The Roger The Paladin

Hicks didn't work out for me. As in 4 speed dismounted at level 18 didn't work out. You can also forget Fergus being my best unit. Chapter 19 happened... and I know I was using the Dain Scroll.. but Leif has now capped strength, speed, luck, and defense... hit 16 skill and 9 con... and if that wasn't enough, he got four movement levels. In one map. He's got 12 move thanks to the leg ring. Forget arguing over whether Leif or Roy is better. Let's see Ike get 12 move. *Make that 13 move. Crazy bastard did it again.

It says a bit my biggest concern on having him use the sleep sword was that he'd crit one of the leonster armours to death. Which was a justified concern, not just because of Rumei having trouble with the same... but the fact he literally did exactly that the first time I tried it.

Well... there's no more chapters ending with 8 either. We'll see how I go. I've barely touched the warp staves as yet. I warped Asbel in chapter 17a to get rid of some ballisticians. He was more than capable of dealing with the nearby armors because... well I gave him vantage. Figured he can one shot most generics at this point... so it's more of an adVantage to Add vantage to him than someone like Mareeta or Olwen. All the same... I can't ever remember Roy being this useful. There's been points were I've felt like I'd been running the overpowered Ike just because Leif's been doing so well. Mind he's hardly my best unit. But you know, scrolls and all. Fergus has capped strength and skill, 17 defense (mounted), 17 speed, 6 magic (can you tell he's been using Ced's scroll?) and 15 luck, and 15 con. Halvan has 14 strength, 2 magic, 15 skill and 15 speed and 10 luck. But what's special is he hit 18 defense the moment he promoted. 16 cpn here. I can't remember Othin's exact stats, but I know he's got 16 strength and capped speed. He's about 14 skill and luck. I think he had 3 magic. He procced move once. Not as good as Halvan for defense. Marginally better for offense. Also able to capture more at 18 con. Finn has 16 strength, 18 skill, 20 speed, 11 luck, 12 defense.. and 2 magic (off memory). After seeing him with 12 speed through much of FE, that's poetic. Asbel is... as one would expect good. 20 magic. 19 skill. 20 speed. 18 Luck. No strength to speak of, 6 defense. A whopping 12 con despite being a mage. 8 move. And thanks to scrolls and a life ring... 49 HP. He gets a lot of experience due to being the boss killer. Kaga sure loves his wind mages. I have now experienced four broken ones in a row on the SNES. Mine had to settle for the leg ring. No regrets on that though. He's got the stats to make use of the extra move.. and it helps him seize faster if I need him to. Plus who else could use it every map? I'd like to say it was frustrating... but one reset isn't too bad. I got really lucky. Or the game was throwing me a bone after I murdered Misha last chapter enough times that I gave up on trying to save her from herself. "No don't start killing recruitable units. Have this one after less resets". Now I got to do the game again sometime. I want to say I recruited everyone in Thracia. Which means at least two more runs thanks to the route split.

And now he's promoted. His promotion gains may not be much, but with him having 45 HP (partially from a stat booster), 15 strength, 13 skill, 16 speed, 14 luck, and 14 defense prior he doesn't need them to be. My Leif was blessed or at least on par in any stat bar magic (his entire magic stat being from rings barring the point on promotion) at level 20. Or at least benefited from the fact I tended to make sure he had as many scrolls as possible on levelling. Now he can get levels again I don't have to hold him off as much as I have been... and I can take full advantage of his lack of fatigue. He's earned that promotion. His only fault if he's too prone to killing enemies when I don't want him to in chapters ending in an 8.

Well.. it's official. Capturing Rumei took me more tries than recruiting Xavier. I gave Leif as little room to screw up as humanly possible. He only put three of the armors to sleep. I sniped the Friege ones from outside the room with Fergus and the Flame sword, and Salem. After that, Leif got the hell out of there... and a bit of rescue reshuffling the hostages did the rest. The fact one particular armor I put to sleep kept dodging everything really helped, because it stopped any suicides... and meant not having to send in Leif to put more down. There was a mishap with Xavier and the killer bow... but Leif had a scroll... and 14 defense.

