Aethelstan

Violence and sexual content that is considered "deviant" are not treated remotely the same in America. America has always been fine with gratuitous violence with no one batting an eye. Look at violent works that are hugely popular in America like Dragonball Z, Scarface, and Call of Duty. Now try to think of widely popular films, games, shows, etc in America that prominently features incest. It's way harder because that stuff doesn't really fly here. Japan just has a less reactionary culture around that stuff. I'm not speaking my personal preference. I adore FE4, I think it's the best narrative of all FE games. I wish they would remake it. But it's not an accident that Nintendo put it on the e-store in Japan and didn't mention it here while they went out of their way to localize FE1 for the US despite us just getting a remake a few years ago that didn't even sell that great. They don't want to deal with the firestorm FE4 would lead to here. Only way I see it happening is if it's not on the nintendo store and is some small physical release. But that's not been Nintendo's style recently.

Those mods look sick! I'm a little disappointed in how few choices there are for Fodlan, but other than that it's a really cool idea. Do these mods also contain a unique unit and ability for each civ? I voted Jugdral and Elibe. I personally would play Agustria as Ares

I generally agree with you that most of the ambush spawns are fine. I would only add one more example to your one of Miklan's being annoying. Felix's paralogue has a spawn point that puts out some decently fast rogues right in the path the villager's AI will take to their escape point. Your units are usually pretty spread out on that map so you may need to divine pulse way back to set people up who can intercept them. I usually find ambush spawns annoying in some older games because you can do everything right and only lose becasue it's your first time playing the map and you didn't know they would be there. But I think it's uniquely fine in 3H because of divine pulse. I think that's mainly what the developer intended it for.

Three Houses has a dynamite story. But I wouldn't say most narratively intensive by far. I gotta plug FE4. I think it's better than the VW, SS, or CF routes of Three Houses and rivals AM. Path of Radiance is also up there. I also don't think the FE7 plot is thin once it gets to Bern and if you put in the time to learn Nergal's backstory. Shadow Dragon, Sacred Stones, and many others are nothing special narrative wise though. My biggest gripe about the lower difficulties is I don't think Intelligent Systems is good balancing them and that makes a lot of new players think the game is just poorly designed. On the harder difficulties you are forced to use all the tools at your disposal to get by. Some franchises are really good at encouraging you to do all that stuff even at lower difficulties so you always get the full experience but FE is usually not because that's never been IS' forte. On lower difficulties in casual mode there is just no reason to worry about inventory management, learning skills outside the most obvious class tree, or even something as basic as unit placement on maps because no matter what you choose your unit will likely be able to kill whatever it comes across. I think casual mode is part of the problem. The maps in the series are partially balanced around the enemy being able to use kamikaze tactics while you cannot, so even if you have better stats than them like on lower difficulties, the computer still has an advatage you lack. But with casual mode there is never a negative consequence to just bum rushing the boss with all your units regardless of the map. So that's the only strategy many players ever pursue. On higher difficulties, casual mode can still be challenging and fun for some players, but it kills the exeprience completely on lower difficulties in my opinion. All that said, I prefer the franchise making lots of money to it not doing that because that's how we get more games. So if the cost of that is some people falsely believing the games are two dimensional it's a very small price to pay.

For me what has distinguished him the most on my team and why I say he's one of my better units now is Deadeye. I think it's unique to him and Bernadetta. It's not that useful right when you get it. But after Death Blow, Bowfaire, Hit+20, and an accuracy ring he regularly has about ~75 hit chance on the most distant units he can reach and it's strong enough to one shot many mages and archers, removing them before they ever have the chance to become annoying. That makes it much easier to advance with fliers and low res units. Also good for weakening some units that charge in from outside your reach like cavaliers making them easy to one round when they reach you. That's something only he is capable of on my team. And it was easy to build it all before the time skip.

For me what has distinguished him the most on my team and why I say he's one of my better units now is Deadeye. I think it's unique to him and Bernadetta. It's not that useful right when you get it. But after Death Blow, Bowfaire, Hit+20, and an accuracy ring he regularly has about ~75 hit chance on the most distant units he can reach and it's strong enough to one shot many mages and archers, removing them before they ever have the chance to become annoying. That makes it much easier to advance with fliers and low res units. Also good for weakening some units that charge in from outside your reach like cavaliers making them easy to one round when they reach you. That's something only he is capable of on my team. And I was able to build it all before the time skip.

That's one of the good points of the Sniper line. Since all he needs is bows I spent the extra time building up his authority. He's already at B

Welcome! We can always use more Sylvain fans here. I'm newish myself. FE7 was also my first Fire Emblem and the one I've played the most times. I never grow tired of that story. Happy posting!

