Some of the Fire Emblem sprites were breathtakingly fluid, and you can't deny that they often look better than the jaggy polygons of the modern DS titles (similar to how the OP contrasts Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Diablo).
My favorites were always the sprites for the "hero" unit:
Good point. Heroes probably had the best attack animations. Either them, or critical hit from the paladin.
My favorite animations overall though were definitely swordmaster, specifically their "dodge" animation. They only moved like 3 or 4 pixels, so it was hard to tell that they actually dodged. But once you saw it, it was in fact amazing.
But the Fire Emblem sprites were redrawn with details from each of the characters in the game. Amelia from FE8 for example, was the only blonde female paladin, and her long-blonde hair would blow in the wind during her critical hit animation.
The animations were incredibly personalized to the characters, a true feat for a game with several dozen playable characters (and random mooks to KO).
In contrast, the 3D Art of FE:Awakening is clearly built off of recycled bone animations across multiple units. Furthermore, they were mostly recycled from FE9 and FE10.
The level of effort needed to create the 2D sprites is clearly much higher than the level of effort for FE:Awakening's animations.
Sigh, the "benefits" of industrialisation and new tech. Fortunately I hope that 2d or 3d pros and cons are known and mastered enough so people can go back to produce artful games.
Similarly to movies, early 2K era movies were speaking too much of CGI, now SFX aren't attractive anymore, you got to give density.
ps: about the level of effort, I think it's not fair, 3d modeling and animating was hard, but more than that it made people focus on low level details rather than 'impressionist' ones. You had to care about all angles and didn't have time nor knowledge on what made a good animation. Same goes for old animations.
Old GBA Game: http://lparchive.org/Fire-Emblem-Blazing-Sword/Update%2063/1...
Fire Emblem Awakening: https://youtu.be/ls0Nn_-hv-8?t=3m35s
I showed this to multiple people, and a lot of them seem to think the 3D animation was better. :-(