History VideoGame / FireEmblemTheBindingBlade

* StoryBranching: Roy goes through either Sacae or Ilia depending on whether or not your pair of nomads or pegasus knights, respectively, have higher cumulative experience. You also recruit different characters on each path--the leader of Sue and Shin's clan in Sacae, Thite and Shanna's older sister in Ilia.

* HeroMustSurvive: Lilina and Douglas must survive their join chapters so that the side chapters to obtain Durandal and Aureola respectively can be obtained.

* TheQuisling: Etruria is turned into a puppet state for Bern after their king is struck with grief and then taken hostage. All of its generals except Cecilia obey Bern's orders, though they end up joining Roy's army one by one.

One day, the country of Bern decides to make unprovoked attacks on its neighbors Sacae and Ilia, and after successfully conquering them sets its sights for Lycia. Roy, son of Marquess Eliwood of the Lycian territory of Pherae, is tasked with leading the army in place of his ill father to defend his homeland and ward off the invading forces. What starts off as a fight against a hostile nation turns into quest to gather the Divine Weapons of legend, uncover the truth about an ancient war against dragons known as The Scouring, and save the world from destruction.

* ArcNumber: The game tends to do things in threes such as having three high ranking generals for Etruria and Bern. Most notably there tends to be three characters of one class, each fulfilling a different niche.

*** In ''particular'', there's the fact that Lyn, the heroine of the prequel, is completely absent and unmentioned. That's because, when ''Binding'' was developed, she simply didn't exist; Rutger, Fir and Karel are the fast sword-swingers of this title, and Lyn came into existence for ''Blazing'' as a good point-of-view character for the planned Anglophone-friendly intro campaign and was "meant" to simply fade into the background after the game. This has always stood out a little bit, but with the passing of time, the advent of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' and Lyn becoming not just one of the most popular characters in the franchise but one of ''Nintendo's'' most popular characters, full stop, her complete absence is now an elephant in the room. Between a few snatches of info in ''Blazing'' and ''Heroes'', there are guesses as to what happened to her (the most popular being that [[spoiler:she's the mother of either Lilina or Sue and, either way, perished trying to defend Sacae from Zephiel after taking up the Mulagir]]) but since she simply didn't exist when ''Binding'' was written, there's no definitive answer.

%%* FantasticRacism: Bern mounts a genocidal campaign against the tribes of Sacae; Sue and Rutger are both witnesses to the atrocity.

* ContinuityReboot: The Archanea,Valentia, and Jugdral games were all in the same universe, while ''The Binding Blade'' and its prequel take place in an entirely new universe.

* ContinuityReboot: The Archanea and Jugdral games were all in the same universe, while ''The Binding Blade'' and its prequel take place in an entirely new universe.

* BagOfSpilling: Justified. Twenty years pass between the two games, meaning there is plenty of time for characters to lose their edge through old age, injury, and inaction.

** In this game, there are no unpromoted classes capable of using light magic, something that isn't the case with the other types of magic. Later Game Boy Advance installments feature the monk class, which is an unpromoted class that uses light magic, essentially giving light magic an equivalent to mages and shamans.

* ElementalWeapon: The four physical Divine Weapons have epithets associated with a different element: Durandal the Blazing Blade, Armads the Thunder Axe, Maltet the Blizzard Spear, and Murgleis the Wind Bow.

*** In ''particular'', there's the fact that Lyn, the heroine of the prequel, is completely absent and unmentioned. That's because, when ''Binding'' was developed, she simply didn't exist; Fir and Karel are the fast sword-swingers of this title, and Lyn came into existence for ''Blazing'' as a good point-of-view character for the planned Anglophone-friendly intro campaign and was "meant" to simply fade into the background after the game. This has always stood out a little bit, but with the passing of time, the advent of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' and Lyn becoming not just one of the most popular characters in the franchise but one of ''Nintendo's'' most popular characters, full stop, her complete absence is now an elephant in the room. Between a few snatches of info in ''Blazing'' and ''Heroes'', there are guesses as to what happened to her (the most popular being that [[spoiler:she's the mother of either Lilina or Sue and, either way, perished trying to defend Sacae from Zephiel after taking up the Mulagir]]) but since she simply didn't exist when ''Binding'' was written, there's no definitive answer.

