Topaz Light

For the Mark name issue, they already solved it with Morgan in Awakening; the Japanese names of all three characters are the same. I'd imagine Mark's default name will be changed to Morgan if FE7 is ever remade, though if for some reason they decide to have multiple EarthBound-style "Don't Care" names for them, I'd love to see Mark be one of the ones for at least a male Avatar. Personally, I would like Mark to become playable, and for their role to be expanded somewhat... in a sense. I'd like for them to be able to weigh in on conversations with dialogue choices that maybe let you get additional bits of worldbuilding and characterization depending on what you say, but I don't think they should get a full-on added subplot like Kris did in FE12. For Supports, I don't really see anything wrong with the "Support Anyone" model, but paired endings between Mark and characters with canon significant others should be either nonexistent or strictly platonic in nature, i.e. no marrying Dorcas, Bartre, Canas, Louise, Pent, or Karla. As for how Kris would work as a playable character, I'm thinking bringing back New Mystery's class selection (it's just a lot of fun IMO!) as well as the appearance customization that FE12~14 allowed. While I personally find the idea of how New Mystery lets you allocate the Avatar's stat spread to be way cooler than AwaFates' Boon/Bane system, I do concede that the latter is a lot more straightforward and easy to immediate understand the significance of, so it might be the better pick if an FE7 remake were to try to retain the newcomer-friendly design goals of the original.

Can't very well not have Marth. If alts a la the Koopalings, Alph, etc. don't count as separate characters, you could also roll any number of Rapier-wielding Lords into Marth that way, to be honest. Hector as a slow, heavyweight axefighter. Robin can stay I suppose, since they're already one of the more distinct Fire Emblem reps. Finally, I'd actually have Linde as a rep for dedicated magic users. The fact that she's from a game that considers all attacking magic to belong to one "Tome" weapon type makes it easier to justify giving her a broad movepool of all sorts of spells. Starlight would make a fun shieldbreaker move, I think. I might come up with a better lineup than this, but I definitely wouldn't want to exclude Marth, so that really just leaves three slots to play around with, and Fire Emblem actually does have a pretty diverse array of ability sets to consider. Alm and Lyn as drastically-"statistically"-different Echo Fighters of each other, a la Captain Falcon and Ganondorf in Melee, is another rep idea I've been tossing around for a while now, as well as Celica as a Robin Echo with their spell durability gimmick replaced by Pichu-style recoil damage. It's hard for me to narrow it down to just four, haha!

It could be handled the same way, is the thing. I'm not saying they will do it (I'm almost certain they wouldn't), it's more like, how I'd handle the Assist Trophy situation if I were somehow able to force Isaac in as a playable character.

For me, I really want to be good as Mewtwo, and I can sort of do okay as them, but their playstyle just really doesn't jive with me and I have a hard time effectively utilizing their down and forward specials. Piranha Plant is in a similar boat, on account of the fact that I absolutely adore just the fact that they're even in Smash as a fighter at all, but, like Mewtwo, I just can't really play them effectively at this point in time.

Felix is also a possibility, on account of the recent debunking of the "Spirits deconfirm" theory. Or Jenna; Jenna might be cool, actually. Personally I think it'd be fun to have a sort of Dragon Quest Hero-like setup and include Isaac, Felix, Matthew, and maybe Himi as alts of the same character with two colors apiece. That said, I don't actually know if it'd work to have Himi in there since she's so different from the first three in terms of her own stats and such... Maybe like, three colors for Isaac and Felix and one for Matthew? I dunno I know Isaac's already an Assist Trophy, but they could always do something like how Link is replaced in the background of the Spirit Train stage if he's present as a fighter and make it so that another, non-playable character with Move shows up instead of Isaac if he's present as a fighter.

Just wanna point out here that different people are just plain bothered (or not) by different things, so it's not necessarily about who is or isn't "right" about a given game as much as just, one person is really bothered by some aspect of it that another person is totally okay with. Like, a lot of people hate EarthBound Beginnings because of how grindy and directionless it can be compared to the rest of the series, but I love it a lot not because I think those things aren't true of it but because they just don't bother me, at least nowhere close to enough to outweigh everything that appeals to me about the game. Conversely, I really just don't care for how Monster Hunter controls at all but I acknowledge that that's a totally subjective thing and I don't think it's a bad game objectively or that people are dumb for liking it just because how the player character controls doesn't jive with me, specifically. It's okay to just have different tastes in media and aspects thereof from someone else and just leave it at that! Discussions like this really don't have to devolve into who's "right" or "wrong" about what's being talked about.

