A Bard Named Wilhelm

The entire anti-Ellincia faction of the Crimean nation, along with the associated senators from Begnion (namely that long haired punk with Valaura) are very forgettable & leave a lot of details to be desired. Specifically, because I feel like in RD this is where the biggest spotlight is given to a plot that delves into aristocratic antagonists, and it's the part of the story that's really neutral. At least Part 4 is so much of a Deus Ex Machina that I can't forget it, and it's fun as hell to boot. To reiterate what I was getting at earlier, I mention all this because Zephiel gets a lot of exposure and screen time in FE6 to make his motivations known, and he's just a mercurial, angry guy, who happens to have a great deal of power. Consider that; he's got absolute power over his nation, and he's a mean man. This pretty solidly meets my expectations of a good tyrant character. Mind you, I'm not expecting something ground breaking in a video game plot, so I really appreciate the fact that FE6 keeps it simple, and I don't have to suspend my disbelief either. Zephiel just feels true to life, to me.

This is my biggest issue with RD, is how they ended the game's plot. Don't get me wrong, the scenarios make for my favorite game in terms of gameplay, but the plot feels way too vast to be constrained to one title. It won't happen, but I'd like to see a change where Ellincia's story is expanded, separated out from the Dawn Brigade + Greil arc, and made into a Thracia 776 style side game for the Tellius series, so that in the RD remake, she's there similar to the way Leif is in FE4. Juuuuuust my thoughts. I believe this could free up some clutter with which to provide a more proper ending for RD. I think the concept of making God angry with humanity for their wholesale slaughter is a great plot device, but even as puppets, siding with the more bloodthirsty nobles, who God should know, are the main culprits of the war, is a major inconsistency. I would resolve the conflict concerning the corrupted Begnion aristocracy, and as part of that story solution, I'd gather the guts needed to kill off a lot more characters heading into the endgame. Making it so that you kill off some of your own units that you battle, but also including this as a requirement to progress through the story, could help in resolving a lot of these troubles. Eventually, Micaiah and Ike would need to reconcile, which would also mean that the blood pact would have to be ended. This would require a retcon to make the blood pact weaker or more conditional, or you would just require someone to assassinate Izuka as a part of the game. Since Volke is already trying to do this... I think making it a Part 3 mission to snuff out Izuka could be a viable solution, and may make for a fun scenario too. Once you break the blood pact, you now can change a lot of the story regarding the ending, and I'd go back to the idea that God is angry with humanity for their violence, but have this manifest in the form of apocalyptic calamities, and brutal conditions as the unified armies of Crimea and Daein work to destroy the corrupt aristocracy of Begnion. This is opposed to the clusterfuck we got in the form of the "weak human stone judgement beam" and "the bad guys are now Ashera's puppet crusaders" scenario. After defeating Sephiran / Lekain / whoever the fuck, you could have the victorious player characters contend with judgement from Ashera directly. Here, you could also introduce Yune, not as a protagonist, but simply as the avatar of chaos, who helps the player not because she wants to restore balance, but because she is chaotic and enjoys causing conflict. The players can utilize Yune to fight Ashera in the early going, but this would ultimately require beating both Ashera and Yune as separate entities, in order to weaken them both for some magical bullshit to restore order, as Ashunera comes back. I'd either figure out a way to make the gods fight each other, and have a three way break out (plot wise, I'm much more interested in this, than in the game mechanics). That would likely be an anti climactic final boss fight, so I'd settle for a multi phase boss battle where you fight two archangels representing Ashera and Yune, then subsequently fighting both gods simultaneously, or something like that. A lot of what I'm going for, is undoing a lot of the bullshit plot magic, deus ex machinas, and unnecessary stories that mar the resolution of the main conflict. I don't think the plot will ever change that drastically in a remake, but I can dream. Mind you, this is my favorite game in the series, I may appear to be poking a bunch of holes in the plot, but honestly I'm just thinking of how I'd make the game cooler.

