Board 8 > Gauging interest in a Fire Emblem ranking topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have been dreading this write up all along because this chapter makes me legitimately angry to think about. But here we go, the worst chapter in Fire Emblem. There was only ever one contender for this "glorious" title...

(following the link here will technically spoil something, though I won't be referencing that aspect myself)

The Absolute Worst

1. Thracia 776 Chapter 24x - The Altar of Loptyr

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe5/guia/ENG_cap24x.htm

Oh hey there, Thracia fog. Can't see the terrain at all? Fun. Map layout that encourages you to get lost (look at that path on the left that leads to nothing but stat boosters that mean little at this stage and a god damn promotion item in the second last chapter of the game) because you can't actually see where you're going? Fun. Poisonous weapons, which of course never wears off on its own because status effects in Thracia are permanent unless you heal them manually? Fun. Thracia really likes the whole infinite poison chipping you away in the darkness gimmick, this is like the third time its used it. Status staffs that you can't know about going into the map because of the dark? Fun. Fenrir tomes and their ten range plus poison, on tiles that give +10 magic to the units on them? Fun. Dark mage reinforcements that teleport into the darkness to ambush you, possibly with Hel tomes whose "HP to 1" effect is instant death for a poisoned unit if hit on enemy phase? Fun. Almost every enemy on the map is a Berserker, who have Wrath in this game to make fighting them on player phase obnoxious? Fun.

Everything I just said? Pretty much completely irrelevant. All could be annoying but would be manageable to some extent, even in combination. The real problem with this map is, of course, the warp tiles.

Remember how in 16B, there were warp tiles that would send your units backwards through the forest for more tedious walking? Well, here we are with more warp tiles, more than twice as many in fact. And this time, they send you to that room in the bottom. You know, the one with no exit? So any unit that gets stuck in there can only get out if you have a Rescue staff (or a combination of Warp and Rewarp, which is more resource intensive). Do you also remember in 16B how I mentioned that it was an escape map, and any unit left on the map when Leif escapes is considered captured? This is after the prison break chapter where you get to rescue captured units. Anyone captured at this point is effectively dead. So anyone who gets stuck in that room is effectively dead if you can't get them out.

Did I mention that the warp tiles are invisible, with absolutely no indication that they exist, no way to know which tile is normal and which will teleport you into the doom room? So depending on your inventory, these tiles can effectively just auto-kill a unit that ends their turn on one. With absolutely nothing to even tell you they're there in advance. The only thing that even tries to indicate their placement is that enemies will avoid standing on them. On a fog of war map where you can't see the enemies. On a map with low enemy density so you barely get to see them anyway.

Oh yeah, if Leif gets warped into the doom room and you can't teleport him out with staffs of your own, he can't escape, and thus the game is softlocked. Gee what do you know, a Thracia chapter designed with the deliberate intent of trying to softlock you! Not even for the first time! This is clearly the absolute pinnacle of game design, best game in the series, 10/10.

There's a few actions you can take on warp tiles without being warped, mainly involving the rescue command, which is helpful if you know about it but utterly meaningless if you don't look things up online. In fact, it just creates potential confusion when you see that a tile is "safe" because someone stepped on it and didn't get warped, then you move there with another unit and they DO get warped. Speaking of, one of those actions you can take is opening a door. Take a good look at the map. Notice how three of the five doors on the map have warp tiles directly in front of them? So you'll stand on that tile to open them, and think that it's a safe space. Then on the next turn, if you're looking for a place to move someone, you can remember that the space by the door is safe! And then you get warped to the doom room. Punished for the sin of actually paying attention to the game and expecting it to hold true to its own apparent rules. They literally programmed and place these tiles with the explicit purpose of tricking you into getting wrecked by them.

Earlier in this topic, I referred to Revelation Chapter 10 as "an absolute atrocity". To call Thracia Chapter 24x the same would be an insult to atrocity.

