Dark Holy Elf

Happy with the results overall. Felix is one of my favourites and was who I voted for, Bernie winning is cathartic. Not the biggest fan of FEH originals but y'know Alfonse is the main character of a Fire Emblem game which has shown it can get characters get into the CYL winners' circle so I guess if anyone from the game deserves to get in it's the guy who has gotten 7+ books of character development. Since the big discussion is around Engage: I'm not at all surprised that the Engage men were shut out. There is really no reason to believe that male Alear would be as popular as male Byleth, or Diamant would be as popular as Felix (a comparably important supporting male PC) given the gap between Engage and 3H, and there was Sigurd in the mix as well who honestly I expected to be one of the winners (didn't see Alfonse coming). I thought maybe Alcryst had an outside chance until I saw he wasn't in the running at midterm results. I am surprised the Engage women were shut out, though to be fair they were close, and I imagine at least one of them will win next year. Biggest disappointment is that neither Fogado or Timerra are anywhere to be seen. I only wish I could say I was surprised. I also prefer Dorothea and Petra but I get it. This might be one of the things you have to be on social media for, but Bernadetta gets a lot of very specific, targeted hate (e.g. some at least moderately-known FE youtuber made a video of himself destroying a Bernadetta figurine) and this really galvanized not only her own fans, but others, into supporting her. My wife spent all her votes on Bernie this year despite not being the biggest fan, and I know others who were doing similarly.

+1. I actually have played Hard (and did a challenge run on it to boot, perhaps as a defence mechanism against anyone who might say "you just don't play hard? skill issue") but I definitely agree that it's a terribly-designed mode. Removing UI and QoL is terrible, removing the weapon triangle is also pretty bad. And the things I might actually want a hard mode to do, like creating trickier enemy formations, making more bosses move, etc... the game doesn't do. Even the stat differences are only barely noticeable. My feeling on Fiona is that she isn't objectively worth investing into (and is terrible if you don't invest into her) which makes her pretty "bad" but she does have neat and unique payoffs so investing into her does feel pretty good. This is a place where the usual "rate the units out of 10" doesn't really capture a unit's value. It is true both that Fiona has the least value if you decide to only invest in Jill/Nolan/Zihark/etc., but also true that she has more potential than the other Dawn Brigade also-rans. Flavour-wise I definitely like this idea! I'm all for small things like this which both increase my feeling of a unit's personality, and create different strengths/weaknesses beyond just stats.

To be clear, I agree with you that FE7 does a good job of characters. I enjoyed watching Eliwood's little arc, and Lyn's. Hector's not so much but I get where you're coming from. And in general this is something I think most FEs are good at, and part of what drew me to this game, and thereafter this series in general. (Nergal I generally think is rather disastrous from a writing standpoint, both in the present and the past. Did he deal with grief and loss? I don't think that came across in the story well at all. IIRC it's mostly gated behind that rather ridiculous 19xx sidequest, and even then I was unclear if Nergal's madness was supposed to be the result of grief or if it was just "dark magic eventually makes you crazy", which iirc some supports seemed to be pointing at. Nergal is bad and there's a reason he's still not in FEH. Even as far as "grief making someone turn to extremes" villain arcs go I thought Sacred Stones did a significantly better job at this... more than once, even!) Far be it for me to defend anything from Blazing's plot but yeah I definitely thought the last Zephiel scene was supposed to be sadly ironic. Or, perhaps it was supposed to make the player hopeful that the problem had been solved (at least if they were unaware of FE6)... only for the ending to come along and gutpunch them with the truth. I also definitely think killing Zephiel is absolutely relevant even after the fire emblem is stolen. Desmond wants someone to succeed him, so he'll need the fire emblem eventually, right? The plan is presumably to kill Zephiel than the fire emblem can be conveniently "found". I do agree with the vice-versa part; I suspect that is just filler to (a) get the titular object into the game and (b) give you more time to learn about what's going on in Bern.

I agree with Jotari on this one; I actually think the inability to reassign the skill to a character makes it feel like LESS of a personal skill. Instead it's something they just happen to start with, and something that in the vast majority of cases I end up removing. Part of the problem IMO is that "can use this skill for free" is generally not advantageous in the early to middle parts of the game. It doesn't matter that Soren can use Adept for free since I don't have that many significant skills to assign anyway. Someone will have space for Adept, and fast units make far better use of Adept than slow ones (both because the rate is higher, but also because doubling means more chances to proc it and turn a non-kill into a non-kill). So even as a big Soren fan I almost always hand the skill to someone else, turning into "distinctly not a personal skill any more". Late in the game, however, and particularly for the Tower, I finally have more useful skills than I have capacity for them, so having one for free is handy. But it's not worth putting the skill on an inferior user for most of the game just to take advantage of this free skill late. It's even more egregious with Tormod and Tauroneo. If Celerity/Resolve could be reassigned to them for free, it would give them both (particularly Tormod, who badly needs it) a nice lategame. They would uniquely be able to combine it with another quality skill in the lategame. As is, it's obviously not worth it to keep Celerity/Resolve on them while they're away, and there's nothing tying it to them thereafter. Anyway I definitely do like Fates/3H/Engage personal skills, though I feel on the whole Engage's were a bit undertuned and there are certainly a few stinkers otherwise (and cases like Cyril which are just insulting). I think they're a neat way to give some personality to the character, though some do so more effectively than others.

