This guide is extremely indepth. I'd recommend reading the whole thing, but a few highlights for those who want a short summary:

Start on 7, 8, 9, 11, or 13. For those who want names instead of numbers, those are Fire Emblem/Blazing Sword/Rekka No Ken (Being the first western release gives it weird naming conventions,) Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Shadow Dragon, and Awakening.

System wise, those are gba, gba, gamecube, ds, and 3ds respectively.

My personal recommendation is 7, but I'm definitely biased, so do your research and find what's right for you.

The other big thing they mention here that I cannot stress enough is if you want to play Fire Emblems that are not the two most recent releases and (presumably) games that come after them, do not play on casual mode.

Yes, permadeath sucks. Yes, restarting the chapter sucks.

You'll be kicking yourself when you can't even manage the easiest older Fire Emblem after becoming an expert at beating the 3ds ones on casual 'cause you've taught yourself tactics that are perfectly acceptable (if not outright good) on casual but a literal death sentence for your characters on classic.

If anybody on my timeline does want to get in to the series and needs help tracking down games, I'll be happy to help, as long as you don't mind emulation.

/shadow tag

I pretty much watched FE9/10 (which is how Micaiah was born in my muselist)

If you've got the computer for it, an emulator my brother linked me to has been running 9 quite well-I actually haven't played it before myself.

I've played and beaten fates, but I ought to get started with FE7, or Awakening giving its popularity.

Did you do casual or classic on Fates?

And which path?

Casual. Started with Birthright, did part of Conquest (which was kinda brutal for me), finished it and Revelations.

Might wanna do 8 instead of 7, then.

I (and the person who posted that thread) think it's both a good difficulty gates between casual and classic/the older games, and it's easier than 7 and still allows grinding.

I have a GBA emulator, I can get by just playing 8 in that case

This is all very in-depth and quite good, though I'm gonna just go ahead and say that unless you really want to know Marth's story in particular, I can't recommend Shadow Dragon.

Yeah, I think it's the weakest starting point of the four suggested, though that's exactly the main reason they recommend it-if you wanna know Marth's story and/or play them in 'release order' without touching a NES game.

PoR would be my most highly recommended, except that it's really hard to get ahold of.

Well, like I said, for people interested in PoR and with a game-capable computer, I can hook them up.

But yeah if you want a hard copy that's rough.

I cheat with Marth's story because there's a manga that covers the first half

There's also a manga that follows one of the side characters in Roy's path too

But yeah, I need better level to get on Conquest so I'll probably start on the GBA games.

If Conquest is too hard, def start with 8 over 7; 7 is only a little easier than Conquest imo.

Though if you don't mind interrupting, playing the first ten chapters of 7, then 8, then the rest of 7 might be reasonable.