Seriously, guys? I was honestly expecting some sort of topic made for it considering its recent release. (If there is one, I didn't see it.)

I've been playing it for the past week. I can say for the most part that I've been enjoying the game quite a bit. Found it a bit frustrating in the beginning when they had those lame conditions where none of your characters were allowed to be killed. Freakin' Laura, I swear. XD

It's fun seeing all of the old characters again. (Sad to say that some of their new appearances just don't appeal to me. What happened to you, Ike!!?! D: ) Though, I won't lie. I didn't get the most excited until the end of Part II / beginning of Part III. For...somewhat obvious reasons.

I don't wanna go too much into detail since I've got so much to talk about in terms of the story. I'm in Part III: Chapter VII and well uh...yeah. Oh my god.

Anyway! Who's picked it up / playing it?

I keep hearing that it kicks ass. I plan on getting it eventually, I'm just content replaying TSS for now.

Nice Sig btw.

Oh yeah, it came already?

I am going to pick it up sometime after I get a Wii, which should be good enough. I'm a pretty big Fire Emblem fan. I'm pretty bummed that character developing supports are gone, though.

Thanks, ArashiKa! 8D Gotta have Soren somewhere to express my dorkiness~

It came out...last Tuesday? I dunno when exactly; my brother came with my mom after I got off work and told me he was going to get it, but he wanted me to go with him. Hahaha.

Yeah, I'm totally bummed over the supports. Instead, you just have them 'Converse' with each other in battle. And they're so lame. D:
I had so much fun with the previous support system not just for character development, but for the lulz as well. Kieran and Mia had some that simply cracked me up.

They changed the American subtitle, huh? Go fig. Separation of religion and business, that's NOA for ya.

This is one of two system-selling games for me that leave me wishing I had the money to buy the system I need. (The other is Blue Dragon.) It makes me wish my parents would let me and my brother pool our Christmas present allowance for a Wii. Plan B is get a job, I guess. X_X

This is a game I’d want to get. I have no Wii, nor the money for it, so my only option would be to borrow my sister’s fiancee’s. However, they don’t visit home too much due to school, so I wouldn’t have much of a chance to play it.

I didn’t know they got rid of the support conversations though. I rather liked them >.>

Oh well. I hope to get a Wii sometime, but I probably won’t. So, this’ll be a game I won’t touch for a few years yet.

AHHH! Now this is a game that is going to be a must play for me, as I am definitely going to get it sometime next month. I'm just looking forward to seeing the Black Knight's identity especially as I believe that the BK is female and is Ike/Mist's mother.

NEVER! D:
I actually have my suspicion of who he is, but I kind of don't want to say save for spoilers. (Not that I'm far enough to know who he is, yet)

It'd be kind of weird that the Black Knight is female, since Greil called him "boy".

Though I already know who it is >_>.

I'm enjoying the game.

I'm currently on the final chapter of the second arc. It's not difficult. I'm just trying to gain the most amount of experience and kill the leader on the 15 turn. I don't want to miss out on the Tomahawk he's carrying. So far, the game been enjoyable, but quite odd why they gave you a main character that could get killed in one attack. You figure they at least give Micaiah a good amount of speed or at least HP. Ike got too powerful in the first game and Micaiah miserably weak. She's like Rhys except without the great healing abilities. Her own HP terrible that make the skill Sacrifice not that effective.

Throwback to the days when the lord wasn't the powerhouse he has been lately. Marth could not promote, so he was a terrible fighter later on, Roy promoted so late and had terrible starting stats so his early-mid/late game useage was significantly diminished (he has at most three chapters of post promotion). Leaf was ridiculously weak, and also did not promote until late.

Micaiha is a foil to Ike's tankness, really.

There's more than one lord this time around, though. Micaiah gets better a little bit later on, but she still requires an insane amount of hand holding. I have a problem with her lack of defense than anything.
It's 8 and she's level 16 at her second tier. Not to mention I had to cave and gave her a Dracoshield a while back. x.x;

...at least she can heal after she promotes.

I just made it to Part IV: Chapter I, last night. I had a bit of trouble on the Prologue, but I think that's because I made some bad judgements on my team. I can't get over how bad my Leonardo turned out. D: Compared to Edward and Nolan.

Ugh, I can't stand Micaiah. I only just got the game, so I'm still only on Chapter five. I feel like a loser. Haha. I want to hurry and blow through part one, so far I hate all the new characters except the wolf laguz. Bleh. I want Ike and Soren and Boyd and Shinon and Ulki and all my old favorites back!

