Topaz Light

Hey! There's actually a whole section of the forums dedicated to spriting, which has plenty of tutorials and the like! You can also find plenty of Fire Emblem sprites over on feplanet, which might be good to help you get started. I personally would recommend starting out with splicing to build up your skills and knowledge of how portraits are constructed before moving on to full custom sprites, but the choice of how you wish to proceed is yours. Happy spriting!

In order for a second generation to be done meaningfully and sensibly- from a story and a gameplay standpoint- there needs to be some shift in focus away from the first generation and onto the second one. Granted, there are ways to do this without killing everyone, but if you don't do anything, you end up with a game like Awakening where all but one of the children are completely irrelevant to the plot and the multiple generations mechanics amount to nothing more than a particularly novel way to recruit new characters, as opposed to in FE4 where it's a lot more important since the characters you create are going to be your team from Chapter 6 onward. Feel how you do about the specific characters in question, but there's no doubt that FE4 did multiple generations way better than Awakening did, from a plot standpoint and in terms of gameplay importance. I get that maybe you just don't like stories that are too murder-happy with their casts, but sometimes there isn't a good way to have a massive shift in focus like that without doing something to necessitate it, and an easy way to do that is to make it so that the majority of the old cast is a bit too dead to be the main characters anymore. I'm not saying that FE4 was perfect in that regard, but it sure did a better job than Awakening at making the second generation an important part of the plot and gameplay.

Axes, because... It helps to further differentiate them from Pegasus Knights It fits their nature as a more heavyweight sort of class It adds some much needed variety to base-tier Axe-using classes (Dragon Rider with Axe as opposed to Fighter, Mountain Fighter, and Water Fighter) EDIT: Also yes I am aware of Axe Knights and Armor Axes but neither of those classes is in as many games as Wyvern Riders (which exist in some form or another in every game in the series sans Gaiden).

If the presentation was about something so trivial as "showing off Fire Emblem to the public", I guarantee you there is no way the person assigned to give it would know about it far enough in advance to waste time doing things like this

Kozaki as the official/promotional artist can stay (or be replaced, I'm largely indifferent), but get a better costume designer. Lots of the outfits in FE3DS are pretty garbage. [spoiler=Fates-related things, no plot spoilers]Somehow ban skinshipping, the Brigand weapons, and the dress-up mechanic from ever appearing in another Fire Emblem game ever again. ...Alright, I guess the dress-up mechanic can stay if they don't get take it in too raunchy a direction, but the other stuff has to go. [spoiler=Fates-related things, plot spoilers]No more being able to marry siblings to each other. I don't care if they're blood siblings or adoptive siblings or step-siblings. The incestuous relationships worked in Jugdral because they were for fixed plot purposes and they never really touted it as anything to celebrate. The way it's done in Fates is just gross, blatant fanservice. At the very least, if incestuous relationships are to be used again, handle it with a lot more care than Fates' "Oh no we accidentally made someone related to you hot, now we have to make them not actually genetically related to you so you can still marry the hot person". I really, really don't care for the idea of a GoT-esque Fire Emblem game, honestly, but I do think that IS needs to start putting more effort into worldbuilding again, as opposed to Awakening's "Directly Plot Relevant Nations Numbers 1 through 4, plus passing mentions of some other territories we guess". To go with that, put also put more focus into building the characters as people in their world, like how they felt in the earlier games. Honestly, Awakening's characters really just felt to me like they were made to be "your party" rather than the "people who live in this world and just happen to join you" vibe I got from earlier Fire Emblem games. I hope the distinction I'm trying to make there makes sense. Bring back antagonists actually being characters as opposed to mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villains. Bring the scaling of stats back down to around the level of FE6~9. This is really more of a personal preference thing than anything that I feel is really crucial; I just like it more when individual stat points carry more weight. Keep skills. Never un-keep skills. But make them more like in the Jugdral and Tellius games, where they're by and large a lot more character-based than class-based. It adds another interesting level on which to differentiate multiple characters of the same class line in addition to varying bases and growth rates. I'd really like to see a return of weapon weight as a mechanic, but I'm not really sure how it would be done. They've tried three different formulas for it so far, and each one brought with it its own set of balance issues. Maybe introduce a stat that deals exclusively with counteracting weapon weight? It'd probably need to have a pretty low growth rate, if it even had one at all, but it seems like a good way to handle it without tying it to either the unit's physical attack power or their ability to Rescue and be Rescued. If nothing else, it'd help keep purely-magical classes- especially characters who start purely-magical and then gain access to physical weapons later- from being screwed over in that department. I'm actually pro-branching promotions, although I don't really mind not having them, either. I just think that branching promotions are a nice, tasteful way of adding more player input to how their characters progress while still keeping each character within a set of classes that generally makes sense for them. On that note, I think Reclassing is actually a neat mechanic from a gameplay standpoint, but ideally you should not be able to reset a character's level within a class tier. Reclass sets should definitely continue to work as they do in Awakening and Fates, being small and character-based rather than a fixed, generic set based on the character's initial class. I can't decide whether I prefer requiring the use of an item for it (making the ability to Reclass more of a commodity and lending more weight to the player's decisions in regards to it, but coming at the cost of freedom), or doing it FEDS-style (allowing more freedom, but decreasing the sort of cool, novel feeling of Reclassing a character and removing the ability to use Second/Change Seals as a gameplay commodity). Basically, any promoting or other class-changing that goes on should be restricted to a set of classes that makes sense for the character in question to be or have access to. Bring back variable chapter goals in full force. I'm fine with the Avatar staying as long as they either A: embrace the "this is your character" part of it and allow you to make frequent choices in dialogue instead of having MU be essentially a fixed character for the purposes of the story, or B: make them be basically "just another unit" in just about every way except that you get to customize their appearance, name, class, stats, growths, supposed backstory, etc.

