Extrasolar

Definitely agreed. It didn't help that only 2 were playable in POR, at the last fight, when Ashnard is pretty much untouchable by most everything not named Ike or a laguz royal. And in RD, they're just...kind of there. Gareth has paper resistance in a map full of mages, while Nasir is a magic-based dude in a map when every enemy has high resistance. Ena just doesn't do much in general, and Kurthnaga is underleveled. The Dheginsea fight was definitely one of the high points of RD. Very fun and epic.

Gaius: "Spying, assassination, and burglary are my specialties. Decent lockpick, too." - Just the amount of casualness in his voice when he pitches himself like this. Also, adding lockpick as though it's an afterthought. Frederick: "Today, like every other day, I woke up early to clear away pebbles." - Just...what. Frederick, please. Niles: "Yours until I break, master." as well as "A little advice: Wear white, and you invite mudslinging." It's Niles, so it's to be expected. A lot of Henry's lines, like the one where he wonders how many crow feathers he needs to fly. But my favorite of his: Henry: (starting a map) "It's curse-o-clock!" Gordin's lines are cute and adorable as well, especially: Gordin: "I don't really look the part of an Altean knight, do I..." Setsuna's cluelessness is pretty amusing. Setsuna: "Hey, your weapon shoots things? Mine too... It's like we're twins." Hinata's a little silly and excitable just like he should be. Hinata: "This realm has such wide, open fields...Man, you gotta love that!" and "Um... Maybe I'm a little scruffy...but I give the 'pits a splash every day!" and finally "Ha! I may not look it...but I'm actually pretty good at stuff!"

So I managed to get 20 orbs for my next round of summoning. The good news? I pulled all 4* units this go round, which I don't know what the chance of that is. The bad news? They were a Maria, a Laslow (of which I already have 3, albeit 3*), a Setsuna, an Est, and a Hana. All the bad luck. Still holding out for that next 5*. I know people that have five and six different 5* units, while I'm still sitting at two. All the jealousy.

Mystery of the Emblem in general is more popular than Awakening in Japan (in fact, it's still the most popular Fire Emblem game in Japan, or at least, the game that's looked upon most fondly), so I assume that's where they got the idea that child Tiki would be more popular than adult Tiki.

And thank God for that. That overly-sexualized Micaiah was so cringey, it was almost a parody. It's even more noticeable when people start sexualizing Tellius characters, since Tellius characters are pretty much the most sensibly and modestly dressed in the series.

Can you elaborate on the latter point? How is that so?

Yeah, I like Kurthnaga as a character, but as a unit, he's very meh. Which is a shame, because the guy destroys an entire tower in the scene before you get him...let's just say, I was far more hyped than the game was about to fulfill. Lol. Laguz in general in RD were...subpar, though, other than the royals and possibly Ranulf. They were much more useful in POR, unfortunately. I agree. The laguz in general were a cool adaptation of the Manaketes from the other games. Rajaion was sort of...wasted as a character though. I understand why, and that all of his stuff happened offscreen before POR started, but I wish we had gotten more time with the guy other than his ending scene with Ena.

