Zapp Branniglenn

Dunno if these are ordered within tiers but Ike seems like he's in the wrong tier. I feel like the only map in the game in which he's uniquely good before Ragnell is Chapter 8. Because there's a ton of horses to the south and he can sit there knocking them out with the regal sword. You can feel free to deplete it there too since cavaliers become pretty rare enemies from then on. Soren and Tormod are also real questionable. Soren's combat is just not up to par with physical units and he's going to cause you a bunch of resets on every difficulty trying to keep him away from not only the front lines but javelins and archers. Tormod isn't noteworthy for anything either, and annoyingly joins after the laguz-filled desert chapter where he would be outperforming some of your units. All in all these two deserve to be wherever you put Illyana. They're fun projects for casual play - and vital backup healers for iron man play. But their combat never surpasses "please feed me a kill every turn" on Hard mode. They won't naturally hit double thresholds for many enemies and magic damage is just really weak with 1-3MT tomes. If they do start one rounding it can cause new problems now that more enemies with 2 range are suiciding themselves on their low defense/hp.

And isn't it just a little tiring to see these sex-less JRPG worlds over and over again? Where's there's obvious feelings of attraction, but everyone was clearly pulled out of sex-ed and nobody talks about it? Living a life in fear of their own Sinful thought. Ayra's already cool with being this dangerous red unit on the battlefield and using Astra. But the coolest thing about her is that she's DTF. That makes her super compelling and relatable. I want her to make it home from every fight so that she can Give Gold and then some. I wouldn't buy for a second that she'd be attracted to me or my milk-paste avatar in Fire Emblem Echoes of the Holy War. I can't compete with Arden's muscle adVantage, or Best Sex Lex. F it. We're getting a third mode to the left of Casual. Cut the gameplay, replace it with a developer's playthrough (skippable), and now players can skip straight to the fishing mini game between chapters

Yeah I know a bit about that grind. My friend and I have been working our way through Round 2 of Pokemon Stadium, and training a team of six lv 100s just to take on that one round of Prime Cup. One shotting those 26 same pokemon, then soft resetting through the credits. You might be thinking just use the speedup feature, but unlike Stadium 1, Stadium 2's 2x and 3x speed settings only unlock after 100%ing Round 2, not Round 1 like in the previous game. It'll all be worth it to use Light Ball Surfing Pikachu

I thought of it as a "Let's roleplay as Youngster Joey" challenge, and Joey canonically evolves Rattata into Raticate. But I suppose among the realm of die hard challenge runners, letting him evolve takes a bit of the spice out of the challenge. For what it's worth, Taking your level 100 Raticate to fight Red should be the showdown of all showdowns.

Stacking Badge boosts is a good idea. Way to play the game like it's Gen 1. And Double Team is already a desirable effect in the first place. I often find myself talking big game about how good Rattata is in Gens 1 and 2. So a Youngster Joey run would certainly prove it. Brock would be an obnoxious roadblock, but Hyper Fang is the toughest move any pokemon is slinging that early in the game. Super Fang also hits Ghost types in Gen 1. As for Gen 2, the third gym badge is an early boost that helps make normal types king.

I was also about to suggest a system where your Avoid rate gets cut on subsequent attackers on enemy phase. Because when more and more people swing a weapon in your general space, there's less space for you to feasibly dodge. Anyone who's packing an extra stock at the end of a Smash Bros Free For All match knows that phenomenon well. "He has a second stock. Get him!" You could also bring back Fatigue and have its effects start to activate within that map itself where you've gotten over-fatigued - one of them being a penalty to avoid. I know I would love a scenario where there's an awesome recruitable unit on terrain, but if you take too long eventually he succumbs to fatigue. Fatigue could also be done in stages with stacking effects the worse you get. Stage 1 Fatigue is Attack being cut in half. Stage 2 is Avoid cut in half. 3 is Def/Res. 4 is HP. 5 is Mov and you essentially become a civilian NPC that can't fight. And maybe weapon rank somewhere for staff users, since they wouldn't care about most of these so long as they don't see combat.