Honestly. Intelligent Systems already frequently recycles old plot points and ideas, oftentimes with at least a semblance of a new spin on them; why not take another whack at some of the potentially-more-interesting ones? I don't think that the Battle of Belhalla should just be lifted straight from Genealogy of the Holy War, plopped into a new game, and given a different name, but I do like the idea of having another game do the generation split that way as opposed to how Awakening did it. That is, conclude the first generation story with some sort of disastrous "Bad End", and then move the focus over to the second generation, who now have to pick up the pieces and set the world to rights. You wouldn't necessarily need to kill all the first-gen characters like Genealogy did (well, except for a lucky few), but make sure there's a definite and decisive shift in focus to their children come the second act. Maybe have the first-gen characters who survived show up in various story roles throughout the game, with some being rerecruitable, some being NPCs, others being enemies, etc. but I don't think having all of them rejoin would necessarily be a good idea from a story perspective. At the very least, you should have to wait until later in the second generation to get them back so you're forced to at least try using the kids instead of just ignoring them in favor of your first generation team. I wouldn't object to bringing back the first generation in its entirety as "bonus" characters for postgame, though. Also this.

Just played up to Chapter 4. It's quite a fun and charming little game! I think the level of challenge is pretty good so far, as well, although maybe that's just me. I've had tense moments, but so far it hasn't felt unfair at all, which I think is a good balance. The comparatively (that is, relative to Fire Emblem) very small scale of character HP greatly magnifies the importance of the weapon triangle's +/-2 Might properties, and generally-speaking I think it makes good use of its elements. Ya did good! I'll be sure to play the game all the way through to the end, bonus chapter and all! EDIT: Oops I totally didn't even notice how long it'd been since the last post here. My apologies for inadvertently necroposting.

