Beat this game without many preconceptions about it besides knowing it was divisive among hardcores and it was the origin of FE "Child Mechanics".

As the earliest entry I've played I was genuinely shocked at the QOL the series had on the SNES, and was shocked again when the immediate tedium of running across the prologue chapter kinda gave way into a type of trace-like hyperfixation on the game. I didn't expect to love the music so much, to like so many of the characters, or to be so on board for Gen 2's straightforward redemption story where the context of Gen 1 gave it so much more texture. Even if some of the mechanics are kinda odd, you can at least understand the reasoning behind why they're like that.

Shoutout to my homie on Discord for telling me about the secret events in the first few chapters though, definitely made Gen 1 a lot less of a grueling push. Also, if I replay this I am definitely trying that mod that gives foot units extra Move (even if I used them here despite it).
Also Noish!Fee with the Leg Ring goes hard.

This is easily Bioware's best game that I've played. There's jank, it's old, it is paced in an insane way, but this game is also some of the best cRPG style gameplay I've experienced. Every sidequest in Chapter 2 (which is 60% of the game minimum) was as good as the best quests in games like New Vegas or KOTOR 2. Absolutely killing it to release a game with this level of quality by 2000.

The biggest negatives are you can feel the cut-for-time edges, pre-fight party buffing becomes a huge chore, and that 2nd Edition D&D is an insane person system.

Note: I used the Tweaks Anthology to speed up out-of-combat movement and casting by 50%, but if I had known how much time I'd spend buffing before walking into the next room I'd have done 100%.

This was a huge improvement over the last couple games in almost every regard and pretty fun and better paced. It kinda gets to be more than the sum of its parts, but it would've done a lot more for me if the basic battle theme had more variation. I liked the low-key soundtrack and acid jazz stuff here and there but it really needed more life sometimes. The back third of this game fucking kicked it up a notch so it's forgiveable but the middle was a bit bland after a really cool intro. I also would've liked just a bit more flavor in the battle system but from where we came from I'm just happy it's as good as it is.

I'm happy I can now but KOS-MOS merch and assert my status that "Yeah. I really did play those games. They're kinda bad but 3 kinda owns." And avoid 'poser' status.