I would be really exhausted by the hetero-normative pairings being pushed on us. But I think that's just me and not a Fire Emblem specific thing. Think I'll go with the bottom option. I can't think of any likely pairing that would bug me. Yet I also can't think of any likely pairing that would get me to say "Ah, finally". I can imagine most of them would be decided purely to fridge one or both characters in order to up the stakes. And from that perspective choosing to pair up two legacy characters is kind of mean. Writers always looking for parents to kill. Weddings to ruin. So it's less "I don't care" and more "I don't trust them".

I'm not saying I would ever buy it, but I do think Rutger could really use a hug. And Wendy to protect my dog. Okay I guess I would buy it.

Donkey Kong Country and Yoshi's Island are closer in style in my imo. Both emphasize exploration and completionism and removed the timer so you can play at your own pace through every level. DKC just has a more notorious difficulty in precision platforming while Yoshi is technically indestructible. Plus the main characters have both been tasked with searching for their lost fruit. DK swings on vines, Yoshi swings with his tongue. I've always felt Yoshi's Island would have been the easiest transition into that N64 collectathon era. And with all the difficulties of 3D platforming and depth perception, we sure would have appreciated the Flutter Kick for course correction. Aiming eggs in first person like you do with DK's coconut gun. As for plot, let's say the Kongs fall into a time machine developed by Baron K. Roolenstein. They all get sent into the past. And not only do they find Yoshi, but Baby K Rool. Boom, new Mario Kart character. Baby K Rool Rides Yoshi in Baby Mario's place while present day K Rool teams up with Baby Bowser and Kamek out of desperation since he doesn't have his usual army.

The first Octopath Traveler sold 3 million units according to Square, which certainly outperforms the latest non-spinoff entries of SMT, Tales, Trails, and Ys. It's a fair point that for Square Enix standards it's not the toppest tier IP in their catalogue but I think we're straying off of the topic. Why exclude this or that game based on perceived budget and 'intentional niche-ness'? OT2 is a turn based JRPG, and we were talking about that style of combat. I'm not even sure what place Ys and Tales have in this discussion, as those were always action games first. Turn based rpgs with involuntary random encounters still release as recently as the year 2023. It's not up for debate, it's an observable fact. What is up for debate is whether this style of game has aged any better or worse than the Xbox360/PS3 era of action games you brought up. And yeah I wouldn't exactly place Yakuza 3 among the PS3's Top 10 action games. Just like I wouldn't have picked FF13 to represent JRPGs. Actually...FF13 would definitely make the top 10 PS3 JRPG list. Top 5 potentially. Slim pickings back then.

How low budget we talking? Have we reached the point where $60 in 2023 is a low budget release? Not trying to dunk on the recent, Square-Enix-Published Octopath Traveler 2, just a genuine question. Did they put random encounters in the game because of the game's price point/developmental budget or because it's a genre staple that few fans are willing to criticize? I'm willing to bet it's the latter. And surely their budget could spare enemy sprites roaming areas like in Chrono Trigger. That's exactly right. The player vibes it out in lieu of information. Which is fine, though it reminds me of how many people have gravitated to Intelligent Systems' RPGs (Fire Emblem and Paper Mario) due to their use of smaller digit numbers. The information is easily parsed and counted out by the player. And Fire Emblem's battle forecast is a revelation in game design. When combat is predictable, it becomes strategic and engaging in a genre that is asking the player to make conscious choices from a menu. What I really meant regarding "hidden stats" is things like, how resistant is the enemy to my sleep spell? I feel like I'm lucky if I see the words IMMUNE pop up on an attempt, let alone "Resistant". And if so, how resistant? The difference between 50% resistant and 90% resistant is enough to sway me on choosing between Sleep or Attack. How likely is my Flee attempt from this random encounter? Is there a Scan ability, and how much information does it get me? What are my FE unit's Growth Rates, or my pokemon's Individual Values? How does my play experience benefit from the game hiding these stats from me? Yakuza combat has some annoying idiosyncracies with its boss designs, but I don't think these are RNG scenarios. To get past blocks consistently, try attacking from the side or back. They can't break out of your combos this way either. A well timed dodge to the side often places you directly past their block. Kiryu has the same weakness. Can't block attacks that he's not facing (unless there's some unlockable skill permitting it). And if an enemy is comboing you from the front, try holding block, it may bail you out from some damage. As for their grab breaks, it's often a matter of have you grabbed them already not. Similar to how the damage of Heat Actions drops off if you've done one already. The game wants you to mix it up. Grabbing from behind typically has more favorable results too. I would be surprised if there was any RNG at play here. In my experience I think it's just bosses permitting X amount of grabs, or perhaps there's some hidden cooldown period before a grab will work again.

