Topaz Light

EDIT: I realize this actually isn't a new topic and that I posted in it before and now I feel stupid oops. Feel free to delete this post.

So I decided to just sit down and make a list of every legacy bonus character in Fire Emblem Awakening who had some kind of special property that couldn't be replicated by just any old MU or other legacy character of the same gender. There's not really a whole lot more to say than that, so here's the list! Note that I've only listed the skills the characters couldn't normally learn through reclassing/leveling up. This is not meant to contain their complete base skill sets.

Kids inheriting their non-attached parents' hair colors was really cool and a lovely touch! Although, I do think Chrom should've been flagged so that his wife passed down her hair color to her attached kid for equity's sake, since Lucina always has Chrom's. Mercenaries finally were solidified as a unisex class and we were given the... fifth and sixth female characters in the series to be part of that class line. The UI and general speed and feel of the gameplay from a control standpoint is amazing. So amazing, in fact, that many elements of it were carried over to both of Awakening's successors, and the three of those games together have, incontestably, the best user interface and control feel and programming in the series. A lot of the characters were actually pretty fun and likable! My big overarching complaint is really that the lack of much worldbuilding kinda keeps the vast majority of them from feeling like inhabitants of the setting as opposed to just Designated Party Member Characters. Getting to recruit your friends' MUs as bonus characters from StreetPassing was a super fun and lovely little addition, and, in my opinion, should be a mainstay in any Fire Emblem games that have MUs as a mechanic. I also really liked the randomly-generated characters from getting only StreetPasses with 3DSes that don't have Fire Emblem Awakening StreetPass data on them. It's fun to see the wacky units and teams the generator spews out! All those bonus legacy characters may have been kinda pointless in the long run, but darned if they weren't a fun and endearing addition to the game, too. I feel like Gangrel actually doesn't get enough credit as a Fire Emblem villain. In my opinion, he's the best of Awakening's three/four central antagonists, and he also has the distinction of not really fitting into any of Fire Emblem's established "main antagonist" archetypes, class- or character-wise. Despite their shared title (at least in English), he's actually not even much like Ashnard at all aside from simply being a villainous male monarch.

For one thing, I'd like to see them bring back the classic archetypes, but play with them more. Maybe have the Navarre be a Brigand with a Killer Axe or something, or maybe the Est could actually be an older veteran fighter who's gotten rusty, and whose high growth rates represent them getting back into their groove. Give us another Triangle Attack between three characters who aren't Pegasus Knights. Make the Cain/Abel duo of the game both be a class other than Cavalier, and make them both girls, or at least make the green one/Abel of the two the girl for once. Have the Jagen be something that isn't promoted from a Cavalier. Have a Lord who's totally different from the standard Nice Blue-Haired Noble Sword Boy the series loves to spam so much while changing maybe two of those listed traits if we're lucky. Make a main villain who's not a tin tyrant, evil sorcerer, cult leader, or superpowerful dragon or deific being or something. And, it'd be great to see more LGBTQIA+ and darker-skinned characters, too, as well as the aforementioned variety of body types. This sorta doubles as a worldbuilding desire, but I'd also love to see a visible difference in the cultures present in the game's world, and have that be reflected in the characters you get in your army, too. Really just, keep it recognizably-Fire Emblemy, but get a little bold and switch things up, too. Also make the characters actual characters and not walking, talking tropes and gimmicks, but that kinda stands to reason.

They become melee-range only and the wielder just runs up and whacks the enemy with them.