Once more I return to this thread with another unpopular opinion (I think?): I really like the Archanea games' map design mentality. I realize that not every specific map is a winner (FE3/12 Chapter 3 comes to mind), but I really appreciate how the maps feel very... "point-of-interest"-centric? And this applies both to the layout of the terrain and to enemy formations. At least I really get a tangible sense that each map was constructed deliberately out of pieces that were chosen to create an interesting play experience. Like, take Chapter 4 of FE1/11 for example: You have... Matthis' Cavalier platoon, who start to advance on you as soon as the map begins, but who are positioned a few turns away, giving you time to brace for them however you see fit. Matthis' placement among them also makes a player interested in recruiting him tackle the Cavaliers more cautiously to avoid accidentally killing him off along with them. The choke point guarded by a Knight and two Archers. It's dangerous to play too aggressively here, because you might provoke the Horsemen to rush in and help the Archers beat up whoever you have kill the Knight if you're too reckless. At the same time, this Knight is placed in Merric's immediate range, as soon as you recruit him, so you can test out the efficacy of magic against physically-hardy foes right away, if you'd like. The Horsemen themselves are actually their own point of interest here, and you have a few ways of dealing with them, depending on if you wanna try beating them at their own (2-range combat) game and pick them off from across the river, or lure them over to where your melee fighters can take them out without fear of counterattacks. The placement of the aforementioned guarded choke point, as well as the river, provide a lot of things to consider in terms of how you want to tackle them. The band of Fighters and the accompanying Hunter who flank you, making you consider whether you want to let them come up behind you or send a few units back there to deal with them. The Thief in the center south who you'll wanna take out fast, because they could easily beat you to Merric's village, otherwise. The Thief in the northeast, who's guarded by two Hunters, making it risky to just send Caeda up there by herself to deal with them. The boss Bentheon with his Ridersbane, which makes it dangerous to challenge with your own cavalry and encourages you to keep your other units hustling to take him on in their place. Plus, once you take him out, you get the Ridersbane! What a fun little Mega Man-esque bit of game design! This is something I whipped up on the spot as a sorta vague description of what I'm talking about, but there are also things like Chapter 8's passage through the mountains to the boss, with the two valleys to the north from which enemies will advance, Chapter 7 and 11's little valley villages that are each guarded dedicated enemy groups and that you kinda have to go out of your way to go to, etc. I just think the Archanea games have a really nice sorta design philosophy behind their map design that I like a lot, or at the very least a lot more than I like maps with enemies and defensive terrain just kinda strewn about haphazardly, with the boss positioned vaguely opposite your starting position on the map. EDIT: I think a good way of putting it would be that Archanea FE's maps feel like they're designed around specific situations you're put in, and they often deliberately give you multiple ways to approach the problems they present with the resources you have available to you. They also employ secondary objectives pretty well and work them into the overall chapter design in ways that impact how that chapter is played considerably. Chapter 6 of FE1, for example, is actually extremely easy to just complete if you're not in any particular hurry, but there are all those cool goodies in the treasure chests that you'll miss out on if you don't beat the Thieves to them! Similarly, in Chapter 10, you can actually just skip the central fortress entirely and go around the southwestern path to Zharov, but doing so means foregoing just about everything cool you can get in the chapter. You'll lose out on a Physic staff, a Levin Sword, a Silver Bow, and the first promotion item in the game, as well as a grand total of five recruitable characters, counting the Whitewings you need Minerva to recruit later. Even though there is a "path of least resistance" to be taken if all you're interested in is just making it to the end, you're heavily incentivized to opt for the harder route and its considerable rewards. It's just a really cool way of designing Fire Emblem chapters, I feel.

I'm not really sure who I'd pick from FE4 to join Leif's party, but, and I'll admit this is totally cheesy of me, I'd like to have Eyvel somehow end up fighting alongside Seliph's army, so that...

Some assembly required, but Spriters Resource has a fairly up-to-date collection of playable character sprites, including dragon and beast characters, and it's all transparent.

For Blazing Blade... First, the most obvious change, and one I've already heard mentioned in this thread in various capacities: update support point gain mechanics. As it is now, they're just ridiculously tedious and obtuse and just not practical to actually build except in a few rare cases where a pair's support growth is super fast, like Eliwood and Hector. I'm not sure exactly what I'd change it to, but I do know that I'd want A: for support points to generally increase much faster, and B: for there to be some visual indicator of units gaining support points with each other, like in the 3DS titles. For the second change... this is sort of more of a sweeping change and may not really count as just one thing depending on how you wanna look at it, but keep the current Normal modes in as "Easy Modes" and... ultimately end up with a tougher Normal mode and a Hard mode that's, well, actually hard. Also lower the Weight stats for Durandal and especially Sol Katti. They're just ridiculous; the weapons aren't so powerful otherwise as to warrant that kind of drawback to using them, and it kinda takes the wind out of the sails of the idea that they're Eliwood and Lyn's "ultimate" weapons. Armads is fine as it is though IIRC.

