Slumber

7. Maxie: Can't remember the dude for anything besides looking like a huge nerd that I wanted to beat up and throw in a locker(And I'm a scientist). Also Team Magma might be the dumbest villain group in the franchise. 6. Lysandre: Can't remember the dude for anything besides the stupid hair. 5. Cyrus: He's another just kind of generic villain group for the franchise, and he's basically the hyperbolic extreme of the Team Magma/Team Aqua leaders, but at least his history and motives are explained. 4. Archie: Dude's basically a pirate. His goal is one of the dumber ones, but it's less stupid than the Team Magma goal. It still is basically the plot to "Waterworld", so it's not that much better. He's mostly at #4 for the pirate thing. 3. Giovanni: The last of the "generic" Pokemon villains, but he's the most realistic and understandable of them. He doesn't want to basically destroy the world with Pokemon and chase after legendaries single mindedly to do it. He's just the leader of Pokemon's equivalent to the mafia, stealing Pokemon and terrorizing people for power. It makes sense in a world full of animals who have ridiculous super powers. 2. Ghetsis: The dude is basically pure evil, and unlike most of the other villain leaders, he doesn't want to do something absolutely stupid like destroy the world with Pokemon or reshape it in his image, he just wants control over Unova. He gets a bit more character building than most of the leaders, his goals are fairly understandable, and that theme. 1. Guzma: It's ya boy. Memes aside, the dude is a manchild who was abused as a kid and lashed out by disobeying authority and becoming a criminal. He leads a bunch of other misfits who mostly come from broken homes and treats them like family. He has no grandiose plans(Until the Aether Foundation recruits him, and even then, he's quick to realize how wrong Lusamine's plans are once she starts accomplishing her goals), and really he just wants to be with the rest of Team Skull. He's a surprisingly rounded, relatable character. Even though he's not a massive threat and Team Skull are mostly just a joke group, being somewhat realistic and having an actual story that you could see happening in real life is something that puts him above the rest.

He's got awful sameface going on, his artstyle has gotten highly reminiscent of other, less offensive artists, the guy is a massive horndog when it comes to drawing women(And unfortunately, little girls, and we'd likely a handful of Nowis. To make matters even worse, his method of drawing kids is to just give them tiny bodies and bigger heads than adults), he couldn't draw anything tasteful to save his life, and quite frankly, he can't touch anything of any sort of quality. Even if the FE he did art for was good, I wouldn't be able to see it, due to Fairy Tail being so awful. His most notable trait as an artist is that he draws fast, which is great when you draw manga, but it really doesn't matter in a project like a video game. His general artstyle is nothing to write home about, unless he's moving to your hometown and you want to warn the women and children.

Westaboo

GOD NO

I'd say most people would like FE12 quite a bit more(Myself included), but ultimately, because @eclipse would kill me if I didn't specify, it's ultimately down to preference. FE12 feels a lot more like a "modern" Fire Emblem. Growth rates are higher, the pace is generally faster, there's a bit more balance that puts it in-line with current games. For a lot of reasons, 11 felt like an older car with some bells and whistles and a new coat of paint. 12 feels like an older car with a brand new engine and a fresh coat of paint. If you didn't get a kick out of 11, you may actually still end up enjoying 12 quite a bit.

I could see the auto-promotion at 21 come back, but I dunno. I also don't want reclassing and grinding, but again, I dunno. As much as it hurts me to say, I'm ultimately fine with something like FE8's branching promotions, supposing they make sense.

The more and more this looks like Gaiden, the more worried I grow. I really hope they do something to balance this game in some way. Bows with ludicrous range get out of hand later on. Bow users essentially become mobile ballistas.

Yup, every mounted female unit in FE5 wears pants, except for Nanna, who is wearing the same outfit she wears in FE4. The pegasus riders in the Jugdral games might be the only pegasus riders in FE history to wear pants. Even Fee and Fury wear pants.

I could get down with a thief lord. Maybe do Knives/Swords at promotion, and they could stumble into the plot by stealing something well above their paygrade. Kind of like Zidane in FF9, or, as you alluded to, Aladdin. A thief who gets swept up in a giant, epic plot simply because they stole something that was way more valuable than they were expecting. I'm actually liking the idea the more I think about it. Maybe I just really like FF9 and Aladdin a whole lot and would like to see FE do something similar. Plus, you wouldn't have to justify bringing thieves along to every map just in case an enemy showed up with a valuable, stealable item.

Hey now. I'm from Minnesota, and pretty much any time there's a string of -10F or lower temperatures, the first time there's a spike to 20F or more, people can't wait to bust out their shorts and t-shirts. Granted, I doubt this was what IS was going for, but I actually didn't see that kind of thing as too out there. Then again, I'm also not a girl so I really didn't look at it like that, and I have no idea if skirts are remotely similar to shorts or t-shirts in terms of how external temperatures feel.

