Marth: Fire Emblem's Weirdest Best Unit

[@SSBBPOKEFAN]

Slight correction about Mercurius; it doesn't double growth rates. It potentially doubles any stats earned when leveling up. So Marth may get 2 points in a stat instead of 1.

[@actuallizard]

Pinning because correct!

[@jamiedytham5276]

25% chance, in case anyone was curious.

[@liesandvideotape]

Especially in a game with 20 pt caps, and Marth already having great growths !

[@WhiskyShotATFC]

"A Lord is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to." - Marth, probably

[@shanegiorgio4713]

Their promotion (if they have one) on the other hand, that can certainly be early (Awakening and onwards) or late (Leif, Roy, main FE7 lord, etc)

[@megamanzero29]

Marth only releases his true potential when he doesn’t wear pants

[@Xaiclun]

So like Goku and Piccolo with their weighted clothes

[@AKASUKIJOE]

Marth looks at a powerful enemy Marth:"I didn't want to do this but I've no choice." Marth proceeds to rip off his pants quintupleing his power

[@Ilias2]

This is why Lucina failed to keep impersonating Marth. She was too embarrassed to take her pants off when it mattered.

[@mr1sign925]

Mystery of the Emblem Marth isn't that strong.

[@ElvenRaptor]

Jaegen: "Sire, are you really, TRULY sure you don't want a horse? Look, we can even just take one from a downed enemy knight. That one over there is a perfectly good golden-brown stallion in its prime, and its rider is currently floating facedown in the river thanks to Castor managing to Critical him. Poor thing now lacks a master. You would look truly majestic riding into battle in its saddle." Marth: "Nah, bros, I'm good. Can't skip leg day!" Jaegen: "Sire, every day is leg day with you." Marth: "Precisely!"

[@nickchua5772]

never skip leg day, abandon horse and pegasi, ones legs shall carry you to victory

[@thomasmontoya302]

That's the legendary hero king right there. Never skip leg day, kiddos.

[@ivanbluecool]

Marth isn't wearing much armor so his speed is faster. Like rock Lee he removed his weights

[@actuallizard]

True, he is weaker in every game where he wears pants

[@theghostcreator776]

They put pants on him to limit his power Turns out the real Shadow was Marth

[@Nitosa]

@@theghostcreator776 he has a shadow dragon in his pants.

[@huyphan7825]

And like Lee his pants weight 8000 pounds.

[@IDESTROYER236]

"If the prince does not lead, how can he expect his allies to follow?"

[@DSaC_]

It's worth mentioning that the other two personal weapons he has, the Rapier and Falchion, are also both good in weirdly unique ways. The Rapier is the only weapon in FE1 that does effective damage to Paladins. The Ridersbane only works on Cavaliers, not sure if this was intentional or not. Beyond that it's just an Iron Sword with crit, but you fight a ton of horses and armors in FE1 so it's a solid choice through the whole game. As for Falchion, you don't use it much since FE1 endgame is warpskip central, but the fact that it completely negates all 1 Range attacks from non-Dragons pairs really funny with the fact that the AI will always attack Marth. They throw themselves at him like rats to a KFC deep fryer.

[@viviblue7277]

Did you forget to mention Marth is also a budget thief after he gets the fire emblem? Because he is. And it’s convenient sometimes.

[@0ctopusComp1etely]

Underrated point. It's hard to describe how cool it feels to open Chests for free with a Lord.

[@jesusmen6308]

Budget?? He's straight-up a upgraded Thief

[@viviblue7277]

@@jesusmen6308 well he can’t use lock picks (or master keys as they are officially translated) to open doors which comes up a fair bit since inventory space is so tight in fe1 and maps having multiple doors isn’t exactly uncommon. However, in terms of the long list of other things Marth can do of course he’s better than a thief (even if Julian is easily a top 10 unit in a draft context and really good in general).

[@Elfangor567]

Who is this Marth you speak of? That is very clearly Lord Mars.

[@GymnopedieTornado]

Sure hope this KZbinr gets fired for that blunder!

[@Excadrill-lo5sh]

Marth being so amazing reminds me a lot of Seliph. Both are units with fine enough bases and on paper aren't too impressive, getting a lot of investment that to the unknowing makes them go "well anyone with these boosters would also be OP". But like Marth, Seliph dictates the pace of the game, so it's imperative to get him promoted asap. Since you wanna get him promoted asap and he can easily get promoted by the end of chapter 6, it means you want Sigurd to pass all the good stuff to him. Which isn't a problem since Sigurd is your best gen 1 unit so he most likely has the best rings and at least one 50 kill weapon anyway. Then by the time chapter 7 rolls around and Seliph is promoted, you have this super OP unit on a horse who blows everyone out of the water. And you want him to kill everything so that way you can get through the game faster. It's interesting how similar the two are in that regard.

