HeroMystic

Awakening has made everyone here too critical of hair colors.

It would be pretty silly to not have Ike at all, but I was particularly talking about DB being main characters and Ike filling the role as a supporting character.

The illusion of fighting for the Glory of Nohr can help keep an army in check.

This is mainly due to writers stretching themselves too thin with trying to give everyone spotlight. It's part of the reason why I think the developers originally intended for DB to be the main characters and you would follow them the whole game, but ultimately Ike was far too popular of a character to brush aside, which is why we jump around so much and the plot becomes a mess as a result. Ultimately though I see RD!Ike as The Big Damn Hero, and what we see in this game is what his growth resulted into. Of course, this also means he stopped growing. The only plot that was left for him is finishing off Zelgius. Zelgius overall was pretty awkward when I think about it. I think he was well done in PoR as a mysterious combatant that put fear in his enemies, and you didn't really know his intentions besides wanting to prove he's better than Greil. Which begs the question, why did he wanted to prove that anyway? When he revealed his scheme to Ike in RD, he never answered that question either. As a result I'd say Zelgius got the shorter end of the stick in terms of development. Nothing really surmised to anything.

To note, in the Elibian Games (Blazing Sword and Binding Blade), Ilia is also a poor country with no crops to harvest and poor living conditions due to the cold. Ilia has to rely on trade from other countries and mercenary work in order to survive. That's why they're a mercenary nation. Seeing as how Nohr is a kingdom, I actually can see them having established trade to keep them going, but wanting the ability to fend for themselves could be the initial drive for conquest.

Yes, I was around when Awakening was bashed, and I specifically remember the term Waifu Emblem, but it's incredibly minor and only existant in a handful of users (unless you want to talk about GameFAQs, but they're known for not being the most civil of people). Thracia 776 and Radiant Dawn were legitimately challenging games, so I can see people saying that (my preference is a mix between PoR and New Mystery, but that isn't here nor there). Point is, anyone who bashes people for liking a new game are people not worth listening to and they don't make up the majority of fans. Even further, if they never knew Fire Emblem was in trouble, I would be hesitant to even place the "true fan" label on them. Missing the yellow flag from PoR/RD's poor sales I can see, but the red flag should've been apparent when New Mystery wasn't released internationally. The two things that veterans that I know from here and FEPlanet was even though the majority of us never touch casual mode (I forget this mode even exists), it's one of the reasons why the Fire Emblem series exist today. We all have our gripes about Awakening, but numbers don't lie. People love the game because it was generally stress-free on it's easiest difficulty and they can enjoy strolling through it, and as long as people realize our preferences doesn't have to be the same then we mesh pretty well. At the very least, a large majority of this board seems to understand this. Future of Despair is the same difficulty regardless of the mode (slightly harder in Lunatic+ due to having an extra Luna-specific ability). I don't know about anyone else, but people disagreeing about Awakening doesn't mean the community is split to me. I've been part of plenty of other communities that are far worse than Fire Emblem is, even at it's worst. Many people would cite the Sonic community but the Smash community would take the cake easily.

Meta in simple terms is knowledge of the game. Black Knight is built to be literally unkillable, especially in Part 1. If some random grunt killed BK I'd be gawking too, so it's funny that the writers didn't even make Micaiah sad, but rather just baffled and surprised.

This "true fan" stuff is pretty garbage. There actually isn't a rift between Awakening fans and veterans. I'm quite sure any veteran FE player understands Fire Emblem was in a severely tight spot, and Awakening's success is the reason why the series still exists, and even further it's still a good game. Veteran FE players aren't asking FE:if to be ballbustingly hard by default, just that there's a reasonable difficulty. The problem with Awakening is how easy it was to break and there was no balanced difficulty. A lot of people usually cite EXP grinds but the real culprit here is actually supports and pair-up. This is the main reason why it's better to to have a small squad (2-6) so they can be fed EXP and be buffed beyond the game's difficulty. Lunatic can't survive this and Lunatic+ is basically the only legit challenge which is ridiculous in it's own right. If every map on the Nohr side is something akin to the Future of Despair DLC from Awakening I'll generally be satisfied. Those were very fun and actually challenging. The developers are generally very good at giving everyone what they want along with drawing in new fans, which is what they seem to strive for. They just haven't hit that sweetspot for veterans with Awakening.

Ike got criticized and blasted in Path of Radiance a few times. but in Radiant Dawn he was pretty much god incarnate even from a gameplay perspective, so you'd be correct on the latter. Bolded: For FE, and other JRPGs in general, I completely agree. These games are not good at making self-inserts, to the point where I no longer see them as self-inserts but rather characters you can influence by making them take different choices. Some games, like the FF series before they did away with name changes, doesn't even have dialogue choices. The best JRPG I've seen in recent time that attempt self-inserts is the Persona series, and even they got to the point where they stopped kidding themselves and made the silent protagonists into full-fleshed characters through movies and sub-plots. The western RPGs tend to make self-inserts better because they're literally self-inserts with no known pre-determined history, unless the developers gave you the ability to make that history yourself (Props to FE12 for doing this). In that case, you can actually envision yourself as the main character as you're a blank slate, but even this has it's flaws in the form of action, as you never say/do what you actually want to say/do, but it actually gets pretty close. Anyway, I feel it's best to not see Kamui as a blank avatar but rather a character you facilitate growth through choices you influence. That's what IS is going for anyway.

That's an interesting point. However, the effects behind this besides the torment behind the Hoshido family for losing their kin remains unseen. It's already been shown that Kamui was pretty well off in Nohr regardless, to the point where the Nohr family genuinely loves him/her as one of their own. If Kamui is a prisoner of war then someone screwed that up. I'm pretty sure it's just part of a Deus Ex plot device that Garon wants for himself. But fortunately Garon's actions doesn't speak for Nohr as a whole. If it did then you might as well be siding with the Legion of Doom.

