Archanea gets slagged off a lot for not having "good" or "well-developed" characters.  Er... I'll grant you there are a lot, and I do mean a lot, of characters who didn't have much dialogue save a death quote up until FE12.  And I remain skeptical of the brand of development presented in FE12.

But, as a counter-example, may I present Character #3: ( Read more... )

I'm so glad I waited to write this one.

I was having second thoughts, you see.  Spending a great deal of time comparing the merits of "favorites" and the reasons why they rank can lead to second-guessing.  I was starting to wonder if poor Leaf really belonged "below the cut," down at #12, and if I shouldn't rearrange a few other things while I was ( Read more... )

You should be grateful to this guy.

Characters as diverse as Innes, Shinon, Joshua, and Levin all can trace their lineage back to him.  He's both the original Snarky Sniper and the original Wandering Noble, at least as far as FE goes.

I refer, of course, to #5: Jeorge.

( I love this guy. )

This one should not be surprising at all, to anyone.

Rounding out the bottom five... Ephraim.

( He's hot. He kicks ass. He's... pixels. Sigh. )

I said I wasn't bringing headcanon into this.

That doesn't mean that some characters didn't take a fair amount of consideration before getting on this list.  A little thought, a little reflection, a bit of compare/contrast with others of their "type."

Case in point, #7: Eliwood.

( Psst. He's the actual main character of his game, too. )

What makes a "favorite" character?  In my case, it's kind of a visceral appreciation and not purely an abstract "what-if" meta obsession.  Put simply, I often know if a character (or pairing) is truly a favorite by how I respond to artwork.  If seeing a little fan-doodle or icon provokes a reaction in me, that's a beloved character.  If I see the ( Read more... )

I appreciate Fire Emblem's Old Guys.  I don't mean the Marcus-types (though they're good too), or the ancient sage-types, but the older dude, usually heavily armored, that you get at the middle or end of the game.  The one with crap stats and an affinity for small children.  I almost always use Lorenz in Shadow Dragon because I think he's a great ( Read more... )

And now, coming in at #10, the only Jugdral representative on this list...

Finn.

Yes, that's right.  Out of an entire continent of tragic, star-crossed, and "dramatic" characters, I go with Cuan's little sidekick.

( Would that we all had a sidekick of this caliber. )

 Boy, 
( Read more... )