[@crysosisback7115]

All depends I get the "movement is the best stat" if you rush through the game, but having him not promote really won't change much of what's going on, aside from bigger turn count overall... He WILL promote, he WILL become insane, and still steamroll the game anyway. Also, while sigurd willl end up with a lot of stuff because he's so good, because it's easy to finish kills with him, but damn, he really doesn't need anything else than his silver sword to steamroll gen 1 honestly... Best unit with the second best class (master knight is n°1), broken bases AND growth, he won't even need any form of help to achieve anything. But yeah, gen 2 transfer, obviously

[@bki9840]

​@@crysosisback7115 But promoting Seliph for chapter 7 make it much easier, so there's reasons to go for it even if you don't aim for max efficiency, and because it's easy to setup there's very little reason not to do it (of course apart from not caring or challenge run or similar). The important part about the inheritance isn't that Sigurd need those items, but that's he's looting half of them and is swimming in gold to buy the rest, so the only effort is in the end-of-gen 1 inventory management.

[@crysosisback7115]

@@bki9840 That only stands for a repeated playthrough, and the fact you want to be done with it quick because you've done it before, and you want to save time for stuff outside the game A first time playthrough, for a lot of people, will be much more carefree / chill, because you're discovering shit (or you google'd everything because you tend to sabotage your own experience, but hey people are free to do so...) People first timing the game probably won't always setup leg ring + paragon to quickly promote Seliph in ch6, that's just what i meant Optimisation through repeated playthrough is basically the ground for speedrunning, it just take enough to start looking like a speedrun, which is the pinnacle of efficiency and game knowledge But watching every fire emblem game through that spectrum always feel so alien to me Like, again, movement It's only as good as the value you give to the time you save by reducing your turn count, thus your game time The best stat for most people is so, because it gives them something that has nothing to do with the game I mean bruh, wtf... (Obviously it's not only good for that, especially with canto+, but people always mention the turn count like they've got 7 wives and 80 children, and really struggle with finding time to play video games)

[@LeapyLad]

bro how do you promote seliph in a single chapter

[@screwtokaiba]

To be fair theres another (future) Lord who promotes into a horse who also dictates the pace of FE4 lol

[@ellenhalfmoon]

Now i understand more why you recomended FE1 for Ironmans

[@armorbearer9702]

I like the idea of the lord being the only unit able to capture an objective. This could create interesting scenarios where you have to protect your lord from enemies who are dead set in killing him. Units that counter the lord can be added to increase the difficulty of the chapter.

[@avinadadmendez4019]

That's what FE6 did and everyone hated it. Not me though I loved it

[@jimjimson6208]

@@avinadadmendez4019 I thought FE6 was generally well liked, its probably my favourite in terms of gameplay and map design

[@zena2239]

FE6 is always crapped on for having wild RNG, terrible map design, and a horrible lord in nearly every forum and social media I see lmao@@jimjimson6208

[@scarocci7333]

@@jimjimson6208 Escorting Roy is fine at first because his bases aren't TOO bad, his growths are actually fine and rapier is great, so he can contribute here and there while doing his lord duties (aka recruiting everyone). But after like chapter 13-14, Roy become a complete deadweight, and in a game filled with status staves (especially berserker), ballistas and long range tome it become INCREDIBLY frustrating, and he promote only before the last chapter (with two bonus ones in the secret ending) which is often too late for him to be really relevant. If he promoted earlier, like in chapter 16 (mirroring his story promotion to being the leader of the alliance army) it would be less frustrating.

The main issue with FE 6 is that Roy gets super outclassed by promoted units. If he promoted a bit earlier (say chapter 18ish) he could at least keep up in stats with the extra levels and wouldn't feel as bad.

[@anzyroadside2374]

Marth tanking ballista in the last mission of FE11 with the Falchion is hilarious.

[@ryangallagher9723]

do you mean fe1? fe11 marth is not tanking ballistae in a million years. also, fe1 falchion doesn't seal 2 range attacks, so unless marth's hp and defence are both very high, he's still not tanking ballistae.

[@radiantherooftellius1138]

Fe1 marth is the definition of broken, its so satisfying to use him when i played fe1

[@johndoe-rq1pu]

Well he has pretty good aerial mobility, superb grounded mobility-both from a dash dance and wave dash perspective-and excellent grab range that leads into a multitude of follow-ups and mix-ups, especially once you learn pivot tippers for super early kill confirms.

[@alangrizzo]

The fact that the BGM you chose for this video comes from Trickster Online is just wholesome.

[@actuallizard]

I miss Trickster!

[@arte7125]

Leif of FE5 is also one of those amazing characters that are S tier thanks to how their game works. He: 1- Cannot be Fatigued. So he's a great unit to stall ballistas or lots of enemies that only deal chip damage. 2- Is in every single chapter no matter what. So he's an amazing unit to invest towards to. 2a- Which includes the Manchester Arc, a.k.a one of the hardest (or the hardest) part(s) of the game 3- His exclusive weapon (the Light Brand) that you have since chapter 1 can be used as a 1-2 range weapon (that affects magic stat instead of def) and a full HP restore. 4- Leadership stars which don't affect much, but 6%/9% extra hit and dodge is always neat to have to ALL units. 5- Like FE1 and FE6, most maps are on Leif's pace (the Escape and Seize chapters) Don't think he's THE best unit since Thracia has so many power players like Osian, Safy and Asbel, but without any doubts he's a S unit in that game.

