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YMMV / Fire Emblem

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Given how many characters there are across the games, this is inevitable. Particularly obvious with shipping (especially when it comes to sexual orientation), since the games rarely define specific canon pairings, and the support system often gives each character multiple potential romances.
  • Americans Hate Tingle:
    • While the games set in Marth's world are loved in Japan, with Mystery of the Emblem being heralded as the very best, the rest of the world sees them as some of the weakest parts in the series or at least not accessible enough to warrant the special treatment for crossovers and spinoffs. Ironically, thanks to Super Smash Bros. Melee, Marth himself is one of the most popular characters in the series, which leads to the interesting case where most of Marth's western fanbase is based around Smash Bros more than his home series, at least Heroes helped a little bit get the spotlight on on other Archanea characters.
    • The series itself used to be more niche in the West, where it was still somewhat popular, but fell under the radar compared to Nintendo's other franchises. However ever since Fire Emblem: Awakening the series has only increased in popularity in the west with every subsequent game, finally breaking into mainstream popularity with Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
    • Tiki's child self is so iconic in Japan that she frequently appears in spinoffs and is the closest thing to a Series Mascot alongside Anna. Western fans tend to prefer her adult appearance from Fire Emblem: Awakening, due to that game far eclipsing Shadow Dragon in sales and neither version of Mystery of the Emblem being localized, and often express frustration at the sheer amount of favoritism child Tiki gets in Fire Emblem Heroes at the expense of her older self, as well as her appearance in Fire Emblem Warriors and an amiibo.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: A recurring trend in the series: due to the franchise enjoying its random stat growths and hit rates and the presence of Permadeath, Final Boss characters are usually designed to be beatable even by severely weakened parties. The most common form of this is the Lord's Sword of Plot Advancement dealing effective damage to the boss in question, meaning the boss dies in two or three hits, or an 11th-Hour Ranger joining the party who can handle the boss pretty adequately. This tends to involve Acceptable Breaks from Reality, as the combat engine in Fire Emblem tends to not lend itself well to boss battles—meaning that bosses which are difficult are usually unfun to fight against due to not having much strategy besides "stand still and whack player with giant stats when they're in range."
  • Anvilicious: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn's "racism is bad, mmkay?" Aesop can be pretty annoying, especially since nothing new is really done with it.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: "Battle Preparations" in The Blazing Blade. You've just decided to assault the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, the fate of the world hangs in the balance, Hector has just learned that his brother has died... and then without warning, an unexpected lesson in economics and trade. "[...] as Marquess Ostia, he(Hector's brother) gave a scathing indictment of the peer system." — What? Lyn and Eliwood are briefly speechless at how unusual it is for Hector to say something so profound before Hector changes the subject.
  • Broken Base:
    • The entire notion of Permadeath. Some feel that it adds to the challenge and makes every death really count, forcing you to be very careful with high-risk strategies, on top of encouraging you to care about your units and making it all the more heartrending if any of them fall in battle, even if the downed unit is a story-critical unit who simply ends up with a Career-Ending Injury or is not used that much anyways (on the other hand, the loss of the player's avatar, the Lord or a mission-critical character will result in a Game Over). Some point out that in practice, it becomes an exercise in restarting each chapter until nobody dies, making the otherwise-poignant deaths of each character meaningless unless one has the self-restraint to never reload saves ever, while others who do restart each time feel it gives every character the feel of a Lord-class unit, treating any unit loss as losing the chapter entirely. There's also the question over whether it's well-implemented in later games—while earlier games like the Archanea titles, Thracia 776, and Binding Blade are rather clearly designed with "ironmanning" in mind, later games tend to have smaller rosters, stronger enemies, or characters that require a lot more effort to take off on higher difficulties, meaning that a lost unit is a much greater blow to progress than in the days when you could lose half your cavaliers and still scrape something together.
    • The rivalry between fans of the pre-Awakening games and fans of the games from Awakening onwardnote  is very pronounced, due to how drastically different the franchise was before and after that game in terms of writing, design, popularity, and success, even in the Japanese fandom. The runaway success of Awakening and the massive Newbie Boom it caused prompted numerous changes in both the games themselves and the franchise as a whole, leading to numerous debates about how much/little new games should try to be like it. The debate intensified after Fates got a mixed reception for following Awakening perhaps a little too closely, especially once Echoes released and received an also-mixed reception critically, commercially, and among the fanbase for keeping much of the original game's mechanics intact with only a few quality of life changes. It only got worse when Three Houses came out in a direction dramatically different from both the 3DS titles and what came before them, bringing with it a Newbie Boom of its own and putting it at odds with fans of other contenders for the title. The debate has now morphed into whether future Fire Emblem games should take cues from Three Houses or not, especially once Engage released and got a mixed reaction from fans who felt it was too much or too little like their preferred vision for Fire Emblem. There are fans of all of the games, especially with the Massive Multiplayer Crossover that is Fire Emblem Heroes, but they are not the loudest voices in the fandom.
