My unpopular opinion has been debunked, but I can't fall here. I must retreat.

I think the “I must retreat” trope would be better if the unit retreated at _low_ HP rather than zero. It would really give the impression that they’re “licking their wounds”. Not sure how XP would work with that, but it would make for a much better retreat scenario. Plus, it could possibly allow for some minor story branching if you managed to kill the boss instead of drastically weaken them.

Kaga may be the father of Fire Emblem, but Sakurai is its sugar daddy.

22:25 there's actually a 4koma comic about that where Cherche reclasses to a griffon rider but it's Minerva in a griffon costume, it's pretty cute!

One thing I don't think Mekkah quite gets because he hasn't finished Revelations is WHY it's such an open-ended "sandbox" experience. When the game's over, you have infinite resources. Infinite grinding, which leads to infinite money and thus infinite reclassing, forging, etc. I have a friend who has spent hundreds of hours on single save files building a team of monstrosities including a max-level Berserker Sakura. The game isn't open-ended because it's easy, it's open-ended because it has infinite grinding.

51:53 Throughout fiction there's been many characters that have specialised in a single type of magic purely out of preference or or an affinty in some kinda magic, not everyone has been some sort of omni sage

My favorite example of class being an aspect of a character's personality is Joshua from Sacred Stones. A gambler who tries to conceal his real identity is a perfect fit for an evasive, crit-dependent dodgetanky class like Myrmidon. As is standard for a myrm, he comes with a killing edge, which communicates his "gambling" as a combat strategy. His class' promotions both fit him because they both maintain a "gambling" playstyle. Swordmaster is a mere continuation of Myrmidon and, as his initial appearance is as an assassin tasked with killing Natasha, Assassin fits Joshua's role in the story. Swordmaster has a nonplussed-looking dodge which fits Joshua's laid back personality.

"Brom is the best armored unit in the Tellius games" -The Black Knight would like to know your location

Yeah, I really feel like people outright deciding not to die is not only anticlimactic, but also annoying and actually makes you think the opposite: when they finally die, your reaction is either “Finally!” or “Oh wait, this time it’s for real?”. It certainly was my reaction when the prominent gaiden chapter villains in FE12 actually died when you defeated them, as they would’ve fit the description of “I’ve been defeated, but I can’t fall here” to a tee, and that was the moment I realized how much the permadeath concept as a whole was sort of pushed aside in later entries (though it obviously also wasn’t introduced in it, FE4 is a fairly big offender as you pointed out).

I can’t die here, I must retreat

So the reason I'm fine with certain allies retreating instead of dying at 0 hp is we saw the alternative in fe6, which is a game where nobody is relevant anymore after joining Roy, so the game just ends up being the Roy, Merlinus, and Gwenivere show

unpopular opinion, Sigurd is such a bad unit and hard to keep alive that he dies mid game

You know, i actually agree with the "Revelations is a good sandbox" guy. One of the most fun that i had with the game was building up My Castle to become both functional and nice looking, while also beefing up my units and marrying them to god knows who.

Cherche is an odd case, where her alternate classes (Cleric and Troubadour) do make sense with her backstory, but really clash with her as she's written in her supports.

"I'm pretty sure the laws of physics in Fire Emblem are the same as they are in real life..." *looks at Swordmasters and Generals*

My opinion of the whole "I need to retreat" thing is that it also forces non-essential characters to not really be able to interact with the story at all or else their absence in the story just sort of forces the story to take a more circulous route to get the end. So either some of the more plot-important but not vital character retreat or the story is basically Lord and NPC allies do all the real work while the non-plot critical characters don't really matter in the story. Also, I'm actually with "Emmeryn's amnesia strengthened her death's point". Emmeryn's gone, she isn't gonna come back. All that's left of her is a shell that wears her face, and her continued presence hammers in the point that she isn't going to just be able to walk off her sacrifice. Everyone can try to bring her back, but the tragedy lies in the fact that she will only get a few scraps at best.

Here's an opinion, awakening has the elements of a compelling story but IS dropped the ball. Awakening's story would have been much better if part 2 of the game used the future past setting of the dlc instead of going to valm and collecting child paralogues. Part 2 would focus on the children with lucina as the lord. I found that the future timeline was more interesting than most of what awakening's plot had to offer. Also that way the children can join as competent fighters instead of drastically under leveled growth units. Part 2 could end with the children going back in time to join the parents to defeat the grimleal in the past after exhausting all means to fight grima in their time. Part 3 could end similarly to the third future past dlc where the entire cast travel back to the original future to defeat a full powered grima after which the two generations part ways.