How are cavaliers in thongs less insulting than pegasus knights in skirts?

The thing is, Kratos never cared about any of that, and even Pandora's speech didn't really reach him until she dies more or less as a direct result of his actions. For God of War 1, he had a semi-justifiable reason for taking up issue with Ares(Ares manipulated Kratos' brutality and rage to goad Kratos into killing his wife and daughter), and Ares WAS a bad guy. He's loosely an "anti-hero" in this game. God of War 2, he's more or less straight up a villain. Once again, the gods manipulate him to showcase his flaws, and he falls for it completely. Now completely pissed at EVERYBODY, he basically goes on a roaring rampage driven really by nothing more than his own ego, kills several Greek heroes, and kills off gods one by one, knowing that by doing stuff like killing Poseidon will flood Athens(And possibly the world), killing Hades will cause the dead to come back and ghosts to raise, and killing Apollo will cast the world into eternal darkness. Literal world ending stuff. The Greek gods were assholes, but they were keeping the world in check, and once Ares was out of the picture, they were separated from humanity, not having much of a direct impact beyond making sure everyone was alive. Kratos, on the other hand, was fine killing as many people as possible, both directly and indirectly, so long as he could quench his rage boner. Kratos, in the grand scheme of things, was very much the villain for ALL of GoW2 and most of GoW3. Until the very end, where he suddenly thinks that the hope from Pandora and Pandora's Box should belong to the people and not the gods, or whatever. I forget. The end of GoW 3 is really dumb and sappy. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Boring characters are just characters who just have poorly explained motivations, no outstanding personality traits, and no real character growth. It can overlap, but is usually different from a character with just a bunch of bad traits, poor writing, and awful motivations. Kratos, while we're on the subject, would be both a bad and a boring character. The writing of his character past the first game is poor, and almost everything he does after the opening of 2 makes little to no sense. He never learns or grows, and he just stays exactly the same for both games as he rips through every man, woman, and god in his way for no real adequate reason. Again, until the very end when his heart grows three times its size because of Pandora Lou Who, and he gives the world hope out of nowhere.

This is kind of a meta-discussion about Fire Emblem and the community, so it's not like there isn't a thread between the games and something like how much you like supporting the development studio.

I don't think you have to worry about supporting IS if it means hurting your wallet for it. They're basically Nintendo's workhorse studio, being given tons of different projects, big and small. Their own internal projects have generally been hit or miss(Financially), but I think Awakening showed that FE could be a big franchise, and Fates has solidified it as one. I think IS will be fine going forward.

The bolded is very telling to me. It almost seems like your reasoning for what makes a "good" unit is purely the horse, even when it makes no sense. Tristan has very middling stats(And downright bad as a substitute in gen 2), awful growths, and a very bad set of skills. Tristan isn't outperforming shit until promotion, and even then, all he'll get is Continue. He's a glorified Noishe in a generation where you have to be more than just glorified versions of bad gen 1 units. Your playstyle also baffles me if all that's around for Larcei and Ulster in chapters 6 and 7 are Seliph's leftovers and Dark Mages, but whatever.

I wasn't saying that Seliph and Leif were like other footies in the sense that the other footies will also become viable somehow. Using a character's raw potential to gauge whether they're worth it or not undermines the sheer pain in the ass it is to level up a character like Leif, who shows up right about when the balance starts shifting towards mounted units. I was more getting at that they're footies because you have to move them around like footies. Seliph can get the Leg Ring, but that's going to get him into trouble early game if you don't give him adequate backup. Ulster and Larcei, are, for all intents and purposes, very adequate backup. They kill stuff with relative ease and have great growths and stats AND they keep up with most of the army. No madman is throwing out Dairmuid, Lester, Fee and Oifey off on their own to clear the first handful of maps. At least no madman that isn't doing a very specific challenge run or something. The "HORSE EMBLEM MLG PRO STRATS" don't apply for quite a while, and deliberately ignoring great units who eventually become not so great isn't a very sound strategy when there's really no downside to not using them. There's enough EXP and enemies around in that early game to get everyone up to speed until the twins lose relevance. You're really not starving your other units with more potential of EXP by using them. They only lose points because eventually, they start dragging everyone else down because they literally can't keep up with mounted units, so they're left behind to pick off stragglers or defend castles. But until that moment, the two are likely among your best units when it comes to being able to actually be out in the field, fighting off enemies. Their gradual descent is nowhere near enough to knock them down a solid 7-8 points, and rank them among the likes of Arden and Hannibal.

The sword twins aren't "softening up" anyone. If you're using them purely to feed Seliph and... Arthur? I guess? What frontline units need to be fed kills in early gen 2 besides these two? And even then, Arthur and Seliph really don't need anyone giving them easy kills. Regardless, their worth isn't in their ability to feed kills to nonexistant low level units that need babying. In early gen 2, where about half of your early-game units don't get mounts until promotion, Larcei and Ulster are absolutely pulling their weight as units, and in all likelihood, outperforming even some of the mounted units like Dairmuid. And this will continue on until chapter 8/9 when everyone starts promoting and getting mounts. That's much more utility than Arden, who immediately starts falling behind basically on the first turn of the game.

