Best Avatar

[Jotari]

I made a thread like this before, but now we've got two new Avatars since then, and two new ones that seems to actually not have controversial personalities. Which is quite an achievement. So another poll seems warrented. And because we all love negativety, I've also made a worst Avatar option.

Edited June 14 by Jotari

[Acacia Sgt]

You mean best/worst as in being characters? Being avatars? Playability? Overall grading? Ten-pin bowling?

[Jotari]

10 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

You mean best/worst as in being characters? Being avatars? Playability? Overall grading? Ten-pin bowling?

Whichever criteria you want.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Best: Corrin for most meaningful unit customization.

It´d be a tossup between Byleth and Alear for worst for no meaningful unit customization.

[Acacia Sgt]

Well, as the poll asks for "Avatar", then I take that as my criteria.

Marc for best since the others, barring Kiran, have too much character to be avatars. Marc is the most AFGNCAAP of them all, so they fit best the definition of Avatar.

Alear for worst since they have the almost if not absolute least customization options, and also the character angle which puts them more distant than someone like Byleth.

[lenticular]

Mark is my least favourite. Mainly because I always find it incredibly creepy when Lyn turns to look directly out of the screen as if she's addressing me. It gives me a literal shudder every time it happens. Also, my habit for avatar characters is to always pick female and always use the default name. And while I can technically do that in BlaBla, having a woman called Mark is just kinda weird.

My favourite: eh, Robin, I guess? Robin's fine. I'm not really a big fan of avatars as a concept, so the one who is closest to just being a predefined character is going to be my favourite.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Best Avatar: Marc. Literally wakes up in Lyn's bed 😳

Worst Avatar: Marc. She's underaged, dude. 😡

Man I hope they put Kris in Fire Emblem: Echoes of the Holy War. I don't mean an avatar like Kris, I mean canonically Kris. Gone from the history books because he actually disappeared and has a lot more to tell us about his grandfather. He'll steal lines from plot important characters. He'll storm off to Chagall and get beheaded in place of Eldigan (he gets better dw). He'll survive the battle of belhalla. And he's re-recruited with Leif's crew, implying that he's around for the events of Thracia 776 too. Also, the game's season pass story content confirms him to be a divine dragon who can show Julius the path of righteousness and join our party

Edited June 13 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Metal Flash]

In terms of being a "avatar" for the player, Mark is the best, as they have no real character of their own. Conversely, the worst are Byleth and Alear, as they are practically their own character with no customizable elements.

In terms of which I personally prefer, Kris is my least favourite. They are so boring, only talking about either training, Prince Marth or their grandfather. Robin is my favourite in terms of character (especially in DLC), while Corrin is my favourite as a unit. Corrin is strong without feeling broken, and being able to turn into a dragon is cool (even if I wish the story would remember that detail).

[Jotari]

19 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Best Avatar: Marc. Literally wakes up in Lyn's bed 😳

Worst Avatar: Marc. She's underaged, dude. 😡

Only in Japan!

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Best at being an Avatar: Marc

Worst at being an Avatar: Alear

Best character: Robin

Worst character: Corrin

Best unit: Robin

Worst unit: Alear

No opinion on: Kiran, Shez

Spoiler

He'll storm off to Chagall and get beheaded in place of Eldigan (he gets better dw).

I see he's rocking the exclusive "Green Knight" class.

Don't forget the ability to romance any character, including those who are canonically married! Sorry, Quan, but you've got to share Ethly-

Spoiler

She's underaged, dude. 😡

Wait, no, none of that. Nope, nope, nope.

...Well, maybe just in Japan.

Edited June 13 by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Added response.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Best - Shez

Yeah, bet this one didn't surprise you coming from me.

Shez is a standout powerhouse even in a subgenre that literally translates to "unmatched."

Shez has a badass design in both genders, and in both base and prepromote classes.

Shez has an endearingly stupid personality that bounces well off the existing cast, and they have a believably different impact on the world than Byleth.

 

Worst - Kris

So, there's a lot of avatars with bad qualities. Alear has a godawful design, but is an endearing character. Corrin is an unentertaining dipshit, but has a great design. Kirin is a brick in a bad game, but at least they are fully customizable. 