I can't even begin to fathom how this ever got made. The entire map is built on an incredibly punishing, deliberately unclear gimmick that cannot be overcome except by brute force trial and error or looking up a map. I don't know if there was a strategy guide for this game being sold separately that Intelligent Systems was getting a cut of the profits on, but it would sure explain a lot about this map. And the game in general, to be honest.

The nicest thing that can be said about this map is that its unlock condition is almost as absurd as it is. In chapter 24, one of the NPC children you're trying to rescue (always one of the male ones, IIRC) will be selected randomly. If that child is rescue dropped within range of the door at the north end of the map, he'll move to open it. But only after turn 5. Before that they don't do anything but shuffle around. And no, none of this is hinted at in the game anywhere to my knowledge. So to even get to 24x you probably need a guide. Which just adds to the insanity, and doesn't change that even if you use a guide to unlock the map, you don't necessarily want to use a step by step walkthrough to deal with the map itself. I know I personally look up side chapter unlock methods, but try to play maps blind on my first go otherwise. With this being the sole exception really, as I'd had the details of it spoiled to me already.

Now that I've written a detailed summary of this chapter, I want you all to understand how hard I've tried to keep this civil and polite. It's hard to do and I may not have done a perfect job, but I've tried hard. I tell you this because I'm about to stop trying and tell you how I really feel.

Fuck 24x

This is the unquestionable worst thing in all of Fire Emblem. Shitty maps exist, full of tedium and gimmicks, but they pale in comparison to 24x. Stupid plot points exist, undermining interesting conflicts with dumb deus ex machinas, but they pale in comparison to 24x. Aw

Today I learned that the GameFAQs character limit is apparently 8000 these days

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That sounds like 24x to me.
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I don't know, I feel like I may have gone a little too easy on it in the end

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Not sure if I'll have time to do the last write up this afternoon or if I'll need to wait until later on tonight when I get home

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Let's wrap this list up, shall we?

This will feature mild spoilers for Genealogy of the Holy War (FE4)

The Best

1. Genealogy Final - The Final Holy War

https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Chapter_11.png

After an entire game's worth of fighting across literally the entire continent, you come to the last battle kicking off right where it all started. Twenty years after Sigurd set out from Chalphy castle to repel the Verdane army, Seliph sets foot in his home for the first time in preparation for the final battle. You can even see the similarities between this map and the prologue. While some additional forests have grown to the west, you can clearly recognize the same layout, with the first village you ever saved right there and the village and church Lex and Azel once showed up at nearby. That little stretch of the map may serve little purpose in gameplay but to house some reinforcements you'll probably never even fight, but it certainly helps maintain the continuity between maps that this game is known for.

And of course, you have good music to listen to. It's not my favourite chapter theme in the game, but it's definitely in the upper half.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcjjPNHrXyM

Right off the bat you're surrounded by dark mages on the cliffs, ready to pelt you with Fenrir and Sleep as you head out to deal with the first wave of enemies. After you deal with them it's on to the first real test of this map, castle Edda and its vast array of status staffs and siege tomes. Probably the largest concentration of long range magic in the entire series and guarded by a crew of strong and fast foot units, including an extremely strong swordmaster boss, this can be a long, brutal battle to slowly pick off the threats, abusing canto, dancing and the almighty Rescue staff to safely approach this gauntlet...or with those same tools and a bit of planning, you can slip right through them, take out the comparatively weak dark bishop boss and seize, immediately eliminating the entire threat. This same choice between epic showdown and sneaky trick is present for three of the five castles on this map, and even arguably the fourth to a lesser extent.

As soon as you've taken Edda you're beset by a swarm of great knights, lead by the master knight Brian. Once again the final battle of a generation puts you up against the Helswath and its monstrous defensive boosts, and Brian surpasses even his grandfather Langbalt with an insane 47 defense and 27 defense (in a game where stats cap at 30, mind you). Even holy weapons and non-holy magic will struggle to do damage, and he's a 9 move unit with canto on road tiles who will abuse all those things. Taking him down is no mean feat, but he can be bypassed with some quick thinking (or given the same treatment you give every high defense boss - throw the Forseti tome at him and see what happens), though it's much more difficult this time due to his minions blocking the way (although that can be to your advantage with some deep knowledge of the Rescue staff mechanics...)