By the way, I have a question... Would you know where to find more of these:



I forgot what website I found these from. I have a few, but I wanted some others that I don't have.

So it's out in America? Shouldn't be too long till it gets over here then. Can't wait since my Wii is just sitting there collecting dust at the moment >_>.

It's so sad that I decided to get a Wii about now. It'll be impossible to find it.

I was at Best Buy yesterday, looking for a Wii, as well as for this. As I was looking it over, on the back, there was English description, as normal, but on the bottom, all words were in Spanish. Is this normal, because NoA decided there were enough Mexicans in this country to cater to in games, or is it just a Best Buy thing, because they had absolutely everything labeled with it's Spanish name (and yet still, no games with Spanish on the back)?

lol

You try finding a link to the official Japanese site for Fire Emblem, Ember.

By the way, I beat the game. Like the previous game, maniac mode been removed. Though, the game on normal and hard mode should be more than enough challenge. It's much more of a challenge than Fire Emblem: PoR that's for sure.

Actually, Eva, Maniac mode wasn't removed. It was renamed.

The Japanese Normal, Hard, and Maniac modes are actually American Easy, Normal, and Hard games. It's true. American Hard Mode = Japanese Maniac. It takes away weapon triangles, the movement ranges, etc.

I did not known that.

Though, I am aware of disadvantages of Hard Mode you mention already since I'm currently playing the game on Hard Mode. You can't check a enemy's attack range. Instead, you have to determine it in your head. I don't exactly understand how that's making the game more difficult. I find it's just making the game more time consuming. That's my only beef with Hard mode at the moment.

I got confused by that when we first got our copy. I read the spanish thinking it was english until I saw the captions under the screenshots. Half of the instruction booklet is also in spanish. Personally, I'm not too fond of that, but I am aware of mexicans being the majority in certain states.

So wait wait, if you're playing the game on normal, you're basically playing it on hard in accordance to the Japanese version? O.o; That would explain why the game is kind of tougher than Path of Radiance.

I'm getting close to beating it. I'm in Part IV: Chapter IV. I swear, Haar is such a tank in this game compared to the last. He's like level 8 or 9 and his stats are insane than what I'm used to. I wish I can say the same about my Jill, but she's only level 15 Dragonmaster and Haar is a Dragonlord. She sucked so badly in Part I that I benched her for a while. >:

Just putting more work into the guys that I'm seriously considering for the final chapter. Some are coming along without a doubt. (Soren 8D) Others like Nephenee, Mia, and Boyd I'm still considering with Aran, Edward, and Nolan. I dunno why I like Nolan so much out of the Dawn Brigade. lol

WHOOO! I am made of awesome! I found it!

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/fe/akatsuki_bk/chara/index.html

For those who care. ^^;

Oh cool! Thanks for the link, Ember! 8D
This will make great reference and, until I can find a large version of Ranulf's official art, awesome for icons or whatever. ^^

Sacrifice, gets useless once Micaiah promotes after Chapter 10 Endgame. And that Stealing the Dracoshield is very hard in Chapter 2 Endgame.



Martt, could do fine with stat up items, Roy, well no positive comment on him. His promotion is too late to make him any good. Leif, was terribly weak for 2/3 of the game, and that he will need HP UP stat up items in order to survive in the later chapters until he class changes. His unlike Roy's, comes at just the right time.



Ike,Soren,Boyd,Shinon,and Ulki are in the game. Micaiah's scenerios (Chapters) are among the most difficult in the game, because you have got to train them from scratch and that the only ones that are worth using in this group is every except, Meg and Fiona.



In the FE NES games, they did not have no enemy attack ranges either.

I want this game so much!

Glad to see that no one on here had any problems with their Wii freezing like so many others!

The games missing off of the Q1 2008 release schedule for the EU which has me concerned considering how quickly PoR came out over here after the States release - and it was at a similar time of year. Ah well hopefully nintendo will get back to me sometime soon and actually give me some information but i doubt it.

My Wii froze the first time I tried to load up the game, but I just deleted all but one Epilogue file, and it worked smoothly.

A question though.

Part III, Chapter 10, the one where the Greil Mercenaries have to protect Crimean Knights with all the cavaliers from Part II and Elincia... Does it matter if they die? I notice that they run away, so does it work the same way as Part III Chapter 1, where Lethe/Lyre can still join you if they get killed in that chapter? Because keeping Astrid alive is giving me some serious trouble, and I never like to have anyone die permenantly.

Did Astrid die when defeated or retreat? I'm not positive since I never lost a character during that battle. Also, you're going to forget that idea of not losing a character to death, because you'll lose characters during the final battle of the game. I ended up losing four characters during the final battle when I lost none during the rest of the game. Though, if you didn't remove Paragon from Astrid, you would prefer to keep her alive since that skill can be removed and assigned to a character you need to train, if you haven't yet.