I have to give the worst to Kris though. Because no one else hijacks an existing narrative and makes it arguably worse just by existing.

[Etrurian emperor]

The best Avatar is probably Robin because they function best in that role. Robin has a very low key personality so that any player regardless of personality can identify with them to some degree, but because they do have some traits of their own they aren't the charisma black holes that Byleth and Mark are. Robin is also in the exact same position we are. They are the straight man reaction to an overly wacky cast.

The worst Avatar is Corrin. Because he isn't one. He's an established character who's appearance we can slightly tweak. This makes it impossible for the player to imprint themselves on Corrin because Corrin is his own characters and their behavior will always be the same no matter the personality of the player they are supposed to represent. No matter if the player is a goth, a hippie, a boomer or a redneck, Corrin will always be a sweet, dorky, overly naive doormat of a guy/gall. There is no room to imagine them as anything other than that. 

To an extend this goes for Shez and Alear too but Corrin has an additional handicap. They have a defined personality that many players find frustrating. Corrin constantly gets duped, needs people to babysit them or lets people walk all over them. So Corrin (probably on accident) implies that the player needs to be coddled and protected, and that they'd be eaten alive if the big bad outside world gets its hands on them. After all as an avatar Corrin represents us. Meanwhile Shez is kind of a dummy, but undeniably cool and a jovial figure to boot. They're a strong personality but not a strong personality that players would find offensive to have attributed to them. Alear is sensitive and dorky like Corrin but to an extend its easier to imagine as lovable rather than frustrating, and the Engage plot is too basic for Alear to do something overly foolish that a player character would never do.

Edited June 13 by Etrurian emperor

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Best at being an Avatar: Marc

Worst at being an Avatar: Alear

Best character: Robin

Worst character: Corrin

Best unit: Robin

Worst unit: Alear

No opinion on: Kiran, Shez

  Hide contents

He'll storm off to Chagall and get beheaded in place of Eldigan (he gets better dw).

I see he's rocking the exclusive "Green Knight" class.

Don't forget the ability to romance any character, including those who are canonically married! Sorry, Quan, but you've got to share Ethly-

  Hide contents

She's underaged, dude. 😡

Wait, no, none of that. Nope, nope, nope.

...Well, maybe just in Japan.

Actually while Kris could support with any character, marriage was off the table. There's no S ranks and no paired endings. Some supports did lean romantically, but it was only a handful of the very sizeable cast with the majority being platonic. Robin was the one who began the trend of the Avatar being a sex god.

New Mystery allowing marriage of anyone would be hilariously impractical as not only would it involve breaking up official couples (plot Relevant official couples), but there simply wouldn't be enough time to romance the four Maidens. It would also mean putting Tiki in the wedding dress which is ew enough as it is, but Julia and Jubelo also exist and don't have the centuries old excuse (yes, yes I know Awakening had Ricken and Nowi too).

4 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Best - Shez

Yeah, bet this one didn't surprise you coming from me.

Shez is a standout powerhouse even in a subgenre that literally translates to "unmatched."

Shez has a badass design in both genders, and in both base and prepromote classes.

Shez has an endearingly stupid personality that bounces well off the existing cast, and they have a believably different impact on the world than Byleth.

 

Worst - Kris

So, there's a lot of avatars with bad qualities. Alear has a godawful design, but is an endearing character. Corrin is an unentertaining dipshit, but has a great design. Kirin is a brick in a bad game, but at least they are fully customizable. 

I have to give the worst to Kris though. Because no one else hijacks an existing narrative and makes it arguably worse just by existing.

That's funny, as I find that Kris and Shez are by far the most similar as Avatars, both in terms of personality and narrative role.

Edited June 13 by Jotari

[Fabulously Olivier]

24 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Actually while Kris could support with any character, marriage was off the table. There's no S ranks and no paired endings. Some supports did lean romantically, but it was only a handful of the very sizeable cast with the majority being platonic. Robin was the one who began the trend of the Avatar being a sex god.