These are fair points: I could point out that the popularity metrics ratio exceeds the sales ratio, but you're quite right that those are subject to feedback effects (in addition to what you said, fan works put the characters in the minds of others who then create their own fan works, etc.). That said I do think it's worth observing that Fates does very well in character metrics by any measure (behind 3H, but everything is behind 3H), and I don't think that would have gotten rolling in the first place if people didn't like the characters. And while not Fates-specific, it's interesting to observe that Tellius does quite well on character metrics despite relatively lower sales (e.g. compared to SoV, again), so we at least know sales aren't always destiny. Eh, for what it's worth, I disagree with this. FE7 was my introduction to the series and I fell in love with its gameplay and character designs (and I even agree that its character writing is pretty good!). I have massive nostalgia for it, but honestly its story is terrible, IMO. I don't think it's nitpicking to observe that a thousand-man band of "noble" assassins is both ludicrous and dissonant with the setting, or that Nergal's plot power yo-yos like mad as needed for a given scene. As for the forest, FE7 is a game that always kinda felt devoid of any theme or message. Most other questionable FE stories manage to say something about war, even if they frequently undercut it by apologizing for anything the player does; FE7 really feels like a game about nothing. I don't even fully blame the writers; they were apparently tasked with writing a story where everything that happened (except the Zephiel stuff, which unshockingly is one of the few parts of the story which feels coherent outside Lyn Mode) and everything the characters might learn would be too unimportant to mention twenty years later.

To me, Fire Emblem really excels at a combination of two things: -having a rich cast of memorable characters I care about -having great gameplay featuring fun moment-to-moment decisions and easy-to-follow mechanics (which can inform those decisions) The second is overall more important to me, in that I've played and enjoyed Fire Emblems (as well as other FE-like games) even when I didn't connect with the characters much, but the characters are still a huge help, and something FE is good at. I definitely agree that connecting emotionally with the characters makes things more fun. I think games can excel at different things. Earlier today I saw on social media the sentiment of "it's a GAME what matters is the GAMEplay" and here in this thread I've seen "the story is the soul of an RPG". I don't think either sentiment is wrong and in particular I think people are often weirdly insistent that others should share their priorities in this regard. I can see both, and in fact sometimes feel both! For me personally, there are absolutely games I love for writing where I dislike the gameplay and games I love for gameplay and dislike the writing, so I can't view either as essential. I'll also mention that I quite like the RPG elements of Fire Emblem, though interestingly the cited example (growth units like Ross) don't really do it for me. Instead, I like things like the 3H class/skill system, which is the main reason I've replayed the game more than any other in the series. Letting me feel like I've built characters in ways besides just "I fed them experience" enhances the game for me, and also increases replayability. I think the biggest thing honestly is that a lot of people do like Fates's characters. Like to compare it with SoV, more people will say SoV has a better story (I don't personally agree but SoV pissed me off in some pretty specific ways; I acknowledge it's the majority opinion though), but it's obvious more people liked Fates's characters (see: any CYL, or volume of fan works) and that's why the game was a bigger success, moreso than the gameplay differences. I actually think that outside the hardcore communities like this one, gameplay differences between the games aren't seen as that important.

Jeralt is supernaturally old but he is not immortal, any more than Wilhelm and the others who received the blood of the saints were. So presumably his mortal physical decline kicks in at some point, and my read is that it is occurring during the time period of the game. In his Manuela support he kinda implies that he doesn't expect he has that much longer to live. That said, definitely agree that Sitri's death is a huge factor too; it's impossible to say how much of his decline is due to age and how much is due to his mindset. It's certainly possible that the physical decline hasn't kicked in yet at all, that's just not my personal read on the situation. I would not describe Jeritza as supernaturally strong, no, but he is about as skilled as a human warrior can be. His appearance on the battlefield is consistently painted as a big deal.

As a general observation, combatants don't exist in a "power ranking" scale where the "stronger" one will always win. By which I mean that even if you perceive Jeralt as stronger than Jeritza, the latter could win if he gets a lucky hit in. Having said that I'd kneejerk Jeritza as the more impressive warrior than Jeralt anyway, at least in the present day. The biggest in-game thing praising Jeralt is largely based on his fame as a Knight of Seiros from 20+ years previous, and even assuming that reputation is totally deserved, age and alcohol have likely taken a toll since. Jeritza meanwhile is built up as just about the scariest human in the setting: Byleth and even some of the students are hyped up a lot and you're still told, in no uncertain terms, to avoid him when you first meet him. The gameplay backs this up, too. As for Rhea... even setting aside the Doylist argument about whether the game is still half-heartedly clinging to keeping on her secret in Chapter 12 non-CF, you can argue she's holding back a bit and/or she herself is a bit rusty at this point. And even then it kinda looks like that fight can go either way, judging by the numbers (Jeritza has better stats, mostly speed, but Rhea has draining and a stronghold regen/evade boost so Jeritza will need some luck with criticals to win).