Astrid retreated. She had a unique quote different from her regular death quote and Elincia told her to retreat, which is why I was asking. Astrid is complete ##### this time around, I swear... She probably beats Fiona in the amount of suckage on a cavalier. Still, I'm not sure if I can use her afterwards, and even though I probably will never even touch her again once she's not forced into my party, I'd rather let her live on the off chance she has an Info conversation.

And I will not lose anyone in the final chapter. If I have to do it over a trillion times, I will. I've made only one exception to the no one dies rule, and it was in FE4 because it was literally impossible for me to kill Julius or Ishtar without losing someone that turn, and I didn't have the Valkyrie staff, so I gave up Hannibal who was a liability anyway.
I'll probably make that rule more lenient for myself on Hard mode, though, and let crap people die if i make the mistake of not removing them from the battlefield myself.

Sorry I can't help you with your problem. I had the same policy before reaching the final battle myself. Though, my characters were strong enough to survive, even Makalov. I don't believe his growth as good as the previous game, but I don't bother checking charts of character's statistic growth. I'm not sure if he's bad in sequel or not. I didn't have a problem with Astrid myself once she gained enough levels, but she doesn't ever become a elite character. Her Paragon skill better suited for a stronger character. If I remember, you won't find out Astrid gone until the start of Part IV. How you're describing her defeat during that battle and she retreated, she'll be there, but I'm not positive.

The problem with the final battle would be the boss can launch an attack on the entire team and when she attacks regularly, she'll go after the weaker characters and likely double attack and kill them. You can't hid characters since she can attack a character no matter where they're located on the map. If you don't want a character to die, I won't bother with a dragon since they'll be double attacked and killed. Also, the finishing strike must be done by Ike or she'll revive.

Well, the final chapter is for the Elite. It's just laguz kings and whoever maxed the most stats...
The game sucks with HP, I swear. Everyone's HP growth is such #####.

If you did that, I'm not sure if she'll just target Micaiah. Micaiah need to be on the team when she's available, if I'm not mistaken. We both known she's isn't that fast and nearly double attack every time she's targeted.

Main idea is to watch out for characters that are not fast. That's how you'll lose characters during the final battle. You'll need heal due to wide area attack she's got. I just didn't care myself since I just wanted to end the game. I lost four characters, two died and two retreated since they're important to the plot. Like I said, no dragons since they'll be double attacked and likely won't survive.

Anyway. Astrid stopped bothering me once I put her in her place. Literally. Stopped her from doing stupid things by blocking her path, and she went on her merry little way of standing still.

Nolan is one of the best units in the game. He has excellent speed and luck growth. As for Jill don't ditch her, sure she is alot less availible than Haar. But, if you get Haar to speak to her in Chapter 3-7, she will betray Micaiah's team and that you can get to use her for another four missions, as for Zihark, get Lethe or A support Bond Ilyana to talk to him and he will become playable for another 4 missions as well. Doing this will give you a chance to develop their skills even more than you would by leaving them with the Dawn Brigade. As for Jill she is better than Haar in defense as she grows ALOT more Res than Haar and that she is one of the best characters in the game and that she may possibly be the only character in the game other than Vika that can max out in every stat. Jill won't shine until she becomes a dragonlord and that you do not promote her into third tier with a promotion item. As for Aran, he is risky as he has toruble in growing speed, you may want to slap on the fortune skill on him (stripping it off of Meg) and giving it to him as it prevents critical hits. As for Edward, don't bother, he has trouble growing Res as I would recommend going with Zihark as he grows alot more Res than him. Less Power but so what, he also grows alot more Speed and Luck than Edard as well as having a godly support affinity, Earth. Meaning, that supporting him with anyone will give him ALOT more avoid than ever before and that he will give the other character that he is supporting with the same as he is certainly excellent for supports.

Nephanee is better than Aran because she grows alot more speed than Aran as well as having WAY better luck!

So...

Jill>Haar
Nolan>Boyd
Zihark>Edward
Nephanee>Aran



The only character that I know of that can actually survive Ashura's single double attack is Nasir as him getting double attacked by her at full health won't kill him.



Astrid isn't a good unit, ditch her, she never doubles under any circumstances, I swear it. Even in the Normal mode, yes.

Julius and Ishtar were a pain, without boss abusing it is very likely that you WILL lose a character when you are up against them in Chapter 10. Hannibal is a great sacrifice for this as someone like Shanaska or Lakche is a way better unit to use to guard the castle.