(Current) Favorite: Echoes: Shadows of Valentia Bring back class-based stat caps outside of Overclasses, and maybe the previous 3DSFE titles' cap modifier system. As it stands, classes aren't as varied, functionally, as they have historically been in the series, with a few exceptions. There should be a reason to, for example, pick to have somebody ultimately end up a Baron rather than a Gold Knight, and there currently isn't. I'd also enjoy if there were more classes with access to multiple weapon types, but that may be more a personal thing. Removing genderlocks was a really good thing, so bring back their absence. Add Mercenary, Archer, and Soldier to the female Villager promotion options, and Priest to the male one. Pegasus Knight being female-only is alright, because the Archanea-Valentia universe does actually have it as part of its worldbuilding lore. Do something about those ridiculous movement penalties from desert tiles, and the swamp maps, in their entirety. Buff the HP gains from lion statues to, like, +3 or something. +1 is perfectly fine for other stats, but +1 HP is pretty negligible in comparison. Nerf Cantors somehow. Maybe make it so that summoning Terrors costs them more HP than their regeneration can make up for each turn, and keep them from summoning too many too frequently. De-nerfing Expel might also help with this. On the subject of Cantors, give all the named Cantor bosses unique battle models, not just Jedah. Using the generic one kinda works for the Arcanists since that one is pretty nondescript and all the named Arcanist bosses fit its general profile well enough that it doesn't look too odd, but the generic Cantor model is a very distinct character design that already has a lot of personality and recognizable physical traits to it, so it's downright jarring to enter a combat engagement with Dolth, Garcia, or Mikhail and see the generic Cantor model that looks absolutely nothing like them. While we're at it, lets give Hestia and Marla personal battle models, too. Ideally, Tatarrah, Jamil, and Gharn would also get unique models, but they're sorta lower priority. Also fix the damn armor colors on Zakson and Wolff. Both of them are green for some reason despite that the characters in question wear red- and copper-colored armor, respectively, in their portraits. Give Halcyon more importance and screentime in the plot, and make him a recruitable Arcanist or Cantor (maybe an Arcanist that promotes into a Cantor?) on Celica's route, thus evening out her team count with Alm's. Seriously, it bugs me more than it probably should that they counted both Sonya and Deen towards Celica's team despite that you can only get one, leaving her with 15G/16E to Alm's 16G/17E. Make Alm more flawed, and a better representative of Duma's philosophy, to strengthen the sense of thematic duality between him and Celica. I'd have to think more about how to really do this well, but give Celica a way of damaging and killing Duma below 52 HP, too, and keep her an active player-controlled participant throughout Act 5 rather than boiling it down to the male protagonist having to swoop in and save the female protagonist. For the gameplay side of both of them being active during Act 5, something along the lines of Final Fantasy VI's split-party dungeons would be really cool, I feel. Just generally change it so that Alm and Celica feel equally-important through to the end rather than having Celica step back and become secondary at the last minute to let Alm be the primary hero. Make Act 6 an actual postgame story arc instead of just unlocking a route to go to Archanea for no real sensible reason. Granted, it'd be kinda hard to justify Alm and Celica heading over there still in the wake of everything that went down on Valentia, but still, I'm sure they could come up with something better and more interesting than what they did. Add more supports. Seriously. The ones we do have are great, but there really shouldn't be any instances of one character being another character's only support option, especially since there are no characters that really makes sense for when it gets right down to it. Alm, Celica, Gray, Tobin, Kliff, and Faye should each have supports with all of the other five. Celica and Alm's supports being limited to postgame is just fine; they can even use that as the basis for what they talk about. Kamui's decision to join Jesse's mercenary kingdom in the epilogue comes a little out of the blue, since he never really interacts with Jesse at all before that. Give them supports, and give Kamui supports with Valbar, too. Give Genny supports with Mae, Boey, and Celica in addition to Sonya. With Halcyon as a new playable character, he should be able to support Conrad, Sonya, Celica, and maybe even Saber, due to his supposed being from Rigel originally. Definitely give him a special battle quote with Duma, too. Atlas should be able to support the Whitewing Sisters, since they have that shared experience of being torn apart from their siblings by Grieth and his cohorts. On that note, Zeke could have some really interesting supports with the Whitewings, too. There's really just so much potential here, I'm positive I didn't even touch on all of it. Give Cleric-line characters unique spell sets as Mages, too. Having it so that only female Mages get special spell sets as Cleric's but not the other way around is unfair. Make it so that units with defined Mage spell sets will ultimately learn all the Black Magic spells in those spell sets if you make them Harriers. A minor thing, but either: Make Yuzu a Myrmidon in accordance with the removal of genderlocking on classes, Give her a personal skill that makes it actually beneficial to use her primarily as a swordfighter, or Just cave and give her a larger spell list. Gaiden/SoV's having Strength and Magic merged into one stat doesn't really lend itself well at all by default to having a mixed physical/magical character be specialized towards one or the other. Least Favorite: Fates, in its entirety where do I begin Tear the entire plot down to just the base premise, and rebuild it from there. The conflict between Hoshido and Nohr should be genuinely morally-ambiguous, with both sides having equal virtues and vices. Make it so that there's actually a goal for each nation beyond just defeating the other. Ideally, neither side would be free of corruption or wrongdoing, but they should also both be sympathetic enough to make choosing either one palatable, and to make you feel a bit bad about fighting whichever one you sided against. Keep the presence of a third route where you don't choose either kingdom, but instead of making it some miracle golden route where you learn who was really behind it all and everything ends up all sunshine and rainbows, make it about genuinely just not choosing a side and trying to resolve the conflict from the outside. Give it the same amount of recruitable characters as the other two routes instead of more, and give all three routes equally-bittersweet endings. It should still feel like you were able to do some good no matter which route you pick, but also like the resolution was far from perfect. Make the enemy royal siblings die when they are killed instead of just stepping back or having a plotline death cutscene after you beat them in gameplay. Corrin's starting personality can stay, but make it so that their actions have consequences that they aren't sheltered from, and make it so that not everybody unconditionally loves them. From this, you can give them actual character growth and maturation over the course of the story. Also, make their ability to transform into a dragon be more acknowledged within the plot. Make worldbuilding be a thing that exists, and give dragons an actual significant place in the world's lore, akin to their level of importance to Elibe or Archanea at least. If you're gonna make the main character a Manakete, dragons had better be important to the world and story. Make the three Awakening kids universally-recruitable characters. Them not being universal recruits in the actual final game is completely at odds with their entire reason for being in Fateslandia to begin with. Do something about Camilla and Peri being such creeps who almost never get called out on it. Actually, do similar things for every character who's creepy or a huge jerk but never faces any consequences for it. I'm looking at you, Jakob and Azama. Anankos can stay, broadly-speaking, but his entire character would have to be overhauled pretty significantly. Making him a figure in the world akin to Naga, Mila, or Duma would seem to me to be the best option. Make Garon an actual person and not a cackling Saturday morning cartoon villain. Completely remove plotline deaths for characters who are in your party on that route. The permadeath mechanic is already there to represent the possibility of death along the protagonists' journey; you don't need to force it to happen against the player's ability to prevent it. If you are to keep plotline deaths for party members, at least do something meaningful and cool with them, like Quan and Ethlyn's in FE4. Vary the circumstances under which characters join you more. There are a lot of instances of characters who are already in your faction who you just don't meet up with until later in the story; take some characters out of that category and make them meet and join the protagonists in different ways. Change the royal siblings plus their retainers setup to be less obnoxiously-symmetrical, and give the royal sisters more importance and their own personal weapons. Make the non-Hoshido/Nohr nations actually matter in the plot, and have between-chapters narration with the little moving map sprites and flashing nation territories to actually flesh out how the pieces in play are moving around and where the borders between various nations fall. And give the continent a damn name. Also make the S-rank weapons actual Things instead of just kinda... being there. Move all My Castle recruitments into main story chapters. Add voice clips to the support conversations, like in Awakening. They feel so barren without them. Remove the Corrin/Azura and Corrin/Royal Siblings S-supports, and, if children are kept, remove Corrin and Kana's S-supports with them, and set it up so that the game detects when child characters ended up cousins and bars them from S-supporting if they did. Add more same-gender pairing options, and not even just involving Corrin. Remove the concept of "Corrinsexual" characters, and make sure they all get plenty of supports and, if sensible, romance options. Either axe kids as a mechanic altogether, or do FE4-style multiple generations, where the focus shifts completely onto the kids after a certain point, and there's an actual timeskip. There would be substitutes for characters with unmarried fixed parents. This is super petty, but bring back that mysterious, scholarly, robed Dark Mage aesthetic from pre-3DSFE. At least for Nyx. Even putting all other (still totally valid) complaints about it aside, it's just plain out-of-character for her to be so scantily-clad when she's expressly self-conscious about her body. Just bake Aptitude's bonuses into Mozu's natural growth rates. Alternatively, make Aptitude a skill that Mozu just comes with but that isn't attached to the Villager class, and let her share the class with her spouse and A+ partner. Maybe add in an Afa's Drop/Metis' Scroll-type item that teaches Aptitude, but that there's only one of in the entire game. Actually, I'd really love if they made Mozu's Villager class work like Valentian Villagers in terms of promotion, but that might just be my bias showing. Remove Eternal Seals, and make it so that a level 20 second-tier character or a level 40 single-tier character automatically gains all skills from a new class line they switch into. Additionally, set the final level up to 20 promoted/40 single-tier also teach all yet-unlearned skills from that class line. Also, cut character statues and their stat cap bonuses. As much as I love how exploitable My Castle battles are for powerleveling Staff-users in non-Conquest routes, that should... proooobably be fixed. Honestly, make My Castle a postgame feature, or at least include sets of chapters that forcibly punt you along from one to the next without getting a chance to return to your Castle when it wouldn't make sense for the plot. Make the Castle a physical location in the world that serves as your team's home base that they return to every so often throughout the plot. Alternatively, replace My "Castle" with the army's current camp, with the backdrop changing depending on what point in the story you're currently at. Give the amiibo characters reclass options and personal skills; Locktouch for Marth (to emulate the Fire Emblem letting him open chests), Shove for Ike, and Bold Stance for Lucina and Robin. Lucina would have her own irremovable additional class options from Awakening; Cavalier and Archer. As for the others... Ike would have Fighter due to training with Boyd, and, uhhh... maybe Cavalier, taken from Titania and Oscar? Monk, inherited from his mother, might also be a neat choice. Marth could go Cavalier/Archer like Chrom and Lucina, but that's a little boring. Maybe Cavalier, plus Sky Knight as his secondary options, from Partner Sealing with Caeda offscreen? Robin's kinda the toughest to pin down, but I think it'd make the most sense to give him Dark Mage, inherited from Validar, and allowing him to focus strictly on magic, and then Mercenary, to allow him to focus strictly on Swords. Alternatively, Outlaw might be an option to represent a path he could've taken in life were he not found by Chrom, or Wyvern Rider, 'cause, y'know, the whole "Fell Dragon" thing. Make Cipher Marth, Lucina, and Minerva accessible in the English version, and give them some buffs, too. Cipher Marth and Lucina would essentially just be alternate skins of the amiibo versions of those characters, being identical aside from appearance and possibly not having critical cut-ins. Minerva would have Aegis or Wing Shield as her personal skill and access to Wyvern Rider (for obvious reasons) and Shrine Maiden (Maria, and her FE3/12 ending) through reclassing. Make the capturable bosses into full recruitable characters who are simply recruited that way, and give them support conversations and secondary class options. Daniela should join you normally in Conquest, as should Haitaka and Kumagera in Birthright. Zhara could be a mercenary you could hire in any route, a la Beowolf, Hugh, or Rennac. Let Candace reclass and wear the Bath Towel you cowards.