    • After Fates and Three Houses, route splits became a subject of heavy debate. Earlier games in the series had the occasional branching path, but they only lasted a few chapters and didn't impact the overall story or ending(for example, Sacred Stones branches in the middle third, with the other twin's story events happening offscreen, and the final act- Chapter 15 onward- is basically the same between routes). The newer games expanded this into full-blown alternate campaigns and Faction-Specific Endings. There are many fans who appreciate the feeling of choice and the increased replay value, as well as the ability to choose their preferred faction and see different parts of the story, and these two games are the most successful in the franchise. There are others who feel route splits stretch development resources too thin, leading to issues (For Fates, the story of all three paths suffering, for Three Houses, three out of four routes being mostly identical for the first half of the post-timeskip part and the remaining one feeling rushed and unpolished) and would prefer the developers focus on writing one coherent story. These games' attempts at Grey-and-Grey Morality don't always succeed, as Fates was intended to be this, but ended up having Hoshido be the clearly good faction. When the spinoff Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes announced it would feature multiple routes and endings too, the reaction was mixed in some circles.
    • Shadow Dragon caused (and still causes) a lot of drama among the fans. It was highly anticipated by Western fans, who were excited to finally get one of Marth's games and avert the No Export for You nature of the first installment of the franchise. When the game released, however, it was considered a rather lackluster remake because the game's new graphics were of contested quality, it lacked a number of systems that are now considered core mechanics like Supports, Rescue, or even allowing any unit to visit a village (only Marth can do so), and the story was a not-very-updated version of the very simple NES and SNES original. However, others like the game for its simplified approach, a large difficulty selection, Purple Prose localization, and being the largely faithful remake of Marth's story people who dislike the game criticize it for. It also properly introduced the Reclassing feature, which is divisive by itself, and doubled-down on a number of features meant to promote replayability and Iron Man play, both of which tend to be more popular with streamers than players, although streaming as it exists now did not exist then. The sequel, New Mystery of the Emblem, was not released internationally due to lackluster sales, and also underperformed in Japan, leading Echoes, the remake of Gaiden, to implement features from newer games while still keeping some of the original game's mechanics intact. This blend of older and newer mechanics of the series ended up being very well-received by the fans as a whole, but did little to lessen the debate over Shadow Dragon.
    • Binding Blade is one of the most polarizing games in the series, with debates on its quality versus Blazing Blade getting particularly heated. In the 2000s, Western fans who started with Blazing before discovering it was a prequel often suffered Hype Backlash when they played Binding and found it fell on the opposite side of the Story to Gameplay Ratio, with a minimalist plot and characters, scaled-back presentation and more focus on map design and combat. The game heavily favouring pre-promotes over Magikarp Power units was another point of contention as the latter were preferred in the fandom at the time and the game's reputation for frustratingly low accuracy across the board, cheap shots, and entire story branches that just aren't fun led to an overall reputation for slipshot design that Blazing Blade improved on and polished. Binding Blade always had a small but loyal fanbase, though, mainly consisting of more hardcore players, since the design does facilitate Ironman runs with its difficulty and steady drip-feed of prepromotes to replace those killed by bad luck. Come the latter half of the 2010s and fans of Binding Blade started gaining more traction on Youtube, which, along with frustration and backlash towards the increasing focus on characters and RPG elements over strategy in the later FE games, led to an upsurge in the title's reputation. This, however, led to an increase in Hype Backlash over Blazing Blade, as Binding fans often blamed its fanbase for their game's poor initial reception and began criticizing what they saw as flaws that were covered up by its status as the first English Fire Emblem game, such as a tangled and meandering plot or Lyn's campaign being a slow-paced Forced Tutorial. In turn, this caused Blazing fans to hit back; issues with Binding Blade's design never actually went away and it's still a game that's more popular with the "Iron Man"/Let's Play community than general audiences, creating a very nasty Broken Base.
    • Which is the best game in the series? The debate usually comes down to The Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance or Awakening, which are all preferred by different demographics. Sometimes fans of the former two team up against Awakening, while other times it's a three-way split. Genealogy of the Holy War is also a contender (and one that causes a four-way split for predating the Western localization of the series), albeit a less frequent one due to its obscurity. Then Three Houses released and had its own Newbie Boom, meaning a melee-a-cinq ensues whenever it gets brought up.
    • Related to game preferences, there's also a divide between players who enjoy the games with more RPG elements, such as greater character customization and the ability to level grind, and those who enjoy the more strategy-oriented games, which have characters with fixed class progression and finite experience. Not all of the games cleanly fit into one of the two categories, but there can be heated debates over the direction any given Fire Emblem should take.
    • There's also the issue of how much the stories matter to the games. Many players are primarily interested in the gameplay and enjoy titles with strong gameplay but weak stories, like Conquest and Engage, with some going so far as to cynically assert that Fire Emblem has never had very good stories. Others, however, enjoy the more story-rich entries such as Three Houses or the Tellius games, and argue that good gameplay does not necessarily have to come at the expense of a good story.
