I'm starting to dislike the "mass of marriage candidates" system. In Revelation, there are nineteen possible pairings that can be created (twenty if the player character marries an "Avatar only" candidate). As has been discussed before, a lot of the support chains are handled in a way that makes the romance at the end come off as forced. The big problem is that some characters have only one romantic support chain that I like while others have several (and one character has none), and my preferences don't line up in a way that allows everyone to get married unless I don't pursue some of my favorite pairings. As such, if I want to prioritize the pairings I'm especially fond of, some characters will have to either not marry or marry someone I have trouble picturing them with. I suppose I should be happy I have so little interest in recruiting the children...

I'm starting to dislike the "mass of marriage candidates" system. In Revelation, there are nineteen possible pairings that can be created (twenty if the player character marries an "Avatar only" candidate). As has been discussed before, a lot of the support chains are handled in a way that makes the romance at the end come off as forced. The big problem is that some characters have only one romantic support chain that I like while others have several (and one character has none), and my preferences don't line up in a way that allows everyone to get married unless I don't pursue some of my favorite pairings. As such, if I want to prioritize the pairings I'm especially fond of, some characters will have to either not marry or marry someone I have trouble picturing them with. I suppose I should be happy I have so little interest in recruiting the children...

What I don't understand are the cases where some characters can't get support with anyone at all...

Actually, every character is capable of supporting with the player character at the very least. That said, yes, there are six characters who can only marry an avatar of the opposite gender.

Even Awakening has Flavia, Basilio, Say'ri, and Tiki, all of whom can only form S-Level Supports with an Avatar of the opposite gender. There's also the matter of Chrom and Sumia, both of whom can only marry five different playable characters. Still, yes, it is rather strange that the developers would include some characters who are limited in whom they can marry when a lot of characters can marry pretty much anyone of the opposite gender (the aforementioned exceptions notwithstanding).

I'm aware of the 5 supports limit in the games (minus awakening which doesn't have the rule), but anyone know if that rule is in fates or not. Fates was made after aweakning and I haven't heard of it being present in fates. Anyone know anything about this?

If there's a maximum number of supports any given character can have in Fates, I have yet to hit that limit.

Three of those at least make sense. Tiki and Anna are characters from optional prologue, and Flavia and Basilio join about one episode before he game ends.

I disagree. In FE7, there are three characters who join in optional missions (Canas, Jaffar, and Karla). All three of them have multiple support chains available to them. Karla in particular is an odd case, as she joins in Chapter 31x ("x" denoting an optional mission after the original mission with that number). Only three missions remain after that, one of them being an optional mission. Despite that, there are four characters she can Support with, one of whom she canonically marries. There are other examples from linear games in the series, though the ones from FE7 are the first ones that come to mind for me.

As such, I don't think joining late can justify Basilio and Flavia having only three possible Support chains in a game that provides other characters with far more options, to say nothing of the fact that Awakening allows the player to pursue side missions that provide additional opportunities to build supports.

Having played Conquest first myself, playing Birthright second really did feel quite boring in terms of gameplay. Not only were the enemies overall weaker I feel from the overall campaign, but the lack of unique objectives and overall strategy made it very lackluster for me. It mostly just became to me just a game where I could throw out any unit I wanted to without any real risk of dying considering there was really no need of strategizing on where and when to use your units.

I do feel Birthright did have a bit of a better story compared to Conquest, but at the same time, playing Conquest first did help make some plot points in Birthright hold more significance and vice-versa. Then again, maybe Birthright's story had a bit more impact on me because I was going up against characters that I had gotten to know through playing Conquest as well.

Ironically, having played both on the same difficulty, I actually thought Birthright's
Chapter 27 was a bit more difficult than Conquest's.

Awakening is SUPER accessible. You can start there without fear.

One caveat, though: the Pair Up mechanic was introduced in that game. Older games in the series won't have it, so you might be in for a rude awakening if you pick up, say, Sacred Stones while expecting to be able to exploit the Pair Up mechanic.

The only thing I'd say is Awakening is really easy compared to most of the series and it becomes more of just building the best units to just obliterate everything rather than using strategy to conquer foes.

There's that, too; a lot of the games are more linear and provide the player with less room for grinding.

Bolt, I've only been playing conquest so far but plan to buy birthright later, you have played both and started with conquest. So would you say that after playing the more difficult conquest, that birthright became boring with the drop of difficulty?

Wait, I skimmed, but I think I just gathered that marriages and children for the characters based on your actions. If that's the case... I'm bi, so I'm just asking... are homosexual relationships an option? I just came from a bunch of youtube comments, so I don't want to ruffle anyone's feathers just by asking, lol.

I'm at the final chapter now. I'm not sure I'd call it boring per se, but it's definitely less engaging. Very few enemies have skills, so often times fights are much less strategic and more "which unit is flat-out strong enough." This isn't helped by the fact the later levels just fling massive amounts of units at you.

The story's slightly better than Conquest but still pretty dumb, and I think I preferred Conquest's cast.