Sol Hiryu

Also, keep in mind that sales being good for a musou game is damning by faint praise. Nintendo likely set expectations to be on par with HW, so underperforming that threshold is not good. Because it released on both Switch and 3DS at the same time, it also likely needs more sales than HW's initial expectations too.

Okay-ish sales, but still underwhelming and likely disappointing for Nintendo. Judgment will have to be held until it releases in the rest of the world, but it's not off to a great start. Also, to clear up some misconceptions, Zelda still sells more in Japan than FE does, despite the common "Zelda is not popular in Japan" sentiment I see going around.

I'm baffled at how people can go "rosters shouldn't matter" when musou spin-offs of franchises are literally fanservice. Rosters absolutely do matter in these games and they can definitely make or break a game. One Piece Musou did well with fleshing out character movesets while including fan-favorites and surprise picks -- enough to have three games in the series. Gundam Musou included characters from way back in the series because it was a representation of the entire franchise in the very first game. Attack on Titan did well enough with its characters and mechanics that a sequel is in development. Also, remember when the inclusion of Ryu Hayabusa and Ayane were big selling points for Warriors Orochi 3? They brought a lot of hype alone, which contributed to sales of the game. Conversely, Berserk Musou was widely panned for an extremely thin roster that left out several characters that people wanted, and fans were upset. The inclusion of characters -- or their exclusion -- is definitely enough to sway someone's decision on if they want to buy a musou title or not. People who wanted to see Wind Waker or pre-N64 characters in Hyrule Warriors were likely upset that they were left out of the base game and likely didn't buy until the Legends expansion came out, for example. FE Warriors is definitely a polished and well done game mechanically, but the number one complaint with people reviewing the game on amazon and elsewhere is that the roster has big problems, namely that there aren't enough axes and that there are too many Fates characters. (Anecdotally, Awakening generally has a warm reception with fans, but Fates is a very controversial game both in the JP and US fandoms, so the inclusion of every single Royal has led to backlash. Not surprising, but it could have been avoided.)

I still won thanks to a crit, but I had a good chance of one-rounding the strategist anyway thanks to her low HP. Strictly speaking, I don't think Wary Fighter is a good idea for high-speed units you send in, like Swordmasters and Berserkers. There's no reason to gimp yourself if you reliably double in the first two rounds, and the third round is always a huge luckfest anyway. Of course you'll get a few units that will double you, but generally there's a trend in which units will do so. Or, at least, until the game throws these assholes at you: Seriously, a sorcerer doubling a 43 Speed unit? Talk about capbusting!

Certain Blow, which I find is effectively required for all arena units because you can't really pass up a free Hit+40. Sadly, it and Death Blow are the only useful ones, because the arena will just ramp up the enemy's stats to get around Duelist/Armored/Darting/Warding Blow. Since you can't expect to reliably dodge in there, it's simply a matter of hoping for a critkill before you take too much damage.

Just going to leave this here, lol In all seriousness, much of the arena boils down to hoping your skill setup is enough to beat out the RNG. Proc stacking is good, but you also have to think about which skills you want to proc and if you can make room for support skills. You almost assuredly want Certain Blow + Death Blow on your S class units because it will almost guarantee that they'll hit. Two or Sol/Luna/Aether is also good for survivability purposes. Wary Fighter is too much of a double edged sword for my taste, as it's inevitable that you'll run into an enemy that outdamages you and has a higher crit rate. It's unfortunate that you can't have a 100% win rate because it's just too random, but stacking as many things in your favor is always a good thing.

I'm not sure why some of you are thinking that Zelgius wouldn't have killed Greil when it was pretty obvious that it was his intention that night. Don't forget that while he was pursuing his original ambition (dueling Gawain), he was also to retrieve the medallion as per Ashnard's (and Lehran's) orders. The only regret we get to see him have in RD is that 'surpassing' his old teacher had been too easy, but he doesn't actually regret slaying Greil.