    • The five-support limit from earlier games with supports. Fans argue that this, and the associated limiting of how many support chains any given unit has, helps counteract the "quantity over quality" problem with modern Fire Emblem games' support chains and, from a gameplay perspective, makes support bonuses a more meaningful tactical choice, since different supports offer different bonuses. Detractors, however, loathe the mechanic as an example of Fake Longevity that forces players to play multiple times to see every character's supports (since only one support chain can be completed per unit per playthrough), and argue that this doesn't necessarily help improve the quality of characters' supports, many of which had exactly the same problems they complain about modern games having, but with the added detriment of taking up limited slots.
  • Casual-Competitive Conflict:
    • The franchise is infamous for this despite being almost entirely single-player. Most players fall into one of two categories in how they judge units: "how high are their stats by Endgame?" or "How much do they contribute over the course of the game?" Both sides have been at each other's throats from the fandom's inception, with the former being favored in the early days and the latter being favored later. And then there's the fans who like characters for their supports or story, and many fan-favorites happen to fall on the low end of the Character Tiers, which leads to their fans making misleading arguments for their usefulness, which sets off hardcore players...
    • Additionally, there's a divide between more hardcore and casual fans. Many hardcore players enjoy titles that have high difficulty, and don't care if the stories aren't particularly good (Conquest and Engage stand out). More casual players may prefer games with well-written stories, good characters and lower difficulty, such as Awakening and Three Houses. Because of the perception that the developers can focus on the story or gameplay, but not both, this results in fierce arguments as to which Fire Emblem games are better.
  • Character Perception Evolution: The Jagen archetype, to its benefit. Early in the series' fandom, players focused purely on endgame potential, and Jagens were despised for their low growths and poor performance in the final chapters. However, as the fandom matured and began to focus on overall contributions throughout the entire game, Jagens and their earlygame power became more appreciated, with most Jagens ending up in upper-mid tier at worst on Character Tiers.
  • Character Tiers: Debates over this encompass a big part of the fandom. Whether or not certain characters are Game Breakers, whether or not certain characters are Low Tier Letdowns, whether the characters should be judged purely on growths and stats, et cetera. The most common standard judges a character by "how much do they do for you over the course of the game?", which tends to favor characters with strong base-level performance, significant longevity, and particular utility.
  • Cheese Strategy:
    • The game has its fair share of bosses that require some strategic thought, but in a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, in Echoes -- Shadows of Valentia, Emperor Rudolf will not attack Alm, even if he is attacked first, because Alm is his son. Given Rudolf is considered That One Boss, a common strategy is to simply keep everyone out of the line of fire and have only Alm attack him.
    • Furthermore, whenever an immobile boss carries a melee weapon and a bow, attacking from whichever range they cannot counter and then moving/rescuing out of range is a viable tactic. This is practically mandatory when fighting Gomez in Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 due to him having endgame-level stats and sitting on a throne that gives 10 defense in Chapter 8X. Given that it's practically impossible to survive a single round of combat against him, the best and likely only route is to hit him with one of Asvel's spells from the range he cannot counterattack from (initially 2, since Gomez has an ax and a bow, and starts with the ax equipped), rescuing out to prevent Gomez from equipping his bow and repeating. Good luck, because obtaining Asvel in the first place is a major Guide Dang It!.
    • In the spin-off game Fire Emblem Warriors, Minerva and Camilla have a dash that puts them out of attack range for anyone but archers, and a dash attack that has a massive area of effect and trivializes Kill Count objectives, so a common strategy is to simply spam that attack on crowds of enemies or enemy generals. The technique is sometimes referred to as "Slamspam" because it involves Minerva's and Camilla's (massive) dragons body-slamming the ground, hitting everything around them.
  • Chickification: Tends to happen with manga adaptations. Love interests tend to show no indication that they can fight, or even heal. Julia gets hit with this in the Fuyuki adaptation of Genealogy; even if she wants to be useful, she doesn't pick up a single weapon. And she's supposed to beat the Final Boss. The Oosawa manga averts this with its many female characters; the only girl who doesn't show any fighting skill is the cleric.
  • Cliché Storm: The games go in and out of this - the Archanea games certainly seem this way after more modern installments but these games are products of the dawn of video game storytelling in the early '90s. The plot of The Binding Blade is certainly rather old hat (playing many tropes used in the first game almost identically), and Sacred Stones, outside of its interesting and three-dimensional antagonist, is also following well-trod ground. Awakening is very cliche, though it has the excuse of being the series' Milestone Celebration and attempting to incorporate a sort of "Greatest Hits" feeling throughout by incorporating bits from other Fire Emblem plots. The rest of the series is much-less similar, or at least does a better job of playing with the tropes it utilizes.
  • Crack Pairing:
  • Cult Classic: In Japan, though, the series has been mainstream since the NES days. Outside of Japan, the people who actually have bought the pre-Awakening Fire Emblem games and played it are reduced to a (very loyal) cult. Still to this day, people are still arguing over a tier list in FE9 and FE10.