[@zxylo786]

Don't forget that Leif can hit level 20 extremely fast. Meaning that at the beginning of the game when combat will matter a lot he will be putting heavy work. And his skill makes him great without even being in combat.

[@Kruggov]

Additions: 1) He supports half the army, including almost all of those S tier characters. He is also pretty much the best candidate for the King Sword. So he is useful just by being there. 2) Since his promoted class is techincally a base class (which explains why his promotion is so bad), he gets EXP at a blazingly fast rate once he promotes.

[@BknMoonStudios]

So, in short: 1) He is required to beat every chapter, so it is a good idea to feed him EXP, stat boosts and give him strong equipment, as it will make progressing through the game faster and easier. 2) He has access to extremely powerful items that are exclusive to him. 3) The enemy's A.I. has a fixation with attacking him and hit-rates are pretty bad, so he is often forced into a dodge-tank role, which naturally funnels more EXP to him. 4) His growth rates are not the best but far from the worst, so there is a good chance he'll get decent stats.

[@MetalGearRaxis]

Funfact, I recently ran a lord tier list on gamefaqs, FE1 Marth did quite well, being beaten only by modern avatars, the 3H lords (I think they were overrated a bit), and Sigurd and Seliph.

[@bumibomber]

Edelgard one turning half the game and most of the hard maps + dimitri doing the same isn't overrated imo

[@Matezoide]

Yeah thats pretty reasonable. I still feel like FE1 Marth is > Seliph and 3H but you can argue. Just nice to see FE1 Marth getting respect.

[@FiboSai]

@@Matezoide Seliph and Marth are quite similar in the context of their game. Both of them don't have stats that look amazing, they both are footlocked, at least initially, and they are surrounded by units that look either better or at the very least comparable to them. But the context of the game means that they are by far the best unit to dump all your resources on, which makes them juggernauts able to solo most enemies and allowing for quicker objective completion.

[@jacobcrist7982]

where did FE10 Ike rank?

[@MetalGearRaxis]

@@jacobcrist7982 I'll just post the whole thing: S Tier Sigurd Seliph Robin A Tier Kris Corrin Edelgard B Tier Dimitri Claude FE1 Marth Byleth FE3 Marth RD Ike C Tier Chrom Alear Leif FE12 Marth SoV Alm Ephraim SoV Celica D Tier Micaiah Hector PoR Ike Eirika E Tier Roy FE11 Marth Eliwood Lyn Gaiden Alm and Celica were excluded because nobody knew what to vote for them lol

[@misterbadguy7325]

I think another point to bring up is FE11 Marth, who is functionally almost identical to FE1 Marth from a stats perspective and actually got some buffs (higher caps, higher level cap, Rapier does effective damage to more enemy types and can be forged), but conversely, the game isn't designed around him. Lance enemies are still everywhere, but weapon triangle not only exists, it's more important than it's ever been. Enemy stats are higher on the whole, especially on any difficulty above Normal. Promo bonuses are bigger and statboosters are weaker. His bosskiller utility is performed better by Caeda. Nearly every other unit in the army can reclass into almost anything they want at a moment's notice. For the final boss, not only does Marth now struggle against him, but you have an alternative option in the form of divine dragons or ballistas. And as a result, Marth is now considered one of the *worst* Lords in the series, and regularly hits the endgame with a level in the single digits.

[@scarletrose8766]

yeah the changes made in the remake hurts marth not being able to promote.

[@plentyofpaper]

Credit for towns and villages for Marth vs. chests and locked doors for thieves isn't a bad comparisson. I can think of 2 notable differences that are present, and worth considering whether we want to treat this property the same or not. 1. Marth is force deployed. Thieves are not. So we now need to think about whether we're counting raw contribution, or what we gain by making decisions to use a unit. 2. Marth visiting side objectives will likely increase the overall turn count, while Thieves opening chests and doors will not. So in LTC context, Marth may lose out on these benefits, while thieves still have them. 3. Thief benefits often have alternatives. Door keys, chest keys, while Marth's village visiting is the only way to obtain these benefits. 4. Often, main characters in other games have the Convoy ability. However, this is usually not counted when evaluating character effectiveness. For the sake of consistency, I think these properties should be treated the same. I'm not going to draw a hard line on this. There's enough going on that people can form different reasonable opinions. Personally, I'd count his village visiting ability as a positive, but think we should also now start evaluating the Convoy ability for other lords as a substantial positive as well.

[@General12th]

Hi Lizard! Have yourself a lovely week too!