I mean, you can get Daniela, Lloyd, Llewellyn, Nichol, Candace, Tarba, Daichi, and Funke from it but I dunno if any of them are considered remotely worthwhile. Haitaka really seems to be the big one from what I can tell.

I think there's benefits to sending either pair with either character. Celica faces more Terrors and has a lot of nasty terrain maps, which means that you can never have too many Falcon Knights. Emma's more than welcome with her. But then, so is Shade, since she gets Seraphim as well as Rescue, which Celica's team can really use, since it gives them another much-needed mobility option. On the flipside, Alm only gets one fixed Pegasus Knight, plus another potential one in Faye, normally, so Emma would help with class diversity there. Alm's route also has more Archers, though, and that plus its comparative lack of Terrors means Emma might have a rougher time going with him. Not directly related to Emma herself, but her Trainee's Lance teaches the Solo Triangle Attack art, which costs 5 HP and executes three consecutive physical attacks when used, making it a great fit for your favorite Knight-line character or other slow Lance-user. Shade, meanwhile, is another healer and magic user, which is helpful in any map. Her Physic spell is a nice complement to Alm's large number of mounted allies, and Seraphim's a pretty potent damaging spell even against non-Terrors. Alm also gets less magic-users by default, although he actually gets one more Cleric-line character than Celica (two if you make Faye a Cleric), so she'd actually surprisingly be more redundant there than on Celica's route in terms of her specific class. Randal's just a really solid Paladin slanted a bit more towards offense than defense. He'll perform great on either route; Celica's only has one Paladin normally, so he'd help with class balance there, but Alm's maps are generally more conducive to Cavalier-line characters, which would definitely help Randal's performance there, too. Yuzu's in a bit of a weird spot. She's a gimmicky glass cannon Priestess who only learns Sagittae aside from the default Fire and Recover, and who's seemingly meant to be used primarily as a physical unit, which doesn't really work super well due to how Echoes' mechanics regarding physical versus magical attack power are set up. I guess she could really go with either Lord just as well. I've heard a Mage Ring goes really well on her, but there are honestly probably better candidates for it who can do everything she can and more, magically. Still, if you really like her, it's definitely something to keep in mind. It seems like her main thing would be blasting enemies from afar with Sagittae, which is cool, but nothing Gray, Kliff, Luthier, Faye, Boey, Atlas, or even Nomah couldn't do just as well. Not to say that she's bad, she just doesn't really bring anything all that unique to the table. Generally speaking, the Cipher characters' personal weapons aren't the best equipment options for them, nor are they the best wielders for those weapons, so it's also important to consider who you might want to have use those weapons when you're deciding who to send where.

