Augestein

He doesn't earn it anymore than anyone else. Ike is literally trusted with the lives of his mercenary friends for no reason despite the fact that he has nothing that should make him worthy of being the leader. He doesn't even know about the weapon triangle (which is a thing storywise in the story), and he doesn't listen to direct orders from his superiors AND he doesn't know anything about tactics or strategy. Also, unlike everyone else in the story, Ike has never officially finished his training-- which would make him the weakest person story wise outside of Mist and Rolf. There's also the fact that the first day of his mercenary work... We see, he's green through and through. Even worse, is that he has horrid moments like referring to Ranulf as sub-human and then lying in his face about not knowing what a Laguz's proper name was despipte the fact that Soren told him about that literally not too long ago-- which implies a very poor learner or listener or just plain stupid-- all of which are horrible leadership qualities. Heck, Titania even makes fun of it at one point, so it's not like I'm making this up either. The Begnion characters should never even really GAIN his respect considering he was a complete tool to the apostle the first time they met, and he even annoyed Sanaki with his bluntness (no I'm not talking about the infamous yelling scene either). Compare that to Corrin who has Rinkah that hates him until you join Hoshido, Takumi pretty much never likes him unless you A rank him, Ryoma eventually becomes incredibly angry with Corrin towards the end (even if he pulls a classic Samurai in the end). Gunter thinks very little of Corrin in Revelations route, and people actually... Dynamically dislike Corrin based on Corrin's decision of siding with Hoshido or not. Like holy crap, now that I think about it, Corrin has a ton of people in game that'd like to see Corrin's head on a pike, and quite a few of them aren't 1 shot bosses either. Robin helps stop 3 wars. (S)he does this by gaining Feroxian support, and then having the two work together to stop Plegia. They then 2 years later -- which is plenty of time to gain favor with people, stop a man that has an army so tough that he is simply referred to as "The Conqueror." Like... Even if we're ignoring the fact that Robin is THE tactician of the group, we still have the fact that Robin helps fight in the army. And finally, is willing to sacrifice him/herself to save the world. Like... What? People praise Robin for being a good tactician. That's it. By the time RD rolls around, you'd think that Ike was practically the Messiah. Corrin either: completely crushes the opposing side into submission or makes peace between the two nations. How does that not warrant respect? There's also the fact that Corrin starts out as a sibling to a huge portion of the cast. That's going to net him/her some respect from the start. How does that not warrant at least some respect? No. Ike is definitely worse, as the game constantly does things like "oh that would have been bad Ike, but we don't have time for bad things to happen to you" sort of deals weren't constant all over PoR. Even Corrin has more setbacks than Ike does. Ike's only set back is that he lost his father. That's it. And even then, with that comes a bunch of stuff he should have never received in the first place. Heck, the "chaos" from war in RD causes Micaiah to lose her farsight powers just so they can make Micaiah lose to Ike. His stuish powers are so strong that they even cancel out a supposed Mary Sue's powers. And even if the chaos from war does make it hard for Herons to concentrate, it didn't stop Reyson from performing his abilities, and he's more fragile than Micaiah, and has honestly been exposed to less chaos than she would have been. Fact of the matter is that all of the lords receive a mountain of praise. So holding this attribute against Corrin and Robin when we've gotten cases that are worse than them is pretty ridiculous. The children suck from a story perspective. But they are a pretty fun mechanic to play around with. I don't think it needs to be in every game, but having customizable units like the children is pretty fun. I mean look how many pairing topics there are for them, people aren't even usually asking for storyline advice, but gameplay! That means something to me. I agree I'd rather have an avatar that's silent and potentially only talks in that old school WRPG style where you get dialogue responses if they talk.

From what you've said, it's fine. No interaction with others? Sounds great. It's fun seeing crazy hypothetical builds anyways.

Nice. I might check it later.

Yeah, he is pretty nuts. I don't get why Lyn Hard Mode didn't take that crest away from the player.

Because I was curious about that route. And in the end of the day, there's nothing that's somehow better for not playing it first. I had the special edition so I didn't need to download it or anything.