  • Demonic Spider: The Dark Magi with their "reduce to 1 HP" spell in the Genealogy of Holy War. Despite the low accuracy, it still seems to hit you very often for some reason.
    • Played literally in Sacred Stones with the Bael and Elder Bael enemies. Actual giant, demonic spiders that also fit the trope - as they hit hard, fast, can poison, have a respectable chunk of health and defense, and nearly always spawn on mountain tiles and/or in fog.
  • Discredited Meme:
    • "Are Roy and Marth in this game?" all but died out in the series' modern era, as Marth's game finally got localized and while Roy's home game still hasn't, he's made frequent appearances in spinoffs. It's now obvious to Western fans which games they both came from.
    • Many people blame the downfall of the "BEGONE THOT" meme on the overuse of it in the Fire Emblem fandom, especially towards either Fanservicey characters like Camilla, or Yandere characters like Faye.
    • "Hoes mad" has started to get this treatment, despite being a primarily Three Houses meme. When Byleth was announced as the last character of the first Fighter Pass in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Smash community went ballistic about the eighth Fire Emblem character getting added into the game, as opposed to the Fire Emblem community, who pretty much spammed the phrase to anyone who was upset about the announcement. It very quickly burned out and you're more likely to get annoyed comments from the community rather than people joining in.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • The Whitewings have had the most amount of appearances throughout the series and are the progenitors of the unique Pegasus Sisters archetype. Palla and Catria especially have their fans, though Est is something of a Base-Breaking Character for gameplay reasons and story reasons mostly exclusive to Mystery. As a trio though, they are widely beloved.
    • Malice is easily the most popular character introduced in BS Fire Emblem, with both fans and the developers. It probably has something to do with being a Rare Female Example of the "Ogma Archetype", and a badass Anti-Hero with a cool design (and being Ms. Fanservice). She was given a much greater role in New Mystery, and ended up featuring as a SpotPass character in Fire Emblem: Awakening, "representing" Mystery of the Emblem despite not actually debuting in that game!
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • Many of Nintendo's other niche fandoms, such as Metroid, Kid Icarus, F-Zero, Donkey Kong, and Rhythm Heaven have a bone to pick with the Fire Emblem fandom out of jealousy for the attention that the franchise is receiving. The large amount of divisiveness in the fandom does nothing to help matters either.
      • It gets worse every time a Fire Emblem character is added to Super Smash Bros.. Initially, it wasn't too bad in the days when Brawl was the most recent game, as back then the only characters were Marth and Roy in Melee or Ike in Brawl, but when Robin, Lucina, and Corrin were added to Smash 4 caused rumblings, Chrom was added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at launch, followed by Byleth as DLC, the fandom got more and more irritated with each subsequent addition, particularly because three of the eight characters were seen as Moveset Clones of Marth, meaning there were really only five unique characters of the bunch, but all of them were sword-fighter characters, which there is already an abundance of in the game.
    • Fans who hate the pre-Awakening Fire Emblem games, particularly the Kaga Era, tend to dislike the TearRing Saga series as well. Berwick Saga escapes this somewhat due to not many even knowing about the games' existence (even amongst fans of Kaga-era FE)
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Anything regarding sacrificing allies in Shadow Dragon. Surprisingly, Shadow Dragon's version of Marth is considered to be very well written and has its fair share of fans. The mechanics that caused this actually verge on Canon Discontinuity in New Mystery. Namely, all characters from Shadow Dragon (even the sacrifice) appear alive and well, and Marth recognizes them all. An outcome like this would be impossible to achieve in Shadow Dragon, as meeting the sidequest characters requires most of the other characters to be dead.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • The official term used when a unit becomes a different class, on both sides of the Pacific, is Class Change. Since units get a boost in stats, weapon proficiency, and/or a level reset, (Western) fans nearly always say they promote, to better express the change being an upgrade rather than the more neutral or sideways shift implied by "Class Change".
    • Some games are referred with (something prominent in the game) Emblem. For instance, Genealogy of Holy War is referred as "Mounted Emblem" or "Horse Emblem", due to the enormous size of the game's maps making having a mount (horse/pegasus/wyvern) a good boon. Awakening and Fates are referred as "Waifu Emblem" due to their use of the Avatar and Marriage system.
    • A Radiant Dawn Lets Play named the reinforcements who appear near the starting point of the map "Asshole Reinforcements". It's true. "Ambush-Spawning Reinforcements", or simply Ambush Spawns, is used to refer to reinforcements that move the turn they arrive, also known as "same-turn reinforcements."
    • It's common to refer to the powerful but unfortunately named Bolganone tome as "Bologna."
    • The Cavaliers of the Cain and Abel archetype are sometimes referred to as "Christmas Cavaliers", due to their Red/Green Contrast.
    • The 3-10 range magic spells like Bolting, Purge, and Eclipse are often referred to as "siege tomes."
