>>20191545I wouldn't say you spoiled yourself, since the DLC was all superficial garbage anyway. They spoiled a few key things like generation 2 of FE4, but that in itself isn't a huge spoiler. I won't point out any other spoilers for obvious reasons. You'll understand what Awakening spoiled if you play the games, but I won't bring attention to them now.
Sacred Stones would be an extremely easy place to start since it's the most like Awakening while being fairly traditional in mechanics (for the most part). You can choose which class to promote into but aside from that there isn't much customization. There's grinding spots like in Awakening too, which don't appear in any other game in the series. It would wean you off of Awakening pretty well, but overall it's not a very substantial game. It's for the GBA and easily emulated.
If you want to dive strait into the modern (pre-SD) Fire Emblems, the GBA game simply titled Fire Emblem would be a great place to start. It was the first to be released in the west, and is tailor made for new players, while also having a very large amount of content. There are three story modes, Lyn's which is the tutorial, Eliwood's which is the rest of the game from Eliwood's perspective, and the new game plus Hector mode which is told from Hector's perspective, has more chapters, and is generally better. There's also hard modes for every story. I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It's astounding. GBA.
From there you can move back to FE6 which has an English translation patch. It's not as good as FE7 in content, but it's long and fairly difficult. It's Roy's story and is a sequel to FE7 (well, FE7 is a prequel to FE6). GBA.
Then you get into the old SNES games. FE4 is where the marriage system originates, and while FE4 is a departure from the series norm, it's worth playing since it hold no punches and is in some ways superior to where the series has gone since. The maps are huge and help to make the continent feel connected.
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