The only real downtime of the map follows, with a relatively dull walk up to Freege to take on an armada of barons. They don't hit hard at range, but their high Pavise activation rate is a nightmare to deal with, and you'll have a brigade of bow knights showing up from behind you to try to catch you off guard...though in practice, it's pretty easy to seize before they can even catch up. Once again you can bypass most of this army if you can clear a path to the castle, though most players will probably want to take the opportunity to finish off Hilda personally, ideally with Arthur or Tinni. And the castle seize does not solve all problems this time, as the dark bishops nearby are not linked to Freege and will continue to pester you until you deal with them somehow, which can bode poorly if they're still active heading into the next part.

The final stretch of the map is definitely the hardest, as you have two of the hardest enemy groups in the game heading your way, Ishtar and her crew on the one hand, and a trio of Falcoknights with Leg Rings and nearly capped stats on the other. Trying to fight them all at once is a tough task for even combat monsters like Shanan and whoever your Forseti wielder is, but there are a bunch of clever ways to minimize their threat. The Falcoknight trio can be baited south and their AI will tend to attack at one range for the sake of setting up their triangle attack (did I mention they can do a triangle attack?), allowing you to lure them away from the rest of the crew and/or deal with them on enemy phase if you have a unit capable of handling them (like Shanan). Ishtar is as deadly as ever, but there are mountain tiles to give you at least a slight chance of dodging Mjolnir, she's still frail enough to be taken down before she can counter with critical weapons, and even her better than capped resistance isn't quite enough to save her from a nearly capped magic unit with a magic ring turning her off with a status staff. Or if you like RNG shit you can use the sleep edge (or berserk edge!) because a glitch results in the status always triggering on her when it hits due to her resistance being over 30.

However you handle it, you'll then move on to face off with the Deadlords and another little surprise I won't go into detail on here for spoiler purposes. With tremendous stats and deadly skillsets (each posses Pursuit and at least one other damage boosting skill) and equipment, they're a threat to even your best units if you don't plan out very carefully what the worst case scenario is for exposing someone. And all of this happens under the watchful eye of the final boss, crown prince Julius. His Meteor tome covers a lot of ground and with Accost he can trigger multiple attacks with, and the Deadlords will actually retreat back into his range even if you've lured them away if there's no one in their attack range on enemy phase. If you can get up close with him, you'll find yourself barely able to damage thanks to the attack halving effect of his Loptyr tome, and while his attack stat is actually not as high as a few other bosses thus far, once he dips below half health he will crit on every attack thanks to Wrath, and a Wrath crit from Julius is strong enough that even capped HP and resistance can't withstand it, while he himself is immune to critical hits, as well as Astra and Luna.

<continued>

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While it is actually possible to take him down (safely, in fact) right away, for the sake of plot you'll actually end up sending some units around the forest to the north, leaving the bulk of your army behind to deal with the Deadlords while they head up to finally get a shot at Manfroy, the man responsible for pretty much the entire story. He's no joke to deal with quickly, as he has an army of dark bishops with sleep staffs and Hel tomes guarding him, and they start moving when you get relatively close. A single hit from Hel will drop you to 1 HP, another Hel will kill you, and Manfroy himself will try to pick you off with Fenrir, and with his high stats and 4 leadership stars, he's pretty accurate. Seems a place to take it slow, except you can't do that or you'll risk bad things happening. And Manfroy is durable enough that Seliph cannot ORKO him conventionally, even with a Power Ring. You'll need to either chip first or use a critical brave sword to actually get through him and seize without having to end a turn in range of the horde.

And then finally, you get Julia with the Naga tome that lets her utterly obliterate Julius in a bit of an unusual twist. Usually it's the main character who is "destined" to kill the final boss, not someone else!

This write up is huge, but the chapter can go by surprisingly fast. The enemies are strong and often well positioned, but you have so many tools in this game to work around them. Any given segment can be approached as slowly or quickly as you want, so long as you have a solid plan in place to make it happen. At the end of a game that can occasionally drag its feet, you find a chapter with great pacing that delivers a truly wonderful finale.

