Rapaille

Feel indifferent about the target audience which Fire Emblem currently goes after. All media tries to reach a certain audience and will design the product to reach that audience, which can be distracting ones you notice it. Even something like Climax (a movie that's entirely about dancers tripping on LSD), a movie that seems designed to alienate certain audiences also tries to reach a certain demographic. The most important thing for me is that I enjoy it. Thracia 776 & Three Houses both appeal to a different demographic (of course there is overlap) but I still like them both. My reason for disliking Fates isn't because it panders to otakus, it's because I found the story often aimless & terribly written, the maps often gimmicky and the character underdeveloped within the story. I'm also not the biggest fan of Path of Radiance despite it's problems not being the same as Fates'. What I do think however is that pandering often draws more attention to the already existing problems (for me at least). If Fates was more toned down I would most likely not notice the problems as quickly. But I would also have forgotten the game more quickly. Blazing Sword to me has many of the same problems as Fates but due to it feeling calmer when it comes to fanservice I don't notice them as quickly and just kind of forgot the game as a whole. In that way one could argue that the pandering was actually benecifial because at least I didn't forget it (unlike fe7, fe8, fe9 & fe15 which also had equally big problems but didn't leave a impression on me at all). I will always remember Fates as that one Otaku Fire Emblem game with Pokemon Amie. Long story short: Don't really care as long as the game is good but if it isn't good, might as well shove in as much fanservice as possible so I at least remember something.

I tend to not often feel passionate about popular characters (there are exceptions but they're that for a reason) but I never actively dislike them because I can often understand why people like them. I always found it more to find out why characters appeal to people then talk about who I dislike. That being said, I always liked female characters way less then male characters in Fire Emblem. They often feel more one-note and like they aren't allowed to be characters. I think this is because the games are made mostly by males for a generally male audience. This means that male characters tend to be more well defined because are the characters most of the player base will relate to and female characters tend to fill supporting roles (with a couple of exceptions like Micaiah & Edelgard). Even within supports I often found them lacking and often felt they lacked a well defined personality. Of course there are female characters that I like a lot but even some of those are more because of their design or qualities as a unit. Don't know how other people feel about this and maybe it's just me having a hard time relating to female characters but thought it was worth mentioning. For other games Dislike Keldeo for outclassing Poliwrath as a water/fighting type in every way conceivable but don't really know how popular Keldeo is. All characters in Kingdom Hearts. Really like the gameplay but despise whenever the characters talk (especially Dream Drop Distance).

Fair enough. Just like I said in my original posts there are ideas that could have worked. The problem is that they couldn't follow up on any of these factors because they needed a self insert.

So my anime trope knowledge is limited but from what I know kuudere is basically the Rei-archetype (there probably are older kuudere characters but Rei is probably the most well known and the only one I know anyway). First I want to ask. In what way makes Byleth being a kuudere interesting? We are just said that he had no personality and slowly got one over time. Then after the Loli-fusion nothing is done with Byleth as a character beside giving Dimitri a 5 minute long therapy which somehow fixes his mindset (which is dumb but I won't get into it since it isn't related to my current point I'm trying to make). In all other routes he just hangs around and doesn't do anything interesting except for his S-support. It's fun to categorize characters/stories but it doesn't automatically make them good. That's like saying that I need to realize Suicide Squid is a superhero movie and then everything will make sense (maybe a bit hyperbolic but still).

Seliph with Leif being as a very close second Seliph is great not because I know a lot about him but I know almost nothing about him. Story-wise he never does anything interesting and suffers from the fact that he only talks with one person who is basically an exposition-bot. But there are a few small moments which give insight into his personality which don't give me the feeling he is that heroic and that it's all an act. By telling us so little about him it makes him actually interesting and relatable since a lot of people don't act the way they feel or actually are which is a problem I often have with a lot of other lords (although I might also be me overthinking it). Leif is great for the opposite reasons that Seliph is. He is a great because he is an amazing lead that has flaws and makes mistakes that actually have real consequences. Simply put, he feels like a real human being because you see him act like a real human being. (I wrote some short thoughts on Marth, Sigurd & the 3h lords because I also like them but not as much as Seliph & Leif. )

Well, no need to wait anymore! To be perfectly honest I can understand why people like Path of Radiance and it's not like I dislike it solely for the slow & easy gameplay (just look at FE4). I just think it isn't interesting enough to warrant having both slow & easy gameplay. The characters, while generally good, also never resonated with me. Most character fell in the "Yeah, they're cool I guess..." category which is quite a crowded category. Same with the story, it works but didn't leave an impression on me. Bonus EXP also wasn't that special because they are just extra level-ups for units you where gonna use anyway. If I was able to skip enemy phases it would be still not be one of my favourites because of what I mentioned before, but I would at least consider playing it again as oppossed to now where I feel that it just wastes my time without offering anything unique.