Lyn definitely didn’t need to be a lord for the main game. Honestly, I think it would have been cool if she got sort of an Elincia style glow-up when she returns. Actually, now that I think about it, having Lyn treated like Elincia would have been pretty perfect. They’re the main characters for their own story, but take a side roll later on. On Lucina, I’ve said this before, but I always found her character pretty compelling. The fact that she doesn’t do much during the Valm arc I find kind of irrelevant to her character. She doesn’t really have any personality gimmick like the other kids, which may be why people see her as boring.

I mean, despite I disagree with the guy sayin "Kaga leaving was the best thing", they don't need to know the whole Kaga drama with IS to have an elaborated opinion. Kaga's design philosophy is very different from what has been done later, so I think he was just referring to that, not criticizing him personally.

Maybe having every single unit actually die can add some more impact, but it either limits the narrative or the gameplay to do so. Either you have a story where a ton of the characters you get can't have a meaningful impact on the narrative after their joining chapter (like pretty much every single one of the older games), or you have more characters that when they die it becomes a game over, which I would argue also lessens the impact in a way.

"Tharja and Camilla 2 of the most hated characters to this date" Idk about that one chief, controversial sure but they are by no means hated. Despite what Twitter and Reddit may lead you to believe they are really popular and IS milks them for a reason.

First comment: Uh... Sleep is the easiest way to prevent Douglas from suiciding into your army and ensuring you get the Paralogue. Mist is useless in RD primarily because the devs were idiots and didn't make the swords that were supposed to do magic damage actually do Magic damage. If Fleurete and the Wind Sword actually did what they were supposed to do, she would have been a solid unit who could heal while still being able to counter if needed. Faye is hella cute, the main problem is they just made her entire existence revolve around her Yandereness towards Alm. Like, a lot of her mannerisms and personality are super cute, but they ruin the whole thing by making her completely fixated on Alm.

It's interesting, my experience with the"maturity" of the FE subreddit and serenes forest is pretty much the opposite. Especially since 3H came out, the subreddit is almost 100% fanart and zero discussion about games other than 3H. At least in the sub-forums for the older games, there seems to be more legitimate discussion on Serenes IMO.

On the Rev. Idea I can totally see where their coming from. You get access to all the supports, so access to a bunch of different classes. All the weapons from both norh and hosido. That's pretty damn sandboxy to me.

5:00 ishtar is like the worst offender of retreating in fe4. You fight her 3 times.

*pronounces Rhys correctly. That was an interesting pronunciation of Rhys...

I love being this early to a Mekkah video so my opinion isnt tainted by the commenter's unpopular opinions.

Awakening is a WAY better sandbox than Rev in my opinion.

7:30 The laws of Physic change all the time in FE. Some games its infinite range, some games have limited range, some games have a range based on your magic and the formula for that in of itself is incosistant. The laws of Physic never stay the same! Yes this is a dumb pun. Dislike at your leisure.

I like a couple characters not being able to die in your army. It lets more characters than just your main character show up in cutscenes and be relevant throughout the story. Fe6’s Roy and Merlinus show gets boring. Even if fe5, while I like Leif, Augustus, and Dorias more than Roy and Merlinus, I still think it’s bizarre that Finn just shuts up and never talks to Leif for most the game. Obviously I think Awakening and fates took this too far with like half the characters never dying, but like fe9 has a good balance of this with Titania, Soren, and Mist not dying. Just like 3 or 4 characters not dying.

I enjoy Faye's character. She approaches the yandere trope in a grounded way; her obsession falls into this uncanny valley of fantasy anime trope but with realistic consequences. I had a blast reading Tharja/Camilla fans' take on a character who fit their fantasy while suffering its consequences. However, I admit that Faye isn't appropriate in the context of what I would call an "ideal" FE. Anyways, the immortal Nosferatu killager will always hold a special spot in my heart.

The problem with the gimmicks in fates is that they replace map design. The gimmicks aren’t designed around the maps, the maps are designed around the gimmicks.

7:29 since when does fe have realistic physics. Remember in fe7 where lyn splits into like 4 lyns before she crits someone? Edit: grammar

Emmeryn and co: I LIVE

Heres a non-exclusive to fire emblem opinion that I have that might be unpopular. Lack of deaths doesn't mean a bad story and having deaths doesn't make a good story. So many people give crap to stories for having too little deaths but death doesn't make a good story. Death can be as much as harm to a narrative as it can be a help. And when it goes wrong it goes way more wrong then a lack of deaths.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think death -> retreat is ever done in Path of Radiance, unless you count characters like Soren and Titania who stick around in the story but never take the field again. Shinon does hit 0 HP before his recruitment, but it's still not quite the same thing. Separately, it would be cool if they took the 3H monster concept of multiple HP bars and used that to address this issue. So an enemy might retreat after losing 1/2 (or even 1/3-4) HP bars, and this would be a visible indication that they have a lot more fight left, and they'll be tougher the next time.

