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    A 
  • Abandon Shipping: The Mysterious Man/Veronica had a minor following early on, but almost completely collapsed when later chapters were released revealing that they are siblings.
  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • A non-sexual example: the name of each Book I chapter from 1 to 8 as well as Book I, Chapter 10 is based on the title of the game the chapter is based on, rather than the names of the games' settings. Chapter 7, based on The Blazing Blade, is called "World of Blazing." Cue stoner jokes.
    • When leveling up with 5 or 6 stat increases, the regular younger Shadow Dragon version of Tiki will say "What's going on? I feel all hot." Some fans laughed or cringed upon reading this, doubly so given Tiki's youthful appearance, as this line would not be out of place in a hentai manga.
    • Content from Genealogy of the Holy War and The Sacred Stones, two games in the series infamous for Incest Subtext (though in the former's case, it's very blatant), were not only released at the same time, but as a paralogue called "Family Bonds". This is even lampshaded in Eirika and Ephraim's dialogue.
    • One of Ephraim's lines has him gasp (in surprise) when Kiran talks to him, and then tells them "You startled me! You almost met the tip of my lance." His tone of voice while saying this does not help matters.
    • During the Spring Festival, Xander mentions he's eager to "brandish his carrot". His artwork doesn't really help matters, even though he is wielding a big carrot lance.
    • One of Love Abounds Hector's special activation quotes is a play on the classic saying "My heart is singin'!”, but it can be interpreted a very different way...
      My arm is singin'!
    • If Laevatein levels up in battle and gains five or six stat increases, she'll say "My body is burning... I like it." This quote by itself suits her as someone from Múspell, but can be interpreted as lewd much like the quote from Valentine's Hector above.
    • The "To Stay Dancing" version of Lachesis says the below during her Level 40 confession (she's talking about "formal dance parties" and dancing, not... you know):
      I fancy balls, but if my partner does not have equal stature to that of my brother, it simply would not work out.
    • Dieck's dialogue when summoning him can sound very phallic, as his name is spelt very similarly to a certain body part.
      You my new employer? If you want to hire Dieck, you better be ready to pay for Dieck.
    • That the incredibly Ship Tease-y Chrom and Male Robin duo was released on a Valentine's banner whose associated paralogue number was 69 was already enough to send eyebrows waggling. The fact that the Paralogue's last map was titled 'Inside All Along' was just the cherry on top.
    • Eitri's finishing move animation and Skill-activation artwork, where she's seen firing with her weapon, which is even larger than her. The problem is, that weapon is right between her legs. It's even worse by the fact that a sphere is attached to the gun in a... certain place. It's impossible to not see it as a giant... thing about to blast.
  • Adorkable:
    • In the Forging Bonds event "A Trust Earned", Fjorm is so desperate to befriend animals that she's resorted to wearing cat ears.
    • Xander in his Nohrian Summer self allows himself to loosen up and sometimes does comically silly actions that one would not expect. He revealed to the summoner that he named his own floatie toy "Lilith". And in the Japanese version of the game, he will scream "Lilith!!!" in an agonized way if his HP reaches half or below, which is when his injured art is put on display where a torn-up Lilith floatie can be seen.
  • Americans Hate Tingle:
    • On a general banner level, banners focused around Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, and Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade sell moderately better in Japan compared to the West, where banners focused around said games tend to be among the worst selling banners of the year. This is generally chalked up to the No Export for You nature of the three titles, given that all three games were never localized, so they lack a strong foundation compared to other titles. This is more noticeable should any of the three games have a banner not featuring more well-known characters like Roy, Sigurd, or Reinhardt, the three being some of the more note worthy characters in the western fanbase.
    • Of the many characters that appear in this game, Young Tiki is extremely controversial, at least to the non-Japanese playerbase. In Japan, she's among the most popular and iconic characters in the entire franchise and her getting a lot of variants isn't deemed to be much of an issue. On the other hand, a lot of players outside Japan either hate or are very critical of her due to being oversaturated, as well as being blamed for overshadowing her adult self from Awakening (despite being one of the winners of Choose your Legends round 6), while several non-Japanese players either don't mind the favoritism Young Tiki has been given or think that her oversaturation isn't so much of a big deal as her opposers make it out to be.
  • And You Thought It Would Fail: There were a lot of obstacles that Nintendo had faced before releasing the game, even in the US. While the Japanese were more welcome with mobile gachapon games, Americans were not as welcoming. Nintendo wasn't exactly known for continued mobile game supports either, and the game had to be a watered down version of mainline Fire Emblem games. Not to mention if they had planned to release non-English FE features, many casual fans wouldn't recognize the characters, while the older fans might not like the early rosters filled with mostly newer 3DS era characters. After taking notes of all those, Nintendo went ahead and released the game... and it turned out to be one of their greatest successes.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • The heroes you encounter in story mode are all... shockingly blasé about repeatedly being ripped from their home dimensions, becoming the contractual mind-slaves of multiple evil empires, and being forced to wreak the kind of destruction and misery upon the innocent that most of them devoted their lives to fighting in their original games. Most of them treat it like a minor inconvenience at worst. This is especially jarring with Book II Chapter 7, where Surtr murders Fjorm's sister in front of the player and Leif's crew (who were the theme enemies for the chapter) is oddly sicced at you afterwards. The term "contract" has rarely been brought up since Book III (with only one mention about Líf issuing them) and hasn't been mentioned in any Book IV or onward chapter since.
    • Near the end of Book IV, Freyja claims that Alfonse has been killed by Alfaðör as a punishment for defeating Hel in Book III. Even though her claims were later revealed to be false, no one really bothers to react.
    • After it was revealed that the Summoner dreamed that they were Alfonse, the closest things they get to speaking lines are multiple "..." spread through the chapters. They don't even get real lines after Freyja threatens to kill all the elves if they still insist on waking up!
    • During Book VII, Heiðr's death is only important for one chapter and only gets brought up once in the next chapter before it is forgotten about and Heiðr is never mentioned again. This is especially strange because Seiðr loves Heiðr more than anyone else in the world, but this plot point turns out to be irrelevant and Seiðr strangely recovers much quicker from her trauma than she should have.
  • Annoying Video Game Helper:
    • The Tempest Trials difficulty recommendations. While it can thankfully be turned off, when it was first implemented in Tempest Trials+: Thunder's Fist, it frustrated many players thanks to the assistant invoking Damn You, Muscle Memory!, as players who automatically selected the top-scoring levels would accidentally play the much lower-rewarding Hard difficulty.
    • Not a fan of Mjölnir's Strike? The game constantly updates you whenever a new phase changes. This is the only major mode that does so until update 4.7.0 allows you to turn it off.
  • Anti-Climax Boss:
    • Julia, the boss of Tempest Trials: Genealogy of Light, is simply weak by Tempest Trials standards. Compared to her green mage predecessors (Veronica, with a set of optimised skills worthy of the Arena and the dubious honor of the ONLY Tempest Trial boss in the game so far to use a Sacred Seal in the form of Quickened Pulse, (Alm having a similar honour of using Phantom Spd as a Seal in his and Celica's BHB, the first of BHBs) and Sonya, who combines ridiculous offensive stats with Vantage, essentially preventing any mage or archer from finishing her off if she doesn't die in one shot), her kit is extremely underwhelming, and contains poor skill selections that don't synergise well, basically being her innate skills plus Poison Strike. She simply relies on pure stat inflation to win fights — a trick that she performs poorly at that, as even Arvis, a 1.2x bonus unit widely available due to being a F2P unit obtained through an event battle, can handily and consistently win a 1v1 duel with her. Her map is also designed such that the enemies are forced to trickle one by one into the player team's starting positions to attack, limiting their choices and making it easy for the player to handle the enemies one by one. However, the developers seem to have realized this by the time the seventh Tempest Trials rolled around, as its boss (Brave Ike) can fall into That One Boss territory.
    • Right after Brave Ike, we get Regular Male Robin for the eighth and Christmas-themed Tempest Trials: A Gift of Peace. He shares many of the shortfalls of Julia (poor nonsynergistic kitnote , stat inflation that hardly benefits him), which in his case is exacerbated by each and every 1.4x bonus unit being able to comfortably resist his attacks even on the hardest (Lunatic 7) setting, then proceed to kill him on the player phase. Even then, his inflated Atk is still so poor that most green units with even just moderate Res (at least 25) can easily take little to no damage from him with aid of the common Triangle Adept skill. Unlike Julia, this is mitigated slightly in his favor by his chokepoint-heavy map, which forces the player to selectively choose units that will initiate or bait him and/or his Elite Mooks.
    • Winter Sothis is considered significantly easier than even her Paralogue encounter, which the latter is armed with Distant Counter. You could easily nuke her with a powerful ranged unit without worrying about getting hit back, and even the forces around her aren't that hard to deal with either - it's mostly Infantry and Cavalry units with some Ranged units, so you might have to occasionally watch your Flyers for any Archers, but that's about it.
    • While Book I Chapter 12 (had a lot of That One Level Timed Mission stages and a relatively hard boss) and Book II Chapter 12 (had a pretty challenging boss in the form of Loki) were considered pretty climactic penultimate chapters, the same cannot be said for the Book III version. None of the levels are particularly hard, even on Lunatic, and Líf himself is quite easy to dispatch, even through the virtue of being a reinforcements map. This book seems to be the only one to do this so far, as Books IV and Book V continue the tradition of tough climax bosses on the penultimate book chapter.
    • After being built up for several years, the Tempest Trials fight with Thórr is a sad disappointment. She has the misery of being an axe flier with no way to counter ranged attacks, she's got no protection for her bow weakness, no damage reduction, has a low speed stat, making it easy for someone like the Tempest Trial reward unit Shamir to kill her even on Lunatic, and two of the bonus units are the powerful archer Shinon, one of whom has weapon triangle advantage, meaning he can very easily kill her with little issue.
    • Book VII, Chapter 12 features a pretty underwhelming fight against Kvasir. Ignoring the fact that she was completely Out of Focus in the story, her final confrontation with the Order of Heroes is laughably easy and anticlimactic compared to how frustratingly difficult some of the other Chapters in the Book are (namely, Chapters 8 and 10). If anything, two other units that aid her in battle are more dangerous than her: Mycen for how surprisingly tanky he is, and Rearmed Sonya for her ability to warp to any ally instantly.
  • Arc Fatigue:
    • The travel to the alternate realm of Askr section in Book III, starting at Chapter 7, and ends at Chapter 12. It takes 3 Chapters to reveal the identity of the realm and who "Thrasir" and "Líf" truly are as well as the Macguffin needed to stop Hel, then another 3 more chapters for Hel's Generals to be dealt with and get said Macguffin before the Order finally return back to Hel to fight the Big Bad. At this point, there is 1 Chapter left and no more time to do anything else except beat Hel. Not helped by the fact that during all of this, Hel, the Big Bad of the Book, was nowhere to be seen, leaving little time to see and learn more about her.
    • In general, much of the game's storytelling suffers due to how much real life time passes between releases compared to how much story is actually being told. The Story Mode chapters are all updated once a month (with the exception of the first two chapters of every new book which are released in tandem), but despite having five battle maps per update, prior to Book V it was very rare for them to include story progression for any part besides 1 and 5, and even with Book V being the longest book in terms of sheer text, it still feels dragged out once the Midpoint movie confirmed Eitri is a villain and Fáfnir would become a dragon, and then takes several real life months to actually show it happening.
    • While the actual story of the "Ice and Flame" Tempest Trial series was mostly well received, the length of the story was not. The story was spread across six Tempest Trials, which only happen monthly, and the story spends more time building up to the big Fjorm and Laegjarn interaction by having what comes across as padding at several points (such as Loki and Thorr randomly having a dedicated chapter to just setup the conflict). Like the Story Mode, Tempest Trials only update once a month, and get even less dialogue to work with by comparison, so the extra padding does nothing but drag out what is a fairly simple story about Nifl and Múspell selecting champions to fight each other, only for Múspell to be defeated. Not to mention how every Tempest Trial lasts around two weeks, and you can't read the ending dialogue until it's over. Tellingly, the next Tempest Trial story, "Life & Death", cut almost all the filler and had a better reception.
  • Awesome Art: Even though the character artwork is drawn by various artists, many of them are very well-designed. Even Arthur, who gets an unorthodox comic book art style like that of Codename STEAM, looks even more heroic in his style.
  • Awesome Music: It's Fire Emblem, so it's a given. See here.

    B 
  • Badass Decay: Due to the addition of new skills and higher stats, many previously strong units will eventually become outclassed. A notable example is Regular Takumi who started as a Game-Breaker thanks to his innate Close Counter skill and solid statline, then fell off as more powerful archers like Bridal Cordelia and Brave Lyn were introduced, and was finally reduced to a Starter Mon as of version 2.5.0.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Some of the original characters in Fire Emblem Heroes tend to get this reception for various reasons:
    • Alfonse has had divided reception since the beginning of Book III, due to the story focusing much more on him and the kind of character he is. Several fans have expressed their love for Alfonse as he has his Character Development within Book III and subsequential Books, showing how badass he can be with his tactical thinking to outwit his opponents, and making him stand out from other lords in the Fire Emblem franchise. On the other hand, some fans hate Alfonse for stealing the spotlight too much, often at the expense of other characters in story, specifically his sister Sharena and as other new characters introduced within a Book, which have rendered them Flat Characters as a result. Adding insult to injury is the sheer amount of alternative versions that Alfonse gets, such as a New Year variant with Sharena stuck as the cheerleader for him, as well as Líf, his adult self from a Bad Future, who also received a Valentine's Variant; as that banner's Duo Hero.
    • Fjorm. Some fans praise Fjorm for devoting their love to the Summoner for helping them defeat Surtr in Book II, as well as giving her a motivation to stick with the Order of Heroes after the events of her story. As well as this, fans have grown to love Fjorm for her presence in Forging Bonds in several Support conversations, which have added more characterization to her than usual. When she received a Tempest Trials story that would wrap up her arc with her Incurable Cough of Death when she gave her life to Nifl, fans were happy to see the attention she was getting, such as getting her own song "Flower of Ice" and even an Ascended Hero. However, much like the previous example above, other fans have grown to dislike Fjorm due to seeing her as a Creator's Pet, due to the sheer amount of Character Shilling and spotlight stealing that Fjorm tends to do. Those fans find her appearing at almost every opportunity to be very annoying, especially how it's not-so subtly implied she's in love with the Summoner, which fans have found creepy for various reasons. Additionally, they dislike Fjorm due to the sheer amount of attention she gets in Forging Bonds, thinking she would be best removed in favor of other characters or stories that would suit a character's Support chain better. Lastly, fans who dislike Fjorm tend to agree that her Tempest Trials story "Ice and Flame" dragged on way longer than it needed to, on top of all of the variants she receives in favor of others.
    • Veronica. Once an Ensemble Dark Horse, after Book VI, she had become hugely divisive. Some fans love Veronica for her adorable yet sympathetic character and appreciate the number of alts that she receives every year, starting with her Brave variant in 2018. On top of that, her supporters have enjoyed Book VI for giving a much larger focus on Veronica and concluding the arc between Askr and Embla's conflicts, as well as her role in the story being changed to aid the Order of Heroes every Book. However, other fans have grown to dislike Veronica for these exact same reasons due to how many times Veronica appears in the story and in Special Heroes banners, appearing at least once in every single Book to aid the Order of Heroes in whatever big threat they need help with to destroy. Book VI is regarded as the most egregious case of this, as, much like Fjorm and Alfonse earlier, people have accused Veronica of stealing the spotlight at every single opportunity at the expense of everyone else, Sharena most of all, to the point where her detractors call out Veronica for "replacing" Sharena as the Deuteragonist of the game. While Veronica still has a lot of fans, other fans have had a lingering distaste for the princess believing that she overstays her welcome.
  • Better on DVD: Much of the game's story is better understood when you can read it all in one go, as opposed to waiting for one chapter a month.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • Xander briefly appears in the first level of Paralogue 10, lectures Seth about his allegiance to Veronica, and disappears as quickly as he popped up, never to be seen in another level in that paralogue.
    • Panne in the first and final part of the Book III chapter with the Kitsune and Wolfskin units. While her GHB did correspond with the banner, she's not from the same game as them and she doesn't even say anything, making her appearance there oddly noticeable.
    • Just about every Hero fought from Book II onwards could be seen as this. While Book I made clear they were fighting under Veronica's contracts, rarely would any of the Heroes say anything related to the situation going on in the future Books, instead saying lines they said in their home games and never once interact with any of the story characters. Some Book II chapters and paralogues do bring up the particular heroes as being under contract, the whole concept seems to be thrown away from Book III onwards outside of a slight mention from Reyson.
    • Before the final battle against Líf, he delivers a threat while his eyes glow red... Something that he's never done before and is never acknowledged in any way.
    • Veronica's sole appearance in Book VII. She fights Gullveig, loses, and then vanishes for the rest of the story. Likely meant to tell the player she isn't going to be able to help, but it comes out of no where early in the book, and never gets referenced again.
  • Breather Boss:
    • In the first Illusory Dungeon, floors 76-80 contain a boss fight against Fae...who will go down in 4 hits even if you set yourself to the highest difficulty. However, after beating her, Sophia - the REAL boss - challenges you to an actual harder tap battle. This is a common trend in the 76-80 bosses in Tap Battle, where almost everyone fought has been a Bait and Switch, including Sharena, Caeda, Summer Tana, Arthur, and Bartre.
    • In the "Wings Carry Me" Illusory Dungeon, floors 1-20 have Tsubasa. She's a fairly standard floor 20 boss coming off the heels of a nasty 121-note level, and acts as a very welcome reprieve.
    • Following the outright overpowered final boss of the "Familiar Stranger" Tempest Trial (Harmonized Spring Myrrh & Nah), the final boss of the "Princess's Gloom", Harmonized Young Eirika and Ephraim, is significantly easier due to being closer to a Fragile Speedster, meaning a tanky blue unit can tank the hit fairly well and counter. The only area of concern is their weapon and having Null Follow-Up, but this isn't too dangerous. In fact, the arena is arguably more of a threat than said boss.
    • Following the previous "Life & Death" Tempest Trial bosses, all of which were very hard fights thanks to including foes like Rearmed Líf and Ascended Eir, the final boss of "Life & Death 5", Ganglöt, is a huge step down in difficulty compared to the other bosses. She isn't outright a cakewalk since she is still a potentially tough foe on account of her Arcane Downfall making her tough to tackle head on, but her axe typing means she's very easy to beat with a decently tanky red sword unit, or with ranged units. In particular, the reward unit, Ninja Haar, can easily counter her with a mild amount of investment on account of his weapon giving him a huge boost to his defenses, and she's very weak to units with Vantage, so a unit with Vantage and a special ready can take her out on one hit.
    • Ginnungagap, the boss of "Nihility & Dream 5" and "Nihility & Dream Finale", is easier to defeat than the previous "Nihility & Dream" Tempest Trials bosses, especially when compared to Rearmed Eitr and Harmonized Teatime Ayra & Mercedes. While her Arcane Void does give her -1 special cooldown, +5 to all stats, in-combat Sabotage, a guaranteed follow-up, and special cooldown charge +1 per attack, these effects are easy to work around with follow-up negation, Null-Follow Up, and/or Vantage, since she has middling Spd, lacks Damage Reduction, and doesn't have Canto like the aforementioned bosses did, which would otherwise have made her a Goddamned Boss. Because she is a colorless dagger cavalier, you can put your tank within 5 spaces of her to avoid triggering her Spd/Def Menace, and she also doesn't have this skill on Hard 30 and below. The reward unit, Ninja Saizo, has high Spd and Def, comes with a brave weapon that doesn't reduce his stats, and can equip the Null Follow-Up sacred seal to prevent her from doubling him, making him a decent answer to her. She's a bit tougher in "Nihility & Dream Finale", having Atk/Spd Catch 4 on Lunatic difficulties and trading out Spd/Def Menace for Fatal Smoke 3, and the reward unit, Winter Claude, has to inherit either Daggerbreaker 3 or Miracle to survive against her, but she's still relatively easy to deal with.