Part of my love for Genealogy is how much it nails its biggest moments. A lot of games have issues in this regard, with overly long and dull introductions, climaxes that go full stupid in one way or another, final battles that don't deliver on any of the hype, etc. Genealogy...does not. The prologue, as detailed at length earlier, is as good an introduction as it gets. The end of the first generation in chapter 5 can be a bit slow in gameplay but is great in every other way. The beginning of the second generation in chapter 6 can be a bit slow as well, but the first part of the maps is solid. And the final battle does not disappoint in the slightest. When it matters most, this game always delivers an unforgettable experience, and that all comes to a head with The Final Holy War.

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And with that, the listing of my top twenty and bottom ten chapters in Fire Emblem is complete!

Big thanks to everyone who followed this chapter, guessing at my often painfully obvious hints and reading through my frequently overly long rambling. It's kind of funny, I'm often bothered, especially in video game stories, by writing that is drawn out too much instead of being more concise and efficient, but as you can tell my own writing tends to be the polar opposite of what I think I value. Either I'm wrong about my own tastes or I'm a huge hypocrite <_< Regardless, it's been a lot of fun doing this.

I don't have anything else specific in mind, but if people have requests for other Fire Emblem topics they'd like to see me talk about or rank or whatever, feel free to make them. I'm definitely in a Fire Emblem discussion mood these days. I don't tend to get attached to many characters so I probably don't have a lot to say on topics like "top fifty best characters for non-gameplay purposes" or, god forbid, "top five FE waifus" and it's hard for me to discuss music without my comments getting hugely repetitive, but aside from that I'm open to almost anything. And even on the character side I still have favourites and all, just expect me to put a lot more weight on how much I enjoy using them in gameplay than most people would.

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Panthera posted...

Or if you like RNG shit you can use the sleep edge

God that sword is fun to use. Lets you safely take out Julius or Ishtar during their murder competition, even.

Nice write-up for Final Holy War. It really is a chapter that throws everything at you, but you have enough tools by that point that you can handle it, in a bunch of different ways even. As you said, it makes for a great climax. And has probably my favorite player phase music in the game!

Thanks for doing this ranking, I enjoyed reading it a lot. Would definitely read another ranking if you decide to do one.

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Kenri posted...

God that sword is fun to use. Lets you safely take out Julius or Ishtar during their murder competition, even.

Huh. I've never tried using it there. Makes sense though, Julius has over 30 resistance so the sleep should trigger on him every time. The vast majority of my sleep edge shenanigans are just cheesing the arena with scrubs like Patty

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good job. interesting reads. I was more invested in the negative write ups, for whatever reason.

future suggestions... off the top of my head, it might be cool to pick the 'best' character from each game and then rank them all against each other?

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Hmm, maybe I should play Genealogy.

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mcflubbin posted...

Hmm, maybe I should play Genealogy.

You might want to hold off on that, its fairly likely to be remade soon
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Yeah, this topic may have finally convinced me to take that plunge.

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If I've convinced people to give Genealogy a try then god damn was this a good idea

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FE4 is great. I would love it if it was just a little more flexible.

I love discussing maps and chapters. It often gets missed when talking about characters or classes. Great read.

If you somehow was the developer to remake FE4 ala Echoes-style remake, what changes would you make, if any?

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One small thing Id change is allow the player to pick how much money is given by thieves/spouses rather than it just being everything
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With all the speculation that the whole "Echoes" concept will continue with a Genealogy remake, I've thought about it a fair bit. Off the top of my head, I'd like to include something for foot units that would basically work like a Three Houses style combat art that lets them move farther, at the cost of their player phase action. Still leaves foot units with less mobility, but helps them keep up better. Re-arranging some enemy formations to have less down time would be another big one. And the idea Hb suggests for money donating is definitely a good one

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Another idea Ive seen is giving infantry more bonuses on roads, or let them go up ledges
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Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks for doing this!
Now I get an itch to play Binding Blade and Genealogy.