I think the Radiant Dawn triangle is the best where it's a magic triangle inside a magic triangle. You still have the gba triangle but you get the elemental triangle as an added bonus triangle

There actually is a way to see what the Fire Emblem franchise would have been like if Kaga hadn't left: playing Tearring Saga. That game plays so similarly to a Fire Emblem game that it's no wonder Kaga got sued, almost anything about the first 5 games series that you can think of (promoting at level 10, the 5 magic types, etc) is in TRS.

Emmeryn's survival makes no sense in regards to Gangrel's (or whatever his name was) character. He is put forth as a sort of sadistic insanity case, by all accounts he would ordinarily take Emmeryn's body and parade it around like a morbid trophy. By the time she would have to wake up in order to not die of dehydration she would still be in the hands of the enemy who would outright kill her the moment she awakened.

The only 2 awakening xenolouges I acknowledge are Priam and Yen'fey. Priam because he's just a new character and Yen'fey because he's actually future Yen'fey who went back in time to tell present Yen'fey to betray his sister so that she would live instead of die which imo makes him probably one of the coolest Camus archetypes in the franchise.

For the fire/wind/thunder mage argument - To me it makes perfect sense that some mages would only be able to use one type or prefer one type. Its the same argument as “why can’t sword users use lances or axes etc.” its because of preference and training. I like that certain mages can only use some magic types because its makes sense based off of their training and lineage. I.e. tiltyu. I also like the magic triangle, simply because it adds an element of gameplay and even story about why the magic houses may not like eachother or why one is superior to the other. For example house freege being below velthomer (I think thats the house name?)

While reclassing CAN hurt a character’s...character, I kinda feel like heart seals from (fates, weirdly enough) isn’t a bad idea. Just in cases where a character could believably be another class,though. (Odin being able to go back to his myrmydon roots, for example). Edit:Unpopular... you know what I have no idea what people (or Mekkah) think about Kliff (Mage). I think he’s pretty good but not the best what do you guys think of Kliff

Would it be unpopular to say that mekkah is the most in dev and research heavy fe youtuber? I watch every other fe KZfaqr to have fun or because I like their channel but I watch mekkah to learn about things I didn't know and to avoid pitfalls. He's pretty funny and his content is really good.

My unpopular opinion: Ignatz is underrated and is not one of the worst units in the game. At worst, he will always have valuable utility with Rally Speed and high-ranking authority battalions. Typically, he'll has high speed, dexterity, and luck, and his personal skill, so he will have very reliable accuracy (especially earlygame) and high crit rates. People constantly complain about how he has among the worst strength in the game, but his base strength is only 1 below Leonie's and his growth is only 5% below Leonie's. Also, I don't think people even bothered trying to work around his mediocre strength - he can use stronger weapons effectively because his high speed and especially accuracy offset their higher weight and lower accuracy. His authority boon lets him quickly use high-power battalions earlier than many other units. He's easily at his best as a sniper, because Hunter's Volley again compensate for his mediocre strength, and his high accuracy and crits complement Hunter's Volley (like Shamir). But I will agree that he's one-note in that he's, at best, average in any class that isn't a Sniper. I will also agree that he's a lot less useful when recruited outside of his house because he defaults to having E or E+ Authority.

Unpopular opinion: Tharja was a perfectly fine character in Awakening, but later appearances in other games stripped her of any nuance she had... along with her shame. And, in some cases, clothes.

How the hell does Nolan get less speed than Micaiah with a better base and growth. HOW?

"I'm pretty sure the laws of physics in Fire Emblem are the same as the laws of physics in real life." Oh dear, you haven't played with animations on in a loooong time, huh?

Just finished the video, and I love these types of videos. It would be nice if you brought someone along to discuss these opinions, but the current style of just you by yourself is still really good. I also really like these videos because they spark a lot of discussion in the comments, it's nice to see people be able to talk to one another about something they love.

I find both the "I must retreat" and reclassing thing are a case by case type deal. I get 0HP means the character is dead, but the limits on what you can do for a story seem like an uneven trade off. For the playable cast, I'd rather not have multiple plot important characters cause a game over when they die in battle, or they only become playable after they stop being important, or the devs take the Eyval route and put a flag on the character preventing their death for a portion of the game, or their role is so minor they can be easily written out if they die. On the other hand, yes the Death Knight did it way too much. I think one "I must retreat" is fine, two at most. When it comes to reclassing, I'm a fan of the Awakening/Fates approach. As far as I'm concerned with the SD/NM/3H version, if you choose to reclass someone to something that doesn't fit, why? Not to say you can't, but choosing to put an armor knight in a class that doesn't fit and complaining is like using the devil axe and complaining about the backfire happening. To put it another way, the game giving you a stupid option is a fair criticism, but if it doesn't put you to take it and you still do, that's on you. TLDR shit's complicated.