New Mystery allowing marriage of anyone would be hilariously impractical as not only would it involve breaking up official couples (plot Relevant official couples), but there simply wouldn't be enough time to romance the four Maidens. It would also mean putting Tiki in the wedding dress which is ew enough as it is, but Julia and Jubelo also exist and don't have the centuries old excuse (yes, yes I know Awakening had Ricken and Nowi too).

That's funny, as I find that Kris and Shez are by far the most similar as Avatars, both in terms of personality and narrative role.

I saw that coming. Context and execution matter. An entirely new perspective in a spinoff vs. a character who steals plot beats from others and becomes the center of attention in a remake. The second case people rightly find offensive.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

51 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Actually while Kris could support with any character, marriage was off the table. There's no S ranks and no paired endings. Some supports did lean romantically, but it was only a handful of the very sizeable cast with the majority being platonic. Robin was the one who began the trend of the Avatar being a sex god.

New Mystery allowing marriage of anyone would be hilariously impractical as not only would it involve breaking up official couples (plot Relevant official couples), but there simply wouldn't be enough time to romance the four Maidens.

That would be pretty handy. If you could substitute Julian for Kris, have one less body to block

Edited June 13 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I saw that coming. Context and execution matter. An entirely new perspective in a spinoff vs. a character who steals plot beats from others and becomes the center of attention in a remake. The second case people rightly find offensive.

Well maybe if I actually cared about Mystery of the Emblem's plot more it'd be more of a turn off. I rate Old Mystery as having the worst story in the series.

[Dark Holy Elf]

My favourites are Shez and Corrin because they both have pretty clear personalities and get meaningful interactions with other characters. They're not very "avatar"y but I don't care since I'm not that into avatars. And to varying extents I dislike all the others.

Marc, Kiran, and Byleth are silent player stand-ins, which I'm not a fan of as a rule. Marc and Kiran can have some extra demerits for being "Choose your gender... j/k the canon name is obviously male" (and in Kiran's case, the default design always looked pretty male to me, too)".

Robin is... bland/dull and over-praised. So's Alear.

Kris feels out of place and a bit spotlight-stealing in addition to being bland/dull.

 

I made this list without thinking of gameplay... but I have opinions on them in gameplay too. Except Kris.

1. Corrin (gets a lot of customization without feeling overpowered)
2. Alear (has a unique, supporty role which I think fits the avatar-type characters well)
3. Shez (has a neat unique class which is fun)
4. Byleth (not really unique at all, but not egregious)
5. Robin (kinda overpowered in a very generic way, just ends up doing anything and doing it better than anyone else, aside from earlygame Frederick; it kinda feels like weird fanservice).

 

[Fire Emblem Fan]

For being an avatar stand-in for the actual player, I'm going to say that Mark is objectively the best in the pure sense of what an avatar is supposed to mean and be. Alear is my least favorite, which is somewhat surprising because I didn't think Corrin and Kris could be dethroned...but here we are. Congrats, Engage, for giving us the worst avatar.

[Jotari]

Marc is simultaneously the (tied) best and worst avatar according to the poll at present. Which is hilarious.

Edited June 14 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

New Mystery allowing marriage of anyone would be hilariously impractical as not only would it involve breaking up official couples (plot Relevant official couples), but there simply wouldn't be enough time to romance the four Maidens. It would also mean putting Tiki in the wedding dress which is ew enough as it is, but Julia and Jubelo also exist and don't have the centuries old excuse (yes, yes I know Awakening had Ricken and Nowi too).

Awakening at least has the "Nowi/Ricken aren't getting physical right away, it happens years down the line" excuse. Elise in Fates, though...

Anyway, yeah definitely not advocating for this, it was all a joke. Didn't recall that there were no paired endings in New Mystery. 

3 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Marc, Kiran, and Byleth are silent player stand-ins, which I'm not a fan of as a rule. Marc and Kiran can have some extra demerits for being "Choose your gender... j/k the canon name is obviously male" (and in Kiran's case, the default design always looked pretty male to me, too)".

Incoming petition for the next Avatar to have an aggressively feminine default name, regardless of gender. "Ah yes, Prince Tiffany, how do you do?"

