Radiant Dragon

If you plan on leaving Ramza in his base class (which is fairly good, so it's not a bad idea), magic-using secondaries are probably best, since Ramza's useful skills are mostly supportive in nature, and most physical secondaries either don't help him kill enemies (Knight, Thief) or aren't great on Squires (Charge w/o range, Jump w/o Spears, Punch Skill w/o Martial Arts). The only exception would be Throw, but while it's fine there are better options. Item is also fine, since instant speed, unmissable healing/reviving is never bad. Draw Out is great because it has damage, healing, buffs and range. Black Magic is great for damage, White Magic offers more support as well as Holy for even more damage. Green Magic has a lot of utility, and the HP Drain destroys bosses since it deals percentage damage. Elemental is good for range and possible status, but is kind of weak. Time Magic lets Ramza support even harder, and occasionally drop a giant rock on his enemies. I'm not a huge fan of Summons outside of a dedicated caster, but Golem is nice. Talk Skill is better for grinding and/or min/maxing than actual combat. Math Skill is obviously amazing but also a giant pain to grind for (although Auto Battle lets the computer do the math for you). Same with Dark Knight, but much more so. The best thing about Ramza is he's incredibly flexible, since he gets the best of both Male and Female growths, so I would recommend just using whatever you like most.

I'm totally just spit-balling ideas here, but on the subject of possible Argath threads:

It always surprised me that the marquis doesn't get any lines whatsoever in Chapter 1 after you rescue him, considering that he's a somewhat important character later on.

True. I always just ditch the first three of the starting generics so that Lavian, Alicia and Ladd join in slots 2-4, then I ditch the rest of my generics at the start of Chapter 2. You only get to deploy three non-Ramza units for most of Chapter 2 anyway, and by the time you get to add a fourth you've recruited other plot characters to fill the gap. Thankfully, you get some wiggle room in WotL.

You totally can do this, actually. With only two gender-exclusive classes, there is a lot of mixing and matching of skillsets available, unlike in FFTA/FFTA2 where some races only have a couple of good options. Many of the unique characters also use certain classes better or worse than others, and there are one or two that are broken enough that they will almost never use a generic skillset except maybe to heal/revive others. There are a couple challenges to running a large team that you'll need to keep in mind, however. One, if you want to keep and use all of the special characters, you have to make sure you don't go over your roster limit. In the original FFT, there were 16 roster slots, exactly enough for Ramza and the 15 special characters, so any generics you recruit and train through chapter 1 have to eventually either get booted or boot out someone later. I think WotL has 20 or 24 slots, and only has two additional unique characters, so you have some wiggle room there for additional generic units or monsters if you want. The second challenge is that you're probably going to have to fight a lot of random battles to keep a large team all leveled, since FFT doesn't have any sidequests until chapter 4, unlike FFTA/FFTA2. Your generics can run propositions for JP on the side (basically dispatch missions like in FFTA/FFTA2), but they don't give EXP.

Thankfully, there's such an incredible amount of diversity in the Commander format that you almost never get forced to play against a bunch of boring, yet incredibly effective decks. There's definitely something for just about everyone.

You were all holding up Redirect? Damn, that's unfortunate for that guy. Reminds me of a game a saw last week where a friend of mine died due to his Commander running into a Deflecting Palm after he had cast Hatred on it.

To be fair, this is what Daein tried to do in PoR and Ike was still able to break through their lines then, so reusing the same failed strategy probably isn't the best idea. In addition, I doubt the Laguz Alliance wanted to divide their forces before taking on the massive Begnion Central Army, and opted to hedge their bets on being able to convince Daein to back out of the war after winning a couple battles and proving that Daein had no chance in stopping them. If Ike and co. had known about the Blood Pact at this point, I'm sure they would have done exactly what you suggest, however. There was no way they could have expected Daein to fight an obviously losing battle on behalf of Begnion, especially so soon after the occupation.

To be fair, Marquis wasn't an amnesiac until he started taking the potion for Cyda.

The voices of Virion and Donnel kinda startle me occasionally, not because they're bad (they're both rather fitting in Heroes, actually), but simply because they're different from how they sounded in Awakening, where they both had very distinct voices. Olivia's voice sounds quite a bit higher than before, also, which is odd because isn't she voiced by the same person in both games? As for those who are getting voices for the first time, I actually really like most of them. Barst, Cecilia, Florina, Shanna and especially Serra all sound excellent. The only one I've heard so far that I kinda don't like is Raven's. I've only really listened to the characters I've pulled myself, though, and I only have approximately 45 unique ones.

Yes, but that's also assuming that Ike doesn't proc any skills whatsoever. The chance of Ike missing once and never activating anything is much lower.

Do note you'll only be able to use the Forge on 4-2 and 4-5, the chapters with Tibarn/Elincia's group, as that's where Jorge and Daniel are. Plan out your forged weapon uses with this in mind. As has been stated, Micaiah's route has a desert to trek through in 4-3, so fliers (especially Jill and Haar), mages and any beast Laguz you're using are a good choice for this route. Ike's route is the kindest to your mounted units, so this is a good place for those. In addition, his route is the toughest in general, so your strong infantry units will be good here as well. I'd send Heather here, also, because 4-4 has plenty of doors and chests for her to open. Elincia and Tibarn have the easiest route, and 4-5 is great for EXP if you're still training up any units you want to bring into the final battle, so this is a good place to send those units, with one or two of your stronger units as backup. If you're not interested in the EXP, 4-5's objective is 'Defeat Boss' anyway, so Tibarn can take care of him no problem.