Firstly, speaking very broadly, I really don't subscribe to the notion that a unit requiring investment inherently makes them bad, partly because that's an idea that's very much founded in a playstyle that I really have no interest in, but mostly because seeing the payoff of putting investment into a less-immediately-strong unit is an experience I very much enjoy in Fire Emblem. I do have examples of specific characters, too, though! Roshea's definitely one. I'm fully aware that he's not that great, and his downright bizarre HP/Strength/Skill-focused growths (which include abysmal Speed) are super janky and definitely not helping, but I love his design, and he's a super sweet guy, too. Roger, who I always used over Draug as my Knight in the DSFE games. I actually have no idea how good he's considered to be, but he's always been really nice and solid whenever I've used him. Shame about what New Mystery did with his personality, though. Radd's design is Radd, which itself is enough to get me to use him despite how much babying it takes. It's my understanding that he's... better... in New Mystery? but I almost never hear him talked about in the context of that game. Reiden has sorta earned his way into my good graces despite my previous indifference towards him due to being a reliable Sniper on my hard mode playthrough of New Mystery. I'm fully aware that Atlas is probably the worst of the Valentian Villagers by most objective metrics, but damned if I don't have a soft spot for him anyway, thanks to Echoes. Lyn seems more contentious a character than I expected? Honestly, I don't really care. I still like her and don't think she's that bad a unit. Using Nino has become something of a tradition for me in FE7. I like her as a character too much not to, honestly. Ross, Amelia, and Ewan always get used whenever I play Sacred Stones. I just really love the concept of "trainee"-type units, honestly. Boyd is the only playable Fighter in Path of Radiance, so I use him. I actually kinda like his character, too. Mist and Rolf are both units I always make a point to train up despite their lackluster starting situations, because they're both decently-plot-relevant, at least early on, and I do rather like both of them. I always try and train up Astrid, for no real reason other than that I just like her. Paragon definitely makes it easier. Meg and Fiona. I've barely even played Radiant Dawn, and I know for a fact that I'm gonna shower both of them in ridiculous favoritism and bring them into the endgame. Both of their designs are just so great. I guess Donnel, since he seems to be pretty widely-considered to be bad. I don't really care, and I love marrying him to somebody who has a son specifically to pass down Villager and make Donnel not the only one who has access to it. I do this being totally aware of how much it sucks. Inigo seems frequently-maligned as a character, if not as a unit, from what I've seen, but he's actually my favorite child character in Awakening, and I always make a point to use him. Rinkah takes a bit of work to get going, largely thanks to her base E ranking in Axes, but taking the time to get her rolling has always been worth it for me. Arthur. As risky-at-best a unit as he may be, I just really like him as a character, despite how gimmicky he is. They could very easily have taken him in the "acts like a hero on the surface but is actually self-centered and cowardly" direction, since they were clearly aiming for comedy, so I really appreciate that they didn't. As silly and lighthearted a take on this type of character he may be, I really admire the type of character (and person!) who continues to be kind and do good even in the face of adversity that directly impacts the ease with which they can do so. Yuzu's apparently the worst out of the Cipher units, but her design is honestly my favorite out of all of them, and she comes as my favorite FE class of all time, so...

I always imagined them just wearing it like a competitive fighting champion's belt that weighs as much as 2 points of Constitution and also makes them stronger by, like, emboldening them or something.