Xander is great at taking out anything that doesn't use magic. As soon as a mage so much as breathes on him, he's pretty finished. Try to get the drop on mages first, since he'll have little problem one-shotting them with their low defense, but mages in turn will two-shot him to death if you let him be attacked first. Leo is well-rounded. He won't really shine, but he also won't struggle at any point. The skill he learns as a dark knight, which heals him after a kill, is very useful as well. Effie is indeed one of the best units on Conquest. It's at the point where I think she's nearly mandatory to use if you want to get through, unless you're going for a self-imposed challenge run or something. She'll be tanking everything and more often than not one-round killing it. Keaton is a great asset, simply due to his great physical bulk and strength. Though he's got a weakness to mages, and can be worn down by the likes of ninja with the poison ability, he's more than strong enough to hold his own against most enemies, if not one-round killing them as well. Not to mention, he gets one of the best skills in the game after he promotes, which heals a large portion of his HP at the beginning of every odd-numbered turn. Niles is indeed very useful early game, as he's one of the very few bow users you get by default on the Conquest route. Just a warning: Niles will fall off as a pure damage dealer roughly midway through the game, as his strength growth is lacking. He'll be fast enough to double everything, but as enemies start packing on the defense, he'll struggle at killing them. He always makes a great mage killer though, due to his high resistance and the low defense of mages. Promote him to Adventurer and he'll always be useful as a healer. Shura works better as a pure damage-dealer due to his extremely high crit chance, the fact that he comes default with a killer bow...but like all Adventurers, his pure strength isn't all that great. Ophelia can turn out great; I personally paired Odin with Selena, and got an Ophelia with both high speed and crit chance. Laslow turns out well, as a Mercenary, though he's a little bit fragile early on. Once he gets levels on him, he'll be packing great strength, good defense and high HP, making him a good unit. He also gets a skill that has a chance of healing his HP at the beginning of each turn. Odin is a bit wonky to use as well, simply because of his strange growths. He tends to turn out mediocre more than anything, but it's not like he's completely useless. He just may not be worth the effort to train up. Arthur's terrible luck makes him a liability in the later game, when enemies have higher chances to crit. So he's all together not worth your time, unless you grind marriage support on him, get his son Percy, and keep them paired up forever (Percy has a skill which more or less negates enemy crit chance).

Oh, I see. I never knew that that enemy phase thing was so important in the rating of a unit. I suppose in Radiant Dawn, enemy phase in general is less important for me just because of how strong your units are by the time you get the Greil Mercenaries, because anything that attacks them is liable to get killed on the counterattack anyway, while with Shinon it does take a big longer. Now, the Dawn Brigade...yeah, enemy phase matters a lot.

Ohh, right, I'd forgotten about that. Weird that the Daein army dragged her all the way to Gallia, though. Did they intend to feed her to the beasts or something? Oh, as a funny in-joke, it works, but yeah it's a bit OOC. I would replace it with something like: Ike Great Level: "I've come so far..." The guy's a bit reflective on how much of a badass he's become, haha. Thanks, haha. These are really fun to write. XD

...That's because it hardly matters to him. We must have been playing a very different game if you think Shinon not being able to attack on enemy phase holds him back from being strong. Because I don't see how it makes that much of a difference with his high stats, honestly. It boggles. I've literally never seen anyone argue that Shinon in Radiant Dawn is balanced for obvious reasons. That's like giving someone an AK-47 when everyone else is wielding revolvers, and saying that it's balanced because he has to stop and stick a new clip in it every now and then. Like...yeah, he doesn't have literally everything in the world going for him, but what he's got going for him is more than most other people have. One hit kill with a plain critical or Deadeye, once he's third tier. And from my experience, their luck stats ain't saving them from Shinon, or player skill activation in general. Not sure we're you're getting "sky high luck" from. Mine crits at least every third fight, if not more often than that, when he's fielded, and tends to activate Deadeye every single fight, if not every other fight. Then your Haars must turn out worse than mine, because mine double Halberdiers, fighters and snipers pretty easily. It isn't until he's in literally the final part of the game that enemies have enough speed to possibly not get doubled by him. And again, even if he doesn't double, his strength is more often high enough to one-hit kill then anyway. Then there's the times he activates Stun and one-hit kills anyway, with his high skill. Again. Not saying that Ryoma is immortal, but his evade is great and saves him most of the time. Anybody can get screwed by the RNG, getting hit by 3% hit and crit by a 1% hit and the like. Literally anyone. That's not much of an argument against him, considering how consistently he dodges and kills most of the time.

Imo it is kind of lame how most of the playable, transforming Manaketes in the series are little girls... I wanted a male Manakete that could transform and that wasn't elderly for the longest time... Kurthnaga and the Tellius dragons just didn't do it for me, as far as that went. Corrin...sort of satisfied it...sort of. But not quite, considering their dragon form was nerfed pretty heavily on purpose.

Oh, that reminds me! A game focusing on Tormod, Muarim, Vika and the rest of the Laguz Emancipation Army would be cool...and it would explain where the hell they all went during a gigantic portion of Radiant Dawn, at that rate... Maybe a mini Dawn Brigade game which takes place a few months before the beginning of Radiant Dawn, with the actual focus on them this time, would be good...provided you buffed the Dawn Brigade's stats and developed their personalities a bit more.