None of the examples of "class-locked" weapons you gave are actually class-locked at all. The Colossus Axe isn't even a real weapon, and all Falchion and Yato variants can be wielded by their associated characters in any class that permits the use of swords; they're even considered E-rank for these purposes! Shanty Pete's 1st Mate has kinda already covered this, but actual class-locked weapons would be things like the Wo Dao/Shamshir (exclusive to Myrmidon-line classes, plus Lyn and Eirika in their respective games), Longbows (exclusive to Archers and Snipers), or, in Awakening, Rapiers, which are restricted to only Lords, Great Lords, and Lodestars. As for me personally, I tend to prefer that both types of weapons only account for a small portion of the total set of weapons in an installment, but I think I'm more amenable to having more class-exclusive weapons than character-exclusive. For character-exclusive weapons, I think they should be kept really rare to retain their novelty, and weapons should only be assigned such exclusivity when there's a good plot or lore reason for it.

This list is gonna be a lot of "investment" characters who don't have the benefit of joining early enough in the game or being a Three Houses student character, but... First off, name any Est or trainee-type character. Odds are I love using them, so I won't mention them here unless I feel they're a special case within that trend in terms of how much I like them. To start things off, Roshea is easily one of my top three favorite Archanean Cavaliers alongside Hardin and Cain, so I always use him even though he's really not that great in FE1 or 11. Actually... does Cain count? I know none of the four Cavaliers/Paladins from Marth's starting posse are actively bad, but Cain's the one who gets stuck with the E in Lances while the other three all have the ability to use Javelins right out of the gate. Granted, this is moot in FE1/3 due to how weapon proficiency works in those games, but in FE11, I mean. While I'm on the topic of Archanea... what is the consensus on Roger, anyway? I genuinely just never hear him talked about as a unit at all, although he's my go-to Knight for every Archanea game he's in, if he counts. From the same chapter, Radd's pretty rad. Really I just like his design, though I'm fully aware that he's probably the worst infantry sword unit in FE1/11. Atlas is easily my favorite Valentian Villager, design-wise, and I always make a point to use him, even though I know he's not that great. Mercenary is kind of the obvious choice for him, but I find he makes a really fun Mage, too. He's great at healing and just completely blowing things up from afar thanks to FE2/15 classifying Strength and Magic as one stat, although he does want for accuracy a little bit. On the topic of Celica's route, Sonya is I guess inferior to Deen as a unit, at least for the purposes of Celica's route? I don't really care about that, though; I just like her so much more as a character, honestly. Plus, Mage Navarre. All the usual suspects for Binding Blade. You know, Wendy, Sophia, Wolt, Dorothy... What can I say? I just like 'em! Lot too, actually. It is a time-honored tradition for me, during any Blazing Blade playthrough, to promote Nino from level 20. Is her performance as a unit worth the effort? Not remotely! But it's just fun to do for me. I actually... don't know what the popular assessments of Blazing Blade units are besides a few of them. Do people still consider Lyn bad? I like using her, although I realize she's a special-ish case on account of being a Lord and all. Pretty sure nobody in Sacred Stones is actually bad who isn't already covered by the first three sentences of this post. I say this having not actually properly played the Tellius games in a while, or at all in the case of Radiant Dawn, but I am determined to use Meg, Fiona, and Leonardo in FE10, motivated largely by sheer force of love for their designs. Do people consider Nephenee bad in Path of Radiance? I know she ends up solid with enough training but I dunno what the current consensus is on whether or not that's worth the effort. Oh wait! Rolf! Rolf's another character in Path of Radiance who's like, objectively-terrible as a unit but who I still always use. For Awakening, I'm gonna second Virion and say that I love to use Donnel, too. I like both of their characters, and in Donnel's case, I'm a sucker for the sheer novelty of unique classes in FE, even if those classes are bad. I'm... pretty sure the Villager class is weaker than Soldiers, actually, in terms of caps, but that's not quite on topic. Gonna have to pass on talking about Fates and Three Houses since I have very little concept of who is and isn't considered good in them beyond general principles carried over from other installments, so I guess that's it!

