Zkitty8

My favorite is Incineroar. Big buff dark-type kitty! My other favorites include Spiritomb, Drapion, Porygon, Luxray, Houndoom, Malamar, Weavile, Giratina, and Zeraora. I love dark, ghost, and psychic types in general, and all the cat pokemon.

Keep using Shin, and try bringing Sue along if you think you can get her some kills. She can still do some damage against wyvern riders even if she's underleveled. A few bosses are wyvern riders too, so you might even be able to set up a boss kill for her. In Chapter 16 there are manaketes that don't move, so as long as Sue can damage them she can safely chip away at them for some easy exp. (I did that in my hard mode playthrough to level up Zeiss.) If you haven't promoted Shanna yet, maybe you could also try promoting her early so she gains less exp.

Those are good choices, and like others said FE7 normal mode is easy enough that you can pretty much use whoever you want. Chapters 23 and 25 have alternate versions with different maps depending on what units you train, so you might want to keep that in mind if there's a particular one you want to go to.

Remove the support limit and make some of them faster to unlock Have more characters be involved in the story and get dialogue outside of just supports More tie-ins to FE7, it doesn't have to be anything major, just cameos or hints at what FE7 characters are up to Balance the characters and weapons so everyone is at least viable Balance hard mode, since it's ridiculously hard at the beginning and gets easier Give the divine weapons more uses Have Roy promote earlier, maybe after chapter 16 (but still only get the sword of seals after 21x) Make a few things less cryptic, like how the route splits work and unlocking some of the gaiden chapters Remove ambush spawns

I think my favorite is Shaman in the Dark from FE6. I love it! FE6, FE5, and Awakening are probably my favorite soundtracks overall. FE6 has lots of catchy boss and map themes besides the one I mentioned. FE5 has really good final boss themes and I think it's so cool that it has unique music for things like when you're winning or losing or when the enemy is healing. Awakening's music is really nice to listen to and I think it does a good job of setting the mood too.

I tend to do this a lot with games where I take a break for years before going back to it, and then play it obsessively for a few days. I got Pokemon Conquest not too long after it came out but didn't finish the main story until last month, so it took 6 years. I still haven't done the post-game stuff because there's so much of it. I also beat Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow recently after getting stuck on the puppet master boss like 5 or 6 years ago (it's not even that hard I was just using bad souls for that fight) and then I even beat it again in Julius mode. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time is probably the longest if you count beating the post game, because I didn't beat Darkrai until a few months ago. I took a long break after getting stuck on the fight with Wigglytuff and the rest of the guild. And when I would go back to the game, I kept doing missions and stocking up on items instead of trying to beat the main story.

When I was playing through Awakening for the first time, I had a dream about fighting Grima which was weirdly similar to the actual fight considering I was playing the game blind? (I don't think I even got to Grima's resurrection yet I just figured I'd have to fight them at some point.) Instead of fighting on Grima's back, Grima was more skeletal and half-buried in the ground and you were kind of in its ribcage? The field was also a big poison swamp that damaged you every turn. It was actually pretty cool. I know I must have had other Fire Emblem related dreams but none of them were as memorable as that one.

I'd suggest Radiant Dawn since you said you recently played Path of Radiance. I played the games back to back and thought it was pretty cool just seeing what all the old characters were up to. Blazing Sword and Sacred Stones are also some of my favorites.

I'd like to see Fire Emblem crossover with Sonic just because they're two of my favorite video game franchises, and also because the more I think about it the more I think it might actually work. Sonic has already used a sword in one of his own games, so why not? Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are the "lords" and use swords, lances, and axes respectively characters like Tails, Cream, and Rouge would be flyers Amy Rose would fit well as a war cleric since she already uses a hammer (it could even be a personal weapon) actually a lot of characters could fit fire emblem classes, like Blaze and Silver = mages, Espio = ninja, Shadow = assassin, Big = general, etc. Knuckles and Rouge get locktouch since they're treasure hunters the gemstones in the Fire Emblem are chaos emeralds and completing the emblem lets Sonic "promote" into Super Sonic instead of fighting generic bandits near the beginning, characters like Nack, Bean, and Bark make a cameo Metal Sonic as the Camus archetype, being powerful and loyal to Eggman to the end the final boss is Dr. Eggman piloting a giant robot dragon or something I don't think this kind of crossover would take itself too seriously, but it would be fun.