The most notable one is Bartre, who's name I pronounce as "BAR-tee" and have for the last decade or so. The story behind that is that I had a friend who pronounced it that way and it just kinda stuck with me. I know his name is supposed to be an alternate spelling of "Barter" but he's "Bartee" to me pretty much forever now. Kjelle I bounce back and forth between "Shella" and "Chell" because I've seen both brought up as the "correct" pronunciation, but more often I'll just jokingly pronounce it "K'gel" (gel as in the type of substance). The G in Begnion is not and has never been silent when I pronounce it. Bolganone I pronounce like "BOWL-guh-nun" Crimea I still pronounce like "CRIHM-ee-uh" even though I now know that it's supposed to be "cry-MEE-uh" Renais I pronounce like "REE-nayce" even though I'm becoming increasingly certain that that's actually wrong. I pronounce Ephraim like "EFF-rum" although I feel that's not likely to be correct. Pronouncing "Caellach" like "KAY-latch" is definitely wrong. Apparently there's uncertainty about how "Zephiel" is supposed to be pronounced? I've always said "ZEE-feel" but I feel like it's probably meant to be "ZEH-feel". Gilliam, I also pronounce with a hard G. So, the first syllable is "gill" as in a fish's gills, rather than "Jill". Cherche is "Share'sh" or "Shairsh", whichever makes the pronunciation clearer. Although why they didn't just localize "Serge" to the very real name "Sergia" is beyond me I've always said "Lie-SEE-uh" for "Lycia", but I guess that's not correct? Using the katakana's "LEE-kee-uh" seems so awkward considering the English spelling, though. It's Ostia, at least in the Japanese and North American versions. I believe the European versions changed it to "Ositia" for some reason. I'm not really sure why, though. The "ae" is actually its own single letter, "Æ". Aether is actually "Æther", which incidentally is, I believe, the same word as "ether", just an alternate spelling. They don't use the Æ character in English text much because it has the appearance of two capital letters smashed together and looks weird right at the beginning of a word, so it often gets split apart into "ae" instead, without altering the intended pronunciation. I'm not a linguist, though, much less an expert on languages other than modern English, so if somebody with more knowledge of this has any corrections or elaborations to make, feel free.

Alternatively, if the important thing to you is making it so that the normal FEGBA-type portraits don't look disproportionately small, you could always go for FE9~12-style dialogue windows, with a big fancy box at the bottom of the screen, but that'd probably be more effort than just putting in the black bars.

It's in the Base. I think it's in the same submenu as skill management... It's been some time since I've played FETellius, though. Just go through all the submenus in the Base once you unlock it; you'll find it. And bonus EXP is kinda like Gold a bit in that you build it up as you play the game but you have to manually "spend" it on characters by giving it to them. It never spends itself. You can't turn it off, but you can just choose to not use it if you'd prefer doing things that way.

I was beaten to it, but the chapter where you fight Gangrel is Chapter 11, not Chapter 13. Chapter 13 is the one on Carrion Isle, where you're fighting off a bunch of Risen in a valley. The one Henry joins in and Lucina joins after. Anyway, by and large I think Awakening's level design isn't too great in general compared to the rest of the series, but chapters I particularly dislike would have to be the first few simply because I've played through them so many times to the point where I'm basically permanently sick of them. Chapter 12 is really uninteresting, though. Seriously, though, it's kind of hard for me to pick specific chapters I don't like because a lot of Awakening's maps have very similar problems with the chapter designs so a lot of my map-related problems with this game are more general trends than things that have to do with specific maps. EDIT: Forgot Chapter 24 which I honestly find to be just made of bad decisions. The map design is bland, the battle taking place is so utterly detached from the main story (it's basically just a mandatory Skirmish), and really there's just no reason the map couldn't have been axed or replaced with something more interesting. The whole thing just reeks of being filler to me and the map itself isn't even interesting or fun so it's contributing about as much to the gameplay as it is to the story.

