Topazd

An aesthetic reason is as good a reason as any to dislike something over something else. I don't think there was any reason for responses so vulgar when there was little provocation for any of it at all and the matter in question was almost entirely subjective. But to stay on topic, I want the next lord to just be a character. I don't have any great vision for what he/she should be like, as long as they would have some other characteristics in place of the typical unshakably virtuous personality.

Well, there were regular dragon bosses in FEs 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.

FE4 & FE5 also had non-Dragons as final bosses (although Julius did wield the Loptyr tome), but other than those four, yeah.

I feel that BrightBow has said everything and more than I could have about Robin. Kris wasn't much better to be fair, but at the very least Jagen of all people would blatantly state it if his stats were inadequate. But as a character he is just as bland of self-insert as Robin is. (though I really liked some of his supports, like Palla/Arran)

nuh-uh

nope

ew

For females I'd say Tiki/Noire. For males I'd definitely go with Gaius, although I actually like him more due to his voice rather than his looks (Gideon Emery ah), so it's either Stahl or Inigo for me.

My Roy had 24 Defense in one save file. I've no idea how that came to happen. Of course with the 1 RN system these were more common; Ares didn't get Str procs 3 levels in a row, 94% hits miss a few times in a row, etc. In FE12 Ryan had 3 perfect level ups in a row, but that wasn't all that astounding if I recall his growths correctly.

If what you're thinking is the true hit rate, it would actually be 0.03%. But critical rates are calculated with 1 RN, to my knowledge.

Thus far the one for me has been FE12 Chapter 22 on Maniac, I just wasn't competent enough to either complete it fast enough or deal with those Glower!Sorcerer & Manakete reinforcements, haha. At least I know what's coming this time around, so I might actually pose more of chance there when my weaponry actually consists of something usable.

I'm not certain whether or not the question presented in the post was meant to be taken as a rhetorical one, but I'll give my two cents anyway. When FE is in question, there obviously need to be some limits that cannot be crossed when it comes to balancing the gameplay. Of course, having a setting where swamps are the nearly exclusive form of terrain would not be ideal for the gameplay. These examples are really just worst-case scenarios though; a certain amount of responsibility is assumed from the developers whilst crafting their settings. And this can also be turned the other way around: like a comment above already said, excessive balancing could make the game much more boring. In the end, I don't think too much balancing should be sacrificed when it comes to FE; the games in the series are very linear and there is always the strategic aspect which needs to be largely prominent. Consistency just so happens to be a preference of mine. If this was something less linear, like The Elder Scrolls for example, I would sacrifice any amount of balancing for the sake of consistency without any second thoughts.

Oh yeah, the FE8 trainees would have been a good example. Additionally, over-extensively balancing characters' bases/growths would totally ruin characters like Boah whose charm is essentially his less-than-adequateness.

Agreed. I was just a bit desperate for examples and had to go with that one.

FE1/11 - Camus. One of the only FE1 characters. FE2 - Palla/Zeke. Palla is personality-wise one of my favorites from the whole series. Camus is Camus, so yeah. FE3/12 - Palla/Hardin. Palla is still Palla. Hardin was the first FE villain that was an actual character. FE4 - Finn. Goes through a lot and has a hard work ethic. FE5 - Haven't finished yet. FE6 - Tate (duh) and Galle. I never got a lot out of FE6 characters, but Tate was my favorite of the Peg Knights and Galle seemed like he had really earned his position. FE7 - Canas. His personality just hits the right buttons for me. FE8 - Knoll. The above also applies here. FE9 - Zihark/Marcia. Zihark because of his motivations and Marcia since I have a huge Peg Knight obsession. FE10 - Zihark/Marcia. I also liked Pelleas, but other than that my favorites stayed the same. FE13 - Laurent. Unlike Miriel, in his supports it felt like he was actually conversing with other people rather than just using complex vocabulary without acknowledging the other participant. I managed to keep the list somewhat varied even though my Peg Knight obsession almost got the best of me.

The RPG community in general is a bit divided on this subject, so I was wondering what the general consensus on this topic is in regards to FE. If it was up to you, which route would you take from a game designer's perspective; sticking with consistency while sacrificing some of the game's overall balance, or vice versa? As an example, would you rather make enemies/bosses scale upward in a balanced manner regardless of their combat prowess in the actual story canon, or alternatively make their stats reflect their combat prowess according to the story canon while simultaneously sacrificing some of the game's balance? I'm generally bad at explaining things, so in case my explanation wasn't clear, let's use Arran as an example. Some people claim that he should not be a Jeigan, since they genuinely want to use him throughout the game, but are unable to due to his low growth rates. Buffing up his growths a bit could make the character roster slightly more balanced, but would not make much sense from a consistency/story viewpoint, since he is slowly dying and has already reached the limits of his strength. I identify myself as belonging to the consistency camp, although I don't think it's wise to abandon either consistency nor balancing entirely just for the sake of maintaining the other. What's your stance on the matter?

There desperately has to be an in-between difficulty, rather than the immense gap between Hard and Lunatic modes. And I hope that they have a more traditional support system; Awakening's was functional, but the formula it utilized could get redundant really fast. As far as the core gameplay mechanics go, I'm pretty happy with the way they currently are. It would be nice to see some classes return, though (need more Barons).

Mara is an often recurring demon in the series, so it's certainly possible. Almost every SMT demon, like Mara, is based on some mythology, so it's not like they just invented a demon for the sake of being weird or gross.

In the days of his prime, perhaps, but not with all the tendons of his primary sword arm severed.

True. And my personal problems are not necessarily with SD's art style per say; FE12 improved upon them a bit while technically still using the same style. In SD many characters just seem kind of "off", IMO at least.

Shadow Dragon had some pretty bland character art for sure, but unlike in the original, at the very least they had some idea what they were doing with their art direction.

Of course Xenogears had a phenomenal beginning, and perhaps the rest of it could have followed suit if not for the budget of a certain game we would all like to wholeheartedly forget. The reason that Loki mentioned is of course the primary one. The lack of quality on the second disc, however, is a huge factor in the sense that it really gets fans of the game enthusiastic and defensive about it; many would agree that the game had a lot more potential than the one that actually got all the resources in the end. EDIT I don't really remember whether or not the FF8 budget was at fault, or if Square was just disinterested in Takahashi's concept(s). Regardless, screw them.

The trailer included the protagonists from every main installment of SMT, so I'd say it's really likely for Alm/Celica etc. to appear. I agree that the reason was probably their lack of proper artwork to implement into such a modern trailer. Part of me hopes that the final game will be something akin to Majin Tensei 1/2, since they were SMT spinoffs that functioned much like FE. Then again, the Majin Tensei games are old and not necessarily the most popular SMT titles, so we'll have to wait and see.

Really simplistic, but eh.

Flashcarts if I have the availability, but more often than not emulators are my only option.