The last Fire Emblem game I bought was Fates, although I have replayed Blazing Blade (AKA "Fire Emblem" for GBA) and Sacred Stones since Fates.
I'm a massive fan of the series, but it's had a sort of "Metroidvania" style change where a fundamental aspect of the game has changed turning it into a different kind of thing. Sacred Stones was the first one that had any significant grinding mechanic, but Awakening is where it became a mandatory element of the game.
Before Awakening, the game is at its core about strategy and story. There are RPG elements which are built around the units used in the strategy, but if your character dies, it dies. Similarly, the game is more forgiving for dead characters because it usually has someone quite powerful to replace your dead characters. You can move forward without missing a step.
Awakening and later: characters are more challenging to come by, the maps to get the child characters in Awakening are sometimes brutal, and you get 1 new character, but the chance of losing 1-3 characters is fairly high on most of them. Additionally, the game is built for grinding and character development. Instead of going onto the next map, a lot of building/customization has to be done to lower the risk of losing your new characters.
They both appeal to different sorts of desires for a game; I like both types. I loved building up my team of flyers with crazy strong weapons and immunity to most weaknesses in Fire Emblem Awakening. Similarly, I love the thrill of just mobilizing through a story without a break, and with the constant threat of loss if you become too lazy about your defensive patterns/formations, and strategy. Older Fire Emblem games require a lot more math, which IMO is a lot of fun and much more rewarding when executing; but if you don't like math, this will be annoying - newer games have quality of life changes that removes the math from the immediate engagements (but not the map as a whole, so if you want to be good, you still need to do math).
Basically:
* Sometimes I have the itch to go through a game and see how long it takes until I am either A) Wiped Out, or
finish the game and see who has survived -- I like to make an account of who dies in the game along the way. Second, I like to move quickly through a lot of stories. This is where the earlier games shine.
* Sometimes I want to build up and customize a powerful force to go and crush any army that stands before me and move much more slowly through a story, do a lot of side quests, etc... This is where the later games shine.
I'll also note that while perma-death helps make the experience of the first type of game, it is more of an annoyance in the second type. With the first (older) type of FE, you're invested in characters almost more from a story perspective and less from a gameplay perspective (unless they're a healer) while the second game, with all the grinding and investment you put into characters it is easily a considerable time investment from a gameplay perspective.
The big difference is the first is a uniquely Fire Emblem experience, while the second is every strategy game: Final Fantasy Tactics offers a very similar sort of experience. This is why I haven't bought FE: Three Houses yet, or any other FE game since Fates. Also, the second type of Fire Emblem is much closer to classic RPGs (and I just played through FF7), so I don't have the itch for building up a powerful team right now; I just did it with Materia.
Anyway, I just wanted to rant about Fire Emblem.
I am looking forward to playing Three Houses in a few months or so.
Anyway, my multiplayer game is nearly up to 1200 AD on Crusader Kings 2. Since we kept our nations relatively small, we're considering playing Europa Universalis next.
As a snapshot of our part of the world:
(Note: This is only about a quarter of the map, to the East you'd see a vast Mongol Empire, China, and India. To the South Ghana and Byzantine Empire rule a lot of Africa, as well as a lot of smaller native African nations and native Persian nations rose up and destroyed the Caliphate... possibly the first game I've played where this has happened without my involvement ). (EDIT: Steph just pointed out that she owns the Sinai Peninsula and part of Galilee - suck it, crusaders!)
* Niflheim is played by me, and Midgard is played by Steph's (my wife).
* We may seem smallish, but that's because we built tall, building Empires and then sticking to a single duchy and focusing on trade, plunder, and dynasty building. So we had a lot of independent Kingdoms belonging to our dynasty outside our realm. Eventually, as the plan went, we established Viceroyalties (Now Viceroy Kingdoms and Duchies) and sprung off some vassals: I began with three, one in York (Jorvik), one up North (my Merchant Republic), and one in Estonia. The Merchant Republic CONQUERED Bulgaria (down North of Greece) from the Byzantine Empire and somehow and has been thriving. My Estonian vassal expanded heavily, and now I have several vassals in that region (south of the Baltic), but, unfortunately, my English vassal has not fared too well as we only own a few counties (even the Jomsvikings are doing better, I think, they're the grey ones over in Ireland aside from Midgard).
* Despite me looking tiny, and having fewer counties, I am the most powerful character in the game (see below:
* Midgard (Steph) has insane prestige because her character is a 147 year old immortal, with one leg.
* My realm has the largest army, I also have the best Duchy. With later updates to CK2, you can increase the number of holdings to a county, and I have focused heavily on that, and heavily on pouring tons of resources into developing them. My 4 county duchy puts Constantinople to shame... I raid Constantinople, Venice, and Rome for a large portion of my wealth (seriously, I now send down multiple raiding parties of 18-25K troops each on a fleet of 1000 ships), the Byzantines can only sit and watch as I take what I want. Steph meanwhile occupies herself with raiding the Iberian peninsula and the Moroccan coast, and occasionally down around Carthage and Egypt.
* Viceroyalties are good; I love to seize the titles of non-vassal members away and give them to my children. Since when a Viceroy dies, my character gets their title, every county in the Empire will be a vassal of mine at some point. If they are NOT of my dynasty, I revoke their title and give it to my nearest of kin (usually a landless child) and then throw a viceroyalty on them (so my kids are always Dukes/Duchesses or Kings/Queens).
* When we reformed the religion, we went with "Hierocratic" which means a high priest rules the religion and can call on Great Holy Wars, because playing tall, neither of us wanted control of Holy Wars. While it is great for the expansion of our religion, it hasn't been an important part of our realms, personally. Next time we're going Autonomous which means no declaration of Great Holy Wars: "Every priest will be given a chance to give his proper interpretation of the new holy text, free from any centralized authority." BUT, it allows for certain bonuses to followers (like a free +2 Stewardship, +2 Martial, etc... depending on the branch you follow); additionally, you can get exclusive traits, such as Militant which gives a bonus to personal combat skill, prestige, and a higher chance of Ambition events to fire. So for a tall game, it is far more beneficial to play Autonomous than any of the others.
Speaking of religion. Whatever I did (probably choosing Cosmopolitan as a feature) the Old Germanic faith is still thriving in Southern Scandinavia, while Reformed Germanic seems to be doing much better in the Northern areas (usually it's the other way around!) in Finland, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe. Suomenesko (the Finnish Pagan faith) is thriving in North-Western Asia, while the Slavic Paganism has been replaced, for the most part, and has only small pockets remaining. Overall we're 5th place out of 47 active religions, BUT - most of that 47 only hold about 10 provinces or so, mine (Reformed Germanic) holds 89. The top 4 religions (1. Catholic, 2. Hindu, 3. Iconoclast, 4. Sunni) all have a few hundred provinces each.
In short: basically, our vassals are doing all the expansion while Steph and I just have these MASSIVE armies that we raid with and stave off invasions with. Sometimes Adventurers declare war, but they're quickly defeated. The Catholics have declared a few crusades against us, but we made quick work of them (usually we launch a massive attack to eviscerate Italy the moment the crusade begins then send our troops Northward to help the others destroy the Catholic armies... One war was a little rough, so we split our forces and had one destroying Italy while the other defended Germany). The last crusade declared on us was weakly supported, and they seemed to have called it off before it even started.
(note: changed nothing besides maybe a line of dialog).