Lyn - 2 Young Tiki - 2 Roy - 2 There you go. Also,

I'm certain my vote is perhaps a little more biased than it should be, since I really haven't played any WRPGs in my life (except Neverwinter Nights a loooong time ago), but I rarely see any that appeal to me. I get that they're trying to be more realistic, and I'm certain that they just factually are more realistic than a lot of JRPGs out there, story-wise, but the overall tones of most all WRPGs I see tend to come off as far too cynical to really draw me in. The level of open-endedness in some of them can also be a bit intimidating to me. Additionally, although I know not all games use this and a good number of the ones that do allow you to turn it off... I have tried first-person perspective games in the past, and honestly? That PoV just really doesn't work for me. (Also what's the point of customizing a character's appearance if you're only going to be seeing their hands and equipped weapon for probably 90%+ of the gameplay?) So, while it's petty, minor, and I'm sure even disable-able in a good number of cases, that's a thing, too. I guess the tl;dr version is that I've always thought of most WRPGs as games that are probably great if they're the kind of game that you enjoy, but they don't really seem like the kind of game that I'd enjoy. I will grant, though, that an "avatar" character who you actually get a good amount of control over in storyline and cutscene contexts as well as gameplay is a good idea. Call me a sap, but I honestly kind of prefer more idealistic stories, probably because I'm more than a little idealistic myself. And, also, I tend to like the general appearance of Eastern art styles more, because I tend to prefer more pretty/cute sorts of aesthetics... Although don't get me wrong, I've seen plenty of Eastern art styles that I haven't really cared for. Honestly, I really don't mind anything that doesn't fall into any out of ultra-moe, Real Is Brown, or I'm Pretty Sure This Artist Draws Porn In Their Spare Time, (or Borderline Clip-Art Quality). So I guess I just like the general style of JRPGs more. I'm not saying I think they're objectively better or anything, but I personally am fond of them.

I am honestly completely clueless as to why you're unwilling to just use each character's official artwork. I understand that they're not all in the same style, but I'm almost certain there's no actual reason they'd need to be. You can find official artwork for just about any Fire Emblem character on this very site under Media >Gallery There should be a big list of games, TCG series, etc. I'm sure you can figure it out from there. Also, just as a note, it's really, really not okay to just go using other fans' art pieces without their informed consent. Ask them if you can use it for what you want to use it for, and if they say yes, then go for it (and be sure to give them credit!). If they say no, then don't use it; it's not yours to use as you please.

This entire argument is at once kinda relevant and also dodging the actual criticism people are giving. Because the comparison being made isn't between "Fire Emblem as a series" and "other SRPGs", it's between "pre-Awakening Fire Emblem" and "Awakening and onward". What people are arguing doesn't have to do with the presentation of the story, but rather the story that's being presented. It's probably true that Awakening's and Fates' stories are presented better than past Fire Emblem games, but the stories themselves are in many ways not as good. Almost every villain in Awakening, for instance, is a mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain during the main plot, with no real motivation that wasn't pretty obviously thrown in hastily near the end when it came time to write their Support conversations. On the other hand, villains of past Fire Emblem games, while they may have come off as mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villains at times during their stories, actually did have some kind of motivation that was relevant in some way to topical happenings in their worlds or that at least tied into backstory events and/or lore. For example, Medeus had become embittered with humankind's racism against the dragonkin, which eventually led to him trying to claim the continent for his own people. Gharnef took advantage of Hardin's inner turmoil and used the Darksphere to twist his personality into that of a cruel tyrant, while Gharnef himself was bitter because another student of Gotoh's was chosen over him. Travant was trying to do what he thought was best for his people even though it entailed him doing a lot of less-than-savory things. In contrast Validar wants to revive Grima because ???????????? profit. Grima is evil... because he's evil, basically. Walhart was allegedly attempting a "utopia justifies the means" plot, but this isn't really hinted at at all during the main story. Gangrel was trying to unify the continent against Walhart by conquering it himself, which, in addition to being a terrible idea if one thinks about it for more than four seconds, is also not hinted at even a little bit during the main plot. Granted, Fire Emblem games have had villains who were just kind of evil because they were evil before Awakening (Fomortiis comes to mind immediately), but at least for most of the villains they tried to give them some kind of motivation that wasn't tacked on at the last minute, even if those motivations usually weren't groundbreaking original or anything. If you have an example of a plot point or character type from Awakening or Fates that you thought was done better than a similar plot point or character type from an earlier Fire Emblem game, then please present it, but what you presented here was a counter to a different argument than what most people here were making.

