Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword

• Save often and between every battle if you want to avoid the dreaded permadeath.

• No character is guaranteed to be great, so you might as well just use the units that turn out good and who fit your playstyle. Use stat boost items to make up for their deficiencies.

• Already promoted recruits like Paladins, Generals and Sages are strong at first but usually fall off later on and take valuable experience in the meantime.

• Speaking of promotion, wait until a unit hits level 20 unless they've maxed out an important stat (STR/DEF).

• Keep your protagonists leveled up, they're always present and some mandatory fights later can otherwise be very difficult.

• Agile units like Myrmidons and Mercenaries are popular as they're likely to hit multiple times dodge more reliably.

• Most enemy units with a unique portrait can be recruited if they aren't bosses. The pre-battle cutscene usually gives you a clue as to how.

• There are a few semi-hidden optional missions in the game, it might be worth looking them up to see which chapters they come after.

• Death isn't permanent in the prologue (Lyn's story), though not having people taken out is still preferable so that they can level up.

• Somewhere around Chapter 18-20 you'll want to at least have a decent idea of who's going to be in your final team and focus on powering them up.

• The storage man Merlinus is a pain at first, but he levels up for each map he survives and gains the ability to move after promoting.

• Brief explanation of the support system: every character has a list of people they can support with (often family or friends), and you build this up by having them stand next to each other in battle for X amount of turns. Then you can choose "Support" and you'll get a little skit that will reveal some part of the characters' backstory. These characters also get a bonus to their stats when they are within three spaces of each other, depending on their alignments. You can go up to support level A, but you can only have five supports total per character (so 5 C's, an A and two C's, two B's and a C, etc.)