Clan Centurio plays a very minor role in FFTA2, as well. However, one of the later missions in FFTA involves a female Moogle pretending to have a crush on Montblanc in order get back at him for something (it's been a while, I don't remember what exactly), which is what I believe this mission is referencing.

If Ike has max Strength, attacks every turn and never misses, he will defeat the Black Knight within the time limit without needing any skills to activate. Obviously, equipping Aether or Adept/Wrath is good to increase your chances, but the fight isn't as luck-based as you might think. You do need Mist to be able to hold off the enemy Bishops while healing Ike, though, as he doesn't have time to pop an Elixir if he doesn't activate something.

Hey, Astrid was really good in PoR. She just got nerfed into the ground in RD. Mounted bow users would be really cool, but it may be a balance reason we haven't gotten any. Can you imagine a slightly worse Takumi, but with 3 move to make up for it?

I legitimately don't understand why Al-Cid can't reclass. Like, I can kind of understand why Hurdy and Montblanc can't become Chocobo Knights (they were too lazy to make models for them, I guess?), but were they worried that Guns would be too good with any of the Hume skillsets?

To be fair, does the mobile game really count? Anyway, I'll also vote for an LP of FFT WotL. There are patches available to eliminate the slowdown problem, thankfully.

Beyond the Wasteland (the one that plays for Clan Trials, was also in FFTA) would probably get my vote for favorite, but all of the ones mentioned so far are really good, especially Front to Back.

While I'm not a huge fan of Shadow Dragon either, it's important to realize that there were many factors that I'm sure went into the decision not to localize New Mystery, of which Shadow Dragon's sales were probably only a small portion of that. For example, the game was released in Japan only about six months before the 3DS launched, and most of Nintendo's focus moved onto their new system.

I used BEXP to get him enough Speed and Strength to ORKO the 4-E-1 Generals in a draft once. It took over an hour of resetting, if I remember correctly. And even then, he only saved one turn over the course of the entire Endgame. Still, if you take the time to get him there he performs well enough against standard enemies. There's just no point in trying to raise him at this point, unfortunately. His aura is the worst out of the three, even.

To be fair, you actually make money by recruiting Volke, since I don't believe you get the 30,000G from him at Endgame unless he's recruited, and 3,000G isn't too much to ask for by 4-5.

If I'm not mistaken, Hurdy does indeed show up in FFXII - He's one of the moogles that operates the Moogling in Rabanastre. If I remember correctly he's the one at the Westgate by the Aerodrome. One of the hunts in that game involves tracking down a flan that ate his candy and ran off with a key he was fixing for Old Dalan.

Unfortunately, the only other game in the series that offers as much grinding options as the newer entries is FE2, and that game is quite dated by this point. Blazing Sword (FE7, also known as just 'Fire Emblem') has Arenas like Sacred Stones does that you can use to grind, but no world map or skirmish/challenge battles available. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn both have the Bonus Experience mechanic, which allows you to give your units extra EXP in between battles, which is kinda like grinding without the work, but there is a limit to how much BEXP you can get. You also mentioned that story is at least of some importance to you, and Path of Radiance has one of the best written ones in the series. Difficulty-wise, however, Path of Radiance is about on par with Sacred Stones (I personally find PoR's Hard Mode easier than SS's Hard Mode, just because the units in PoR have better stats in general). Radiant Dawn's difficulty is good, but is a direct sequel to Path of Radiance so I would recommend playing that one first if you intend on eventually wanting to play Radiant Dawn. Blazing Sword's difficulty is also fine if you have the option of starting on Hector Hard Mode, otherwise it might be too easy for you (I would recommend playing through Lyn Mode on first run regardless, as long as you don't mind long tutorials). There's also Shadow Dragon, which has arenas for grinding and many difficulty options, however the story is quite sparse. It's not bad, and it's well written, there's just not much of it because Shadow Dragon is a remake of the original game starring Marth, and the remake's story is pretty faithful to the original's.

FFXII's Cid is probably meant to be Dr. Cid, an Archadian scientist responsible for developing the skystones that allowed Archadia's airships to fly through Jagd. Since he was (as far as I'm aware, at least) the first Cid in the series to be an antagonist, I'm assuming they gave this guy the name 'Al-Cid' so that players could point to him as a Cid on the player's side, despite the fact he doesn't have really any of the qualities that a 'Cid' character typically has (he's only slightly less obnoxious in FFXII, by the way). The fact that most skystones can't operate in Jagd is something that I don't believe is brought up at all in FFTA2 since the only airship in the game is a ferry that doesn't go near any Jagd anyway.

I've always preferred Rhys to Mist, personally. Mist's (slightly) increased durability isn't super important in my opinion because healers aren't meant to be taking hits anyway, but Rhys' existent chip damage is something I can actually use. The Physic staff that transfers over in 3-2 makes their movement and durability even less relevant, especially considering Rhys has much more Magic to use it with.