Ahhh, yep! I got it covered, actually!~

FAVORITES Hmm, oh man, I like a lot of classes, but my overall favorite might be the original Priestess class from Gaiden/Echoes, which naturally extends to Celica's increasingly-fancily-clad variants of it as she promotes. Swords, offensive magic, and healing makes them a pretty badass and versatile class, if you ask me. Not to mention, Celica, Mae, Sonya, and Delthea all have nice, robust spell lists, with Faye's not being half bad, either. Even Yuzu's a rather interesting and novel unit, limited though her spell pool may be. Shame about that Movement, though. Valentian spellcasters in general, I really love, honestly. The unique magic system attributing distinct spell pools to each Mage or Cleric makes every one of them feel even more distinct and unique than is usual for Fire Emblem units, not to mention they end up with a lot of versatility by virtue of being able to select which weapon to use on the fly from an increasingly-diverse pool, unlike any physical unit who isn't either Alm or adjacent to him or Celica. Troubadours kinda have a bit of a special place in my heart due to Priscilla being the first, and maybe only, FE7 character I discovered in-game all on my own as a kid without looking her up in a guide or anything... er, that is, out of the characters that you aren't unavoidably tutorialed into getting. Naturally, since she's the first Troubadour to appear in the game by a matter of several chapters, that meant that I also discovered her class alongside her, which was pretty neat. I've always had kind of a weird soft spot for Brigands and Soldiers, due to them both being unplayable in Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones. I realize neither of them are terribly exceptional or thematically-interesting classes, but even so. DSFE Generals are pretty neat. I really like the weapon type combination of Lances and Bows. I don't even care if it's that good, I just think it's cool. Ninjas are really cool. I love what Fates did with Knives as a weapon type, and being the sole base tier representative of it makes Ninjas pretty darned rad. I really like the Oni Savage class, primarily because of its promotions. I realize that Blacksmiths are really similar to Heroes, and Oni Chieftains get kind of a weird second weapon type in light of their stat caps, but I still think they're really neat classes. Ballisticians and Mechanists really kind of intrigue me as Fire Emblem classes go. They're both kind of dipping into the use of technology, which is a subject Fire Emblem as a series almost never touches on. FE1 probably had my favorite take on Ballisticians thematically, giving them unique animations to fit each of their smallish selection of weapons. I'd love to see the class explored more in the future, but considering they've only been playable in three games, with two of those being a game and its remake, I don't really see it happening, realistically. I could always be pleasantly surprised, though. This class has never once been playable or even existed at all outside of Jugdral, but I really love Armored Bows, just, like, conceptually. It's such a bizarre and novel class, even if it may tick off most, if not all, of the points on a "how to make the worst technically-usable class ever" checklist. If there's ever a playable one, I'll use them, how good they are be damned. LEAST FAVORITES I actually don't really actively dislike any classes, but honestly, as much as I love the concept from a worldbuilding standpoint, beastshifting classes in practice just end up being super boring. Triangle-neutral physical infantry melee fighters who only barely have weapon options when they're lucky enough to even have them at all... how bland can you get? Honorable mention goes to Sword and Lance Knights. Like, just make them Cavaliers specialized in the weapon type you want.

I'm kinda weirdly fond of that little Soldier who accompanies Clive and Fernand in the first Rise of the Deliverance DLC map. He may not have a horse or terribly good stats, but dammit, he's gonna do his best anyway. As far as actual named characters, I don't know how much he counts anymore, since Echoes actually kinda gave him very limited relevance during the Grieth arc, but Atlas is probably one of my favorite characters in Gaiden/Echoes. I also tend to prefer using Roger as my Knight over Draug in Shadow Dragon, and he's never let me down. Radd is another more minor character I really like, even knowing that he requires so much favoritism to get going, which... honestly isn't an issue for me most of the time due to the kind of player I am. I need to actually play more than the first few chapters of Radiant Dawn, but I adore Meg and Fiona's designs, however bad they might be as units. I can definitely see myself giving both of them plenty of favoritism when I do get around to playing the game. Candace, Tarba, Senno, and Zhara also have pretty neat designs, I think. I wanna try actually using them sometime.

Most people have already covered what makes a "bad" unit, so I don't think I really have anything to contribute there. As far as story/characterization goes, I honestly tend to be pretty laid-back and forgiving... for the most part. The first thing that comes to mind for something I would describe as an objectively bad quality of a character would be one who, for the majority of the audience of their home media work, fails to elicit the audience reaction they're clearly intended to evoke. Along similar lines, it really bothers me when characters have serious flaws as people that aren't treated as such by the writing. Peri, Tharja, Azama, Jakob, Camilla, etc. are all good examples of this. Essentially, I find a bad character to be one whose writers evidently didn't really have a very nuanced understanding of them even as they were writing them. I don't know how much sense that makes, but that's the best way I can articulate it at the moment.