"Everyone who mentioned anything about other supports only mentioned which ones they really liked, not as to why it was good. GTFO of here if you think that holds any validity." You say this as though you've made better arguments than this. If you did, I must have missed them. Please, feel free to direct me to any of them or paste them here. Actually, there were things there about why it was good. Previous Lords have been more three dimensional, have had flaws that actually have meaningful consequences beyond killing off random playable characters who could very well have died by that point to a screw-up by the player anyway. (And many of those are even preventable in Fates). As a result of these flaws and screw ups, the characters grew and developed as people, which cannot be said of Kris, or Robin, or, from what I'm hearing, Kamui. The point isn't just that they screw up, it's that their mistakes and imperfections have lasting effects on them and sometimes even on the plot. And actually, you're the one who's selectively-ignoring here. They did mention why the supports were good. Rebecca and Dart's gives a lot of insight into Dart's backstory, as well as providing the answer to a question that had been plaguing Rebecca for some time at that point. Raven and Lucius' delves into Raven's convictions and the relationship between the two characters, and ends up giving Raven a noticeable amount of character development. Hell, Renault's entire backstory is revealed in his supports! Granted, Awakening does have some supports that are like this, but the vast majority of them basically read like little comedy skits between the two characters, which isn't necessarily a problem in itself, but it leads to characters almost never getting any real development from their support conversations, which therefore makes them not as interesting to many people. I never said that that had to go. That's something other people said. However, it is worth considering that the huge number of supports has resulted in a very "quantity over quality" approach being taken to writing them. I would rather have fewer, better-fleshed-out options than a greater number of shallow, less-developed ones. And, to use a bit of your own reasoning, every feature included in the game takes time, money, and manpower to implement, all of which are finite when developing a game. Many long-time fans feel that much of the time, money, and manpower spent on features such as skinshipping and writing supports for every conceivable different-gender pair of characters would've been better spent elsewhere. Yes, you can spend your gold on twenty Iron Bows, and you can try to make the argument that "I should focus on getting more weapons instead of exchanging what I already have!" but the fact is that your gold would've been better spent elsewhere, on other things. People complain because they feel like Intelligent Systems is spending too much of their time, funding, and manpower on features that don't really add anything meaningful to the game, and they would rather IS use those resources to make components of the game that are meaningful really shine. You actually don't have control over what you do. At least, not hardly any more control than you have over any other recruitable character. You can maybe choose what you say in a few instances, but, to use Awakening as an example, the game gives you choices throughout the game. All but the last one of these choices do literally nothing to affect the story. They change the next few lines of dialogue, but aside from that, the game progresses exactly the same way no matter what you do. Fates admittedly does a little better at this, but not much. As for choosing who they marry, what they reclass into, where they move in battle, etc., that's not anything that you can't also do for any character, so it doesn't count as a mark in the favor of the Avatar specifically. Also, I haven't heard one argument from you about why what people are suggesting is actually a bad idea. You're saying why IS isn't likely to do it, but that's not the same thing. I'll give you that it may be a bad idea as far as profits are concerned, but that's not the same thing as actually making the game itself a lower quality.

I'll be honest, I always sacrificed Jagen because honestly, one doesn't really need him in Normal mode. I'm sure he makes things easier, but it's more fun for me personally to do things without using the Jagen, because they're a crutch that at this point I'd be ashamed of myself if I needed... At least, in most Fire Emblem games. As far as usefulness goes, Gordin is probably the worst unit out of the Prologue batch, so as mean as it sounds, nothing of (gameplay) value would really be lost if you sacrificed him. You get Wolf and Sedgar not too far in, and Jeorge a bit later, and all three of them can pick up the Bow slack for you. (Even if Wolf and Sedgar are better in other classes)