Well. I beat the game. It wasn't very hard, but I had to very muchly abuse Laguz Royals and Gareth/Nasir/Ena's/Kurth's tides. No one died, and I overall kicked ass, considering I brought Sanaki in there, with her piss poor 32 HP and 23 speed.

Everyone's speed growth is crap. Except Makalov's... and Brom/Gatrie's? WTF?!

Anyway. Started a new run on Normal mode again, mostly to use Meg and Fiona for extra fun - and for extra cutscenes/Palleas. Fiona is so much suck. Jesus, Meg holds her own quite well, low on defense for a Knight, but at least she's got the speed to make up for it. But Fiona. OMG. A lot of speed, but NO strength. 8 STR at level 13? Doubled by everyone because she's weighed down. I am still leveling her, because I can and no other reason than pure unadulterated masochism.

Meg also grows hardly not much str as well as Res. Fiona also has trouble growing skill and that the only way to make her any good at all, is to RNG bless her with the use of Bonus EXP and resetting until that you get the statistic level gains that you would want her to gain that she has trouble growing in. The only thing good about her though... is that she has the best support affininty in the game, which is Earth.

So yeah. That didn't work out too well. Got Meg to 20/8 and had to stop using her because she maxed speed and had like 13 DEF and therefore sucked. Because her max speed is 22.

Also Fiona never went over level 17. Wow. Such #####. Good defense, no strength equalling ##### speed, and she was overall the absolute worst unit I've ever had the misfortune of using.

Hard mode run. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. lol

You won't think they make characters that awful, but they did. I mean it's not a preference if you wanted to use Meg or Fiona. They just that much worse than other characters you could use. Growth of their statistic are not great and how could they cap Meg's speed at 22. That's just baffling.

I did hard mode until you reach the prison where you need to bust soldiers out of prison before quiting myself. I wanted to play different games instead of playing the same game with statistic altercation to make the same enemies harder.

Whoa i can't believe this thread has been relegated to the third page already - though I suppose it has been out stateside since november - aren't there an EU players floating around?

Ah well just finished my first playthrough a few weeks back and it was definitely worth every penny - its been a while since a game has got me so addicted as that one did.

Managed to recruit everyone that is possible on the first playthought except for Oliver - but that was my own fault for not using Raphael as much as I should have - only found out they could be recruited until after finishing the game.

While it wasn't particularly hard to make it to the end I definitely found this one to be the most difficult of the four games released outside of Japan, the early chapters in particular seemed especially unforgiving, the slightest mistake and that was it. Though I was surprised that I managed to get through Endgame on my first attempt considering I made two major screw ups:
1) For some stupid reason I went into the chapters having not stocked up properly on supplies/ weapons - if it wasn't for Yune blessing the weapons I would have been struggling by part three
2) Didn't take along any royals, (which was very nearly my downfall against Deginshea) and used only Ena and Kurth which was stupid as I think Nasir's tide would have been a bonus against those all-map attacks at the end.
So I wont be making those mistakes again.

Hope to see the return of the different ground levels in future releases even considering it made defending so easy and the seize chapters that more interesting. A nice feature.
Though I do NOT want to see the new support system. I'd heard a lot of people complaining on the net about the new system on the stateside release but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, though now having played it I can safely say every single comment was well founded - seriously what was the point, the majority of the character development and humour in the games was in the support convos.

OMG Fiona and Meg were crap! In the end I was just going out with less than the max number of players as they were both just a liability. I tried to train Meg up early on and just wrote her off as a bad job. And as for Fiona - well if you can't saying anything nice you shouldn't say anything at all, though it was so uncharacteristic of a FE game to introduce a mounted unit so late on and to give you that!...

I'm probably alone in this but I think the out of all the classes the Mages got a bit of a tough deal in this one. Being restricted to a single element at the beginning was a bit ridiculous (and definitely aided in the downfall of Ilyana) and the promotions for this class (and the bishops) didn't really seem to add much apart from new graphics and the stats increase.

Whilst I generally really liked the new three tier system (not having to rely on the Occult scrolls to gain the master skills was a blessing) I think these classes in particular may have benefitted from a system more a kin to that of Sacred Stones
a ) to make the bishops a more versatile,
b ) to get some druid action on your first play through and
c ) to finally see the return of the almighty Mage Knights.