    C 
  • Captain Obvious Reveal: Few fans were surprised when Book 6, Chapter 3 revealed that Letizia was the one who wanted to overthrow Veronica, due to her being the leader of Embla's Secret Police, her being the only newly introduced member of the royal family, and her looking like a green mage in the Book 6 trailer, on top of resembling fellow villain, Hel. If anything, the real surprise is the reveal being dropped early on rather than the story playing coy, albeit because the character is the Disc-One Final Boss of the Book.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • It can be very satisfying to kill villains with the heroes that they wronged in their home games, or to finish off hated characters with beloved ones. Or, depending on your taste, vice versa.
    • Arvis' Grand Hero Battle is the closest thing you can get to having control of the extremely tragic Battle of Belhalla and possibly averting it by beating Arvis, something that many fans wished to happen. It's possible to have Sigurd be the one to defeat him, too! How's that for revenge? Not only that, you can also bring Deirdre and have her fight against Arvis for a change.note
      • Additionally, in the "Fated Battles" Voting Gauntlet, Sigurd trounced Arvis in his first round. Lots of Sigurd fans were jumping for joy at the fact that Sigurd won against Arvis for once.
      • Taken further with the Grand Hero Battle with Travant, where you can also defeat him just fine and dandy using a team of Leonster family (Quan, Ethlyn, Leif, Altena and you can switch one of them with Finn) as a vengeance for the Yied Massacre. It also further helps that the map somehow isn't Yied Desert (it's actually Mease, Seliph's main headquarter on the 9th Chapter of Genealogy), so Travant lost his upper hand against Quan in the past, and he didn't bring Gungnir with him too.
      • The Beyond Destiny Tactics Drills map, features Quan, Ethlyn, and Finn in a desert map filled to the brim with Wyvern Rider enemies, with a lot of them even having anti cavalry weapons, which is a reference to Quan and Ethlyn's demise in the Yied Desert. However, the map also features Legendary Leif, who can shoot down every flier quite handily. You'll get to feel like you're saving Quan and Ethlyn from their tragic fate, and it's through the help of their son of all people. Quan, Ethlyn, and Finn all need to help buff (or heal in Ethlyn's case) Leif to guide them all to victory, making it feel like a real family effort.
    • Book II Chapter 10 gives us the sweet, sweet satisfaction of emptying Surtr's health bar. Bonus points if you do it with Brave/Spring Veronica, Thrasir*, Xander, Fjorm, Gunnthrá, Ylgr, Hríd, or any fire mage. Although it doesn't stick canonically at this point, you get to do him in for real in Book II Chapter 13.
      • Better yet, as of the Generals of Múspell banner, you can add Laegjarn, Laevatein, and Helbindi to the list of characters who can kill him. Revenge is a dish Best Served Cold indeed.
      • And just for kicks, with the Brave Redux banner, you can have Loki kill Surtr.
      • If you still feel like being cheeky, with the Fire and Ice banner, you can kill Surtr using Surtr himself.
      • During the Nifl vs. Muspell voting gauntlet, it's pretty satisfying to see Nifl gain the upper hand against Múspell for once, with all four Nifl royals making it to the second round. Especially satisfying was Fjorm's victory against Surtr and eventually winning the Gauntlet, which she deserves after everything she's been through.
    • The Grand Hero Battle of Sonia. It was actually pretty simple enough that it can be carried out by anyone to deliver yet another utter beatdown for one of the franchise's earliest international Hate Sinks, but it's even sweetened with the fact that Sonia is a Blue Tome unit, while Nino, her abuse victim, is either Green Tome (her default or Flying variant) or Blue Tome (Christmas variant), meaning that most players will have an easier time to have Nino deliver well-deserved vengeance against Sonia, and with Heroes leveling system, they don't have to go through so much trouble in leveling Nino to the point of being able to execute this satisfying move.
    • Further on that, the April 2022 Grand Hero Battle pits you against the Queen of Friege, Hilda, pretty much Sonia's progenitor and a proven 'devil in human skin'. Not to mention, those who played her game knows the horrific torture she delivered to Tailtiu (to the point of killing her) and Tine. Have fun deploying not just Tine, but also Tailtiu to finally exact vengeance against this devil hag that made their lives so miserable in the beginning. For even better, unrelated catharsis, you can also bring in the much sweeter Hilda from Fodlan, pretending like taking offense that the queen used the name of the sweet girl in the worst way possible.
  • Character Perception Evolution: Veronica was easily the most popular Original Character during the first year of the game, due to her compelling writing, character development, and relationship with Bruno. It lead to her being the second place winner of the first Choose Your Legends event. Seemingly in response, the writers began making Veronica an important part of each Book’s story in some way while giving her more alts compared to the Askr trio, causing Veronica to gradually become more polarizing as she began to become a Spotlight-Stealing Squad compared to the Askr trio. This eventually reached its peak during Book VI, where Veronica became the main focus of the story, and overshadowed all of the other characters in terms of focus, to the point where she was chosen as the Heroes rep for Fire Emblem Engage, and it being based around her appearance in said chapter. After Book VI ended, Veronica now is significantly more polarizing compared to before, going from a Breakout Villain in the eyes of fans, to being something of a Creator's Pet by the writers at the expense of the rest of the cast, with some players disliking her now because of how much focus she gets compared to other characters.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
    • Many players will "reroll" (that is, uninstall and reinstall the game, or erase just the game data if playing on Android) until they summon the characters they want with their free 15 orbs. This is generally done to get one of the better units so that the player has a powerful unit to start off with right away.
    • When it comes for unit builds, people sometimes resort to the same but tried and true skills to inherit on certain units:
      • For the first few weeks of the Skill Inheritance metagame, the skill Fury dominated the A skill slot due to the interaction between the skill and the Base Stats weighting in the Arena. Slapping the skill on your unit increases the unit stats by 12 which increases the scoring of an Arena run by a significant amount. This trend has died down following the change to the Arena scoring system, but it is still considered one of the best A slot skills out there purely for being an extremely well-rounded skill, and later gained a resurgence with the release of Fury 4.
      • Units with Distant Counter often run Vantage as well. Such a unit would need to be dispatched in a single round, otherwise they will be able to strike first, letting them get the jump on their foes. They would also fear no range thanks to Distant Counter.
      • For years, the most common Dragon unit build a player would see in PVP modes was Lightning Breath +, Steady or Warding Breath, and Quick Riposte 3. This was because Lightning Breath + was an easy to get Distant Counter Breath weapon that all Dragon units could get, while the Breath skill would counter the special charge penalty from said Breath, and allow the unit to be a terrifying counter to almost every unit type save very specific units. This grew even more when all Dragon Breath weapons gained adaptive damage, making the build even better for countering ranged units, since many early Dragon units were Mighty Glacier or Stone Wall units that could survive even top tier units like Reinhardt. The build largely began to die down as Distant Counter and its variants became easier to obtain, and players found new ways of dealing with it, but this build was so commonly used that Arena was plagued with Dragons for a long time.
      • Units with Mighty Glacier stats would either go for a defensive build run Distant Counter or Close Counter from either their weapons or A-skill, a Breath skill in their A-skill if they have a Distant Counter weapon, and either Vengeful Fighter, Quick Riposte, or Dragon's Ire as their B-Skill, just to guarantee their follow-up attacks and make maximum use of their bulk and Atk, or for an offensive build inherit a Brave Weapon, Death Blow 3/4 for their A-skill, Bold Fighter or a weapon-breaker skill for B-Skills, to make maximum use of their high Atk.
      • For the longest time, Moonbownote  was the go-to skill for specials for Glass Cannons and Lightning Bruisers, due to its low cooldown of only 2, and thus, unlike Reprisalnote  and Glimmernote , the latter of which had 3 cooldown until 2.0.0, is very reliable in dealing damage and activating on a short cooldown. It wasn't until update 2.0.0 that the cooldown of many specials were lowered by 1, including Glimmer, that players now have to choose either Glimmer or Moonbow as their preferred special for those units, or the more rare Ruptured Skynote  and Vital Astranote  for those who can inherit it.
      • The most commonly used Assist that units will have is Reposition thanks to its versatility. It can be used to get an ally out of danger, or it can be used to help propel an ally into the fray. With the Hero's Path quests giving a free Barst (who has Reposition), and one such quest instructing the player to inherit a skill, it's clear that even the devs acknowledge how popular and well used this Assist is.
      • If you see a Lightning Bruiser Infantry unit in Aether Raids or the Coliseum modes, prepare to see either Null Follow-Up or Close Call/Repel/Sprun/Frenzy on those units, as they will use their high Spd to their maximum potential, as Null Follow-Up allows them to have to have follow-up attack while at least make sure that their foes do not while also disabling many Action Initiative skills that favor the foe, and Close Call/Repel/Spurn/Frenzy, while restricted to Sword/Lance/Axe Infantry units, allows them to reduce damage taken from enemy attacks and non-Røkkr AOE specials by 4% for each point of Spd they have over their foes, up to 40% damage reduced. This is especially bad if their Spd is in the 50s, with little ways to completely outspeed them during combat if they reach those numbers.
      • In terms of generic, inheritable tomes, expect players to be running the Fox tomes if their unit is primarily player phase focused. The tomes decrease all of the enemies stats by four when attacked, which makes it very powerful and easy to turn even moderately okay units into hard hitting units thanks to basically reducing the enemies overall power, which is helped by the ease of access for acquiring the tomes. While Blade tomes are still used on occasions, their focus on visible buffs in an age where many units can No-Sell them, means they are often replaced by Fox tomes. For enemy phase units, the Serpent tomes are the go to choice due to having a Distant Defense 3 effect (+6 Def/Res when attacked), making many highly defensive mages capable of shutting down ranged units with ease. Other commonly used tomes include the Bloom tomes from the Valentine's 2021 banner (inflicts Atk/Res -5 on foes if near allies and also heals 4 HP), which is rarer but highly sought after because it can work on both phases.
      • Following the release of Arcane weapons, expect to see many units running around with an Arcane weapon, and at least one Tier 4 skill from said unit, due to the sheer power Arcane weapons bring to units who lack unique weapons.
    • Many healing Assist Skills got hit with this on both sides before and after update 2.0.0 was released:
      • Before update 2.0.0, despite giving +1 special cooldown, Rehabilitate was the best healing assist skill in the game due to outclassing the other healing Assist Skills, which either only had a fixed healing number, such as Recover only healing 15 HP and Physic only recovering 8, or Martyr required the healer to be badly damaged to recover more. It allowed HP recovered by +2 for every HP missing under 50%, +7 healed example, so a unit being at 7 HP or less remaining would mean they will get fully healed with Rehabilitate.
      • With update 2.0.0, many of the healing Assist Skills receive Balance Buffs, one being removing the +1 special cooldown, so players went with Recover+, Physic+, and the later released Restore+, while Rehabilitate+ wasn't used as much. The reason for the shift is that how much HP is recovered is now based on half of the user's Atk stat, but it didn't scale well with Rehabilitate+. Recover+ uses 50% of the user Atk, rounded down, +10, with a minimum of 15 HP healed, while Physic+ and Restore+ only uses 50% of the user's Atk, with a minimum 8 HP healed, and Physic+ has a range of 2 and Restore+ removing all debuffs and negative statuses on the target, so all three of them are more reliable when healing, even at the middle ranges of an ally's remaining HPexample. Meanwhile, Rehabilitate+ has the same +2 recovered per HP missing under 50%, but uses 50% of the user's Atk, rounded down, -10, with a minimum of 7, and uses that as the base healingexample, and as a result, while serviceable, Rehabilitate+ wasn't used as much as the others now.
    • Full armor teams, also known as "Armor Emblem", is another popular type of team to run, especially in Arena. While more difficult to obtain due to many strong armor units being 5* exclusive (such as Hector, Amelia, Male Grima, Hardin, and Zelgius, to name a few), those who get them and build them up into a team will see their score in Arena shoot up due to their high BSTnote . Also, due to their usually high bulk, they'll easily shrug off damage normally lethal to other unit movement types, and with the introduction of Save skills they can protect their weaker allies from certain attack ranges in the process. As such, expect to seem them a lot in high tier Arena teams, especially if an armored unit is a bonus unit.
    • In Aether Raids:
      • When it comes to building your defenses in Aether Raids, the Spring Breeze map was the most picked map. The maps has 4 wall tiles (which blocks all movement types), which the other maps do not have, allowing players to build a choke point with all their buildings while also making it tedious to flank defense units with the 7 turn limit. Spring Breeze was so rampant that the developers nerfed it by replacing two of the walls with breakable ones. Even with the nerf, alongside Abandoned Castle and Snowdust, it was one of the most used maps due to still creating choke points in all of them with the Fortress placements in specific tiles near the unbreakable walls, so, including the two other maps mentioned, it was nerfed again in update 3.6.0, where the bottom right wall was made breakable as well.
      • The Desert map is the most popular pick for players that run Defense Teams with high mobility ranged units while also punishing Offense Teams that run too many buildings, even with the Safety Fence deployed, due to the two mountain tiles on the bottom of the map being perfect obstacles for Offense Teams when the two empty tiles on the same row are filled with the Fort and Decorations preventing initiation on the Defense Team and the Offense Team wasting actions breaking the Decorations in order to attack, especially if one uses a non-Flier team, or can only target a few units that potentially are protected by a Save unit and is going to be stranded themselves if they do try, while the Defense Team can pick off any unit they can reach on their turn, especially those that can deal damage when combat begins.
      • Introduced in update 6.6.0, the Jötunheimr Castle map became the new one that players commonly pick. Like the above Spring Breeze pre-nerf, it features walls, and while it only has 2 walls 1 space away from the left and right side of the map, players can place their fort on the edges to force a chokepoint to the center of the map and create a tedious workaround on the weaker side. Like the above Spring Breeze, it was later nerfed in an update in July 2022 to have the walls be breakable after two attacks.
      • Aether Raid Defense teams will almost certainly run dancers, any Game-Breaker ranged cavalry, and/or armored units with Wary Fighter and high defenses to either eliminate at least one foe or stall to gain victory by running out the turn limit.
      • If not attempting to stall, Aether Raid Defense teams will instead pour all of their effort and support into one or two monster units, solely to get at least one KO so the defending team loses less Lift. Especially common examples include Ophelia with Hardy Bearing to immediately obliterate someone with a powerful Area of Effect Special (and their Vantage passives), Regular and Pirate Tibarn with Heavy Blade, Galeforce and Pass to oneshot someone in the attacker's backline, with supports like Legendary Azura with her busted support kit to refresh the beast unit so most debuffs are neutralized when trying to tank them and Aversa with her Aversa's Night to inflict Panic and -3 Atk/Spd/Def/Res to punish and debuff foes who bunch up together and have at least 3 less HP than her.
    • For Summoner Duels, captain skills may be subject to this. For example, when Quick Draw, a skill that guarantees the bearer to go first while removing an action for the opponent during Rounds 2 to 4, was implemented, nearly every player ran that skill either to ensure priority or to protect themselves from others also using the skill.
    • When auto battling game modes like Tempest Trials+ or Forging Bonds, most players will pick Hard difficulty. This is because enemies on Lunatic will always have their personal weapons, while enemies on Hard don't until the later maps of Tempest Trials+. Enemies with their prfs have the power to single handedly wipe out a player's team, especially due to the Artificial Stupidity from auto battle, while enemies without their prfs are much easier for a team on auto pilot to handle. Tellingly, Heroes' Journey does not have a Lunatic difficulty for grinding purposes, only Normal and Hard.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Book II: Surtr, the King of Muspell, expresses a lust for carnage and domination. He begins by invading the Kingdom of Nifl, and caps off the conquest by burning Fjorm's mother alive before her eyes. To oppose the Order of Heroes, Surtr forms an alliance with the Embla Empire, but quickly reveals his intent to burn the young Princess Veronica alive slowly and painfully in the Rite of Flames. Surtr tries to force an early surrender from Prince Alfonse by forcing the Order to choose between their lives and an innocent Askran village. Later, when Fjorm's older sister Gunnthra enlists the help of the Summoner and the Order to cull Surtr's invulnerable Muspellflame, he finds Gunnthra and proceeds to incinerate her in front of Fjorm, mocking the girl all the while. Showing no regard to even his own people, Surtr kept the village of his top soldier Helbindi, including his younger sister Menja, under the threat of a fiery death should he fail, a fate which unfortunately comes to pass. His boundless cruelty even extends to his daughters, who are treated as expendable tools he expects to obey his will and take every punishment for failure. Eventually betraying Veronica and even kidnapping the youngest princess of Nifl, Ylgr, Surtr plans to have them sacrificed to sustain his immortality. A sadistic and heartless excuse of a tyrant, Surtr provides no reason for his senseless and disgusting evil other than it being the blood right of a king.
    • Book III: Hel, ruler of the homonymous realm of the dead, seeks to have whole populations forcibly join her ranks so that she can dominate the Nine Worlds. Her campaigns have brought desolation to many alternate lands directly or indirectly, including Lif and Thrasir's worlds, where she manipulated their despair over their failures to gain their assistance in her cause. In the present day, Hel and her entourage have targeted Askr and Embla, slowly but surely killing more individuals through murder or curses to add as undead soldiers unable to fight back against her thrall, including Gustav, Alfonse's father. Most horrifically, Hel murdered Eir's real parents, constantly tormented her to steal her many lives for empowerment, and expected complete obedience for a suicide mission. Cold and dispassionate, Hel was nothing more than a ruthless excuse for a goddess of death.
    • Book VII: Njörðr is the king of Vanaheimr who secretly despises mortals for continuously growing in numbers yet also being inferior to the gods who are declining, and plots to end every single mortal through the erasure of time itself. As part of his plan, Njörðr would order Seiðr to have a baby with Kiran so that Heiðr would be born, and would then proceed to transfer the Golden Seer's curse on her, turning Heiðr into a monster. When Kiran and Seiðr are forced to kill her, the curse would then transfer to Seiðr, beginning her transformation into Gullveig, with Njörðr gloating on how he masterminded the situation and intending to turn Gullveig into his pawn to destroy all of time.
  • Crack Pairing: The Support system heavily implies that the characters get married at S-rank (their faces blushing appears to reinforce this), regardless of gender and their relationship in their home game. This means players can make all kinds of bizarre pairings, like pairing up characters with their mortal enemies, their siblings, parents with their children, or even an alternate version of themselves. This may have inspired some fans to create somewhat disturbing fanfiction that may or may not make you cringe.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: One of Halloween Henry's voiced lines is “Dying is just a costume change, and I can’t wait to be a ghost!”. In other words, Intelligent Systems slipped a suicide joke into their mobile game. It gets even more morbid when you take a look at Henry's solo ending in Awakening, where he is implied to commit suicide...
  • Crossover Ship:
    • The trailer showed Lucina and Xander as Back-to-Back Badasses. Needless to say, some people have started to ship them...
    • People began jokingly shipping all of the top ten from the Choose Your Heroes poll with their opposite gender counterparts because of the calendar pages they share (albeit, they ended up getting two different wallpapers), with the ones that have gotten the most attention being Roy/Lucina (which also already had some traction from the Super Smash Bros. fandom) and Hector/Tharja.
    • Brave Lyn seems to be paired very often. Having her in 9 of the Top 20 pairings for Ally Support, and both regular and Brave Lyn are two of the top 20 characters for Summoner Support. It doesn't help that Lyn herself was a Launcher of a Thousand Ships in the fandom since her debut.
    • Ephraim/Chrom, both in the platonic and pure shipping sense, absolutely exploded in popularity during their heated match, which as stated several times in this page, is widely agreed to have been the best round in the March 2017 Voting Gauntlet.
    • The support system encourages the player to make their own pairings. Some inter-universe ships, like Reinhardt/Xander, became popular immediately after its launch because of excellent gameplay synergy.
    • Grima's Draco in Leather Pants status and memetic role as the protector of dragons has also extended to pairing up his male version with Idunn, in large part because he's the Fell Dragon and she's the Demon Dragon.note 
    • Thea/Catria became a popular ship after the 2021 bridal banner, which depicted the two as a Harmonised Hero in matching wedding gowns. Though the associated video depicted them talking about their respective lord crushes, that only leads to easy plots in which their comforting each other leads to falling for each other too, and at the end of the day they are two brides happily making declarations about love, so it's not exactly a hard ship to notice.
    • Thorr/Gatekeeper became a popular crackship after the 2021 Brave Units Forging Bonds, which featured Thorr waging a battle against Askr, due to a scene in which Thorr praises Gatekeeper for his courage in attempting (with ultimate success!) to hold the gate against her. Fans like the dynamic of the serious, strong warrior lady and the somewhat goofy but warm-hearted simple gatekeeper.
    • After Astrid's Forging Bonds, which featured Eir coming to speak to her at night about their shared family difficulties while they watched the stars together, some came to ship the two due to their good chemistry and the romantic atmosphere of their scenes.

