yeah
be the change you want to see
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sed times
And in a decade of romhacking, that unlimited potential has meant either no playable role or playable as a comedic relief character (prominent examples being Drums of War and Code of the Burger King where the playable Mogall supports boil down to making funny gurgling noises affixed with tone descriptors, and the recipient nodding along).
I get the OP’s “frustration” (bold word, I don’t care passionately enough to be frustrated, but it gets the meaning across better).
The only none gimmick monster character I can think of is the gargoyle in Storge - proving once again that FE romhacking peaked with that title.
It even features a monster boss with a speaking role and a neat map gimmick.
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Of Sand and Sabres features monster units as playables, and as far as I know they’re not treated as gimmicky or some sort of demon king minions.
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Is on hiatus tho 
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The hack im making the slowest of progress on will have a skeleton as a moldable unit if thats worth anything. Just no ETA on its completion tho lol
Time to shill my own stuff.
Tactics of Taming. Chock-full of plenty of monster units from beginning to end.
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For what it’s worth, in my own project, I’ve been strongly considering including various kinds of monsters/nonhumans in the playable cast. I personally tend to strongly prefer for portrayals of nonhuman beings explicitly or implicitly as intelligent as humans to ascribe them the same potential for moral and philosophical sophistication as us, as well. Their presence in gameplay may be a bit limited by the fact that there are far more sprites available for human classes than for monster ones, but they’d very much be playable and present in the world. Actually, I was thinking of not giving them unique class labels unless their actual abilities would warrant one, i.e. Cyclopes might just be labeled “Berserker” or something for example. Like, as in they’re a Cyclops whose class is Berserker, rather than implying Cyclopes all have the same fighting style.
The only thing is that I’m not terribly fond of how official Fire Emblem has historically handled, say, Laguz for example, in how they’re locked not just to one weapon type but to one specific weapon, which I think makes them really boring to use and is not a style of unit I feel inclined to include in my project’s playable roster. So, y’know, don’t expect any playable units who work like that, but that doesn’t mean no playable units who don’t use conventional weapons at all.
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opinions on humanoid monsters? we have a lot nowadays i believe
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There are quite a lot! Although there are generally only materials for maybe a couple classes of each “race” of them, is what I’m getting at. Like, if you’re counting “monsters” as all one race, then sure, there are plenty of options, but, like, for Tarvos/centaur-like characters, you only really have options for axe- and/or bow-users, or sword/staff/magic-users, with most of the battle animations being pretty strongly gender-leaning with no other-gender equivalent. If you want a Gorgon/lamia-like character, hope you’re cool with them being a spellcaster because there are exclusively magic-using animations for them. Etc.
There is also the possibility to include nonhuman members of classes whose outfits obscure their entire bodies, such as most dark mages and armor knights, since you can just say it’s a monster or other nonhuman being under the robes/armor rather than a human as long as they have roughly the same basic body shape and posture, but I get the feeling that’s not quite what you mean.
i guess you’re right, despite the robustness of the monster section right now, there’s clear limitations on the amount of assets one can use to make monsters a consistent race, and because they have differing body types it’s harder to see them as a whole “race” vs humans with the many classes
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Bloodlines uses non-human characters quite a bit, though they’re not the traditional monsters from FE8. And, given the direct Shining Force inspiration, they’re very integrated.
Personally, I prefer to cast some of the monster units as beasts instead - wolves, spiders, etc. in the wild. Forces of nature in a world of humans. I don’t really like the generic approach that FE8 took with the monsters and I don’t really see scenarios in the plots in my head for where I would somehow make them standout as characters in a fleshed out way on their own. I’d rather focus on core characters, their motivations and interactions, and different types of stories and premises than the official games.
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how’d you write em in?
I think the role of monsters is on the up and up. It looks to me like we’re in a transitional period where they’re still starting to really gain attention. This year I’ve seen a lot more hacks include them than prior years, so I predict it’ll be a year or two until their role in the hacks become more significant. The amount of hacks might be the same, but monsters with character ought to increase soon-ish, especially with some of the more recent animations that really get ideas flowing.
It’s hard to quantify exactly what makes me think this’ll be true. It’s just the feeling I get based on everything l know.
there aren’t enough resources
There’s like one portrait for each of like five monster types and most hackers can’t draw and/or don’t really care about putting monsters in their setting.
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true, though i guess I’ve been makin humanoids so that normal portraits can count for them. but resource is definitely a huge factor
There are new F2U custom classes and potraits available as well as the freedom of the author. Dont limit yourself to the originals or other peoples headcanons so you can do whatever you want.
There is Terror of the Forest.
In that hackgame, monsters play big roles in the story. Not only the common skeletons, but slimes (who are pretty much zombies and other classes) and golems as well. They have distintive personalities, motives and aren’t evil by nature. They also don’t serve some kind of “evil demonic force” like a Demon King/Lord that serves as the final boss.
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Afaik, recently bigles/mogalls have become somewhat popular as a “nerfed” version of magic fliers. You might end up owning one even if no other monster units are playable.
Other monster types are simply not as distinct though
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they’re a go to yea. But I feel like monsters are distinct enough as is. I mean gameplay wise you can definitely update monster weapons to be more unique and visual wise as well. The limit is really just your imagination and assets really. to throw out some ideas, bael classes having mountain move, cyclops being big HP beat sticks, gorgons have unique weapons in vanilla. I really do think they have a lot of potential, which is part of the reason why I champion them so.