Nephenee was by far the best character for me this time round - her and Brom (the first time I've consistently included a general in my team) were unstoppable, nothing could touch them. Paired up with an A support they were easily able to break any attack and were great in the defend chapters or as the centre of a front lines

Rolf was another to show his true worth, I thought he was good in PoR but as a third tier he was a demon. During Part Four Endgame equipped with Dragonfoe and using the Gladr he cleared a good half of the field with single shots and helped me finish off the Deginshea his defense, strength and speed were ridiculously high and with the addition of Crossbows he was fairly capable upfront as well. And got to love the power of Deadeye.

As was to be expected Mia was consistently in my front lines and the time and effort into leveling her were well worth it, especially when she git tier three, Astra FTW!

After Ilyana the biggest disappointment was Jill - her accuracy and speed were terrible and even pumping a fair bit of BEXP to get her to tier three she just couldn't keep up - i think I was unlucky with stat gains as I got a fair few levels with a zero stat increase - hopefully better luck next time.

With regards to the Lords:
I'm surprised people had problems with Miciah, equipped with Thani, Physic and Paragon was able to take her 20/20/16 and max out 5 stats beaten only by Nephenee who maxed 6. Kept her near the front lines most of the time and not have to worry about her too much.

Elincia - well I put a bit of effort levelling her up in PoR and it was well worth it - but now, if it hadn't been for the archers she would have been a more effective front line fighter than Ike for most of the game. During the last chapter before Endgame she was quite capable of taking out Tigers and Dragons in a single turn. and taking minimal damage in return. Hell in Part Two end game I decided to try something a little risky to get hold of a certain Item drop - I sent out Elincia and Harr right into the thick of things - i lost count of the number of enemies she took out with 4x attack with Amit. In a sinlge turn she got attacked at least 8 times and still had about 1/3 HP left!

Ike - well once again his speed let me down for most of the game - it was only after using two speedwings and a bit of leveling that he could consistently double attack and that was only in the closing chapters of the game. Once he could distance attack he became a bit more useful regardless of only being able to attack once - but he was still lacking compared to Lyn and Eliwood as a lord.

Whoa and this has turned into an essay - obviously I have way too much spare time on my hands!

I finally got a chance to give this game a go a couple days ago at my sister’s place. Definitely liked what I played of it. And, honestly, I can see the similarities with PoR, but I’d need to play PoR again to get really nit-picky with it on what they changed. As far as characters go so far, Sothe is definitely the best. I remember I never liked to use him in the GC version, but I guess people can change a lot in three years, right? Ilyana still isn’t anything special for me, but she’s not terrible. Nolan is decent, Micaiah isn’t that bad, Leonardo I don’t trust much, Edward is alright, and Aran isn’t too bad.

Only got to chapter three though (so I haven’t met many of the characters, just the ones stated above -though I may have forgotten some). I have the difficulty setting on Normal though, and I still couldn’t get past Ch. 3. *laughs*. Well, at least it’s not going to be a cheapo game that I’ll beat within eleven hours of game time...I’ve been running across too many of those recently. But whatever.

So yeah, good game. I haven’t gotten very far in it (just to Ch. 3 as I said before), so I haven’t paid much attention to much of the new stuff (still in the euphoria of playing a new Fire Emblem game that looks and sounds as good as it does). I’m sure as I play more I’ll have some complaints to add...But until then. =).

Don't be hatin' on Meg now. Meg is made of w1n and awesome. Sure, she's a bad unit, but how could you not love the puffy, cute orange Armor Knight? Why, just the other day I had her destroy the laguz on the right side of the map in part 3, chapter 13 and wipe the floor with the Griel mercenaries, starting with my third-tier level 4 Soren, and finally defeating Ike on the last turn. The GMs were officially dominated.



That is nothing compared to the FE titles before Blazing Blade. Both Meg and Fiona, while bad units, are perfectly usable. Even the worst unit in the game, Lyre, is usable in Part 4 if you give her a little favoritism. Ever tried using Zealot in the final chapter of FE: Sword of Seals? Or find any use for Yunno at all? Absolutely horrifying.

Anyway, this game is really enjoyable from a gameplay standpoint. It is a noticeable step up in difficulty from the laughably easy Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance, which is definitely appreciated. The ability to reassign skills adds a bit of customization to units and really fleshes out the system. The chapters are well-designed, also a welcome step up from the last two games in the series. I'm finally fixing to finish my first playthrough, and I'm also near finishing a PoR file that is prepping a few units for stat transfers so I can jump immediately into my second playthrough.

Played more of this yesterday. I think I can agree with most everybody else now that the support conversations during battle just aren't the same as the ones PoR had back at the base. Most of them haven't had much of a point yet (unless I'm just talking with the wrong people).