When I first played Persona 5 and tested whether you get a game over when Joker dies (yes, I think it's prudent to Save and then Test before finding out the hard way in a game that lacks autosave/checkpoints), the High of the game ended right there. We're still doing this huh? It is the year 20XX according to that calendar and my human, supposedly free thinking party members will not think to revive me unless I'm conscious enough to tell them to do it. No in-universe justification like my party is made up of demons whose contracts end when I die. I got nothing against special Game Over states, but this SMT trope is ancient and not even implied in the forced tutorials as far as I recall. It's SMT's equivalent to Pokemon's HMs, but even Pokemon ditched those after 20 years. Only to reappear later in the form of Xenoblade 2's Field Skills. Turn based games have absolutely aged in their own ways. You just have to unplug and look at them from the perspective of a genre-outsider. Their battle mechanics can be obviously imbalanced or not give you enough information to make dynamic and informed decisions. Stats hidden from the player are still a thing. Ultra-rare drops - and how you'd only know about them from a guide. Random encounters and a 50/50 chance of Flee Success are still ubiquitous. Think of every time you died due to pure RNG and compare that to every time an action game's camera contributed a little bit to your death. Fire Emblem's Fog of War hasn't been updated since FE6 - I don't even need to have played the latest one to guess that it still doesn't impact enemy AI to imply they also have limited vision.

Haven't played much in the last few weeks but at the top of the month I did play Mega Man Rock N' Roll Fire Emblem The Binding Blade

They all move in FE3. Every enemy is aggroed to your position from the first turn except for the wyvern that sits on the throne. So the battle with Michalis happens outside in the canyon rather than inside the building like it did in FE1. I do not recall how it plays out in FE11. And then you've got that thief heading for the village with Gotoh. In FE1 it's easy to beat him there with no enemies in the way, but now there's a Knight-Filled Sky directly in your path. To get Starlight I had no choice but to Warp Marth ahead to kill the thief while the battle with Michalis and his cronies was still going on. All the while stressing out about whether the back line of units could kill Marth and end the ironman. He was fine, they killed Abel instead. And Michalis went straight for the ORKO on his sister. At least we didn't need to travel for their funerals.

I actually did point out Lorenz's buffed defense (though I didn't give any numbers. It's 16 to 19). However, this is not sufficient to make him basically invincible. In FE1 Michalis and his puny javelin does 21 damage. But remember that FE3 Book 1 is functionally a Hard mode, especially with its boss characters. FE3 Michalis with his silver lance has 30 damage and his defense is capped at 20, so he would double base level Lorenz for 22 damage, and Lorenz would do 11 in response with gradivus. Michalis also has 7 crit on both swings while Lorenz has 0 (they gave Michalis a Luck stat). The other enemies would not deal nearly as much damage, but Michalis is a ruthless killer and you're fighting in a canyon that is mostly 1 space wide. Use Lorenz to lure him to a spot a mage can reach. Linda's Aura tome can ORKO him if she leveled up speed seven times. Excalibur has a decent chance to score a crit too.