The sad part is that Zelgius has next to no characterization whatsoever. We're left guessing as to his true self, given that the Black Knight differs so much from Zelgius--although Ike does note that the two do share the same bearing, meaning there's at least something that connects the two. My personal interpretation is that he is just insanely loyal to Sephiran, which allows him to act as he needs to. Being able to fight his teacher is just icing on the cake.

Given that she didn't seem to realize that her own soldiers were being extremely prejudiced against Tormod's group until the end of part one, it would seem to indicate that holding things together for the greater good (Daein's independence) took priority over their own feelings, which is again emphasized in part three with her hesitance about the war. To be fair, exactly who would supervise Daein? Crimea certainly couldn't, not with the political state they were in. Begnion just signed a reparation treaty with them, and with them being their suzerain, some form of supervision is automatically assumed (although unwelcome). Under these conditions, Daein is effectively free to do as they wish. You can't exactly call Micaiah out on this one given the way Begnion was handling things. This whole issue ties back into my last post, specifically the part about trying to forcefully show Daein in a sympathetic light. Part three shows just how mired in the old ways Daein still is, and the game never actually addresses or tries to call attention to it. It's the epilogue that just makes me shake my head, because Micaiah manages to extract a promise from Sanaki to treat Daein like an equal and to forgive all transgressions, essentially.

Micaiah is a decent character, just not a very well written one. It's mostly the game's subpar writing and pacing that exacerbates her already precarious characterization, which culminates at the final part of the game where it just goes off the rails. To be honest, it was the game's attempt to make Daein sympathetic in light of the last game that rankles me, considering that it goes so far to handwave and/or retcon certain things just so it can further glorify Daein's cause. Micaiah herself was fairly okay in this part, but she did some extremely dumbass things that she wasn't called out on--or if she was, it was half-hearted and never brought up again (leaving camp to go in a dark forest by yourself? In hostile territory? And then letting the enemy commander leave?). I'm more surprised that she didn't realize that she was possibly making things worse for Pelleas considering the soldiers all rallied behind her, but I'll give her a pass on that one. I'll admit that I did enjoy part 3's deconstruction of her character, and it shows the lengths she would go to to keep her country safe. But the deconstruction doesn't go far enough--as we see in both this part and the next, she never actually has to pay for the consequences of her actions. Sothe's near-death was the wake up call, but it probably would have been better for her character if he actually had been killed off. This is probably the biggest issue people have with her, as she gets off completely scot-free for whatever she did thanks to her status as Yune's vessel and Queen of Daein. For all the things the game did well (The whole Crimean subplot and the war against Begnion), it completely bungled everything about Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade, and as a result, the fandom doesn't tend to think much of her.

It's just a shame that FE9 feels so rushed and incomplete now that we can look back on it. It got a lot of things right (lord promotion at an actual good time, good new classes), but a good amount of what they tried just wasn't implemented in a decent way. This is probably the only recent FE game where S rank weapons don't even matter, given how few of them there are, and weapon ranks have never been so hard to build. RD fixed up most of these issues at least, at the cost of butchering the story/characterization aspect of the game. Still, I would love to see a rebalanced version of PoR where paladins weren't godlike and bonus exp is severely toned down; it's no fun seeing all of it get pumped into Marcia and then watching her take off with her rocket-powered horse all the time.

