Your FE (First Experience)

[St. Pius X]

My first FE was FE4. I was introduced to it by someone on another forum. (and he may be here as well). Everyone but the lord died(and those who didn't rotted at the castle), since I wanted to 'tough' it out. The playthrough stopped at Thracia, where Arion is pretty much impossible due to his defense and Awareness. Many playthroughs later, I finally got an all-A rank on it.
It's still my favorite game, but Marth is now my favorite FE lord(he has character(lol?)).

I stumbled across FESS2 [before it died] searching for something related to beating Arion, I think, and it had interesting infomation. Since then, I still consider FESS to be superior to other FE forums.

[Marescio]

I bought a game magazine whilst on holiday in France -even though I had only very little knowledge of French, go figure- and it features a special on the new Fire Emblem game. I liked the pictures, not kidding, and thought it looked fun.

Yup, it's the same magazine that started it for us both  . Of course, I liked the pictures too especially Rebecca.

[Dark Legend Vampire]

I first played FE7 and my first playthrough kinda sucked. I used Marcus(Until he got killed in chapter 26, I think), promoted my units early, and nearly everyone in my party died. My second playthrough was slightly better, but I still used Marcus and promoted my units early. It was also the only time I skipped Lyn's tale.

[Jedor]

I found out about the series shortly after FE9 was released, two friends at an Advance Wars board with an FE sub-section convinced me to give it a try, my first was FE8 on recommendation that it was easier and that it made FE7 look better once I had played it... They were both long time players at the game, so I was warned of all the unofficial rules, don't use the Jeigan too much too early, don't promote before level 20, etc. Overall the playthrough was a success, my only casualty being Artur who I had promoted on the Darkling Woods chapter at level 11, fearful I didn't have a Bishop who were supposed to be OMGPWNZERS against monsters. He was killed by Riev... I made Gerik a ranger, too. Everyone laughed at me

[Leon of Grado]

My first FE, I think, was FE8. I personally liked it (Wish they had human based random enemy parties sometimes though) and I played through doind the usual stuff, leveling up the already strong ones, (Seth.. ah, still a personal favourite) and not bothering with characters like Amelia and Ross (Learnt my lesson. On latest playthrough, on Ephraim's route, I have Amelia (So far, Level 20 Knight) and Ross (Level 20 Fighter) well leveled, and haven't done Chapter 10: Turning Traitor yet. Can't wait for the rest yet). However, A) I found Lyon in this game, who quick became a favourite character and B) showed me how Strategy can be even more awesome then AW inspire mayhem.

Thanks to that, I've played FE7, 6, 1, 2, 4, 10. Want 9 so bad, though.

[Hanz]

I started with 7 after having it recommended to me.  I played horribly, barely training any of my lords and abusing the pre-promotes.  I got up to Jerme with my lords only level 5 and decided to start over.

[Lavama]

Fire Emblem 7.

I started playing a few weeks ago, and I went through perfictly, then, Wallace's first chapter.

  Erk was lost first time, Florina 2nd and 3rd, Matthew 4th, Sain 5th, Kent 5th, Dorcas 7th, then, I retry and Matthew dies.

Screw Matthew. I'm betting this game.

Then I won. Didn't get hurt really in the chapter with Lundgren.

Then, oh lord, another Chapter 9.

This time, I lost Serra most of the tries.

[Draggy Dragon Dragger]

I was so stupid then but...

When I was 12 I snuck on my older brother's computer to play what I thought was some Gundam Strategy game(It was actually SD Gundam X), and I choose Fire Emblem 4 by mistake. So as I played it I thought... Holy crap the graphics on this thing is awesome! I ended up giving all of my rings to Sigurd and Lex with everyone else dead. I forgot about it until about a year after that when I actually learned its name.

Yep, really stupid.

As a side note: My spell checker said Lex was Lexy.

[JohnMichael]

Like most people, I started with FE7. I remember reading a small article in NGC magazine about it ages and ages ago. It had Eliwood's official artwork as an illustration, and said that Nintendo were seeing about a release of Fire Emblem in the West (I already knew that name of course, having knelt down and sworn my undying fealty to Roy and Marth in SSBM). I was really pleased with the news, though the article said it was going to be more like a strategy game (I'd always assumed the Japan FE games had been more like Zelda's gameplay).

Then I heard nothing else about it for around two years, until one day I was looking for the old Final Fantasy titles on the Game Boy (I had a bad case of RPG fever) on Amazon. Then I stumbled upon a link to FE7, and it kicked off from there.

I loved the gaming experience of course. I was so hooked on the gameplay and storyline. To the point where as I reached the last few chapters, I began to feel genuinely sad, because I knew it was all coming to an end very soon, and I really, really didn't want that. It's quite amazing when something does that to you. The only other example I can readily think of was when I read The Three Musketeers.

[Pair of Ducks]

I started with FE7 as well~

Although I was familiar with the franchise through SSB:M, I don't think that was a prime motivator in becoming involved ... I'm quite simply a big fan of strategy games.

FE7 is still probably my favorite game in the series, though I've played and finished all the games except FE1-3, and FE5.