I've gotten to chapter 5 though. It is providing a nice challenge, though a few of the characters are practically useless for me (Meg included. Sorry, but I don't much like her in battle...).

Yeah, Meg is a terrible unit. She starts badly under-leveled and her growths aren't befitting her class. I still love her though! Most of the Dawn Brigade are mediocre/bad units.

I'm still on the fence on the supports. On the one hand, I LOVE that you can now support any character with any other one (lol @ the broken-ness of a Volug-Zihark support). That's not really possible with the old system. But due to that, it takes out the support conversations, which were the only way for a lot of characters who were less important to the main story to develop. The new system is great for gameplay and terrible for character development/immersion.

My hope was that they'd make up for the lack of support conversations with more base conversations with a lot of the more minor characters. They did take a step in that direction, but there still isn't nearly enough. :\

To be honest, I don't even get how the supports work. I'll attack with Sothe, and then if Micaiah is nearby I'll get a little box saying "Support" before the battle and they'll be enveloped in white light. I don't get the difference in the battle though. Haven't noticed anything that actually happens (or if I have, I just don't realize that's actually the "supporting"...).

I know...I'm a little slow with some of these types of things. >.o. Can someone explain to me?

It depends on the type of support each character has.

If Sothe attacks with Micaiah nearby, he recieves a bonus to his stats, based on the level and type of support. If she is a light support, which I THINK she is, I'm pretty sure he receives an increase in Magic Defense and probably Evasion or something.

Wind supports give Strength and Speed, that I do know...

At lvl 3, or A, or whatever, the bonuses get really high.

Also, bringing in Characters that had a support level of A in PoR into RD, they recieve an extra 5 Evasion and something else, as a basic support.

(I've never actually played RD, only because I don't have a Wii... But I want to! Really bad!)

You characters need to be within three panels for a support to activate. When it activates, your units will get a bonus to their stats. What type of bonus depends on the strength of the support and the supporting character's affinities. You'll get stronger bonuses as you go from C to B to A level support, and the actual stats that are affected depends on the unit's affinity.

You can actually look on a supported unit's character page to see what type of bonuses they are getting, if they're close enough for the support to activate. I think it's on the third page.

A quick example. I referenced the Volug-Zihark support earlier. Ok, they are both earth affinity. The type of stat bonus that earth affinity gives is a massive evade bonus. 7.5, to be exact. So for every level of support, you add both unit's affinity bonuses to the affected stat. In this case, you're adding 7.5 x 2 to evade, because there are two earth affinities involved. So at C level, Volug and Zihark gain 15 evade when they are within three panels of each other. At A level, the highest rank, Zihark and Volug are gaining 45 points of bonus evade. lolunhittable.

Here is the support page on Serenes Forest if you need any more clarification:
http://serenesforest.net/fe10/support.html

Oh, that makes sense. I’ll have to start fiddling with supports next time I play. Would be handy, haha. Thanks for the clarification, DragonsVenom and Hyoushitsu (and for the link). ^^

Serenes Forest also has a recommendation to what units to use, but for Micaiah's team I would recommend using these characters.

Manditory Characters

Micaiah
Sothe
Nolan
Rafiel

Top Tier

Nailah
Vika
Volug
Tauroneo
Ilyana
Jill
Aran
Zihark
Edward
Laura

Middle Tier

Muraim
Leonardo
Rafiel

Low Tier

Meg
Toromod
Fiona

Manditory Characters

These are characters that are definitely needed for the chapters.

Top Tier

These are characters that have the potentiel to become powerful in the future.

Middle Tier

Erm characters that are most useful in the hard mode.

Low Tier

Needn't I need to say more, characters that you should stay away from.

Micaiah- Someone who starts off at very bad HP and that is needed a Seraph Robe in order to survive the later chapters of the game. If you want to support her with someone else, you will have to delete Sothe and Micaiah's A support, thought doing this will not get you an a Elixier towards the endgame. But who cares, you will get several of these throughout your adventure.

Sothe- He is there for your thieving needs and that he is generally needed in order to survive the chapters. Give him the Pargon skill whenever that you can, as he is manditory for the endgame that you are forced to bring him anyways.

Volug- Someone that you should not relie on too much as he will eat up EXP. Better strip off the Wildheart ability whenever that you can so that he can reach LV30 by the endgame and that you can teach him the Savage ability with a Satori Sign. But, right nowin Part I, he will eat up EXP. Try not to over use him! But, his support affinity Earth makes him excellent for supports!

Nailah- Same for Volug's information.

Tauroneo- Same for Volug's information. But his Resolve skill and his great defense does make him an excellent frontline unit!