Yeah, to play off of this statement, you also can't evaluate the world through your own lens when trying to analyze evil characters, because their behavior, whether effective in practice or comically incompetent, is going to seem strange. Zephiel is a well written tyrant villain for the series, and usually the antagonistic nobles are poorly written. Alvis of Velthomer and Trabant the Thracian + his son are the only other examples that come to mind of really well written Noble antagonists in FE, and neither fills out the tyrant's archetype the way Zephiel does. Zephiel doesn't care about the thoughts and feelings of others, the only thing that matters are his mad ambitions. That may sound immature, illogical, and senseless, but the problem is that he has the power to kill scores of people, and he does. Getting this detailed insight into Zephiel's is really good for the game's story. Conversely, we have a lot more poorly written aristocratic antagonists permeating the series, particularly in Radiant Dawn, which involved itself the most with nobility, among the titles I'm familiar with anyway.

Was that due to Valni, or not? It's been so long since I played the game, man.

I love Sacred Stones. It's best played without the Tower of Valni, during the main game IMO, especially on hard. I advise that you take Ephraim's route, because the ghost ship is one of the most fun levels in the entire series, especially on hard mode. If you're not new to the series and already beating the other games on increased difficulties, you probably will only have fun if you play the GBA games on hard, anyway. I feel like that's how those games were meant to be enjoyed.

Shinon is a decent answer without going to the really blatant picks. Bonus points if you get forced into a mission where you only control Shinon for the duration.

Emphasis on MOST of the time. I think the 3rd tier classes really helps archer balance in FE, which is typically skewed against them unless they can use other weapons lol

As Fire Brand has said, if you're strictly interpreting the topic question to mean, "Worst character to place into the role of a Fire Emblem Lord in their current state", then the Lenster troops you play, who have no dialogue besides their death / escape quotes (correct me if I'm wrong on that), are likely the winning choices. Thracia 776 in general probably has the worst characters to make Lords simply because a lot of the characters aren't Noble or knighted, and many of the side characters simply don't have very much development, even excluding that rare feat of having cast members who say nothing at all throughout the game's story. That being said, Thracia also has some of the best choices for Lords, in spinoffs, or just a remake of Thracia itself from a new perspective, much like how Blazing Blade has Eliwood and Hector modes. Though this may risk causing a huge retcon, having a game about Eyvel prior to being turned to stone could be interesting, or you could expand the Thracia story and make Finn the star of the show. Thracia 776 was really, really good in terms of gameplay, but all over the place in many other regards. I would really like to see this game revisited by Nintendo in the future. If we're interpreting the topic question loosely, I'd pick Septimus because you could develop an entire title around evading detection by wildlife, justifying your own cowardice and lack of leadership to Zelgius, all while surviving as long as possible. The final boss is a court martial. OR, you could make a Septimus spinoff game where you open up a zoo.

Since 3DS emulation is a thing now I'm playing the Gaiden remake, which has been pleasing to me thus far because it feels rather faithful for the time being.

Hello guys; I am DJ Wilhelm, however I adapted my screen name to the theme of SF somewhat. I'm not a newcomer to Fire Emblem or SF, but I haven't been around in a couple of years. This account has a pretty specific purpose; I was listening to some Fire Emblem music from Holy War, and realized I could probably recreate it in Ableton with my software synths and a TR 626 (or other sampled drum machines). Hence, the purpose of this account. I don't play video games nearly as much as I used to, and I really stopped playing Fire Emblem games in the 3DS era because I was too immature to appreciate the droves of newcomers to the series (I was salty about the fact we weren't getting mechanical expansions beyond the advances of Radiant Dawn and Thracia 776), but the series has remained my favorite ever since. Part of what prompted me to come here and undertake this effort was the fact I casually picked up Heroes recently. I took up music in the past year to replace video games as my main hobby, and I started off practicing my singing, then I expanded into studying the nature of musical synthesis, the major / minor scales, and some time keeping. This led to me picking up Ableton and eventually me buying a Microkorg S. Basically, sound design, singing, and rudimentary music theory are all things I picked up in 2019. I'm currently trying to get better at the piano so I can perform on the keys while I sing, for live audiences, and I'm also writing songs with my band up in Alaska. We have no recordings to share yet. I'm starting college again, after taking some gap time, so this will probably hold true for a hot minute. Maybe on Spring Break? Thanks for reading my condensed life story from recent times. I hope to have a fruitful quest to recreate songs from Fire Emblem 4