Mount Dominance Ranking Part 1

So I thought it would be fun to rank how mount dominant each Fire Emblem game is. For those of you who don't know, the most efficient units in most Fire Emblem games tend to be either horseback units, or fliers. The thing is, not all Fire Emblem games are equally mount dominant. So I thought it would be fun to talk about which Fire Emblem games are the most / least mount dominant. There are some Fire Emblem games that I'm less sure about when it comes to my knowledge of the game so I'm open to having my mind changed. At the very least, I hope this elicits an interesting discussion. 

Without further ado, let's begin with the least mount dominant games in the series. The least mount dominant game is:




Thracia 776

The best unit in the game is Safy, a Warp bot. Staff utility is so amazing that a lot of your staff wielding characters are going to be some variation of "great unit and worth using". That's about 6 different infantry units I'm counting 6 infantry units that are automatically great right there (Safy, Salem, Tina, Sara, Sleuf, Linoan). 


In addition to your staff bots, your other worthwhile infantry units are:

    - Asvel: Boss killer of the game. Amazing combat unit.

    - Dagda: Still the best unmounted axe unit in the series. His base stats are amazing.

    - Leif: Great support utility. It's generally considered optimal to give him tons of stat boosters too.

    - Orsin: Pugi Axe says hi.

    - Lara: A thief that eventually becomes a dancer.

    - Lifis / Perne:  Thief utility is a lot of fun in this game. And helpful too.

    

      To be fair, there probably are other awesome infantry units that I'm forgetting, but that ends up proving my point. The infantry units can keep up with your higher movement characters. Thracia also has the indoor mechanic, which means that there will be maps where your higher movement characters have to dismount, and thus have lower movement. These higher movement characters will also be forced to switch to swords, which is a weapon that most of them will have a lower weapon rank in, which further hurts their usefulness. 

The # 2 Spot Goes to.....

Fire Emblem 12

When it comes to the topic of mount dominance, most FE 12 fans are usually in agreement that FE 12 does a very good job avoiding mount dominance. Here's a quote I found on Fire Emblem reddit that sums up why Fire Emblem 12 is ranked this high up:

“Stat caps in fe 12 do actually matter in contrast to most games. For instance, draco knights only have a cap of 23 spd, which means that they won't be able to double enemy units later into the game depending on what difficulty you're on. This creates what is arguably the best "class balance" in the series in which most classes have a desirable niche or role. Classes with higher caps (particularly in spd or weapon rank) will become more favorable to reclass to once the game progresses and you're actually hitting stat caps. This prevents the game from being completely mount dominant as compared to games like gba and tellius.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/718jm5/what_makes_new_mystery_of_the_emblem_better_or/


For most Fire Emblem games with reclass, the general impression I get is that you should promote / reclass all or most of your units into flyer classes and then just make your team mostly fliers / mounts. It never works in the opposite direction for those games where you should reclass characters in higher movement classes to characters in classes with lower movement.

 This is where 12 separates itself, because you actually have a reason to reclass your higher movement characters into lower movement classes. The fact that Swordmasters and Snipers can unironically become your team composition near the end of the game is pretty rare and pretty neat. 

The # 3 Spot Goes to.....

Gaiden / Echoes
These games get a lot right when it comes to avoiding mount dominance. For starters, your villagers all get the option to promote into cavaliers, and yet it's usually not the most optimal choice. If this were a mount dominant game the easy answer would be "make them all cavaliers because higher movement is OP." Instead the best option is to make at least one of them a mercenary. The funny thing is that Cavalier usually isn't the second best option for most of the villagers either. The only villager you could say this for is maybe Kliff, but I've seen ltc players argue against Cavalier!Kliff so even that's up for debate, depending on who you talk to. Faye even has the option to become a Pegasus Knight and she's still better off as a Cleric instead.

Now to be fair, Palla and Catria dominate Celica's Route once they show up, so you'd think that would prevent this game from being this high up. The thing here is that:

 (a) They're limited to one route 

(b) Palla and Catria don't show up until Act 3, so you have to to play a good amount of the game without them.

(c) There are still plenty of great infantry units who can contribute to the game even when Palla and Catria there. Saber, Kamui, Genny and Leon are prime examples of this.



Alm's Route is significantly less mount dominant than Celica's. The best units in his route are infantry units. Examples include whichever villager becomes a Mercenary, Alm himself and Silque. 

 Mathilda and Clive are useful, but far from game breaking. Flight utility isn't even that useful in Alm's Route either, which is why Clair doesn't make it super high in Echoes tier lists. It's actually pretty impressive to see an early joining Pegasus Knight not be ranked super highly due to how rare it is. For all the crap that the gameplay in Echoes / Gaiden gets, this is an area where it's unusual gameplay does really well in.
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These are the games I would put in the "S tier" of mount dominant Fire Emblem games. They provide you lots of reasons to use infantry units and a significant percentage of the best units in the game are unmounted. 

The next tier is going to be the "A tier". These games will be more mount dominant than these three, but they still provide enough useful infantry units that are worth using.