In the specific case of the Death Knight, he's an optional opponent, so I don't think he's in danger of making any one thing too overcentralizing, e.g. I tend to care more about having units who match up well against the 14 AS rampaging villagers than I do about matching up against Jerry in Chapter 8. And even if he were forced, I doubt it would bother me much. Yeah, Dark Spikes (and Knightkneeler / Lance of Ruin) are a bit better than they would be if he didn't exist, but there are still plenty of other tools that get chances to shine in this game, and I don't think the anti-cavalry tools are overpowered, either in practice or in terms of "vibe". Gameplaywise I can take or leave his appearance here, but I agree with vanguard333; his appearance here matters for storyline reasons. I also kinda like how he has steadily more effect on the battle each time you face him: Chapter 4: doesn't move (except on Maddening, where he still doesn't move unless aggroed), completely optional Chapter 6: still only moves if aggroed and only on Maddening, but now you have to hunt down every enemy on the map if you don't want to engage with him Chapter 8: actively pursues you, gets between you and the southern treasure chest (granted, you'll probably just bypass with a flier), can kill Jeralt (loss condition) if you take too long. Chapter 12: gets in your face Final appearance: actually a required kill

Thirding what makes the Black Knight work. I don't think the character is great in PoR (I like him better in RD once we start learning about the human underneath the armour and what makes him tick) but from a gameplay/story point of view? Yeah I get it. Plus he gets a memorable theme music, can't underestimate that. There's also Zephia and Griss in Chapter 23. I'd say it's very clear that the emblem rings aren't the reason you fight them so many times. Zephia is only fought once with her emblem ring (not counting Chapter 11). I'm a bit ambivalent to having bosses you fight multiple times. I think it can serve a good story purpose, but at a certain point it tends to get a bit ridiculous. I'm pretty happy with the encounters with the Death Knight with the exception of the VW/SS bit where you fight him in two consecutive maps near the end, but I agree the Hounds definitely got tiring.

I feel the first game in the series being my favourite is rare for me, which makes sense, since on average, I do think game design improves with time, as devs build on the good ideas of old games. Off the top of my head: Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Ace Attorney, Mario, Mega Man, Mega Man X, Castlevania, Suikoden, Wild Arms, Tales, Xenosaga, Metroid, Ace Attorney, Zero Escape are all series where the first I played is definitely not my favourite. Some series where the first one I played ranks the highest for me are: -the first Valkyrie Profile was a game that really drew me in with its unique story and pacing, I really enjoyed all the little einherjar vignettes building toward a common theme. It is something that few RPGs have done before or since. By contrast VP2 was much more generic and VPDS is kinda muddled with bad gameplay. -the first Devil May Cry is the only one in the series I really love. Its enemy design just feels so much more interesting than the rest of the series, which I tend to find more mindless (caveat: I haven't played 5). When I learned that some of the main people involved with DMC1 weren't part of the rest of the series it was the least surprising thing in the world to me. Fortunately Bayonetta actually lived up to DMC for me, and... I think I barely prefer 1 to 2 although you could argue me on that. (Haven't gotten around to 3.) -So has anyone else even heard of the Marathon triogy? Bungie's big thing before Halo, but hardly anyone played it because Mac-exclusive. Anyway the three games are very similar in terms of gameplay, but the first game has the best atmosphere IMO. -I suppose if one considers the Xeno games a series then Xenogears is my first and my favourite, but -saga and -blade are enough of a departure in terms of tone (not to mention having different names) that I'm not really inclined to count this one.

On both Hard and Maddening, you don't keep your exp/etc. when you retreat, it's pretty much the same as resetting the game.

I definitely agree that I don't think the Houses/Hopes writers dislike Edelgard (quite the opposite), and I wouldn't chalk up Azure Gleam's second half to that. My guess is the writers were given certain restrictions in how to write the story, which included "don't make any ending too overtly happy" (there's an interview where this is all but stated outright iirc), "don't turn any route into a lord versus lord conflict", and "don't kill off any of the lords". Hopes is set up so that Dimitri is an ally of the church, and hence, if my guesses are correct, the Agarthans are basically his only candidates for antagonists. But the Agarthans don't have a substantial army, instead relying on manipulation of existing forces. So the game uses Cornelia manipulating the western lords, than Thales manipulating the Empire. Of course, the question is, how do you make it so Thales, ousted in the prologue, is actually able to manipulate the Empire again? Given that killing Edelgard wasn't an option (if my guesses above are correct), and manipulating her with guile would be hard to stomach, arguably the route was one of their less bad options. But I still hate it. I think the writers basically wrote themselves into a corner. I'd be absolutely stunned if the original plan wasn't to have Hegemon Husk be the final boss of Azure Gleam along with Thales. I imagine she'd have been a uniquely powerful monster similar to Rhea's Immaculate One form. Hence the video of her (videos being commissioned early in development). But they ran out of time to actually create that boss fight, so they just put regular ol' axe Edelgard in that battlefield instead.