Only looking at games I've played since 2017. Though I definitely think that excludes some of the better showcases for this class. With armor knights, I'm reminded of a good thing to keep in mind - Use units when and where they're good. If they don't have a place being in that map, don't deploy them. Players tend to think if they're raising a unit or if a unit is considered "good" then that means they need perfect attendance in every map, no exceptions. But It's still your call to make. And look how your deployment slots open up when you start making these decisions! Three Houses: You bet I'm counting the armor knight certification. 12 base defense is nearly guaranteed to be at least one free point for any physical unit that can spare the skill exp to train some Armor after they're finished with Axes and the saint statues have unlocked. Even mages might consider the detour depending on their priorities. As for actually using the class, Stride and Reposition are all you need to get these guys into position early. And being an Axe-using class means a unit could reclass to an armor, brigand, or Wyvern to match the map layout and objective priorities. Defense stacking would be very effective in Maddening if not for those poison strike archers. But take the Ingrid paralogue for instance. Infinite reinforcements that can only deal single digit damage to an armor knight's 16 base defense. None of the enemies are mages or possess axebreaker so it's a good ecosystem for them. And I'd be remiss not to mention my maddening Gauntlets only run, where nearly all my units spent time in this class and found room for the Armored Blow skill (did you know armor knights have unique punching animations? I didn't). Fortress Knight is a great choice for Batallion Wrath degeneracy, especially if there's no terrain to pad out your avoid. Your priority will be reducing the damage you take directly, and the innate Weight -5 makes up for the speed drop. And finally Great Knight is only something I've used to salvage a Ferdinand that wasn't cutting it as a wyvern. Not the worst class in the game, but definitely begging for a justification to use. The Last Promise (Romhacks whaaaa?): Kevin has the best availability of any unit. 13 defense at level 3. Siegfried mode is loaded with mage-less maps and chokepoints where he can contribute without needing to heal. Then you get him back as the bodyguard of Anakin mode to train the next wave of dorks that need the help way more. The biggest issue he has is just that this game's fliers can't carry him. Your first flier of each route are both women with 7 con, they can't carry Kevin regardless of promotion status. Only Ben and Lirin can carry Kevin, but Kevin should be hitting level 20 soon. Frederick is also great. Not Athos-level good, but he can survive against the final boss gauntlet no problem. FE11: Probably the most complicated game to rank classes in general (heh). Draug is a bad unit who is facing ORKOs as early as Chapter 2 on H5. But judging FE11 classes by the units that join in them feels like the wrong approach for FE11. Some of your best units might have tantalizing results when reclassed as a General, like Wolf/Sedgar, famously. Lances are way more viable compared to FE1/3, and they buffed the General's Mov to 6. Giving them bow access is a little superfluous though. An unforged steel bow won't one shot wyverns even on the easiest difficulty. Not unless it's held by a trained Wolf/Sedgar but that's more a statement about those units than the class. And at some point I want them to set up kills, not sponge all the best exp. FE8: Gilliam's got Oswin's availability, but five levels under him. The General class re-introduces Great Shield, but its activation rate is far below FE4's. It does indeed activate on magic attacks - even critical hit magic attacks as seen in this video of Gilliam solo-ing the game. In a standard playthrough I would pick Great Knight not so much because of the extra move but because his Con doesn't change. He can still be rescue dropped by Paladin Franz/Forde, L'aRachel, and Falcoknight Vanessa/Tana. Bear in mind that Gilliam's Aid stat actually drops from 13 to 11, so he's not able to pick up a fair chunk of your units. When he does he will of course have canto. Also Duessel is pretty good. If we're talking Ephraim route, these two units enjoy much better maps. If it's Eirika route, let's say it's below FE7. FE7: Oswin's a pretty big lifeline in hard mode. And in Normal Mode his high level is supplanted by an EXP formula that doesn't level scale as hard. He can be rescue dropped into a key position and chunk enemies to set up kills for your weak units that Marcus might just outright kill. On the pirate ship, the entire right ship is only physical units and you'll find that the FE7 armorslayers don't outpace his vulnerary healing. Oswin certainly feels like the best GBA armor knight, but I'd offer that FE7 also has the best GBA cavaliers as long term projects. And knights crests come as late as in FE6. I usually leave Oswin in his base class, especially since promoted mounted units can no longer carry a General