  • Fountain of Memes: If talking about the OVA, expect to hear Gordin mentioned a lot, in particular his line of, "But Maaaars!" Only when talking about the OVA, though; he's pretty forgettable in the games he appears in.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • Many Fire Emblem fans, particularly those of the older games, have an overlap with the Megami Tensei fandom, both for their tough as nails, yet satisfying gameplay and simple yet dark stories. This was one of the reasons why Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE was highly anticipated during its Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem phase, and both fandoms were divided on the final result. The bond was strengthened by the release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Between the time management systems, surprisingly dark story routes dealing with a conflict predicated on a decision to align with Law/Neutral/Chaos, and the abandonment of the weapons triangle, it feels more like a SMT crossover than the aforementioned game ever did.
    • Similarly, many fans, particularly those of the newer games, also have an overlap with Persona, namely because of the Relationship Values systems present in both, the fact that both share many voice actors in both the Japanese and English versions, and for essentially being system sellers for handhelds (Persona 4 Golden for the Play Station Vita and Fire Emblem: Awakening for the Nintendo 3DS) before receiving more mainstream attention on consoles (Persona 5 on PlayStation 4 and Fire Emblem: Three Houses on Nintendo Switch). Three Houses would likewise strengthen the bond between Fire Emblem fans and Persona fans with its school setting, time management life sim elements, use of Tarot Motifs, and routes that evoke the colors and central themes of the three "modern" Persona games released at the time. Both franchises would eventually cross over in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
    • Fans of the NES and SNES era Fire Emblem games tend to love Fire Emblem's Spiritual Successor, TearRing Saga and Berwick Saga, and it’s frequently included in Fire Emblem fansites, including both wikis.
    • Since the franchise's revival with Awakening, the series' fanbase has shared an overlap with that of Xenoblade Chronicles, Nintendo's other big JRPG series - likely as a result of the first game making it overseas around the same time Fire Emblem Awakening was released. This overlap became especially apparently as of the Nintendo Switch era, with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate featuring multiple representatives from either series and the console itself being home to mainline installments from both series (Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Fire Emblem Engage).
    • Starting with the late 2010s/early 2020s, Fire Emblem's fanbase developed a minor overlap with Saint Seiya's, mostly due to both franchises having characters from having an '80s flair in their designs (Compare anyone from Judgral with the ones from Saint Seiya...) and the designs of the armor in Saint Seiya not looking too out of place in Fire Emblem, as well as both franchises also drawing inspiration from various European mythologies, most notably Norse Mythos.
  • Gameplay Derailment: In theory, the Permadeath mechanic is meant to make you put value into every unit you have, and to think very carefully before making risky decisions; it is very possible to create your own Tear Jerker moments by being careless with a particular unit. In practice, however, a huge portion of players just end up restart-scumming the current chapter until they can pull off a no-death run, especially since if the protagonist unit dies, it's game over anyway. Later games in the series have accepted this and leaned into it, beginning with New Mystery of the Emblem introducing Casual mode and Awakening introducing heavier RPG elements that reward heavy investment. The original intended way to play (the "ironman" playthrough) has devolved into a Self-Imposed Challenge.
  • Goddamned Bats: Enemy magic users with Sleep or Berserk staves. Especially in Genealogy of the Holy War, where enemy-exclusive Sleep staves had near-perfect accuracy and unlimited uses and in Thracia 776, where the staves had infinite range and the status effects never wore off on their own.
  • Goddamned Boss: Any static boss with decent power, doubly so if they're sitting on a throne which gives substantial bonuses to their defense and evasion.
  • Good Bad Bugs: The enemy control glitches, which have Game-Breaker potential (but are not Game Breaking Bugs).
    • The pitfall traps in Chapter 3-11 of Radiant Dawn only activate if a non-flying unit moves onto the space, and one of the enemy bishops in that chapter has a Rescue staff. This can allow a unit to end up on one of the pitfall spaces without setting it off. (Yes, normally the enemies avoid those spaces, which makes it easy to see which spaces are and are not booby-trapped.) However, because the space is already occupied without the pitfall trap having been set off, a unit with Pass can move through that space without falling into a pit.
  • Hype Backlash: A strange example of this combined with Once Original, Now Common hit with Shadow Dragon. If you ask most people outside of Japan what their first Fire Emblem game was, most of them will say "The Blazing Blade". In between receiving Shadow Dragon, the rest of the world also received Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn... so a lot of people had clear expectations for what a Fire Emblem game should be. When Shadow Dragon was a "back to basics" remake of the first game, narratively and to a significant extent in gameplaynote , a lot of people expressed disappointment because almost twenty years of innovation had taken place in the meantime, and the game was showing its age.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While villains in this series can be loathsome, there are usually NPC characters who are not fought by the players, but act like such massive jerk and Unwitting Instigator of Doom within the lore that they end up being more hated than the actual loathsome villains. The Tellius games have a variation: The one who fulfills the trope isn't any of the villains or backstory characters, but a playable character: Makalov.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Some fans circa Awakening were attracted to the series due to the ability to marry your Player Character to any of the many attractive characters in the game. However, as noted above, many veteran fans tend to be accusatory about this issue, claiming that it is the only reason the series had such a big Newbie Boom and that it has attracted players who play for the "wrong" reasons.
