Slumber

You're right that marriage shows commitment, but I think that's also where the bit about "not believing in marriage" comes in. My sister and her boyfriend have been dating for going on 5 years now, but they have no real intentions of getting married, simply because they're not huge fans of the religious aspects, the costs, or the ceremony. However, they did apply for domestic partnership, which bypasses all of the stuff they don't want to deal with, while also cementing a commitment and getting similar benefits of a marriage. And I'm sure they'd make great parents if they decided to have kids. Of course I think there are people who don't want to get married purely because they don't want to solidify their commitment to one another, and those people probably shouldn't have kids.

Solid choice. FE4 is a bit divisive here, but it has plenty of fans, myself being one of them. Hope you enjoy yourself here.

I don't think it's important at all. It all depends on your own personal priorities. If it's a personal priority, or it's something you do for religious reasons, then go for it, but I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with sex out of wedlock, or even having kids out of wedlock. Similarly, I don't think an unmarried couple that loves and supports each other and has a kid is less stable than a rocky marriage. It's all about the couple. It would probably be accurate to assume that married couples are generally more stable than unmarried ones, but that's not 100% the case. Marriage is actually a social construct. If a couple doesn't believe in marriage(Somebody like @Ronnie for example), then I don't think it's really right to say that they're not responsible or capable of raising a child fairly. A wedding band isn't going to suddenly make two people who already loved each other love each other more, and it usually doesn't save relationships that were doomed from the start(A good reason so many marriages end in divorce. People either rush into it, or they think it will salvage a crumbling relationship). So yeah, if you're worried about being ignorant, then just assume that on issues like these that there are people out there who don't necessarily agree with you, and try to understand that they're also not necessarily wrong. I don't think you're wrong for believing in abstinence until you're married, it's just not what I believe.

We don't know if he'd be eligible or ineligible. Daein during the events of PoR, Daein's ruled by a crazy asshole who obviously doesn't care about blood. Petrine is a general of Daein despite being a Branded, which is about as far from a noble as people get in Tellius. They're treated as less than Laguz, who are already treated as less than Beorc. They're at the bottom of humanity from a societal standpoint. Ashnard likely made her a general because she's one of the strongest people in Daein, more or less the one thing Ashnard cares about. In this regard, yeah, Ike probably would be eligible for some sort of title in Daein. Not because he's Greil's son, but because he's powerful enough to earn it in Ashnard's eyes. I doubt Ashnard would give two shits about giving anybody weak a title, regardless of what their lineage is. In RD, Daein is ruled by Begnion. Ike already earned(Not inherited) a Lord title from Begnion, so again, being the son of Greil does nothing for him here. Post-RD, Micaiah rules Daein with Sothe at her side. Two people who care about Ike and respect him immensely. They'd give him a noble title in a heartbeat, once again, completely divorced from the fact that he's Greil's son. Greil having once been nobility in Daein essentially doesn't matter at all. It doesn't grant Ike anything he doesn't already earn, or impact anything he could hypothetically earn.

While all of what you said is true, Awakening giving out Second Seals like candy, the fact that you can reclass down to level 1 unpromoted, AND that all of the units default to having 3 class sets immediately is way more egregious than Fates' use of the system. Yes, there's a cost to Second Seals since you can literally buy infinite ones, but the cost is not great. The game tosses money at you and if you let everyone who can learn Armsthrift actually learn it(Six of the first gen units), you damn near never have to worry about buying weapons after a certain point. There's absolutely no reason to not try to have every unit learn all of their skills, then reclass them to their strongest classes, which boils down to about 3-4 promoted classes that nearly everyone can change to that you're using at the end of the game. And that's not even getting into the insanity that are the kid units that you touched on, who are so insanely broken when it comes to the classes and skills that they have available that it's borderline comical. Fates at least makes you work for alternative class sets, you can't level down, and reclassing items are scarce(Unless you do MyCastle, which breaks the game in all sorts of ways outside of reclassing). Children are also nerfed to high-hell. You're generally incentivized to maybe swap between two classes for any given unit, as opposed to the 5(I think there are some units with class sets that overlap promotions) that Awakening incentivizes at minimum.

I just kind of meant to how there was seemingly nothing special to Lyn, Alm, and Ike, and they all lived normal-ish lives for the time period. Obviously Ike growing up around a bunch of mercs is a bit different than being a nomad on the plains or being a farm boy, but it's not a particularly noteworthy life. While Micaiah fits the mold of being a blood royal/noble who grew up as a commoner like Lyn and Alm... She was a branded who doesn't age with Jesus powers, which is far from normal, even in Tellius.

