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Ike and Micaiah duke it out for the number one spot in my heart and my least favorite would be Corrin with Celica, Alm and Lyn sharing the spot just above him.

Yeah, I get what you mean. It's just that I've been pretty inclined to make use of status ailments, buffs, debuffs, etc. in RPGs and whenever I find that these sorts of things might be useful to me I make use of them in SRPGs as well. They're definitely niche, but I guess that's fine with me since they allow me to pull off some of the strategies that I like.

For story, I think people see good non fanservicey character designs and hear good voice acting and just feel like everything is alright without actually noticing the crippling flaws this game's narrative and cast actually have.

I like status staves as they give some more utility to staff wielding units and can open up some interesting strategies especially in games that want you to fulfill some side objectives like in Binding Blade when you have to keep Douglas alive as an enemy unit to get a gaiden chapter putting him to sleep gives tons of free turns to run around the rest of the map. For each status specifically: Poison - Is basically worthless and I just wish the animation was faster Sleep - Can be helpful in player hands, but is only a mild annoyance in enemy hands when it comes to chapters with no time requirements Berserk - Fun to play around with, but I've never found it particularly helpful Silence - Just another helpful staff and something to work around. Freeze - Really helpful for fighting dodge tanks and saving units from nearby enemies. Entrap - Can help to blow up some enemy formations and make a later section of the map a lot easier to handle Enfeeble - Kind of annoying when the enemy uses it, but regardless a good staff that you can still work around as well as make use of to cripple some dangerous enemies Hexing - Like a lot of people have said is the worst and cruelest weapon I've seen in this series. It lasts the whole map and basically puts any unit it hits within oneshot range. In a game like Fates where it feels like you don't have a ton of reliable tanks to also have a staff that cuts your HP in half basically rendering one of your few tanks worthless with no way of fighting against it is one of the most infuriating things that can happen. I think most status stave are fine since your generally have some way of working around them while still being very useful in their own right. For me the hexing rod is the only one I outright hate since there is nothing you can do to fight against it and there's no real way to work around your units being hexed since they'll all mostly end up in oneshot range.

Berserkers in Fates (because I don't think a single other game in the series uses this class as much as Fates does) They hit ridiculously hard in a game were most units seem to have low health, they're fast so they double, high crit rates so they can out right oneshot you unless they're equipped with some kind of specialty weapon which just makes them dangerous in another way. This class in the epitome of gambling whether they are under your control or not. They're unreliable when you have them and you need to be lucky when they're enemies. I don't think any other class has ever driven me as crazy as them.

Wow thinking back on it that's actually true. Is this an intentional theme with Fire Emblem stories or is it just some bizarre coincidence. I mean Garnhef and Medeus, Zephiel and Idoun, Nergal and the fire dragon, Garon and Anankos. So many Fire Emblem games have a main antagonist and then some other guy shows up out of nowhere to be the final boss with little to no build up through out the game and the few that are built up are all just back loaded into the game.

Wasn't the theme of the game supposed to be the joining of two conflicting ideals. I mean yeah, the game was terrible at it but isn't that the theme the original Gaiden was going for. It wouldn't make sense for it to be men vs gods when the primary antagonists of the game are men. Duma's madness is one of the major contributors to starting the conflict as well as Duma being the final boss, but he was hardly the main antagonist. It's similar to how Nergal is the main antagonist of FE 7, but the fire dragon is the final boss or how Medeus is the final boss of FE 1,3,11,and 12 but the real antagonist is Garnhef. How did it play into Alm's arc? his part of the story put a focus on the idea of nobility and difference between nobles and commoners. Alm constantly tries to say that there is no difference between nobles and commoners but he's secretly a prince and everyone constantly points out how much better Alm is at everything in comparison to everyone else. His very character contradicts his message. I never meant to imply that Duma vs Mila was the theme of the game. Duma and Mila are a brother and sister who had deifferent beliefs and ideals about how humans should be handled and because of that went their separate ways despite caring for one another. The point of the story was supposed to be two characters who represented their ideals coming together to find the middle ground that they did not and making a better world for themselves with that new ideology. I admit that Alm is very likable (although I creedit that more to his fantastic voice actor), but he's not a well handled character in this story. Corrin's a mess of a character that's trying to be an avatar and his own character at the same time and because of the developers refusal to let the player's feelings get hurt when their avatar is called out for being an idiot Corrin is free to do stupid thing after stupid thing and receive no consequences for any of his actions. When it comes to flawed characters in order for them to actual feel like people they need to be flawed. Everyone has flaws and it comes from our life experiences, beliefs, etc. We all have reasons for the way we are and don't always do the best thing in every situation, we can't be good at everything. What makes a flawed character good is when we are given every reason to understand their flaws. We may not like or agree with their choices but we can understand them because we don't share their experiences, we have a different perspective from them. I think my favorite instance of a well-written flawed character in recent memory in Killmonger from the recent Black Panther film. who is obviously a villain that we shouldn't agree with, but his experiences and his arguments for his point make you stop and think. He was a good character because while he was wrong you could see why he held his particular beliefs (maybe I'll talk about him in more detail in a different post). Alm having no flaws is what makes me unable to relate to him for most of the game. I understand why he wants to leave his village; he makes it clears he doesn't want his whole life to just be Ram village. I understand why he comforts Berkut when he's dying; he shows early on that he feels lonely because of his small family and some distance from Mycen and now he knows who his blood family is and they are dying, he wanted to be with them despite them previously being enemies. Those parts of Alm's character are actually decent, but his being so perfect at all other times hurts the themes of his game and hurts the characters he interacts with. Celica's a pretty bad character as well because despite being so flawed there's no real reasons we are given for those flaws. They just come across as contrivances for the story to move in a certain direction, like when Alm and Celica split up after meeting in part 2 and when she flat out ignores her friends and her brother when they ask her not to trust Jedah or to sacrifice herself. She just comes across as a selfish idiot who only causes trouble for others.