Between this, Chapter 8, and countless other times where he got a crit or adept that I'm not complaining about, I find it ironic my experience with Leif is "the guy who wants to have no mercy" in the game with a capture mechanic. Near as I can tell, the only time it was in character was when I had him one round FE4 Travant.

Went about as expected actually. Leif crits the first armor to reach him. Just like I've come to expect from the guy. This is going to be Chapter 8 all over again isn't it?

I meant to move Othin to the side I wanted him on for rescuing armors too heavy for anyone else.

Herein lies the problem. In the game I suspended ready for my attempt, Fergus and Halvan are both big enough to lift all but three armors. Othin could lift any... but he's on the right side of the map... which makes it the wrong side under the circumstance. One Friege armor is alrady dead... because I had a bolting tome with one use left. Olwen pulled a crit. Problem is, no one one on the right side has a warp staff. So I'll either get away with 5 rescues or redo the chapter. One or the other.

Why can I see Leif having this exact mentality after Rumei back in the day?

I've looked at my units. Leif, Dean, Fred, Fergus and Ralph have the required sword rank. Problem is Fred's combination of dismounting penalties, con and speed means he ends up with an attack speed of 1 with the thing.... some of the armours have 5 or 6 AS. Others have 0. My ideal would be three... but Dean, Ralph and Fergus go so far above it it's not funny. Leif on the other hand would end up with the perfect three AS. 20 weight minus 7 con being 13, and Leif having 16 speed would put him at 3. So Leif might unironically be my best bet.

Sleep Edge... check. Units who can't double or crit with an A rank in swords might be trick. I'm thinking Dean might work. He's got A swords and dismounting penalties affect him. Leif and Fergus are right out though. Fergus has 20 skill.. and 20 strength.. and 18 defense... and 16 speed. Even with dismounting penalties he's kind of going to destroy anything I send him at. As for Leif... I'm pretty sure he'll be busy elsewhere. Working off a cartridge means I'm going to have the "fun" of no save states.... so it's legit or nothing. But I'm opting not even to try for the member's card because I figure I'm not even going to have the money to buy stat-boosters anyway given how I rarely sell anything I do capture or steal.

It does not bode well that after so long of having Misha commit suicide or just flat missing with the sleep edge that I just gave up and let a recruitable character die this time. If she wants to be dead that bad... she can be dead. But breaking my rule the chapter before Xavier appears... knowing that his recruitment is supposed to be hard, I fear the worst is yet to come. I've got an undamaged sleep edge seeing as Misha refused to take a hint. So there's at least that.

I tallied them up myself a few years ago. By amount of appearances, going from Avengers one to the point I stopped collecting in 2012 (When the Marvel Now banner came in), I can tell you that Cap is in 576 Avengers comics (I'm counting spin-offs, not just the main series), Iron Man is in 554, Hawkeye 498, Vision 426, Wasp 409, Scarlet Witch 408, Hank Pym (In one identity or another) 393, then Thor In 358. While there were stretches of that where Hawkeye wasn't an active member... he was still around a lot. Whereas Thor kind of spent a good chunk of time dead after the Ragnorok story, and would often conveniently miss storylines while he was an active member for purposes of making the villain more of a threat. I can get specific issue numbers, because that's listed too.. but that might be a bit excessive. Plus I admittedly can't tell you post Marvel Now, because I called it a day when they re-numbered everything because I needed to start saving space. For the record, Hulk ranks 42nd... with a mere 45 appearances in the stuff up to that point. A lot of the time not as a member but an adversary or guest star. But as I said. My data is missing the last ten years so that could be accurate.

And suddenly I know why I'm constantly messing up that equation lately.