Maybe something like best and worst classes, weapon, or gameplay system?

I'm interested in seeing how the gameplay evolved throughout the years, as FE seems to like mix and match its various elements in different games (canto, rescue, weapon triangle, skills, supports, child characters, magic, convoy, rescue and shove, etc.)

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Class ranking would definitely be fun. Pretty expansive idea, though.

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NBIceman posted...

Class ranking would definitely be fun. Pretty expansive idea, though.

Hm...
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I'm leaning towards a best unit ranking right now but I'll think for a little while

Class ranking would be neat, but it's really hard to do. So many classes have undergone significant changes throughout the series. Just look at the pegasus knight - in some games it promotes to dracoknight instead of the usual falcoknight, in Genealogy it gets swords even unpromoted, in Genealogy and Awakening falcoknight gets staffs, then there's the branching promotion paths to dark flier and kinshi knight...I'm not sure where to begin on some of these. There's some obvious stuff like dancer good, knight bad, but beyond that...yeesh.

I suppose I could do a ranking of the games themselves but uh I don't think there's much suspense when I've made some of the top and bottom entries obvious (plus my Genealogy chapter write ups tended to be half just commentary on why I like the game already)

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Alright, I think I've decided I'm going to do a top ten best units in Fire Emblem ranking if there's interest in reading it. Just might need a day or two to actually make the list first before I can start on it <_< And finish the playthrough of Binding Blade I just started a few days ago. And get on that Three Houses Maddening mode thing I've been meaning to start...(at least I've actually done Cindered Shadows now though!)

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Of course we're interested. :D
Would 10 be enough though? Won't you expand it to twenty? And include a bottom 10 as well?

Haha, just kidding...

... unless...

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I could do a bottom ten but I fear that might get depressing <_< Not to mention repetitive, since there's only so many ways to phrase "has atrocious bases and/or shit move" before it gets old

I kind of want to do some sort of look at under or overrated units along the way, but I'm not sure how to format it really, and I only really have a couple on my mind right now so idk if I'd have enough to really make it work

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We all know the #1 best unit is Big Bad Boyd.

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best bosses

gheb is love, gheb is life

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I mean what makes for an unit's worth varies by game. Sometimes it's also their availability, usefulness beyond straight combat, how valuable they are compared to the game's other units.

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It's definitely true that good units come in all kinds of forms, but bad units tend to have a lot more in common. Non-combat utility pretty much disqualifies you from being among the worst of the worst, for example.

Also, my playthrough of Binding Blade right now is reminding me of an important lesson...don't go to Sacae <_<

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Yeah, non-combat utility is a huge factor, even if you'd otherwise be bad. Just ask Salem how well it worked out for him.

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If anything Thracia goes the other way and makes it so for huge chunks of the game, combat itself is what barely matters <_<

Salem has to be one of the weirdest dudes in Fire Emblem. He seems like he should be an important character in the story or at least have something of interest to say given his background, but he isn't and doesn't. He seems like he should be a good combat unit because he has exclusive access to dark tomes, but he's not because they're kind of shit in the player's hands and his stats are bleh. But he's still really good because he can realistically be your second or third A rank staff user (especially if you go B route and miss Sleuf/Schroff...not that any sane person ever goes B route) and having lots of high staff rank dudes lets you just break everything forever. Who would have guessed that the first playable dark mage would turn out to be staff bot?

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This has not been forgotten, just...delayed. I have my top ten units list pretty much finished, just not entirely sure on the exact order and I'm leaving out a couple of games from consideration because for various reasons I feel like I'm not qualified to really discuss them in depth (Three Houses due to being too new and having not played Maddening yet, and Fates in general because Conquest is the only one I've played more than once and it's been long enough that I'm not sure how to judge some stuff, especially when the game changes a lot based on whether or not you're abusing the online features). Should probably start either tonight or tomorrow

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Nice. Are you going to make a new topic or continue here?

