Mikhail Naumov

Just clear GotHW and then move on to 776. I find that playing a Prequel or Midquel is much better in terms of story arc experience if you finish the previous game it's tied to first, because FE4 did come BEFORE FE5 so back in the day all the FE fans played FE4 first. It's rather odd to bounce from game to game like that, and most of the stuff that happens in FE5 gets summarized quite nicely in FE4 or isn't extremely relevant at all. FE5 didn't have the best story in my personal opinion, but it was saved because it was able to piggyback off of FE4's story and then had the ambush spawn RNG fisting to boost the difficulty in order to give seasoned players a kick. FE4 is a much better game than FE5 in my personal opinion, and I feel FE5 would be more properly enjoyed if you cleared FE4 first because that's how it was basically intended to be.

This is basically what I've done every time I've used Donnel, I just pull him out of Villager right away because there's little to no benefit in keeping him in that shit class unless you're just desperate to get his lance rank up and really don't want to use a Second Seal. Gregor is the biggest let down of any Mercenary character I've ever seen in a Fire Emblem game, usually the first Mercenary you get ends up a Hero with all of his combat stats and HP capped or right at capping, Gregor didn't even come close (granted Awakening has the highest caps of any FE) to that and was overshadowed by most of my other units. Donnel's only purpose in my eyes is replacing Gregor as the token Mercenary because Gregor is just mediocre.

But they do, and regardless of that Chrom and Ike don't take time consuming about of babysitting to get to a desirable stage. You're essentially going to have to abuse the hell out of pair up and forge the hell out of Bronze Lances if you have any chance in hell of getting him to level 15, at that point he can start going off on his own. One of the worst problems with Donnel is his E rank lance start out, then once he reclasses he's going to lose lances entirely. Plus Ike is just fucking broken, especially in late game RD. It's hard for me to see Donnel giving Ike a run for his money, Chrom I could maybe see. When Ike showed up in RD I thought he wasn't going to be OP as shit like he wasn't in PoR (older FE games have conditioned me to using really ass Lords, save for maybe FE7 Hector and FE8 Ephraim, then there's Sigurd) but by the time he was well into the Vanguard class he had stats up in the 30's and was one of the best units I had with minimal effort put into him. Aether is just bullshit in FE9/FE10.

Because a lot of Fire Emblem fans are rather hardcore. A vast majority of the time, casual players are the only types who meander about babying the hell out of characters. Most people don't want to constantly use reeking boxes to spawn risen onto the map, then proceed into the skirmish with the character you're babying and then pair him up with one of your best units for the stat boosts, proceeding from there to just grind out one of the easier risen chapter spots OVER AND OVER AND OVER. Then second seals come into play, and it's just a fucking chore. This is essentially arena abuse from the earlier FE games just masked as something different. A lot of hardcore FE fans want to play through the game on harder difficulties, and they pride themselves in doing as little grinding as possible because grinding is time consuming and takes a lot away from the challenge of the game. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone who does this is a casual, there's actually a TON of value (especially on fucking Lunatic and Lunatic+) in reclassing and grinding characters, but Donnel is a poor fucking choice. His stat caps are abysmal and he's a shit father on top of that. It goes back to the same general idea of trainee units in FE8. Excluding maybe Ross since you get him really early on, it's literally pointless (especially since FE8 is the easiest game in the series) to baby characters like this because regardless of how good they turn out there's an abundance of characters you'll already have who are leagues ahead and they are by no means necessary in terms of progressing through the game. Not to mention having a character with a fucking piece of cookware on his head during battle animations is just a bit stupid, and as a character Donnel is just a perpetuated stereotype of the 'dumb southern farm boy' trope you see in all sorts of TV/Movies/Video Games. Also, his base stats are absolute garbage. He can get some good skills, but due to his low stat caps and how much babying he needs, it's a waste of time when there are characters who take less grinding who can turn out better. TL;DR - Donnel isn't worth the massive amount of babying and waste of second seals because he has abysmal stat caps and babying isn't exactly fun on top of that. He's just not worth it.

Dondon is right, considering the ambush spawns in this game are flung at you like overpriced crap on a tourist's vacation there will be times that no matter how well you play the RNG falls outside of your favor and absolutely FISTS you. Though this is rare in my personal experience. The one warp staff isn't an issue when you can restore uses with it, you definitely can't warp abuse through every chapter but there's around 3 chapters in particular where the Warp staff can save you a LOT of time.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm finally getting around to playing through GotHW again today. I really like the SNES Fire Emblem games in the sense that chapters (ESPECIALLY GotHW) last a lot longer. Seems like when I play FE6-FE13 that I just end up blitzing through the game after the initial chapters are over and I have a good team. To be fair GotHW isn't exactly hard at first because with a healer Sigurd could essentially solo the maps.