22:50 I know you're not much of a LP watcher yourself, Mekkah, but Deltre's Conquest LP is quite excellent if you want to see character skills being actually used (and quite excellent in general. Deltre is very good at the video game). Although to be fair, if I remember correctly (it's been a couple months if not a year since I've watched it) the most used skills are Camilla and Elise's auras.

I don't mind the "not dying when hp hits zero" when it's not overboard. Like the Hubert style shit is annoying but sometimes you just can't have the narrative without a character. Also I wanted to point out that hp reaching zero isn't a hard and fast rule even in early fe games, mainly fe4 because Deirdre and Julia will be captured and reappear at the next castle (iirc) if they hit zero hp. Also capturing in fe5 is definitely something to note. Also to be perfectly frank sometimes the bosses who get killed the moment you fight them early game or mid game are very undeveloped, but there's still more of an opportunity to be developed if they live, say, once and then get fought again later. Also I like it when you have super strong enemies you aren't meant to beat that just teleport away. Stuff like the black knight being literally invincible is understandable but also it is so much fun to have a casual playthrough and find a way to strategize around beating a unit like desaix or Xander in that one birthright chapter.

54:45 they should bring back the fe10 magic double triangle.

2:30 i found that silence and freeze were almost completely required to beat conquest lunatic. The stone monsters in the staircase are kind of crazy with immobilize, 5 range, and basically 2 shot every unit. The maids in the final chapter with staff sevant and inevitable end are a nightmare to deal with and are positioned to overlap with the different maid groups.

I'm not experienced enough with the old Kaga era to comment on his games, but from what I have played he definitely seems like a man who is dedicated to building a sincere creative vision, and the kind to challenge himself to reinvent a franchise to create something with real depth to it. Actually, Shu Takumi is pretty similar with the Phoenix Wright series, where you can clearly see his voice in his games compared to the titles he didn't work on. While the modern games that don't have him may have more mainstream appeal, the Shu Takumi games tend to be less tropey and more experimental, and have more shades of grey to their writing, especially in the latter Takumi titles (to their benefit in my opinion too).

Having a guest to discuss with is something I'm down for. I typically don't care how long these get because I listen to these while cooking, cleaning or something of the sort.

Actual unpopular opinion: I never thought of any of the paralogues as canon, especially the downloadable ones. The child ones, the Anna ones, and Donnel do not actively detract from the story, while the DLC ones do. Without the paralogues, the story of awakening is much tighter and more engaging. Also the paralogues are just shit maps. Priam's map is OK as a test of brokenness, but the others are just terrible and unfun generally.

I personally wanted Warriors to have an entirely original cast and story based on the archetypes of the series. In the game we got much of the story is "Look! It's [character]! You know them!" and recreations of scenes from the games, while the original segments of the plot are rather generic and bare bones. I think going fully original would have lead to a more interesting game. Maybe the fact that I don't care for most of the characters in in the actual game, and few of my favorite characters had any chance to make the cut even if their games were included anyway adds to that as well, but even if they could make it I think i'd prefer an original cast regardless. I've seen many people who don't consider robin and Byleth as lords, and that makes no sense to me. (Before it's inevitably mentioned like it always is when I talk about this, when I say "lord", I do not mean the title of nobility. I'm talking about the common term in the fan base to refer to protagonists. Being actual nobility/royalty does not affect this status, as shown by Ike. Still, even if it did, both robin and Byleth make the cut in some way.) -Both are on an equal or even greater level of importance as all other lords in the series: robin is the second most important character of awakening after chrom, and is arguably more important than he is, at least in certain parts of it, and Byleth is the PROTAGONIST of his game. -They both cause game overs when they they like most lords. -Sure, they don't have classes with "lord" in the name, but why does that matter? Neither do Alm, Celica, Micaiah, RD!Ike, and Corrin, yet that isn't a problem for them. Both still have unique classes. (and before anyone says Byleth doesn't start with his none of the other 3H lords do either) -I've seen people say it's because they're avatars, yet Corrin gets a free pass. I wonder, if Azura was made a lord would Corrin suddenly lose his status? Why exactly should being an avatar matter for non-Corrins? I have no idea why they wouldn't be lords, especially when less significant characters like Elincia and lucina are often counted. Both robin and Byleth are as much of a lord as Marth, Alm, Celicia, Sigurd, Seliph, Leif, Roy, Eliwood, Hector, Lyn, Ike, Micaiah, chrom, Corrin, Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude or anyone else you may count is.