I can help you with that. Males have higher PA (physical) and females have higher MA (magical), so in most cases, it's better to have casters be mages and females be casters. There are some exceptions to this. Males make better Chemist than females because the only weapons that they use are physical or don't use any stats at all except Faith and weapon power. Females make slightly better thieves on the account that most of the enemies in the game are male so Steal Heart is better used from a female than a male-- it also helps that females cannot have worst compatibility with males so it makes it impossible to ever have your stealing rates plummet as a result of signs. The only exception to the male / female dynamic is Ramza who is actually good at both because he gets male and female bonuses outside of gear. If any of your characters have time that are male, they should always go to Bard Summoner Job Level 4 and Mediator Job Level 4. This class enables them to get Move + 3, the best movement in the game besides Teleport (Time Mage). If you're on the PSP version, you CAN get it with Dark Knight, but I don't think Dark Knight is worth grinding for. Onion Knight is a lousy class and cannot learn much. *Master Onion Knight is okay, but I still find that it's not really worth it. You should always have Gain JP Up / JP Boost equipped until you at least hit the job that you want and from there grab everything else that you need. The main thing I'd say for a Vanilla "good" team would be. 1) Wizard (if it's Ramza use his Squire class) / Sub Samurai skills (female or Ramza). Since Samurai skills scale off of magic, it's a great way to have Ramza fight up close without having to rely on charging, and in Chapter 4, Ramza gets a skill that boosts his magic. It's amazing. 2) Ninja / Sub Monk Skills with Martial Arts as the support ability. Two Swords with Fist is some of the best damage in the game, and the monk skill is very versatile. Plus the Ninja is one of the fastest classes in the game in terms of growths and multipliers which will result in your characters being able to go more frequently (and perhaps get a permanent speed boost depending on long you stay in the class). I'd recommend this be a male at all cost. 3) Geomancer / Sub White Mage - Having two people that are capable of reviving is never a bad idea, and the white mage can have some free AoE attacks when it's not supporting your team. Plus Geomancer has competent MA as well so you can use magic without fear of it being rather lackluster here. 4) Mystic (Oracle) with the Samurai's Two Hand passive is great on a female unit. Since sticks scale off of MA, you can have a woman go to town with sticks and poke people to death while simultaneously giving you access to powerful status effects. In all honestly, it doesn't really matter what you use as your secondary, but keeping with the magical concept, I'd use Summon skills if only because you'd pack some large AoE with smart targeting (doesn't hurt your allies) and you get Golem, a spell that ruins the intelligence of the AI and blocks physical attacks for the amount of hp that the caster has. These skills also have the incredible ability of "not missing" it's nice. 5) Monk / Time Magic - This is actually more effective than you'd believe. Since most of the spells don't actually do damage, you can have a unit that can hit with haste on the party, and if for some reason can't kill or reach enemies, use slow on them. A team like that should be a great starting point to beat the game. I'd recommend Math Skill, but it's more of a pain and a chore to get and I don't recommend doing so on a first playthrough as the class itself is rather lackluster even if the skills themselves are very powerful.

For me. I felt like this: Revelations: this was the first path I did, so I didn't really know what to expect. However, I'd say the story started to get a bit boring around the time that you get to Valla. The plot curse is a silly premise, but at least it continues to roll with it. Even if it IS stupid. Conquest: It was kinda weak all around, but what killed it for me was Ch. 15 where you realize that you're in ... Valla. Birthright: is a bad joke that goes on for hours. It's bland, boring, and still manages to have things that still reach the levels of stupid that are in Revelations and Conquest. Which honestly makes it worse in my opinion. It's safe AND bad.

I say bring on the strange mechanics. It's time to play this again.