Oh, realy? Wow, I never knew that. How in the world did she end up all the way in Gallia to meet the Greil Mercenaries then? Strange. I love Kieran's quotes, by the way. I was thinking of something similar for him. I think Ike's third quote is a bit strange, and could do with reworking. I think it sounds a bit too excitable and energetic for him. A bunch more quotes from me:

If the mere thought of Shinon being attacked and unable to counterattack immediately means he's balanced to you, even if he takes no damage from it and instakills the enemy, then I honestly don't know what to tell you. Considering his personal skill means that enemy units target him more often anyway, he's essentially a dodge tank that still deals a ton of damage to everything. If "well he has to wait a turn to do it" means he's balanced to you, then it's definitely to each their own. 'Cause that's not balanced to me. All he needs to do, literally, is wait for player phase to one-hit kill an enemy that likely did no damage to him. I don't see what other issues it causes. If anything, it's better, because your other units (who maybe aren't as good at dodging) don't get targeted. Most enemies in the game: The majority of lance users, mages (mage speed nerfs too strong), bishops, pretty much anything. Those that he doesn't double do no damage to him, including myrmidons, laguz cats, and the like. He's more liable to one-shot a mage before it gets a chance to do anything against him. More squishies: Shura, Niles, Odin, Kaze, Felicia, Jakob, Elise, Selena, and all that just in the first generation. And Evade did get nerfed in comparison to the other games, but it isn't completely unreliable the way it is in Shadow Dragon. See Ryoma for that fact; his defenses are actually pretty paper, but he dodges everything and kills it anyway. Really strong unit.

I can get behind this. It makes sense. Speaking of which, I think Mia is Crimean, rather than being from Begnion - she's a mercenary hired to fight during the Mad King's War. EDIT: Some level up quote ideas!

I think it's more of a literal thing. He was pretty much born and raised in Gallia, even if his memories of that time were wiped. But strictly allegiance wise, yeah, he's definitely from Crimea. Lol.

Not really. You're making it seem a lot worse than it was. "Helpless" would imply that he's in danger of dying on the enemy phase if he's attacked. And, you know, he's just not. One drawback does not a balanced unit make, especially when it's pretty much negligible. Archers have ended up as low tiers because most of them have terrible growths and stats. Shinon isn't one of them. He has stats comparable to a mercenary or high tier fighter, despite being an archer. He's weak to thunder magic and his speed isn't the most amazing in the world, despite it being more than sufficient to double most enemies in the game. He still destroys most everything he touches, has his free reign of the map due to him being a flying unit, and generally makes the game very easy when he's available to use. Sure, most of them have terrible durability. But considering most of them that do have high dodge/evasion and /or range, it's a bit moot. Squishy units have a much more difficult time on the Conquest route, where most units have garbage for evasion stats.

Hmm, I could see Jotari's mini, 3 - 5 chapter game idea working for Ryoma and Frederick. For Ryoma, maybe we find out what he was up to while he was mysteriously missing for all of those chapters in Birthright, and Frederick could...I don't know, do something knightly while away on a mission assigned by Chrom. I would love to see a game starring the Three Heroes, but it always seemed to be like they won the war against Yune solo, in more of a hack and slash fashion than a field an army fashion. Not saying a game with just the three of them wrecking face against an army of chumps couldn't work, but I think it would feel a little strange. It would give us an opportunity for more development with Dheginsea, we'd give Soan a personality, and get more development of Altina and Lehran's relationship. Not to mention, dual-wielding Altina would just be cool to see. Your second idea is a cool one, and could work for the smaller format game. Anything that gives Kieran more screen time. Seeing more Lucia would be neat too.