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I'll continue here. No real reason not to I think

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Alright time to get going on the top ten best units list! This list is excluding Fates and Three Houses because I don't feel quite qualified to include them in this comparison. It's not explicitly excluding multiple units from the same game, but in practice, "best in the game" is a pretty hard threshold to break if you can't claim the same title yourself. And fittingly, the most debatable entry of the list is up first.

10. Rutger (Binding Blade)

Binding Blade is certainly one of the hardest games in the series to decide on a clear best unit in. Many will give the nod to Milady and her dominance of the late game, mixing stellar combat with the always potent flight. Others will cite old man Marcus carrying the team early on as the top difference maker. I think it's actually a minority position to not pick one of those two, but I genuinely believe that it's Rutger who takes the cake.

So the question becomes, how does a sword locked foot unit actually manage to get near this list, much less actually on it?! First things first, there's no denying that Rutger doesn't utterly break the game the way many of the other units on this list do. He doesn't let you straight up bypass entire maps or sleepwalk through armies. His peak performances are arguably not even as strong or long lasting as the aforementioned units. What Rutger does have going for him though are two major strengths.

Up first, for once the myrmidon class is actually not an ugly one to be stuck in. Weapon hit stats are low in Binding Blade and enemies have both good speed and actual luck stats, making them quite evasive. The high hit on swords is not the superfluous benefit it so often is in Fire Emblem. And with high speed enemies comes much higher requirements for doubling. This is where Rutger really starts to shine, as his combat is legitimately great for pretty much his entire existence. Joining late in chapter 4 with great bases, he doubles everything barring one dickhead boss in Sacae, hits things reliably and 2RKOs nearly everything. There are many times early on where Rutger with a killing edge is the likeliest person you have to ORKO a given enemy. He needs a crit, but so does everyone else, and he gets better odds at it. The traditional sword unit weakness of no 1-2 range still does hinder him a bit, but with physical 1-2 range weapons having trash accuracy and enemies having too much durability to be ORKO'd by them he's able to make do without it quite nicely. You will pretty much always need to clear things up on player phase, and Rutger brings the player phase offense like no one else for much of the game, especially once he promotes and gets the ridiculous +30 crit that Swordmasters get in Binding Blade.

This all also leads into the point that truly sets Rutger apart from the pack, which is his boss killing abilities. FE6 features some of the most obnoxious bosses in the entire series, combining good durability with absurd avoid that makes them incredibly frustrating to deal with, as no matter what you do you'll never have a truly reliable way of killing them. The closest you'll get though? Rutger. With better accuracy than other units and the ability to actually double, he can ORKO almost every boss in the early/mid game if he gets a crit or two, which may not be guaranteed but it's still a hell of a lot better than any other unit can do. It's no joke to say that on average, Rutger will save you multiple turns on killing the infamous chapter 8x boss Henning, the hero we deserve but sure as hell not the hero we want. While other units can't dream of doubling and still need 3+ hits to kill at garbage hit rates (this dude has 60ish avoid!), a promoted Rutger with a killing edge doubles, has better accuracy than anyone else and a far higher crit rate while still needing just as few hits to kill. This kind of trend continues for many bosses up until chapter 16 or so, at which point his lethal skills finally start to be surpassed.

What ultimately sets Rutger above Milady and Marcus for me is his ability to contribute so much for so long. Marcus is around even earlier, but he essentially has half the game to contribute before he just kind of stops being able to cut it. Milady is a monster but likewise only joins when you're already about halfway through. Rutger meanwhile has almost the entire game to play in. Early on he's a strong combat unit who deletes bosses. Then with an early promotion in chapter 8 he becomes the most dominant combat force in the game throughout the western isles chapters, chewing through the bulky axe users with his huge crit rate and never dying. By chapter 16 or so he starts to fall off as Milady and Perceval show up, matching or surpassing his offense while bringing better durability and movement to the table, but his combat never ceases to be great and he always has a place as part of your plan for dealing with the super evasive bosses. It's only in the very last chapter, where Boots fueled mounted units with canto are the only way to not be bored out of your mind, that he's not a great choice.