This is a bit hard for me to answer, since a lot of the characters who I'm aware of being widely-hated, well... I tend to actually see a lot of validity in the gripes with them underneath the hyperbole and vitriol. Doesn't mean I feel the same way, but like, I get why people would dislike them that much. For me... I guess I'd say Donnel? He's probably more obscure than a lot of characters people are likely to bring up here, but he's just... so incredibly inoffensive as far as I can tell? Like I can understand not really caring about him because he's so easily-missable and I know a lot of Fire Emblem players aren't as interested in using "investment units" as I am, but actively hating him just feels a bit excessive to me.

In regards to Silver-Haired Maiden's comment, I do think it's worth drawing a distinction between something where the story's genre is horror and something that's just gruesome and violent, because something can be the latter without necessarily being the former, and vice versa, too. I've found that I actually enjoy certain types of horror stories—mainly ones with prominent fantasy, sci-fi, and mystery elements with violence and jumpscares being downplayed—but I really can't stomach excessive violence or gore at all, even if it's just text. It just gives me this really... viscerally-uncomfortable feeling, y'know? I've found it hard to sleep after that kind of thing, too, historically.

I think for me personally, I tend to really like stories with a grounded but ultimately compassionate view of humans, showing us as flawed creatures capable of terrible evil, but great good as well, and still worthwhile despite everything. This is admittedly really broad, and it's not, like, a genre or anything. I guess I just like stories that fully acknowledge the bad in the world but that are still ultimately compassionate and optimistic in tone anyway. I'd say Final Fantasy VII and Mother 3 both have stories fitting that description, but they're certainly not the only examples or necessarily the best.

Starlight should absolutely go on a Legendary Hero alt for Linde. I'm thinking Starlight's functionality should be something like... Built-in Lull Res 3, plus completely bypassing all "Reduce damage taken by X%" skills and blocking any defensive Specials the opponent has from activating. ...I may or may not want this hypothetical Legendary Linde kind of a lot I've always sorta associated the Ladyblade with Cecil, so I'd make that her special weapon should she get in. I kinda also want a Priestess Mae alt with it, too, though. Yewfelle should clearly go to Brigid and Febail when they eventually make it in somehow. Rienfleche? Grand Hero Uhai baby Things like the Meisterlanze and Meisteraxt, the various skill-themed weapons... are a bit harder to place, because they don't really have the sorts of clear character associations the legendary weapons do. I'd both love and hate to see the Meisteraxt go to Dalsin, though... I know it'd be broken as hell but I kind of just want to see the world burn and have a Meisterwaffe + Distant/Close Counter + Vengeful Fighter build be doable anyway

I feel it's important to point out, in this moment, that Sanders is not actually withdrawing from the election, merely suspending active campaigning. He will remain on the ballot in all remaining states, though I'm not sure how things will turn out on that front. See 18:04 in his announcement video.

If you haven't tried there yet, Fire Emblem Universe is a community dedicated specifically to hacking Fire Emblem games, so you'd probably have a much more fruitful time looking for assistance there! Sorry I couldn't be more help!

That's not something FE6 is able to do natively I don't think, but I know there's a patch for FE8 that adds that functionality, so there may well be a similar patch for FE6. I wouldn't know where to find it, though.

Really baffling that Bramimond doesn't have Apocalypse, but they're still a cool as hell inclusion and look to have a rad and very unique playstyle! They were one of those characters I thought would be a great fit for colorless tomes, but who I discounted as being too obscure and unlikely... but evidently not! I'm quite thrilled to have been wrong, honestly! I'm wondering if the Colorless Tome category is going to remain relatively unique or if we're going to start getting standard units that use it soon... Colorless tomes only have one actual final-tier weapon, so they'd need to introduce an Arcrock+(?) and some Litrnoun tomes (maybe using Grár as the prefix?) to really get some options going for them.

In general, spriters-resource is a good place to go and actually has every single character portrait for all three GBA Fire Emblem games, split up by game into three big complete sheets. FEPlanet also has a lot of sprites uploaded; between these two sites, you should be just about set, I think! They're my main resources, at least.

So the thing is I can't actually think of any unique gimmick I'd give to my actual most wanted characters so I'll just do my Most Wanted Who I Can Actually Come Up With a Gimmick For, which is... CRESS ALBANE (I am not calling him "Cless Alvein") Swap Weapons - Cress can switch his currently-equipped weapon from between the Excalibur (speed-focused sword), Bahamut's Tear (power-focused axe), and Gungnir (range-focused spear). His currently-equipped weapon will affect the hitboxes and sweetspots of weapon strikes, and maybe even change which Artes are available as specials. I think it's really cool that Cress actually has multiple weapon types available to him in Tales of Phantasia, even if it doesn't actually change his moveset as much as hit slash-to-thrust power ratio. It's something I'd like to see reflected in a Smash portrayal of him should he make it in! I know in my heart that Lloyd Irving is an infinitely more likely Tales rep... but let me dream.