Pretty much this. Slime monster Garon is one of the dumbest things in the game, in my opinion. They could have made Garon a nuanced and interesting character, but they defaulted to lazy "he's a literal monster so he's one-dimensional in personality now." Very frustrating, to say the least. Very true. They could have done much better than with what they had. Especially so in the Conquest path. Yup. Fates tried to set up Lilith's death as this huge tear-jerking moment, but...it's not. She barely did anything, and barely had any relevance. We get told over and over again about their closeness, about how Corrin rescued Lilith and nursed her back to health, but they just don't interact enough to make their relationship meaningful. Making her an actual playable party member would alleviate a lot of that, since not only would she have relevance in cutscenes, but Corrin could support with her, thus developing their bond and finding out more about their history together. Making her a forced unit in the chapters in which she is killed would get rid of that nonsensical "Lilith suddenly shows up out of nowhere" thing that bothered me even the first time I played through the game. Not to mention, having an astral dragon party member would just be plain cool.

Hampered by his class' shortcomings? What, not being able to attack on the enemy phase? That's not really a handicap for him, imo. He just dodges everything that attacks him and kills everything on the player phase. Or do you mean the fact that he's just got average mobility like 90% of the units in the game? If he had Haar-tier mobility, he'd be even more broken. I don't see anything balanced about Shinon as he i in Radiant Dawn. I don't know how one could argue it seriously. That's like someone trying to say that Haar isn't a game-breaking character because he's weak to thunder magic. So? It's not exactly a glaring weakness, especially in comparison to all of his strengths. Takumi doesn't have to be killing everything on the map to be more useful than Setsuna. Other units are capable of killing Pegasus Knights as well. Setsuna's growths are kind of wonky, while Takumi is a solid unit and above average in the areas he needs to be as a sniper. There really is no reason to use Setsuna when you have Takumi. That's what I'm trying to say.

Not denying that a Matthew-based game would be cool, because I just like him in general, especially if he was voice-acted like he is in Heroes. Not quite sure how "stealth-based gameplay" would work in a strategy RPG setting...what exactly do you mean by that? It might be interesting. I think it would be fun to play as a villager having some sort of off-the-wall, way-over-his-head adventure before settling down with a wife and having a son. I think it would be a pretty cute game. A little depressing, since you'd know what would become of him in the end, lol. Yup. She did. I believe that in the notes, Raquesis, Azelle and Sylvia were petrified out in the desert, as the intention was that they'd come back in the hypothetical third generation of the game that never came to light. Thanks! Yeah, one of my goals was to flesh out Stefan, since he's a lot of missed potential as he is in the canon series, imo. Also as a way to explain his whole "world weary and wise" personality. The guy's been around and seen things. So my idea of a prequel is to give him context, and my idea in a potential sequel is to feature him and his Branded village a whole lot more. The adventures of Priam on other side Tellius could be cool, and we'd end with him going through the Dragon's Gate and stumbling upon Ylisse. Though by his time, a good number of the original Tellius characters would be dead or very old, barring the dragons and some of the laguz. So you'd feature a cast of pretty much all original characters (with hopefully some Branded and wolves in the mix). Ooh, a game featuring the Crusaders would be pretty awesome, from the rough start of their rebellion against the Loptyr Empire to them hitting god mode (basically literally) and powering up with the Holy Weapons.. We already have the designs for all 12, a lot of personality for them to start off with. Final boss is already made for us too. Not to mention, it would finally put to rest that whole debate over whether Ulir is male or female (I always thought she was a woman, personally).

Yeah, I conceded on that first point. I don't think it's accurate to say that he isn't malicious toward anyone, but I think it is accurate to say that he's not sadistic in that he doesn't threaten or indulge in violence just for suffering's sake. As the Black Knight, he is more than willing to taunt, demean and attempt to intimidate his enemies with violence, but it always serves an end to him rather than just because he enjoys others in pain. And by "scorning him," I mean that just by his status as a Branded, the world automatically hates him the same way they hated Soren and Stefan. He's lucky that he was around when Ashnard came to power, or else he'd likely never have advanced himself at all just due to his status. Sephiran was pretty much the only person he could turn to, aside from Gawain, who took off after a time. I'm definitely not saying that Ashnard's Daein was perfect, but I think it gave far more people opportunities that wouldn't have had them otherwise (Petrine and Zelgius, first and foremost). It was definitely a dog-eat-dog world, to say the least.

Play it straight? I mean, it wasn't wholly original way back when they first did it. I don't think they'll be messing with it.

I think the cut-off is if they can transform into dragons in-game or not.