As someone who hasn’t played every single mainline FE, I think every game is of equal merit
I mean, it’s hard enough to make designs for these classes if you want to keep the medieval European aesthetic that’s so integral to the series (unless you want to dive into other cultures like Japanese for Hoshido). Okay, now try doing that every
single
time you hire a new character designer (or, in some cases, have an entirely different aesthetic between games with the same designer), on top of having to do so every time you jump to a new engine and have to learn how it works, especially if it’s an engine capable of three dimensions. That’s a lot of work, and it’s honestly kind of a miracle we even get to have this discussion in the first place 
However (and I might get stabbed with a pitchfork for saying this), I adore how the GBA ones are designed
Now, yes, they’re not the absolute best, and yes, it’s more about the motions than the designs themselves, but think about it: IntSys’s designers and animators had to make these on a tight-ass time crunch considering that the entire development cycle of FE6 went from the N64 to the Game Boy Advance pretty late into development, so it’s a miracle in itself they turned out so good, especially the ones often praised by the community like Paladin, Swordmaster, Berserker, etc.
In terms of the actual designs, I love the feathered shoulder pads and stereotypical-Viking-caps of the Warrior cause they’re dumb, yes, but they work somehow, and they help that class stand out from the rest, Nomads are cool as hell considering we’ve never gotten something like it again (unless you want to count Bow Cavs but that’s not an actual answer); Heroes are simple yet effective (especially Raven’s alt like fuckkk that one’s so cool
); and overall, they’re just so stylish and eye-catching across the board 
However, I have issues with these, as do many others in the community, mainly with some of the gendered alts, their palettes, and how they match a character’s portrait. Let’s start with the gendered alts since some of them suck ass. Some examples I can think of off the top: the female Paladin having a different emblem on the shield for no good reason, the female Myrmidon and Cavalier losing their ponytails upon a promotion for no good reason, and there not being a single female alt for classes like Mercenary and Fighter even though one of the playable characters in these games is doing that classic “use a female name on a male” thing that I hate so much (and who could have also given us a banger lesbian couple in 2003), and plenty of others I’m surely missing. They just could have done so much better when it comes to keeping cohesion between Tier 1 and Tier 2, yet they just didn’t out of presumed laziness or indifference. They also could have made female Mercenaries or Fighters, yet they didn’t. That’s not based or poggers, and it’s one of the things I hate most about GBA Emblem 
Next up: the palettes for said classes. Now, for the most part, they make sense in terms of how many colors take up each part of the design and where said colors are placed
However, stuff like the Cavaliers having a random fourth color in the folds between each armor plate that also shares the trim of the saddle makes no sense, as well as the Nomads being a complete clusterfuck colors-wise (both when trying to make palettes and even the palettes the devs made themselves with how washed-out and DS-y they feel), random classes having a white pixel in the face for no good reason so you can’t have dark-skinned characters in those classes (unless you whitewash them; looking at you Igrene
), and other little oddities that feel sloppy and unfinished. I mean, hell, the Nomads are so bad that the repalettes we have in the Repo are essentially entirely new animations
In general, the original animations are so bad that it’s absolutely zero wonder why A.) we have so many repalettes in the Repo and B.) that they all pretty much kick the devs’ asses (that’s a good thing, by the way, cause now we can use them with little to no issues :333). Overall, the coloring could’ve used a lot more work. Not much else to say here 
But now, finally, the main thing I despise about these designs is how they match the character’s portrait…or lack thereof
Most times in all three games, the animations do not match the character’s design. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. Some do in places, but only in places and not the whole design. For example, take Dieck the Wounded Tiger. While he does have his shoulder pad on his right shoulder, we see him shirtless in-game yet wearing a shirt in his animation cause all Mercenaries do that. Then take Joshua, who does wear garb that isn’t too far off from what’s seen in battle yet who’s wearing a stylish-ass hat but isn’t in his animation. Then there’s someone like Geese. Dear God, I hate this one with a passion
See, he’s wearing a strikingly stylish jacket in-game, but he isn’t in his animation (and is also wearing a headband he just somehow created out of thin air), and that’s just inexcusable to me. Stuff like that is what boils my blood cause you can’t have stylish and unique designs and then sacrifice them in the name of not putting in effort. Maybe they should’ve, oh, I don’t know, told Eiji Kaneda not to do that
Same issue with Sachiko Wada, where she gives someone like Forde an extremely cool shoulder pad and even a low ponytail, and yet they don’t exist in the animation. Hell, FE8 doesn’t even have a unit animation assignment system in place to help remedy this, so why bother making a character like that in the first place? Look, I know it may sound stupid to complain about this, but I am a massive supporter of that detail, where the character’s design matches the animation because, in my opinion, that’s what can turn a character from unmemorable to iconic and can help them stand out both in your mind and on the battlefield (this is why Storch’s design in VQ is at the bottom of the list in terms of original designs in the hacking community too, since he has armor in his animation, like come on
). Luckily, someone like Forde, Joshua, or Guy either already has their own animation sets with the latter or has animations now that match with the former, and even for characters like Dieck or Geese, people are already out here making some for them (even if they’re just stills at the moment, UltraFenix, my king
), so clearly people want to see this too. In summary, the animations aren’t to blame for their inconsistency, but instead, the characters that are placed into those classes are at fault, and in general, IntSys’s designers and animators could’ve done so much better with a few of them (hell, they just straight-up remade the Mercenary entirely between FE6 and 7, and they even updated ones like Sniper, Sage, and Swordmaster to be higher in quality later on).
In conclusion, while I love these for both how iconic they’ve become over the decades and for how much of a strong foundation they laid for not just the series but for us hackers, they still have plenty of faults that I’ve now spent nearly fifteen hundred words complaining about (sorry about that by the way, talking’s fun and I don’t regret it in the slightest >:333). Again, I might get my arm chopped off by a sickle for this take, but that’s what opinions are for, eh? Plus, as long as we can discuss this on good terms and not be at each other’s throats, it should all be okay
However, if I had to pick a silver medal (and one that is objectively more cohesive and just better overall), Awakening would win that solely because not only do the character’s designs match the outfits (oh thank God), but some of these designs spank (toilet bowl cage-helm Cavalier notwithstanding). Stuff like the Mercenary having a shield on their shoulder as a pad is badass (so badass that Fates inherited it), the Hero’s generic being so damn done with his life, which I can relate to, and the Barbarian and Berserker having an awesome skull helm and stylish pointy armor, respectively, etc. are just cool as hell, and I will die on this hill
Anyways, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, I’ll be here forever if you want to talk about my choices, even after I die as a ghost and after the sun finally gives up as some weird spirit thingy in the blank dark void of nothingness long after it all disappears :333