"that bastard"

From the readme file: PLEASE NOTE: If you would prefer a video guide telling you how to patch the ROM, Mekkah has one prepared: https://youtu.be/dRfWIuuE2dY 1. Obtain an unmodified, cartridge ROM of Thracia 776. I cannot help you do this. Your ROM should have the following checksum values: File MD5 C3FD1CAD754256D7A013864D917F47FA File SHA-1 75B504921D08E313FF58150E40121AC701884517 File CRC32 FC519952 If you don't know what that means, this tool can help you: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1002/ 2. Extract your unmodified ROM, flips.exe, and ProjectExile10.bps to the same folder. 3. Open flips.exe. 4. Click the "Apply Patch" button. 5. Select ProjectExile10.bps. 6. Select your unmodified Thracia ROM. 7. Choose a filename for the new, patched ROM. This is the ROM you'll use to play Project Exile. Its CRC32 checksum should now be equal to: 4B8FC2D6 IMPORTANT: If you receive an error message, it's because you tried to patch the wrong ROM. Make sure your ROM's checksum values are equal to those provided above. IMPORTANT: Not all emulators are compatible with Project Exile, because the ROM has been expanded. It will work with Snes9x (http://www.snes9x.com/downloads.php) without any additional effort on your part. PE is also compatible with the ZSNES 8MB custom build (https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/emulator/zsnes8.html). Finally, bsnes is also compatible, but only if you use the XML file provided in the download (it's in the "Optional" folder). Make sure you've got all this squared away! It's easy to miss little things along the way when doing this, so try going through it again, carefully, making sure you're following each step properly. If it still doesn't work, then... well, I'm not sure what the case would be then.

I really like this one, too! The ending feels pretty organic and makes a lot of sense, honestly. The impression I get, setting aside Kellam's gimmick, is that Miriel and her achievements were just far and away more historically-noteworthy so Kellam ended up largely forgotten, but there's no implication that he would've been unhappy in the relationship, so that's alright! As for myself, I... would have to say that while I do like Robin/Cordelia, Cordelia's performance in "favorite character" polls really calls the pairing's supposed "unpopularity" into question for me, haha Though there is certainly a difference between appreciating the pairing as it's written and just pairing it because you, the player, really like or have a crush on Cordelia, so I suppose I can't really speak to what the ratio is there and whether that condition would affect whether one counts it as "unpopular" or not! As for myself... I actually think Marth/Xane is potentially a really cute idea, although I also like both Marth and Caeda and them together so I'm not sure what my complete feelings about it are. Another one I like a lot is Eliwood/Fiora. It seems to be the least popular pairing for Eliwood and I... actually don't know how it stacks up against Fiora/Sain, but I'm fairly certain it's less popular than her with Kent. It's a sweet and low-key relationship, and I think the two are a good match for each other, personality-wise! As a kid, I definitely remember being frustrated that there was no Lucius/Serra ending, although I've since come to be less sure how I feel about interpreting that relationship as being romantic in nature. I still love the support chain, though. Ever since I first played Sacred Stones and read about character endings and stuff, I always automatically read "...and as [Eirika and Tana] grew older, their children shared a bond of friendship as close as Eirika and Tana themselves did." as referring to like, children that they had with each other, as opposed to just kids they had independently with other spouses, before correcting myself to what I'm pretty sure is the intended reading. However, I think that my initial gut reading of it from childhood should be correct. They should be happily married with kids, is my opinion. For some Awakening pairings, Lissa and Ricken are actually really cute together. They're about the same age, and I feel like they have good chemistry that I could easily see forming the foundation for a healthy and happy relationship. Plus, Owain gets access to the Dark Knight class, so he needn't choose between his sword hand and his darkness. I mean, with the Dread Fighter DLC, he can use both at once regardless of his father, but I'm also definitely in the minority for liking Chrom/Sully as much as I do. Mainly I'm just a sucker for childhood friendships and friends-to-lovers romances, but I think their supports are really sweet. I actually don't pair them too often in gameplay, but I'd definitely say that I "ship" Chrom/Sully the most just for the two of them as a pair out of all Chrom's romance options, with only Chrom/Robin perhaps tying with it.