I think the reason everyone has been saying that you're just trying to shut down discussion is because you haven't been giving very much in the way of concrete examples to support your position. Most of what you've said has amounted to "Yes but I don't like the thing that you suggested/didn't like the thing that you brought up so it's a bad idea". You're entitled to your own feelings about things, of course, but if you're attempting to sway others to your position or prove your own correctness (basically impossible on the subject of opinions anyway), then you need to be able to provide some concrete backing for your stance. In this instance, for example, could you provide some sort of evidence to support that past Fire Emblem games' plots and characterizations were, in some way, objectively-worse than Awakening's and Fates'? And remember, "I didn't like them as much" doesn't count; that's subjective. Other people here have been providing examples of things that past Fire Emblem games have done well with their writing and contrasting it with the newer games' failures to do similar things. Meanwhile, you've just been responding with, "I didn't like the older games", "people would throw a shitfit if you made it more like the older games", and stuff along those lines. Again, you are completely allowed to have your own feelings and opinions about these things, but other people are not immature, shortsighted, or wrong for not sharing those opinions. I get that Awakening and Fates strike a good balance for your personal enjoyment of them, and that's fine, but I'm beginning to suspect from many of your responses that you basically started this topic to pick fights with people who disagree with you, and that sort of behavior is not respectable. On the actual topic of discussion, I don't really have anything new to add, but I'll give my two cents anyway. I think the bottom line is that Intelligent Systems has been playing with customizable, player-created protagonists, but they've never really fully committed to having a player-generated, player-driven protagonist, so you get this weird hybrid between that and a preset protagonist who doesn't really do a good job at being either. I think there are really three options for what to do about this: Basically FE7's Mark, but as a unit. Minimal impact on the story aside from maybe supposedly being the group's Tactician, but is still playable in combat and can be customized aesthetically and as a unit. Actually commit to making a player-created, player-driven protagonist. Allow their actions to drive the story forward to some extent, or to at least influence its course. Give the player at least some control over what they say and do during the plot and during interactions with other characters. Don't be afraid to let other characters have dynamic opinions of the protagonist, either; loving them, hating them, or anything in between based on the player's decisions. I don't have a problem with the idea of an Avatar or a customizable playable character. I do have a problem with IS's shamelessly-pandering, half-baked implementations of Avatars thus far.

- 1 Lunatic mode is a bit of a ridiculous jump in difficulty from Hard, although in itself it's not really anything worth freaking out over. Putting Maniac mode in there as a middle ground would've helped a lot, I feel. - 2, 5 Awakening is so easy to break in general that it might as well be called "The Breakening". The Rogues and Redeemers and Challenge packs, as well as Lunatic+ and Apotheosis, are probably the developers' attempts to provide a challenge to min-maxers to make up for the main game's balance being made of wet rice paper. - 3, 4 The thing about Awakening's map design is that for the most part, each map individually is alright, but the thing is that a disproportionate number of the maps follow the basic structure of "You start on one end, the enemies are concentrated on the other, sweep from your side to theirs killing everything until they're all dead", which makes most of the maps play pretty close to the same, give or take a few obstacles or treasure chests or what have you. Granted, there are some maps in there that aren't that, and those are pretty cool, but the vast majority of the maps play very similarly to each other. I'm not saying that past Fire Emblem games never used that kind of map structure, but I can't think of a single Fire Emblem game other than Awakening and maybe Gaiden that had a map roster that was so utterly consumed by that particular style. There's also the fact that Awakening's chapters employ optional sub-goals- such as villages and treasure chests, recruitable enemies and NPCs, etc.- noticeably more sparingly than other Fire Emblem games, and where they are present, they're usually much less pressing; I recall Awakening has several maps with villages that lack any kind of enemy that goes after them, although to its credit it is pretty good about putting in Thieves to provide incentive for you to hurry to treasure chests. There's also the fact that Awakening quite literally hands you the vast majority of its roster of playable characters, and the few that you do need to recruit from other factions are generally very easy to get. And all this is on top of the almost-complete lack of any variety in chapter clear conditions. Awakening's individual maps are each mostly fine taken on their own, but the game repeats the same objective and the same basic playstyle for its maps ad nauseum with very few islands of variety scattered throughout, and for me, it least, it tends to become monotonous well before reaching the end. Although, admittedly, I haven't played on higher difficulties, so it might be different in those cases. - 6 Don't buy it? It's not remotely necessary to finish the game and it's all just bonus content, anyway.