* RuleOfThree: The game tends to do things in threes such as having three high ranking generals for Etruria and Bern. Most notably there tends to be three characters of one class, each fulfilling a different niche.
* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: In Chapter 3, Zephiel, Idenn, and Narcian--all of them very powerful fighters--are all present at Araphen Castle. Idenn, the FinalBoss, offers to take out Roy's band of low-level fighters and mercenaries, but Zephiel declines and departs with her, leaving the matter to Narcian. ''He'' promptly turns the matter over to a low-level knight so he can lech on Clarine. This happens again in Chapter 13, but instead to a low-level Wyvern Lord and a large force of Etrurian cavalry.

* RecurringElement: There are many aspects of ''The Binding Blade'' that are extremely similar to previous games, notably ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'' and ''Videogame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar''. Some of the characters (Milady is a very blatant {{Expy}} of Minerva in terms of class, looks, and personality and Altena in terms of relationship to Gale) and parts of the plot. (mostly about Idenn being the "Dark Dragon", the various political coup's, all of the liberation that Roy does) The game does tackle all of this in a different enough manner to not be a total repeat, but it's clear that there was a lot of inspiration taken from previous titles.

** Sacae is based on Mongolia with a dash of Japan. It's a far-eastern nation with a notable tradition of horseback riding and archery, and a religion that worships the sky and earth. For the Japanese aspect, Myrmidons/Swordmasters clearly use katanas and those characters, especially Karel, are heavy with "wandering samurai" tropes.

* RecurringElement: There are many aspects of ''The Binding Blade'' that are extremely similar to ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'', including some of the characters (Milady is a very blatant {{Expy}} of Minerva in terms of class, looks, and personality) and parts of the plot (mostly about Idenn being the "Dark Dragon", all of the liberation that Roy does).

%%* DarkIsNotEvil: Raigh, Sophia, and Niime, the three dark magic users of the game. The last of these is the mother of Canas from the prequel, who is a strong believer in this trope.

%%* {{Expy}}: Many of the characters strongly resemble characters from the first game. [[http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x198/pvpnk8/FE6and11comparison.png This is a rather good example]], [[http://www.serenesforest.net/general/relation.html as is this]].
* FaceOfAThug: Gonzales is an ugly character in a series that usually plays BeautyEqualsGoodness straight, but he's actually a kindhearted man who only associates with bandits because of his difficulty in being accepted anywhere else.

%%** Chapter 11A. It's technically possible to save all the houses, archers, and pegasus knights, but you have to have made your team really buff beforehand, make a reckless charge forward, and then a reckless charge back.

* LastOfHisKind: Jahn claims to be the last dragon, even his battle theme is named after that fact. Technically, there are other dragons around, [[spoiler:but Idenn is not a "true" dragon since she became a Dark Dragon and the war dragons she created are not real dragons, either]]. However, there are dragons on the other side of the Gate and in Arcadia.

%%* WeatherOfWar: Including a sandstorm that hinders movement ''and'' causes fog-of-war.

* TropeCodifier: While ''[[Videogame/Thracia776 Thracia]]'' had several elements of classic ''Fire Emblem'', this game cemented what to expect from a ''Fire Emblem game'', such as the [[RecurringElement recurring tropes]] being in full-force, the plot structure of fighting a kingdom and then slaying a dragon of some sort, and a backstory that has a great deal of mythos to add to the world.

%%* LuckBasedMission: Hard Mode. The early chapters can be terminated easily, if you don't like having your characters dead.

* KarmaHoudini: Subverted with Erik. After helping his father's attempt to start a war in Lycia and kill Eliwood and Hector in ''The Blazing Blade'', he apparently [[CivilianVillain "reforms"]] and becomes the Marquess of Laus after his father's death. Years later he betrays Lycia ''[[TooDumbToLive again]]'', but this only leads to him getting killed by Roy.

There game also has a manga adaptation, ''Manga/FireEmblemChampionsSword'' (''Hasha no Tsurugi''), that was published in Japan from 2002 to 2005. Taking place concurrently with Roy's story, it follows a quartet of {{Canon Foreigner}}s on their quest to find the Fire Emblem.

''The Binding Blade'' is notable for two major contributions to the franchise. The first is the introduction of the recurring Support feature, an expansion of the RelationshipValues introduced in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar''. Characters build their relationships by spending a lot of time together in battle, which unlocks special conversations between them that allow for extra characterization, CharacterDevelopment, and occasionally reveal character backgrounds. Unlocking Supports also grants boosted stats to characters with shared ranks when they stand near each other. The second contribution is more indirect -- Roy was included as a playable character in ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Super Smash Bros. Melee]]'', which helped give ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' international exposure and led to latee games getting released outside of Japan.

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