"All I have are half baked thoughts" Intelligent System while creating Byleth Byleth doesn't work in any way that you look at him. As a self insert you barely have control over his actions (I wouldn't jump in front of an axe to possibly save a girl I just met) and the limited dialogue options mean you can't express yourself through him/her (Why can't I be sarcastic/cynical?). As a character there are ideas that could work but all of them are executed badly. His/her whole shtick with having a god inside him is never utilized in an interesting way. He/she doesn't seem to have any motivation/goal and just goes along for the ride and is basically used as an excuse to explain to the player what is going on. The relation between him and Jeralt is barely developed and we never get an idea of how he lived prior to the monastery and how it is that he knows nothing about the world despite having lived the mercenary life for almost his entire life. The player worship also is still ridiculous (You are god, Edelgard sees you as her only equal, you are the one who turns Dimitri back to normal, you are the leader of the church in 3 routes because you are somehow more qualified then Seteth and become a god-king in 2 routes or leader of the main religion in 1 route). What really saves him/her is the fact that he/she is never obnoxious and that the other characters are mostly great (which is one of the reasons why Kris is horrible since he is one of the only characters in fe12 with dialogue within the story). The fact that there are ideas I like also helps since it makes me think about how I would write him/her. Tl;dr, Byleth bad but I don't care enough to get mad.

Lord of the Rings Online; First I want to make clear that this game isn't great. It's your average MMO which forces you to pay absurd amounts of money if you want to experience the game to it's fullest. But if you're like me and have grown up with Lotr this is a truly breathtaking game. despite being almost 15 years old, the way it bring Middle-Earth to life is is mesmerizing. Of course you have well known locations like the Shire & Gondor but it are the places that are never visited in the books that are the main selling points. the fact that they clearly took inspiration from the appendix and how they incorporated new ideas into these places without them feeling forced or unfaithful (Unlike some other Lotr games that shall not be named in the same breath as LOTRO) is truly something to behold. The music is also pretty good and raids can be pretty fun but the world is really what sells it for me. Outside of LOTRO there are quite a few other games I would consider some of my favourites. Ocarina of Time, Link's Awakening, Breath of the Wild, Call of Duty World at War, pretty much every Pokemon game up until White 2 (only enjoy the competitive side of Pokemon beyond that and SwSh kinda ruined that for me too), Final Fantasy IV ds, Super Mario Galaxy, Medievil, Morrowind, Skyrim, Super Smash Bros & (of course) around half of the Fire Emblem games (to be more specific; fe3, fe4, fe5, fe6, fe10, fe11, fe12 & 3H)

FE1; Battle Map 1 FE2; Final Map FE3; Liberation (Favourite map theme) FE4; The Last Holy War FE5; Adversity FE6; For the Commanders (The one that plays on the Western Isles) FE7; Winds across the plains FE8; Truth, Hope & Despair FE9; Change of Scenery (Almost picked Crimea's attack since that one is in smash and because of that is one of the few tracks I remember but after listening to the soundtrack again I think I like this one more) FE10; Eternal Bond FE11; A hero's destiny FE12; Holy War (sounds way better in this game. Would have picked Liberation again but that seems redundant) FE13; Conquest FE14; Dusk falls Fe15; What lies at the End FE16; Funeral of Flowers

Don't strongly dislike him, just not a big fan of his lazy/oblivious personality and I feel that his interactions with other characters aren't interesting. Most of them boil down to either crest research or him being lazy. Maybe it's because I have only used him on my first playthrough where I only recruited 1 student so maybe I just need to read more of his supports. There is also the fact that I really like the cast in Three Houses so when a character would have been annoying but tolerable in other games, I dislike it more because I directly compare it to the other characters in the game (which is why I dislike Sylvia & Kris way more then for example Nowi & Corrin despite my reasons for disliking being pretty much the same).

