Fire Emblem: Awakening

[ChaosYoshi]

To answer your question, Donnel will join you as long as he levels up. In Casual, he doesn't have to stay alive as long as he levels up. I actually got him to level 2 every time I played the mission on Hard, but the problem I did have was that someone on my team would get that 1% chance crit that would kill them (or they just missed their 80% accuracy attack and got killed that way).

A lot of the marriages I got happened while Risen grinding for me, though the Chrom & Sumia one just seemed like it fit well. Also, Donnel & Nowi got together, and it was surprisingly cute and they seemed to get along extremely well. However, if there was one marriage I regret in terms of the story behind it, it would be Tharja & Libra, because Tharja is a ♥♥♥♥♥. She's currently an amazing sorcerer, but it just seems like she doesn't deserve to be married.

[Zunar]

I usually marry Tharja to Henry, since Henry is one of my least favorite characters, plus he's a Dark Mage so it's fitting. Anyway, you'll want to marry her to someone, unless you want to be missing a character.

I typically pre-plan my marriages, they don't just happen (except for my first playthrough when Chrom proposed to Sumia). Speaking of cute marriages, I'm planning on putting Donnel and Olivia together. I've seen some fanart of them and they look adorable. And I also plan to put Virion and Cherche together; I'm interested in how that'll go down considering their origins. And you know what other relationship is cute? Frederick x Nowi. Plus their ending is hilarious.

[Harmless]

...

Just found out Chrom doesn't have any support with Cordelia. Shaaame. But it makes sense.

I was actually going to pair Donnel with Cordelia instead.

[Raz]

turns out literally every store around me didn't have FE:A but I'll just buy it online. that means I'll have one digital game and every other game a physical copy
WHAT A TERRIBLE THING

[Zunar]

Join the club, Raz.

[ChaosYoshi]

About how much space does this game take of an SD card in the first place? I know that they would try to keep it under 2GB in the assumption that a buyer is only using the SD card that came with the system, but there's a helluva lot of content in this game (though most of it is text so it probably doesn't take up that much).

[Zunar]

It takes 8,577 blocks, but there's still room for some other things. I'm not sure exactly how much that equates to in bytes, but I think it's about half of the stock 4GB card that comes in the XL.

Also, whoever suggested the idea of surrounding the archers, that is an excellent idea. I did that and it worked like a charm. Donnel didn't die (in fact, no one did!), but leveled up twice during the chapter.

[Harmless]

lel me mastr strategits

hamless r mastr race

But yeah, in all seriousness, after he reaches level 4 or 5 Donnel can pretty much take any archer by himself (assuming he's paired up and has anything other than a Bronze lance).

[Zunar]

It kinda sucks that Donnel's base class is weak and doesn't have an upgrade and his re-classes can't use lances. I usually like to put units back in some class related to their base class once they have all the skills I want them to have, but Donnel is one of the few I have to change. I usually put him as a Hero in the end since he's like a hero of his village, in a manner of speaking. Plus the Mercenary line is one of my favorite lines, next to Myrmidon and Pegasus Knight.

It is really cool how Donnel grows very fast, though. Starts off weak, but grows very fast; basically the polar opposite of Frederick.

[Harmless]

but but but Frederick still likes to train ; n ;

also I once saw this incredibly OP team with Donnel in it (because what OP team doesn't use Donnel), but he was a Bow Knight with a Bow, incredibly high skill and luck, and had Counter.

Yeah...