[Brighton]

I'd heard about Fire Emblem over the years, and about how much more hardcore of a TRPG it is than FF Tactics, Vandal Hearts, and others. I'd lumped it with Tactics Ogre : Let Us Cling Together as games I'd never be able to play.

Then a fan translation of FE Gaiden was released. Loved it to death. Even though it's the Zelda 2 of the series, it's still my (now second) favorite of the series.
Then FE7 came out, and FE4 and 5 were fan-translated, and the ball is still rolling...

For the record, I managed to acquire an iso of TO : LucT.

[FE3_Player]

My Eliwood was level 20/20.

That is all you need to know.

[TheIntermission]

slowpoke.jpg

Seisen no Keifu here. Back when I still had dial-up internet, I got a CD with SNES roms from a pirated software dealer (lolol) and lent it to a friend. When he returned it to me, he recommended FE4 (because it reminded him of Dark Wizard, for Sega CD). My brother played it, I liked what I saw (same thing that happened with FF6 and Chrono Trigger, really; Sega fanboy here) and decided to play it too.

My memory about my first playthrough is fuzzy; I think I picked up my brother's one, or maybe I just watched. Either way, that savegame included Levin x Bridget, slaughtered Fury, slaughtered Ayra, Tiltyu x Claude, Dew x Lachesis, no Holsety, and a honest surprise when Sigurd died and the game continued.

That probably happened around the time FESS was created, maybe earlier (2001-2002). Back then, all I knew of Japanese was hiragana and (some) katakana. Yet, I never actually played Seisen in English, even though that's by far the game I've finished the most times (around 7, IIRC - and I don't usually replay games; I still have to replay it to make Azel x Lache and Holyn x Bridget, hmmmm).

Then eventually I played FE5 and FE6. I believe I stumbled on FESS a couple months after it was made, lurked for a few days and completely forgot about it. I only remembered it and joined when FE7 was released in English.

[Shir Gold]

I started with FE7.  I remember my sister saw it in GameStop was like, "Hey, Nintendo Power mentioned this game!"  So we ended up buying it for about seven dollars.  Really good deal; the game wasn't that old and it was in good condition.  Anyway, the only other strategy-RPG that I ever played before FE7 was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, so I wasn't too used to strategy-RPGs yet.  I was the uber-n00b when it came to playing that game; I promoted units at level 10, I over-used Marcus, I didn't level up my three lord characters too much, etc.  My characters had such bad stats at the end that I thought I would have to start the whole game over again.   Looking on the bright side, I only had a couple characters die thoughout my first playthrough. 

[camus the dark knight]

Shortly put.

I had heard of Fire Emblem, looked pretty fun, didn't want to bother importing it however, FE7 came out, so I picked it up, I liked it quite a bit, enough so, that I imported the rest.

[burning_phoneix]

I actually found out about Fire Emblem through the OVA, watched it and thought it was okay and put it away not realising it was a videogame.

Then SSBM came out and Nintendo Offical magazine had a preview and I bought FE7 when it first came out. I signed up for FESS1 but never posted because the place was freaky back then but signed up for FESS2 after my sister hit it off with a lot of the people there. 

[Blue Knight]

I first heard about Fire Emblem through an article in NGC Magazine (a Nintendo magazine here in the UK, now NGamer), about Nintendo suing whatever company it was (Enterbrain?) over Emblem/Tear Ring Saga. Then, two or three years later, I heard that Fire Emblem was finally coming to Europe in the form of FE7, and I was told that the core gameplay was similar to Advance Wars, a game series which I loved. I also heard that it was "Roy and Marth's game" from loads of sources, and even though that obviously turned out to be wrong, the fact that I loved Roy and Marth in SBBM also influenced my decision, so I decided to buy FE7.

As for my first play through, well, by my standards, it was odd. I powered through the game, rather averagely and not paying much attention to the story, though I did think the secret gaiden chapters were really cool. I got up to Cog of Destiny before deciding to restart my game, as my team was severely unbalanced and therefore underpowered (I used Marcus too much  ).

Oddest part of my first play through: I could have sworn that I played A Glimpse In Time on Eliwood's story on my first play through, which is obviously impossible (or is it?), and though I can't remember playing the actual chapter very well, I do have vivid memories of reading the opening screen of the chapter. I thought I was going a bit crazy and that there was no such thing as a gaiden-gaiden chapter, but obviously I found out through subsequent Hector mode runs and by referring to guides on the internet that the chapter did indeed exist. But on Eliwood mode...?

On my second play through, I got up to the final chapter, but didn't complete it as I found it too difficult. I left the game for a couple of months, until I returned to it sometime in 2005 and completely owned it, and for some reason I actually enjoyed the story this time.

Since then, I became an FE addict: I completed FE7 on various modes about eight or nine times, I bought Path of Radiance, Sacred Stones and Radiant Dawn all at launch and completed them all, and I went back and played Sword of Seals via the illegal way. I tried playing FE4 but didn't find it to my liking, and I didn't bother trying any of the other older FE's as I usually can't grow to like retro games I didn't experience at the time. As for FESS, I've been lurking since the previous board, reading every now and then, and, after hearing of Superbus' activity plight, I just now thought "why not" and posted this today.