The way I see gimmicks is that they are special and sometimes experimental map features and themes that shift the gameplay focus away from the norm in an attempt to surprise the player and break up the monotony. Gimmicks are not inherently a bad thing. A map being gimmicky does not mean it is bad, that just means it is different. Saying gimmicks are bad by definition would imply the person wants a very pure and core mechanics-focused game through and through (I suppose Shadow Dragon would be prime example of this). Fates has a lot of maps centered around very specific and unusual ideas, for better or worse. Birthright maps the least so, most of them are relatively straightforward, and even dragonveins are largely applied in fairly basic and non-crucial ways. They're there, they might let you alter the terrain or deal damage to enemies easily, but are typically not very important to how you play the game a lot of it is optional. Conquest and Revelation differ here, in the sense that whenever map gimmicks are present, they tend to permeate the entirety of the chapter, becoming a focus of gameplay. Conquest more often uses these with a specific challenge in mind to the player. Whether it's racing enemy soldiers to the villages in chapter 8 to prevent large numbers of reinforcements and get a reward, or having to account for the wind blowing around units on the map each turn in Fuga's wild ride. As for how successfully it does so overall, you be the judge. Revelation, meanwhile, tends to get very experimental. A lot of its unique gimmicks don't necessarily challenge you with a specific purpose in mind, but are rather there to provide something different. In this, Revelation also has a heavy emphasis on interactable or moving objects, like warp tiles, the snow village, movable debris, elevators... and personally, I think the reason people don't like this is because most of these gimmicks really slow down the game. Like yeah, Conquest does this too to some extent like you mentioned, but I feel it's nowhere near as blatant as Revelation. Like taking the wind tunnels I mentioned before in conquest, sure, they are difficult to play around and so you'll probably feel compelled to go about things more slowly. But at least it isn't random and all the necessary information is provided to you, and you aren't forced to slow down either, if you think you can manage going faster. You can't really do that with the snow village. Unless you have prior information or a guide, you can't really break the ice safely, because you have no way of knowing when you'll encounter enemies and overextending runs you the risk of having your frail units caught defenseless. So you are pretty much forced to go slow. Then the elevators you see later *actually* force you to waste time waiting for it to come around to ferry your units across. Revelation's gimmicks too often are more tedious than they are interesting.

Hey, thanks for the shout-out! I'm glad you and so many others have enjoyed my FE5 content. :)

My comment will probably not be seen because of the 200+ other comments. I disagree with how retreating detracts from the actual story because if a boss for example, died in their joining chapter but that boss was supposed to be significant in the story. You won't get a lot of impact or development from that boss because they died. Ishtar getting saved by Julius makes sense because Julius, even though he's pretty much possessed by Loptyr, still finds a use for Ishtar so he saves her. Maybe they could do it like leaving the boss at 1 hp so they won't die

How I see why gimmicks are bad is imagine that instead of the stat pots were placed sparingly in all of Conquest’s maps instead of being vomited into a single concentrated map. The devs could have less severe effects early on and have them be placed in such a way that they only really benefit the player. Later on the more severe effects like the hex affect could be added to the mix, and also have certain pots designed to benefit the enemies. Now we’ve just created an interesting system that is present throughout the entire game and progresses in way that will make players understand when and when not to break certain pots. As they are now most people just use the dragon vein in the one map to get rid of the pots because there’s many of them that it’s impossible to keep track of which effects are when and it slows the map down to halt. It’s an overload of information that will be never used again, so what’s the point of learning it? That’s how I see it anyways. If you got rid of Conquest’s map gimmicks and integrated a couple into the core gameplay I think Conquest would be even more interesting to play. On the subject of the aptirnity of magic, I do agree with the person that the Anima/Light/Dark triangle is better than the fire/thunder/wind one. I can never remember the anima triangle because I don’t really see any justification for why Fire beats thunder and the like. Dark beating anima makes sense, as it is a forbidden but powerful magic compared to the basic anima spells. Light beats dark because of course it does, and anima beats light because light is designed to banish the darkness and not primarily a combat spell.

I definitely interpreted the paralogues in Awakening as being non canon. Just a way to make other characters playable. They feel extremely fanfic so that’s how I like to think of them at least.

Unpopular opinion: Always thought Faye was sort of a self-parody/callout to dumb characters in modern FE games. Her name is literally pronounced "F E" in Japanese and is still FayE in English. She even gets cucked hard by the most canon pairing in the whole franchise, so you KNOW she was never having it her way. Nobody will ever believe me regarding this. Say it's too smart from them. But remember these games are made by multiple individuals so who knows.

not an unpopular opinion but i think its messed up that nintendo doesn't even recognize Kaga and what he's done.