[@tanphamnhat969]

In my opinion, the fact that he has comrades who follow, he's just strong on his own, the fact that his foe just keep coming at him because he don't want his friend to dies, the fact that there is a boss who Marth cannot beat but with his friend that boss is gone, and a final boss who you usually need Marth to win as all of his friend and and also the player's hope to give him the power of friendship he needed to defeat Medeus. Truly, one of the best main character he is.

[@PhoenixNewMoon]

Great commentary, looking forward to more videos like this

[@mistriousfrog]

I think the villages are unfair to credit to marth for the exact same reason that you can’t discount him based on his speed. Marth will always be in your army. There is no opportunity cost to weigh against other units in that regard. Thieves on the other hand aren’t mandatory units, so the benefit of being able to get chests or steal vulnaries can be weighed against the benefit of including another unit for the map.

[@joaoguilherme8083]

I think any unit that can use staff in FE5 might not look so good on the surface but are incredible in the end game due to staff utility

[@luthierisbestboy8177]

If you're doing a video like this, I think you should try doing one on Luthier, whether in Gaiden or SoV.

[@kinsleycow148]

Tell me what you think about luthier. Be as extensive as you like

[@luthierisbestboy8177]

@@kinsleycow148 Oh no. I was merely talking about an analysis about him as a unit. I find him to be very underrated.

[@AzumarillConGafasBv]

Luthier is a good unit, for sure is a more fast to level up unit than Delthea, he may be outclassed by any of the vilagers units but he still is the goat

[@MajinMattPlays]

Something a lot of people seem to kinda pass over, and even in this video it's eluded to but not really discussed, is that unlike a lot of the FE games, especially in the GBA era, FE1 and I'll toss in FE3 as well, are games built around Marth and what he does. He isn't just good because he has a set of strengths, he was intentionally designed that way. Archanea's maps are designed pretty well with Marth in mind and especially when we compare him to the likes of say, Roy and Eirika, the game feels molded to make sure Marth is always doing something of value, because it very literally is. He's a fantastic unit and even if I really hate when people just talk about Speed or "Warp Skipping" maps, he's fantastic and worthy of investment whether you're playing very quickly or very slowly.

[@makinnak3010]

Love your videos. I have a topic that I don't think you did yet. Forced miss characters/items. Famously you see this on three houses. You miss on the other class leaders, but not counting that so much. I am talking about if you recruit (A), (B) will refuse to join. Also if you don't bring unit (A) you cannot recruit (B) (most common). Finally if you choose route A, you cannot recruit someone only on route B. Now to bring up 3 houses again, there is a character you can only recruit if you choose Edelgaurd to begin with and side with her later.

[@SoldierLuka]

That’s why they call him “THE HERO KING” 😤😤😤🔥🔥🔥

[@VanessaVersus]

what do you mean marth doesn't have 2 range did melee's grab range lie to me

[@iranoutofideasforausernam1703]

No, see, he only has 2 range with fists, which aren't in FE1. Good on Melee for referencing this obscure fact.

[@Lockedupmymouthandthrewawa-x6b]

@@iranoutofideasforausernam1703 really THROWING them punches ey?

[@MisterSpeedStacking]

Xane has such a drip animation in this game

[@carpediem6841]

You mention that there isn’t that many ranged attacks post early game, and that’s really just not true. For almost every map from Ch. 12 onwards at least 40% of the enemies have some form of 2 range, not even considering maps like the wooden cavalry which are almost all ranged. I think the lack of great non-mage 1-2 range means it doesn’t end up being a major problem, but it’s definitely something that holds him back.

[@actuallizard]

Prefacing this with I'm gonna take the L on the way I said that in the video, cause you're right, there are plenty of ranged enemies on later maps. But in practice I think counting the ranged enemies isn't a great way to measure how many 2 range enemies Marth actually has to face. Though I should have been more clear that that's what I meant rather than just saying there aren't a lot of 2 range enemies. in chapter 12 for example, there's a fair amount of 2 range enemies on the map, but there are only 2 that Marth has to face en route to the throne (and one of them is the boss, so it's not like he's going to attack you at 2 range on enemy phase unless you just put Marth there for some reason). 13 is wooden cavalry, definitely have to deal with 2 range enemies there, in 14 there are tons of archers, but Marth only has to pass by 1 ballistician to get to the throne. It's really 15 and later where Marth has to pass by a bunch of 2 range enemies, but by that point warp is a pretty good option for bypassing the handful of maps where there's really a lot. The worst ones are probably chapter 15, where there are a bajillion mages, and you may want to wait for gharnef to leave so there's incentive not to skip, and 22 where marth needs to hit the village before the throne and can get gummed up by the nomads and jav fliers. Also 23, but that's less because of Marth and more because you need to bring your starlight user along instead of just yeeting Marth to the throne as you would if you didn't need Falchion. On most maps I don't think it's really an issue, but yeah saying "there's not a ton of 2 range enemies" in the video was too handwavey, I should have gone into more detail.

[@carpediem6841]

@@actuallizard I don’t disagree with you on it not being a major problem, I just thought the way you said it in the video was odd.