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well maybe if I actually cared about Mystery of the Emblem's plot more it'd be more of a turn off. I rate Old Mystery as having the worst story in the series.

There's already a big plot hole in Mystery of the Emblem. See, what Kaga failed to account for is, I'm a massive noob who got Jagen killed off in chapter 1 of Shadow Dragon. Ergo, he shouldn't exist to deliver any exposition in the sequel. New Mystery fixed this, by giving his lines to a nobody who didn't exist before (and whom, therefore, I could not kill off).

10 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

The worst Avatar is Corrin. Because he isn't one. He's an established character who's appearance we can slightly tweak. This makes it impossible for the player to imprint themselves on Corrin because Corrin is his own characters and their behavior will always be the same no matter the personality of the player they are supposed to represent. No matter if the player is a goth, a hippie, a boomer or a redneck, Corrin will always be a sweet, dorky, overly naive doormat of a guy/gall. There is no room to imagine them as anything other than that. 

I hear what you're saying, but isn't that true of Robin as well? Even the cast's spposed "straight man" still has a personality, one that's outside the player's control. The only Avatar whose personality you can (kinda) control is Teach, since you can select their lines (sometimes). Otherwise, the Avatats have either a fixed personality, or no personality due to no dialogue.

Edited June 14 by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Typo, clarification.

[Jotari]

17 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

There's already a big plot hole in Mystery of the Emblem. See, what Kaga failed to account for is, I'm a massive noob who got Jagen killed off in chapter 1 of Shadow Dragon. Ergo, he shouldn't exist to deliver any exposition in the sequel. New Mystery fixed this, by giving his lines to a nobody who didn't exist before (and whom, therefore, I could not kill off).

Jagen does still have some lines in New Mystery XD although on that topic, they didn't do any kind of data transfer in Old Mystery even though Book 1 and 2 were on the same cartridge. Obviously we couldn't have stuff like killing Hardin to stop the whole conflict, but some minor data transfer stuff could have been cool.

17 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

I hear what you're saying, but isn't that true of Robin as well? Even the cast's spposed "straight man" still has a personality, one that's outside the player's control. The only Avatar whose personality you can (kinda) control is Teach, since you can select their lines (sometimes). Otherwise, the Avatats have either a fixed personality, or no personality due to no dialogue.

Even Byleth isn't Link. There's still very much a defined stoic personality there that the characters even comment on and has plot relevance.

Edited June 14 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Jagen does still have some lines in New Mystery XD although on that topic, they didn't do any kind of data transfer in Old Mystery even though Book 1 and 2 were on the same cartridge. Obviously we couldn't have stuff like killing Hardin to stop the whole conflict, but some minor data transfer stuff could have been cool.

"Wake up, babe, new speedrunning tech just dropped."

Yeah, that would've been fun! Probably ahead of its time, too. Maybe offer a secret, expanded ending to players who beat both titles with no deaths?

[Acacia Sgt]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

There's already a big plot hole in Mystery of the Emblem. See, what Kaga failed to account for is, I'm a massive noob who got Jagen killed off in chapter 1 of Shadow Dragon. Ergo, he shouldn't exist to deliver any exposition in the sequel. New Mystery fixed this, by giving his lines to a nobody who didn't exist before (and whom, therefore, I could not kill off).

Or, and I know it might be shocking to hear... him dying is just not canon.

[lenticular]

12 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

the Engage plot is too basic for Alear to do something overly foolish that a player character would never do.

The whole "let's just walk into this really obvious trap" thing managed to at least make me roll my eyes.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Obviously we couldn't have stuff like killing Hardin to stop the whole conflict

No, but see, you only thought you killed him. Just because he got cut to pieces by a magic sword and then had a building collapse on top of him didn't mean he was dead. Everyone knows that.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 Maybe offer a secret, expanded ending to players who beat both titles with no deaths?

They actually had that in Old Mystery. Well, I don't know if was for both books, but certainly if you cleared book 2 with no deaths then you got to see the timeline of Archanea. Strange they didn't ever have a reward for a dedicated perfect rub since then, especially since earlier games were intended to be ironmanned more.