Fabulously Olivier

Beyond that, it appears that Anna appears when dialogue/announcements catch up to the player getting 1,000 KOs. This is clearly done to help the player notice her when she appears, but in certain maps where objectives and status updates are rapidly spammed, it can potentially take a long time for her to spawn.

Could you even imagine how much of a travesty motion controls would be in a Fire Emblem game?

Not to mention that the game quickly gained a reputation for a bad difficulty curve and excessive difficulty (neither of which were unjustified, to be fair) because of the difficulties being mislabeled (Normal being labeled Easy, Hard being labeled Normal, and Lunatic being labeled Hard). At least that's what I've heard. And I certainly remember that being the press issue at the time. A general audience is usually going to steer away from something known for high difficulty and bad difficulty spikes, Souls series aside.

I certainly would skip Valentia. Alm, Celica, and Berkut are the only real standouts, IMO. If I were to add more characters, I'd pretty much just add Lukas and Conrad to give Alm and Celica each one iconic companion.

Perhaps. But Ike did happen to win the biggest ever voting gauntlet in Heroes, despite the voting gauntlet being heavily weighted against male heroes and Ike being up against one of the most popular characters in Fates. If Heroes doesn't represent a general consumer audience, I don't know what does. And he also won the FE community poll by a landslide, meaning that Ike is the most popular character in the franchise with both the casual and hardcore audience. And Nintendo knows it.

Both Tellius games were also released with inopportune circumstances. PoR was released late into the life cycle of the lukewarm Gamecube and RD was released long after the Wii became stigmatized as a casual console and started gathering dust for a majority of the potential FE audience.

Thankfully. I would much prefer that they build on a solid foundation than wipe the slate. That said, I could perhaps see the sequel focusing on new original lords, with Rowan and Lianna relegated to alternate costumes for a new, hopefully more likeable, main lord (like Darios) with the same (or similar) moveset.

Oh, really. That's unfortunate. I assumed it would be more similar to the fantastic Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends. In that case, out of the 3, I would also recommend Warriors Orochi 3. The massive roster and long campaign make it a good value for money.

No. Dynasty Warriors games, by necessity (as they are based on Romance of the 3 Kingdoms) retrace the same story. DW8 just happens to more or less have the complete overview of the story.

Word of advice though. If you look for other Musuo games on the Switch, avoid Fate Extella the Umbral Star (another Musuo game already on the Switch not made by Koei Tecmo). It is not worth the asking price at all, and I'd go as far as to call it one of the worst games in the genre. Small roster. Terrible, cringey story that doesn't represent the source material. Some of the worst stage artwork I've ever seen. It's a difficult game to visually read, as the neon backgrounds make it difficult to keep up with fights and locate chests and other items. And worst of all, the game never stops pestering you with enemy reinforcements and time pressure.

I can't speak for Samurai Warriors Sanada, but Dynasty Warriors 8 is one of the best, most feature complete games in the genre. Warriors Orochi 3 has a huge roster, but I found myself enjoying the story and missions significantly less. It's still worth a purchase, but your mileage may vary.

I may buy these ports, but FE:W is such a massive step up from other Musuo games that it's going to be difficult to go back.

Great news. I absolutely love almost everything about this game. With a little more polish (ie: remove or heavily reduce voiced character responses from the convoy and forge) and a better roster with more game representation and better weapon variety, any sequel could be truly spectacular.

Ike for his Path of Radiance appearance, personality, and character arc. Sigurd is a close second for his romanticism. He's very much akin to Rhaegar Targaryen from a Song of Ice and Fire, right down to his ultimate failing. There's something about his story arc that just feels darker, more realistic, and more futile than other games in the series, despite the strength and idealism of the character.

I personally love IS. They are one of my most respected developers alongside CDProjektRed, Arenanet, and Digital Extremes.

Sigurd is the Ned Stark of the Fire Emblem universe. Or perhaps the Rhaegar Targaryen.