Raven usually turns out better than Harken(Of course, Harken being practically RNG-proof is a selling point), and if you give me a unit I can raise up to use, and give me a unit who is ready to go to end game with little work, I'll almost always take the one I can build up myself. Plus, I have an irrational bias against frontline units that struggle to get 50HP.

Dammit. I knew I should have double checked.

Points for: Castlevania is pretty decent source material Netflix is usually pretty spot on with quality The people behind it seem interested and competent Points against: Konami Adi Shankar is can be spotty with his projects(Dredd was amazing, Voices and Dirty Laundry were pretty good, Machine Gun Preacher was awful and that Power Rangers skit was cringey as fuck) It's a video game property I'll be skeptical. It could be good, but it's also very likely that it could be bad.

The Iron Sword is an Iron Blade, the heavier, but stronger variant of swords. What Vax says.

I think the people giving the kids shit purely for being foot units are overreacting a bit. A 1-2/10 unit is like an Arden or a Hannibal, two characters with virtually no practical use, who are immediately outclassed by mediocre units. Yes, Larcei and Ulster lose pretty much all of their utility and use by about chapter 9, but they're very useful for chapter 6 and the early parts of chapter 7, and a good chunk of 8. I think if you're giving them 3 or less out of 10, you're severely underestimating their early gen 2 performance, or you're just thinking "Well I didn't use them in the last chapter, so they're just trash." Leaf and Seliph are people seem to agree are both 9 or 10/10 units, and they're stuck on foot, locked to swords until the promote, which for Seliph, is about as long as Larcei and Ulster will be useful, and Leaf won't be useful until well after that unless you baby him like crazy in chapter 7 when you get him. Even after it becomes total Horse Emblem again, Ulster and Larcei can see some use and actually get results, even if they're very niche. I'd give them both 6/10. I think differentiating Larcei and Ulster by saying Larcei has better caps is a bit funny, too, since most people seem to agree that they'll never see enough use to even reach those caps, but I digress. Roddleban/Dalvin and Radney/Creidne don't get this same argument though, and fall behind almost immediately when it shouldn't be too much of a struggle for a decent foot unit to show worth. Especially Dalvin. 4/10 for Creidne, 3/10 for Dalvin.

As much as the series likes to play up politics and warfare against countries, it'd be nice to see a villain actually take advantage of this in a clever way. Villains almost always inevitably do this, but they do this through magic and stronghanding people rather than taking advantage of leaders through political influence or actual cunning. The closest we really got to this was the Lopto Sect in the Jugdral games, who had magic and power on their side, but they still used politics to enforce stuff like the Child Hunting in order to build up power. I still don't think this is really enough, and I'd like to see a villain(/villains) actually fleshed out as a proper strategist to work opposed to what the good guys are working towards. Granted, this might be boring at a surface level, but if worked on thoroughly and thoughtfully enough, it could end up being a FF Tactics type deal, where politics play heavily on top of all the magic, and it works out very well. The overall plot of Tactics isn't that different than an FE title(Disgraced lord goes on a personal war against a religious cult using forbidden powers to attempt to rule the world yadda yadda yadda), but the thought and presentation that went into actually developing the story and establishing the villains through heavy medieval politics was on a level we've never seen out of an FE game. Not only do we get righteous, memorable assholes like Dycedarg, Folmarv, and Elmdor, who all have substantial roles(Elmdor not so much) and memorable, climactic ends, but you also get tragic characters like Wiegraf, who abuses the power of the Lucavi because his sister died rebelling against the Beoulves, and he basically sells his soul out of anger and grief, only to fully lose himself and he dies not even remembering why he did this. And that's not even getting into Delita, who is possibly the most perplexing and most worthy of analysis character in FF history, who constantly plays as this moral gray ground in between the "Tiny rebel army fighting the massive literal political monsters". So while I don't have a strong idea of what the villain should be exactly, I do think focusing on the politics of the world could potentially be a very good idea, rather than immediately going to magic mind manipulation or using a giant, powerful army to just steamroll the opposition until a tiny army shows up and somehow dismantles this unstoppable force.

Even Awakening on Hard is easier than most FEs on Normal. I get the feeling him trying to play FE games would probably draw a lot of criticism. His schtick is being a goofy airhead. If him playing normal-ass RPGs has ended in disaster before, him playing an RPG with explicit strategy elements on top would probably go over even worse.

I don't like the comparison to the Sonic fanbase. The FE community and the Sonic community are scary for different reasons. One is likely to bash you for liking certain sets of games in the franchise and are just super opinionated, the other is likely to flood you with furry porn and bad fanfiction.