The problem with Alm in SoV is that he's the perfect golden boy and that ends up hurting the themes that the game tries to emphasize like an equality between nobility and commoners as well as the dichotomy between him and Celica. Alm being perfect and better than everyone at everything just kind of ruins everything that the story is attempting.

Sorry, kind of just ignored this thread for a while and didn't think about responding. Was it really the point to make Alm perfect at everything and making everyone else including Celica inadequate in comparison (although Celica's not just bad because Alm's better than her) if that's the case that still sounds really boring and not engaging. The interpretation of Alm's character in Awakening is meant to be a pragmatist, he understood Zofia's position and that fighting back was the only course of action they could take or else they would have been conquered by Rigel. He wasn't a bloodthirsty savage who only wanted to fight or some power monger who wanted to take over the throne. His dialogue only implies that he was a realist who knew that there was no way you could just sit down and talk with the Rigelians and get them to leave Zofia. What was needed was brute force to show them they couldn't just walk all over Zofians. Awakening Alm being a pragmatist doesn't mean he's lacking in compassion it only means he knows when to offer someone his hand in an offer of peace or his sword in a show of strength. The only representation of Mila's ideals that Alm shows in SoV is the fact that he's not a jerk it's not really a part of his character that is explored otherwise. As for how Mycen raised him, The only thing we know is that Alm was trained in military strategy and swordsmanship. We can assume they were a loving family because of their support conversation, but otherwise who knows. FE 11 Marth isn't missing the point of Marth's character because there is no point to Marth's character. Marth in FE 1 was basically just a player avatar with no real personality and FE 11 gave him one. It was good because it was just well handled. Keeping Alm similar to his famicom portrayal just means he's limited and nothing is actually done with him. I mean Clive, from the same game, has had a massive update to his character, which had less of a point than Alm's and he's probably the one of the best characters in SoV.

How is making a deeper character a travesty. Marth essentially had no personality in FE 1 and was given more of a character in FE 3 book 2 with how he now was being affected by the events going on around him and FE 11 went and gave him a actual character arc in his original story that helped to make him more compelling of a lead. Alm staying so bland and uninteresting for the sake of keeping him consistent with his limited characterization within a famicom game sounds like one of the most laughable decisions they could have made to make him into someone people would actually care about.

I think for a lot of people, myself included, it more had to do with the interpretation of his character in Awakening being incredibly more interesting and engaging then what we got rather than it being unfaithful to the original. I kind of got my hopes up for one of the most unique lords in the series and what we got was Marth 9.0 and ironically a worse character than Marth 1.0.

It's kind of sad that the more recent Fire Emblems have gotten some real good voice actors to do really good voice overs for their really crappy leads (you know, Azura, Alm, Celica ...).

Isn't that more apart of how Ike was raised? He grew surrounded by mercenaries and battle and it was expected of him to be strong. When his entire life revolved around battle and improving his swordsmanship (something he wasn't opposed to at all) it seems like his obsession with defeating the man who beat his father, the strongest swordsman in all of Tellius, lines up pretty well. As for Zelgius, it doesn't really feel like that warrior mentality was delved into too deeply, the only thing we can do is imply that he wanted to be stronger because of his past experiences and relationship with Gawain.

For me the problem with reclassing isn't that it's mandatory (which it isn't) or that it makes you grind it's the fact that how it's handled in Fire Emblem just shows how badly balanced the different classes are. Fire emblem's always had trouble making all the classes relevant; in most of the games being a mounted unit automatically makes you good because there are so many benefits and so few downsides. With reclassing a lot classes feel like they only exist for the sake of getting a skill out of it and once you've gotten that skill you just reclass into something better because now there is no reason to stay in that class. My problem with reclassing as it exists now is that it homogenizes all the units and makes even having separate classes pointless. There are other factors in this that show certain classes are pointless like how there are typically no inherent abilities for any classes outside of mounts (who get canto) and fliers (who, well, can fly) that make some classes like armors laughably pointless. Map design not being in their favor doesn't help either, but at this point I'm starting to ramble. I just think IS needs to go back to basics with Fire Emblem and build a game that actually gives a reason for all the classes to actually exist before they start screwing around with reclassing as a mechanic.