Perhaps I misspoke. I'm not saying "axe the Manaketes." I'm saying that the trope that Manaketes are this one-off character in every game that is just another little girl with a dragonstone and not nearly enough backstory needs to change. I'm saying that we need more variety in our characters. Fire Emblem as a series would only benefit from more in depth lore. The Manaketes need more fleshing out. We should have multiple Manaketes of various appearances and ages in our party, every game. One off beast characters like Kaden and Panne should be more integrated into the lore as well for the same reasons. And yes, I do quite frankly miss having hawk/raven characters as an option; alternative flying units are a good thing. Hell, we could even introduce aquatic shapeshifters while we're at it. I do not care what each of these species are. Just give them to us, name them whatever you want, develop them however you like, and use them to enrich the universe. The Laguz are just such a strong go-to example because they enriched and diversified Tellius in a way that the series hasn't really seen before. There's a difference between removing something and improving upon it. Also, i would say that it is not silly to extrapolate on the species by the only examples we are given. Effectively, the characters that we are given ARE the species as far as the player is concerned, as these are the representatives that we have to go on. They've all been pretty similar, and they've all lacked in the lore and backstory department. That should change for the better.

Isn't Niles bisexual, not homosexual? Regardless, I don't think that Nintendo was attempting to be cruel to gay people. I mean, they even went out of their way to include a decent transgender character with Forrest. (But I digress. I do not enjoy discussing identity politics. I get the concern, but I sincerely doubt Nintendo meant any insult. And in Rhajat's case, her personality has less to do with her sexuality and more with her being a lazy port of Tharja.)

If your spouse is attracted to your behavior, regardless of whether you had meant it to repel them, why would you stop?

Path of Radiance if available. To me, it truly is the best the series has to offer. It has fairly well balanced difficulty, great characters, and the best story in the franchise. Otherwise, Awakening is a good entry point. Aside from being one of the easiest entries, it's better to experience it without pre-conceived notions and then play the rest of the series, rather than vice versa.

Okay, but that still does not change the situation. The manaketes and beast characters either need to be developed and de-tropified or replaced entirely. It isn't the names "Laguz" and "Manakete" that are important. It's that the Laguz were well-realized and offered a variety of character types and transformations, while the Manakete offer none of these. If we're sticking with manaketes, include multiple ones per game. Make them more believable. Vary their genders and ages. Take us to their homeland and have humans and manakete meaningfully interact. Give the same treatment to beastmen. Introduce birdmen. But if we do all of these things, we effectively have Laguz. See my point?

I will say that if we're counting spinoffs, Rowan is easily the worst lord. Every single thing about him is obnoxious and unlikeable.

Sure. If you're Tiki and Nowi. For the rest, there is either no homeland, a homeland far removed or ruined, or a homeland separated by dimension. Frankly, even in the case of Tiki, who gets something of a pass for belonging to Shadow Dragon (in which quite frankly no one had a personality worthy of note), her nation does not play a comparable role in the story to that of the Laguz. The Laguz had proper kingdoms which interacted with each other and with the Beorc. They were treated as human characters and that made them interesting on a level that the manaketes have never been and will never be.

Culturally and aesthetically speaking, Laguz are more interesting and varied than Manaketes. Manaketes thus far have just been lolicons with dragon stones (adult Tiki aside) with no known nation or culture to speak of. Laguz can fill the same role, but have also shown more age ranges, transformation variety, and backstory. The only flaw of the Laguz has been in their awkward shifting mechanics. Those have to go. When I say Manaketes should be replaced by Laguz, I mean that the loloicon dragon trope is old and needs to be replaced with something that has actual potential for variety. I don't mean that the dragonstone mechanic needs to go. Just give us something with the variety and numbers of the Laguz with the simpler gameplay mechanics of the Manaketes.

Corrin. Marth is a close runner up for being essentially human tofu, but Corrin is in his/her own league of boring, obnoxious, and foolish. Marth is a victim of no writing, while Corrin is a victim of bad writing.