    D 
  • Designated Villain: Gullveig is the Golden Seer who destroyed the world in a previous cycle and is destined to win in the future. Despite this however, Gullveig isn't really an active threat in the story afterwards, as she rarely pops up on-screen. She only gets in the way of the heroes once, forcing them to retreat to the past. Afterwards, Gullveig doesn't truly do anything else villainous. Every other time Gullveig appears after her debutting chapter has her commit actions that help the heroes (namely, by taking them to the past to learn more about who Seiðr is, killing Njörðr, and giving the heroes the MacGuffin needed to defeat Gullveig and Kvasir and break the cycle and indirectly helping Seiðr be cured of the curse), which makes Gullveig feel less like a villain and more like a hero in villain's clothing. The only reason she's considered a villain in the first place is because it is said that Njörðr created her to destroy the world, and she supposedly won over many previous cycles. Although it was potentially done to subvert the idea that she's a cruel villain, some have noticed the difference in how she was written when first introduced compared to the rest of her appearances, which comes across as the writers backpedaling on her as a villain due to her unexpected popularity.
  • Difficulty Spike:
    • Book I Chapter 10 is when maps begin to have varied objectives such as Hold the Line and Timed Mission, the enemies only get more powerful, and enemy reinforcements are introduced.
    • The debut of Ursula's Grand Hero Battle introduces Lunatic difficulty and excludes Normal. Ursula's map is a difficulty spike in itself, as player units are placed in a severe tactical disadvantage.
    • Grand Hero Battles get Harder Than Hard again with the debut of Legion, who brings Infernal difficulty along with him. Legion's map is also the first instance in which a Grand Hero Battle has enemy reinforcements.
    • As if Infernal wasn't enough, special maps go one step further in difficulty with Abyssal, introduced alongside Legendary Marth's battle and the first rerun of Legendary Robin's battle. Every enemy in an Abyssal map has immense stats and a complete skill set, including Sacred Seals.
    • The Retrospective Battle map released at April Fool's in 2020 has the map difficulty be at Normal with Level 5 enemies, Hard with Level 15... and Infernal with Level 40+ enemies with reinforcements, skipping Lunatic entirely. What's more, the Infernal map has the enemy have their refined weapons, equipped with strong skills and have higher stats. If you want the 8-bit Anna accessory, you're going have to earn it.
    • Solon's Grand Hero Battle and Seliph & Deirdre's Bound Hero Battle in March 2021 on Infernal difficulty now introduces Tier 4 skills and refined weapons on most generic units, where beforehand units on that difficulty go only up to Tier 3 and only some units are equipped with refined weapons.
  • Disappointing Last Level:
    • Surtr's final confrontation in Book II, Chapter 13 is surprisingly anticlimactic compared to previous battles he was in. He himself doesn't have any special set-ups, even at the highest difficulty, and he doesn't even have any armored units to support him (compared to a previous battle such as Chapter 4-5, where an Armor March unit accompanied him). It's worth mentioning that the hardest enemy on the map is perhaps Flora of all people (which is funny considering she's the chapter icon). That's because not only will she most probably kill mages, she'll also catch units with Distant Counter builds off guard (which are generally good counters for Dagger units), so one would have to think twice before getting at her.
    • Gullveig's final battle in Book VII, Chapter 1 is considered to be one of the most disappointing Book finales for a variety of reasons. One reason is that her fight is almost exactly the same as the first fight against her was in Book VII, Chapter 13, just with different New Heroes. Secondly, due to Gullveig's status as a Glass Cannon, she is easily able to be disposed of with any capable unit in the player's barracks, making units like Attuned Nino and Isadora more threatening than the time goddess herself. And to top it all off, several fans expressed disappointment due to how anticlimatic the story ended with Gullveig dying from the power of the MacGuffin (despite initially showing to have immunity to such a power and growing stronger with each cycle), citing that Njörðr would have been a much more fitting and climatic Final Boss of Book VII to break the cycle instead.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Grima, the world-destroying dragon, is often given this treatment, being treated as 'protector of other Dragon units' (who happen to be majorly adorable girl characters) thanks to their Dragon-enhancing skill set. It also help that they specifically took the form of both versions of Robin. To a lesser extent, this can also be given to any villains that had Dragon-support skills, most notably Garon (whose Breath of Blight neutralizes Dragon effectiveness).
    • Zephiel: While he didn't have dragon-enhancing skills, fans like to treat him as a dragon protector thanks to his role in the original game (attempting to bring the world's rulership back to the dragons due to his disgust with mankind) and his maximized bond quote is about slowly regaining his trust in mankind... but this is also hampered by how he's treated as a Memetic Molester at the same time (see below).

    E 
  • Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Or rather, skip the banner. The Adrift banner was widely derided on its introduction for having 3 out of 4 of its units already exist in the game in another form, but the associated Paralogue's story is very well-liked for its interesting teases of Loki's true nature and motives and raising new story implications by hinting that later villains may abuse Not the Intended Use aspects of summoning, such as how opening portals to other worlds includes the dream world and possibly more. The paralogue also gave a rather heartfelt story for child Azura that gave the character extra depth, something the other paralogue's have almost never attempted since.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Feh, better known outside of Japan as the "Present Owl," for being just plain adorable. She even got an official popularity contest against Lucina after the March 2017 Voting Gauntlet.
    • This status also applies to some Heroes that were minor or obscure in their respective games, especially if they're good units. Some examples include Fae, Klein, Nino, Myrrh, Eldigan, and especially ReinhardtFun fact!, due to his Game-Breaker and High-Tier Scrappy statuses. Both he and Nino would go on to get (non-seasonal!) variant units well ahead of a great many of their castmates, with Nino even getting a shot at being a Green Fliernote , a unit concept that doesn't even exist in her home game.
      • Reinhardt stands out even more because people who are logically adjacent to him actually have voice lines commenting on him in Heroes... when they barely even acknowledged him back in the Jugdral series. Ishtar mentions that he's been a loyal retainer of hers ever since she was a little girl, and Julius mentions intensely disliking Reinhardt... which is funny, because he never interacts with the man in Thracia.note 
    • Both versions of Fallen Robin (a.k.a. Fell Dragon Grima) exploded in popularity after their debut. While villain units have always enjoyed popularity since they first started being released, Fallen Robin stood out as the first time players had a monstrous Greater-Scope Villain at their command. Their insane usefulness as units was just the icing on the cake - Male Fallen Robin was a former Game-Breaker that set the gold standard for Enemy Phase tanks, while the Female version is still a Jack of All Trades that fits neatly into any team composition.
    • When people first saw Helbindi, they thought he would just be a violent thug based on his appearance and description (and there have been such examples in the previous games too, such as Valter and Hans). When his debut chapter came out, people quickly warmed up to him because he turned out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who was fighting for his family and showed concern for Fjorm's little sister Ylgr. His design combined with his personality also makes him very unique for a Fire Emblem antagonist, being an "ugly" character with a good heart. Him playing a crucial role in Surtr's defeat caused people to cheer for him and lament his heavily implied death. The 2.9.1 update revealing him as a summonable character was met with plenty of cheer. Many fans had hoped for Helbindi to make a return in Book III, but to the disappointment to his fans, he did not.
    • The generic Emblian Bow Flier became a hit with the fanbase, thanks to her cute appearance. They have some people hoping that she becomes a playable unit someday.
    • Heiðr is surprisingly well-liked for a Book VII character. More than a few people were disappointed that she didn't come back to life in any form at the end of the book.

    F 
  • Fan-Disliked Explanation: A common criticism of Book IV was the resolution to Sharena and Peony's subplot that teased the two may have swapped placed when Sharena was a girl and Peony was a human, leaving it unclear if Peony was the real Sharena or not. Despite being technically resolved when Sharena remembers she didn't become a ljósálfr as a child, the ending for Book IV has Peony basically come along and bring it back up as a plot point to Sharena, both discuss it at the end of the story and shrug it off as not mattering because they are "so alike". Many felt that the attempted "explanation" was just a handwave attempt to resolve the idea without out actually doing so, and felt that the game bringing it back after already seemingly resolving it, only to basically say "it doesn't matter" was a poor explanation for what many had been excited to see be a character arc for Sharena.
  • Fandom Rivalry: Fans of other gacha games such as Fate/Grand Order or Granblue Fantasy aren't fond of fans of FEH. Reasons vary from jealousy over Intelligent System's generosity with Orbs compared to the other games (at least in the early days of Heroes) to how divided and loud the fanbase is. Special mention goes to Nintendo's other gacha Dragalia Lost, which was not only released right around the time Intelligent Systems was becoming less generous with Orb giveaways, but also has a developer who is much more receptive to feedback than IS.
  • Fanon:
    • In fanart where Kiran/the Summoner's hood isn't covering most of their face, they'll usually have black hair to further contrast Robin's appearance.
    • Thanks to Cassandra Lee Morris's performance as Julia, some people think that her personality is a bit spacey. Especially her "What?" line.
    • Despite the wyvern sprites having slightly different colors, a lot of fans love to entertain the idea that Summer Innes is riding Genarog, Cormag's wyvern.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
    • Because of how close and exciting it was, as well as the amazing display of camaraderie between both sides, the fanbase sees Chrom vs. Ephraim as the true final round of the March 2017 Voting Gauntlet.
    • Despite Intelligent Systems considering Fire Emblem Heroes to be a mainline game, several fans don't consider the game to count otherwise, as some find its nature as a mobile-exclusive online gacha game work a lot better as a spinoff title instead, leading them to think that its connection to the console mainline games is too farfetched other than the fact that it exists in the Fire Emblem multiverse.
  • Fountain of Memes: Ever since Oliver was added to the roster, he has been the source of MANY memes. Especially those regarding his hideous yet hilarious "damaged" artwork.

    G 
  • Gameplay Derailment:
    • The Voting Gauntlet is supposed to be about players joining their favorite character's team to support them. However, some players simply join the team that's currently in the lead so they can get the award for winning. The game tries to prevent this by not showing each team's score before players join a team. Unfortunately, this is undermined by the game showing the scores after the player joins a team but before the round is finished. This means that players can simply look up each team's score on the internet and then join the team that's in the lead. This results in the Voting Gauntlet having a severe case of Unstable Equilibrium.
    • The Voting Gauntlet derailed even more after the multiplier system was added, and now it faces the opposite problem. It is much easier for players to rank highly in a less popular team. The amount of feathers received for this outweighs the award feathers from winning in a more popular team. So those seeking maximum feather rewards and ranking are encouraged to hop to teams predicted to lose instead of the team they personally want to support. This is furthermore exacerbated by multipliers stacking with personal score, so your overall rank suffers if you don't use this method. Both people who want to support their character and people who seek more feathers are inclined to spam flags during multipliers, and there's no way to communicate to the rest of your team when they really need to hold back. Characters who pull too far ahead are punished for it when the other teams' bonus is triggered, which can prove deadly in the crucial last hours where it can go up to a massive 7.5x and there is no time to recover. This is exactly what happened with Summer Leo, Lyn, and Ishtar, who were ahead of their opponents by a very wide margin but got robbed by ill-timed multipliers in the final moments of the round. This reached its peak in the "Blood of Dragons" Gauntlet, where multipliersnote  were almost always active even if there was a less than 1% score difference between the two sides. A similar incident happened during the first round of the November 2018 "Clashing Thunderers" Voting Gauntlet, where Ishtar was soundly beating Olwen at every turn. Only thing is, Olwen jumped up ahead at the last second thanks to the multipliers, causing Ishtar to lose despite her Curbstomp Battle up to that point. So we have a mode that is advertised as a popularity contest but voters are punished for showing too much support for the characters they like. The Voting Gauntlet basically comes down to luck, and many fans are dissatisfied with the unbalanced nature of it.
    • In theory, players are supposed to bring their strongest allies to Arena Assault and face equally strong opponents, similar to Squad Assault. However, since all enemy teams are based on how strong the player's first team is, many people use a low-level team on the first fight and win with said team before sweeping the floor with high leveled units. However, this strategy is only used for grinding items and getting a minimal score, since the highest score can only be obtained if players use a strong team on the first fight. Still, it allows for players with a decent roster to gain higher ranked rewards thanks to how the system works.
    • Røkkr battles are intended for the player to play smart and carefully by picking a team that can handle the boss and the enemy reinforcements. However, there are several ways players can cheese it:
      • It's entirely possible to not lose a single unit to the boss as long as you equip them with a skill like Aether or Sol because of the way the bosses damage is calculated. Due to the way damage is calculated, said skills become full restores, and can easily ensure that your party never die to the boss unless they are reduced to exactly 1 HP.
      • The boss has a powerful AOE special that swaps positions with the target to avoid being boxed in. However, if you have a unit with skills like Guard or Special Fighter, the enemy can never use their special because they will No-Sell their attempt to do so. Weapons with the Guard effect do the same, meaning a player can set their team to be filled with Guard and pound on the boss. Averted if the boss has a skill that can lower cooldown like Bold Fighter equipped.
      • Due to the way damage is scaled, if a player uses skills like Astra and Glimmer, it can allow them to deal insanely high damage that can trivialize the fight. This is because said skills boost damage output by a flat percent, meaning that using something like Glimmer can result in a dramatic amount of damage output that the boss can't keep up with.
  • Goddamned Bats:
    • Roderick and Regular Faye outside of Arena, especially on the higher difficulties of Tempest Trials and Chain Challenge. Both of them use Firesweep weapons, making them completely immune to counterattacks, at the cost of nullifying their own counters without having Null C-Disrupt. This trait makes them extremely annoying opponents. The former has surprisingly high bulk and Spd, making him hard to beat in a single round, and his Drag Back pulls himself and the unit he attacked backwards, which can expose them to a unit they're weak against. The latter is generally viewed as weaker than him, but a reckless, low Def mage could easily get themselves killed by this Ram Villager. Faye possessing Wings of Mercy, which lets her warp to weakened allies and potentially kill slower units when you're not expecting it, does not help. While Soleil carries a Firesweep Sword, she is significantly squishier than the other two Firesweep wielders, meaning that she can get killed by any strong blue unit with ease.
    • Klein in the Training Tower, specifically on the Eighth Stratum and above. He always comes packing a Brave Bow+, almost always has Death Blow, and his decent speed means that he can quadruple a lot of units, especially if he receives speed buffs. To make things worse, this allows him to quickly charge his special, Glacies, which can ruin a player's training session when they're least expecting it.
    • Units with the Cancel Affinity skill. This passive inverts the weapon triangle advantage against units with Triangle Adept as well as those using gem weapons, meaning that, say, a red unit with the skill could waltz in and easily kill a low-defense Triangle Adept blue unit. Innes and Mathilda get special mentions, however, since they’re both Resistance-heavy units that bear the skill by default. Wanted your Triangle Adept Gronnraven Cecilia to pluck off Innes or tank Mathilda in a pinch? T-O-O-B-A-D!
    • Enemies with Rally skills can prove annoying to fight. Due to how the AI works, if the Rally unit and another unit can attack someone, most of the time the Rally unit will buff its ally instead of attacking. Besides likely making match-ups harder, this can result in a lot more time being wasted than usual, which is especially bad if finishing quickly is important, like in the Tempest Trials.
    • Enemies with movement assist skills will sometimes be caught in an endless loop (such as an armor unit that keeps getting pulled back by Draw Back, or an Infantry or Flier unit that gets pulled back by Reposition) that results in them never getting any closer to you, forcing you to enter their attack range. Not only does this waste time, the enemy is usually in a position where either or both of their units can attack yours, which can potentially lead to dilemmas where none of your units can survive fighting both of them.
    • Annette. Not only does she have high Atk and a weapon that targets the lower defensive stat of her foe to complement her Atk, she has Rally Atk/Spd+, which she 'will' use whenever she can. This combined with Def/Res Ruse typically keeps her away from your unit's range of attack, while also hitting your units that should be in a cardinal direction of her and whoever she Rallies with debuffed defensive stats and slowed special countdown. But what makes her stand out with this ability is that any time she uses her Rally, the Rallied unit gains 'one extra movement' (unless said unit is a range 2 cavalier). Gods help you if she uses this on another particularly strong unit.
    • Leila. Also having a Rally/Ruse skill combo to play keepaway, she has a devastatingly strong Atk/Spd line that's further complimented by Life and Death 4 and basically Swift Sparrow 2.5 in her weapon, meaning it's highly likely she'll tear any unit she attacks to shreds. While she does have mediocre defenses, further lowered by the aforementioned Life and Death 4, it's quite possible for her to have just enough to not be one-shotted and with her incredibly high Spd, it's unlikely anyone you use will double her normally.
    • Enemies with the Guard weapons are this for special-oriented heroes. While the B skill Guard has at least a HP threshold to activate, and while the weapons don't make the enemies stronger, they just serve as an annoyance due to inflicting -1 special buildup for your units regardless of the user's HP. Thought that you were going to activate Moonbow against them in one round of combat? Think again. The only way to actually reducing your unit's special cooldown against them is by using skills that boost the unit's special buildup by +1, but most of them have conditional activation requirements to gain that effect, and even then it still delays the special flow with certain builds requiring to activate specials in one round of combat, especially for units with 4 and 5 cooldown specials such as Ignis and Galeforce. Special mention goes to Silque, who possesses a Guard weapon and Dazzling Staff, meaning that unless you have C-Null Disrupt, you'll have to worry about her attacking your units with impunity.
  • Goddamned Boss: The final boss of the "Life and Death 4" Tempest Trial, Ascended Eir, is a Squishy Mage Green Dagger unit who lacks a strong A skill, and can be easily baited and killed with the right setup. However, her weapon, Ymir, Everliving, gives her a bunch of effects that make it incredibly annoying to fight hernote . Should the player end up with enemies with high amounts of HP, then Eir can potentially kill tanky Red units with no issue, and thanks to her Miracle effect, can just refuse to die. If the player works around fighting her on the enemy phase, she can be easily killed on the player phase, but if not, expect to lose an entire team to her.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • Prior to version 2.3.0, Zelgius was unable to wield his signature weapon Alondite when chosen as a randomly generated enemy due to a bug where Alondite was only exclusive to the Black Knight. Because of this, when appearing outside of other players' teams or the story mode, Zelgius would never actually have Alondite. In the Training Tower, he would hold a random weapon instead, typically a Silver Sword+. In the Tempest Trials? He held nothing.
    • After Bridal Tharja's release in early May 2018, a bug was discovered for units with Spd Feint and a Rally ability. When that unit moves and rallies another unit that's already been buffed, the unit with Spd Feint disappears, but still counts as being on the map. This turns out to be pretty useful on some maps, like ones that require you to survive a certain number of turns. While IS acknowledged the bug shortly after it was found, it wasn't fixed until the 2.6.0 update in early June 2018.
    • An exploit surfaced after 2.7.0 that if played during the days SP is doubled, free stamina maps can stack the multiplier for every restart, resulting in a unit obtaining hundreds of SP per kill. The maximum SP a unit can gain per KO is 768, after which it will revert to 4 SP per kill, and any restart after that will be frozen at 1 SP per kill.note 
  • Growing the Beard:
    • This game is considered to be where Nintendo has finally found its footing in the mobile games department. Miitomo was criticized for being little more than a barebones messaging app. Pokémon GO (though that one was more of a Niantic production than in-house) had a lot of buzz at first, but was criticized for its lack of gameplay variety and it rapidly declined in popularity outside a small group of dedicated fans. Super Mario Run was fairly well-received, but was criticized for having too little content for an up-front price as well as incorporating unnecessary Free-To-Play elements in a non-Free-To-Play game. Come Fire Emblem Heroes, the game has been praised for its large amount of content, gameplay that strikes a balance between simplicity and depth, and its regular update schedule. As such, it has become the first consistently popular mobile game released by Nintendo, has contributed greatly to the rapidly-growing popularity of the Fire Emblem franchise, and later Nintendo mobile games such as Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp have met similarly positive reception.
    • The story mode initially had a rather lukewarm reception, being mostly an Excuse Plot to jump from location to location and fight new Heroes. Around the end of Book I and start of Book II, the writing took a strong turn for the better, giving more development to the main characters and introducing well-liked new villains who gave the plot more direction and higher stakes. Chapter 11 and 12 of Book I, and Chapter 3 of Book II in particular are where the villains and heroes began to get more complex and developed, resulting in fans expressing joy at how good the writing has been getting (although some got hit with bleakness mid-way). This even contributed to Veronica and Loki cracking the top twenty of the second Choose Your Legends event, which started after the release of Chapter 3 of Book II. Chapter 11 of Book IV is another part where the story is considered to have another bar raised, whereas Intelligent Systems did away with filler fights where the participating heroes said a certain line from their home game and then be done with it. Instead, each sections only had the Original Generation characters speak, further the plot and reveal more about them and had a certain effective Wham Episode in one section.
    • The Forging Bonds events were long considered uninteresting because nearly every single conversation was between the featured characters and the Summoner. Since the Summoner is a Heroic Mime, this severely limited what the conversations could be about, with most of them being just the character talking about their relationship with the Summoner. The most infamous example of this being the "Dueling Desires" plotline involving Aversa and Loki arguing over the Summoner in creepy and not very comfortable ways at the cost of both of the other characters involve in it. "Hearts As One" was a major turning point for Forging Bonds, where instead of having the characters talk to the Summoner, they instead talk to Alfonse, Sharena, and Anna. Since those three can actually talk, this allowed them to have actual conversations that better showed off their personalities, making the whole mode much more engaging. It got even better starting with "A Trust Earned" and "Power's Den" when Fjorm was also thrown in with the Askr trio as someone the characters talk to, and characters from other games began showing up, such as Adult Tiki in Fallen Tiki's conversations. General consensus is all of these changes made the stories a lot more dynamic and enjoyable.