I'm working my way through Thracia so I haven't finished, but I'm pretty sure he's referencing how some units of the same class promote into different things. For example, thieves in Thracia promote into thief fighters but one of those thieves can promote into a thief fighter or a dancer or thief fighter and then into dancer.

I really enjoyed the down to regular battle animations in Echoes, but I think special skills like should be over the top to just show how strong it is.

Swords are less popular because in more recent games they are just outclassed by axes and lances. In the old games swords were just accurate and low weight and in comparison to the other weapon types which had higher might, but low hit and high weight. The down sides were just so extreme that swords beat them out entirely. By FE 7 the weapon stats were a bit more balanced which helped out the other two but the game also had an abundance of enemies carrying 1-2 range weapons which swords could not counter because they had no readily available 1-2 range option so now swords which were dominant in FE 1-6 were now the worst weapon type until Radiant Dawn gave them a 1-2 range option. Then in 11 and 12 that changed again with enemies and weapons being rebalanced in the remakes resulting in swords being bad again and having no 1-2 range. Fates eventually came along and just gave the 3 main physical weapons equally crappy 1-2 range weapons, but then it also added bows, tomes, and hidden weapons to the triangle and hidden weapons alone, with their debuffs and equal might to all the other weapon types, probably beats out everything else. In short, Fire Emblem is pretty bad at finding a way to balance its weapons and swords in recent history are typically the worst type so having our main character stuck to the worst weapons type, at least until promotion, is pretty bad.

Well he's the general of an army. He needs to be the figure that inspires his men to fight and since Alm is the type of leader to fight on the frontlines as he gives order of course he would charge head first into battle. It's not so much that he's eager to cut down some Rigelian scum as much as he does what he feels is expected of him as the leader of the Deliverance. I don't think they added anything to Alm's character in the remake that made him look bloodthirsty or even give him an actual reason to think fighting isn't the correct option. The only thing Echoes does is send in Celica to call him a warmonger who's trying to take the Zofian throne for himself while he sits there dumbfounded at the ridiculous leap in logic she made. Overall they really did a poor job of establishing a dichotomy between Alm and Celica when it came to their methods of handling the war between Rigel and Zofia.

Yeah, you're right. If Conquest didn't try so hard to say Corrin is the real victim in this story and constantly talk about how much it hurts HIM to fight and kill his Hoshidan siblings the story would be a little better. I mean, it wouldn't change the fact that Nohr is invading another country rather than using diplomacy to get what they need so Nohr would still end up on the moral low ground.

Hoshido is the most moral of the two. Fates barely even touches on any reason for Nohr to invade in favor of trying to make you so attached to your siblings that you forget that you were actually kidnapped and are attacking a kingdom of innocent people for basically no reason and murdering what you believe is your blood related family that just want you to come back home.

How often they've handed out armorslayers in the past has no bearing on what they would do in later games. They could give tons of units armorslayers as the game goes on as a method to counter them. Pegasus Knights typically don't have high strength but they can still rescue drop stronger units, provide chip damage and then run away with canto, they aren't impeded by forests or deserts like cavaliers. Being able to rack up kills isn't all it takes for units to be considered good or useful.

I totally agree with you I think reclassing should go. Rather than trying to increase replay ability by changing unit classes and grinding they should increase it through making maps that can be beaten in various ways and giving rewards for taking the much harder path in those maps. Sadly I don't think the majority of the fanbase care or share this opinion and if they do haven't voice any complaints so, as I said earlier, I pretty sure IS will just make some tweaks to the Awakening/Fates reclassing system and leave it at that.

I like playing as Rowan too. Actually I'm often pretty surprised to see so many people say they like playing as Lianna and then go on to say they hate to play as Rowan even though they have the same moveset and, correct me if I'm wrong, until you can put topsy turvy on a sword he has the better stat spread then Lianna.

If reclassing has to make a return I would rather that class skills be something kept to the class and only personal skills be carried over. The reclassing system of Fates and Awakening made all classes only about the skills it netted you and once you obtained them you would just reclass to something overall better and got to keep the skills which just served to make individual units overpowered. With personal skills carrying over units could still retain their identity and a niche that only they could fulfill even if they reclass. Also this is just my personal wish but I'd like to see class skills obtained right away as opposed to leveling up to get them just to further emphasize what each classes functions are. I can't remember how many times I would play through Fates or Awakening and grind an individual unit just to get their next skill. Though considering that the majority of the fanbase seems to prefer grinding and minmaxing their units I don't expect any changes like that to happen and for IS to just make tweaks to the current reclassing systems. *sigh* hopefully they're good tweaks.

Along with what the others have said I also feel that it would be more engaging to fight a final boss that was built up over the course of the game rather than a dragon who randomly swoops in and says "Rawr I'm the REAL bad guy."