That's the thing. He doesn't. In FE9, everything literally falls into his hands. People appoint him as the leader of a group despite being the least experienced of the group-- like Corrin, but at least with Corrin, it's implied that while they were in the fortress, the siblings gave him some training, which is more than Ike, who hasn't even mastered his style by the time the game starts. Corrin at least is never implied to be incompetent at fighting -- just worse than Xander... Which is something that pretty much everyone is. . Despite the fact that the main reason Greil even had to pass the torch was because Ike doesn't listen (something that the game just ignores completely). Ike can't even run the mercenaries by himself in PoR, and admits this at one point, but the game pretty much acts as though Ike did everything in the end-- which is ridiculous that both of these ideas even exist in the same narrative. Everything that Ike does wrong is completely ignored and has no lasting power for consequences. What's that? He didn't listen to Greil when Rolf and Mist got kidnapped? Well then, Ike you're punished! But not now though and I'll die before I can carry out that punishment. One or two bouts of convenience don't bother me, but that seems to be Ike's story in a nutshell. I don't even think we need to address FE10 on Ike. And you even have games like Awakening paying homage to Ike despite the fact that it's not even his game! At least with the Awakening trio is actually was the same person. Having a Ragnell weapon drop is cool for a reference, but it's a bit much to dedicate an entire character to him-- even Lucina doesn't count, because at least she's in a continuity where Marth actually exists. I can agree with this. However, the issue is that most tacticians aren't the player characters where losing = game over. The difference here is that if your tactics fail, you die and lose, there's no room for a character to be like "you're an idiot" unless the player is given Dawn Brigade style maps where the objective has you "lose" in the story even though you accomplished the objective. And that's fine. The issue here is that there's praise of Robin and Corrin, but the extent is about as badly as they praise other lords. That's my issue. So when I hear "Avatar worship," I'm generally left scratching my head, because the only lords that weren't really praised was FE7's cast now that I think about it. And I'll grant you that games like FE4 have people basically wanting to kill Sigurd like no one else's business, but the point here is that pretty much all of your allies constantly praise you.

Ike supports: 3/10. Seriously, outside of Soren's supports, his are honestly astoundingly bad. And even then, Soren's isn't that great when you consider that Ike literally just acts like a talking post for the characters almost half of the time. Really, you could have the characters essentially having an inner monologue and it wouldn't make much of a difference outside of Ranulf's. It doesn't help that Ike isn't particularly interesting outside of the supports, and it pretty much shows in the supports. Ike doesn't really do anything but react and have knee jerk reactions, and since people are talking in a calm way, it ends up being pretty boring. People often talk about the lords being boring, but here I feel that Ike is especially boring in supports. Titania supports: 5/10 we get some background from Titania but fortunately for her, she gets enough screen time to have her basic background fleshed out enough where we can see her acting as a guardian to the lot of people in her supports actively encouraging them to perform better. As OP stated, her supports with Rhys are good outside of support A which kinda comes out of left field and isn't terrible good either. Oscar supports: 6/10 a simple guy with simple supports. There's not much to say outside of learning that he's a knight a heart but takes care of his brothers out of duty, and that he enjoys being a mercenary even more than that. Solid character even with a small range of supports.

Honestly, Corrin is only really "broken" because of the final weapon more than anything else. Before then, Corrin doesn't have bases that are much better than a level 1 Mozu. And his/her growths aren't much better outside of hp. Each Avatar has been better than the last in terms of balance, so I'm not really seeing this at all. The biggest problem with Corrin is that he/she gets a bunch of extra chapters that no one else does. Ditto for Kris. That's not avatar worship. The game basically says the aftermath of you being a great tactician. That's not worship at all. Especially when you consider that it doesn't say very nice things if you get a C rank. And? None of this is even remotely close to worship. It's more akin to giving you an introduction because you're the avatar, so it's from your perspective. That's not even remotely close to worship. Hell, even Robin isn't worshipped like people claim. Corrin is the closest thing to Avatar worship, and in comparison to Ike, it's really tame.

Yeah, that was part of it. But it's more so to be a narrative thing for consistency. As it stands, I find original Algus to be perfectly fine. The zombie part is just goofy. If they really wanted to have a Ramza versus Algus/Argath rematch, they shouldn't have had Algus/Argath die in the PSP version. That kill count is absolutely great.