While he may have fewer chapters where he's truly the best than some of the other top tier units, Rutger brings a level of consistently strong contribution that those other units just can't match, and he is a huge help in countering the unreliable hit rates that can be the most frustrating aspect of this game. I think he sometimes gets underrated by virtue of people assuming a perfect world of sorts where the RNG never sabotages the most optimal strategies. In that world he's definitely a bit worse off, but in a world where even the best laid plans can be undermined by the whims of a series of hidden numbers, Rutger's ability to keep things on track with high accuracy or salvage a situation with his huge crit rate or dodge tanking is truly valuable, and even in the optimal world he's still excellent. You have to rescue drop him along sometimes (another thing that sets him behind some of the other names this list will include) but the payoff is always worth it.

Up next: I don't think the whole hint thing will be as fun for this kind of list, but what the hell. We talk about a unit who is controversial for reasons that have nothing to do with gameplay, and who shares the dubious distinction of not always being agreed upon as the best in their own game.

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Panthera posted...

Up next: I don't think the whole hint thing will be as fun for this kind of list, but what the hell. We talk about a unit who is controversial for reasons that have nothing to do with gameplay, and who shares the dubious distinction of not always being agreed upon as the best in their own game.

Ike? I feel like it'd fit for either FE9 or FE10 but probably FE9 because FE10 is a whole different can of worms (Titania in FE9, Haar in FE10 even if he falls off in endgame because of his lower speed cap, dude is just too available.)

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I'm actually not sure what you're thinking about that would make Ike be described as controversial, so...

Well, for non-gameplay reasons specifically. FE9 Ike is quite controversial in terms of gameplay, with some people thinking he's one of the best units ever and others thinking he's decent at best (I definitely fall more into the latter camp)

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Maybe Camilla?

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Panthera posted...

I'm actually not sure what you're thinking about that would make Ike be described as controversial, so...

Mostly the shipping contingent really even if it's dumb. Especially when Awakening re-opened it slightly with the whole "Priam is Ike's descendant" thing.

Like it shouldn't be controversial but maybe I've walked into too many dumb discussions with people flipping out over Ike/Soren idk.

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If you were including Fates I would be completely sure it was Camilla, but since you aren't, I don'tknow who it could be.

xp1337 posted...

Ike? I feel like it'd fit for either FE9 or FE10 but probably FE9 because FE10 is a whole different can of worms (Titania in FE9, Haar in FE10 even if he falls off in endgame because of his lower speed cap, dude is just too available.)

Ike is nowhere near the best in FE9.
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I doubted Panthera would consider Ike the best in FE9 but out of the games I've played I was struggling to think of a character who could be considered the best and was controversial! Ike was already pushing it in both regards!

I may just be forgetting someone obvious though idk. But if it's from FE1-6 (well 1-5 given Rutger) then that would explain it!

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xp1337 posted...

Mostly the shipping contingent really even if it's dumb. Especially when Awakening re-opened it slightly with the whole "Priam is Ike's descendant" thing.

Like it shouldn't be controversial but maybe I've walked into too many dumb discussions with people flipping out over Ike/Soren idk.

Oh that stuff. Yeah okay I know what you're talking about now. It's not something I've really seen very often myself but I've heard enough people talking about it being a thing that I assume it must exist somewhere out there.

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Oh, I missed that Fates wasn't included.

My only other guess would be Sigurd since I know some say Seliph is the best FE4 unit and there's some pretty polarizing opinions out there about Sigurd's role in the story.

Also, Ike/Lethe best Ike ship don't @ me.

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My first time through FE6 I had Rutger A-support an incredibly magic-blessed Clarine and the two of them broke the mid-game in half.

For the hint, it could be Robin, they have a claim to being the best in Awakening and all the avatars are controversial. I'd say maybe Kris also but I expect Sirius to rep New Mystery here.

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xp1337 posted...

Pantera

I've never even listened a full album of theirs but I am cursed to be eternally haunted by their existence nonetheless

NBIceman posted...