6. Binding Blade: Fae... exists and isn't great. She's a bit awkward to level and use. Low move, 1 range. 5. Path of Radiance: Lethe and Mordecai are both pretty good, but overall that's despite their class, not because of it; prepromos in Chapter 9 are just nice to have. Most of the later laguz (particularly after Muarim) have serious trouble doing damage and are locked at 1 range, generally some of the worst units in the game. 4. Sacred Stones: Myrrh at base has some issues killing things but you can level her up a bunch if you really want and then she'll kill most things then, while having durability which is kinda good but weird (very tanky against weaker enemies, but dies surprisingly fast to stronger axes/bows and of course defence-ignoring attacks). But 6 move and 1 range just isn't very impressive at this point. She's kinda like if Eirika couldn't promote. Her dragonstone should suffice for whatever your plans are for her in the maingame, though, unlike Fae. 3. Fates: Foxes are pretty mediocre (as mentioned, they kinda try to have the same niche as ninjas, but with 1 range instead of 1-2, no thanks), wolves are decent. No 1-2 range but that's less terrible in Fates than some games. 2. Awakening: Taguel are pretty mediocre, somewhere between Fates's foxes and wolves I think. On the other hand, Awakening manaketes are very solid. Tanky with 1-2 range, very nice. 1. Radiant Dawn: They're a real feast or famine group, aren't they? The idea behind them is "high stats, but you have to watch a transformation gauge, also 1 range is a downer". So how good they are depends on how good those stats are. If your name is Giffca, Janaff, Ulki, or Volug? Yeah you have excellent stats for the time and are very useful. If your name is Lyre, Kyza, or Vika? Not so much. Birds having both shove+canter is cool. Obviously if the laguz royals are included they're an excellent set of units; I'm not sure whether to count them or not for this. But I feel like if I give the game even partial credit for them it's going to top this list, despite the bad.

"Men aren't used as slaves because they're harder to subdue" isn't historically accurate at all. Men have been made slaves frequently in societies which allowed slavery, from the Ancient World antebellum American South to gulags and more. In fact, physically strong men were very desirable as slaves because of their ability to do physically taxing labour (mining, etc.). Some were even used for their combat ability (Roman gladiators were slaves, for an example you're probably familiar with). Jesse being held as a slave is entirely reasonable. As for misogyny, yeah I would definitely say SoV has serious problems on this front. Shaky Jones says it well: I'd add on to this the Grey/Clair A support (which as lenticular already mentioned, undermines an otherwise excellent support chain), Berkut being able to "sacrifice" his wife for power (because she's his possession obv) and then her forgiving him for that. There's a host of problems on this front and the maddening thing is that a lot of them were introduced by the remake; I expect a 1992 game to have some issues on this front but a 2017 game I'm gonna take a much harder eye to. I definitely agree with the start of this and for that matter your broader point (i.e. how the appeal of FE isn't in gameplay or character writing alone, but rather their intersection and other considerations like art/music) but... I do think FE gameplay is a bit better than you're giving it credit for. Or at least, I think it is. In the case of your rhetorical question... I have and do play such games. Like, I enjoy XCOM and Into the Breach, for two examples. And those are two examples of games where I basically don't care about the writing at all. The units in those games have names, rather than serial numbers, but they're randomly pulled from a list and have minimal characterization. Some people may value some of what those games do for writing (e.g. with respect to emergent storytelling) but I personally do not; they are close-ish to what you describe as far as I'm concerned (they do have music/graphics, and some story is not none). Yet I still enjoy these games well enough, and I wouldn't personally consider their gameplay better than the stronger Fire Emblem games (again, some people might feel they are, but not me, which is relevant for the point I'm making). Of course I like Fire Emblem better and that's because of the things you said. I also want to add: Fire Emblem and games like it are asymmetric, of course, but I'm not at all bothered by asymmetrical strategy games. in fact, I enjoy them, and feel that single-player strategy games do not have to and often should not strive to be symmetric, since the AI and me are fundamentally different players, and only one of us actually experiences the game. A skilled chess player facing other equally skilled chess players expects to have about a 50% win rate (counting draws as half a win), but a skilled FE player facing the AI expects to win most of the time, and when she loses she expects to learn from her loss, try again, and ultimately win. That's intended in the design of each game and IMO desirable in both cases.

I think this is correct... and I think the opinion you cite might not be as widespread as some assume even within hardcore communities. I dunno if this counts as an unpopular opinion, but I'd say that 3H and Engage are pretty close in overall gameplay worth. They're relatively different so it's reasonable for people to prefer Engage, but I also think it's reasonable for someone to prefer 3H. I consider the two of them pretty close, with my bullet points for their gameplay pros/cons being: Engage advantages: no same-turn reinforcements (only affects Maddening, of course) overall better map design, on average the backup / mystic / qi adept / armored tags mean every class type has a niche instead of "infantry bad" 3H advantages: unit building is more interesting; going through classes to pick up skills is more fun than just pressing a button to inherit skills after burning time in the arena on a related note, five skill slots instead of two leads to a lot more customization (Awakening/Fates share this advantage) individual units are more interesting, due to having unique spells / combat arts / talent lists There's a lot more I could add to both lists (I could talk about how emblems are more interesting than battalions, but bond rings are far worse and for a large part of the game over half your cast is stuck with those instead), but the point is there are significant points for both and I don't come away thinking there's a clear winner. Engage's first playthrough was a better gameplay experience than 3H's for me, but I doubt I'll play Engage as much as I've played 3H, and I think there's a reason that 3H generated more gameplay discussion even in hardcore communities (including here).