Oswin. His purpose is more like training wheels. But even if he's not a long term prospect he's contributing a lot where and when I need it. As for Wallace, I'm a bit less inclined to drag this ranking down because of him since he's technically not in every FE7 playthrough. FE9: Gatrie is a big help for feeding Boyd and Oscar kills in the early maps, and keeping us all alive in his hectic rejoin chapter. When he's not taking up a deployment slot, he's great! Brom not so much. Even with his lack of Canto, armor knights still help your wall formations plenty. And can be rescued easier here than in GBA FE. They're just not attractive long term units since Generals don't get any notable bonus and Gatrie/Brom both lack a personal skill. Tauroneo (Resolve :0) makes for decent filler in the late game because FE9 is all over the board with its amount of deployment slots. Echoes: I don't think it's controversial to say that this is the worst classline. But when there are just five of them, somebody has to be #5 at the end of the day, and I don't think it's far behind cavs. No villager sees soldier as an attractive choice, but I haven't ever considered benching the ones we do get like I bench later joining units. Valbar annoyingly joins right after the boat maps are over. Alm Route Knights can lure and one shot enemy horses with a ridersbane, but Paladins can do the same if you forge it a bit. And you should forge effective weapons in Echoes. The only unique point to make about these guys is that since they have a ton of health to spend, they can spam combat arts every turn. It's also a fun project finding spaces where you can warp them in once the witches have been lured out. FE6: I've got some experience with the Bors and Bars dream team. But both units are constantly struggling with hit despite their support. And can only kill with a killer lance crit. What I should have done is raise Wendy too and check out the triangle attack. We know it's a gauranteed crit with a weapon of your choosing, but is it a gauranteed hit in the first place? That'd be some good boss killing in a game where that really matters. Unfortunately, thrones typically have just one adjacent space to attack from so your triangle attacks are with javelins. Anyway, not a great showing for this class individually. Use Bors in early game to help feed kills to Allen/Lance and Roy. Use Barth on the bridges of chapter 13. And if you're going Sacae route consider Douglas for luring the Nomads safely. FE4: In maps where I decide to split the party between footies and horses, Arden is valuable in just being the foot unit that can most safely bait a squad of enemies into range. Gen 1 has extremely few mages and mostly 1 range enemies, so when somebody says Arden can solo the game, I believe it. He just doesn't build a lot of confidence, starting the game with a dinky iron sword. If he's locked to any weapon, he should be glad it's swords. And his promotion comes with some awesome perks. I don't think a lot of this translates to standard FE4 play, but I think the idea that he's the worst unit of Gen 1 is fairly antiquated. Jamke is standing right there, and Tiltyu is at risk of dying any turn she's near enemies. FE3 Book 1: Armor Knights promote into Generals now, but both classes lost their access to swords. They're actually the only units that can wield lances in indoors maps, but it's hardly an advantage. The Javelin is 20 weight and will likely get you killed if you try to fight mages with it. What is an advantage is keeping your promotion bonuses in indoor maps. Draug is no longer securing the double in early game, and his stat growths are still just as bad. Roger was blipped from the game. Lorenz was given an almost capped Defense stat, making him fairly attractive for the following Macedon map. He will likely die since every enemy is aggroed from Turn 1, but better him than the units you've been working on since the start right? God that map is brutal. FE1: Individually, I think the unpromoted armors are contributing more here than in FE3 despite not being able to promote and continue leveling up past 20. Draug with a sword can double and set up kills in the earliest maps for units you do care about. Roger helps wall off infinite reinforcements in his join chapter. The big issue here is that armor knights are not the best tanks - manaketes are. Bantu has 18 defense and infinite weapon durability. His defense growth may be 0, but with stat boosters it can surpass the 20 cap all the way to 35. FE3 Book 2: I'll be honest, I forgot Draug was in Book 2. For early game wyverns, he does have just enough weapon level to hold the silver lance as you bait them (so do Aran and the pegasus knights). He's no help at all against mid game dragons that pierce his defense. There's no dragon killer lance. And some early maps are functionally Escape chapters with promoted enemies chasing you from starting position. He may not keep up. Then there's Sheema who is outrageously bad. If I put this in a tier list format, 1-3 are B tier, 4-8 are C tier, the rest are D Edit: Somehow forgot Arden and Added rankings for FE11