A noble being raised as a commoner is far from an interesting concept. But Fire Emblem is so rooted in its conventions that a lord breaking norms becomes interesting. I this regard, Lyn, Alm and Ike are all more interesting on a base level than a lot of their peers, who are nobles or are obviously special from the get-go(IE Healing Hands Micaiah) all played straight who go on a hero's journey once something bad happens. Of course, there are more straight-forward lords who are used to explore different concepts(Like the Jugdral lords), but on a very base level, yeah. Being a commoner bumps those three above the 20 other lords in the franchise. EDIT: Now that I mention it, Micaiah can get a mention, too. She's basically Jesus. A miracle working savior who's a shining beacon of hope to her people, a threat that everyone's wary of to anybody looking from the outside.

Welcome. It's pretty laid back here. Don't let anything get to you and you should have a good time.

I mean, say what you will about Hector, he's NOT an idiot when it comes to combat. He's just as good(In story) as the brainy Eliwood, and he managed to uncover more of Nergal's plot and backstory through combat than Eliwood does.

Counterpoint: The strategy of the game stops actually being part of the core gameplay, and becomes something meta. Instead of "Oh, I have Dorcas and Bartre on my team, how can I make use of them in a battle?", it becomes "What can I reclass Dorcas and Bartre to outside of combat that makes them just like everyone else that lets me bypass the difficult bits of actual gamplay?" I like strategy games that give you rigid parameters, but lets you use work with them in clever ways. The Awakening/Fates style of FE doesn't have rigid parameters for strategy. There are damn near no parameters in Awakening. Fates was definitely a step in the right direction, with reclassing being more limited, but it was arguably even more of a "If this unit can't get these skills, bottom tier." If they keep it(Which they will), I really think the next step should be limiting skills and reclass options. As much as everyone says that it adds replay value, I don't really ever see myself ever replaying Awakening, and I don't plan on going back to any of the Fates routes besides Conquest. Meanwhile, I still have a hankering to do every other game(Besides SS outside of rebalance patches) at some point, and I JUST played RD, T776 and FE7 within the last year. I haven't touched Fates in over a year, and I haven't touched Awakening in probably 2-3. Every run in those games devolves into nearly the same thing EVERY time. While it was somewhat of a limit to not just the best units in other games, there are SO many more limits you have to constrain yourself to in order to not just reclass everyone to get their best skills, then reclass them to their best classes. So yeah. I'd be fine with heavy limitations on classes and skills, but I'd prefer no reclassing. Skills are a whole different topic.

Arguable. Greil was a noble based purely on his position as a general, but he relinquished his title as a general. Though Ike might have been born while Greil was still a general, so... technicalities.

Blazing Sword. Saw an ad for it in the back of a pamphlet that came with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. And then again in the back of a pamphlet that came with the GBA version of ALttP. Recognized the title from Smash, and wanted to get it. I walked into *I think* BestBuy and pestered my mom and dad until they bought it. And it shaped me into the man you see today. You can thank my parents.

Seliph and Leif. Two lords who have been on the run since birth due to living in a world where the bad guys have already won. Sigurd, too, for being more or less a "deconstruction" of the lord archetype. He does everything you'd expect a Fire Emblem lord to do, but his situation is treated with biting realism. While fighting purely for good and his friends would have saw him through to the end of any other FE, in the real world, it would lead to him being targeted, taken advantage of, and killed. Which, well... Honorable mentions to Lyn, Alm and Ike, who are all raised as commoners(Lyn a nomad, Alm a farm boy, Ike a mercenary) who all eventually have to settle in to lord positions. Or in Ike's case, refuse and rough it in the woods with his buddies.

Fates couldn't go more out of its way to paint Nohr as the bad guy. They're the aggressors, they conquer, they love killing, they seemingly have no problem('cept Scarlet) obeying Garon after he's been replaced with dragon spit that's been injected with lethal doses of pure evil, and Peri. Just Peri. They live in a nearly pure black wasteland where it's seemingly always night for crying out loud. Hoshido, meanwhile, is a peaceful land full of peaceful people who just want peace, but have to fight back against the evil Nohr army.

It'd be ironic if DBZA ended at the same place DBKai did(Initially). They're both abridged versions of DBZ.