But high magic is considered a major selling point, which you're ignoring. "Three high stats, and one of them is one of the important ones" isn't damning. It's not automatically good by any means, but it can work. And in the case of Orochi, I've already shown it does work. You can get her to double a remarkable number of enemies thanks to pairup + Horse Spirit, and Birthright enemies are usually not too fast outside of specific maps. Onmyoji is a perfectly reasonable promotion for Azama; Grand Master involves a wait for 1-2 range and doesn't give Rally Magic. He's going to be mostly on staff duty anyway, barring some sort of elaborate build. That said, if you prefer him in another class, that's fine. Izana literally exists for a zero-effort as I already mentioned. And although I think of Onmyojis as ideal pairups for mages, there are other classes which aren't that much worse (swordmaster and nine-tails offer even more speed, master ninja offers speed and move, etc.). Constance only has one high stat, Lysithea might as well only have one (her other high stat is Dex but that's nearly useless on FE3H mages, clocking in at +0.5 hit per point, a third as potent as Fates Skill). Both are generally considered good. I don't play FEH any more but Reinhardt was utterly dominant for a large stretch of time with only one high stat. etc. For your last query... I bench different people on different playthroughs... and in particular, if I'm talking about a unit, I'm always going to assume they're not benched (unless they have some bench-specific utility I suppose, like a FE3H adjutant). That said, even from your list, I'm surprised at no mention of Subaki or Rinkah, and I could easily see adding Hana.

Basically agree with all this. Deserts are neat in moderation.

The "investment" of a weapon which you get one of for free and can buy more of for 2100 gold, a pairup (which anyone needs to be effective at enemy phase on that map), and a couple tonics? Really? There are certainly good Fire Emblem stats who manage to have only one good stat, and Orochi actually has three (Magic, Skill, Res). But regardless, her magic is so good that you can get away with giving her a weaker weapon which raises her other stats by 3, and the proof is in the pudding: she has enough magic/speed to one-round a large number of enemies at 1-2 range. If you think Orochi sucks, post a build for a unit typically considered mid tier or below (I'll let you choose who) which is more impressive at one-rounding at equal or less investment than the one I posted. I never claimed it was bad? I'm a bit confused by this barrage of multi-quotes. I think the class is fine (I described it as "all right" in my ratings post, and then acknowledged that I might be underrating it a bit in my previous response to you). I just like some other classes better for both tome combat and staff use. If you feel that way about Engage Sage, that's fine. I think Engage Sage is better because it's more competitive with its competition on move (only losing by 1 instead of 2, and getting class advantages so the move's not a total loss) and IMO it's more competitive on combat too (I suspect I value Nosferatu much more highly than you).

Yeah to chime in, Orochi is a legitimate unit and her speed is more workable than you might think. I'm going to take a snapshot of Chapter 23 Birthright, both because it's the map I'm currently up to in my current run but also because it's generally considered one of the harder maps in the game. Let's see how Orochi does: Orochi, 20/7 Onmyoji, has 29 magic and 13 speed (rounding down 13.55). Let's give her another Onmyoji as a pairup (they're not exactly hard to come by, Izana works at worst, obviously one she supports such as Azama would be better) and a +1 Horse Spirit. Orochi's Atk: 29 + 2 (Mag+2) + 6 (Horse Spirit) + 1 (B rank... A is possible by now too) + 4 (pairup) + 2 (Magic Tonic) = 44 Orochi's Spd: 13 + 3 (Horse Spirit) + 4 (pairup) + 2 (Speed Tonic) = 22 This doubles and kills the Dark Knights, Great Knights, Sorcerers (surprising but true), and Malig Knights. She's 1 speed away from doubling the Wyvern Lords, 2 away from doubling the Paladins. If you swap her Onmyoji pairup for a Swordmaster, she'll kill the Wyvern Lords, but not the Sorcerers, so it's a matter of what you want there. She'll have a hard time killing the Bow Knights and Strategists unassisted. This is good! You might say "I'm sure other units can do this too" but it's harder than you think in many cases. Orochi's magic is just so high that most other units can't do the kind of damage she does. I feel pretty confident saying that at least 75% of the cast can't do as well as her here with this level of investment (i.e. not relying on stat boosters, overlevelling, or outside support like rallies and auras). Orochi's squishy, you say? Well... kinda. Thanks to Horse Spirit her defence/res are pretty good (and her speed is good enough to avoid doubles from anything) so she can take one hit from everything on this map, even with her bad HP. And that's... often all she has to take, because by setting her up to double, she fills up her dual guard gauge fast. If she enters an enemy phase with at least 40% of her dual guard gauge filled (i.e. the minimum if she one-rounded something on the previous player phase), she'll be able to take two enemy attacks. If she enters the enemy phase with the gauge 100% filled, she'll be able to take three. That will be two or three dead enemies on the next player phase, allowing you to press forward. And speaking of the player phase, she'll of course be able to one-round something on that, too. There's also a number of combinations she can take two hits from anyway, if you do have some sort of aura behind her (Gentilhomme, Inspiration, Sakura). The specifics vary but it's quite possible. That's fair. My own preferences for staff users involve units who start with them (particularly Libra and Anna... the latter even has +1 move) or highly mobile users like Falcon Knights. Sage doesn't really stand out at this niche to me; the extra magic is nice, but I find movement is more important than magic for Rescue, and like Falcons she has to start at E rank for the purpose of non-Rescue staves (why the heck was Rescue E again?). But as you say, Miriel has better killing ability than some other staff users, so I get where you're coming from. I could see sliding Awakening up a spot or two on my list very easily. While it's a bit unusual to see it so early in the game, Monk is the same as Gremory or Sage to me: a class which equally favours attack magic (/tomes) and support magic (/staves), so I figured it belongs here. If you read the definition I used it definitely qualifies. Obviously it's possible to craft a definition that excludes it, too.