I pick characters that I like that are also at least decent in battles. When I replay the games I might rotate characters around to try out different ones, but there are other characters that are my favorites that I always put on my team.

Relationships. I usually pair up units based on which support conversations I really like, or which ones I'm curious about seeing. Or just pair them up with anyone if I don't have a preference.

I really like the idea of playing as the bandits like @Hawkwing described. That sounds like it could make a fun spin-off game.

I can think of at least one good reason to use Nino: having her kill Sonia would be really satisfying. The first time I played FE7 I used Nino and she was okay. She actually ended up being better than Erk because I think Erk was RNG-screwed. But then the other day I was replaying FE7 and I just didn't have the patience to train her and mostly used other units. I like Nino as a character though, she's cute!

Conquest spoilers: Also in Fates: any time the characters are wearing silly accessories during important cutscenes.

Good luck! I played FE6 for the first time several months ago and I thought it was pretty tough in normal mode too. It felt great when I finally beat it though. Alan and Lance were both really good in my experience. Also you'll probably want to get all the gaiden chapters (8x, 12x, 14x, 16x, 20x, and 21x) because you need them to unlock the last few chapters and true ending.

I agree with the defense maps like Conquest chapter 10 and Radiant Dawn part 3-13. They're hard but pretty fair. Chapter 15 of Sacred Stones stands out to me just for being a fun desert map. There are a lot of tiles that aren't desert so you aren't slowed down too much, it has two tough boss fights, after a few turns the other lord appears on the opposite side of the map with their army so you don't get overwhelmed, and you can even kind of tell where most of the hidden items are because they're near the bones.

I haven't played chapter 24x of Thracia 776, but chapter 16B has a similar problem with warp tiles. It's an escape map with mostly forest tiles so you have to go very slowly, and then the warp tiles can just send you back to the beginning! And if you get warped back to the start you will have already beaten most of the enemies along the way so it's not really a challenge, it's just boring having to go through the forest again. At least you can get a second pugi.

Zephiel because that would explain why his theme plays even when the music is turned off.

Rafiel because I love dancers that can refresh up to 4 units at once and I like the design of the herons too.

A pegasus/wyvern/griffon rider that's afraid of heights. Maybe they chose a flying class because they wanted to overcome that fear (and over the course of the game they do), and because they really trust their mount not to let them fall.

It depends on the game for me. If it's a game that lets you level grind like awakening or sacred stones I wait until level 20, but with games like echoes or fe4 I promote as soon as possible because I don't see much of a reason not to. Most of the time I try to wait as long as possible, but sometimes I'll promote earlier if things are getting hard or I don't think that unit is likely to reach level 20 promoted by the end of the game anyway.

The second time I played fire emblem 7 (in Hector normal mode), I don't remember the specifics but Oswin ended up being really good. He reached level 20/20 without going out of my way to level grind. I have a picture of him at level 20/14 though.

My favorite is the 11th hour old man character lol. "Did everyone else die?! Do you need the old man?!"

I prefer having limited resources when the game is designed around it, because it forces you to plan and use your resources wisely but also gives you enough so that it isn't impossible to win. I have fun grinding when the game lets you though, and I think it should at least be an option in the postgame (I didn't like that about Conquest).

FE7 was the first game I played that didn't have casual mode, and that made me realize that permadeath wasn't that scary since the game is designed around it and you can avoid most deaths with careful planning. At some point when playing it and FE8 I also realized that it's really important to check enemy weapons and ranges. When I played FE4 I learned to appreciate dancers a lot more. Before I didn't see the point in using them when you could just have another attacker, but since 4 lets you field everyone I saw that the dancers were actually super helpful and often saved me from losing a character and having to restart the whole chapter. And I think it was from watching the Fire Emblem Pitfalls videos that I learned that using the prepromoted units is okay sometimes. Before that I avoided using them at all even if it made the game a lot harder, but now I'm not afraid to use them if I'm having trouble. Edit because I thought of another one: Near the end of my first FE7 playthrough when I finally put together that sages and druids can use staves and that I could have been using Canas and Erk as extra healers the whole time. After that I started paying attention to what weapons units can use after promotion.