I posted this rashly without doing much research and I now have the answer to my question. So sorry for the trouble. Feel free to delete this.

It seems to me that... well, most likely all Fire Emblem games up to 8 could be "ported" to the FEXNA engine, and you could do 2D demakes of 9 and onward if you knew your stuff. You'd just have to port them by hand. Graphical and audio assets and even maps could most likely be copy-pasted, but things like events, enemy layouts on maps, etc. would have to be copied over by hand. So basically it's doable, but there isn't anything resembling a "Port Game" button so it would still require at least some actual effort.

It's important to remember that death isn't the only way to avoid having a story be too "happy-go-lucky". There are many, many other dark things that you can write into the story in order to make it darker (if that's what you want to do) without killing someone off. I'm not trying to say killing characters off is necessarily bad, either, I just want to express that "lightheartedness vs. darkness" and "how much character death is there" are not synonymous, however strong a correlation there may be between dark stories and characters dying, lighter stories and absence of character death, etc. Write in plot elements according to what you feel serves your story best. Don't just throw things in because you feel that each story should have a token instance of that trope.

I would say it depends very much on the kind of story you're trying to tell. If there's a focus on concepts that call death to mind- themes of war, loss, etc.- then it could definitely be used to further develop those themes and drive the plot forward. However, you shouldn't throw in character deaths just because you can, or just for the sake of them happening, because then the audience will be able to tell it was just for shock value and didn't really bring anything meaningful to the story. In short, if it brings something important to the story and drives it forward, then go for it, but if that's not the kind of story you're telling, then don't shoehorn character death into the plot where it doesn't really fit just to make it "realistic" and so edgy.

I noticed that this wasn't anywhere on FE1's "Calculations" page, which surprised me, because it's shockingly simple and straightforward compared to previous Fire Emblem games'. Observant players may have noticed that in FE1, enemies have an actual number for their "EXP" stat, rather than simply "--" as is the case in later games. The number shown for the enemy's EXP stat denotes how much EXP is gained from killing that enemy. (Also, party members who start out as enemies retain this when recruited, which means that they do not come with 0 EXP like party members recruited through other methods do.) So, for example, killing an enemy Fighter with 24 EXP would award 24 EXP to the killer, no matter what their level was. When a party member fights an enemy, but doesn't manage to kill that foe, the party member will gain EXP equal to the amount of damage they dealt. To use an example from personal experience, Draug double-attacking an enemy, doing 5 damage both times, would get 10 EXP for that battle. However, if he fought another round and missed one time, he would only gain 5 EXP from that engagement. This is also likely the reason why your units need to deal damage to get EXP in this game. (Well, unless they're Priests/Clerics, but those are up next). Okay, this part actually is covered on the main site, albeit only briefly in passing, but for the sake of completeness, when Priests/Clerics "endure attacks", the EXP they gain is equal to the EXP stat of the attacker. In other words, it is the same as if they had killed that enemy. Also, whether the Priest/Cleric gets hit or not has no effect on their EXP gain. Lena being attacked by a Thief and dodging would get the same 40 EXP payout as if she had been hit by that same Thief. My apologies if this information is already up somewhere and I just missed it, or if this has already been called to the attention of relevant parties and they opted not to put it on the site. But, it's here, in case it's new (to this site) information.

I gotta admit I have a bit of a soft spot for Gaiden. Never actually finished it, but I've made decent enough progress. Arguments about it having aged poorly are entirely valid, and I'd say how much a person would enjoy it would be dependent in significant part upon their feelings about "old game"isms, since Gaiden does have its fair share of those. Ultimately I'd say it's a game that's not for everyone, but I certainly like it.