majora_787

My last run of Sacred Stones ended because of two separate incidents where my strongest units got critted three times in a row and died. I just stopped after that.

I feel like Fire Emblem needs more human final bosses, to be honest. With the exception of Veld, the few we've had have been pretty good. And while monster final bosses can be good, they can also fall insanely short, like on the GBA games. I'd much rather future fire emblems try experimenting with interesting final bosses who are human for a bit.

Either 5 or 7 probably. 7 has literally no positive qualities to it and is a mess of several of the worst decisions and biggest failures in the series, but it gets a pass on literally all of them for some reason and it's just kind of held as a good game as long as you ignore... the game. I guess. 5 is held in a high regard literally because it's hard, despite the fact that its actual gameplay and story fall pretty... short. Beyond the former being difficult.

Thracia, Radiant Dawn, and FE7. Thracia was pretty difficult just in general for me. Radiant Dawn was really hard for me when I played my hard playthrough, though not as much on normal. FE7 was just hard to play. For other reasons.

This. I have no idea why you would take functionality away from a lord character and put it on a worthless character that is just there for you to have to protect and escort. A trait that can very easily make maps more tedious and unpleasant than they need to be. I'd prefer IS just put effort into making games more difficult in a more legitimate way than that. EDIT: Actually, I am interested in the idea of selecting units to serve as convoy units. That sounds like it could be made into a pretty cool mechanic.

I find it hard to even acknowledge calling Conquest's plot "the worst" as an opinion as much as just plain bitterness when Gaiden and the Elibe titles exist. Those games were built on an entire foundation of horrible decisions.

I can understand people not liking Chrom, but I really can't agree with him being the worst in the series when Gaiden didn't do a whole lot for its lords and the GBA games, as good as Sacred Stones was, was REALLY bad about handling lords in general. There were two (arguably) good lords between three games that had six lords between them. I also don't get why people think Ike ruined Radiant Dawn, when I really feel like the fault is on how Micaiah was handled. If they just did more with Micaiah and made use of the new protagonist they made for this game, they wouldn't have had to push Ike so much.

I'm honestly partial to rout over "seize the throne" and thing the latter is a pretty... needless goal. I think that if an entire game was only "rout the enemy" it has a pretty solid shot at still having some good variety and complexity to it. I also think "defeat the boss" is kind of needless. Stuff like "escape" or "defend" are alright though. Another one I guess, I feel like fog of war is intrinsically a bad mechanic for a strategy-centered game that's particularly at its worst in Thracia. I don't think removing weapon durability is a bad thing, since unlike in Gaiden they actually did it to make weapons more interesting as opposed to aggressively simplifying things.

Ashera is a given, though then it's basically a fight between high-end dragons like Anankos and Grima. While Duma is called a god, Duma is a god that rules over half of a continent and is able to be sealed away with just the Falchion, along with his 'sister', despite not even being a dragon. So Duma is pretty clearly a low-end god and probably isn't actually a real god, not unlike Naga. I'm going to try and do a thought crunch on this... 1. Ashera. World-creating and world-destroying goddess of order. She's pretty clearly the pinnacle lore-wise of final boss strength with no actual competition. 2. Anankos. A dragon god with a very high level of power even when heavily degraded to madness, setting himself above most dragons. 3. Grima. I only put Grima above Fomortiis because I subscribe to the theory that Grima is another identity of the dark dragon Loptyr. If this wasn't the case, I would probably only move Grima below Fomortiis. 3. Fomortiis. We have pretty little scope into Fomortiis' power, though it is clear that he has a definite influence over Magvel's world. He shows the ability to corrupt and possess a pretty good variety of people, and has a pretty sizeable monster army if nothing else. 4. Duma. While I'm skeptical of Duma, I guess I can accept being branded as a god as enough to put him above entities like Medeus that are simply 'powerful dragons' that haven't passed a god-level threshold of power. 5. Medeus. A pretty powerful earth dragon who's later an undead earth dragon, but isn't exactly god level or anything. 6. Idenn. A divine dragon turned into a shadow dragon. I'm not 100% on the distinction between Idenn and Medeus here, but I think I will put Medeus higher if only because he's actually undead as a shadow dragon iirc. 7. Julius. Julius is a human mage, and has the blood of the dragon Salamander while being possessed by Loptyr. Definitely the strongest human boss. 8. Ashnard. Ashnard is pretty abnormally strong in the grand scheme of things by human standards, though he isn't actually the host body of a high-level dragon. 9. Generic Dragon. I still feel to this day like this one is a bad joke. 10. Veld. As bad as the generic fire dragon is, I don't really feel like I have much reason to believe Veld surpasses a dragon in power. That's my stab at all of this. I feel like the highest end is pretty much locked into being Ashera, Anankos Fomortiis, and Grima though while the low end is pretty much locked into being Veld, generic fire dragon, and Ashnard.