Last time I checked Hawkeye was a member of the Avengers because Stan Lee wanted to get all the characters with their own feature off the team and have a less powerful team of raw recruits for Captain America to whip into shape in issue 16... with former Iron Man villain Hawkeye serving as the Falco Lombardi (or maybe Shinon if we're going for video game characters with a similar) style "cocky, arrogant member who thinks he should be leader" with a character arc of going from being the guy who constantly tried to undermine Cap's authority to having a respect for him, to leading the West Coast team himself with what he learned. Which is more character growth than some characters of that mentality ever get. Point is, he was put in to create conflict in the team to set them apart from books like the Justice League, who were virtually a mutual admiration society with zero ability to disagree, while giving him a character arc that took him from being a jerk to a leader in his own right. I find it can be useful depending on the game to have a two range unit with good defense at a chokepoint because then you can get the AI to trick itself into having a weak unit attacking it... while you two range kill anything stronger stuck behind it. But this is FE1. The strategy I worked with Wolf reclassed to General in Fe11's H5 Lefcandith gauntlet to get rid of the reinforcements in a cheap manner isn't ever going to be needed because the enemies aren't a real threat. And playing optimally, that strategy isn't valid either. Point is, FE1 ballisticians are somehow both a nuisance to deal with due to high defense and 20 being the universal cap for strength and virtually useless to the player due to their movement. That'd explain way too much about Hinoka's storyline irrelevance. Really depends what they're fighting, though as Ping said, there's two Javelin Pegasi that Wil can bait that Rebecca can't due to starting positions. Which does give him two kills in an optimal play. Rebecca can hit things twice but struggles to do damage against anyone who has defense. Wil can damage things Rebecca can't because of extra strength... but has trouble doubling. There's also some argument they're probably both better off in the Japanese version, because apparently (though I've never confirmed it by playing the japanese version), the 2x damage was a localization change.. and effective damage has a 3x multiplier in Japan. There'd be an argument Wil might benefit more... because every point of strength's value triples against fliers instead of doubling. Which kind of leads me to wonder if the worst Eliwood mode unit manages to be different in Japan compared to other regions.

My argument is more on the "Rolf would be a lot better off if he got another chapter or two as a free deploy". Other earlygame archers benefit a lot from that. When you look at Gordin for instance, his growths in Shadow Dragon aren't all that impressive. I mean, his personal speed growth is the same as Jagen's. His bases are 2HP and 4 luck off generic units. But he sure benefits from being free to use for the first three chapters. More so in Hard 5, where the early game is a bit of a "all hands on deck" situation. Doesn't make Gordin a good unit long term. But he's pretty useful if you want to get past the early game in the higher difficulties. That said, in the context of Path of Radiance specifically, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who is worse off than Rolf. And that's from someone who likes using the guy. Though I do prefer using him over other units who are better over-all. He's got no enemy phase in one of the most enemy phase oriented games in the series. Taking out one foe in player phase isn't much use if other characters are taking out multiple in enemy phase. His bases are low, his starting level is low so he takes longer to get to the point where promotion is an option. Having canto and knight ward bonuses really helps a unit in this game... and he has neither because of his class.

In Rolf's joining chapter, Chapter 9, the deploy limit is 10, and at that time you have 10 characters. Which makes him a free deploy for chapter 9... but come chapter 10 he's not. You've now got 14 characters and a deployment limit of 9. Using Rolf after that point means actively not using someone else. Then chapter 11 it's 13... but you've now got 17 characters. Then 10... with 18 characters. Rebecca by comparison is a free deploy from chapter 12-14 of HHM. That's four maps (three if we skip 13x) where there's no reason not to use her, because it's either you use her or just have one less unit. On Eliwood normal... she's available in chapter 11 as well, and because of Normal's deployment slots being more generous.. chapter 15. Chapter 16 of Hector normal also let's you use her free. This means she gets six maps in Eliwood normal, five in Eliwood Hard, and five in Hector normal. So depending on setting, Rebecca has four to six chapters to make herself useful at no deployment cost. Something Rolf almost entirely lacks. Wil on the other hand gets one if Lyn mode is skipped... but it should be noted he does technically have Lyn mode. Which gives him another 6 chapters (2-6 and 10) of free deployment. I'd argue that alone gives them a significant edge on Rolf. Sothe's combat may be crappy, but he does have thief utility.. and his only competition is Volke. Calling him the worst unit in Path of Radiance is a lot like saying Rickard's the worst unit in Shadow Dragon because he's a thief with worse combat than Julian. Which seems like a mistake. Their selling point is not combat. It just happens Volke and Julian are better at combat than Sothe or Rickard.