I think the guy who called Revelations a good sandbox was talking about the online connectivity, I imagine he or she really enjoyed the player vs player interaction and battles inherent in the game. By comparison, FE7 and 8 had the link arena which was mostly garbage, FE11 had some online versus which was interesting enough, but fights were very often imbalanced because matchmaking was random, and TearRing Saga had a versus mode that I never tried. Three Houses doesn't have multiplayer and has very little player connectivity. Echoes has only a renown system, (Though I quite liked the achievement board, they should bring that back!) Awakening had Streetpass battles which were cool, and almost there, but Fates had the best 2 player FE hands down. And if you had Revelations your base was better, I guess, so it's the best version to play for the full online experience. If you're willing to grind your team to frightening levels and give them skillsets that make sense and work, you can really provide a challenge to someone who wants to battle you, so it's like Mario Maker or something in a way.

re: 2nd one I cannot disagree with this one more. Emmeryn "living" is a copout they did only really to have all those of characters playable for the sake of being playable, regardless of the narrative consequences. (FE12 does this too). How does Emmeryn's body go from the Plegian battlefield to some random village? AND amnesia, oh my god, let that trope die already. Regardless what you may think of her personally, I still really like the whole exchange of Chrom running to desperately try to save his sister, the whole scene with him reaching his hand out....

If characters like the death knight had an skill than leaves them at 1hp if you attempt to kill them, would it be better?

I think I made an account on Serenes Forest like a decade or longer ago but it's also been about that long since I've been on their forums. I'm surprised to hear the userbase is younger-- considering how old the site is, I would've assumed its forums would only be populated by old people hanging around. I didn't think people really used forums at all anymore and all online socialization basically took place on big social media sites.

Random thought about the con/weight thing: have weight penalties be mitigated if a unit's weapon level is higher than needed. For example: If a unit has a lance level of C and they use a lance that requires a weapon level of D, the speed penalty is halved. Mabye have weight penalties removed completely at A or S.

I believe is the battle at the fortress in Adrestia after the Gronder War mission in 3H part 2. I can’t remember what the fortress is called, but you’ll usually fight Caspar, Lindhart, and Jeritza there. It’s the one that gets blasted by the Agarthans after the battle. Frankly, that’s where Jeritza should’ve died. He shouldn’t have escaped that, there was no reason for him to suddenly leave and go to Enbarr. Not to mention, him getting blasted by the Agarthan weapon would’ve been a great way to further establish the threat the Agarthan’s pose, or in the case of Azure Moon, his death at the fortress would be a morale boost to the Kingdom soldiers and the students.

My issue with Kaga was that he was too fond of really obscure and bizarre mechanics and things you need a guide to find on your own, such as the FE4 secret spots. Also, his games were huge sausage fests...

"Kaga leaving was the best thing for the franchise" I think this opinion is one held by people who don't understand what Kaga wants to do, and his creative intentions. They evaluate his games by standards set by following games.

I agree. Sleep staffs are indeed very useful in FE6, a major use that always comes to mind is Douglas. You need to keep him alive the entire chapter to get the sacred weapon from the side chapter after. And a sleep staff is a great way of keeping him busy. Since your only other real option is kiting him, which is possible due to his general class movement. But it can lead to some annoying situations trying to ignore him.

Emmeryn survived the fall because she has miracle

Emmeryn should've joined with Cleric skills instead of Mage skills bc then she would've had Miracle and all would have been well

Three houses personals being better than fates personals is probably an unpopular opinion in itself. Management of auras especially is a game changer on CQ lunatic, and I think you could argue the very first CQ chapter is designed around Lilly's poise. Capture is also a difference maker, and implemented in a unique way from the only other game that implemented it. Ironically in 3H I find the only useful ones are directly ripped from fates. Ferdinand has Subaki's, Hilda's is Camilla, Dorothea is Azura, Bernadetta is Rinkah, etc.

RE: reclassing affects how solid a personality is... i think awakening is the only game that did that right? both 3h and 11/12 basically let your characters be anything, and in 3h esp the combat animations end up looking out of character for some characters. for example, with the addition of cindered shadows, we get animations for war monk, but putting some one like caspar in war monk felt really weird to watch him fight! especially now that we have these great 3d animations, you can put a lot of personality into how a character moves. look at claude in his unique classes. however, since awakening was the only one with so many reclassing options that had strict limits on what a person could become (every one had 2 classes aside from their base class available), each unit (at lest in gen 1) had a unique set that i think added something to their character, or the world building? example: henry and tharja start as dark mages, but both of their reclass options aren't magic classes at all, implying dark magic is distinct from regular magic, and those two might not be very magical. miriel's other classes are dark mage and cleric, so she's really ONLY interested/good at magic. one of libra's other classes is dark mage, either referencing or reinforcing the "darkness" tharja finds in him in their supports. ricken's other options aren't magic-based, referencing how much he struggles with magic in some of his dialogue. chrom gets cavalier and archer, and most of the original shepherds are cavaliers or close to it, also it exemplifies his knightly way of doing things. etc etc. yeah, cherche losing her mount gets pretty silly, but it isn't like her other classes were tacked on her without care.