Go buy the Nintendo Power issues linked to it. In all seriousness (though this would help, the difficulty of the game vanishes entirely if you're not playing it blind and know where the ambush spawns are) the warp staff will make the game laughably fast, on top of not bothering with capturing every unit you come into contact with. Kill the bare minimum of enemy units, just enough to get by and keep your units decently trained. Maybe don't bother with Xavier, that's a given for a speedrun because that's like 1/5 of the game play time recruiting him alone. Maybe don't bother with most of the recruitable characters unless it won't slow you down. I'd go with a few staff users because Warp abuse will definitely make shit fly by. I've never been one for speedruns, I'm a completionist, but I have done a few and that's generally my method.

Hello, people of Serenes Forest. I've lurked here for the absolute longest time, not usually much, but I do a lot of FE googling and it sometimes ends up taking me here. I finally figured I'd join. I'm not much of a forum junkie, but being an introvert, even with an eventful life I still end up with too much free time on my hands. About me, my name is Mikhail Naumov, I was born in Serbia in 1992 and lived there until 2005, upon which my family brought me to Tennessee in the US and essentially left my ass. I was adopted, then I left that family. Now I'm an electrical engineer by degree and profession and I work from home. I had a shit life for a long time, now I have a fairly great life. I'm a pretty neutral person and overall a recluse. That's about all I feel is worth sharing about me. As far as Fire Emblem goes, it's BY FAR my favorite series. I've always been a gamer, though I've never been one of those stereotypical gamers who stays up into the wee hours before morning (I do this anyway, but not because of gaming, because I'm not a huge day person and I work from home.) sweating and munching down Doritos while I call in my CoD killstreaks; screaming into a microphone about how useless my team is. I am PC Gamer when I do game, and even though I have a 4K gaming PC, I mostly use it for emulating older FE games. My love for the Fire Emblem series is borderline an obsession. It's the only gaming I do seriously for hours on end, usually every day. I recently bought an original Wii along with an $80 used copy of PoR and a $45 used copy of RD just to experience the games outside of emulators. That's all that Wii will EVER be used for, those two games. Dolphin is great, but it has plenty of problems. The only FE games I emulate at this point are the ones in Japanese. FE1-6 and FE12. FE7 and FE8 I play on an old Gamecube with a GBA addon for big screen action, FE9 and FE10 I play on the previously mentioned dedicated Wii console, FE11, FE13 and the FE14 titles I play on my 3DS. I do own a FEW games outside of the three Fates titles, the DS Shadow Dragon and Awakening for the 3DS, but I bought a N3DS XL JUST to play the newer Fire Emblems. Like I said, borderline obsession. I've never been a huge proponent of hacks and mods. Not that I have anything against them, I have played two, but overall I can get plenty of fun out of the original games themselves. I've also played and enjoyed emulated/translated versions of the TR Saga series. I've played (and beaten on all modes) every single FE game and FE spinoff to completion several times. My least favorites are probably Gaiden (Not sure why this one even exists, it's not a bad game but it's so unlike every other FE, and Celica's dual healing can be a bit game breaking at times.) and Thracia 776. The reason for 776 is because I had such high expectations built up for that game, everyone said it would be as hard as Lunatic mode is on Fates: Conquest and it wasn't. The entirety of the difficulty of 776 comes from the reinforcement spawns that attack you immediately, but by the time I played 776 I was already made used to this by the harder difficult modes on other FE's. 776 is very easy if you're not playing it blind or if you're used to reinforcement spawns. Also, fuck Leaf. Take away that Light sword and he's one of the worst Lords in FE (Though really this is only in the start.), though he by no means beats Roy in terms of uselessness. Conquest and Path of Radiance are my two favorite games. I like Conquest because unlike SO MANY of the newer Fire Emblem titles, it does not baby you and present umpteen billion opportunities to grind your ass into god mode and the harder difficulties are ACTUALLY hard. PoR is another because while the game itself is a fucking cake walk (though it's nothing compared to Sacred Stones or Awakening Normal mode in terms of easiness.) it had what I personally feel is the best story line in the series as well as some phenomenal world building. It really laid out a red carpet for Radiant Dawn, which I did enjoy but I feel a lot of the potential RD had story wise was wasted due to the way they executed it. It was sort of like Sacred Stones, a bit too ambitious for its own good. This of course is just my opinion. I was introduced to FE a long time ago with the first international release, FE7 on the GBA. Then FE8, then the GC/Wii titles, and it's been an obsession ever since. I know that's a rather long intro, but, I type fast and this honestly took about ten minutes. I don't see myself posting a ton, so, I felt like I might as well give a good greeting.