    H 
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In the castle, Gunnthrá can't communicate with anyone but the Summoner after performing the rite, meaning that she likely can't talk to Fjorm as well. Just before the last battle of Book II, Chapter 7, Fjorm finally sees Gunnthrá again only to have her be killed by Surtr in front of her.
      • On that note, after Book II, Chapter 6-4 is cleared and it's revealed that Múspell is actively tracking the Order's movement, Fjorm says, "They'll find [Gunnthrá], and they'll kill her. Oh, Sister..." Seems she predicted the future for the worst, regardless of whether she meant to.
    • Also in the castle (and the Legendary Heroes Tap Battle), Gunnthrá will sometimes say, "A Legendary Hero, you say? What an honor! Please, tell me the stories you share about me in this world." Her story? She has very little of it, as she dies just as you meet her in Book II, Chapter 7.
    • The "Hares at the Fair" Paralogue has Alfonse tell Sharena that there are alternative universes to explain why there is another Alfonse and Sharena to meet at the fair, stating that there are endless possibilities of either of them. Come Book III, and "Líf's" realm is one such possibility that both Alfonse and Sharena didn't want to see.
    • The ending of "A Child's Wish" has Hector make a promise to L'Arachel that he will live for Lilina's sake. Two guesses as to how that's going to turn out in Binding Blade.
      • To expand further on that, Halloween duo Hector and Lilina's duo conversation is based around becoming the new head of the Lycian league. At one point, when she knows that something bad would happen to her father, she became upset, saying that she didn't want to see her father get hurt nor does she want to be the head. Hector calmed his daughter down and said that he won't disappear anytime soon. Come Christmas Day 2020, just a year and two months after the introduction of Duo Heroes, Legendary Lilina was released, based on her ending from The Binding Blade, and in this version, she is depicted as the new leader of Lycia, just like what her father predicted. Now, for the two guesses, what happened to Hector? What happened to his promise? Wait a minute...
    • Anna's quote in the "Alfonse Quests" in November 2019 has her say that "Alfonse's weakness? Oh, that's easy. It's Sharena... he'd do anything for his sister." In Book III, "Líf" is actually another Alfonse, and after his real identity is revealed, "Líf's" tells Alfonse his main motivation for serving Hel is to kill everyone in Alfonse's Askr to revive everyone that died in his, but most importantly his Sharena. And in Book III Chapter 12, the main Sharena was able to reason with "Líf" with her telling him what his Sharena would tell him there and making him realize the error of his ways, allowing him to finally die in peace at the end of that chapter when he was defeated by Alfonse and the Order of Heroes. So yes, "Líf"/Alfonse's weakness was Sharena, and he would do anything for his sister.
    • The first Feh Channel of 2020 had a joke that Feh was out on vacation, which was to cover up the fact her Japanese voice actress was out due to maternity leave. On March 2nd of the same year, it was revealed by Feh's English voice actress Kimberley Tierney that, going forward, the recordings for Feh Channels would be done internally by Nintendo, meaning that Feh going on vacation ended up being the last thing the English-speaking fans would hear of her, at least with her original voice.
    • In the Feh Channel introducing Book III note , when Feh saw Hel she said "we probably won't become friends, EVER". As pointed out above, by the time Hel became playable in July 2020, Feh's English voice actor was replaced.
    • Merlinus upon release was widely seen as a Joke Character, and quickly became a Memetic Loser in the community. Three months after his release, it was announced that his English voice actor, Brad Venable, had passed away from illness, causing a number of players to feel bad for mocking the character.
    • One of Summer Claude's castle lines has him wonder which of the three house leaders is the fastest swimmer. Those who know Edelgard will know her lack of swimming talents.
  • He's Just Hiding: Fans were mostly trying to convince themselves that Helbindi didn't die against Surtr, since they Never Found the Body.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight:
    • Nino was a character available from launch, and one of her lines at home was "Oh, Lloyd...Linus...and dear old Uncle Legault..." indicating that she misses them. By June 2018, all three of them are recruitable and thus would be able to reunite with her.
    • Yukata Xander's dance is actually a real dance called the Bon Odori, with the purpose of connecting the dancer with his ancestors and, more importantly, with deceased family members. In Fates, it is revealed that he has a deceased mother and several deceased half-siblings, not to mention what became of his father before and during the game proper, so the fact that Xander is attending the festival in Hoshido and doing that dance to honor and connect with them is really Heartwarming and a Tear Jerker.
    • Bridal Sanaki has a quote mentioning her retainers/bodyguards Tanith and Sigrun, wondering what they'd say if they saw her in the outfit she's wearing. A year later, Bridal Tanith and Sigrun both show up, and evidenced by one of Sigrun's quotes, she'd think that her Empress looks adorable. As a plus, regular Sanaki's Cymbeline tome grants her a stat boost if she's nearby a flier ally, referencing Tanith and Sigrun; she can now fight alongside them for real.
    • In "Bridal Beloveds", Leanne is moved by her brother Rafiel getting married, and she wishes she can someday be a bride. An ending she can have in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a Babies Ever After with Naesala, meaning that this dream can be a reality for her.
    • Like with Navarre's Japanese VA, Sumi Shimamoto has reprised her role as Elice, when she debuted with Marth as a Duo Hero for the Glorious Gifts banner.
    • Legendary variants of Lucina, Roy, and Seliph were all released before their respective fathers Chrom, Eliwood, and Sigurd got theirs. When they did however, it means they can finally reunite with their respective child. The inverse does happen with Hector getting a Legendary variant before his daughter Lilina did, but it still counts.
    • Since 2020, a lot of the new seasonal units were based on the students and faculty of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Considering what almost all of them went through in their pasts ''and'' the events of their home game, it's actually nice and refreshing to see them all be able to have fun in such a carefree way.
  • High-Tier Scrappy: Certain Game-Breaker units tend to get a bad reputation for being considered too good by the fans:
    • Fallen Edelgard, while not nearly as powerful as she was during her debut, was regarded as one of the most infamous units in the game due to how extremely powerful she was. Due to her signature skills and weapon granting her one extra space of movement, an Extra Turn, healing 7 damage after every combat, cuts off foe’s natural follow-ups and 40% Damage reduction from the foe's first attack, on top of her ridiculously high Atk, Def, and Res stats and being an Armored unit and a Colorless Beast, there were few units in the game who could even hope to make even a dent in her ludicrous defenses. To make matters worse, her weapon has a built-in Distant Counter effect, so even trying to use ranged attacks would only result in the loss of any ranged unit foolish enough to attack her. It doesn't help that her Special cooldown is lowered dramatically, and combined with Ignis or Galeforce, it made Fallen Edelgard absolutely notorious to fight, and for a while, she was nearly unavoidable in most PvP gamemodes. Thankfully, stronger, more capable units have been added to the game as time went on, such as Thórr, Legendary Hinoka, Heiðr, and ironically, Edelgard's Brave version, all of which are easily able to defeat Fallen Edelgard without breaking a sweat. As a result, Fallen Edelgard had fallen off her pedestal as the most powerful Hero in the game, but she is still a very capable fighter, and can invoke ire from any unprepared player who doesn't yet understand just how powerful the Hegemon Husk is, especially with new skills coming out she can benefit from. Another factor of her release that contributes to her reputation was that she was such a broken unit with little counters at first, that the developers had to start releasing even more broken units just to counter her, essentially making her responsible for a new wave of powercreep.
    • Recent Cavalry and Flying Nukes (including but not limited to: Legendary Hinoka, Wind Tribe Claude, Both Gullveigs, Normal Kvasir, Ninja Duo Sanaki, Legendary Camilla, and Valentine's Duo Lyon) are widely hated for being borderline impossible to tank even a single attack during enemy phase. While Cavalry and Flying nukes struggled before to make a name for themselves after Savior skills were introduced, the way they bounced back proved to be a little too effective, due to the new skills they have access to, such as Flared Sparrow/Mirror and Occultist's/Assassin's Strike (which not only create Flame tiles that deal damage at the start of every turn and before combat starts, but also deal damage at the start of combat, which stacks up to 14 pre-damage total on top of Occultist's/Assassin's Strike dealing 20% true damage based on the enemy's Def or Res) as well as any potential prf weapon and/or skill the nuke might have, if any. Most of these nukes also have ways of reducing or outright negating percentage-based Damage Reduction effects just to make them even more impossible to survive against, and Legendary Camilla and Valentine's Duo Lyon in particular have prfs that deal even more pre-combat damage that can go up to 40% of their foe's Atk if they have the weapon triangle advantage or if their Spd or Res respectively exceeds their foe's. Fortunately, most nukes in the game have the virtue as being stuck as a Glass Cannon, meaning that while they can deal out a ton of damage that outright cannot be blocked and instantly tear through most Armored Saviors, the instant that another unit attacks a nuke, they are almost certainly done for. Despite this, the meta has heavily shifted in favor of Player Phase over Enemy Phase due to these nukes dominating the meta with their extreme offensive power combined with the new skills released in Version 7.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In Fire Emblem Fates, Xander tells Siegbert that when he makes a speech, he imagines the crowds as carrots (JPN) or as bunnies (ENG) to not get Stage Fright. Cue the Spring/Easter Event that has an alternate version of Xander dressed up as a bunny and with a carrot lance.
    • When the bride banner was teased, many people joked that the circular object in the silhouette, which was assumed as a staff, was a spoon. As it turns out, it actually was a spoonful of wedding cake.
    • “Dark Olivia” was a popular fan-made alternative version of Olivia, not only because a shy girl suddenly becoming a bloodthirsty warrior was funny, but it also served as a foil to Azura's dark costume. Come late September 2017, and Olivia donning a dark outfit comes to the game.
    • This video parodying the "Soup Store" skit from Code MENT with Takumi as Suzaku became funnier when his Hoshidan New Year's variant's title is "Prince of Soup".
    • Jokes involving Zephiel being over-protective or weak against dragons came to a head when the weapon refine for his unique weapon Eckesachs made its Defense-lowering ability not work against dragons.
    • Legault is commonly interpreted as bisexual due to the way he interacts with Heath, Matthew, Lloyd, and Isadora. He was added onto the roster during what happens to be LGBT Pride Month.
    • There's something funny about how after Surtr is defeated, the heroes now must face Hel, much like how it happened in Thor: Ragnarok.
    • Jokes about combining the most powerful aspects of Game-Breaker units Brave Lyn and Reinhardt to create a super-unit are fairly common among the fandom. Come Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there is a character named... Linhardt, who even has green hair like Lyn. He's a fairly unremarkable medic, though.
    • Xander and Bruno, the two people who mean the most to Veronica, both debuted as playable heroes as their spring variants. Additionally, had Veronica not won Choose Your Legend 2, her spring variant would have also been her first playable version.
    • This comic features Seliph and Leif admiring their respective fathers in combat and wondering if they should try to become cavaliers as well. Both would then receive Legendary versions (Oct 2019 for Leif and June 2020 for Seliph) wherein they both become cavalry units, with Seliph being a sword cavalier and Leif being a bow cavalier.
    • Heath's Japanese voice actor being Tomokazu Seki actually wouldn't raise a stinker. However, Heath is known for having a Ho Yay-based Support with Legault in addition of paired endings with female characters like Priscilla. Those normally would be considered fine in Fire Emblem faire, but one of Tomokazu Seki's known role is Kanji Tatsumi, a character who struggles with his sexuality and has generated some memes in certain areas. Now you can imagine and grin that after supporting with Legault and asked about it, Heath might react negatively with "YOU SAYIN' I LIKE DUDES!?".
    • The "Harmony amid Chaos" banner, released on March 6, 2020, came shortly after the American Super Tuesday primary polls. One of the Democratic candidates was Bernie Sanders. One of the new units added into the game was Bernadetta, who is called, and calls herself "Bernie" ingame, which back then led to the fandom making memes about the two. The jokes practically write themselves.
    • On the official Fire Emblem Heroes Twitter during Christmas 2019, Feh was replaced by the Winter variant of Sothis for a brief period as part of a promotion for the Glorious Gifts banner during that time. On the April 2020 Feh Channel, Feh's old voice actor Kimberley Tierney was replaced by Cassandra Lee Morris, who also voiced Sothis.
    • During Byleth's reveal trailer for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Sothis pokes fun at the fact that there are many sword fighters in the game, most of which represent Fire Emblem itself. Come April 2020's Feh Channel, which announces that almost every main character and Lord throughout the series will be available for a free summon, with a majority of the units available being sword units. Feh, now voiced by Cassandra Lee Morris, who also voiced Sothis, also lampshades how a lot of the main characters use swords.
    • For the franchise's 30th anniversary, some of the New Mystery characters were given child alts that reference their original Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light designs. One of these was Marth, who was given a variant of his infamous "Pantsless" design with shorts. Dragalia Lost would release a Dragalia-themed version of the original cover as promo art for their second Heroes crossover, complete with adult Marth in his pantsless glory, later that day.
    • Erinys is voiced by Maaya Sakamoto, which means that she can reunite with her husband in real life and business, Kenichi Suzumura, in this game and in cases of their games getting re-made... except that they absolutely can't replicate that in-game, because Suzumura's character (Quan) is already Happily Married with someone else's character (Ethlyn), thus their characters cannot marry.
    • About a month after Heroes had its second crossover event in Dragalia Lost, this time featuring Sharena, Chapter 8 of Book IV released, showing the party falling under the influence of Plumeria's Love Potion powers. Peony says that she loves Alfonse and wants to be "closer" to him, and Mirabilis repeats the exact same line, with Sharena managing to say Alfonse's name before he realizes what's going on and interrupts her. And then the chapter caps it all off by implying that Sharena is not truly Alfonse's sister. Cue horrified jokes of Alfonse asking Euden for advice on how to handle having an Unwanted Harem where one member is their adopted sister.
    • Hector in his Day of Devotion attire has him declare his daughter Lilina off limits to any suitors and does not want to think about her as someone's bride. The 2022 edition of the bridal banner features Lilina in a bridal gown, joined by Roy as a groom in a harmonized duo with his father Eliwood, while Hector is nowhere to be seen.
    • During Balthus's conversation in Forging Bonds, Hilda threatens to ask the summoner to summon Holst to deal with Balthus after he loses all his money again. On September 17, 2022, Holst becomes playable, albeit as a Grand Hero.
    • Byleth and Rhea forms a duo in their Summer Variant. What's really funny is that Byleth wears a red flower. Or rather a crimson flower. If you played Three Houses, you'll immediately understand why it's hilarious.
    • The final panel of this strip by Awkward Zombie has both Byleths not understanding the concept of Tandemaus being considered as one guy despite being two guys. About three weeks later, Duo Byleths were announced in their Winter Variant.
  • Ho Yay: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise here.
  • Hype Backlash: Not the game itself, but rather a character: Reinhardt. He became popular upon release due to his Game-Breaker status and quote-worthy lines. Intelligent Systems took note and released an alt, which proved to be divisive among fans since Thracia still had little representation. Then he got another alt in the A Splendid Soiree banner, when Leif, Seliph, and Sigurd still didn't have alts, and fans got even more pissed. So Reinhardt makes up half the Thracia representation, and the devs seem to like shipping him with Ishtar, who has a canonical boyfriend in the form of Julius; a combination which makes the fans familiar with those games both angry and fearful of how those three would be handled in potential Genealogy and Thracia remakes.