Quistis also has Mighty Guard which is better than Selphie's wall especially so if you are at a very low crisis level. Degenerator which is better than Rapture. Shock Wave Pulsar can break the damage cap so it does 60,000 damage-- which might not be more damage than say... 9999 damage hits from Duel or Renzokuken, but it hits all of the enemies you are fighting. White Wind heals a good deal of your health (doesn't cure statuses like FFVII unfortunately, but it's still pretty useful for being the only other heal move that is AoE). Bad Breath / Acid inflict a ton of status effects. Honestly I'd say that in terms of versatility, Quistis is next to none. Selphie's are to wild and unreliable to deal with. Rinoa's are either too random to rely on or require you to sacrifice control of your character and junctions to work. I'd honestly say she's the most reliable of the three girls to use. But yeah, the boys are better in this one because of how straightforward their limits are.

The only reason thief I'd put as better than knight is because thief has access to Steal Heart. And honestly? It's pretty good, and they also have better speed and males at least do decent damage with their fist over knives (yeah...).

That's a good point about Virion and Cherche. I can't believe I missed them! But yeah, I guess Tellius could be...? Let's see. Laguz are Hawk, Raven, Tiger, Heron, Wolf, Cat, Dragons of Red, White and Black variety... And then Beorc which are boring. Haha. I can see that. And yeah... Ylisse is very strange in that regard with Plegia...

That's exactly what scene I was referring too. It's beyond idiotic. Algus beforehand was a representation of the "three" ways that a person could have gone. Siding with the way things were-- Algus, running away-- Ramza, or actively opposing it (Delita). He's just a guy that's been pushed around by the system but rather than trying to change it, he willingly embraces it. He's like a "hate the game not the player" sort of person. I'd honestly say that at pretty much any given point JP Boost is the go to ability to have until you get to the job you want. White Mage for instance? All you really need is Holy and Cure 2. Protect and Shell are cool I guess, but nothing else is really needed. Everything else is just extra fluff for your characters. It's better to just put on Magic Attack Up and destroy things faster than worry about JP once you have Abandon, Hp Restore, Maintenance and Martial Arts. You really don't need many abilities to beat the game. Knight is honestly the worst physical job in the game. Like... It's even worse than Squire because Squire at least has 4 move at base which means that if it's adjacent to a unit, it can always attack someone from behind. It's skillset also sucks outside of Speed Break because of how the knight class works (you need more PA to lower the damage, but more PA means a better chance of just straight up killing them). This would have been great and the best thing that they probably could have done for him. I would have loved this.

People from Plegia have dark or light skin, but they seem to be more middle eastern influenced (characters like Mustafa for instance really help to make that obvious as well) while Feroxians seem to range from European to African like the knight boss from Ch. 3 I believe or Basillio who is dark skin but looks nothing like the knight boss. Say'ri is clearly inspired by a more Eastern influence and clearly looks Asian unlike a lot of the more ambiguously designed people, and if her appearance wasn't enough, her name is a straight up give away. Then you have Chrom, which is like a strange "vanilla Europe" setting which is clearly like "British, France etc." any Caucasian inspired area. I guess you could also add in the Tanguel, which are also both olive skinned as well-- even if they don't really have a clear origin or racial comparison.

I feel like Algus/Argath's existence was an attempt to have a less clumsily executed Vyce/Vice from Tactics Ogre. In this regard, he's less clumsy in the fact that he's no longer breathing as opposed to Vice/Vyce who may as well be two different characters depending on the route... I feel like Delita and Algus/Argath are basically that character split into two. Argath/Algus living longer might have actually been a good thing. As it stands, WoTL makes him a complete joke.

Yeah, if anything I'd say that Awakening was probably the most diverse for races and the like to be honest.

Oh I know. That was so much hype. I can't believe it. No spoilers but man... Yeah.