  • Low-Tier Letdown:
    • Archers are a consistently hated class since even though they can attack from two squares away, they can only attack from two squares away. Fine, but most enemies in the game attack from one square away, and later in the games, they tend to have weapons that allow them to attack from 1-2 squares away, leaving them defenseless on the turn they are attacked. Adding to this, Archers generally have low defense, and since the enemy AI tends to pick the unit it can do the most damage to, the archer is generally cannon fodder for the enemy to pick off. The only real niche they could fill is that they can take out wyvern and pegasus riders, but even that is rendered null because Mages can do that too and attack from 1-2 squares away. It should be noted that this also resulted in Archers getting MUCH less exp compared to other classes, which is taken further with Archer's generally lacking base stats. It didn't help that the older games and their DS remakes gave archers some of the lowest mobility in the game, either. To be fair though, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn gave archers crossbows that allows them to attack one space and when promoted to marksmen, they could attack from three spaces making them Game Breakers in this particular game. Fire Emblem: Fates buffed them by including bows into the Weapon Triangle to give them more things to counter, increasing bows' Might and introducing a skill that allows them to attack at minimum range. Fates also nerfed generic 1-2 range weapons that are normally melee range (the basic weapon triangle) by giving them a significant drawback.
    • Knights also get a fair amount of flak, though not as much as Archers. Unlike Archers, they do have a specific niche to fill as the party's tank, and tend to start with decent stats. Unfortunately, their low move severely hinders their usefulness — either the party has to move more slowly so the Knight can stay in the front and tank, or the Knight gets left behind. Their low Speed is also a problem, as most enemies later in the game will be able to double them (Ironically, this can make Knight units worse at tanking than other units as, say taking 8 hits twice deals more damage than one 12 hit). They can shine on maps where the party mostly has to stay still and defend a specific area, but there don't tend to be too many of those (and some games don't have any). Combine that with the fact that there are a number of weapons that are effective against them, that their low speed makes them vulnerable to mages, and that there tend to be many other, faster and more mobile units that can fill a frontline tanking role, and you have a class that tends to get left in the dust. Both Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, and Fire Emblem: Fates buffed the class, likely in response, while Engage granted armored units immunity to Break, thus making them more useful on Enemy Phase than non-armored units.
    • Est units, while typically popular among fans, tend to be ranked low on tier lists. In theory, with their higher than average growth rates, Est units should become your strongest units when given enough training. In practice, their typically terrible base stats combined with their often late joining time tend to make training them to competency a complete chore and a bad investment compared to a regular unit. Contrast this the Jagen Archetypes, units that start out prepromoted with high base stats but with terrible exp gain and low growths. In almost every Fire Emblem game, the Jagens can ride off their base stats until they drop off mid game (in which case then the hardest part of the game is already over) or in some cases never drop off at all and break the game over their knees (Seth, Titania, and FE7 Marcus). It doesn't help that in some cases, their growth-increasing skill takes their personal skill slot, depriving them of a useful ability.
  • Mis-blamed: Many blame Shadow Dragon as the cause of series' fall, using the fact that New Mystery, its direct sequel, is not localized. It should be noted that the only Fire Emblem game that manage to have below average sales are, in fact, the Tellius duology - at least in Japan, Path of Radiance is the lowest-selling Fire Emblem game, with 156,000 units in total sold there, largely contributed by the series' Invisible Advertising at that point.
    • Also, don't listen to what some people say about Shadow Dragon hurting the series in the West - the game received strong reviews from the gaming press (gaining a respectable score of 81 on Metacritic as of 6th November 2010) and had good sales (over half a million copies sold in North America and Japan collectively).
  • Moe: Many of the female characters (and some males) are this, for being kindhearted and wholesome and having lovable, unique personality quirks, as well as very pleasant voice acting when voiced. Examples include Caeda, Lyndis, Elincia, Lucina and Cordelia.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The ting of an enemy's weapon bouncing off of your unit for zero damage. The Binding Blade and New Mystery of the Emblem trade it in for an even more satisfying clang.
    • The stinging crack of a critical hit also counts, so long as it's your unit on the attack and not the enemy.
    • The level up fanfare and the ding noises for each increased stat. Even better when the RNG blesses you with many of those dings.
    • The Near-Victory Theme. Especially in some of the harder games.
  • Narm Charm: The less-detailed mini portraits from the Game Boy Advance games look very goofy◊ even when the games themselves are serious in tone, but fans love them just for how funny they look.
  • Newer Than They Think: A lot of fans that started with Awakening, are surprised to find out that Anna having a Money Fetish and having many identical sisters, all named Anna, are all features introduced in that game. Some even express surprise that Heroes Anna's Money Fetish is only present in paralogues. In prior games, Anna was a singular character and valued fun and her own quirks over money.