Genealogy of the Holy War. Yellow enemy units. They attack you, but you can't attack them. Enjoy being siege tomed or ballista'd by enemies that you can never get rid of.

I think the most time consuming thing was Yiazmat... and I tell you my motivation to ever fight that thing again is nil. You know a boss is not a good idea when it has so much hp they don't expect you to beat it in one go. Funny thing is, every once in a while I think of buying the switch version to play through the game again... and then I kind of get flashbacks to that fight, and think "maybe when I've got more time". I think I'd love that game a lot more if I could forget that one fight. I don't know. Seems normal for an octopus. http://www.actforlibraries.org/octopus-reproduction/

Fair. A while ago I was the type that thought the story was the most important thing, maybe because I spent a lot of time inside the FF fanbase and that's the main way to rank games, but I've changed since I joined the fandom of Fire Emblem. I wonder what my opinion of Shadow Dragon would be today. Really wouldn't matter what you think. Personal opinions generally can't be wrong. Ergo you could flat hate my favourite games and I'd see no problem with it. Most of the time there's no wrong way to have fun. Of course there's obvious exceptions. If someone entertains themself at other's expense (serial killers for instance), that crosses a line. But in deciding whether one likes a game or not... it's pretty difficult to legitimately harm anyone.

Fair enough. I don't worry too much about the story in a game. Take Final Fantasy XII. I have beat that game 100% and have no idea what happened in it because I kind of skipped all the cutscenes because back when I was playing it I was in high school and kind of needed to save time for assignments and such. I've been through Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess at least 5 times over the years... and still never watched the majority of the cutscenes. Point is people put different degrees of weight on a story. I imagine if I valued story more, my favourite Fire Emblem wouldn't be Shadow Dragon. My favourite Castlevania certainly wouldn't be IV. But my favourite Zelda would probably remain unchanged.

Plus, if you really wanted an offensive feminist character you'd probably go the Valerie Solanas route.

Part of the problem is the two versions of FF IV that exist on the snes even. You know the Japanese version has a whole lot of abilities that were taken out because they were deemed too complex for the western gamer at the time? Not to mention enemies being weakened. They literally dumbed down the game. Which leads me to believe that a lot of people who say about how badly it aged are more familiar with the dumbed down version. Plus as I recall you get back some of the temporary party members in the GBA version. Which again adds to what's there. Meanwhile the Western Snes release... I can imagine criticism about it aging badly is justified when it's an inferior version to the literal Super Famicom version.

Ocarina of Time was my first Zelda. I literally put of Majora's Mask deliberately when it came out because I thought I'd hate the time limit. Then I got it as a Christmas present... and it remains perhaps my favourite game of all time. I have played through it in excess of 20 times. Best dungeon in the game. Enjoy that one. IV remains my favourite. Though I may have a different mindset because I played the DS remake first as opposed to the original. You know what I like about the DS remake? The enemies can totally destroy you if you don't pay attention. The entire bit where you can assign abilities to different characters and have a new game plus where those abilities carry over but levels don't. I like the idea of customization. I should note this isn't some bit where I came in early and it's what I grew up with either. My first Final Fantasy was X. Which has a special place in my heart for being my first and all, but it's not my favorite.