Yes you can. He's a soldier of Daein, and fiercely loyal up until the point that the commander he serves is killed. He's really easy-going as seen by his supports with Jill in PoR and even his recruitment conversation with her. Sure, he's sleeping in Jill's support, but the difference is that the supports aren't necessarily about him sleeping. Like with Makalov for instance, the support has Makalov gaining respect for Haar's "I don't give a whit about you" attitude and specifically not understanding that Haar just comes across as incompetent and isn't actually incompetent. In RD, he starts a delivery service which is more his cup of tea, but helps Elincia because he's actually kinda developed a bit of fondness for her over time. Compare that to Miriel where we literally don't learn anything about her outside of the fact that she studies. While her son, Laurent, has confidence issues, is a manager at heart, and is easily flustered. Meanwhile for Miriel, we barely get anything resembling human outside of her first scene where she pretty much calls Vaike an idiot for not remembering to bring his axe. He's a jock and a bit of a braggart. Proud of himself and what he does. If anything, I'd say it's a play on the fact that the red social knight is generally very serious about his job, and the writer decided to have fun with this by making him so serious to the point that he becomes comic relief. If anything, red = serious green = casual is a gimmick. And that's what makes it not a gimmick. That you get to see multiple sides of him in his character interactions.

A character being what could be described as "overly enthusiastic for his knightly vows" isn't a gimmick. That's who he is. The man is completely and utterly defined by being a knight, and he has the utmost of pride in the fact that he's a knight. That's no gimmick. A gimmick is literally something done to attract attention. And the dialogue when you first meet Kieran isn't really like that, just a man that's upset that he's in prison and he intends to find his way out. Once he's free, he can concentrate on what was important to him once again. And that's great. He's a simple man, but not everyone needs to be super complicated. Characters like Florina aren't and are just as well off as characters like Dorcas. What you're describing as "gimmicks" are adjectives that describe the character. Those aren't gimmicks. Just facets of a character. Haar being lazy isn't a gimmick. Ilyana's food on the other hand, is a gimmick, because she literally has no real adjective to describe her outside of her hunger pangs. A gimmick is literally something like Setsuna falling into traps. That's not even a personality trait. Gimmicky characters are just flat out bad. Like Setsuna being spacey would be a decent adjective for her, and her absentmindedness causes her to fall into traps or wander places she shouldn't wouldn't actually be a bad character. What's wrong with that, is that the gimmick of "I fall into traps" is all her character does. It over encompasses these other traits faster than anything else. That's not good. Arthur's bad luck is a gimmick. But it's rounded out by the fact that he fancies himself a hero, and always keeps a positive spirit despite setbacks in his life. Arthur's hero complex is more of an attribute in most of his supports. Example: Arthur's support with Peri has Arthur's bad luck come into play, but it's not the main bulk of the support. The main problem in the support is Arthur trying to help Peri so that she doesn't go off and kill the merchant. Arthur wants to help her do things without killing people. Compare that to say : Arthur's support with Setsuna. Support 1 is Hahah bad luck. Support 2: Hahah traps. I have bad luck. Support 3: if we team up! We can overcome our bad luck. This could have been better if we had been made aware that Arthur's luck actually isn't "bad luck" but rather that he gets so fixated on the task at hand that he forgets to pay attention to everything else. You could then have had Setsuna be aware enough to notice Arthur's flaws and vice versa. Neither support I mentioned is particularly good or interesting, but Setsuna's with Arthur is noticeably worse because there's nothing really of substance about it. We don't learn anything about them, and the conversation isn't particularly engaging-- it's the same thing we've seen over and over again from her. And to a certain extent, Arthur. Owain's gimmick is shown to be a coping mechanism in Awakening and he's well aware of the fact that his behavior is off putting. You can see it in Morgan(M) supports, or even Inigo's supports with him. One that rolls with the way he behaves, and another that doesn't-- initially. Owain is considerably more well rounded than tons of gimmicky characters like Miriel and SCIENCE with an aptitude for speaking like an almost alien entity.

Congratulations. I'm glad it worked out. I was so going to ask about that avatar change, but I guess I don't have to now hah.

Like Jagens for the story, but I hate them for the gameplay. I don't like the idea of a unit with "good bases for the chapter but bad for the level" unit. More often than not, it ends up just meaning "this unit is really good."

Yeah. This pretty much. I don't think I could have put it better myself. What kind of person would say "I want flat gimmicky characters," and honestly mean that?