I do miss dark magic specifically, but that's because I started playing with fe7 and well canas is quite a waifu, it feels good to use the animations and sound effects are fresh, and you could get that beefer mage architype, not fast but can take a hit and cast back.

14 views in, and someone already disliked. Do those people set notifications or just happen upon a video less than a minute old and are already butthurt?

Mekkah, can you make unpopular opinions. BuT IN DuTCh?

Kjelle's got a gimmick where she's terrible with horses and her mom yells at her for it, which was pretty awkward in my run since I had her as a Paladin when I got that support. Turns out soldiers in a game about war are heavily defined by the way they fight.

I could see an argument that archers in FE7 are OK in ranked runs. They can provide reliable chip EXP and help with feeding kills to other weak units. Even if you don't get many kills with them, they can get pretty far with chip EXP alone. Starting with New Resolve, there are also a bunch of ballista maps where Wil and Rebecca can team up and they can shoot at wyverns and stuff, and it's very easy to keep them safe. Sure, they don't kill anything, but I would argue that weak melee units in a ranked run (looking at Guy, Lyn, Eliwood, even a cavalier who gets bad level-ups) are actually more burdensome to train than they are and are more of a liability because they are on the frontlines. In fact, I would be interested in seeing a ranked run tier list if that interests you. I think it would look very different from an efficiency run tier list. Come to think of it, you could have a tier list for every major style of play (efficiency, LTC, Iron Man, ranked...).

I don't mind constitution, but I wish it would rise with level growths along with other stats like it did in Thracia

Ok so I have to say, I’m a bit mad at how the community seems to hold Kaga on this pedestal of gameplay style and innovation as if he was the only one working on those games. Mekkah often says “Kaga did it first” and seems not to praise any of the other people who worked on the games. Entire teams make games at Nintendo not just one person. Even if you try to say that somehow all of what he envisions is put into the game and he is the best director of FE, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t many persons who had to tweak and fix his preliminary designs and concepts. Kaga didn’t do it first, you could honestly more accurately state that Kaga’s team/Nintendo did it first. Mekkah kinda fumbles around with his wording in the video but he really does praise Kaga too much (If you watch his play throughs with Mangs or just on his own you know what I mean likely) and doesn’t give any credit to the other people on the first 5 FE game’s staff. I mean, if Kaga was so gosh darn good at making FE, then why is he stuck designing what are basically SRPG maker games now? Nintendo let him go for a reason, last time I checked, it’s not a good idea to release a game on a console that was 3 years into the lifetime of its successor whilst also making the game so difficult to get into that you had to watch an instructional VHS to get a grip on what was happening. I’m not trying to “side” with Nintendo here, but he basically took a ton more time than he was supposed to in order to make a game that so few would likely play. Not even to mention that the game came out as what was basically a kiosk download title and not a full release at launch. FE4 is a great game and FE5 is much less universally praised for a reason. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just trying to say that I disagree with Mekkah in quite a few ways and that Kaga wouldn’t be nearly as good without the team he had with him.

Popular opinion time: You should really, really play Kaga's other games if FE5 is your favorite game in the franchise you're bound to love all the Saga games.

Three Houses had such disappointing personal skills, not going to lie most of the game I played having forgotten they even existed. Atleast in Fates it was much easier, it felt natural to go like "oh yeah I should put Sakura 2 spaces away from Corrin to give -2 damage taken", but since in 3H you have to go all the way into the menus to see the personal skill, it feels like they just don't even exists. Atleast they did cover for that somewhat with crests, which were still unreliable and vague, but it's better than the personals.

Faye is a waste of a good character design.

It looks like I'm a counterexample to your argument about the Kaga games. I liked every Kaga game at first, the stories are pretty good and they have great music, but I always get to a point where the gameplay starts annoying me so much that I stop playing for a while. I have yet to finish FE4 and FE5, I just can't bring myself to play through some of the more annoying maps. I still think FE5 has a lot of positives, but FE4 will most likely remain my least favorite Fire Emblem game ever.

Mekkah mentioned Awkward Zombie. My life is complete.

No comment on the Three Houses weight system? It seems like a massive improvement to the Tellius system to me. You retain weapon weight tradeoffs for basically the entire game, you just change which weapons you're trading off (e.g. eventually training weapons get phased out and fully replaced by Iron, but Silver is still weighing you down some). I don't necessarily think it's better than the GBA system, but I think it works pretty well, and has the advantage of being simpler (arguably). If they do ever bring back the GBA system, I hope they consider adding more frequent opportunities to increase Con. Being able to "graduate" from Slim Lances would be nice.