For the purpose of this thread, I'm defining a mage as an infantry class which uses "anima" magic (meaning magic which includes at least one of fire / lightning / wind, though not necessarilly all) as its primary weapon, or tied for primary with staves. I agree that hybrid classes don't feel like they really belong here, and may slip through the cracks as a result, but since there aren't very many of them, I think that's okay. 1t. Binding Blade: One of the best classes in a vacuum in this game. Fire is super-accurate in a game where this matters, enemy res is terrible in this game, Aircalibur shreds wyverns, Forblaze is gotten reasonably early, staves on promotion, there's a hell of a lot to like here. Its downside is its members: Lugh is good (but not absolutely incredible, he'd love to have a better magic base/growth) and the other two mages in this game have issues. That said, the class is good enough that it manages to make Lilina a decent unit (because goodness knows a Level 1 unit in Chapter 8 would be trash most other classes), so I think that says good things about it. 1t. Engage: I waffled a lot on this vs. Binding Blade; they're basically tied. Sage is certainly a good class; tomes are strong and provide 3-range options, and there are some very nice emblem synergy the class has too (Byleth and Corrin). They can also use pretty much all the staves you want, especially if you have staff proficiency. They aren't quite as good as Mage Knights at combat, but the emblem bonuses and staff access make up for it. Pandreo and Citrinne are examples of good units for whom this has an argument to be their best class. The only knock on it is that Ivy exists and has a flying version. 3. Three Houses: Monk is just the best Beginner class period, since they all have about the same stats but magic is really good! Mage is nice too, they now lose move to infantry but have both white and black magic, and the free Fire is also very handy for folks like Lysithea, Hubert, Dorothea, and Marianne who have less accurate / heavier D rank spells. Warlock... is the weak part of the game for this class line, though how much so depends a bit on DLC. Without it, they're still quite good, since they're largely better than Bishop (+1 magic and Tomefaire > Heal+10 is part of it, but the bigger part is that only a select few units actually want to reach A faith, while every mage wants to reach A reason, preferably S), although the 4 move at this tier does sting (some units, like Hubert and Lorenz, are probably better becoming magic combat art bots in a more mobile class). With DLC, Dark Flier and Valkyrie are good and obviously this devalues Warlock (though it still has the most power and the double uses can matter a lot for siege tomes). Then Gremory comes along and makes a pretty good case for best magical class with its +5 magic mod and double spell uses, while being easy to qualify for. All around they're good just because magic access is very good in 3H; Warp / Physic / Rescue / Fortify / Silence are all very neat, and they have the ability to just strike at crazy ranges which trivializes maps. I've done an all mage run of Maddening; it was only barely harder than a normal game, far easier than my other "theme" runs. 4. Blazing Blade: Compared to Binding, the accuracy niche is largely gone (other things gained hit, bosses are less evasive), Aircalibur and Forblaze are gone, and Monk -> Bishop exists with its C rank staves as competition. The class no longer really stands out, but it's not bad. And it has Pent, who certainly does stand out. Decent class overall. 5. Fates: Diviner/Onmyoji is kinda similar to the GBA class so it slides in around here, although Strategist is better if you can get to it. You can stick it out with them for Tomefaire, though, and Rally Luck + Magic isn't the worst thing for your utility magic class. 6. Sacred Stones: Compared to Blazing Blade, there's even more competition; Mage Knight enters the fray as a promotion for mages in particular. And Saleh's not as good as Pent. Still an okay class. 7. Genealogy: Goodness they're tough to rate here. Being infantry, they're not great at base. Unpromoted is okay enough statwise but not exceptional. Tailtiu is bad, Tinny is also problematic without some pretty specific inheritance. Lewyn is pretty good, Arthur varies from bad to "Lewyn 2.0" (with a promotion which makes him game-breakingly good, but also removes him from the discussion of this class). Ced varies from decent to good. Overall, eh. Not inclined to give too much credit for Forseti, that's really a character-specific thing, and past that they're this low-mobility, low-durability class that sometimes has utility and sometimes doesn't. So pretty mediocre. 8. Awakening: Unfortunately Nosferatu is the dominant magic strat in this game, so everyone prefers Dark Mage to this. Dark Flier and Valkyrie are also just better. I don't think anyone really wants to reclass to Mage/Sage, and the characters who start in it... Miriel's okay but wants to get to Dark Mage, Ricken is somewhat less okay. I don't recall how good Laurent is, but see Miriel for him anyway. That said the class is... all right, in that it doesn't have actively bad move. And if you do end up with Celica's Gale, that's cool I suppose. This lets it beat Tellius mages. 9. Path of Radiance: Mages get a move penalty in this one, which stings. They're also very squishy. I think sometimes people can overestimate in their mind how much squishier mages are than other classes, but in Tellius? It's legit. Soren averages like 10 less def by lategame than even mid-defence physical units like Marcia and Astrid. Other than that, tome might is weak and hard to forge. Siege tomes are a neat little exception, being very strong, but good luck getting enough weapon exp to use more than one. Calill tries to save this class by showing up with competent bases and good weapon ranks, but doesn't have staves... then again, with thier low move, sages aren't very good at using staves in this game anyway. 10. Radiant Dawn: See PoR. Tome might's a little better (and tripling it instead of doubling it helps with their niches), but enemy res is higher, and mages either got hit with big availability issues or got even slower in this game. No staves until third tier, either, and E rank is too little too late, then. Probably their worst outing as a class. I had good experiences with them in SoV but I only played once and I missed some key tools which probably devalue them some (e.g. Hunter's Volley) so I'll abstain.