I am back, and toilsome. There really aren't any Fire Emblem characters at all that I can even honestly say that I especially dislike or find annoying... this actually goes for most works of fiction, honestly. I kinda tend to bottom out at just feeling indifferent towards a given character. I absolutely do not understand when people say Jagens are "basically necessary" in the early-game of any given Fire Emblem game. Maybe they're implicitly referring to a playstyle that just isn't how I play the game, but I consistently, instantly bench Jagens and have never once found it overly-difficult to complete a given chapter within a reasonable amount of turns while recruiting all characters and obtaining all treasures. Perhaps challenging, yes, but still very doable, even with the game's Jagen not even deployed. While the cosmetic aspects of character customization have improved with Fire Emblems Awakening and Fates, I feel like New Mystery's letting you choose your MU's base class and deciding stat and growth personalization by picking various character traits was much more fun and interesting than what Awakening or even Fates did. I hold that at the very least, choosing or customizing your base class in some way should come back, if MUs are to return as a mechanic. Ephraim was just okay. Marth is a good Lord and is equal to or in some cases better than a lot of his ample selection of spiritual successors. Lyn isn't incredible, but she isn't that bad of a unit, either. She's literally just a fairly typical Myrmidon with special animations who needs to promote with a Heaven Seal in exchange for getting Bows out of it. Giving her the Angelic Robe in her story helps her out a lot just by itself, but I understand that there is competition for that item. While I do care about not playing terribly, I'm absolutely not a power player, either. I'll gladly pass up the opportunity to make an "optimal" setup in favor of something fun and weird, instead. FE1 Ballisticians were thematically a really cool and unique class within the series, and I'd like to see that specific take on them return in a future installment... if perhaps buffed a bit to make them more worth using, hehe~ I honestly don't even inherently dislike Tharja as a character, I just think that her terrible behaviors should be called out more by other characters and by how the writing in general treats her, as opposed to them being largely played for humor. In supports where she shows more of a kind side, I can actually end up rather liking her, and I enjoy her snark. Actually, it's mainly just the whole "Robin obsession" and "being abusive" things I dislike about her. I have no idea if this is actually unpopular, but I think it's a lot cooler for the Lord to get a less exceptional starting Prf weapon, a la the Rapier, of which there may even be more than one available in the game, as opposed to having them start with a "sealed" version of their ultimate weapon, since I feel that kinda undermines the impact of said ultimate weapon's presence in the story. This is a nice segue into the fact that I prefer for legendary/S-rank weapons to be worked into the story, world, and/or lore in some way if they are to be present in the game. It doesn't have to be anything super major; what was done with Archanea's Three Regalia was absolutely sufficient. It just seems so lackluster when they're just kinda... there. I feel like most of Awakening's and Fates' characters were perfectly-serviceable premises for characters, and that the biggest underlying problem for a lot of them is that they don't really get the growth or, more broadly-speaking, the specific uses of screentime that they'd need to really become good characters. In exchange for being the worst Cavalier in the series gameplay-wise, Fiona is the best Cavalier in the series design-wise. Letting Knights use both Swords and Lances was actually a really neat idea and I'm a little disappointed that's never come back. On the other hand, while I do think it was equally-cool, I can understand why Sword- and Lance-using Pegasus Knights have been abandoned, because it'd allow them to basically act as flying Myrmidons and snap the often-axe-heavy early-game in half with the addition of the weapon triangle. I actually prefer when a character's class has some kind of connection to their character. It's a little strange to have games where, say, none of the recruitable Mercenaries are actually mercenaries. I like Deen's Echoes redesign and don't find him to look overly-edgy at all, although I still find jokes about his edginess to be funny. I don't especially mind Gaiden/Echoes' terrain bonuses being absolutely absurd and I find it preferable to making the bonuses relatively small. I still consider the three GBAFE games to have hit the ideal sweetspot for terrain bonuses, though. Takumi is neither that amazing nor that annoying of a character, although he is probably one of my favorite royal siblings in the game. On that note, I'm actually less bothered by the royal siblings getting their own unique legendary weapons right from the start than I am by it being only the royal brothers who get them. I feel like having some sort of weight system is preferable to not having one at all, but I fully admit that it's something that's a little hard to make work well. I think that, as of this writing, Echoes has thus far done it best, with the speed penalty from weight being irreducible and big enough to make an impact, but generally not so large as to be too crippling. On the flipside, Fates applying gimmicky penalties to a lot of weapons was way more irritating than fun and ended up making a number of weapons more trouble than they're worth to use. The Trinity of Magic, in my experience, does not actually add all that much that's interesting to most of the games it's in, and in hindsight I'm not especially sad about its absence from the series following Radiant Dawn. I don't hate it, but I don't think it's a must-have feature, either, and it's kinda stopped being on my wishlist for future titles. I do think that splitting Anima, Light, and Dark Magic into separate weapon proficiencies makes the most sense from a worldbuilding standpoint out of all the setups for that they've had, however. I actually really love the various archetypes throughout the series and I enjoy seeing them pop up in various games, but I do think that keeping them too similar to the source characters isn't a good idea and is a recipe for blandness and repetition. Instead, I'd like to see them utilize their classic archetypes, and keep each character recognizably whatever archetype they are, but do more to play around with them and give them their own identity beyond just the archetype they pay homage to. ...I say, as Forsyth proceeds to turn out decidedly-unimpressive in my current playthrough.

It used to be in my signature before I moved it to the "interests" section of my profile page, but my biggest, most defining aspiration is to become a video game designer/developer! Particularly, my area of interest is in making RPGs, primarily Eastern-style, but I'm also fond of sidescrolling platformer-type games and, uh... whatever genre the Zelda games count as. Both 2D and 3D. I haven't seen them categorized very consistently in that regard... I guess action-adventure? Anyway, basically, I'm interested in making games of the same sort that I myself like, although I do think it'd be neat to dabble in making other kinds of games as well, should the opportunity present itself.

Okay, so, uh... I see there's... quite a mess back there. Probably best not to touch that. However, I do want to say one thing, and that is that it's important not to let other people's opinions of things you really like get to you. People are allowed to dislike the Tellius games, or Ike, or Frederick, or Ike/Elincia or FeMU/Frederick as ships, and them feeling as such and voicing those feelings is not an attack on you. I understand that it can feel frustrating and invalidating to hear people speaking ill of something you like, and you're not wrong for simply feeling how you do in reaction to it, but it's important to be able to just let such things go. And, I'm not just saying this as somebody who hasn't personally experienced that; my favorite video game of all time is EarthBound Beginnings/MOTHER 1, the most maligned and ignored game in the EarthBound/MOTHER trilogy. I see it getting criticized all the time, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel it was a bit hurtful at times, as somebody who really likes the game. But, at the end of the day, throwing the chastisement back at people who talk smack about things you like isn't really going to yield any desirable result at all. It can be tough, but really, try to just let it go and not respond to it. These people really are not trying to pick a fight with you, and they deserve to be allowed to express their opinions, too, no matter how absurd you find them or how little you can relate to them. This also goes for people who express liking things you dislike. Again, such expressions of opinions are not attacks on you for not sharing them, and even if you have absolutely no idea what those people see in whatever they're expressing fondness for and cannot relate to their feelings at all... just let it go. They have just as much right to like that thing and express their fondness for it as you do to like the Tellius games, or Ike, or Frederick, and express your fondness for them. The behavior of leaping down somebody's throat whenever they express liking or disliking some inconsequential thing like a particular media is really not good coming from anybody, so I'm not trying to say others are exempt from criticism when they do the same, but this sort of thing is at least what I personally have observed as being the catalyst of a lot of, er... conflicts... you've gotten into. I don't think you're a bad person, but do try to act with understanding of the fact that others' opinions, likes, and dislikes will very often differ from your own, and that it's important to accept that and to not let your inability to understand why they feel that way goad you into denouncing their opinion or starting an argument with them. Neither you nor they are "right" or "wrong" for having any given opinion. If somebody loves Lyn and doesn't care for Ike, then that's perfectly fine, just as fine as it is for you to love Ike and not care for Lyn. They're not wrong for feeling the way they do, however utterly, mind-bendingly-incomprehensible you may consider their feelings to be. Your opinions, likes, and dislikes are all valid, and you're not stupid or wrong for any of them. I simply ask that you understand that other people's opinions, likes, and dislikes are also valid, even when they differ from yours, and that that differentiation is not in itself a slight against you or your own opinions and viewpoints. My own personal experiences with you are rather limited, so forgive me for bringing up what are perhaps tired examples here. At any rate, as many others have stated, whether you stay or go is your own choice to make, and nobody else's. Do what you feel is best for you, but also realize that if you consistently run into the same sort of problems in social situations, even with entirely different people and in totally different communities, then perhaps the issue causing those problems is something on your end. You aren't a bad person for this. Everybody has flaws; that's only human. Even if it's impossible to ever become a person truly free of flaws, it's still important to try to combat and mitigate them to better yourself. It's a constant battle all of us humans face, and it can be tough at times, but it's very doable. Whatever your decision, I wish you the best of luck, both in growing as a person and in finding a place where you feel accepted and comfortable.