[@mobgabriel1767]

if i got a nickel for everytime one of the best units in a FE game was swordlocked and footlocked i would have 2 nickels wich isnt a lot but its weird that it happened twice

[@davidker8820]

Weirdly, what I get from this video is that I really want to try playing FE1 again. I’ve played and beaten Shadow Dragon - which was was fine - and I did get a decent way into FE1 with that rerelease a while back, but now I kind of want to give it another try, and enjoy the quirks of it.

[@connerblank5069]

Marth is the best unit because they built an entire game to showcase him, disregarding any design decisions which might make that unpleasant. I am, of course, talking about Smash.

[@pksprite6401]

FE1 unit analysis, heck yea

[@fyerluna]

I think I'm gonna have to restructure how I'm playing FE1, and just pump everything into Marth, same way I did in FE3H with Dimitri. I'm so used to hiding the game over character it never even occurred to me to think Marth might, you know, be good XD

[@someoneusedtobeknown2645]

I'm a simple man. I hear Trickster Online music, I like and sub.

[@SharurFoF]

It's funny how a lot of what you're saying applies to FE11 as well, but Marth is so trash statistically in that game that he's bad anyway.

[@actuallizard]

Yeah, it's interesting how the remake changes so many of the conditions that make Marth good in fe1. In 11 enemies are a lot stronger, and caps being higher than 20 combined with stat boosters not being insane. So even though he hits the same 14.5 strength at level 20, you can't just nearly cap him with one power ring. He also loses his monopoly on armor/cav effectiveness to the wingspear, and swords are just worse in 11. Weight doesn't matter as much, and the weapon triangle doesn't favor swords since Archanea has you fighting a bunch of lances. There are even other final boss killers for less investment too. I still think he's a bit better than people think in SD though, mainly due to village access and a forged rapier being a solid weapon for killing random cavs or armors here or there, but it's a big fall from the heights of fe1.

[@LiroRaeriyo]

@@actuallizard as someone who has beaten hard5... marth is essentially a liability, hell most of the units you can obtain need to outnumber and gank nearly every enemy in the game for the first half of it, until you get real good units and get them the levels they need its quite literally the worst game to bother trying to keep everyone alive. hell with the free warm bodies they provide you its probably better that your bad and low level units die so you get even more generics at higher levels.

[@SharurFoF]

@@actuallizard He also can't reclass, unlike the rest of the cast, which decreases his overall utility

[@theghostcreator776]

Marth suffers from hard-5 being the difficulty we assume being played despite it being the most obviously uncurated mode. A lot of units suffer from this due to them since hard-5 requires very specific things out of units. On lower difficulties Marth is still outclassed but he can still perform well due to his rapier access and really good growths comparative to other units.

[@SharurFoF]

@@theghostcreator776 There's a good reason that we rarely evaluate units on difficulties below the hardest one. The hardest difficulty provides the most differentiation between units. A sufficiently easy will make all units' combat contributions virtually identical. Harder difficulties are a form of stress-testing. If Marth performs well on lower difficulties, but not higher difficulties, that means he doesn't hold up under the stress - where other units do. So he's worse.

[@bladeoflight12hardcorepro50]

Does this apply to Mystery of The Emblem? I haven't seen the rest of the video yet.

[@MasterQuestMaster]

"Marth is always on time because he defines what slon time means." Love that xD

[@AzumarillConGafasBv]

Marth is just built diffrent, even on the remakes he is still a good unit that is viable for combat use

[@swordsman7959]

I agree with all of this for FE11 Marth as well tbh. Investing in Marth really does pay off.

[@richardklein1167]

Marth is the best unit because if you played like my friend and didn't use him as heavily as the game was pushing you end up where he's too weak at end game, or you don't end up picking up Falchion properly when playing blind. Thus, if you didn't grab Tiki like they did 3:54 3:55 you can't completely finish your run.

[@andrewnoonan8174]

Wait, the background music comes from Trickster Online?

[@bongosmcdongos4190]

Hey lizard do you have any guides for the game right after this one? Im about to beat this one

[@adammetoyer439]

Sick video. what was the music used?

[@kris8571]