    I 
  • I Knew It!:
    • Practically everyone predicted that Zacharias was actually Bruno. The game even somewhat lampshaded it by having the player character figure it out first and break their streak of being mostly passive and silent to point it out to the Askr Trio.
    • Pretty much everyone predicted that the "Choose Your Legends" versions of Ike, Lyn, and Lucina would be an axe, bow, and a lance user respectively, due to those becoming their secondary weapons upon promoting in their games. Likewise, most fans figured that Roy would stay as a sword unit due to that being the only weapon he's ever been shown to canonically wield, though some did predict that he would at least become a cavalry unit like his father to at least differentiate him from his infantry counterpart. That said, not many expected Lyn to become the game's first playable cavalry archer.
    • Several fans guessed that Loki was a woman, based on her speaking style in the Japanese version. For fans in the west, many guessed her gender based on the fact that she was always disguised as Anna, and rarely did anyone else.
    • One of the most common ideas for the highly anticipated Marth variant was Marth as a groom, which was used as a costume in Fire Emblem Warriors. May 2018 would see it becoming a reality.
    • Similarly, pretty much everyone predicted the silhouetted heroes for the "A Sketchy Summer" banner were Camilla and Linde.
      • Two years later, everyone guessed the silhouettes for the "Overseas Memories" banner were Ingrid and Sylvain.
    • Since the first "Choose Your Legends" event had the characters dressed based on their fathers weapons or looks, people guessed that for the second "Choose Your Legends" event, Celica, Veronica, Ephraim, and Hector would have appearances based on their siblings due to it being an area they all had common with each other. While Celica and Ephraim have different inspirations, both Hector and Veronica have skills/designs based on their siblings.
    • With the release of Jamke's GHB in September 2018, many players predicted the next banner in the schedule would be Genealogy of the Holy War related. They were later proven correct with the release of "Doorway to Destiny" in the same month.
    • Everyone predicted that the Ylgr that the Order of Heroes meet is actually Loki in disguise. This is lampshaded by Alfonse mentioning the player character figured it out earlier.
    • As soon as Fjorm coughed after completing the Rite of Frost, everyone guessed she would die in the future due to the price needed for it. Sure enough the end of Book II confirmed this for the future.
    • During the April Fools video, some viewers noticed that the last Feh in the video had a Special Cooldown of 4 before her attack hit the enemy. Since Feh's Special is called Eavesdropping Owl, where she gathers information on the game, people suspected that meant a Feh Channel would be coming within three days. Sure enough, it turned out to be true.
    • When Líf was first introduced, everyone predicted he was Alfonse from the future, or an alternative universe.
    • When Thrasir was introduced, and when "Líf" was revealed to be another Alfonse, everyone predicted that she is an older Veronica from another world.
    • After the silhouettes were dropped for the first Summer Banner of 2021, Caspar was trending on Twitter, with users guessing that he was the right silhouette. The banner trailer confirms his inclusion the next day.
    • After Ótr's death in Book V Chapter 11, practically everyone guessed that, like Thrasir and Plumeria, he would be released as the next Mythic Hero. Sure enough, Ótr was released as the 18th Mythic Hero in late September 2021.
    • Following previous Heroes villains, and not appearing as an enemy unit for the majority of Book V, players predicted that Eitri was going to be a Green unit, more specifically a Green Tome unit. Sure enough, when the "New Heroes & Ascended Laegjarn" trailer came out, that prediction was revealed to be proven true.
    • Similarly, when Letizia debuted with a green color scheme and carrying a green tome, absolutely everyone pegged her as a villain, since the main and/or final villain of every booknote  have all been green units of some kind or another.
    • A few months after his debut in Book VII, almost everyone predicted that Njörðr was Evil All Along. This was proven correct in Book VII, Chapter 9, when Njörðr reveals his true colors, and says he is the one who wants to turn Seiðr into Gullveig.
  • Improved Second Attempt:
    • One of the criticized parts of the plot of Fire Emblem Fates was the total lack of worldbuilding and context for the game's conflict. The "Festival in Hoshido" paralogue gives Hoshido and Nohr a little backstory; the two countries were founded by the Dawn and Dusk Dragons, and their eternal rivalry began when the dragons came into conflict.
    • Ever since the first few free units were distributed (whether from Grand Hero Battles or Tempest Trials), many free-to-players have complained about harder difficulties being over-reliant on units with many merges. These same players tended to have units that didn't have many merges, or units without merges altogether. The 2.11.0 update alleviated this by introducing the new in-game currency Heroic Grails, which can be used to summon past Grand Hero Battle and Tempest Trials reward units. This gave players the opportunity to max merge their favorite free units, and have extra fodder to boot since players can summon every unit available via Heroic Grails up to 20 times. Various other additions like the changes to the Merging System, Weapon Refinements, Trait Fruit, and Dragonflowers now make almost all free units strong options, even if they aren't able to outright match new units in terms of raw power.
    • After the upset of the removal of pre-Book II 5*-exclusive heroes from new hero banners in April 2019, the June 2019 Feh Channel announced Revival Banners, where 3 of those heroes will be the focus for a week, changing out each week, and have them be 4% focus and 2% off-focus, instead of the 3%-3% the regular banners have. And if that isn't enough, it will more likely be an endless cycle of those heroes to give everyone a chance to summon those heroes in the future. When the early-to-mid Book II 5*-exclusive heroes were announced to be removed from future new hero banners in August 2020, they were added to the weekly rotation alongside the Book I heroes. Additionally, the February 4th, 2021 Feh Channel made it so that all those mentioned are now summoned as the guise of a special 4-star hero. They're not as common as their normal 4 star counterparts, but it's still a nice change of pace, especially for some people who weren't able to obtain those heroes in the first place. Additionally, their rerun banners are still in effect, and those rates won't be affected. With the August 2021 Feh Channel, they also announced the removal of the 5* heroes from the pool with the rest of Book II and the first third of Book III, also going towards the weekly revival banners and 4* special rate heroes pool.
    • Although it is relatively minor, the fact that Book III's been dropping some 3/4 star units can be seen as a slightly welcome change to the summoning pool. Even though they aren't really showcased in the trailers or Forging Bonds, it is still slightly better than just having to wait until one of the 5 star units demotes. Besides of mass-demotes showcased on Feh Channel, such base units were only featured on the release of the game.
    • Announced in the April 2 Feh Channel in 2020 - you can get a free focus summon with a New Heroes summon once you summon 40 heroes (the free summon and the Forging Bond tickets count towards this summon too, meaning that if you get all the summoning tickets from that event, you only have 35 summons to worry about). This was met with a lot of rejoicing, as even though 5-star summons have a higher chance of appearing based on how many orbs you spend in the banner, there's still that off-chance that you could get pity-broken by a unrelated hero and that you could get the hero you would want, but they have bad asset/flaws. This being in the Feh Channel after the Feh Channel that announced the FEH Pass felt like IS tried to patch some of the wounds caused by the Pass, which generated a lot of dislike.
    • With the Hall of Forms being a Luck-Based Mission mode already with the skill kits, all of them before the featuring the Valentines versions of Ike, Greil, Soren and Mist featured a lot of Demonic Spiders from Book III and Book IV (the latter which had just introduced their Fallen Heroes at the time) that could easily ruin one's day (and they're only getting more powerful), considering a map with even one of these units could guarantee a wasted run. However, starting from the eighth Hall of Forms map, only units from Book I and Book II are pulled as random enemies, but to make up for their absence, most of the enemies have their refined weapons.
    • The December 7th 2020 Feh Channel brought a small change to the summoning system by making it where being pity-broken by a non-focus unit no longer resets the 5-star drop chance, but instead lowers it by a percentage. One of the longest running complaints about the game was having a random 5-star rob your chances of getting a new unit.
    • One of the complaints of ongoing books was that once a Book concludes, its respective heroines (Fjorm, Eir and Peony) are dumped to just hanging out in Forging Bonds, never to be relevant or appearing in future books again. In Book V, Peony makes a cameo to inform the Order of Heroes that Niðavellir's army is attacking Askr. It's only a cameo, but many are positively surprised that previous book heroines aren't just ignored once their stories are done. This trend further extends to the next chapter, where it's Fjorm's turn to make a reappearance. In addition, the Ice and Flame Tempest Trial finally acknowledges that Fjorm is slowly dying of the Rite of Frost by having her making a deal to cancel the Rite to Nifl. The TT also ends with Laegjarn returning to the narrative after her death. Likewise, Eir gained her own set of Tempest Trials the following year.
    • Some units, such as semi-Legendary heroes like Surtr, and the Fallen Heroes, and Legendary heroes like Nifl are generally considered Demonic Spiders especially at the time they're released. In response, units like these are marked as not to appear in normal gameplay, so players do not need to worry about them showing up in modes like Tempest Trials.
    • When Fjorm's refine came out, many took note how its effect of neutralizing penalties was anti-synergistic to her remix skill Atk/Def Unity,* where you want penalties to reverse them into combat boosts. Following some complaints, Fjorm was quickly instated with a new remix skill, Mirror Stance 3*. Not only does this remove the conflict with the refine, but it synergizes well with her remixed special, Ice Mirror II, which relies on her Res to boost damage.
    • One of the major fan complaints of Astrid in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is that she fawns too much on Makalov. Intelligent Systems then made sure that Astrid was put in the Path of Radiance banner, not the other one, and her characterization harkened back to her time there, as a naive newbie knight and former noble running away from home. She had no mentions of Makalov (it was more reserved to Marcia who already had legitimate annoyance against him) except one minor time paradox-ish item (her Accessory mentioned that she got that from Makalov, but her Forging Bonds dialogue made her unaware that he's Marcia's brother), thus Astrid fans breathed a sigh of relief that for the most part she was summoned at her peak form.
    • One complaint about Books I and II were that their conflicts were essentially dropped at the end of their stories with no real closure. Then starting in July of 2021, the Tempest Trials started to focus primarily on the Nifl and Muspell conflicts, with reveals of the respective gods of their kingdoms and continued where Book II left off. Meanwhile, after several focuses on different kingdoms, Book VI started to show more focus on the Askr vs Embla conflict that was quietly dropped after Book II after threats such as Surtr and Hel started to eclipse it.
    • The character of Kyza from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn was somewhat infamous in their original incarnation for being an unflattering Camp Gay stereotype with a resulting Ambiguous Gender Identity. When Kyza returned for this game, they were exclusively given gender-neutral pronouns (the first Fire Emblem character who isn't a deity or artifical creation to hold that honor) and most of the offensiveness was ironed out without removing their flamboyancy, including by making the Love Triangle between them, Ranulf and Lyre not only more explicit, but also by heavily implying that Ranulf reciprocated their feelings in the past. The response to this version of Kyza has been much more positive this time as a result.
    • The Normal Combat Manuals were well liked for allowing players to get copies of units that could be used for merges or fodder, but a common issue was the next year's batch meant players would stop collecting older Divine Codes, preventing them from getting units they wanted. Prior to the release of the third batch of Normal Combat Manuals, an update was announced that would allow players to use newer Divine Codes to obtain older ones, which was positively received since many players had likely run out by the time it was announced, and were unable to obtain past ones.
    • Though she is popular for Love to Hate reasons, Hilda of Friege was often viewed by some as being too cartoonishly evil, which given her home game was more grounded and gritty, did make her stand out, but it made her a bit hard to take seriously. Here, her Level 40 Confession works to try and give her side of the story while not justifying her actions: She actually loved House Friege beyond herself, as well as her husband Bloom and father in-law, and after their deaths, she's resorted to drinking to sate her sorrow over losing those things, and spins her conflict with Seliph and the Liberation Army beyond being For the Evulz as having more justified basis in hating them as well as her horrific torture towards Tailtiu and Tine, if Hilda respected Reptor, she will have extra reasons aside of pure sadism to torture, since she also blames Tailtiu for getting Reptor killed and shaming the house, thus they're not just mere covers for sadism, it works both ways. It doesn't excuse her actions at all, but it gives her more humanity/characterization beyond simply being seen as "the most evil mother in all of the series".
  • Incest Yay Shipping: In the Family Bonds paralogue, the Ephraim/Eirika and Seliph/Julia duos spend a lot of time talking about how strong their sibling bonds are and how much they care about each other, especially the former. Ephraim even lampshades and (in the international version) denies this by talking about how people spread disgusting lies about him and his sister.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
    • The general reaction to the Choose Your Legends Four units was this. All four of the units (Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, and Lysithea) are the same weapon/color type as the forms that they came into Heroes with, and are simply their late game canon promotion classes (while Lysithea is just a Gremory, a late game class) with the strongest non-Hero's Relic weapons in Three Houses or for Lysithea one of her early spells. As a result, they come across as far less interesting in design then past CYL units, who either were different weapon and movement types all together (Brave Lyn being the first Mounted Bow and Micaiah being a Flying Mage), or had unique themes like CYL 1 units wearing clothes designed to call back to their fathers, the CYL 3 units being themed around all four of the characters having taken up their responsibilities as rulers, or characters like Alm and Celica having their original Gaiden designs re-imagined by the Echoes artist Hidari. Many feel the CYL 4 characters should have used different weapons at the very least so that they felt distinct from their base and Legendary alts.note  The fact that all three of the Lords' Legendary alts have the exact same typing as their Brave variants (axe armor Edelgard, lance infantry Dimitri, and colorless flying bow Claude), means that while they're all powerful units in their own right, it does feel a bit repetitious and uninspired, especially considering it would take a few years for them to get alts that were different color/weapon types.
    • In 2021, there were three Grand Hero Battle red mages that got released in a row, being Arete, Pelleas, and Aelfric. They all have the same general statlines of good Atk and Res, low Def, and middling Spd. None of them have unique weapons, just inheritable ones, and both Arete and Aelfric both have a Rabbit tome (which itself is just a Palette Swap of the Conch Bouquet from the year prior, which was also from a free red mage), Glacies, and Atk/Res Push. Fans were not impressed, especially when they could have done just a little bit more and either made them different colors or given them better skills. What makes this worse is that 2021 already had two GHB units with that stat line (Veld and Solon) who had unique weapons, but also the amount of Tempest Trial units released included a number of unique options (such as the first Free To Play lance infantry in Norne). Of them, Pelleas is considered the best due to having a solid Speed stat, and coming in with a new type of tome.
    • There's also the matter of how female characters are frequently given Atk/Spd Push 4 as a slot A skill. As of the Like Clockwork focus banner in January 2022, the number of units to come with this skill are twenty-one, all of whom are femaleIn order of release. Luckily, February 2022 brought in Gonzalez, who has Atk/Spd Push 3 as an A-skill. While he doesn't have Atk/Spd Push 4 like the females, he at least was the first male to come with the skill.
    • Outdated skills have a tendency to get reused on free-to-play units despite them being nigh-useless in the current meta and already readily available on 3-4 star units in the summoning pool. Notable examples include Young Boyd having Fire Boost 3, Atlas having Earth Boost 3, Wil having Atk/Res Push 3, Validar having Brash Assault 3 and Atk Ploy 3, and Mauvier having Seal Atk 3.
    • One particular old skill that frequently gets recycled is Wary Fighter 3 on free-to-play friendly armors, with Regular Effie, Regular Zephiel, Halloween Dorcas, Flame Emperor, Benny, Cervantes, and Vigarde all having this skill. Some fans have called for Bold Fighter 3 and Vengeful Fighter 3 to be used instead, as they are not as overpowered as they used to be when they were first introduced. Thankfully, when Ludveck and Murdock debuted as Grand Heroes in February 2023 and June 2023, they came with Vengeful Fighter 3 and Special Fighter 3 respectively, bringing those skills into the grail pool for the first time.
    • One area that gets often criticized is how often many characters get alts that are basically the same as other versions of themselves. Popular characters who often get alts like Hector, Micaiah, and Camilla tend to have alts that have the same weapon, movement type or abilities as previous versions, making them feel like they aren't special or unique once you get past superficial details such as stats or base skills. For example: every single alt Micaiah has received has been a mage with a weapon that's effective against armored and cavalry foes, Camilla's alts are always fliers, and Hector is always an armored unit with some form of Distant Counter in his weapon or A skill. Though they have stats and skills that distinguish them, they often feel very similar in spirit on account of often being similar to an already existing alt (Bride, Legendary, and Summer Micaiah are all colorless mages with previously mentioned dual effectiveness), or having the same weapon typing (Regular, Legendary, Valentines, and Young Hector are all axe armored units), making it feel like the developers cannot think of other ways to make them unique. This is noticeable when some characters have alts with more variety in the alts they get, such as Lucina having alts of various weapon types, or getting alts with different typings to make them feel unique. Robin is often pointed to as prime example of this problem; for a character who can literally be every single class in their home game, outside of about two or three alts, every alt has been themed around being possessed by Grima, which many find severely limits the character design wise.
    • Seasonal themes that keep using the same type of roster:
      • With the exception of "Bridal Blessings", every seasonal banner in 2017 only featured units from Awakening and/or Fates. "Love Abounds" broke this pattern by featuring units from the Elibe games without anyone from Awakening or Fates.
      • Halloween banners (from 2020-2022) and New Year banners (from 2019 onwards) were noted to star only dragon/dragon adjacent units and Heroes originals and beasts/dragons, respectively, while patterns established in other seasonal banners had been subverted or broken before. The former pattern was finally broken in 2023, which notably does not feature any units who use dragon breaths as their weapons.
    • Fans have expressed displeasure from the fact that every Book in the game are almost exactly the same, just with a new coat of paint with no real changes to the game's status quo: Each Book starts with the Askr trio being invaded by the new realm that has just been introduced, and the Order of Heroes are aided by an Arc Heroine who also happens to be a princess, or is the retainer to a king. The villain is also completely invincible until the Heroes find a magic MacGuffin that is needed to defeat them. On top of that, every male OC and all but one pair of siblings will die as well as the villain themselves. The Arc Heroine then moves to Askr, rarely, if ever to be seen in the story from then on. Rinse and repeat.
    • This has been a complaint regarding Forging Bonds hero events that feature Fjorm either praising the other hero and giving them a motivational speech, or if the other character is a mage, they're in the library. Some fans find her personality and dialogue to be too generic and boring to justify her reappearances over other Heroes characters, which results in these aforementioned hero events running through the same plot beats every time. It's gotten to the point where these fans have used the term "Fjorming Bonds" whenever she appears, with the other hero being referred to as "getting Fjormed".

    J-L 
  • Junk Rare: This applies to 5-star exclusive rare units that are are a pain to bring up to usable scratch and lack any useful skills available for inheritance. Most of these units are old units with lower Base Stat Totals (BST) that come with outdated, useless default skills. Pulling these units negates a player's pity percentage accumulated from summoning lower rank units, ruining the already low chance to draw a wanted unit, though thankfully if you get a pity breaker with some summons left, you can still roll on it to get something good since the pity breaker only takes effect after that summoning session. While the old 5-star exclusive units in the regular pool have since been removed from said pool, the ones who fall under this entry can still waste your tickets on special summoning banners that only feature these types of units. Notable examples include Luke: Rowdy Squire, Olwen: Blue Mage Knight, Mist: Helpful Sister, Xander: Spring Prince, and Leo: Seashore's Prince.
  • Just Here for Godzilla:
    • Few pay any mind to the war between Askr and the Emblian Empire; most just want to collect and fight with their favorite characters from all Fire Emblem games.
    • Some people will only play the game to hear characters from earlier games in the series voice-acted.
  • Like You Would Really Do It:
    • Sharena was seen killed by Hel in the Book III Opening Movie, but it turned out that it wasn't the Sharena of this world, but the one of an alternate universe, where Lif was born from her death.
    • Also in Book III, Hel put a death curse on Alfonse where he would die in nine days. Come nine day's time, Gustav dies for Alfonse instead.
    • Despite the Mind Screw that is Book IV, Chapter 12 that seemingly revealed that Alfonse was dead as a consequence of Book III for slaying Hel, it turned out to just be a lie to mess with the Order of Heroes.
    • The Ice & Flame series revealed that the Twilit Runes said that Múspell and his champion Laegjarn would win, saying "the ice melts as the flame remains, the champion renewed". The prophecy played exactly as foretold...except it didn't say WHICH champion would be revived, and Fjorm is revived by the Flame Gem given to Laegjarn by Muspell as Fjorm and Nifl defeat Múspell.
  • Low-Tier Letdown: Many bad units have come and gone over the game's lifespan, but none are even remotely as useless as the three main characters of the game: Alfonse: Prince of Askr, Sharena: Princess of Askr, and Anna: Commander. In addition to the handicap of suffering from very poor generation 1 statlines that hold up very badly in the face of years of Power Creep, they have the unique problem of being unable to utilize merges, denying them a further 23 stat points across the board and crippling their score in the Arena. As a final nail in the coffin, they were three of the earliest units to get weapon refines, which have also suffered from Power Creep that render them mediocre (Alfonse and Sharena) or outright useless (Anna), and they are very unlikely to get any new tools to fix their issues that can't benefit every other unit in the game in their weapon class more. Most of the oldest units in the game have much better options available to the player, but they can still be very much viable if heavy favoritism is shown. In a game of a series whose selling point is that any unit can be viable with enough favoritism, the Askr trio sticks out as the damning exception of being completely unsalvageable no matter what the player does. It's fairly telling that many quests require the player to use one of them in certain battles, potentially using them to deal the killing blow to the boss, demonstrating that using them makes things harder for yourself.