Oooooookie-dokie, here we go! The fact that Fire Emblem has historically been comparatively-simpler than a lot of other strategy RPGs is actually one of the things that I really liked about it, and I'm not especially happy that it's moving more in the direction of encouraging/facilitating min-maxing and the creation of broken skill builds. On that note, I think that Jugdral/Tellius making Skills rarer and more of a commodity used to differentiate units from each other was more interesting than Awakening and Fates turning it into a more standard RPG skill-learning system. Fates' personal skills helped, but I still didn't care too much for the system overall. I suppose I prefer to have units be innately-different in ways the player can't really circumvent or grind their way out of rather than essentially reducible to which stat cap modifiers you want on your unit with X skill build. Gonna hop on the "Faye isn't that bad" train, with the caveat that I think all she really needed that she didn't get was for the writing and other characters to actually critically-examine her obsession with Alm. Forsyth is likely to be a better unit than Lukas in the long run without Starshards/Jacinths or Pitchforks, because Lukas' offensive capabilities fall off a cliff due to his abysmal speed just not cutting it for mid/late-game, while Forsyth is able to keep up at least decently while having stronger Attack and still pretty hardy Defense. I don't think that a unit requiring investment to become strong inherently makes them bad, although I do understand that any such hurdle taken to sufficient extremes will cause a hit to a unit's overall worth, gameplay-wise. On that note, I understand that some sort of objective criteria of measurement needs to be established in order to really be able to rate the strength and usefulness of units with any real consistency or efficacy, but it frustrates me just how deeply steeped these ratings are in a very specific playstyle and how utterly dismissive they are of any other playstyles, for the most part. Of course, I do realize that it's also important to understand that stuff such as tier lists and unit ratings are often developed first and foremost by and for people who play Fire Emblem that way, but I still feel it's rather myopic and doesn't always encompass the full picture of how good a unit may or may not be. Part of this comes from the fact that I generally don't tend to enjoy using units as much if they already come really strong, because the sense of progression and seeing that my own efforts made a difference in the strength of an initially-weaker unit is very satisfying to me, and it's an experience that the former kind of unit, by their very nature, will never provide for me. I don't hate them, of course; I just find them comparatively-boring to use. Generally-speaking, I'm not a huge fan of stat caps going above 30 for most stats/60 or so for HP, and I'm not really that big on infinite or extended amounts of level-ups, either. I feel like keeping numbers lower, with each point being more significant and caps keeping things from getting out of hand, helps the game's power scale feel more grounded. Needing only 1 more Attack Speed to double wasn't a terrible idea and works just fine in the games that it's in, and I actually prefer it to Awakening, Fates, and Heroes having a raised double threshold of 5 more AS. I still think somewhere in between those two would be ideal, though; 4 more AS is probably my favorite take on it so far. I dislike the notion of "canon" classes for the Valentian Villager characters as I feel it runs counter to the whole point of them being customizable and in that way somewhat detracts from the fun of it if there's one "correct" class for each of them that you're "supposed" to pick. I'm grateful that at least Atlas doesn't seem to have a "canon" class, and frankly neither does Faye if we're going strictly by textual in-game cues. That said, I do appreciate at least that the developers made an effort to tip the player off with suggestions of what the original three Villagers are generally good as... I do realize how contradictory that sounds, haha~ Note that "the class the character is best in" is not the same as "the character's 'canon' class". Tobin is "canonically" an Archer, and Kliff is "canonically" a Mage, for example, but I've heard decent cases made for those not being the best class choice for either character. Gaiden!Tobin('s in-game portrait) was adorable and I honestly, unironically like his design more than Echoes!Tobin's. Besides, Kliff was supposed to be the lanky brown-haired white guy Kinda drifting outside of the mindset I usually take to playing games and thinking about characters, but I honestly don't find myself being, uh... physically-attracted... to very many Fire Emblem characters at all. This includes... "fan favorites"... like Tharja. Xander and Ryoma are really not remotely as interesting, textually or aesthetically, as would warrant the popularity that they have. Someone mentioned Virion being one of the better Archers in the series character- and design-wise a while back? I agree with them. I think he's a refreshing change of pace from the Nice Green Kid Retainer and Scrappy Village Youth archetypes for first Archers. Incidentally, Rolf is somehow kinda both of those archetypes at once, which is honestly sort of impressive. At the very least, he's something of a hybrid of the two. Vaike is honestly not that annoying. He's by no means one of my favorite characters even in just Awakening by itself, let alone the series as a whole, but I don't really find him to be particularly objectionable in any way. I honestly find Nah way more annoying than him, at least in certain supports where she gets quite literally violently overcontrolling. Also gonna second the opinion I read a while back that Archanea's cast is really not as bad as people make it out to be and, with a properly-fleshed-out remake, could easily end up one of the more interesting and likable casts in the series. On that note, the Archanea-Valentia setting's lore is one of the most interesting in the series in what's very much a case of quality over quantity in comparison to other games that are technically more lore-heavy. FE1 isn't a bad game and after playing it I'm actually mixed on how Shadow Dragon went about modernizing it. A lot of its early-installment idiosyncrasies have retroactively become fun and interesting gameplay gimmicks that set it apart from its successors. Lyn Mode isn't that bad, especially when you're playing on Hard Mode and thus without tutorials forcing your movements. I don't know if this is actually unpopular, but thinking back on it, Laguz were super bland from a gameplay perspective, which absolutely carries over to the Taguel, Kitsune, and Wolfskin, despite them being revised to work somewhat differently. I actually really like the idea of Fire Emblem having multiple intelligent races with varying gameplay properties to set them apart along that axis, but what they did with Laguz was just not an interesting way of making that happen. I think it's because the majority of them just turn into solid, but otherwise unremarkable, triangle-neutral melee fighters, which, although perhaps not bad, is certainly not especially interesting to use. On the flipside, I am actually a pretty big fan of gimmicky weapon types like Ballistae and Fates' Knives and would love to see them come back and factor more into future Fire Emblem games. I really don't like the notion that certain characters shouldn't even be recruitable because there's no gameplay reason to use them over other similar characters, partially because these arguments are often coming from the perspective of a very specific playstyle and partly because I don't think that every character in a Fire Emblem game needs to be or even should be good. At least for me, there's a certain appeal just in the sheer variety of characters that join you; good, bad, and everywhere in between. Obligatory mention of "I don't particularly like A Song of Ice and Fire and really would rather Fire Emblem not become more like it" here.