These are some of the same reasons that make PoR Ike more useful than some perceive him to be. Obviously him being a footlocked sword unit and lack of 1 to 2 range hurt him much more in FE9 than the same attributes would hurt Marth in FE1. As a result, FE9 Ike is far from the best unit in his game unlike FE1 Marth. However, FE9 Ike also has many of the same advantages that benefit FE1 Marth, and he even has some advantages that are somewhat exclusive to him. Both have mediocre base stats compensated by top tier growths that make them worth investing in the long run. However, unlike FE1 Marth, FE9 Ike actually promotes and ends up having the some of the best overall stats of any unit in the game, thanks to not only high growths on top of high promotion gains whereas FE1 Marth remains stagnant (only being the best because FE1 is such a simple game with simple mechanics). Normally FE9 Ike is comparable to Roy in alot of the aspects I have mentioned above, but the difference is that Roy promotes later than Ike and FE6 ends earlier than FE9. As a result, Ike is promoted for a much longer period of time as opposed to Roy, and therefore offers a stronger unit performance overall. On Maniac mode, Ike is a polarizing unit whose pros and cons are even more significant. All things considered, his disadvantages may be as bad as Roy's but his advantages are rather comparable to that of FE1 Marth. Not only do most of FE9 maps involve seizing or boss killing, but Ike also benefits from resources such as the boots and the knight ring. While the boots can be normally be given to anyone, the knight ring is a very useful resource that can turn a footlocked unit into essentially another paladin. A promoted Ike is likely one of the best footlocked units in the game, especially with Aether. Give him the boots and knight ring, and he is now a paladin with Aether that can make seizing lategame PoR chapters much quicker, especially on Maniac mode where rescue dropping is probably not as reliable due to the sheer quantity of enemies and siege tomes that can get in your way and overwhelm you. It is for these reasons that while FE9 Ike is nowhere near as useful as FE1 Marth, he is also likely much better than Roy (or maybe Roy is also potentially underrated). FE9 Ike is no pwnage incarnate (unlike mfs named Inui saying otherwise) but he is definitely a solid high tier unit that does his job rather well.

[@Designated_loser]

The best unit is actually a randomized lalum I got

[@RobotGuy405]

If you wanna count village recruits as contributions of Marth, then he's indirectly the only source of early healing via recruiting Wrys

[@jamesfreeman6946]

Damn I wrote almost an essay on why I think Wolt (then I accidentally deleted it), given his availability and niche, is real good in hard mode iron mans. In short I think he’s clutch in Chp1 as a way to chip the boss if you got unlucky and in Chp 7 as the most reliable wyvern chipper/killer. And he’s always a great unit for a well planned player phase. I think those traits and if growths work out make a great long term unit or at least a good backup chip unit if you bench him and a lot of your army dies. He’s at least a mid tier unit imo.

[@Briggetchu25]

I'll be honest I dont give marth credit for villages because the mechanic is stupid more than because he logically shouldn't The fact he's a force deployed game over condition COULD leas to a logical reason for saying he shouldn't get it but my personal opinion is a maps standard gameplay must have to be altered in order for a unit to get credit for an item they can acquire, so starting inventory? Doesn't count (in most games, your jagens silver lance is basically a prf so i count it, and in fe4 units do get ceredit for inventories) but a theif opening a chest? Almost always requires an abnormal strategy, even if that's as simple as deploying the theif

[@danielv4793]

Marth with falchion is a god among mortals in Fe1

[@robbvanderberry]

Man, if only this timeline developed one degree differently so that his name stayed Mars

[@Seloliva1015]

Swords are just the best in fe1, you didn't mention how easy to get magic swords are in the game after a certain point, and how good they are as there is no resistance in the game and they are very light.

[@mariem8666]

war flashbacks to my first playthrough of FE11 where I was too scared to use Marth at all and had to reset during the final battle because he was too weak to tank a hit from Medeus. X,) Obviously FE11 Marth is different from FE1 Marth, but still. Never noticed the enemy AI targeting Marth over anyone else in SD/NM. Did they update the enemy AI for the remakes?

[@rojx64]

Marth is just the best. He is so simple that he is just so good.

[@redpandersbear2878]

So what you're saying is that rescue dropping is the root of all evil

[@yoursonisold8743]

Honestly, it's less that Marth is good and more that the game is designed around him to make up for his averageness. Truly plot armor.

[@edwardking9359]

which makes him good, no?

[@yoursonisold8743]

@@edwardking9359 There are units in FE1 that would be good in any FE game. Judging whether a character is one of the best FE units tends to be about their general utility in comparison. I mean sure, he is "good" in FE1. But only because of a bunch of things that are not actually related to him as a unit. All enemies are attracted to him? That is not one of his skills, the game is literally just programmed to do that. If he was in a different FE game this wouldn't happen, because it is not a passive of his. The game cannot progress without him reaching the destination, thus making short range irrelevant? Only in FE1's conditions. Let's not even get into the balancing of weapon weight and so on. Maybe the video and I just use different standards.

[@shadownite3378]

Contrary to the meme of being sword locked as a bad thing in FE, swords are usually the best physical weapon type in Fire Emblem actually. The exceptions to that rule is Blazing blade, Sacred stones, POR, and Shadow dragon. The issue with lances and axes in a lot of fire emblem games is that they usually are heavier by a considerable amount and their hitrates tend to be less consistent. While they do have the advantage of having more consistent access to 1-2 range options unlike swords, the issue is that this hardly matters enough to make them better in most FE games since either: Swords have decent supply to 1-2 range options too in some games (See Genealogy as an example. In fact FE4 might have more ranged options for swords), 1-2 ranged axes and lances tend to weigh a shit ton in comparison when weight is used to account for attacking speed, most enemies dont have 1-2 range anyways for counter attack on enemy phase, and/or finally they're hella inaccurate. It's just funny how sword locked has become synonymous with "bad" when more times than not in the series you'd actually rather be sword locked than say locked to axes. The advantages of swords will simply usually outweigh (the irony of me using the word outweigh lmao) the advantages axes and lances might have.

