@Noqanky:
Permadeath and consequences are to me the cornerstone of the experience.
If there's no sense of my planning and actions in one chapter affecting the whole campaign's success
If there's no sense of consequence where units I treasure die because of my mistakes
If there's no loss of items due to usage so that I have to manage resources and plan distribution accordingly
If there's no sense of effort and thought and strategy to be placed into how the units grow over time through different experiences so that they can be at their best by the conclusion of the campaign
Then my thinking is what's the fucking point. If I want to experience the story I'll just go and watch it on youtube.
No, what I want is to legitimately be the key tactician making sure everything is accounted for and everything is prepared properly for growth and success. Without permadeath there's no reason, strategically, to not have decoy units I can just send off to die and distract enemies while other units attack from safety, and that immediately cheapens the value of the units as individuals, which flies in the face of what fire emblem is about. Like, if I'm ok with expendable troops, then I might as well go play advance wars.
Same goes for the weapon stuff. It leads to detachment and carelessness. If I can heal with mend forever, if I can use killer weapons forever, if I can vulnerary/elixir forever, then what's the real strategy? There's no pressure. No consequence to wasting turns, no consequence to being wasteful, no consequence to being inefficient and incompetent.
But I guess by now I'm repeating myself too much. I'll leave it at that xD
I get what you are saying, but for me the permadeath aspect seems tedious when people just continue replaying until they win. If people were a bit more willing to allow the character to die because of their mistake, that would be another thing (also, if the game could have scenes occur for the character death depending on their use, status, etc.). If there was a little leniency so you have some time to minimize damage that might work, but suddenly having a bunch of characters flank you with no warning sucks. I know in actual war that is a thing, but even then there is some time for reformation until having to deal with the reinforcements. With RNG added being a pain, permadeath becomes a pain, as you either have to retry so many times to not have someone die, or just let that one person die because they can't take a hit worth a damn.
I do see everyone's points though, and mine has to be taken with a grain of salt, as compared to others here, I don't know about the game beyond the surface. Seems there is more depth than I originally thought, so playing the game again might be good to see the deeper aspects. Perhaps my opinion of things would change.
If I could get my hands on other FE games, which ones would you people suggest?