#general class

Kyoichi: Why?

Kyoichi: Okay, so what’s the difference between mitosis and meiosis?

Yuko: Depressed?

Satomi: Drained?

Ryuhei: Dumb?

Kazushi: Disliked?

Shogo: Always be informed.

Shuya: Always be the best.

Hiroki: Always know you're enough.

Shuya: Rude.

Mitsuko: That’s fair.

Hiroki: Not again.

Yoshio: What? No. I should do it. I’m a man.

Ryuhei: That’s debatable.

Yoshio: Well, I’m more of a man than Mizuho.

But I feel Great Knights don't provided a necessary role in both gameplay and aesthetically, they don't feel like they're related at all to the Armored class line. In most of their appearances, they're just a worse Paladin with the exception of Engage, and all appearances, bar Three Houses, all they do is make Generals look even unappealing.

Most notably in Engage, Great Knights have vastly superior stats to General in every area, even without movement stats taken into account, the total of their base and capped stats is much higher than Generals at ''10', which is completely unfair to the General class. Previously Generals did better in skill and resistance, whilst their speed stat wasn't that much lower and their defense/strength was much higher.

Whilst in Three Houses, Great Knight has so many ranks attached to it that its just not worth it for almost everyone. Like even Armor rank specializing characters like Dedue and Raphael aren't going to make use of Great Knight because it requires horse rank when they suck at their rank.

And Great Knight does not look like a promotion of Armored Knight, Armored Knights wear huge sets of armor that make them look like stocky football players and move with a distinctive "thunk thunk" sound that shakes the floor.

Whilst Great Knights wear larger armor than Cavaliers and Paladins, they're armor is still significantly slimmer and smaller than the armor of Armored Knights. They also ride a horse that's the same size as the horses ridden by Paladins in all games. Finally their animations are fast, they don't make a clanking noiese and they don't shake the screen on moving.

The only partial exception is Gwendal in Three Houses, whom wears the same armor as a Fortress Knight/General, but even then he still rides a Paladin horse that's too small for him.

There's a reason for this, for most of the series, Great Knight has been a pure cavalry class with no relation to the Armored Knight class line at all!

In the SNES as well as the Gamecube Wii games, Axe using cavaliers promote to the class and its similar to Paladin, but specialized in Axes with slightly higher strength and lower skill.

The Fire Emblem game for the GBA, the Sacred Stones, introduced branching promotions for every class, but as there wasn't a clear option for Armored Knights, they made Great Knight, an armored class, so Armored Knights had it as an option like Cavaliers.

This stopped with the following wii game and the remakes, but Awakening brought back the branched promotion system and it was really popular in the USA+Europe, so Great Knight has stuck around since.

Unfortunately the class's design was never updated since its really inception, so it sticks out in games where they try to associate it more with Armored Knights than Cavaliers.

Yeah, I entirely get that. Kinda like how Avenir is supposed to be a defensive class, but then it's... Literal Just Alfred. (I get why Avenir isn't that armored, it's supposed to be Alfred but More, but that doesn't make the design not make as much sense when trying to show what the class is supposed to do)

And yeah, it doesn't really look like a typical Armored class. It has more armor than Paladin and Mage Knight, yes, but it's not close enough to be an armored class like Engage wants it to be via making it weak to Armored Effective Weapons.