Othin

Headache? FE5 isn't some ridiculously difficult and toxic world to avoid.

Exp isn't a huge concern; there's plenty more later. The game is nowhere near rigid enough for you to "need" any given group of Exp.

Japanese TCG cards do not contain translations anyway; they contain romanizations. Haven't we been over this same matter already? Serebii and Bulbapedia may reference the Japanese names, but they have never used the Japanese name for a Pokemon as the primary long-term name the Pokemon is referred to by. They have used the Japanese names as the primary name temporarily while awaiting an English release, but all Pokemon released in Japan have been released in America, so there was never a need to use the name permanently. That's the core difference here: The main Pokemon games all get released in America eventually, while the main Fire Emblem games don't, and they must be dealt with differently.

So now are we assuming tiering ideology must be ironclad, with no room for interpretation and questioning?

There is no English "gospel" version of FE12, therefore any attempt to make an English reference to FE12 must go outside those bounds. Again, "Belf" is not official either, and it can require considerable digging to get a name that fits the intent better than an overly literal version. This FE12 translation has the tools to entirely replace the official translation where it has failed to exist, and it should do so.

Maybe draft the whole starter/partner group as one unit before moving on to the others?

I might be in for this, depending on the standards used.

Surely we recognize that no English source would refer to him only as ベルフ or Berufu. Therefore, someone's subjective translation must be applied.

I tend to like the Water starters, but I give random-ish answers to get different starters each time. In general, Treecko is my favorite, but I think I've only gone for it once. Rescue Team is one of my favorite games, but I'm not a fan of what Explorers did with taking out a ton of the things I had liked most. I kinda want to finish Sky sometime, but eh. The music is good, but I still prefer Rescue Team's.

If that was the case, then NoA shouldn't have changed the characters' names from Xyst and Asseray to begin with. But they did, as they were being a professional translation, just as this project is doing, and therefore it has no need to be bound by any different limitations. The core fact that you're missing is that "Belf" does not have a go-to name, not for English versions of the game. Just like "Xyst" was not what the FE8 translators knew well not to use as a go-to name, "Belf" is what the FE12 translators know well not to use as a go-to name. Wikis and other sites that listed names such as Brad for Aran and Eddie for Edward had to "retroactively" change them when the English version came out, and in the same way, they would be wisest to change "Belf" to "Vergil" and all other relevant changes when this de facto English version is finalized.

Standards with quirks that decrease matters to consider are an improvement over standards with quirks to increase matters to consider? That hardly sounds accurate. You're equating being able to consider using Astohl to not being able to not consider using Seth? Rankings have some problems, like Dart as you brought up, but those weren't huge problems. They resulted in a few extra characters having substantial baggage to deal with, and yet those characters still managed to not be ignored. These issues we face today? These add more than just a bit of restriction to a few characters; these add massive restrictions to many characters. These are huge problems. And I'm not saying rankings are ideal. My example was from FE9, which doesn't even have rankings. My point is the ideas of options that were floating around, options beyond the "best" strategy, options that no longer seem to exist. Maybe rankings are one way of bringing out those options. Maybe there's a better solution. But LTC is not such a solution. We need something that frees the discussions from their current limits. Edit: Don't have time to respond to the new response right now; I've already been spending time I don't have. I'll get back to this when I don't have anything better to do, which is hopefully never.

The problem is that you're assuming a need for an LTC tier list in the first place. And yes, it is LTC, not "efficiency". You may not be going for absolute LTC, but efficiency in terms of low turn counts is not the only definition of "efficiency". Efficiency can be used to describe playing well to any standard, and I will not participate in the abuse of that word to act like LTC is the only relevant standard. Whether or not you say it LTC should exclude other playstyles is entirely irrelevant. All that matters here is that that is the result: With the influence LTC holds over Serenes, there is little room for discussion of standard playstyles. My comment about "rules" was a response to your remark about the need for a "Sethless" standard in order to consider playing without Seth. Relevant story: A few years ago, I recall watching a debate on FEFF. I don't remember who was involved, but I know it was Oscar vs. Boyd. One of the debaters pointed out in his opening statement that his intent was not to prove that the other character was terrible, but rather that if a player, for whatever reason, had filled every other slot on their team and was choosing between those two for the last slot, then the player would get more of an advantage from picking his chosen character. There was an agreement that those two were two of the best characters in the game, and that an ideal team would include both of them. But the situation being considered was not an ideal situation. It didn't have to be. This is an idea much of the current Serenes community appears to have lost, whether discussing LTC or not.

I feel the same way. I won't say it killed my motivation to play through it, but it's definitely not helping me want to go back and actually play through it sometime.

And this is the precisely the problem with focusing so much on LTC, especially absolute LTC. There are so many ways to play FE, but LTC only accepts a tiny handful. In order to do anything but the "best" strategies, it needs to make specific rules against them and in turn go with the next handful down. That is not necessarily the mark of a bad playstyle, but it is the mark of a niche playstyle that should not be focused on to the exclusion of other playstyles.

Speak plainly.

Preconceptions should not be ignored. In Marth's case, anyone likely to be familiar with FE will know him as Marth, and for good reason. For characters such as Vergil, however, who have never had any importance in any localized game, the impact of such preconceptions on the overall group of people who would be playing FE12 would be far smaller.

The most Hit/Avo you could get from maximum supports in the GBA games was +25, actually. Maximum Earth meanwhile gives +50 in FE9 and +45 in FE10. Granted, that's the only bonus; maximum Anima, for example, gives +5 Atk, +5 Def, +25 Avo, and +25 CEV, which altogether is probably better than even the +50 Avo. But then, FE10's +45 has the advantage of only requiring two units together to get the full bonus, not three, and being possible to form easily between any two characters with Earth.

Or how about we all recognize that Vincent was right in the first place and there's nothing more to say. He says he'll take care of it; let him take care of it.

LTC isn't the only thing too fast for GBA supports. Playing at standard speeds, I haven't tried going for them often, but it seems to me that aside from special cases, you need to either have the characters glued together or just spend a lot of time after emptying a map with them next to each other and hitting "end turn". The latter is just boring and not at all anything something would feel rewarding for. The former can be fun, but the extent to which it's required is fairly excessive.

Sounds highly expensive to work out satisfactorily, enough to question the need to even bother having the possibility of a death penalty at all.

The threat of spending the rest of your life in prison sounds to me like a good way of discouraging people from committing the worst crimes. Cutting that time short so that they get punished for less time instead of more is simply foolish; it's a pointless way of reducing the effectiveness of such a deterrent. Now, I won't say the system doesn't need work in other ways. But the death penalty is not one of those ways.

Okay, then how did he become nobility in Begnion? Begnion seems to care a lot more about blood. I mean, unless he was born into nobility in Begnion, went to Daein for some reason to fight in their army, then returned to Begnion without any problems from what seems like it would be considered treason.

... Blasphemy. Besides, that would only be for like a chapter and a half.

Hey, did we ever find out how the hell Zelgius wound up learning to fight from Gawain, a Daein general, in the first place?

8/10. He's good, but he can't do enough to make up for lack of Pursuit to be any better.