PoR's changes to magic were basically change for the sake of change
If I remember, it was actually going back to a pre-GBA style. FE4? I think had just straight up 3 separate types of Mage for each school. Something only seen in FE4, and then RD. So it wasn't just change, it was straight stepping back in both PoR and further in RD.
Also PoR was pretty random on the mages, but because you can't see the Tome on their model you have to manually check every one. I don't know if that was rectified in RD with the class split, but I would hope so.
What kind of gameplay flaws did they exacerbate over Awakening's implementation?
Besides the aforementioned story aspects, they were given too late to be useful and required an absurd amount of minmaxing to be worth even using. Conquest, the only game anyone played because it was the only even partially redeeming one, gave almost no chance to use them unless you abused a map to powerlevel supports early on.
On the topic of difficulty, did you play Three Houses' DLC?
Did not. Did 2.5 playthroughs on release and haven't felt the need to go back. Will one day most likely.
It had a lot of unique differences like heal staffs being able to miss and double, and hit rates being clamped between 1 - 99 instead of 0 - 100. Also stats being capped at 20 for all units.
I'd say it might be a good idea to fix them to at least the GBA level of QoL just for the sake of fairness, but a lot of the game was built with these ideas in mind and might suffer with removing them. I can guarantee something will be done about the absurd difficulty level though given Fire Emblem is now a Baby Nintendo 1st Party title instead of a niche series for fans.
Is there a story behind how that happened?
The 4th/Final game tried for a grimdark and realistic followup with a lot of the overpowered stuff toned down for "competitive balance" (as this was when online gaming was taking off) and it just pleased almost nobody. The spiritual cousin/spin off Battalion Wars on console never figured out how to comfortably make its controls work and didn't take off either (a shame because it was fun when it worked).
Advance Wars was a very different game, where you used wave tactics and expendability as strategy instead of precious units and minimal options. But it was fun in its own way. Especially because the game was filled with overpowered broken shit, so much that the game was basically seeing who could abuse their OP abilities the smartest. I'd highly recommend Dual Strike for the sheer fun factor.
And yeah Dmitri was probably the best "main character" of the game. Claude was just a Mary Sue who was just a little too perfect to enjoy (though I liked his campaign for the rest of the cast), Rhea is...not well written, and Edelgard didn't get the development time she needed to make her story work. Dmitri was strong enough to carry his much weaker cast all on his own.
If I remember, it was actually going back to a pre-GBA style. FE4? I think had just straight up 3 separate types of Mage for each school. Something only seen in FE4, and then RD. So it wasn't just change, it was straight stepping back in both PoR and further in RD.
Also PoR was pretty random on the mages, but because you can't see the Tome on their model you have to manually check every one. I don't know if that was rectified in RD with the class split, but I would hope so.
Besides the aforementioned story aspects, they were given too late to be useful and required an absurd amount of minmaxing to be worth even using. Conquest, the only game anyone played because it was the only even partially redeeming one, gave almost no chance to use them unless you abused a map to powerlevel supports early on.
Did not. Did 2.5 playthroughs on release and haven't felt the need to go back. Will one day most likely.
I'd say it might be a good idea to fix them to at least the GBA level of QoL just for the sake of fairness, but a lot of the game was built with these ideas in mind and might suffer with removing them. I can guarantee something will be done about the absurd difficulty level though given Fire Emblem is now a Baby Nintendo 1st Party title instead of a niche series for fans.
The 4th/Final game tried for a grimdark and realistic followup with a lot of the overpowered stuff toned down for "competitive balance" (as this was when online gaming was taking off) and it just pleased almost nobody. The spiritual cousin/spin off Battalion Wars on console never figured out how to comfortably make its controls work and didn't take off either (a shame because it was fun when it worked).
Advance Wars was a very different game, where you used wave tactics and expendability as strategy instead of precious units and minimal options. But it was fun in its own way. Especially because the game was filled with overpowered broken shit, so much that the game was basically seeing who could abuse their OP abilities the smartest. I'd highly recommend Dual Strike for the sheer fun factor.
And yeah Dmitri was probably the best "main character" of the game. Claude was just a Mary Sue who was just a little too perfect to enjoy (though I liked his campaign for the rest of the cast), Rhea is...not well written, and Edelgard didn't get the development time she needed to make her story work. Dmitri was strong enough to carry his much weaker cast all on his own.