  • Once Original, Now Common: Archanea was the series that was the Trope Codifier for this series, as well as the entire genre (along with Shining Force and some games like Nintendo Wars). Most of the complaints for Shadow Dragon are pretty much this, as the remake was more of a straight up remake rather than a re-imagining.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: The "iron man" run, which forgoes not only the "Turnwheel" mechanic introduced in Shadows of Valentia, but also Save Scumming in favor of accepting and moving on from a unit's death. This sort of run was the intended way to play in some of the series' earliest installments, but later installments favoring the playstyle of carefully raising a smaller roster of units can turn an iron man into a true test of skill (and luck) for experienced Fire Emblem players.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop:
    • The Blazing Blade is considerably easier than The Binding Blade due to being the international audience's first official exposure to the series, with features such as having enemy reinforcements appear at the end of the Enemy Phase instead of at start and toning down the concentration of status staff enemies. The Sacred Stones is even easier. It goes up from there.
    • Awakening is a weird case. While New Mystery is far and away the hardest entry in the series thanks to its absurd highest difficulty mode and game mechanics, Awakening's Lunatic Mode+ is potentially the hardest mode in the series, but only because it is a Luck-Based Mission. Awakening's Normal and Hard modes are fairly easy, while the Lunatic Mode can be easily trivialized.
    • Fates was one of the hardest games in the series (Especially on Conquest). Echoes in contrast is much much easier due to maintaining a lot of mechanics and features (such as map design) from the original NES game.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike:
    • Thracia 776 is significantly harder than Genealogy, and was easily the hardest game in the series at the time, due to some of its unique mechanics such as fatigue, escape maps, requiring people to capture enemies to get new equipment, and staves having a chance to miss.
    • Radiant Dawn to Path of Radiance as a whole, but thanks to some changes made to the international version of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, western players noticed a significant difficulty spike when moving from Radiance to Dawn, so much the game was criticised heavily for it upon release.
    • Fates was this to Awakening in general. Fates, in contrast to Awakening, had units with much lower stats (especially health) than in Awakening, the second generation characters were merely sidegrades whereas Awakening's second generation were objective upgrades, smarter and more spiteful AI, some very unique gimmicks such as stat-debuffing weapons and hazards, and Asshole Reinforcements aren't announced several turns before they show up.
    • Engage is significantly more difficult than Three Houses, partly due to making it more difficult for the player to kill enemies on the Enemy Phase by adding in the Break mechanic(units that get hit by an attacking unit with a Weapon Triangle advantage can't counterattack on that combat or the next one), and having more challenging maps with mechanics such as Fog of War and AOE attacks that bombard the player.
  • Shipping: With the concept of supports in the later games, excluding remakes, the many different endings that come with A level support between two characters and the stat bonuses characters receive if they have A level supports and are next to each other, the game is actually encouraging characters to be shipped!
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Every single game. Example: In The Blazing Blade, the Lyn x Hector vs Eliwood vs Kent vs Rath vs Florina + whatever else comes to mind. And please, for the love of peace on the internet, do not bring up Roy's heritage...
    • If she's supported with Sain, Serra lampshades this at Lyn's expense.
    • And of course, theres the legendary Finn - Beowulf - Lachesis triangle.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks! AND It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Shadow Dragon is not well liked by fans because it is very close to the original (which fans tend to acknowledge as lacking) with only some of the improvements made in latter titles (meaning that most of the features were "removed").
    • In New Mystery of the Emblem, a lot of fans were bothered by the announcement of the addition of a "Casual" mode option (removing the series' signature permanent death). Fans turned to "meh" after the actual release proved Lunatic is moonstruck hard enough to ease the fears it would be the first sign in dumbing down the series.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The series may be high fantasy with bright, colorful graphics, but it's also filled with war, murder, racism, genocide, and incest, especially the Jugdral series. The only reason that these games have never been rated higher than T is that it's never shown, just spoken about and implied. There's a reason the first few games didn't make it out of Japan. Even Blazing Blade, the very first Fire Emblem game released internationally and which was rated E in its original release, has direct references to mass murder and human trafficking before you've even left the tutorial chapters.
    • Furthermore, In Sacred Stones there is a case of necrophilia: After capturing Renvall in Chapter 5x: Unbroken Heart, Orson leaves Ephraim's party to supposedly watch over Renais for them. He actually sells his Renais allies out to Grado, so that Riev and Lyon can see Orson's wife Monica brought back to life around six months before the game started. His betrayal is all for his devotion to Monica, and through exploiting Eirika's trust in his knighthood to lure her into a trap in Renvall, he returns to Renais to supposedly govern it. Come Chapter 16: Ruled by Madness when we meet him again, he is revealed to have done nothing to help govern Renais and instead locked himself in with his wife, and Renais is shown to be desolate. When the chapter is finished, we learn that she was brought back as a less than sentient corpse, only muttering "Darling..." over and over again. While she technically makes an appearance but doesn't physically appear, we can infer that Orson has likely already made love with his wife's dead body.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: A lot of characters are named after mythological figures, and while there are a few examples where they make sense, there's clearly some thrown in just for the hell of it. Please don't dig too deeply into why a guy would name his wyvern after the Greek God of Sun.