I'm pretty sure nearly half of the game's problems could be summed up as "Chrom being a dumbass and not really ~getting it~". Awakening's world is really screwed up, especially if all the powers that be all decide to completely ignore a defeated and vengeful country for whatever reason.

lol @ giving Soren a speedwing. A dust he can take with relatively no trouble, but many other people want Vantage and the wing, and considering the opportunity cost of both of them, it's very unlikely he's going to be getting either since other characters put them to better use (Mordy, Marcia, Titania, etc...a lot of the people above him really want that wing). Also, how exactly is Soren saving a turn in that chapter? If he saves a turn there with the resources you have, it would be reasonable to assume that it might cost more turns later in the long run due to those resources not going to where they could have gone for optimal use. Soren's not a bad character, but I he's still a foot unit that's bothered by both terrain and defensive issues. Adept is nice, but ultimately unreliable in the first half of the game thanks to his his less than stellar speed. Additionally, neither he or Ilyana (or Tormod) are likely to see C rank staves anytime early unless you Seal them, which ultimately condemns them to staffbot use. Sieging is probably their best use, and that's in the later half of the game. I can agree Soren > Ilyana, if only barely, but Calill still has the upper hand due to coming in trained with great magic ranks with no investment needed at all.

Hmmm. Currently mulling if I should replace Glacial Blast/Trisagion/Deadly Wind with Refrigerate/Ragnarok/Floral Gust. The latter has better damage potential but the former is slightly more reliable. Refrigerate would probably help a lot better with Red Rider kills, though... I'm keeping Thunder Reign because I like having another nuke option that isn't Antichthon. :x

More of the efficient strategies (like the 1-turn kill) actually require you to beat him first since he gives you the materials needed. It's probably just easier to user Uriel rather than use Fusion Lite since Uriel will have the STR necessary anyway. Metatron is pretty nice, but he wouldn't be able to have the same loadout that my Uriel has at the moment.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how it can be done without super buffed Phys Pierce Uriel since magic kinda sucks on non-MC characters. Maybe a Concentrate/Spirit Focus/Ice Pleroma/High Ice Pleroma/Ice Pierce/Refrigerate demon, but it's not quite as reliable. If there wasn't a 10 turn limit, it would probably be a lot more fun to come up with different strategies.

Final DLC superboss is laughably easy once you have the right demon. It's pretty much a ORKO. In actuality, all of the DLC superbosses were pretty disappointing because you had enough time to prepare. The Fiends, on the other hand...well, Red Rider and Trumpeter are the hardest ones, the others are all laughably easy.

Interesting to see that Healing skills are more valuable in NG+, although the scarcity of item drops makes that obvious. I have a big feeling Nurse and Evangile will be infinitely more appealing than popping Mochi Balls like crack. I was actually pretty disappointed with the final boss after I saw people being hyped up about it. He's actually really easy as long as you get as many people within his range as possible and only attack him with units that can shield-kill and cancel counters. X/Zero is the obvious first that can do that without any support, but Akira/Pai and Reiji/Xiaomu were also tag teaming with each other to knock as much life off as possible. Thanks to that, I was able to only get hit with his MAP attack, which is not as strong as his regular counter. The only real hard part is enduring the boss rush around him. (Killing Due gets you a Strange Syrup though, so I made sure to kill her first.) AFAIK, chests on NG+ and beyond will have much better equips, so it'll still be interesting on who gets what as chapters go on. I think the only attacks I could ever reliably crit with on Yuri/Estelle is their Up-A and Neutral; everything else had a weird startup or hitbox to it. Ironically, I was really good with getting Reiji/Xiaomu's crits, so I guess my sense of timing must be skewed or something.