Even though we've done this thread before, I at least have played far more of the game than I had at the time, so my thoughts have changed somewhat. Better: I said this in the previous thread, but I think Petra is improved because her goals and reasons to fight in a Fodlan war are made more explicit; in general the writers seemed more concerned with her position, which I really appreciated. Agree that Claude is done better this time; his scheming takes more of a central role, and he has to figure out what it is he exactly wants to do. His wildcard status is also emphasized by how he take different sides in the Fodlan faction, but he's always cleverly advancing his own interests and that of the Alliance. I always liked Claude, but I think the story treats him better this time around. Byleth goes without saying for me, given my opinions on silent mains. While I think Houses tends to win where serious writing is concerned, Hopes is unquestionably the funnier game. Chief beneficiary from this is Constance, who gets multiple absolutely hilarious supports/interactions (her Lorenz support and the Noble Trio paralogue being perhaps the best (her Petra support is also some good serious character work). Worse: I can dig up old posts of mine here where I clearly state that Edelgard and Dimitri are my two favourite lords in the series, based on Houses. But in Hopes? Oh man, Dimitri does not come across well. Instead of a character arc where he hits rock bottom and then builds himself back up into someone who is admirable (but still living with the trauma of what he has experienced and done), we get someone who... never hits rock bottom, but seems to be doing kinda badly the whole way through? From his execution of Rufus, to "radical new freedoms are not what Fodlan needs right now" to his "we must kill all the lords who disagree with me" to his scene before the final battle where he's still talking about being bound by the dead, to the very final scene, I kinda felt like I was playing as the bad guy, kinda like in Chapter 13-17 of AM... except he never gets better! Only the fact that his antagonist was the Objectively Evil Thales kept me AG from feeling like a villain route, so instead it just felt like a "feels bad" route, especially as a fan of the character. A few characters suffered from being "softened" too much; that is, their negative traits were kinda just glossed over. Chief among these are Sylvain and Gilbert. Sylvain has randomly overcome his misogynist womanizing and Gilbert has had his estrangement from Annette just unceremoniously resolved. The thing is, these characters were really interesting for these reasons in Houses, so this is a net loss. Sylvain's positive traits do still shine through, at least; I like that he's the progressive voice of reason in his paralogue, for instance. I didn't like Ashe at all in Hopes. It felt like "becoming a knight" was turned into nearly his only personality trait, at the expense of his relationships with his family. Goodness I have to nominate someone who isn't a Lion here, don't I? Let's bring up poor Cyril. After Houses tried to make sure he was more than Rhea's yes-man once you dug below the surface, this game... really does reduce him to just that. Obviously the other "reduced to unplayable" characters suffer a bit, but Cyril suffers the most. Dying randomly in the final battle of GW in particular just seems like a middle finger to the character who wasn't even given the time of day on the route that now has more Almyran content than anything in Houses.

Radiant Dawn is harder than Path of Radiance so of course a "no clerics" run of RD is harder than one of PoR, but... honestly, I'd argue that a "no clerics" run of RD is only barely harder than a normal run of RD, which to me at least renders this line of argument largely moot. I've certainly had Laura die in Chapter 4 and decided to go on and... yeah I didn't really miss her honestly, beyond the usual ways of being down a unit in maps where she'd otherwise be a free deploy. (I also often bench her in Chapter 7 and/or 8 with their low deploy limits, for instance.)

