Trif

Agreed, in truth that's really more of an FE7 problem than an FE6 one, but at this point it would be on the FE6 remake to resolve those holes IMO (or make it easy and do a joint remake)

You've already discovered what seems to be the answer but the GCN controller d-pad is pretty garbage. Good luck doing something like switching weapons in 007 Nightfire. Alternatively, it could be an issue with your zadig drivers, worth exploring if you want to revisit using a GCN controller at any point.

Both on Florina, assuming you intend to use her. You could give angelic robe to whichever cav you want to promote and start HHM with two marcus's, but in general Florina is the recommended recipient of both. Don't waste the items on anyone else unless you really want to use Erk but he'll probably still get outperformed by Pent unless he gets RNG blessed (not that you should never use items on units you don't plan to use the whole game, but here there are much better recipients)

Earlier promotion would probably be the simplest "buff" while still maintaining his character. A horse would definitely make him wayyy better but whether or not that fits with Roy's role in the game is neither here nor there. One nice improvement would also be to make the rapier deal effective damage to nomads which it inexplicably doesn't (same with the halberd, maybe then chapter 4 wouldn't be so RNG-dependent), this would help out a lot on the earlier maps where you're forced to lean on Roy more.

Honestly just tie up some more of the loose plot threads (why does Eliwood never mention to Roy that he fought a dragon, and why doesn't Hector have a stronger reaction to meeting Zephiel considering he had saved his life years prior?) and if you're going to include Mark then please don't turn it into a Kris situation

When people call units "bad" (at least intelligent people) they generally aren't saying "this unit is never worth using" but "the effort->payoff ratio of this unit is much worse than that of other units". Obviously in a single player game with shareable xp any unit can be "good" if you put the time in, even Sophia, hell Oswin and Louise carried my first every FE7 ENM run. But it becomes glaringly obvious across multiple playthroughs that some units just perform better with less investment. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, I get your point about phrasing but I feel like it's not that big a deal. New players are just going to use the units they want anyway, and novice players who are easily influenced are more likely to be led astray by "Marcus steals xp" nonsense than never discover a mid-tier gem because somebody on a forum said they were "bad". EDIT: Didn't realize I necro'd, my b