Joshua: I used to dislike him, and saw him as a really blatant attempt at a "cool character". I also have not really liked any Myrmidons as units since Rutger. However, as time has gone on, I appreciate him as one of the standouts of FE8, a game I otherwise really don't like. Lissa: About 3 months after I beat Awakening, I really started to sour on the "lol CRAZY CHARACTER GIMMICKS!" style of Awakening. Granted, not every character in Awakening is a walking gimmick, but I also don't really like the characters who aren't gimmicks, because by comparison, they come off as really plain and boring(Not counting the characters whose gimmicks are to be plain and boring). It was a double-edged sword that Awakening built up, and I really disliked it. The characters that were obnoxious one-notes somehow managed to drag down the otherwise normal characters that I usually wouldn't have too much of a problem with. HOWEVER, Lissa is one of the few I genuinely enjoy in that cast as I played it after I lost my patience with nearly every single Awakening character. She straddles a good line between "lol I'm so eccentric" and "I don't really have anything going on". And I typically don't even like the little sister character types, but I like Lissa. Go figure. Pent: Yes, yes. I used to not like the All-Mighty Pent. Back in my days as a wee-lad, playing Fire Emblem, I started with a tendency to not really like using pre-promotes. The first time I played Fire Emblem, and the first time I saw a unit promote, I was like "HELL YEAH, THIS IS COOL"(Ironically, this unit is Wallace, probably the worst, least cool unit in the game). As somebody who has been a hardcore RPG fan since I was 4 years old(Thanks FF4), I loved seeing characters develop statwise, and promoting was a big 'ol giant piece of development all at once. So when a character couldn't promote, I didn't really like them, and I didn't like using them. Something I still mostly feel to this day. I still don't really like using Marcus, I don't like Isadora, I don't like Jaffar, etc. I even tried to ignore Athos the first time I played the game. But I have grown to like Pent as a unit, and I've grown to like him as a character as a result. Geitz is in a similar situation, but I've always kind of liked Geitz because he had fur trimmings on his gear.

As somebody who has Persona 5 as their GotY for 2017 over games like Zelda and Mario, I absolutely do not want a Persona 5 artstyle for the next FE(Or any FE, really). Keep the artstyle as tone-appropriate as possible. Hyper-stylized anime art styles for Persona work, because it's set in modern day Japan, and for 5 especially, has a HEAVY emphasis on fashion and style. If Persona had any other artstyle, there'd be an unintentional tonal clash. Intentional tonal clashes when done deliberately(Think South Park. A construction paper cartoon about a bunch of foul mouthed kids and their dark, usually violent adventures), but I don't think Persona or Fire Emblem would ever try do this intentionally, as that kind of stuff is usually reserved for comedy, horror and/or works that art trying to make a point about something. Fire Emblem also isn't a flashy modern(As in its setting) series. Fire Emblem has, historically, been a pretty down to earth medieval fantasy. The plots are typically epic and bombastic from time to time, but the Fire Emblem games are slow and you spend a lot of time doing things pretty divorced from the main plot, and there's typically not a ton of melodrama. You can get away with an anime aesthetic if it's kept down to earth. Not all anime art styles have to be super flamboyant and crazy, and that's fine. Awakening and Fates were anything but down to earth in regards to artstyle. Granted Fates also amped the schlock and melodrama up to 11, so the artstyle kinda fit, but saying that Fates' art style fit its story is a backhanded complement. I also made the SAO comparison to Kozaki's art for the series. Yeah, Asuna and Lucia both wear white longcoats, but the trimmings and details are louder, more comparable to the Awakening/Fates style.

That Linde run animation is a little... hmm... She looks like she really needs to go to the bathroom.

I don't think there's any indication whatsoever that they'll ditch mainline FEs. As much money as Heroes makes, they NEED mainline FEs to keep it going and drum up interest. And similarly, they now have and AMAZING advertising tool at their disposal for Fire Emblem that many, many people use. I think Nintendo knows that it's best to keep both Heroes updated, and mainline FEs coming out to support each other. Ditching one for the sake of the other probably isn't good for profits(Obviously Heroes is the bigger cash cow, but businesses always strive for more profit).

This is something I always loved about Thracia, too. Most FEs take a good... 10 or so chapters for shit to hit the fan. Shit hits the fan at the end of chapter 3 of FE5.

I don't think he ever goes that far, but displaying enjoyment over harming animals IS one of the commonly used red flags to identify violent psychopathy. Of course, I'm talking about people who enjoy the act of harming animals. Not talking about people who go deer hunting and get excited when they get a buck with more points than they've ever gotten before.

I think people are moreso tired of them. Though most of them also end up being incredibly disappointing. Then there's Anankos, which by most accounts I think would say is an incredibly climactic final boss... but it's Anankos. The game builds up for three whole games that you're going to be fighting this dragon that nobody really likes that much.

Apparently there's a new patch that's close to being a total translation, but I haven't tried it. I've been juggling the patch that focuses on translating the menu and the patch that translates the story for over 10 years.

Yup. To see the origins of dark stories in medieval settings, all you have to do is look at the actual medieval. Shit was dark and fucked up. Eventually when you pull from the darkest elements of that period(Rape, incest, child murder, political backstabbing, brutal executions and acceptable murder, witch hunts(Not actual witch hunts like America), clowns, etc.), you're going to hit some similarities to stories that try to pull from the same places. Things like Seliph/Julia and Jon/Daenerys are merely coincidences.

Not inaccurate. I like more than the level design, but level design plays a heavy part into why I like it so much.