GoldPaladin

Mathilda is one of the best units in the game and you can never go wrong with her as your leading Gold Knight.

Great post to OP and topic all around. You really made me go back and think about Celica as a character.

Not weird at all. This is the only way to learn every unit and be able to decide if you like them or not. I usually do this with multiple playthroughs where picking and deciding which units I want to invest time into.

Hi and welcome, hope you enjoy your time on here. FE7 and FE9 are popular fan favorites, so you should feel right at home.

I picked Sigurd cause I know he would kill everything in his path with or without a holy weapon.

Corrin - just completely write this character out of Fates and make Ryoma and Xander the lords. If Corrin must except, at least not as the main character.

100% agree with all of this. I would hate to see the maps broken up and made smaller. I understand and respect the criticisms towards Holy War's maps cause they're not for everybody, but it's one thing that makes the game so unique. This game made you feel like you had really explored an entire country in a single chapter. If Gaiden's maps weren't altered at all, hopefully Holy War's are kept the same. I don't have a problem with the horse mechanics in this game. This game did a good job trying to replicate medieval warfare. Cavalry was extremely important in medieval warfare, so I've never had a problem with the horse stuff. There's still some great units that don't get a horse that most of the critics of this game completely ignore - Ayra, Lewyn, Bridget, Larcei, Shannan, Ced and Faval all come to mind. People also forget that there are some mediocre and straight up forgettable units with horses like Noish, Alec, Midir and Beowolf. Totally agree on no avatar. They not only hurt the story with the self-inserted Mary Sue, but they're also bad for gameplay purposes. Robin/Chrom and Corrin/Ryoma can pretty much solo most of their respective games. If anyone is soloing Holy War, it's going to be Sigurd for his half and Seliph for the other. As for postgame content, I'd like to see a DLC campaign for Agustria. The endgame talks about Ares going home to settle the civil war of his homeland. It would be interesting to play that out as a level with the black knight whom we all love. It could be like a redux of chapter 2 and 3, as well as adding in story material to explain house of Nordion and Agustria's politics.

This is a great topic with a lot of cool ideas. It's my dream to see this game get a remake as it's my favorite FE game. I would love to see Thracia get a remake as well, but that would probably be an even trickier deal since so many people dislike it for the difficulty and some of the mechanics. I wouldn't want to change the maps at all. While it is true that Holy War's map design isn't all that great, it still gives off a sense of adventure with the giant maps. It's the only game that ever made me truly feel like I had explored an entire continent. The large maps also work in context that you are going around and seizing castles. Maybe offer a save point for every seized castle (this game did have a good save system where you could save anywhere in a level). There's some glitches that would need to be fixed. The one annoying glitch I hate in Holy War is the one in the arena where it runs out of points to give on a level up. This is something I usually have a problem with in the first generation where the RNG will not give off points upon leveling up in the arena. It's a weird glitch that seems to happen from time to time. Fully orchestrated soundtrack would be a plus. Hell, they could even still use the arranged soundtrack from back in the day. These songs still sound amazing, but I want to hear Arvis' theme orchestrated, as well as the Agustria music. At the very least, this is the main song I get nostalgic over. More support conversations could be added. I imagine some of the holy weapons would be nerfed and the mechanics could be altered (double attacking would be the big change I'd love to see). I'm OK with each unit having their own income. After years of playing Holy War, I've managed to work around that. The only issue I ever have is in the second generation buying up the Paragon ring for everyone to level up. If the remake follows Echoes, I hope to see a similar art style and presentation. Full voice acting would be incredible. I just hope nothing really changes with the story. FE4 has a great story that don't really need to be changed whatsoever, but could have new little subplots added to it and side stories. I would also love to see something like Mila's Turnwheel added to the game, and maybe from that, unlockable support conversations between characters we never get to play as (or even stuff with Lewyn during the 17 year gap between chapter 5 and 6).

That's right. Lewyn also explains to Seliph in either chapter 6 or 7 that for the first few years under the empire, things really weren't that bad under the empire's control at first. Something changed once the cult became more powerful and Julius had become FE antichrist. Arvis had good intentions and in all his dialogue with Manfrony in chapter 5, he makes all that clear. It would make sense for someone who had to fear being burned at the stake for having Loptyr blood in them, that he would want to end prejudices even to this evil cult. Arvis tells Manfroy that he has no intentions of reviving the dark god. They both used each other to gain power. Arvis personally felt the pain that the Loptyr people experienced through persecution since he had to hide his Loptyr blood from the public. I don't think he was blackmailed cause either way, had it been revealed, he would've been burned at the stake and he knew this. I've always felt that Manfroy used him like a puppet without blackmail and both of them were using each other for their own gain. It's easy to sympathize for Arvis cause he's such a well written villain, but he still wanted to be emperor above all else. Between him, Reptor and Langobalt, Arvis simply was the smartest of the three and knew what he was doing with his plans. Having Manfroy in his pocket was a key advantage. Chapter 5 is truly a beauty of the writing in this game. Arvis played the key figures of Grannvale against each other so perfectly, allowing them to kill each other. He even manages to fool Sigurd into thinking everything will be OK when Velthomer turns their forces against Reptor. I think a good question is weather or not Arvis was aware of Dierdre being his half sister or not. I suspect he wasn't aware at all and truly was in love with her. Marrying her was key to getting the throne since she was a descendant to Kurth. If there is ever a remake of this game, I am curious if they'll add something in there with a big reveal of Arvis finding out the truth.