[@Kruggov]

New Mystery, Awakening and Three Houses are just as bad toward swords as Shadow Dragon is. In New Mystery, weight is gone, so it's a nonfactor, hit rates are high enough to not matter most of the time, 2-range is still scarce and requires a good magic stat, which most sword users don't have. I know that max magic swordmaster with a forged Levin Sword is the strongest you can get in this game, but good luck getting there. Awakening is no better. Weight is still gone, supports fix hit rates right up, of three 2-range swords, two are legendary and exist in single number (and one is swordmaster exclusive), and one is magical and not really available until the second half of the game, and most sword classes are meh (Dread Fighter is the only sword class that breaks the mold, but it's DLC). In Three Houses, swords still have the most meh classes (only Assassin is decent), meh combat arts (compare Wrath Strike to Tempest Lance or Smash for example), plus axes with Prowess 5 are literally surpassing swords with Prowess 5 in hit, while being equal in might. Weight is a factor, I agree, but on hard enemy quality is too low for that to matter, and on maddening 90% of your team is getting doubled regardless of what they got, and the remaining characters would still prefer to use something other than swords the moment they can get away with it. Lances are generally carried by ther combat arts, like Tempest Lance, Frozen Lance, Vengeance, Glowing Ember or Swift Strikes, while only good sword combat arts I can recall are Hexblade and Soulblade. Really the only games where swords are best are Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Genealogy and Binding Blade. Gaiden/SoV to an extent, swords and lances are generally equal there.

[@edwardking9359]

1-2 range isn't just about being able to counter enemies at 2 range, it's about the level of flexibility you get from not having to have that unit be right next to the enemy. It's good for the same reason more movement is always good: more options

[@shadownite3378]

@@Kruggov Late reply sorry, I do think swords matter more in maddening of three houses as sometimes the little extra weight can be the difference for some units depending threshholds to be doubling and not doubling, and that does still matter quite a bit. Swords also get access to some of the best weapons in the entire game like the thunderbrand and Rapier+ for example, but fair enough Ill grant you awakening and new mystery at least. Three houses maybe but the extent of which swords are worse is smaller Id say, especially depending on difficulty and how much you weigh in specialty weapons. You're forgetting also swords are still better in mystery of the emblem and Thracia

[@shadownite3378]

​@@edwardking9359 If this were a huge factor, archers would be good in every fire emblem game, this is objectively not the case. I agree that its good flexibility, but Id argue countering on enemy phase is way more important overall, particularly on enemy phase based games like Fe7 where 1-2 range weapons are plentiful. Even on less enemy phased focus FE games its still really nice to be able to punish enemy units for 2 range attacks but I agree that being able to hit enemy units who are 1 ranged and not worry about a counter attack or having more attack space is always a plus, its just less relevant imo

[@edwardking9359]

@@shadownite3378 Archers are also locked to 2 range, though, meaning they aren't as flexible and don't fully get the benefit of covering multiple possible ranges. They end up almost as restricted in positioning as melee only units because of that. Units with hand axes or javelins, however, can also be used just as effectively for ranged chip damage while also being able to attack from point blank if required, as well as then being able to universally counter.

[@xboxgamer474246]

Roy wishes he was Marth? -laughs in Smash Bros Melee-

[@venus4211]

Howls you doing

[@Xaiclun]

Is this also applicable for Shadow Dragon?

[@Pharoah_Nines]

He's the Hero king Marth, he's got to be the best

[@runningdecadeix4780]

Please tell me the name of the music used in this video

[@bobjackson4287]

Amazing in FE, amazing in Melee..

[@DancingMad17]

Minna, miteite kure!

[@JayFeatherOutcast]

your voice is so cute!

[@MrTwo-yv2up]

How does he stack up in FE3?

[@Matezoide]

FE1 is def Marth’s peak, but FE3 is still a great top/high tier depending who you ask.

[@actuallizard]

I would say he's still a top unit in both book 1 and 2, but in book 2 it's hard to top Palla for that number 1 slot

[@Matezoide]

@@actuallizard Mystery of Who the Fuck Balanced Palla.

[@birdbig6852]

I think Marth is even better in book 1 than fe1 since Xane sucks and mounted units were nerfed a lot (weapons and less mouvements in castles). I wish my Ogma and Nabarl didn't get killed in the early game on my run (almost failed my Ironman on last map).

[@justicetaylor3050]

I played the DS remake. I forgot to make Marth carry the Falcion to the sage that powers it up, and I didn't restart to fix that... I also sacrificed a healer to the final boss's ranged attack because I was stuck in a sort of check that would've lost another unit if I didn't make such a sacrifice. Why did ranged healing staffs have to be so rare?! Seeing the healer girl be declared to disappear from history haunted me a little.