They are discounted at 50% off, but, in order to get the discount, you need to buy them from Fates' in-game store for them. They will not be discounted or combined into a single game program together if you buy them separately from the eShop, and you can't even purchase Revelation from the eShop anyway.

Ohhhh, huh. Well, it still is pretty cool! I guess I was just expecting it to be, like, some weird glitched will with all sorts of bizarre impossible stuff in it. It's really cool that you managed to train up everybody to max, though! Even if universal caps ended up making a lot of them indistinguishable from each other, gameplay-wise, hehe~

I actually don't think Faye really has a canon class. (And, incidentally, I don't think Atlas does, either.) Maybe she's been depicted as a Pegasus Knight a lot in Cipher; I couldn't really tell you. She's the only character in the entire game to gain access to the Anew spell if you make her a Cleric, in which she also has a full list of six spells, so that counts for something, I'd say. Really, I'm not a fan of the whole "canon" classes notion in general. I feel it sorta undermines the customizability aspect of these characters by introducing a "correct" or "canon" choice to the equation.

Also, I know that this doesn't apply to Elibe lore, but there is more precedent in the Fire Emblem series in general for characters being able to be revived completely after death; the Archanea-Valentia-Jugdral timeline has the Aum and Valkyrie Staves, as well as Valentia's revival springs. I mean, so much about Fire Emblem lore is left undefined due to not being super relevant to the plot, so there's plenty of room for your imagination. I'm not really sure about "reviving" someone, only for them to have not just a different appearance, but also a different personality, though. At that point, aren't you really just creating a whole new person from the remnants of the base dead person, rather than actually, truly bringing that dead person back? Gotta be enough left of them that it could truly be said to be them, after all, for it to really count as actually reviving them.

Isn't Masked Marth ultimately just an alternate skin Lucina, being identical to vanilla Lucina stat-wise? That being the case, I'd just look up build suggestions for vanilla Lucina, since the parts of them you can't change are exactly the same.

Honestly it just looks like everyone is almost completely maxed out with strong equipment. Is there something I'm missing, or...?

One thing I recall observing is that Fire Emblem's gameplay style is really conducive to any combat-heavy plot involving large-scale battles and following a group of characters numbering in multiple dozens. Therefore, I think it'd be interesting to see things like a main character who was, well... anything other than a person of royal or noble birth. Maybe a commander of some city guard or something, or a leader of a band of thieves or bandits or something... hell, even revisiting a mercenary band might be cool! As for the structure of the story itself, I think it would be neat to see more Fire Emblem stories that didn't eventually end with a battle against some super-powerful supernatural being who's largely a non-presence in the story proper. Fire Emblem's stories thrive when it comes to their vast and diverse arrays of human characters, so the decision to exclude the final boss from the story's developed cast always seems baffling to me whenever it's done. Besides, I find that final boss battles are more satisfying when the character being fought is familiar and the conflict with them has been built up to the climax that is the final boss fight, rather than just, "oh hey here's some super strong thing to fight before you're done". Another idea I had that could tie into the player choice aspect is a story centering around a problem or conflict to which there really is no clean or easy solution, with the main characters being in a position to try to solve that problem nonetheless, and it being up to the player how they go about it.