Nolan- Many say that he is an excellent character though I have never fully tried him out myself outside of Part I. But, use him, he does have the potential to become powerful and that he possesses good speed growth and that he is needed anyways in order to survive Micaiah's chapters. He is definitely a character worth using a Master Seal on as his support affinity Earth certainly makes him excellent for supports.

Rafiel- He can allow units surrounding him to get another turn, shifted or not! Also he does come with a Seraph Robe, which is strongly recommended to give to Micaiah/Laura!

Edward- Ugh! This guy is more trouble than he is worth to train, as he very easily can get killed. But, if you take the time to train him and slap on the Pargon skill later in the game, he will certainly become an excellent unit for the endgame!

Laura- USE HER, No I really do mean it. She has the bestest speed growth in the game out of all of the Light magic users and that she is the best Light Magic user in the game. Though she does have trouble growing in defense =\, but with a Dracoshield or two, she should averagely end up with well over 15 defense by Part IV. Get her Adapt skill, taking Zihark's away, she should hold a league of her own when she promotes to second tier with the use of a Master Seal by Part I endgame. Yes, she is another character that is worth using a Master Seal on!

Ilyana- She is another character that I would recommend using although she does suffer at growing good speed but, what does that matter when she has two class changes and that with the Path Of Radience import data she will start at A level in Thunder rather than C level. DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT USE A MASTER SEAL/MASTER CROWN ON HER as she will not ever get any good defense and speed if you do this so don't! Let her promote naturally and she should definitely max out in Hp,Str,Skill,Defense,and Resistance! Slap on the Adapt skill on her taking Zihark's away and she should prove to be a great ally throughout the game, plus as an added bonus she can support with almost anyone and that she is by far the most availible character in the game!!!!! But, the only downside is that you have got to raise her Fire/Wind levels all over again. Which that is absolutely no problem at all by slapping on the Disipline skill! Plus, give her the items that you want Ike's group to have as she will leave Micaiah's group and rejoin Ike's group! Pretty much she inherit's Lilina's stat growth! Also coming with Shade skill, she will not be targeted by no enemies hardly unless that there is no one else that is getting attacked!

Jill- She is another character that you would want to use as she is probably one of the best characters in the game, is what Serenes Forest says! She does have ecellent growth in something that usually Wyvern units has trouble growing in and that is RESISTENCE! Though she is not as availible as Ilyana but in Part III Chapter 7, have Haar talk to her to get her to betray Micaiah's team. But seriously, user her, you will have yourself a mage slayer soon. Serenes Forest also says that she may be the only character in the game that can possibly max out in every stat! Give some of your items to her as you can get them back when she rejoins in Part III Chapter 7!

Aran- Use him, and you will have yourself the highest defensive Halbrider in the game, but he has problems with Luck growth. So unless you are willing to use Asura Icons on him, he will possibly become the highest defensive Halbrider in the game, but he also has problems with Res growing issues!

Leonardo- Ugh! This guy is also a pain to train as he does have trouble in growing Str! But, he will wield the Lughnasadh later in the game and that he is also the only character in the game that can use it! But, he will prove to be a formidible ally given enough time to train him, he should end up with good enough str to handle the league of his own! If you have played FE3, he exactly possesses George's stat growth!

Zihark- Someone that you probably only want to use in the Hard Mode, as Edward will end up so far better than him till it isn't even funny! You certainly would want to take his Adapt skill away and slap it on either Ilyana or Laura, as they will certainly benifit alot more from this skill than him!

Meg- Someone that you should not bother to use because she almost grows no good defense and that no amount of leveling will make her any good! My advice is to take her Fortune skill away and slap it on Aran as the Fortune skill prevents critical hits! She will however grow good speed than any other iron clad member but, she should not be used as later in the game the enemies are going to own her!

Fiona- Ugh! I may consider her the worst character of the game! She will almost never grow any skill and that without Bonus EXP abuse, she will not hardly grow any strength either! My advice as well as Serenes Forests' advice is to AVOID USING HER!

Toromod- No, do not use him under any circumstances as his availibility is very small, starts at a very low level as a Fire Sage, and that he permenentely joins so freking late in the game that you are close to ending the game completely. My advice his let him sit and stew in the bleachers, although he is a helpful character in Part I endgame, but that is about all that I can say good about him! You also will want to take his Celerity ability and give it to Ilyana so that Ike can get this ability later in Part III in his group!

Muraim- Same as Toromod, another late joining character!

Vika- Same as Toromod, another late joining character and that she starts at an incredibly low level to make her of any use whatsoever!