    M 
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • Princess Laegjarn is a general of the Kingdom of Múspell and serves as a recurring threat for the Order of Heroes to face. Realizing her physical weaknesses, she decides to make a name for herself by becoming a strategist to watch over her little sister, Laevateinn. During her introduction, she sharply notices the fake footprints that the Order has left to throw her off their trail and when captured by the Order of Heroes, Laegjarn manages to escape by exploiting the distracted Fjorm's grief over her sister Gunnthrá's death. Upon learning of Helbindi's Doomed Hometown caused by his failure, Laegjarn politely relieves him of his duty by lying to Surtr, saying he died. When Surtr orders the death of Laevateinn for her failure to kill the Order, Laegjarn chooses to die instead, requesting Fjorm save Laevateinn from an unnecessary death. Fjorm mourns her death, saying the two of them could've been friends under different circumstances. Later resurrected by the god Múspell himself to finally end his nemesis Nifl for good by having Laegjarn duel Fjorm to the death, Laegjarn takes advantage of a Prophecy Twist that ensures she defeats Fjorm, but resurrects her by giving Fjorm a Flame Gem, allowing both of them to defeat Múspell and free Fjorm from the Rite of Frost, allowing both of them to live as friends.
    • Líf is an alternate version of Alfonse and a general in the Realm of the Dead. Having lost his little sister Sharena and his entire kingdom of Askr, Líf joined forces with Thrasir, an alternate version of Veronica who has also lost her country and family. Together, they serve Hel in hopes of restoring their people, vowing to remain close friends should they win the war. Líf retains his strategic mind from when he was idealistic, as shown when he creates a trap to crush the Askrian forces by predicting that they would show up where he was expected to be. Upon being defeated later, Líf regrets the situation he was forced into, requesting Alfonse to not become like him and to not let his Askr fall to ruin.
    • Triandra the Nightmare is the dökkálfr in charge of nightmares and a loyal servant of Freyja. Once a mortal girl forced to kill her father to protect her sister, Triandra accepted Freyja's offer to escape their miserable lives and become her servant. Following her master's plans, Triandra valiantly engaged the Order of Heroes numerous times, remaining a constant threat with her nightmarish schemes, using them to resurrect old foes and other Heroes. She continued to serve Freyja despite remembering her past, using her abilities to the fullest until her final battle. Ultimately resurrected by Freyja as one last act of kindness, Triandra along with Plumeria watch over Dökkálfheimr to keep Freyja's will alive until they could bring her back.
    • Eitri is a scientist in Niðavellir and the main villain of Book V. After being taken in by the first king of Niðavellir, she gained the ability to send her mind into different bodies, serving the kingdom for generations. Initially posing as an ally to the Order of Heroes, she helps them fend off Fáfnir's assault for the purpose of protecting Reginn, the true heir of Niðavellir. In reality, she was the one who caused Fáfnir's descent into insanity by inventing the Crown of the Dvergar that empowered him. Eitri's real plan was to ensure the glory of Niðavellir by securing Reginn's rightful claim to the throne, not caring about her own safety when all is said and done. Before her last stand against the Order, Eitri records a video explaining her wishes to the summoner, saying she got what she wanted, regardless of her fate.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • A lot of the Game Breakers get this, but the biggest example is Reinhardt, for how he was a dominating force in the meta, and he still has his uses and his fans even after his heyday.
    • Wrys is both this and a Memetic Loser. On the Loser side, he's a relatively common Colorless Staff unit who is disliked for both his physical appearance and status as a unit with a bad starting kit and a plethora of other problems. On the Badass side, his sheer commonness makes some players depict him as an omnipotent force of nature who will stop at nothing to ruin your summoning sessions, especially for players who are trying to obtain a Colorless Game-Breaker unit.
    • What Wrys is for Colorless units, Bartre is for Green units. His incredible manliness and commonness has made the fandom portray him as an even stronger force than Wrys himself, appearing in other mobile gacha games and places where he shouldn't be in.
    • Shanna got this treatment after her completely left field victory in November 2017's "Short-Haired Ladies vs. Long-Haired Gents" Voting Gauntlet, which was quite the feat, considering everything that was going against her.
    • Gunnthrá is getting a similar treatment due to her victory in the June 2018 Voting Gauntlet, having beaten both Ryoma and Ike when it was assumed the latter would sweep the gauntlet for his second win.
    • After his portrayal from Book 2 onwards, Alfonse has been slowly but surely becoming this, especially after a very strong showing during Book 3. A rather common joke regarding the big reveal during Book 4 was that Alfonse has become so badass that the Gods themselves deemed it necessary to kill him.
  • Memetic Molester:
    • The fanbase tends to portray Wrys as a Dirty Old Man who tries to sexually assault the younger looking characters, with some of the Manaketes being popular targets of his "affections" (specifically Young Tiki, Fae, and Nowi, who are prepubescent in dragon years). This makes Wrys running an orphanage in the endings of his games either Harsher in Hindsight or Hilarious in Hindsight!
    • Zephiel gets a lot of this for his obsession with (fire) dragons being amped up by the fandom to the point where it's common to see him "protecting" or "collecting" young manaketes such as Fae or Tiki. Sometimes even the more adult manaketes too, such as Ninian and adult Tiki. Other times, his wish of humanity being ruled by dragons is amped to desperately want to be sexually dominated by female Grima or Idunn. This is a fan exaggeration, as in canon, Zephiel's sympathy doesn't extend to the human-loving Divine Dragons, sending war dragons to invade Fae's village.
  • Memetic Psychopath:
    • After mounted mage Eirika's reveal that she was using Gleipnir, a tome many thought would go to Knoll, fan art of her threatening or even killing Knoll for it surfaced immediately (Though the latter was debunked with how Knoll was summonable by December 2020, so he's not dead yet). Some artists took it further by making her motivation incredible jealousy of Ephraim's Siegmund being refinement-capable in Heroes, while her Sieglinde wasn't.
    • The Summoner themselves, ever since the manga had them sacrifice Wrys and crush Sharena's heart, has been considered as some sort of crusher of dreams for the heroes that just want to befriend each other, by throwing them away for Skill Inheritance or any other silly reason. Most of the fanbase consider that this is the Summoner's way to emulate the neighboring psychopathic interpretation-via-manga protagonist of gacha game, Riyo Gudako.
    • Ylgr is starting to receive this treatment mere minutes after her release, with one of her critical quotes happily saying how much fun she's having, as she cuts her enemy down. The manga also had a chapter where she cheerfully proclaimed she'll make Askr into a second Nifl, much to Alfonse's concern.
    • Legendary Roy is jokingly called a racist because of his personal skill Human Virtue, which only works if he's adjacent to human alliesnote . People go so far as to say he's a hypocrite for even having "Lion" as part of his title.
    • Both Palla and Catria became this when it was discovered that Young Palla's sprite during the hot spring scene upon clearing floor 100 of Tap Battles was awkwardly positioned in a way that made it look like that they were drowning their little sister Est. Because of this, fans sometimes jokingly exaggerate Catria's jealousy for Est's potential, and sometimes even portray Palla as a Yandere for Abel by attempting to murder Abel's crush Est, not being helped by Spring Palla's default pose looking like she's staring at something with intent and her Meet the Heroes description for her has her eyeing her carrot suspiciously as if she was admiring it...
    • Hall of Forms has made bow-wielding Kinshi Hinoka into one, due to the tendency of fliers and armors being offered—sometimes for all four forma units—while this variant of Hinoka has effectiveness against both of these movement types. Add to that impressive stats the farther you go, along with her offensive spread, and she becomes a powerful obstacle that could destroy formas with little effort.
  • Moe:
    • The game lumps together tons of different Fire Emblem characters, so it’s only natural that characters that were previously deemed adorable would fall into this here. The voice acting definitely helps.
    • Some of the seasonal variants, such as Spring Lucina, Halloween Nowi, and Christmas Fae, can also fall into this.
    • Winter Cecilia and Love Abounds Titania also gathered this reaction with their endearing smiles.
    • And of course, there are the chibi sprites that make almost every single character look absolutely adorable.
    • In the Heroes game itself, there's Veronica, an initially Creepy Child whom becomes more endearing after development and longs for the company of others. Her adorableness is amplified in her Spring alt.
      • Sharena also counts, wishing to make friends with all of the Heroes, becoming even more endearing in her spring alt, aswell.
      • Ylgr, the youngest Princess of Nifl who wants to relieve her boredom anyway she can, yet is still a sweet snowball.
      • Peony. A cheerful and kind light elf whom brings pleasent dreams to everyone.
    • The Adrift banner introduced a younger Azura, who's very much adorable and makes many wish to protect her.
    • The 10/3/2019 Feh Channel introduces a child version of Lilina who accompanies Hector into battle, and she's an adorable little moppet.
    • The Start of It All banner introduces young versions of Marth, Caeda, Merric, the Whitewings and Minerva, all of whom are very cute.
    • The year after that, the Childhood Encounter banner introduced young Tana, Innes, L'Arachel, Lyon, as well as Eirika and Ephraim, who only add to the cuteness.
    • Then, the year after that, the Unlikely Friends banner gave us young Mia, Ilyana, Boyd, Soren, Mist and Ike to top it all off.
  • Moment of Awesome:
    • The Book III ending video. Hel is about to murder Sharena just like in Líf's timeline, but Eir interrupts her with a dagger and states that she's going to protect them this time. Alfonse promptly duels her while Veronica prepares the ritual that will finish her off, and Hel actually hallucinates Líf and Thrasir fighting her as one last posthumous "up yours" before the Summoner shoots her dead.
    • From the Forging Bonds event "Peaceful Ends", Lyon's S Support. After spending all three previous supports getting taunted by Fomortiis, who possesses Fallen Lyon's body, that Lyon will become just like him, Lyon essentially orders Fomortiis to submit to the Summoner, flooring him with words once Fomortiis decides to talk back, and leaving the demon king completely humbled:
      Lyon: You thought you were my future. You were wrong. It is the other way around.
      Fallen Lyon: That's not possible!
      Lyon: All my power was stripped from me in defeat. What I do posess, however, is knowledge. Most of all I know in precise detail how exactly you can be destroyed.
    • From the Forging Bonds event "Keepers of Faith", we have Gatekeeper holding back Thorr herself, all on his own, during a Mjolnir Strike, managing to do so long enough for reinforcements to arrive, Mumen Rider style. He impresses Thórr enough that she stops holding back out of respect.
    • It was made clear over many points that the Order of Heroes is majorly handicapped without the Summoner to lead them. However, during Book V, after the Summoner ends up being taken captive, the Order is successfully able to mount a rescue effort and save the Summoner. They've come so far.
    • At the end of Book VI, Chapter 5, Alfonse, in a chilling display of acting and lying expertise, claims to Director Letizia that he killed his father because "He got in my way," in order to convince the latter that threatening his people won't work on him. It's so convincing that not only does Letizia fall for it, but so does Sharena.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • If Surtr hadn't already crossed it before Book II when he murdered Fjorm's mother, he leaps over the line in Chapter 7 when he murders Gunnthrá in front of the party and ESPECIALLY her sister and takes his sweet time to gloat about it.
    • Hel crosses it in Book III by not only killing Gustav when he takes Alfonse's place in dying to Hel's death curse, but proceding to mock him and then raise him and pit him against his children.
    • King Njörðr crosses this in Book VII, when after having Seiðr kill her "sister" Heiðr, ostensibly as a Mercy Kill, he reveals that this was meant to transfer Heiðr's curse to Seiðr, thus making her Gullveig in the future, then proceeds to engage in Evil Gloating about having manipulated everyone involved.
  • More Popular Spin-Off: The game's constant updates, large cast, and surprisingly engaging metagame give the game lots of replay value, while its easy accessibility for new players and its wide variety of characters for veterans attracts fans of all kinds. It's really telling that the Heroes subreddit gathered more subscribers than the main Fire Emblem one just six months after its release. Heroes is generally considered a better game for what it is than some mainline Fire Emblem entries, as well as the best out of Nintendo's mobile offerings.

    N 
  • Narm Charm:
    • The Spring Festival Special Heroes costumes are delightfully ridiculous, with Chrom, Lucina, Xander, and Camilla wearing bunny outfits, using bizarre weapons (Xander wields a giant carrot as a lance), and saying cheesy one-liners. Of note is one of Lucina's lines "Let's go hop into a garden and see what's blooming", which sounds like it belongs in an educational game, not a game about war. It's also hard to negate the fact that Lucina's artwork for the event depicts her as the happiest she's ever been.
    • Alfonse, Sharena, Catria, and Kagero, the Hares at the Fair, are lovably silly in their bunny outfits. Alfonse also has a bizarre weapon in his Giant Spoon, which is an oversized spoon holding an egg that he wields as an axe, while Kagero has throwing carrot daggers. Catria meanwhile is so embarrassed about her outfit, it's adorkable, and when Kagero activates an offense special, she'll sometimes say "Ninjabbit attack!" with stone-cold seriousness.
    • The live-action trailer, featuring the four Brave Heroes and the introduction of the Black Knight. It's incredibly cheesy, especially with the Black Knight's absurd armor being translated into a Game of Thrones-esque environment, but fans can't help but love it.
    • The child units from Fates all have voice lines in which they say their names. While most of these are seen as obnoxious, Soleil's "Soleil is here!" is considered somewhat endearing.
    • The intro movie to Book III is as Gothically surreal as an old 2000s AMV, complete with an absolutely metal musical track and pool of tar that you'd find in a Linkin Park video. None of this has really deterred anyone from being excited about everything introduced in it, on the contrary, many just rolled with it and enjoyed the change in direction.
    • Brave Alm's "Worry no more!" line sounds like he's trying to act like a superhero who's about to swoop in and help save the day. Considering he's a Dork Knight, it actually fits rather well.
    • The summer 2020 banner featured the first in a variant of the Duo Heroes called Harmonized Heroes, which acts as a crossover between characters from different games. The first one was Mia, and Lucina, or rather, "Marth". The fact that it's Lucina hiding her identity while still wearing the mask makes it intentionally hilarious since nothing is stopping them from just having her take it off, and yet she makes a big deal about never taking it off while wearing a swimsuit that makes it clear that she cannot be male in any possible way. Despite this, the friendship between Mia and Marth is still endearing and a nice nod to the Tempest Trial where the former stuck up for the latter.
  • No Casualties Run:
    • Enforced with the Hero maps, which will immediately end in failure if any allied unit loses all of their HP.
    • Some quests require the player to not lose any units on top of the other objectives.
    • Beating an Arena battle with all four of your allies will reward you with more points than if 1-3 of them were killed in battle, encouraging you not to lose any units while fighting and work around certain foes.
    • Squad Assault requires the player to utilize five teams with no duplicate Heroes across five consecutive maps to get a Sacred Seal and 2 orbs. Not one Hero on any of those five teams must fall, no matter the map.
    • Blessed Gardens started out the same as the Hero maps—clear one map without losing a single unit, except the Gardens only admit units with certain blessings or affinities. Eventually the Gardens gained an expansion in the Grounds, which are more akin to Squad Assault. The Grounds up the ante from clearing only one map to two or three maps while still requiring the player to keep their units (who, again, must have the right blessing or affinity) alive.
    • Downplayed in Tiers 29-38, collectively called "Vault of Heaven" in Aether Raids introduced in update 5.1.0, where players earn an extra 10 Lift if all their units are alive for each successful raid (+20 if the player uses the x2 boost), meaning while players can still earn Lift if they lose any units, even with heroes in the special slot in raiding parties, it's encouraged for players to keep all their units alive if they want to reach higher tiers in the Vault of Heaven and reach Tier 38 if they want to remain there for the next season.
  • Not Badass Enough for Fans: Alfonse has a kind and calm demeanor, though he's also a Low-Tier Letdown due to being completely impossible to truly salvage, a problem he shares with Anna and Sharena as well in spite of being made very useful through skill inheritance. In terms of personality, he also gets bashed for being afraid to get attached to anyone due to losing his friend.
  • No Yay: The Support system allows any two characters to support, and heavily implies romance at S Rank. This can be between parents and children, siblings, alternate versions of themselves, or characters who are mortal enemies or even killed each other in their home games. You can also make one-sided No Yay pairings from previous games, like Eirika/Valter, canon.

    O-P 
  • Older Than They Think: This being one of the first games using the Japanese mobage model to be widely well-known in the US and noticed by Western gaming journalists (who tend to dismiss mobage as cheap cash-grabs), many news outlets write about the game's F2P mechanics and Player Tics (such as restarting the game repeatedly for rare summons) as if this is something entirely new to gaming.
  • Pandering to the Base:
    • The Hero Fest banners lump together four powerful and popular units into one banner and give them increased pull rates, allowing players a good chance of getting some of the game's finest units.
    • From the middle of June 2017 onward, the developers have been releasing banners focusing on popular and powerful skills such as Vantage, Fury, Hone Attack, and Quick Riposte to give players a better chance of obtaining them.
    • Most seasonal banners and banners featuring characters from the more popular Fire Emblem entries (most recently Fire Emblem: Three Houses) are these.
  • Player Punch:
    • In the first Tap Battle dungeon, Fae appears to be the boss of floor 80, but simply serves to introduce the real boss, Sophia. As a result, Fae proves to be quite a pushover, but all she wanted to do was playnote . Once Sophia steps onto the scene, she wonders where Fae went, says that she can't see her anymore (with the implication that the player just killed her), then proceeds to the battle. Pretty harsh for a simple rhythm game mode.
    • Gunnthrá's death in Book II Chapter 7 was likely intended to be this, but it ultimately fails due to the possibility of the player not summoning them, and thus, not being able to connect with hernote .
  • Play the Game, Skip the Story: Players tend to point out that Heroes' storytelling is severely lacking, despite an attempt of Growing the Beard in Book II. This is mostly due to how the existing FE characters are treated: Most of them tends to just pop up, say 'We have to fight because there's this contract' and then not playing any roles whatsoever (only averted so far with Xander, Seth and Deirdre, all of them only at Book I). When compared to its main competitions such as Fate/Grand Order and Granblue Fantasy, which put a focus on storytelling and also utilizing their previously established characters or characters introduced to the game in the past (either including them in events or giving them A Day in the Limelight optional scenarios (Interludes or Fate Episodes)), this game's story department could look rather lackingnote . As such, players tend to just ignore the story and just concentrate in gathering their favorite heroes or minding the meta-game (or looking at the story as a way to get free Orbs). Players suspect that this is because of a possible mandate from Intelligent Systems to treat Heroes as more or less some sort of 'interactive advertisement' for the characters that in order to enjoy the character to the deeper detail, players should buy their home games, so they can't spoil or put too much information or interaction within Heroes.

