Which Fire Emblem game has the best story/gameplay integration regarding the enemy army that the protagonists face?

[Spatha]

Basically, how the lore of the enemy army translates into gameplay and which Fire Emblem game does it the best. It's a great attention to detail.

 

Example in FE4: The Kingdom of Verdane that the protagonists face in the prologue and Ch.1 is widely known as a country of barbarians.

As such, most of the soldiers in their army consists of weak axe fighters while having hunters and a few strong axe-fighters. They make up for their poor army by relying on sheer numbers.

The Kingdom of Agustria in Ch.2 and Ch.3 on the other hand is the opposite.

They are a well-armed and a well-trained army when compared to the Verdanian Army. Their cavalry is most famous, in which Eldigan and his Cross Knights effectively represent.

Example in FE6: Ch. 21: Sword of Seals  Roy and his army is now facing the full might of Bern's army led by it's most powerful general: Murdock and also Wyvern General Gale is also fighting with him.

This shown in-game by the utterly devastating wave of reinforcements upon reinforcements of Dragon Riders and Paladins.

It's no joke that the chapter intro describes it as "Bloodiest day in the history of Elibe".

 

[Slumber]

FE5, I'd argue almost without question. 

You play a scrappy guerilla force, and your army is constantly on the run or on the defensive whenever the enemy army shows up in full force. You generally only ever put up a proper fight when August or Dorias have a plan put together and you can take on the enemy on your own terms. Leif's army can only function when taking on bandits or when using hit-and-run tactics. 

Any moment Leif tries to act on his own and bite off more than he can chew, he is almost immediately made to regret it. 

Edited December 22, 2018 by Slumber

[Ertrick36]

I'd say Thracia seems to be the one that best depicts what happens when you try to bring in a ragtag band of rebels up against a well-trained army of cutthroats - basically that you often fail, have to flee, or otherwise have great difficulty fighting them.  Genealogy also best depicts the superiority cavalry tend to have over infantry, and has essentially the inverse of Thracia - what happens when a bunch of grunts from a third-world country try to take on just a tiny fraction of the continent's most powerful military.  And the only time you seem to have problems in Genealogy are when you have to deal with enemy cavalry or artillery (including mages with siege tomes), and also shows that armies without diversity tend to fall even when they outnumber their enemies.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Haven't played Thracia, so I cannot echo that one. 

This said, I do think Radiant Dawn nailed the thematics of its battles. Some of these thematics made for problematic fights from a gameplay perspective, but that is besides the main point here.

For some of the fights in Parts 2 and 3, you get plenty of yellow and green allied units who remind you the fight is bigger than what you can see. By comparison, the absence of any such units in Parts 1 and 4 indicate the smaller scale of these battles. 1-8 even strips you of Zihark, Jill, and Fiona, to point out its an unofficial mission by Micaiah not sanctioned by the Daein Liberation Army.

For Part 3 Ike, the game always is able to come up with a reasonable explanation why it's only the Greil Mercenaries and friends you see on the battlefield. In the case of 3-3, the reasoning- a behind-enemy-lines sabotage distraction, is quite fun too!

Part 3 on the whole, during the first half or so of it, has an excellent atmosphere of a grand military campaign. You start with a small invasion accruing small victories in the boondocks, then things get much bigger in 3-2, and you have a real setback because the enemy in the Begnion Central Army means business. 3-3 is a reversal to amazing fortunes for the heroes, followed by a major reversal in the enemy's favor in 3-4. Then things chill after so much drama in 3-5, with the heroes making a planned retreat, albeit one with some urgency even if it isn't panicked. All of this is done with constant war room meetings, as would be expected of any great military campaign. And during these meetings, you have varied voices speaking in the Laguz leaders plus Ike, Soren, and Titania. Even when P3 begins to become derailed around 3-11, its sense of scale and the language of the grand campaign endures to the final turn of this show.

The realism and dynamism here is to be contrasted with other FEs with major military campaigns. Shadow Dragon has one little reversal at Port Warren, but otherwise Marth's constant march is him victoriously on the offensive. Ephraim marches through Grado without a hiccup, Alm probably does the same in SoV, and Seliph the same in FE4 Gen 2. Roy from afar appears to receive a challenge, but perhaps the atmosphere is weaker. Perhaps Awakening has the "dynamic campaign", in Valm in particular, but I thought Part 3 RD did it better.

[Shadow Mir]

Seconding Radiant Dawn for reasons stated already.

33 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

1-8 even strips you of Zihark, Jill, and Fiona, to point out its an unofficial mission by Micaiah not sanctioned by the Daein Liberation Army.

It's only the latter two who are unusable in that chapter.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

It's only the latter two who are unusable in that chapter.

I was iffy on Zihark, so I guess I guessed wrong, well that is a little inconsistent. Jill I get would own the chapter, but Fiona would certainly not. Of all them all, Zihark needs the EXP the least, so they should've blocked him there if they were the other two.

[redlight]

Thracia, especially with the character designs for character's clothing