Giving an update for whoever still cares. I've made it to Chapter 10 and haven't lost anyone. I took everyone's advice and narrowed my team down to all the Blue Lions except Dedue, plus Ferdinand, Leonie, Lysithea and Caspar. I'm debating switiching Seteth into my main team when I get him. I made Ferdinand my Dancer and he's been broken. Using him feels like Lewyn from FE4. Everything except a few assassins have less than a 20% chance of hitting him. I also got Seal Speed from his budding talent so he was great at helping Ashe and Leonie get kills after weakening units on enemy phase. I used to always use Dorothea as my dancer for the linked attack boost with meteor but in terms of utility I now think Ferdinand is more valuable. Being able to dance frontline fighters in dangerous locations and not have to worry gives you much more flexibility. Also Ferdie looks godly in the dancer outfit. I know many people recommend getting Mov +1 for Dancer Ferdinand but I just gave him the movement stat booster and I'm interested in hearing what other skills might be useful. I'm kind of thinking Alert Stance to help with the few enemies Ferdie is still struggling to dodge. But not sure it's best because I almost always find it more useful to dance another unit rather than wait. Please give me suggestions. Also do people usually make Annette a WR before the timeskip? I don't have a Bolt Axe or Crusher yet but she does know Lightning Axe and can kill with it, she would just be useless/vulnerable on enemy phase having to rely on her bad strength if I lost access to her magic right now. But I know flying movement can be useful for Chapter 13. That was my original idea behind WR Ashe, I'm just less worried about him now. I get why people dislike Ashe. He certainly took a lot of investment. But A) His chip damage was an absolute necessity for me many times in the early game where many units could not afford to take damage on player phase but could kill in one hit with a combat art after chip damage and B) After getting Death Blow and Bowfaire from Sniper he's become of my better units. He would really appreciate having Hunter's Volley but I don't think he's bad without it, just not amazing. Appreciate all the help thus far!

I want remakes of the Elibe games. Particulary one where Lynn is worth using on harder difficulties. There should also be one more game in the style of three houses, though it probably won't come out for years. But it seems to be IS' style. (Binding Blade then Rekka no Ken, Awakening then Fates, PoR then Radiant Dawn) FE4 is among my favorite games of any franchise but there is no way in hell it would ever be released in America and put on the Nintendo store here. I don' think it's the gameplay at all. I think it's the incest. America is far more conservative about that stuff than Japan. If it was released here there would be tons of Kotaku and Polygon articles about it and it would generate lots of negative attention for the franchise they don't want. They took great pains over the last few games to give the series more mainstream appeal, they wouldn't throw that away for FE4 for just the most hardcore fans. I'd be happy to be proven wrong but I don't think I will be.

Okay you've all given me a lot to think about. I've only played Maddening NG+ with BE and VW before. This is my first Maddening NG on any route. Blue Lions I've only played on Hard so I've never had to worry too much about optimizing these units. I guess I'll drop all my extra units from the main party except Dorothea, Lysithea, and Caspar. Might consider others if I bench Dedue or Ashe after Chapter 13. Because I won't be using Lin, I definitely will want Mercedes as a Gremory since she will do the bulk of the healing. I'm going to take a lot of the other advice on classes. So I'll do Sniper Ashe and keep Slyvain as a paladin. But I still feel a little weird giving up on Annette's magic altogether. What are people's thoughts on her as a Dark Knight wielding magical weapons? Does it dramatically underperform her as Wyvern Lord? Who do you think its the first, Ferdinand or Marianne? I always use Dorothea as my dancer. She gives me great results everytime. But I adore Ferdinand and if he's viable it'd be cool to try something new.

Part of why I wanted to recruit everyone I could and unlock as many paralogues as possible is because I thought it would provide enough exp to keep more than 11 units up to speed for the main game. Do most of you believe that's not feasible even with all the paralogues? I will definitely adjust my long term strategy if that's the case. I have to admit Annette as a Wyvern Lord feels very weird but it would be nice to use Crusher properly.

Thanks for all the tips so far! They've been very helpful. What's the optimal class path for Dimitri if I don't go for brigand? I want to raise all the blue lions characters. I don't want a bad time in Chapter 13. Plus I genually like most of them. The characters I want to recruit and use in the main game are Lysithea, Linhardt, Leonie, Seteth, Bernadetta (if she doesn't get screwed), Dorothea, and Caspar (I know he's not as optimal as units like Petra but I just love the little guy and will probably want Byleth to marry him. He's my favorite member of the cast) but like I said I'm trying to recruit everyone I possibly can. I haven't settled on class paths for everyone but final classes will likely be as follows: Dimitri - Great Lord (open to Holy Knight for Aura but realistically don't want to train faith that much and it's hard with his slump mid game) Byleth - Wyvern Lord Annette - Valkyrie Ingrid - Falcon Knight Ashe - Wyvern Lord Sylvain - Dark Knight Felix - Trickster or Assassin depending on his MAG Dedue - War Master Mercedes - Gremory Lysithea - Gremory or Valkyrie Lindhardt - Bishop Leonie - No idea, I've always done Bow Knight, open to ideas. Seteth - Wyvern Lord Bernadetta - Bow Knight Dorothea - Dancer Caspar - War Master, I have enough Wyvern Lords. Open to any tips on class paths or better final classes. Thanks again!

I think there's a lot of good ideas here. Something that falls between Hard and Lunatic would be the perfect challenge without grinding and you'd still be able to use any character you want pretty much. I agree with most of the changes, especially nerfing ambush units who are cheap as hell in some chapters. I'm really excited to check it out. I cannot get enough of Awakening though I recognize it's flaws. I agree with others about giving dark magic to other classes. Having it for sorcerors forced you to use them. Nosferatu still needed to be nerfed anyway though and the cost was a really interesting way to do it. I agree on taking away away wind magic's effectiveness to flyers. It made wyvern's feel too weak to me. That might just be becasue my first FE games were the GBA ones.

I'm putting in my vote for Julia. Her high MAG lets her silence or sleep virtually anybody. She's a great user of Psychic as well. And you don't need to be worried about her placing much because she can defend herself rather well with Nosferatu. The only issue she has is lack of a mount but if you aren't playing LTC I don't think that's a huge deal