GBA Armor knights are so close to being great. Because Rescue supplants their biggest weakness (low movement), but then once your mounted units promote and have less Aid, they can't pick up Generals unless their name is Rath or Shin. It's such an unfortunate blend of mechanics. Promoting means your horse can't pick up this one class that has just a few points more in Con. Anyway this is going to be a painful topic to write for lol

That's too bad you can't enjoy these good units. If a berserker on a mountain gets berserked while in range of wyverns, then it won't change anything. Sure you can't reach them with a restore staff, but there's no need when he's as safe as a baby in a crib with a group of enemies in range to get distracted by. He can only move one tile anyway. So if the wyverns all die too quickly, it'll be some time before he walks back down the mountain to his next target. He might choose to equip Armads which is wasteful but not exactly reset worthy. As for Sleep, you're referring to the druids near brunnja, the wyverns are all long dead before you're in range of them. Chapter 23 has 0 reinforcements so it's a play at your own pace affair, bait out those sleeps before closing in. But okay, LTC hypothetical where you want to use a berserker to kill brunnja but aren't degenerate enough to rig crits on a 30% hand axe hit because it's a no-reset LTC. He can very easily get slept trying to battle her even if you place other targets in range of those staves. Sleep status won't make him any less dodge tanky, but he'll need physic support as he's snoozing because brunnja is more accurate than him. Still safer than trying to do the same with any other unit fighting her from the Plains tile, but you're right that warping him there pre-maturely is likely to be a waste and you'll have to cut through all those enemies in the end anyway. Gonzales certainly has this issue (while the other two don't have to worry about it). Once your mounted units promote, nobody can carry him except Shin and Dayan. This sucks. But Warp does not take Con into consideration, and the Chapter 21 strategy I offered is him walking to the right, and then one tile down onto the peaks. And you may still have an unpromoted shanna in your barracks to carry around an early promoted berserker gonzales. I didn't promote my Shanna because she was level 10 and still had her base 4 strength. Not saying that will ever happen to anybody else, just that FE6 is a game where the player must respond to the RNG sometimes regarding unit selection. The first thing you should do is stop posting and take a breath. You cannot delete posts or your account. Every forum has rules and there's a common one about double posting. No one likes to read one user spamming messages, so you're encouraged to get all of what you want to say in one post. The Edit feature lets you add or remove anything you like. And Use the Quote button on every post that you want to quote or tag that user (@USERNAME). Either option sends them a notification that you're talking to them. By using Edit, you can indeed delete everything you've ever said. Nobody knows about what you did on Reddit and nobody cares. Every user is a person and deserves to be treated like one. Even if they're clearly giving you attitude. Take the conversation I'm having with @Shadow Mir. I know I won't change his mind. He said as much anyway. But I feel like it's still important to get out my perspective in a patient, respectful manner because I acknowledge that I don't know everything and neither does anyone else. Someone is going to hear about FE6 berserkers and the game will probably become more fun and interesting to them. That's worth something. Your perspective can potentially change minds too.

Call me up when they update Capcom's Platinum title list. It would be the Seventh Mega Man thing, and second Mega Man collection to make it. There's a lot of self-serving decisions with how Capcom constructs this list. Namely NOT double counting releases of games that are the same in terms of content just to have another entry to list. But...yeah, they did count the two versions of Battle Network 4 together as one release didn't they. Well if Pokemon is never called out on it then we can cut some slack for the underdog. I know the Platinum Title List is just a space for them to brag about how strong their brands are and only represents a fraction of Capcom's (non-arcade) releases but wow. Imagine if every publisher was that transparent with sales figures as a baseline. Would put a lot of things into perspective.

But have you used berserkers in Sacae? Or anyone in that route? You brought up Sacae route, not me. I wasn't about to because I know everybody avoids it. You say "only three maps" as if the route isn't five maps total. Many classes don't have a single standout map that's playing to their unique abilities like that. And everybody is struggling to hit nomads because they're the fastest enemies in the game. Most of my guys were facing high 70s and not securing the double on the promoted ones. I think my Rutger once whiffed one of his two swings with his generic steel sword. So I forgive Geese's 60-80 displayed hit. It certainly doesn't factor in with his wyvern hunting missions. When the enemies can't hit you, you can take that second turn you need to finish the one with a javelin with your Killer. The only valid criticisms with the berserker class I've neglected to talk about are their pre-promotion. Brigands and pirates do struggle with hitting as you say and gaining experience as a result. But when you promote you get 4 or 5 Skill (Geese and Gonzo, respectively). That's 8-10 base hit - the same gap in accuracy between axes and lances. On an indoors map, sending Geese to kill someone was no more a gamble than sending Allen because this is FE6 we're talking about and everything becomes a team effort due to RNG.

I would actually argue they perform much better in sacae route. Sacae has a lot more mountainous terrain and pesky rivers that would stop your other non-flying units from crossing. In 17B Geese and Lugh took on the whole upper half of the map while everyone else went south. 18B, he headed right over the south river to hand axe nomads from the forest. 20xB I walked Geese to the mountains south of Roy to deal with wyverns. Then once we're clear of Nomads he starts carrying people over the river to the objective. He really sped things up. Having unique access to a common terrain type and being an enemy phase monster crit killing would be attackers cannot be the worst class in the game. They may not have Rutger's consistency on boss killing, but they'll cleave a path to the boss in the first place.