    Q 
  • Questionable Casting:
    • Julie Maddalena's role as Sharena and Florina were well-received, but unfortunately the same isn't true for her role as Lilina, albeit more on the base-breaking side. Many players either find her voice to be obnoxious and grating, or is trying way too hard to sound cutesy, whereas others seem to enjoy it. Her role as Legendary Lilina is exempt from this, as it was praised for sounding more mature while still sounding young at the same time, but that does mean the other voice clips Kliewer provided for the character continued to remain divisive among the fanbase.
    • Mick Wingert replacing Liam O'Brien as the voice of Inigo/Laslow. The issue is not that Liam was replaced, but instead people feel Mick doesn't work as Inigo because of the exaggerated British accent Mick uses for both to try and emulate Liam's performance. However, the accent was only a small detail on Inigo and one that wasn't too noticeable for both forms of the character, but instead Mick dials it up to the point of being very out of place.
    • Cindy Robinson as Peri, replacing Elizabeth Daily. Like with the above, the issue isn't that the voice actor was replaced, but rather that the vocal performance changed how the character came across to fans. Her performance took Peri from sounding like a young adult who was unhinged, to giving her an overly cute and squeaky voice that makes it sound like Peri is meant to be seen as as funny or cute despite her yandere like nature. Its one of the few changes that is pretty much agreed was worse off.
    • Zach Aguilar as the replacement for Chris Niosi as Male Byleth. Although replacing Niosi was understandable, the choice to have the much younger and softer voice Zach replace Byleth raised some eyebrows from players as he sounds radically different from Niosi in a jarring way. The issue lies with how Niosi had already done his voice work, so people were used to it before Zach replaced him, meaning that suddenly his voice was different. Worth noting is that his performance in Fire Emblem: Three Houses after the patch for it has been better received since he sounds more natural, but in Heroes, he is seen as a weaker replacement by a lot of players.
    • Amanda Céline Miller as Elincia. Although Amanda is well liked as a voice actor, her voice work for Path of Radiance Elincia is somewhat of a weak spot, as Amanda sounds a fair bit older than Elincia was during the events of her first game appearance, which combined with Elincia's art making her look very young, makes for a jarring performance. Her Summer Festival Elincia portrayal is more liked however, due to the artwork making her look older and being based on Radiant Dawn, making Amanda's voice more fitting and natural by comparison.
    • Marin Miller as Fiora has been met with this reaction, due to Marin's rough and deep voice not fitting Fiora. Their performance sounds like they're trying to impersonate Marisha Ray as Effie, which makes Fiora sound like she's a tough and no-nonsense mercenary, which isn't necessarily out of character to an extent, but clashes with the caring older sister role she plays for her sisters, and to an extent the other characters from her game.
    • Megan Hollingshead as Ylgr earned a bit of this from players due to how strange Ylgr is as a character. She's a Motor Mouth and a young girl, and Megan is well known for being mature and older characters, so having her voice a young girl who loves talking sticks out performance wise as off putting. Her performance isn't outright hated, but some feel it it makes Ylgr sound off.
    • Jamieson Price as young Zephiel. His baritone fits the older Zephiel like a glove, but by having Price still do the young prince, it's as if Zephiel has a grown man's voice during his youth. He does try and give a different inflection, which helps Zephiel sound a little younger, but the deepness of his voice remains.
    • Greg Chun voicing both Young Ephraim and Young Ike earned this reaction for similar reasons, as while Greg Chun is well liked for his voice work, he doesn't at all sound like a child due to how dry and deep his voice is, which considering how both characters are children as opposed to teens or young adults, is very jarring and hard to ignore. In fact, some people felt both characters should have had different voice actors for the parts, as unlike someone like Xander Mobus as Young Innes, Greg's voice can't naturally sound young or at least young enough.
    • Bryce Papenbrook as Raven and Karel. Raven is a sullen man who doesn't speak to anyone unless he feels he needs to after suffering terribly in the past, yet he sounds more like he's trying to come off as tough rather than is and more sulky than genuinely angry, on top of sounding like he has a minor cold. And Karel is an unhinged swordsman, known by many as the "Sword Demon," yet sounds far too young and high-pitched to come across as fearsome.
    • Casting Heather Halley as Sara raises a few eyebrows, since Halley's deeper voice mismatched with Sara being canonically the youngest playable character in the franchise history (12 years old).
    • Tesshō Genda is best known for his gruff baritone, having already voiced Surtr, fitting him to a tee. However, he also voices Múspell, who might be a God and Dragon, but has more of a younger looking man for his human form and generally acts like an immature Psychopathic Manchild. The difference can be a little... jarring.

    R 
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Back in the The Blazing Blade days, Ninian often was hated by some for shipping and weakness reasons. The Heroes fandom has received her appearance quite warmly, thanks to being a tanky Dancer, having a unique skill that assists her fellow dragons, and now using her dragon form outside of cutscenes. She ended up winning the Blood of Dragons Voting Gauntlet, absolutely dominating anyone she fought, even with the multiplier, and that particular Voting Gauntlet ended up not breaking the base just that once due to her presence.
    • There were a few units that used to be considered inefficient if not an outright Low-Tier Letdown in their original games, yet become extremely useful in Heroes due to various factors such as improved availability, stronger statlines, or more favorable map design. Those of the Jagen archetypes or Cecilia from The Binding Blade are some examples.
      Arden: I like fighting with you! I do a lot better than I normally would.
    • At the game's release, healers weren't all that useful due to the fast pace of the gameplay making their entire function borderline useless. Then endurance-style maps began to come out, such as the defense maps and the Tempest Trials, so they've found their own niche in single-player game modes. The November 2017 update solidified this by giving them upgrades to the utility and power of their staves. Not only do they get new staves with better offensive and healing capabilities, they can also upgrade their staves to have Wrathful Staff or Dazzling Staff built into them.
    • New Weapon Refinery updates can make some units far more useful than they were previously.
      • Regular Alm was initially considered the worst Falchion user who brought nothing new to the massive red sword pool, barring Windsweep. His unique refinery upgrade gives his Falchion a Brave effect, letting him attack twice consecutively if he initiates combat and is at full HP. It is thanks to this refinement that Alm is one of the best units to use on offense, especially against dragons.
      • For a long time, Odin was considered useful only for skill fodder, as his stats made him near-useless for actual combat. An update gave him an exclusive weapon, Odin's Grimoire, which is Blárblade+ but with higher Might and no Special cooldown penalty. Additionally, the weapon's unique refinery upgrade can boost his and an ally's attack and speed if he uses a positioning assist on the ally, or vice versa. Odin may not live up to his epithet "Potent Force" even after obtaining this new weapon, but he at least now has a niche of being an effective support unit who can hold his own.
      • Regular Alfonse was considered the worst of the Askr trio, as his defensive stats did him little good against a meta that was, at the time, about one-shotting your enemies. On top of that, his exclusive weapon Fólkvangr has an underwhelming effect of boosting his Atk by 5 for one turn if his HP was at or below 50% at the start of the turn, a la Defiant Attack 2. Fólkvangr's refinery upgrades all grant it a new effect that instead boosts Alfonse's Atk and Def by 7 during combat if his HP is at or below 80% before combat, like Brazen Atk/Def 3, which can be stacked with more Brazen Atk/Def 3 in both his A skill and Sacred Seal slot. This new effect may not bring Alfonse to the ranks of Ayra and Karla, but it at least plays up his strengths of being an effective tank, and cannot be affected by the Panic status unlike the old effect.
      • Regular Berkut was widely seen as one of the worst units in the game due to somewhat weak stats, lack of a unique weapon, and his blue cavalier typing making him one of many of his kind. Then he got the Dark Royal Spear, which gives him +5 Atk/Def/Res when attacked or if the foe is at 100% HP, and the refine includes a built in Lull Atk/Def effect, which had him jump from low tier, to one of the best free to play lance cavaliers, because he can forgo a Lull B skill for something like Quick Repose, and with the inclusion of skills like Distance Stance filling a similar role to his old Berkut's Lance, he can become very tanky and hard to kill. While his out of date stats are still an issue, with Dragonflowers, he can outperform newer units like Fallen Orson with ease thanks to his weapons effect.
      • Ever since her debut, Mist was deemed the worst pitybreaker due to low offensive stats—even the more common Serra has her beat on both stats—and a lackluster base kit, with the only new skill at the time being Spur Def/Res 2. An update gives her an exclusive staff, Elena's Staff, that combines Fear+ and Slow+ along with a start-of-turn debuff to both Atk and Spd, with the refine adding Panic to the mix, granting her a supporting niche.
      • Legendary Ryoma was considered sub-par at the time of his release in late May 2018, even as a Legendary Hero, with his default skillkit Kestrel Stance 2, Bushido, and Guidance being unusual for a Lightning Bruiser statline and not normally worthwhile to keep on, with players replacing most of his default skills for better ones and even replacing his Rajinto for Firesweep Sword+ just to make him worthwhile on the player phase, and even then he was considered inferior to his Regular variant since Regular Ryoma can use the Infantry only skills such as Null Follow-Up and Spurn. However, in May 2021, he received a massive buff. Not only did his Rajinto get a refine, which he shares with Regular Ryoma, but his Legendary Hero Remix during the same time also buffed his Bushido into Bushido II, where the unique refine for Rajinto gives him +4 Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat and Null Follow-Up if he either initiates combat or is within 2 spaces of an ally, and Bushido II removes his flying weakness, +7 damage per attack, and gains Damage Reduction like Spurn, and getting Atk/Spd Rein. As a result he suddenly shot up in usefulness and is now considered one of the best Sword Fliers in the game.
      • Canas, for a long time, was considered one of the worst units in the game despite his popularity due to a poor statspread that didn't lend itself well to any role, lack of a unique weapon, and lots of competition from other infantry red mages. Come the Version 6.1.0 update, he received the Ancient Codex, which gives him more Atk and Res in combat and lets him deal extra damage equal to a percentage of the greater Res stat of him and his opponent if he's within 3 spaces of an ally, with the refine giving him reduced Special cooldown for the first 3 turns of combat and more Atk and Res against foes with at least 75% of their HP left. It says a lot that, after the release of Ancient Codex, he jumped from Tier 5 on Gamepress's tier list all the way up to Tier 2, with his only major flaw being his stats being outdated and needing more investment to make up for it.
      • Legendary Seliph was considered one of if not the worst legendary unit from his release being designed as a pure enemy phase cavalry unit who would take a hit and then counter with two guaranteed consecutive hits from Holy War's End while healing back the damage he took. Unfortunately Holy War's End only worked when he was initiated on and was too easy to shut down either by stopping his follow up or changing his attack priority so he couldn't hit twice while his only defensive tool was his raw bulk which wasn't enough to reliably let him tank hits while his status as a calvalry unit left him with a lower stat total and locked out of other defensive tools. Come the 7.8 update in August 2023, he received his refine and remix, making him possibly one of the biggest examples of this trope in the game. Holy War's End was upgraded to Holy War's End II, gaining a -5 Atk/Def debuff on the enemy and follow up denial while his guaranteed follow up now applied to both phases making it so he was no longer a pure player phase unit. While it took away his ability to change attack priority on enemy phase, it was replaced with a Brave effect on enemy phase which unlike the consecutive guaranteed follow ups of the original, can only be stopped if he has less than 25% of his HP. Meanwhile Virtuous Tyrfing went from just inflicting a -6 Atk/Def debuff opponent and healing him for 7 HP on hit to inflicting a total -11 Atk/Def debuff on his opponent, dealing extra damage equal to 15% of his attack, preventing his counter attacks from being denied, granting him a minimum 40% damage reduction against all opponents which becomes 80% against magic and staff users, a once per turn Miracle effect when he's initiated on and has more than 50% health, and healing him for 8 HP on hit. All of this combines to make him not only one of the best calvary tanks in the game, but one of the best tanks in general with his combination of damage reduction and Miracle making him very difficult to kill before he can counter and heal himself back up.
    • This game as a whole has done wonders for armor units. In nearly every single mainline game, knights and generals have been considered near useless and have ranked poorly on most tier lists due to their combination of terrible movement and terrible attack speed making it difficult for them to make meaningful contributions to efficient play. They're also just generally considered terribly balanced, having low movement and a slayer weakness for no discernible benefit beyond slightly better bulk (which itself is already compensated for by their lower speed and resistance). In Heroes, on the other hand, they're among the best units in the game. Not only do they actually make up for their lower movement and slayer weakness by having superior stats, a massive number of new skills added to Heroes allow them to cover up their previously notorious weaknesses and regularly top nearly every tier list. Additionally, a majority of the maps (excluding the Rival Domains) are far smaller than a majority of Fire Emblem maps to fit an Android/iOS screen so their already low movement wasn't that much of a hassle.
    • Characterwise, Yarne's signature cowardice and whining have been toned down significantly, and while he's clearly still timid, squeamish and easily startled, he complains far less, is far more willing to do what needs to be done, and has generally become far more of a Cowardly Lion than his borderline Dirty Coward persona in Awakening, as demonstrated by his pre-battle quote in Book III, Chapter 8, Part 2.
      Yarne: I'm the last of my people. Mother and father can't fight anymore, so I have to. I have to!
    • While Astrid became a Base-Breaking Character in Radiant Dawn over her love of Makalov, her Forging Bonds events in Heroes focus more on her feeling trapped by being a young noblewoman who will be given to a loveless Arranged Marriage. The only time Makalov comes up is when Marcia mentions she has a brother and Astrid's response implies that she hasn't met Makalov yet.
    • Free units at the start of the game were often considered underwhelming, as they didn't have access to Assets/Flaws and most couldn't be merged past +1. With the additions of features such as Heroic Grails, Weapon Refinery and Trait Fruits, as well as just having much better stats overall, many free units are able to catch up to summonable units and find their place in the game.

    S 
  • The Scrappy: Ótr. He’s inconsistently written throughout Book V, ranging from seemingly being an Ax-Crazy Hate Sink who hates Reginn and thus is meant to be viewed as a putrid character, to a Tragic Villain who just wants loved ones and someone meant to be viewed with pity, then flips between these portrayals so often it makes it seem like the writers don’t know what to do with him. Beyond that, his shallow motivation of not wanting to “lose” Fáfnir, his willingness to kill Reginn out of sheer jealousy for something not given more depth, and his manipulation of Nótt via fake feelings of love, didn’t help depict him as a likable character. This might've been fine, if (as mentioned) the game didn’t seem inconsistent as to what kind of reaction the player is meant to have from him. Combined with his gameplay value being mediocre as a Mythic Hero, and he’s widely seen as the worst Heroes Original Generation character in the game's history, to the point that his first appearance in Choose Your Legends resulted in the single lowest rated Heroes OC during their first CYL appearance period, only being beaten by characters who had fallen in popularity like Hel and Ylgr. To drive this even further, his banner was estimated to be the single worst selling banner in the game's history at the time of its release, and unlike later banners that sold even worse, he doesn't have the excuse of just bad timing from a sales angle.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Has its own page.
  • Scrappy Weapon:
    • While other weapons provide useful skills like HP regeneration or special attack charge reduction, anti-armor and anti-cavalry weapons take a significant attack hit in exchange for a 1.5 damage multiplier against specific unit types. They were rescued by the 2.0.0 update, which introduced stronger versions of them that only have 1 less MT than regular weapons. These upgraded anti-armor and anti-cavalry weapons can also be refined to ignore stat boosts on units they're effective against, providing a strong counter to horse-based and armor-based teams.
    • The generic Triangle Adept weapons are considered either the worst, or among the worst, weapons in the game. The issue with them is that, while Triangle Adept as a skill suffers from Crippling Overspecialization, it at least has niche uses for characters who can get Colorless advantage, allowing the unit to cover two different unit types if built properly (Boey being a prime example). The Triangle Adept weapons though not only sacrifice the weapon slot, but they cause the unit to become stuck at being only good at fighting one color type. In a game where the meta had shifted to often ignoring color typing entirely, the Triangle Adept weapons not only weaken a unit who has one, but almost always, even when the unit gets a Weapon Refine, remains as a main effect (such as with Seth), preventing the unit from ever becoming viable unless you never bother using their weapon.
    • There are only two inheritable colorless tomes in the game so far, those being Hvítrvulture note  and Hvítrdeer note , but they’re almost never used on anyone aside from Niime and Laurent, who don’t come with prfs. This is because every other colorless mage has a prf that generally outclasses the inheritable colorless tomes with their effects. They become more of a nuisance than anything in Hall of Forms, since colorless mages in that game mode are going to want to pick up their prf early on, but if the player is unlucky, the inheritable colorless tomes will keep showing up instead.
  • Seasonal Rot: Some players feel Book VI is the lowest point in the game's story, due to wasting a large amount of the returning and new characters, focusing on too many plot points that could ever have been resolved in the story (Veronica's past, Embla and Askr's history, Letizia and Veronica's history, Bruno's search for a cure, resolving the conflict between Askr and Embla as countries, etc), none of which felt like they were resolved effectively. Even though the Askr trio are still important to the story, it felt like the developers focused way too much on Veronica at the cost of everyone else. Ash and Elm are cited as a good example of this, as Ash received little focus from the writers as the story went on (if at all), while Elm had absolutely no character whatsoever, compared to Veronica who appeared constantly.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge:
    • A popular challenge is to beat Hero Battles using only unpromoted free units. For extra challenge, do it without a dancer. The game's developers began encouraging this when they tweeted out what the weakest team to beat Navarre's map was.
    • Another popular challenge is to "True Solo" Hero Battles, where players can use only one unit to beat the maps with no assistance from other units.
    • There's also beating Hero Battle maps in 1 turn with Auto Battle.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: The FEH Quiz events 2021 and prior relied on materials that players can access. The 2022 version hosted by Fehnix is based off of player metadata instead, forcing players to think how others have used their units. The playerbase ended up getting at least one answer wrong.
  • So Okay, It's Average: Players who don't outright hate the main story have this as their general opinion. While they're enjoyable in their own right and have some good moments, it's not really something to call home as well since the pacing and over-emphasis on advertising the current banner's units in some of the chapters holds back some interesting characters or plotlines. For example... That aside, they're relatively passable and harmless to view as a watered-down version of a Fire Emblem story.
  • Special Effect Failure:
    • Because of how large Grima is, Fallen Robin's manakete "transformation" is actually just summoning the giant dragon, with his head and neck peering from the side of the screen. However, when looking at his entry in the Catalog of Heroes on tablet-sized devices, Grima appears to be solely made out of a floating neck and head. This was later fixed in an update where the neck is now extended to go beyond the screen edge.
    • The Legendary and Mythical Heroes all have animations for attacks when they finish off their foes without using a Special. Some of these, such as Eir, Eliwood and Marth involve attacking the foe multiple times. What makes this a problem is that if the opponent isn't hit before then, their animation remains as idle rather than damaged until the final blow. This is especially glaring with Marth who stabs at his foe several times, yet they never flinch until after the final attack.
    • Some Tomes such as the Raven Tomes have a fixed area on where their animation will come from. So if, for example, a sword unit dashes forward and attacks a Raven tome wielder and the latter then retaliates, the former will be a few feet a way from the pour of magical ravens, yet still act like it hit them if it deals damage.
  • Squick:
    • Micaiah and Sothe as a Duo in the 2020 Bridal event. Their many conversations that imply romantic feelings would normally be sweet if not for the uncomfortable implications of Wife Husbandry, what with Micaiah having been a Parental Substitute for Sothe since he was young with their description even noting they have a mutual trust that rival siblings, not helped by their Meet The Heroes page noting they're like siblings in many ways and then that they almost look like a married couple in the same sentence.
    • Even when ignoring the implications, people were uncomfortable with the fact that Lara was added to the game with her dancer outfit from the original Fire Emblem Trading Card Game, as it was deemed too revealing for someone who looks 15 in appearance. This came to a point where they wished they used her thief design instead, as it was explicitly shown in her Meet the Heroes page and is more modest in comparison.
  • Superlative Dubbing: For the most part, the English voices have received loads and loads of praise from the fans. It's also worth mentioning that much of the Fates characters either got their voice actors changed or had the returning actors slightly alter their voices. This too has been praised, especially given the lukewarm reception the dub got.