  • Woolseyism: The names of pretty much everything and everyone are changed in localization, which usually works well. Some are questionable (Celice becomes Seliph), but they work really well for the most part. The English writing is exceptional, too—there's often a huge gap in quality between the various fan translations and the official stuff.
     The anime adaptation 
  • Cliché Storm: It's basically your average '90s fantasy anime series; the bad guys invade the hero's homeland, spends his life on a different land with the heroine, hero saves said heroine's homeland, and the hero embarks on a Journey to stop the war. Nonetheless, it didn't stop fans from being interested in it.
  • Complete Monster: Gharnef, the Supreme Priest of Khadein, joined with Medeus, the ruler of Dolhr, to take over the continent of Archanea. Leading a siege upon the kingdom of Altea, resulting in Princess Elice seemingly dying he works with the traitors of Gra to kill off the Altea army and brutally kill King Cornelius after the king refuses to have his people enslaved. Reducing the country of Archanea to rubble in a swift and terrible victory, Gharnef with Medeus causes death to run rampant across half the world.
  • Fanon: There's a small number of people who treat Marth's last name from the anime, "Lowell", as canon, much like how some characters and almost everyone from Three Houses have. Some also add that last name to the names of his descendants (i.e. Chrom Lowell).
  • Fountain of Memes: The English dub, in general, has become this in the 2010s due to its cheesy voice direction and writing. This especially lead to fans making compilation videos of various scenes/dialogues from the dub itself, with one video only displaying scenes that contain Gordin in it, who also became a case of this.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!: One criticism about the series is that it only lasted for 2 episodes. Therefore, many were disappointed that there weren't any more episodes produced afterwards. Doesn't help that it only adapted the first three chapters of the original Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and its sequel, which resulted in the anime ending on a cliffhanger that was never solved.
  • Mainstream Obscurity: The anime is very well known in the Fire Emblem community, but most fans only watch it because of the English dub's weirdness, and it's rare to see anyone talk about the Japanese dub, let alone the anime's plot. Outside of the community itself, hardly anyone knew that it existed in the first place, and it's way less popular compared to other anime adaptations of other Nintendo IPs, such as Pokémon: The Series and Kirby: Right Back at Ya!.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Everything Gordin says in the English dub, due to his hammy dialogue. Honorable mentions include:
      • "FIVE POINTS!"
      • "LET THEM ALL GO?! But MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARS!!!"
      • "I HIT IT! DOGA! DID YOU SEE THAT SHOT?!", "WHAT DID YOU SAY?! I HIT IT ON THE MARK!", and "YOU BIG LOG! I HIT THAT BLACK SPOT IN THE MIDDLE! CAN'T YOU SEE-"
    • "Look at my hands."note 
    • Marsnote 
  • Memetic Psychopath: Gordin. Easy to see him as this between him sounding ridiculously juvenile about Mars letting their enemies go, as if he REALLY wanted to him kill them as much as a kid wanted to go to a candy shop and joyfully screeching “FIVE POINTS!” after shooting someone with an arrow.
  • Narm: In the original Japanese audio of the first episode, when Elice is about to warp her brother and Jagen out of Castle Altea to avoid getting captured, Marth began to shout her name in fear of losing his sister. However, the second time he does it, it ended up sounding more obnoxious than usual, possibly due the audio track deteriorating by the time the entire series was uploaded online. However, this resulted in Marth coming off as overdramatic, which completely sucked out all of the emotion it had. This is not present in the English dub, where Marth's scream sounded a bit quieter.
    • The English Dub in general is this, but special mention goes to Gordin, especially him going "Let them all go? But Maaaaars!" in the most ridiculously whiny voice possible. For some, the cheesiness is part of the fun though.
  • So Bad, It's Good: The English dub, due to the voice direction/writing being cheesy and the memes it spawned.
  • So Okay, It's Average: Some fans who don't find it to be So Bad, It's Good found the anime's plot to be okay at best, and a bit cheesy at worst. It's far from being a bad adaptation of the Archanea games, but the anime still has its flaws.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Though she barely had any characterization in the original games, the way Caeda was handled in this anime isn't that all well-liked, as this adaptation depicts her as clingy and tsundere, instead of the All-Loving Hero she is ingame. This is clearly something that did not please fans, and since then, all portrayals of Caeda following the anime more or less stayed true to her Nice Girl attitude.
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously: Despite the English voice acting being all-around hokey, it's clear that Spike Spencer is giving it his all to make his performance as Marth sound believable and lifelike.
  • Watch It for the Meme: The anime's Narmy English dub is pretty much the only reason most people watch or recommend this anime.

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