Of course they are good elsewhere, those two chapters are just notoriously difficult/lengthy ones when you're not taking advantage of the terrain. Berserkers are the only class that can stand there and benefit from the massive 40 avoid. It feels like an exploit.

FE6 is the sort of game where exp gain is slow and nobody's got the base stats to just take off in the first half of the game unless your name is Rutger. The question of who to raise becomes a very interesting one. I think you're neglecting some great units here though. Lugh has proven very consistent for me, with a lot more room to grow than Lilina who has to be spoon fed every kill throughout the entire midgame. She's also really reliant on the +3 speed boost of her promotion while Lugh is getting consistent doubles long before that. And with the +4 Mag of his promotion and shelling out for Aircalibur tomes, they become Hard Mode ORKOs. No reason you can't raise both mages of course, I just think Lugh is much less of a "project" than Lilina. Regarding Aureola, I...can't imagine getting Saul or Elen from E to S light magic even with a level 10 promotion. Especially since their frailty means they can't sit on the frontlines and get 6-8 Wexp per enemy phase. You'd have to throw them into the arena. Sad to say it, but Yoder is the only user that makes sense, and it's not a whole lot of sense to begin with. I'd rather spend that effort on Niime's dark rank. Speaking of I find she has more than enough time to start slinging Apocalypse. If you can play slow, her reaching S before getting that tome is fairly reasonable. 21x is a chill chapter with a lot of weak enemies you can shoot from over the walls. Raigh can be a good unit but raising him just because someone has to wield Apocalypse feels like bad advice. As for Murgleiz, I'd rather work with either of the snipers. The unpromoted archers are all really rough to train. Also come ooooon Gonzy is great. Berserkers are super fun and super useful in the game's final chapters. That promotion gives them +30 crit and 8-10 base hit. Chapter 21, have one walk alone to the right onto the mountains with a hand axe and he'll solo the wyverns. Chapter 23, warp him onto the peaks to the north of your starting position, then take on Brunnja later from the peaks near her. A berserker on a Peak tile is untouchable. It's a far greater threat to 4+ wyverns than 2-3 archers could ever hope to be. Base level Garret can even do it. But raising your own berserker is better assurance they'll be able to use Armads for the finale too.

Do you get excited about new, non-remake, non-sequel Fire Emblem games? It's kind of like that isn't it? That is...a lot like the sort of argument I would be making for the idea. Just say all of that, but with a positive inflection lol. A movie that non-fans can appreciate for just being a good film and fans can appreciate for being a good showcase of what "Fire Emblem" means. An adaptation presents barriers to both audiences. Non-fans feel like they need to do their homework by playing the game first, while fans come in with their own, not-imagined ideas of what the story should be. I saw this movie recently, Dungeons and Dragons something something thieves. Name doesn't matter because it's not an adaptation of anything. There are hundreds of official DnD campaigns/modules that could potentially be adapted into a film script, but they chose to pen an original one. I can't speak to why they arrived at this decision, but the film ended up being very good. Well written, well shot with a blend of practical and CG effects, actors are having fun. And it focuses on concepts, creatures, and settings from the DnD universe that did not become standard-fare in other fantasy franchises. Our party is made up of actual classes and races. The magic and magical artifacts adhere to rules from the DnD guidebook. There's an owlbear. And there's a badass paladin that reminds you of the sort of babysitter NPC a dungeonmaster makes to keep the party from screwing up a tricky quest. Then he leaves when that stage of the quest is over. God that's relatable. This is the approach Fire Emblem can take. Lock down the key elements of what makes Fire Emblem. Write a great story that's intended to be a film. And then work out how one is going to complement the other at every step.

Rhea saves Jeralt's life with a blood transfusion - in a society that does not appear to understand the concept of blood types. So when they say "it was unlikely he was going to pull through, but he did" it makes logical sense with that context. And it parallels real life history where the first recorded, successful blood transfusion was about three hundred years before anyone discovered the concept of blood types - which thereby made the procedure extremely safe rather than a game of russian roulette.