[@Overlord277]

Before ROMs were available for this, I was always told FE1 was brutally tough. Now I'm hearing it's easy. Was the game itself hard or are the people playing this and reviewing it just that good?

[@CathLexio3]

i played it when it was available on the switch for its anniversary, I personally made it harder on myself by trying to keep everyone alive, and compared to other fire emblem games with difficulty settings, it is trickier and very frustrating. If you know what you're doing or are already really good at fire emblem, the stories of its difficulty are definitely overblown.

[@actuallizard]

I would say the hardest part of fe1 is honestly just figuring out how everything works. You can't see weapon stats and there isn't a combat preview that tells you how much damage you're going to do, so I play it with a cheat sheet open that has weapon stats on it. But once you know how the game works I would place it on the easier side of FE games, in large part because of how good Marth is and how available warp is. It's harder if you don't use warp. I think it also feels easier because people don't really play FE1 as their first Fire Emblem anymore. Most people playing it have a bunch of experience with other FEs. I'm not sure how difficult it would be for a newer player that wasn't already pretty experienced with Fire Emblem, because it does have a couple of mean tricks (same turn reinforcements, you can miss falchion and that makes the final boss really annoying, that sort of thing). It's definitely easier than its old reputation though, I think a lot of that came from it being the first game in the series, so when you look at old reviews from when the game came out, that was a lot of peoples first tactics RPG ever.

[@GBlockbreaker]

nahhh bro got the Takumi lisp 😭

[@vincentthelego7967]

I started to realize marth wasn't THAT great around "clash in macedon" and "knight-filled sky". Maybe it was my poor strategy on my part or me coping from a lack of unit placement choices on battle preparations, but marth just kept dying and he was pretty much level-capped at that point. I also wish I knew stats capped at 20 beforehand, as I would've used statboosters a bit more wisely.

[@novAbsolute]

song at 0:00?

[@ChristianPerrotta]

While I really love FE1, in all its janky glory, and also Marth and Archanea in general, I don't think your arguments are actually fair. I don't think it's fair to compare Marth, which is a really unique unit in FE1 (because the devs made the game like this), to other regular units. For me, the comparison between lords and other normal units is only suitably applicable the closer they are in "uniqueness". In other words, the more unique a lord is to the gameplay, the less fair it is to make these comparisons. I do think your analysis is quite valid, though. I just don't think it should be about arguing how Marth is such a good unit compared to other FE1 units. In my opinion (that no one asked, I know), you could say that FE1's design made Marth very unique and necessary, and that he responds to it quite well. Instead of saying that Math is one of the *best* units, you could say that FE1 is one of the *best* examples of how to make the game revolve around its main character.

[@webster8952]

So the base game mechanics emphasis Marth as the main character.

[@Paulkotsu]

FE1 was a mastahpiece

[@moosesues8887]

So marth isnt only top tier in melee huh!

[@blankblank6214]

Boots marth

[@iHORUSx3]

No horse? Vaush would not like that. bruh why am i getting recommended this, i dont even play fe lmao

[@SilentVinyl]

But mars...

[@Caseyuptobat]

Main character best unit. They got it right the first time and it's been downhill ever since.

[@scarletrose8766]

until the remake made him bad dunno how but they did

[@mysmallnoman]

Kinda disappointing with the video considering how you massively d*** ride him and Never mentioning his Serious flaws, like how how fragile he is and how that matters because everyone targeting you is bad Because of that Or how the rapier is only really useful in few maps Because most enemies aren't cavs and knights and it's not effective against paladins, generals and horsemen, making Marth no different than your other units against non-cavs/knights enemies

[@SJrad]

cuz he has an insane grab range

[@RubyChiang]

Ah yes, more FE1 and Marth propaganda!!

[@birdbig6852]

I disagree. Having your lord taking hostage your whole army should not be considered a good thing. Cain or Abel with full boosters are better than Marth except for Medeus, all 3 sucks against Gharnef.

[@actuallizard]

Taking hostage feels like the wrong way to describe Marth. His stats are good, very comparable to cain and abel in bases and growths With the one power ring they all want they perform very similarly in combat at endgame, except Marth does much better against Medeus, and manipulates the AI by existing. It's not like we're stat boosting a loser unit into relevancy. That said, whether we want to call Marth needing to be at every objective and killing the final boss holding the army hostage, the game revolving around Marth, or whatever else, it's a reality of the game that makes training Marth pretty alluring. There's value he provides that Cain and Abel just can't.

[@ZeroKitsune]

I mean saying that Marth isn't good by ignoring the way the game is structured just feels disingenuous. The game is the way it is, whether we like it or not, and EVERY Fire Emblem unit has to be judged in the context of the missions they can be used in, otherwise the entire discussion is meaningless (because it doesn't reflect the reality of actually playing the game).

[@richterbellassi]

So what you're saying is: This game sucks