As the local furry, it is my obligation, no, my destiny to effortpost about a furry unit. And so I feel it is vital to bring up the furriest of them all! The true progenitor of a very short line of anthropomorphic animal units in Fire Emblem romhacking!!!
…What do you mean, “he doesn’t have fur”?
Malcolm from Bloodlines is as of writing this the third of four lords to join Bram’s army. His stats don’t look like much to write home about, and really he just looks like an archer with added flavor, but that’s because you haven’t taken a closer look at that movement.
As a birdman (a valgriph crow, if you will), he is able to fly! This is, however, also true of other Valgriph Rangers you’re going to face, which presents a pretty unique dynamic for at least a majority of the first act. There are times when you’re gonna want to push forward with him as far as birdly possible, in order to take out particularly nasty flying foes, but if you go too far, another crow could snipe him where nobody else would reach him. Even if he manages to survive that, the next opportunity to heal might be ways off…
And yes, I briefly touched upon his base stats, but really they’re quite ordinary for Bloodlines. Just about every unit that joins you is a growths project, and most enemy types actually start out stronger than your playable guys. This is where Malcolm’s ability to chip from afar comes in-handy, because even the most powerful Eliwood!Lord with two cool epic flaming super death swords is absolutely going to fall against a LV.1 mercenary with stats akin to Dieck.
(Not shown: LV.1 Mercenary, because I am lazy.)
While combat-wise he’s pretty interesting in Act 1, it’s in Act 2 where he really starts to shine. His flying ability is only put to use sporadically in those first couple of maps you have access to him, and some chapters like the one with the beeeees really reign him in by putting a handful of archers somewhere he’d really like to beeee, but once maps start being more or less about bumrushing, that’s where putting him to use can make or break your playthrough.
The tent map, for example. His flight is invaluable for reaching them, before your NPCs do anything stupid (seriously, I don’t think you can even keep J.R. alive if you don’t overextend with Malcolm). Or the sinking harbor map, where he’s practically the only unit, who can help your stragglers get away from the swarms of mermen chasing them through the mud. The list goes on and on…
What I’m really saying is, you should give Bloodlines a shot. It’s great.