It doesn't sound like Nohr are inherently evil or "power hungry" jerks. Going by their living conditions, it sounds like they have to make conquest if they want to survive. Hoshido sounds a lot better off, but the fact they've kidnapped Aqua makes them sound pretty shady too. That said, I'm actually feeling that Nohr may actually have a deeper and more "tragic" story than what the trailers claims. Beyond that, Nohr sounds much more like the traditional FE games that I've sorely missed from Awakening's bland routing missions, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with Nohr + Lunatic Mode to get the full challenge.

I find Shadow Dragon to be the worst FE game I've ever played from the western titles. Which is strange for me because I've played FE3 and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I think a lot of it does have to deal with how bland it feels. Not necessarily in story, but in animations and art. I find presentation to be the game's weakest point, and it's just piled up with the poorly-executed Gaiden requirements and weak character personalities. The lack of mechanics are pretty secondary to me.

I don't recall Marth ever getting pissed at anything, even with the lulzy gaiden chapter requirements in Shadow Dragon.

You have to open the Lobera chest with Eliwood. Opening it with anyone else doesn't trigger the dialogue box.

Radiant Dawn just wasn't kind to any of the new character due to it's ambitious plot. There's essentially only two new characters that get developed: Micaiah and Pelleas. Despite Sothe being in every chapter Micaiah is in, he's a one-dimensional character with hardly any development. Daein in general just shows they're very witless and easily persuaded, so Micaiah while all right in design herself, is a victim of having bad friends. Gameplay-wise, most of the frustration about Sothe comes from the fact you're forced to use him. He's a great unit overall, but he really becomes a PITA to use in Part 4. I can definitely see the Micaiah hate though, because I used to be the same way.

To be fair, that angst was well-justified, and he does normalize in The Answers. Owain is so hammy because it's a coping mechanism. He's nowhere near my favorite, but I can see his thought process.

You're missing the point. This isn't about justification, but rather understanding them. Many villians and antagonists have strong backstories that can show the motivations behind their actions, which makes them understandable. Bowser constantly kidnaps Princess Peach because he wants to marry her, Takaya in Persona 3 encourages the End of the World because his childhood was massively fucked by a scientist group and had a set amount of time to live, Faize in Star Ocean 4 attempts to destroy the universe because his home planet was destroyed and he felt powerless. You can disagree with their actions, but you can also understand their reasons behind it. One shouldn't treat characters as so black and white because you hate them. Tharja doesn't have this luxury however, and honestly I doubt she does have a reason. She's an asshole because she wants to be one. I think she even says "I have a reputation to uphold" a few times in supports. I believe that is Reggie's point. Considering I've been in this situation and even wrote a report on it, I know this. However, it still doesn't click with me that Tharja was an abusive mother, even if she was a terrible one. One of the reasons being Noire and Present!Tharja gets along just fine without issues. Now, Future!Tharja is irrelevant to me as she no longer exists, but if Noire can get along with Present!Tharja, then Future!Tharja couldn't have been completely terrible, and if the worst Present!Tharja has done to Noire is give her runny noses, then I still stand by my position that people are filling in holes with their own ideas.

Elincia had to decide to let Lucia die instead of negotiating with rebels who were essentially terrorists at that point. After Ike and the Mercs swooped in and stopped the whole thing, she ordered the Crimean Knights to publically execute all rebels as a message to Crimea that none of that BS will be tolerated. Elincia started off as a weak ruler who heavily relied on others (especially Ike), but she grew into a fairly strong queen that stopped taking shit from people. EDIT: Chrom on the other hand is very idealistic, and it shows most of the time. It's a tragic flaw that's worth having, but the game never explores it like what RD did for Elincia.

Know what? I'll jump in on this too. Gregor is fucking awesome. I love his badass smirk too and his teachings of love. He even throws Miriel for a loop and makes Lon'qu look like a bitch. Gregor for best character in the game?

The rape thing is usually brought up on youtube as a funny joke, but I'm also a person that never thought of it. Personally, I find the notion of her doing that at all to be rather repulsive, though I'm not gonna be blind and say people are wrong for thinking that way. I prefer to just think she locked Avatar in her room and tickled his feet all night. But I do find it amusing that people are willing to bash Tharja for her behavior as a mom, yet not even glance at Cordelia's poor parenting skills towards Severa which made her develop an inferiority complex.

Not gonna get into the rape discussion. The second personality was made by (Future) Tharja's talisman in order to get rid of her cowardly personality. Present Tharja changed that though. I get that Tharja is a terrible mother, which is clear as day, but none of it ever screamed "child abuse" to me. Seems more like people are filling in holes with their own ideas and writing it off as fact.

I agree with this, but can we define what Tharja has done to Noire that can be labeled as child abuse? Far as I know, the worst she has done is put curses on her that gave her runny noses at night.

I'd say Sully isn't popular because she's a bit extreme on her tomboyism. Her attitude about being a woman in a man's world feels like a "been there, done that" type of thing.

The hilarity of that line is exactly why it's my favorite.

I agree with this completely. On my first playthrough I found all the ladies attractive, and my first pick was almost Anna. This was until Cherche swooped in and took my heart. It's just I'm getting the vibe that basing attraction off of one's looks shouldn't be a factor. Maybe in an ideal world, sure, but last I heard, being physically appealing is a good thing. To further emphasize, my best friend chose Tiki as his waifu primarily due to her looks, and he grew to like her more as he learned about her.