Disliked characters are plenty with me. Fates' cast, Sylvia, Linhardt, Sophia(fe6), Faye & Micaiah all come to mind but not one of these characters is capable of ruining the entire game for me. Maybe the cast for Fates but that's more because of the horrendous writing which is easy to get over since it is more one enormous problem that can only be solved by redoing the whole thing instead of one factor ruining something that could have been good. However there is one character that while not ruining the entire game still frustrates me enormously, that character is Kris. If Kris didn't exist Fe12 would be my favourite Fire Emblem game. But because of Kris it joins the rank of being a contender instead of clearly being the best. With other characters I dislike I can at least understand why they where added to the game, why they are written the way they are and what the appeal is behind it. As much as I might dislike Camilla I can understand the reasoning behind the character and the appeal. With Kris I kinda understand the reasoning and why it might appeal but when it's executed I have to go back to rethinking it. Because not only does Kris have a clear personality (which is the most obnoxious personality in all of Fire Emblem) but there also aren't real character interactions with other characters and options to romance which is the biggest appeal behind avatars. Sure you can support but those supports only display basic personality traits which would be way more effective if they supported with other characters. Fe12's also is clearly not written with an avatar in mind which makes Kris stick out even more. Every scene with him is forced and unnatural which even Corrin doesn't have since Corrin perfectly fits in with the other terrible writing of Fates. To put it simply, Nothing about Kris works and he/she drastically decreases my enjoyment of an otherwise amazing game.

Short answer; if it's necessary do it like fe12 but don't give him a personality that makes me want to play fe3. Long answer: something I've noticed about avatars is that I both dislike them because they have no personality but also dislike them because they have a personality. Robin & Byleth both fall in the awkward middle-ground of not having enough personality/relevance for me to like them as characters but also to much of a personality to be a self insert. Byleth also has the problem of not having enough diversity with what he can say. For example, I'm a pretty sarcastic person in real life and because there barely are options to be sarcastic I can never see myself as Byleth since I can't express how I would really act in such a situation. The only option I see is the fe12 route but instead of giving a little bit of dialogue which goes a long way in frustrating me give him no dialogue. But this will not work because people seem to like shipping themselves which will be impossible with no dialogue. But giving them dialogue will alienate people who don't talk like the self insert. What I'm trying to say is that as long as Fire Emblem keeps the plot structure they currently use, avatars will never work for me. But removing them also removes an appeal of the modern games so no matter what we are most likely stuck with them and we will keep complaining about how much we hate avatars for another 10 years.

For me my favourite FE game changes every day. This is because there are so many things which Fire emblem can excel in so picking a definitive one is impossible. Most of the time however it's between fe4 & fe12. Fe4 excels in being the odd duck among Fire Emblem games. While the gameplay is obviously flawed it never got to the point that it bothered me. It also has without a doubt the best story of any Fire Emblem game. It's really a case of a flawed game which flaws never personally bothered me (which it did with fe2) and me being fascinated by how unconventional it feels compared to every game after it. Fe12 on the other is super conventional but it's gameplay is the best in the series when you ask me. The fact that it can be easy, challenging or frustatingly difficult is a big feed only fe10 could comes close to matching. The story is bad and the characters not as strong as some past entries but gameplay is more important to me so i don't mind it to much. But there also days it's fe5 for it's combinations of a good story and good, but occasionally frustrating, gameplay, fe6 or fe11 for their simplicity and the fact they are easy to pick up play, fe3h for feeling modern while not having any of the enormous problems that other modern games have (by modern I mean fe13 and onwards) and there are even weird days I feel that fe10 is the best game for the things it tried to do despite not always succeeding.

Team Garons horrible writing is front center so the fact that it's horrendous isn't hard to miss. But I find them quite entertaining for how bad they are since I've decided in that fates story is a satire of stories in RPG's (makes it easier for me to enjoy fates even if I know it isn't true). Those who slither in the dark are generic and boring which, while not technically as bad as he Garon squad, is worse since I get nothing out of it. 3h's story while not great (it's a bit to melodramatic for my taste and often tells then shows) is still pretty good so something being bad is way noticeable despite having way less screen-time then the Garon squad. Also they lack presence which made the Lopto church decent. The Garon squad is objectively worse but TWSITD's badness is more noticeable. Since I was way more frustrated with the Garon squad on my first play-through I voted for them but it could either way (also because I went in with the lowest standard for 3h's story so it's story could never disappoint me while my expectations for Fates' story where quite high which made the revelation of it's plot quite a shock).

Probably Granvalle (although Thracia could also contend as one of the best). Mostly because the entirety of the conflict of fe4 & 5 is the caused by a political power struggle in Granvalle which is the entire focus of the game. It's main shortcoming is the fact that it's only seen from one perspective but because of how Fire Emblem is structured it's very limited in how it can develop it's continent when compared to games like the Elder Scrolls and Zelda.