Having just finished the game myself, I'm a bit perplexed as to how some units (Zephyr/Leanne, Reiji/Xiaomu, X/Zero) are so incredibly great in comparison to the rest of the cast that you have to wonder what the developers were thinking. X/Zero have what might be the most broken skill set in the game (seriously, Attack Range +1/ATK +15%/Cancel counters/10% parameter boost if > 120% XP/20% reduction of XP cost if under 100% XP) on top of already ridiculous damage output...not to mention they gain most of what they need within a few levels of joining. Hell, you don't even need to give them a guard crushing skill because their Down-A will break a 5-bar shield on its own, unless you really need the extra damage. Zephyr/Leanne and Reiji/Xiaomu are great for reasons already outlined. The former is great with a +30% XP gauge build accessory or support (Vashyron) and the latter is incredible with a support that gives an ATK +15% skill (Sanger or Lindow, although the former is probably better suited). They also get their Map attacks early enough for them to actually be useful. I would say Ichiro/Sakura would be among them, but you pretty much to have to be near full on XP to maintain their expensive skill costs (unless you give them the Faerie Ring, which is better off on Yuri/Estelle or Gemini/Erica for mass healing)...not to mention that they only get their fifth attack at Level 37, which is bullshit. Units that surprised me this playthrough: Akira/Pai - I might have had a soft spot for them, but they were able to deliver high, consistent damage no matter what chapter it was. They learn their MAP attack very early (Level 18, not long after Frank/Hisen-ko), although it only targets 2 people, it still retains the same level of usefulness throughout the game. They pair well with Bahn due to the +1 Counter attack and Counter cancel. Their big issue is Speed; Swift Qigong helps alleviate it, but you're not getting that until around Chapter 30. Gemini/Erica - They're actually pretty strong and can build decent XP. I always seemed to think that their special attack had higher damage modifiers compared to others, but I might be misremembering. Bad shield-breaking capabilities, so they work well with Heihachi/Imca or with the shield-breaking accessory. Their very early MAP attack really makes them shine in mid-game, though. It's a shame that most of their skills aren't really worth mentioning besides Evangile and The Other Gemini. Haken/Kaguya - Powerful units, and Trump Card is a ridiculous skill for only 40% XP. Love is extremely conditional; Full HP healing is a lifesaver, especially in the last few chapters, but the 130% XP cost is staggering. They kinda slow down mid-game with a combination of Speed/Movement issues, but they rev right back up in the final stretch. Units that disappointed me: Yuri/Estelle - I really don't know how to describe it...I know they're good units, but they just weren't doing it for me. Granted, Estelle's Nurse is a lifesaver when you have the XP to spare, but 80% XP cost is still very expensive until you can get the Faerie Ring. Their attacks all have extremely awkward hitboxes that make it pretty difficult to get crits, let alone Cross Hits. They can dish out the damage, and Yuri does get a shield-killer skill along with a First Crit skill, but I just couldn't seem to get them to work favorably. Maybe next playthrough will be different. Kite/Blackrose - They only really shined towards the end with better damage output, but they were only very "meh" from when they first appeared. They really don't get any notable skills at all until they get Protect Break, which they sorely need. It would be even better if it was guaranteed instead of being 30% chance, but that's still better than nothing. The rest of their skills are fairly average (+2 Movement when you already have Flynn or Ichiro giving that to the entire party?), but they do get an ATK +15% skill, which does help their offense. Their MAP attack is tied for the worst with Kurt/Riela though, no question. Toma/Cyrille - Damage output is actually fine. But their skillset...aside from Toma's Stun Resistance (which is actually really good, admittedly) and Cyrille's Invisible (Cancel counters), they're really unremarkable. You have better MAP attacks to choose from by the time you get theirs as well. Not bad units, but very forgettable. I wish they kept WORLD'S LOVE in too. --- Great game overall, and I'll probably start on a New Game+ after I play SMT IV. The new equipment from the next playthrough might help me change my opinions on some characters. EDIT: As an aside, X/Zero were my damage record holders; 62k on the final boss.

I believe all the nitpicking at Robin's strategy was mostly because, just like every other plan he or she has in the game, it's a last-minute asspull that has no foreshadowing whatsoever. The fact that it serves to make it seem like Chrom and Robin are morally superior is gag inducing. But I'm a bit perplexed at people condemning it as an immoral tactic. Dirty? Possibly. But given the fact that Valm is about to run roughshod all over the Ylissian continent and pretty much rape and plunder, I'm pretty sure any other alternative would have been far worse. You have to remember that they are massively outnumbered and are guaranteed to lose any head-to-head confrontation. It's basically win or everybody in your country dies. It's not surprising they resorted to such a tactic given it was sound and probably the only reliable way they had to achieve victory. Look at tacticians throughout the series and many of their plans are no different under some sort of duress; August is one of the prime examples, but both Soren and Micaiah are good examples as well in the way they frame their strategies.