Noted after a bit of browsing. Seems to have a fetish for bashing Holy War despite admitting he's never played it. That's like if I came on here just to tell everyone how bad Revelations is, even though I've never played it but have been told by a number of people how much they despised it. I'd rather actually play something before deciding if I hate it or not. People used to tell me how 'bad' Thracia 776 was, and I completely forgot that after playing it and finding the game to be enjoyable.

What does my favorite FE game have to do with this discussion? I said Awakening has poor map design because it does. It has nothing to do with Holy War's map design. Even the biggest fans of Holy War often admit that the maps are flawed. The giant maps are something you either love or hate but that's not the point of this discussion. This topic is about Awakening and Conquest, not Holy War. I'm sure you'd be angry if I quoted you in a random topic and told you that your opinion is irrelevant because of how disappointing Fates was to a lot of us.

Birthright for me. It has the most tolerable story between the two (Didn't enjoy either enough to warrant paying money to play Revelations, so I haven't touched it). Conquest had better gameplay and some of the best map design in the series but the story was so awful. Birthright had a generic and boring story, but it was at least tolerable to a degree. I had more fun with Birthright despite the bland map design and how easy it could be.

Reina is the biggest missed opportunity for me. I would've liked to see her have supports with all the royal siblings since she served the queen. For me personally, this was a character that had huge potential get wasted.

Most of Birthright can be soloed with just Ryoma and Corrin. If you're playing for fun and don't want to stretch it chapter to chapter, always remember that these two can solo most of the game, even at the end. Ryoma is ridiculously powerful (should've easily been the Lord unit of this game). You can throw Ryoma into hordes of enemies where he'll kill everything without dropping less than 50% in HP. To answer some of your questions: I haven't used Mozu that much to give a good opinion on here. She is similar to Donnell from Awakening. Felica isn't a bad unit, but you probably won't use her a whole lot except as a healer. She is more of an Oifey as a Jagen. I didn't find her growths to be terrible in my Birthright playthroughs. Ninja's are incredibly useful units who replace Thieves in the older games. One of the best gameplay things that Fates does is make Thieves useful and a legitimate threat on the battlefield. Make sure you get an A rank support with Kaze early in the game, you'll be thankful for this later on. Skills work pretty much the same as Awakening, except for second seals. This game cuts out a bit of the grinding. When you change class, you can do it at any level and get the skills, I think (I am not a fan of class changing, so I don't know a whole lot about it since I avoided this). Oboro is one of the best units in the game and is probably the best female when it comes to marriage if you're going for the second generation. She can pair up with anyone and produce an overpowered unit. Scarlett is OK for a pre-promote. I liked Reina and wished that her character wasn't locked to just the Avatar alone for supports. Silas is going to be your lone horseback unit in Birthright and it comes down to your opinion if you like Paladins or not. I always found him to be a good unit, so I used him. Sakara is a good healer IMO, never really had problems with her. I didn't touch forging, so I don't think I could help you there, sorry.

I would love to see the Avatar/My Unit mechanic completely ditched and go back to simply having a protagonist who serves as a Lord unit. From a story perspective, the My Units in their respective games have caused far more damage to the stories than any of the benefits. Dialogue is changed in FE3 and given to Kris instead. In Awakening, Robin steals away much of the spotlight from Chrom and we don't get a lot of character development with a number of characters who just revolve around the Avatar exclusively. This is ramped up on steroids in Fates. Fates could've easily had two Lords for their respective routes - Xander and Ryoma, but it's all shot down by having a My Unit in there. I like to think that both of them missed out on better character building since the storyline had to revolve all around the Avatar as the protagonist. Just when you thought Robin was the biggest Mary Sue in the series, Corrin proves to be 100X worse. Fates had a lot of interesting characters who could've had time to shine and build on characterization, if they didn't exclusively revolve around Corrin (which is only done just for the waifu system). As far as gameplay goes, the Avatar/My Unit tends to be overpowered and is a wrecking ball of a unit. Just look at how powerful Robin is in Awakening and how powerful you can make Lucina if Robin is her mom. Taking them out of the game could make things more strategic. In Fates: Birthright, most of the game can be soloed with just Corrin and Ryoma together. If there's going to be an Avatar, at least do it like FE7 did with Mark and just the tactician who we never see. Mark didn't steal the spotlight from Eliwood, Lyn or Hector by any means. S Support Ranks can be ditched too. I would like to see Support ranks limited again like they were done in Echoes. Some of the S ranks are so badly written and almost embarrassing to listen to. I wish the entire Waifu system could be ditched. In Awakening, it was used to produce overpowered kid units who usually totally outshine their parents once you get them and can turn the rest of the game into a breeze. I didn't even use the second generation in Fates since the whole 'deep realms' thing was so poorly and laughably written. The only game where the second generation has worked is FE4, and in that one it matters a lot who you pair up since it decides unit growths.