Reasons upon why these four characters Micaiah,Sothe,Nolan,Rafiel are manditory... Sothe is Manditory, as you need him to pilfer goods from enemies and bosses, as well as finding the Master Seals in the ground and that you are forced to bring him in the final 5 chapters anyways. We know why for Micaiah! Nolan is needed to weaken foes for your weaker characters to get the finishing blows and that Rafiel is needed to give characters surrounding him another turn!

*Whew* I hope that this help out first time players get started!!!!! =D

Note: All that this game will talk about during supports are that during a B support they would just support each other thick and through thin in battle and that the A support is just practically about that they do not want this character to die as that they do not know what they would do if this happened as they wouldn't be able to live with themselves. Just hoping that the supports don't get like this in the later FE's as I do not want to see that again as the supports alone is what makes the FE games unique to play.

So I know that this thread has been dead for about two months, but oh well, I finally got the game and wanted to comment on it. Anyone who says that this game is hard is not kidding, this is one of the hardest games in the series that has been released outside of Japan. Granted, I finally got past the Dawn Brigade chapters, but they were rediclous at times. It's as if the creators wented them to die. Some of them are next to no good, like Leonardo, the archer who can't take away crap if his life depended on it. And while Nolan had decent enough stats, he has the hardest time hitting anything, even with the aid of supports, not to mention that I rarely see him double, if I even have at all. At least Maiciah (mine at least), turned out to be a decent mage, and with support from Sothe she was a pretty hard target to hit, and Edward is just a beast of a Swordsman now. Once he got a hold of that Bravesword he was killing many enemies in his path without getting a scratch.

I just started the second part of the game, and it is good to finally have some good units at my disposal. Brom is actually a decent General at the moment, and Nephenee is pretty good as well. I know that things start to get even easier once I start playing as Ike.

Yeah. The game is a cakewalk after you get to part 3. The Greil Mercs are generally more powerful units than most of the earlier ones, and the enemies are weaker than they were before. Better player characters and worse enemies = lol.

And then part 4 comes, and you get all of the broken units. Haha.

But all in all, it's still a lot of fun.

Out of all of the characters in Micaiah's chapters....

Micaiah
Sothe
Nolan
Ilyana
Jill
Aran
Zihark
Laura

...they are the only ones worth using, as the rest of her team will end up crappy. Nolan is needed to get through the chapters, Ilyana will end up decent upon average. She will be even more valuable with transfer data. Jill, will become a tank once that she becomes a Dragonlord. You can make this easier by getting her to join the Grail Mercenaries in Part 3-7 by getting Haar to talk to her. Zihark is more recommended to use than Edward, as he grows alot more avoid and Res than Edward does, and that Zihark also comes with Adapt Skill. Wrath is a terrible skill for Edward, as he has pretty bad defense anyways. He also requires alot of babying in Part I to be any good later in the game. He will easily get ow1ned by the wisps in the endgame, but Zihark will back up that problem, big time.

Laura should be used. She is the best Light Mage in the game, also the only one to get any good speed and to possibly double enemies with those heavy tomes that the Light Magic tomes has. She also should have Adapt skill later in the game, or by taking Zihark's and passing it over to her, which will allow her to be a little more helpful in battle. Sothe is needed to get through the chapters in Part I, so he should be used. Micaiah's chapters are the most difficult in the game. Micaiah's army will be very underleveled when you get the chance to use them later in Part 3. You may want to consider boss abusing Jarek in Part I endgame boss, as you won't get to use them again for a really long time after that chapter. That alone is what makes her chapters difficult later in the game. Generally, it is preffered to save some of your bonus points from Elincia's group, so that you can feed it all to Micaiah's team later in Part 4, which that is when all of the teams Bonus EXP will combine.

My level 1 Swordmaster Edward is physically more powerful than Zihark, and his defense is just about equal. Yeah, I did baby him up, but he became worth it for me.

Jill unfortunately seems to get no power or defense often, so I don't know if I am going to use her on part 4 or not, especially since Haar seems to be more of a beast. Jill was also promoted to Dragon Master by the end of Micaiah's chapters, but other than good speed she really wasn't too special.

It's all about growth. While you might not like the strategy, you should save before every battle and reset if a certain character did not gain enough in particular statistic growth upon their level up. For example Nolan is at level 5 and will level up to 6. On one occasion, his STR and SPD will increase or another occasion only STR will increase. The random factor is what can keep a good character from becoming good or helpful. My Nolan was good enough to get me through the Dawn Brigade chapters, which were a major pain.

Of course, there's characters with awful growth rate and will rarely increase in a particular statistic or their cap for a certain statistic is bad.

You used the item to promote her to the next class?