11. Radiant Dawn: Healers do have a clear niche over healing items, but better healing items do devalue them, and RD healing items are really good, while infantry healers mostly all have terrible combat (like, they're all notably worse at it than Micaiah, whose combat is better described as "unique" rather than outright good) and bad move. 10. Path of Radiance: Rhys is largely worse than Mist as far as I'm concerned. There's a slight niche for him as incredibly low-effort Physic bot, but I'm more enamoured with 8 move Restore than anything he offers as far as a staffer goes. That said he's workable. 9. Binding Blade: Saul/Ellen are mostly outclassed by Clarine but they're fine. Yoder is mostly outclassed by Niime but he's fine. 8. Engage: Martial Monk/Master/High Priest are mostly outclassed by Ivy/Hortensia/Griffin Knights/Sages (especially with staff proficiency, for the latter two). But Framme's availability lead on those options is higher than Ellen's availability lead on Clarine. 7. Blazing Blade: Serra is mostly outclassed by Priscilla but she's fine, and Lucius has pretty solid offence and also gets C staves on promotion, which is nice. 6. Awakening: Healtouch helps avoid the "outclassed infantry healer" phenomenon, as do Libra's high bases for the time. Ultimately I find they fall off in favour of more mobile healers (Anna, Falconknights) but there's a case for them. 5. Three Houses: For once, infantry healers aren't outclassed by mounted healers, but by mages! (Especially with the DLC classes added.) Priest does have Heal+5 which is cool, but not nearly as cool as Fiendish Blow and even innate Fire puts up a case for Mage for some units, and Bishop is saddled with 4 move and no -faire, so you really have to be Linhardt/Flayn level "I'm only here for faith stuff". Still, magic classes are good in this game, and both Priest/Bishop do have clear niches, so this feels about right. 4. Genealogy: Infantry healers get staff rank on the mounted ones in this game, which is a big help. The mounted ones are still better overall, though... such is the way of Horse Emblem. I think they belong around here but I'm not really certain; the GBA order is fairly set in stone but I could see ranking FE4 almost anywhere compared to them. 3. Sacred Stones: Hey, a GBA game where infantry staffers are better than the mounted one, that's nice. I don't think Artur is quite as good as Lucius, but he's close enough, and Slayer is a neat niche which both he and Moulder/Natasha can all lean into, so I have to rank this the highest of the GBA games. 2. Fates: I'm inclined to agree that Butler/Maid belongs here (they are infantry, and an S rank staff user), and they are definitely the workhorse class in this conversation: shuriken, Gentilhomme/Demoiselle, Live to Serve. The rest still have good staff exp and on Birthright the easily available 2 range staves and Rescue are neat, too. All the units who start here are varying degrees of solid, though it's fair to point out that few others are excited to reclass into these classes. And Strategist is still mostly better, when available. 1. Shadows of Valentia: Yeah Invoke is very good, Fortify is very good, Warp good, Physic good, I could go on. Genny is boring but probably the best unit on Celica's route, this is probably Faye's best promotion, Silque and Tatiana are good too, etc. I feel like 2-7 could swap around a lot depending on my mood.

Well keep in mind that Raigh himself has something past 75 avoid when on a forest with Lugh nearby. I don't remember wyvern hit rates but most of their numbers should be super low too. Toss in true hit and even if it were true that a single miss would lead to his death, the odds of it happening (consecutive hit, miss, hit) would be incredibly low. And of course some attacks may not 2HKO (depends on robes I'm sure), and some of these wyverns will be doubled where one miss won't be fatal. etc. I don't remember feeling in danger and I'm pretty sensitive to low-percent chances of death. For what it's worth, I think this conversation is showing that (at least to me) Raigh is only worth it on Hard if you're investing into him at least fairly heavily. If you're not gonna, just don't bother at all. He has too many benchmarks he wants to hit, and early promotion doesn't really help him hit them. On Normal you can probably get away with lighter investment, of course. Missing the Wyvern Lords (either by damage or not doubling) is unfortunate but not the end of the world. If you enemy-phase down all the riders and leave the lords on death's door they're an easy mop-up next turn. I also don't think too many setups have a better showing here - Lugh himself is admittedly potentially one (especially if he gets lucky with speed growth, he can get many of the wyverns to zero hit iirc, and Aircalibur is obviously great in this situation. He also doubles them more easily). (As a point of interest, using some numbers from a project for another site I have lying around, I can say that if you give Raigh around ~9% of the combat exp (i.e. spreading exp equally among a combat team of ~11) from his join map on, he'll hit around Level 20/8 for Murdock's map; most units vary between that and 20/10, with a few obvious exceptions. This was calculated for NM, but I don't believe HM changes much. Obviously this is an abstract ideal; a lot of things can change it in practice (especially completing maps extra fast and leaving a bunch of unharmed enemies) but gives an idea of what's possible depending on different levels of investment.) Axes aren't bad in FE6, and I bring them up to observe that even in optimum conditions they barely outperform Nosferatu for hit. If you make the conditions less favourable to axes, such as against other weapons, or trying to attack from 2 range, they just plain start losing. Geese's support situation is dire (59 turns to C with Echidna is his best), and Garret is little better (joins even later, need to save a Lilina support for him and even then it's significantly slower than Lugh/Raigh). Both fall behind Raigh for hit pretty quickly even against lance users (especially on Normal Mode for Garret, though if you want to argue we just don't use Garret on Normal that's fair). I know this is an aside to your discussion with Jotari, but for what it's worth I definitely wouldn't say they have the same classes, in that in these threads I've usually only had to consider a Hoshido class or a Nohr class, but not both. Hero, Dark Mage, Valkyrie, Wyvern, Berserker, Armour, and Cavalier are Nohr; Swordmaster, Mage, Pegasus Knight are Hoshido. Thief is I think the only class we've talked about where I've seriously considered one from each side (and even then, the Nohr thief uses a bow and the Hoshido ones uses shuriken so they feel very different, if both most likely thieves because they share locktouch. Fighter is the other one which arguably has a representative on both sides, and those two are at least somewhat similar, though one emphasizes offence and one defence... you could argue that Fighter (the Nohr class) is just an unpromoted Berserker, actually, since it doesn't promote to Warrior.