Since it seems that it hasn't been updated for a few days, I'm going to try and list the main points that are being discussed and/or got buried. 1) Sumia/Cordelia above Anna I don't think a consensus on this has been reached yet, but it's mainly an issue of if the pegs combat + utility are better than Anna's thief/staff utility + combat. Anna does face the problem of her combat eventually tanking unless she forges a Levin Sword (which is ludicrously expensive) or second seals into a Sage, which is more plausible but leaves her with E tomes. 2) Tharja down/Henry up This one is a bit confusing. If Henry is proven to be able to do Tharja's job but do it better than her, that's more of an argument to have Tharja move down to meet Henry somewhere in the middle, unless it's somehow proven that Henry is better than every character in between them. I don't think anyone can really assume that Dark Flier!Sumia is always guaranteed on him since either Sumia might want to go Falcon Knight for the better skills or don't want to separate her from Frederick. 3) Chrom down to top of A I feel as if this one got buried pages back. Chrom has good offense and excellent pair up bonuses/skills, but that's all he really offers. He is swordlocked for a large amount of time unless you feed him an Arms Scroll as a Great Lord (which everyone wants) or reclass him to Cav and build it up with Discipline at the cost of not being able to use Rapiers, which he really would like to use once Valm kicks into gear. He is a great unit, just not extraordinary. 4) Move the kid tier to a separate thread? This one I just thought of, but I think it has merit in the fact that it would probably be easier to move discussion of it to another thread entirely. That way we could discuss the best fathers/pairings without cluttering the current topic. For this tier list's purposes, their paralogues would still be done, but they would remain untiered because of the whole flexibility thing. It would also sidestep the potential recruitment cost angle.

There's a bunch of issues with Awakening's story that I really don't want to go over again (Chrom being Sigurd 2.0 in the intelligence department, the entire wasted plotline over Gangrel and the former Plegia/Ylisse war, everything about Valm ever, etc.), but I really took issue with Validar and Aversa being the worst villains ever. If you though the senators from Radiant Dawn were bad, Validar makes them look competent.

I think if we want to start tiering children, Morgan in particular, we're going to have to hash out what kind of conditions we're assuming for the children so we can set the standard now instead of making things up later. Do we only assume a certain amount of children per playthrough? Would children exist in a void when compared to other children units (a la FE10 Transfer characters)? Would parents get credit for the kid's skill inheritance? I'd be fine with tiering Morgan so long as we got conditions down for the other children.

It's discouraged because it's seen as a form a favoritism that doesn't accurately portray a unit's abilities compared to others in a full army. Most, if not all, of the current tier lists already assume that you are using every deployment slot in every argument.

Not sure with the hesitance on Chrom down to A. He literally has nothing on everyone else in S tier besides his superior Pair Up skills, but those don't even work on him whenever he's in the lead. He's swordlocked until he takes a Second Seal (which is contested too), and really doesn't get any skill that benefits him in the lead position until he hits 10 Cav or 5 GL, and Aether isn't even good without Rightful King. I'd rather see both him and Lucina fall down to top of A, since I don't think their overall contributions are as important as everyone else's in that tier. Also, anyone get the feeling that Anna is too high? She's definite A tier, but is her thief utility + staff utility better than the Pegs? Her combat is okay until you get to Valm, where it falls off a cliff. You can reclass her to Sage, but she would be stuck at E tomes and that's not cool unless you feed her Arms Scrolls, which a lot of people want. I'm not even sure when she can get to C staves unless she's using a staff each turn in each chapter, since she and Libra using Physic would probably be as much healing as you want. Again, you could feed her an Arms Scroll, but is that really optimal on her?