I know some say Seliph is the best FE4 unit

I actually don't think I've ever heard this before!

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https://imgur.com/oZtTn4u

9th is way too low for Sigurd. He's an easy top 3, with a chance of being #1.

I'll guess Kris for #9. That hint sounds like an avatar or Camilla, and without Fates or Three Houses that leaves Robin and Kris, and 9 is too low for Robin.

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Oh Kris, yeah that fits the bill
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rutger is a pretty cool guy

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To the surprise of no one, apparently...

9. Kris (New Mystery of the Emblem)

Or should I perhaps list the title as Fire Emblem New Mystery of the Emblem Heroes of Light and Shadow? Nah, too much of a mouthful.

Much like Rutger, Kris enjoys some stiff competition, and much like Rutger his (Kris can technically be female too but the male option is strictly superior, especially after you beat the game on hard once to unlock mixed reclass sets) chief rival is a bonkers flying unit. Palla is a beast no doubt with her hilarious 16 speed in chapter 3 and immediate Silver Lance access, but she does miss out on the entire prologue and first two chapters and often falls into a slightly less essential role late game due to her low speed growth restricting her viable class choices. Kris, meanwhile, has no such problems.

It can be a bit hard to be super specific on Kris because the whole point of the character is that you can pick from several starting classes and adjust his bases and growths a bit to suit your needs. Generally speaking you see people starting as either fighter or knight (small prologue maps and strong enemies lead to rare footage of a knight being good!), then transitioning into the always potent dracoknight after promotion, though you can make a lot of options work and will probably reclass periodically, depending on what you need for any given map. Whatever you do, as long as you don't sabotage Kris, he'll always be a beast.

From the word go New Mystery is set up to make Kris great. He has the whole prologue to start building up levels (and weapon rank), ensuring he'll be one of your best units throughout. By the time you hit the main game, he'll be second only to Jagen...er, sorry, wrong old guy, Arran in initial performance and will quickly surpass him. While strong competition shows up over the course of the next few chapters from Catria, Sirius and the aforementioned Palla, Kris never stops being one of your best units and really, never will. His initial level lead from the prologue translates into being one of the first people you'll promote, which is important because the reclass system gets much better after you promote and are able to pick classes that come with built in weapon ranks and more varied base stats, offering you incredible versatility.

And of course, as referenced earlier, once you beat hard mode once you unlock mixed reclass sets on subsequent playthroughs. Normally male units fall into either class set A or B, but now you get to have your choice of any class from either set. This is one of the big things that makes male Kris so much better than female (one of the few times in Fire Emblem where gender restricted stuff actually favours the guys instead of the girls). You can have Kris start out in fighter or knight, but still have the option of paladin and dracoknight later on. You can go swordmaster one chapter when you need it to double some dragons with a wyrmslayer, then berserker the next when putting your axe rank to good use is necessary. Kris is far from the only unit that can benefit from the reclass feature obviously, but thanks to his level lead and by extension stat lead over most units throughout the game, he definitely gets a lot of mileage out of it.

The only thing, besides the quality of competition, holding Kris back a bit is that he never truly dominates the game the way you might expect. Even Rutger has moments (like the beginning of 10A) where he just walks up and you end turn and watch the carnage unfold. By this standard Kris looks pretty lackluster, but that's just the nature of New Mystery on higher difficulties. The enemies are just too strong to get mowed down like chumps and even the best units need help to get the job done. New Mystery's Lunatic (or god forbid Lunatic Reverse, which I largely ignore, though I will say it's a far better "harder than hard" gimmick than whatever Awakening's Lunatic+ was trying to do) is arguably the hardest thing in the entire series and a large part of that is that for the most part, you just don't have free win buttons. This is enough to push Kris down the list of best units, but it's not nearly enough to deny him a place here. He doesn't break the game but within the context he exists in, he's about as good as you can reasonably expect a unit to be.

Up next: A complete change of pace from every other entry on this list with the unit that, in addition to being ridiculously good, also arguably does more to make their game more enjoyable than any other...albeit in a rather roundabout way

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