I can agree with Ashnard being one of if not the best villains in the series, but I can't bring myself to agree on Manfroy. I'm limited in how seriously I can take a guy whose plan involves incest as a critical component. Even if it did work as far as making Julius a host of Loptyr. It's still really silly and strange. I did a whole ramble once about how I rate major villains in Fire Emblem, but I don't think my top picks are unpopular compared to the ones I put in the middle or bottom. I like skills, especially Fates' personal skills. What I don't really like is re-classing. I still feel like it ruins the unique capabilities of certain units, especially in Awakening, where you can easily make... what. Tharja a general, Kellam an assassin, and Gaius a warrior? At most I'm willing to reclass to the other side of a single class tree, but otherwise I think it's less than ideal. I actually didn't like branched promotion either until Fates. Fates makes me feel more like I have more to gain or lose in the decision than Awakening or Sacred Stones did. Though I'd still prefer linear promotion, honestly. I get that people don't think story matters at all, but when a story gets insultingly bad enough I find it impossible to take the gameplay seriously. Though I've only really seen that happen with the Elibe games, which had gameplay that was hard to take seriously anyway. I actually do think Shadow Dragon had an alright story, I just haven't vocalized it that much after playing FE12, which I like more. As much as I do like Genealogy, I really can't fault anyone for not liking its tedious gameplay or edgy story. If they don't want to play it, I don't blame them, but there are some conversations people decide to have nowadays where Genealogy should probably be acknowledged at the very least.

I feel like Camus being a bad archetype isn't really unpopular anymore. It's been seeming recently like people have just been much more noticeably bothered by it retroactively. I mean after Eldigan I can't really blame anyone, but it's something I noticed.

I honestly don't like the Black Knight as an antagonist at all beyond his aesthetic. Even Nergal in all the flaws stemming from him was a fair bit better. I learned to appreciate Ashnard a lot more after Radiant Dawn and realizing what and why the Black Knight did. Like in Path of Radiance it was all fine and good, but then it just got weird.

* I actually like Fates' really strange map BS. Even the moving platforms. (Apparently this is unpopular?) * People seem to have a demand for really deep villains, but I think Ashnard was one of the better ones in the series. Sometimes simplicity can be good. * I didn't like Pelleas at all, but I did like the idea behind how his recruitment as a unit worked. And I wouldn't mind seeing that come back, especially as a standard feature of the "Camus" archetype. * I like the Jugdral games, but it's hard for them to not lose points with me with how... for lack of a better word, 'edgy' they feel at times.

This is hard. It definitely isn't Elibe with all of its gaping plotholes and horrible development, or Magvel with its relative complete lack of development. And at the same time while I would consider Archanea it definitely isn't Ylisse or Valentia either... considering one just kind of exists to continue off Archanea with arguable effectiveness, and Valentia just kind of... exists? While Fates had an amount of development in a single game, I guess then Tellius, since I prefer its world building a fair amount to Jugdral's. I guess if I had to rank it, it'd be... Tellius > Archanea > Jugdral > Hoshido/Nohr >>> Magvel > Ylisse >>>>>>>>>>> Valentia > Elibe

Generally I think Kris is the closest to how avatars should be implemented. I feel like they work best as a "generic self-insert character". I don't have much issue with Robin or Corrin, but I feel like they would have honestly worked better if they simply were normal characters instead of avatars. I can't really say the same for Kris. who would mostly work better by either not being present (to some people) or by just functioning better as an avatar (to some people). Mark is just another mark on FE7's long list of mistakes. So if we keep getting avatar characters I'd prefer having some secondary role where the avatar helps with the main plot, has their own subplot, and everything is good to go from there.