On the topic of units not dying when brought to 0 HP, what are your thoughts on Cecilia's defeat in Chapter 13 of Binding Blade? I think that scene is very important for showing the strength of Zephiel, but in keeping Cecilia alive, it somewhat diminishes the impact. I may be forgetting parts of that scene, however, possibly a line implying that Zephiel saw more value in using her as a hostage than killing her, so if anyone could clear that up for me, it would be very much appreciated.

The benefit to bosses retreating when their HP drops to 0 is that they can be recurring throughout the game. As a designer, if you want the player to interact with the boss more than once, you have to go for a non-lethal KO. Otherwise, the boss would not be encountered until the endgame, which limits the storytelling. But as others have mentioned in the comments, boss HP dropping to 1 instead of 0 might better sell the idea that the boss is almost dead and they decide to stop fighting to live another day. Not sure how much sense that would make, though: how would the boss arbitrarily limit the player's damage on the last blow? It's complicated. About constitution... I like the idea of growing past a low strength. I think it feels very satisfying to lessen the speed penalty as the game goes on. Not necessarily to the point of weight being a non-issue in the lategame, but just lessening the penalty alone is a good mechanic in my opinion. A decent approach might be (Penalty = Weight - Str/2 or Str/3) instead of just (Weight - Str). Three Houses tried to balance this but I think they went too far with Str/5. In any case, a static low con is like a death sentence. Another approach I wouldn't mind is implementing Con growth. A low growth rate, even if it's 5 or 10 percent at levelup, but something greater than zero.

In defense of the “I can’t die I must retreat” thing, it actually does make sense, if you know you’ve lost there’s no point staying especially if the person in question is in a high ranking position, from they’re position they’re harder to replace then some random soldier. Granted everyone and there mother shouldn’t be doing it, but for me atleast it falls within suspension of disbelief. At the end of the day it’s a matter of personal preference.

How ya doing Mekkah? Doing good?

As for the zero hp rule, the only time you can live is if it's a training level, like Ike fighting Greil and Boyd in the prologue, or the mock battles in Three Houses. I'm unsure of chapter 16 Muarim though.

I mean the "There not dead" stuff can work if they have an alternative 'line were there gravely wounded.. can still do their story-talk stuff in some capacity and their "ending" is that they died shortly after the story.. but that should be reserved for like one really important storychar

I remember getting mileage out of silence staves specifically in Path of Radiance. The chapter where you conquer the Daein capital, and the last two chapters are both great times to use the status staves you get. You don't get MANY of them, unless you go out of your way to steal them (which you can do in this game, making them more viable as a tool if you're on your game), but I think in this game in particular I got a good deal of mileage out of them. Mekkah mentions villains dying and coming back in FE4, but doesn't mention (spoilers for the first couple chapters of that game) Midir, which I think is a more egregious instance. There's NO reason for Midir to come back. It's not like he had some established character that needed to be preserved. Some other Jungby archer, maybe a hypothetical brother, or general comrade, could have replaced him in your army when you get to the castle. That one bothers me much more than the litany of magic-enabled badasses who survive death later by fleeing at the last moment (Julius, Ishtar, Hilda, Arion), since at least they conceivably are ludicrously powerful and battle-hardened enough for me to accept the last-minute flight. Midir's a level-2 nobody. Gandalf should have sliced him in half.

I like/tolerate weight/con from a 100% gameplay standpoint, but it does even further the widespread misconception that medieval weapons were enormously heavy and unwieldy. Back to the entirety gameplay side, though, I think Tellius did it best, because it only affects the characters when they’re weak and inexperienced, and eventually disappears as the grow more skilled.

FE Conquest maps are not gimmicky *Fuga:* wElCoMe To My WiNd CaStLe

I think your assessment at the beginning about many of these opinions coming from people who are just immature is apt. I think a lot of them would change their minds if they had more experience not just with Fire Emblem but with more video games and other types of media. For example, I've never had a problem with weight being a factor in Fire Emblem (even though I also don't really understand how it works) because it's been a thing in a lot of the games I play. If you play a lot of JRPGs, you might not have experienced it much, because it generally isn't a thing in those, at least from my experience. It is very much a thing in a lot of Western console and PC RPGs, though, and it's been a thing ever since pen and paper RPGs were first around, which I also have a bit of experience with. Same thing with the comment on specialized mages being a thing. They are a thing outside of Fire Emblem as well, in other video games as well as TV, movies, and books. Sure, there are lots of mages and wizards who do all kinds of stuff, but specialized wizards exist all over the place. I mean, I think it's fine to like it or don't, but it's not a good argument that it's bad because it doesn't exist elsewhere, when it does.