    T 
  • Tainted by the Preview:
    • The Feh Pass was received very negatively when it was announced, since it gave players that bought it a significant advantage over other playersnote  and it had quality-of-life features people had wanted for a long time.note  Its announcement caused what was otherwise considered to be a very solid Feh Channel to be one of the most disliked videos for Fire Emblem Heroes. Manages to become even more hated now that it’s become available, where the game will constantly show off all the bonuses of having the pass, such as the completed Feh pass exclusive quests despite not having the pass, appearing when you do quests from the training tower, in summoner support, just to name a few. It’s to a point where some people can describe the game as an ad for the pass. It's telling that, at least for the Western app store, that the average review score for the game dropped heavily after the announcement of the Feh Pass, and the number of 1 star reviews increased heavily. The hate got even worse when it was announced in December 2021 that more perks would be added to Feh Pass, namely the fact that subscribers can now obtain a free focus hero after 40 summons on several limited time focus banners. This was a long requested feature by players, and the fact that only Feh Pass subscribers can use it left fans angered.
    • The announcement of the Forma Soul Packs, like with the Feh Pass, was received very negatively upon its announcement. The idea behind it was that, after completing the Hall of Forms events, you could use the Forma Souls to essentially keep one of the units used during the mode and gain it for yourself. This in theory is a very helpful tool, but the fact it's only available by purchasing it with real money made people turn away from using it right away. Another major issue is that you cannot merge the Forma unit with ones you already have, but can only merge your copies into the Forma unit, meaning that unless you are getting a new unit, its going to be potentially worse than what you already have since the Forma will be a neutral IV. This, alongside the Feh Pass has left many players very worried about the monetization being done to the game, as the Forma Soul Pack encourages players to drop more money if they want to keep their units from the Hall of Forms event.
    • The trailer for the banner "Attuned: Peony & Triandra", which introduced Attuned Heroes. While the reception for the trailers that introduced previous hero variants were more or less warm, the major reason this one has largely negative reception from the community is not just the banner only having one new character added (Mycen), with Marla and Hestia being released as freebies, but the introduction of Attuned Heroes in general. Many felt that the concept, in which these heroes possess an additional skill slot containing a slightly weaker version of an existing skill that can be inherited to other heroes only once, was both redundant and unnecessary, as Rearmed Heroes already have a similar function albeit with weapons, and that the X-Skills can only be given to units that don't have personal skills already note , rendering what many thought was a pointless concept. This issue was slightly mitigated with the Version 8.2.0. patch which allows Rearmed Heroes to be able to use their personal skills and an X-Skill at the same time (as well as allowing Attuned Heroes to use both their personal skill and an Arcane Weapon simulataneously).
  • That One Component: Dragonflowers are a vital part of the game on account of fixing Can't Catch Up issues older units have due to giving a direct stat increase that gradually is increased to allow the unit to match the current BST. The issue is that a player gets so few in a week that unless an event is happening where they are given out, players can often not get enough to give the units they like enough Dragonflowers to get their characters stats high enough to be able to keep up. The most reliable way besides PVP modes is Heroic Ordeal maps, but those require getting a stream of new units that are for the movement style you want more Dragonflowers for, so the player has to save up a bunch before being able to invest in Dragonflowers. Of particular note are infantry Dragonflowers, which players may end up being starved the most out of the four due to the majority of free-to-play accessible units being of that class. It doesn't help that help that the Askr trio, who arguably are the biggest victims of Can't Catch Up, are themselves infantry units, meaning they take a lot of Dragonflowers just to have okay stats.
  • That One Puzzle: Tactic Drills maps are puzzle maps that require players to do things step by step in a specific order to defeat all the enemies. While most of the Skills Studies maps can be managed with trial and error since they only feature two units and usually only last for five phases, the Grandmaster Tactic Drills maps are notorious for being a huge Difficulty Spike by forcing you to use four units, typically for seven phases. The solutions for these maps are oftentimes so cryptic and baffling to the point where most players just resort to using a video guide to solve them.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • There is a part of the Japanese fanbase that feels the characters have been seriously flanderized in their dialogue, and/or express distaste for some of the artwork (most notably Hector's portrait), feeling that it doesn't represent the character well or just looks of bad quality. The former complaint only became more prominent with Ephraim, whose lines and dialogue in Japanese was noted to be heavily flanderized.
    • Some of the weapon changes given to characters are controversial. Perhaps most prominent are Caeda using swords instead of lances and Lucius using staves over magic.note 
    • One of the changes made to the Late March/Early April Voting Gauntlet has not been well received by the community due to making the mode worse. While the change to a stamina system that allows the player to use one to eight ballots per battle, with one restored every hour, was well received for making the mode more lenient instead of requiring people to play every thirty minutes, the other change was far less beloved. The team in the lead now got a multiplier bonus too; even though it's only half as effective as the losing team's multiplier, this made it heavily skewed towards characters with more people supporting them instead, something that was changed from the first few Voting Gauntlets due to the sheer landslide victory of characters like Lucina and Camilla. For comparison's sake; by the end of day 1 of Idunn vs. Julius, Idunn was ahead by nearly a full seven million points even with Julius having multipliers up pretty much every hour. The old system was still somewhat better balanced comparatively because despite its flaws, the multipliers were only for one team at a time and based on who was losing. Now you have a system that is a very clear popularity poll not seen since the first few Voting Gauntlets. That problem was later changed in the "Children's Day" Voting Gauntlet in Late April/Early March, where the losing side multiplier now has a bigger increase, capping from x7.5 to x12.
    • Some of the name changes introduced by Heroes weren't well received, especially when the fans were used to the spellings or terms used before regardless of the official status of those names. The names of the crusaders and locations in Genealogy of the Holy War are often subject to this. Some name changes were even dismissed as they end up being too wordy, such as the Earth Sword being renamed "Lands Sword" and the Wolfguard changed into "The Coyote's Men".
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
    • Book II's increasingly Darker and Edgier tone had turned quite a few players off. Gunnthrá's shockingly brutal death in Chapter 7 was the first major complaint in this regard, but this feeling really started to set in after Chapter 10, where the heroes manage to accomplish exactly nothing despite how far they've come, all their efforts are rendered completely pointless, and Surtr is now stronger than ever and has Resurrective Immortality. While this is alleviated with the reveal that the immortality can be turned off if cut off from the source, the apathy has already been well-spread within the fans.
    • Book III also turned off quite a few people off due to its even darker tone compared to Book II. This is mainly due to moments like Chapter 6, where it's revealed Eir was tortured and killed thousands of times by Hel to gain more power, and Chapters 7 to 12, which takes place in an alternate Askr where Hel succeeded in her conquest due to a forbidden rite killing everyone, and turned Alfonse and Veronica into undead generals. Said generals also seek to kill everyone in another reality to bring back everyone they love and care about. All the while Hel is seen as a Generic Doomsday Villain with no real motivation for why she wants to conquer all worlds, even compared to Surtr.
  • Tough Act to Follow: While Book IV made strides to improve the storytelling format, namely by reducing the amount of filler dialogue the returning heroes have in favor of giving the new characters time to shine, general consensus seems to be that it isn't as good as Book III. Book III had an interesting villain in Hel, Eir had a character arc that made her feel unique, and the exploration of the history of Askr through the appearances of Alfonse and Sharena's parents made the story feel more impactful. Book IV suffers from having a lighter story that doesn't really explore much that feels unique, the villains lack the same unique connection to the heroes as Líf, Thrasir, and Hel did, Peony lacks a character arc like Eir did (and generally the antagonistic faeries, Triandra and Plumeria, were considered more interesting and the saving grace of the Book, which actually hindered Peony's stance because she's supposed to be the protagonist/face of the book), and Freyja lacks the same intimidation as Hel does due to being introduced halfway through the story in comparison to Hel and even Surtr. Furthermore, the few interesting plotlines Book IV introduces are quickly revealed to not be important, leaving no lasting consequences for the story. Plus, the Fairy theme is seen as less interesting compared to what came before and after.

    U 
  • Underused Game Mechanic:
    • The Assassin's Bow is unique in that it's the only weapon with a Breaker skill attached to it and unlike its Skill counterpart, has no threshold. However, not only does there not seem to be any intentions to release another of its kind, the weapon can't even be refined and instead can be evolved to the different and more versatile Guard Bow+.
    • The Poison Dagger, Regular Kagero's weapon before getting Kagero's Dart, is the only weapon in the game that gives the user effective damage against infantry units. Other daggers have come out that give things like effective damage against Dragons, Armored units, and Cavaliers, but the Poison Dagger is the only weapon still to give effective damage to regular infantry units, which considering the amount of infantry units, comes across as odd. Like the Assassin's Bow, it cannot be refined either, meaning that its base effect has not changed. Kagero would later have the option to get Kagero's Dart as well as refine it too, removing the effect entirely and giving it a different skill, making it possibly the only weapon of its type players will see.
    • 4*/5* Banners were an interesting change of pace where 3 units of each colour and with good Skills could be obtained at either 5* normally or at 4* with a higher chance than other units, meaning you had a good chance of pulling for units you may like or obtain skills you want to give to your Heroes. Despite being well-received by fans, only 3 of it's kind were available and have never been seen since. At the very least, a form of this has appeared where 1 unit in new Heroes/Special Heroes banner will be available to summon for at 4* as well as 5* usually.
    • Forging new Sacred Seals. Initially introduced as a way to get more seals that players were unable to acquire, but also special ones that couldn't be replicated in base skills like Hardy Bearing. Despite this, no new skills unique to forging them have been made since its implementation, meaning that the only ones players can make are the default ones, and ones they missed.
    • Related to Sacred Seals was the Phantom Sacred Seals, which provide +10 Spd or Res when checking to see if the units Res or Spd is higher than their foes. For example; if a unit has a weapon or skill that requires having more Spd than the target, Phantom Spd 3 gives an invisible (hence the name) +10 for the purposes of meeting the stat comparison. While not super powerful, both are considered good Sacred Seals for characters who make use of those kind of stat checks, such as Julius' refined Loptous for Phantom Res. Despite there being several other skills or weapons that involve similar checks (Heavy Blade for Atk), or involve comparisons between HP stats, only two ever were made, with no reason given for why only two were made.
    • The Shield A skills were created as a way for players to No-Sell weapons that did extra damage to units with special movement abilities, such as Granni's Shield allowing a cavalier to not take extra damage from weapons that did effective against cavaliers. These skills were very sought after in the first few months after Skill Inheritance was a feature due to how strong the abilities were for many units. However, no new skills like these were ever added again, and instead units would have them merged into other unique skills or weapons, such as Legendary Robin having Dragonskin, giving immunity to Bows, and Sothis' weapon removing any weakness to weapons like Falchions. Nowadays, its considered only viable for select units whose raw stats are so good that they can afford to forgo another skill in favor of nullifying a weakness they have, such as Legendary or Fallen Tiki. The developers would later bring them back to a degree with "The Start of It All" banner in the form of Young Minerva having a buffed up version of Iote's Shield, but as it is exclusive to her, this means the idea going forward seems to be just making them buffed up skills for specific units only.
    • Many events or special non-seasonal banners had unique mechanics to them that were done only once or twice despite being liked by fans. For example, one event had the community have to defeat specific enemies between a certain period of time, at which point units would be gifted out. Others include Tempest Trials where previous Tempest Trial units were rerun instead of new ones. The introduction of Heroic Grails in 2019 was seemingly done to avoid doing this again, and since no event like it has been done again. Another example was the Farfetched Heroes banners; a banner released after the first Chose Your Legends event that would take four-five of the most popular characters in the CYL event that were not in the game yet and add them in, usually with a special event to go along with it. The second banner was renamed Brave Redux but followed the same lines and was based on four-five of the most popular characters not yet playable. After this however, it was not run again, seemingly because of how many units were now in the game.
    • There are a handful of charactersnote  who gained the ability to upgrade their weapons to special forms of their weapon that was wielded by other characters. Despite other characters having similar situations where a variant of said unit has a unique variation of said weapon (like how both regular and Legendary Ike wield Ragnell while Fallen Ike wields the Chaos Ragnell), only the aforementioned eleven units were ever able to acquire these weapon variants. Instead the developers went about giving refines to the original weapons, and treating those as the characters preferred weapon.
    • Legendary Leif's Meisterbogen has the effect where if you initiate combat, you deny the opponent's follow-up attack, but only if Leif is under the player's control. This is currently the only weapon with this stipulation.
  • Unfortunate Character Design:
    • Fjorm and Gunnthrá's faces in their damaged portraits make them look very aroused, especially the former.
    • Alm's infamous "Dong Armor", an elongated piece of armor placed in a... phallic position, makes a return on his Choose Your Legends outfit, which was meant to be a throwback to his original design from Gaiden.
    • Some characters have awkward emphasis of certain body parts in their artwork due to how they're shaded, such as Spring Alphonse and his bulge, and Legendary Lyn and her... gravity-defying right breast.

    V 
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Navarre's artwork has caused many new fans of the game to mistake him for a woman, especially before he became a playable unit.
  • Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:
    • This game brought to light some names with canonical pronunciations which weren't obvious to much of the fanbase, such as 'Camus' (kuh-moo) and 'Guy' being pronounced the French way. (However, while confusing, the latter is consistent with the Japanese pronunciation of his name: 'Gi'.)
    • Dagr is actually pronounced as "Dog-er", instead of "Dagger" like how it is seen.
  • Vindicated by History:
    • A variation. Many units were considered either average or not very good when they came out for various reasons. However, over time due to updates like Skill Inheritance, Weapon Refinery, the Sacred Seals and the players generally getting more creative, people's perceptions of units have changed to be more positive and in hindsight all a unit really needs to be good is a set of skills that take advantage of their stats.
    • The Hot Springs and Picnic Banners in earlier 2019 were the first banners to deviate from the seasonal formula and add new types of heroes, but although the Hot Springs one was poorly received, the Picnic Banner had middling reception as well, thus sealing their fate to not have any future banners with the theme. However, with how some people view the Spring banners to be unoriginal due to the bunny themed outfits, there's a group of people who feel that the Picnic Banner theme should be given a second chance at introducing a new line of units, especially with the advent of Duo and Harmonized heroes.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome:
    • The movies for the game and its Books are quite stunning, to say the least. The special intros for certain characters don't look half bad, either.
    • There's also the attack animations that certain Legendary Heroes have, such as Fjorm's spinning attack, Ike's finishing blow, and especially Legendary Lyn's jump-and-strike animation.

    W 
  • Watch It for the Meme: During the Princes vs. Princesses Voting Gauntlet, the match between Chrom and Ephraim, how close it was, and how much fun the community had with it has prompted many players who hadn't yet played Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones to go and play it to see what Ephraim (and to a lesser extent, Eirika, since she destroyed Elise in the opening round) was all about.
  • The Woobie:
    • Fjorm, big time. She was on the losing side of the war against Múspell, had to witness her mother and eventually elder sister die being burnt to crisp by a ruthless tyrant, and all of her efforts to stop that tyrant (up to and including severely draining her own life force) have been rendered futile. In addition, she was not able to take part in the fun, relaxing side missions/events that are more lighthearted in nature and could have done good for her psyche until the Gifts of Winter event, over a year after her release, and that was after she had gone through all the sufferings within Book II without any breaks. Somebody should give her a hug or a trip to the beach too, while we're at it.
    • Alfonse. Story-wise, he is shunned by his father for joining the Order of Heroes, and had to deal with the disappearance of his good friend Zacharias, which is a driving point for the story of Book I. After realizing that his friend is still alive, he learns that said friend suffers from Demonic Possession and has tried killing both him and Sharena multiple times, before he has to see him off yet again. As a result, he refuses to get too close to other Heroes in fear that he'll be hurt again, and feels forced to put up a strong facade since it's his duty as prince. Not helping is the fact that he is a Memetic Loser within the fandom—with many jokes and memes calling him "useless"—as well as the fact that many players would rather use other, better sword units. Book III is especially cruel to him, as it has him being harshly reprimanded by his father, then Hel appears and puts a curse on him that'll kill him after nine days. And when the time comes... his father takes his place instead.
    • Helbindi falls into this despite trying to look like a Jerkass Woobie. All he wants is to provide for his family and aid his sickly sister. Unfortunately for him, his boss is Surtr. He plays The Brute to ensure his family's survival, but then because the Order of Heroes keeps driving him away, Surtr's dickish nature kicks in and he decides to burn his whole village and his sister along with it solely to make an example of him, driving him into despair. It's surprising that someone who's modeled after brutish, unsympathetic villains like Hans makes players sympathize with and want to hug him.
    • Laevatein. Other than her older sister, she doesn't seem to have many people on her side; her father is an Omnicidal Maniac who isn't above forcing his children to undergo a Forbidden Technique that will definitely kill them, Loki enjoys messing with her just for laughs, and worst of all she isn't able to oppose them since she's so reliant on someone to give her orders before taking action. Throughout Book II, she is defeated several times by the Order of Heroes, incurring her father's wrath and leading her sister to sacrifice herself for Laevatein's sake. By the end of Book II, she is the only character associated with Múspell (besides Loki, who has her own agenda) to still be alive. And being Surtr's daughter means she has to rule the kingdom in his stead, which considering her reliant personality, might be a recipe of disaster for Múspell and herself.
    • Laegjarn herself deserves some sympathy. She's the most honorable of Múspell's royal family, and she's a good big sister. Nevertheless, she has to go along with what her father wants. Finally she uses the aforementioned Forbidden Technique (which only ensures she's going to die a painful death regardless of whether she succeeds) to keep Laevatein from being forced to use it. That's tragic enough, but it ensures that her younger sister is going to be forced to rule Múspell alone when all is said and done.
    • Eir. There are some very good reasons why she always looks incredibly sad: Her mother, Hel, is dismissive of her even with Eir's efforts to please her, and the generals of Hel refuse to tell her anything about her lost memories or her mission. That's because Hel sees Eir as nothing but a pawn; Eir later recalls that she once had thousands of lives within her, allowing her to resurrect if she were ever killed. Unfortunately, she's down to her last life because Hel had previously killed her over and over again to strengthen herself, only leaving her alive to carry out a mission against the Askr royalty. She is taken aback by the main characters' kindness, getting second thoughts about betraying them, but Hel presses her on to do so anyway. Luckily, she doesn't and Hel is killed, but not before Eir learns that Hel had killed her real parents and pretended to be her mother the entire time to serve her own selfish purposes. Even as she celebrates with the Askr trio after Book III ends, she is still anxious and unsure of her purpose in life.
    • All of the ljósálfr and dökkálfr were formerly humans that received such great abuse by the people they loved that they drank the sweet nectars to become fairies under Freyr and Freyja, with the dökkálfr eventually committing more atrocities as Freyja began to descend into madness more. Mirabilis was hated by her mother since birth and was left to starve, Triandra had to kill her abusive father after his abuses go beyond ordering her and her sister to sleep on the snowing ground outside her home, Plumeria was hated by her own mother because her father was abusive to her, and then thrown to a well for being unwanted and so she could go off with another man for fortune. And the reason she fights turns out was so her mother would finally welcome her as a hero and be proud at her. And you still have to cut her down as she miserably cried out for her mother.
    • As Book V progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Fáfnir's life has been a cavalcade of shit. He was originally just a random soldier with a wife and daughter who he wanted to provide for. Then Eitri incompletely summoned him, wiping his memories. Then Ótr fixated on him as his adoptive older brother, which would cause him major problems down the line. He became king of Niðavellir, but since he wasn't of genuine royal blood, his crown was cursed to drive him completely insane. By the time the Order of Heroes crosses paths with him, he's mindlessly conquering other nations in a desperate subconscious attempt to return home, unaware that Ótr is sabotaging him to keep him for himself. He eventually gets wise to how Ótr and Eitri are screwing with him, but by then it's too late; Eitri turns him into a mindless dragon and sends him on a bloody rampage. Reginn is forced to put him down, and he only remembers his true identity as he lays dying in her arms. He goes out on foreign soil, never getting the chance to reunite with his loved ones. And as a final insult, he doesn't get a chance to give any details that would help identify him before expiring, so unless a miracle happens, his family will probably never find out what happened to him.
    • Veronica is put through hell in Book VI. She often suffers from Demonic Possession by Embla, forcing her to turn against the Askran royals. She's framed for several capital crimes and learns that the person responsible was her Childhood Friend and older sister figure, Letizia. She's badly injured fleeing from her pursuers and is forced to turn herself in to protect the Order of Heroes, only for Letizia to continue attacking the Order. While being held on death row, Veronica is denied food and water, and is demanded to be whipped on at least one occasion, all by Letizia. After some sympathizers release Veronica, she then witnesses Letizia commit suicide to stop Embla trying to force her to kill Veronica, and some time later, her older brother Bruno dies in a Heroic Sacrifice. By the time the Order of Heroes face her in the penultimate chapter of the Book, Veronica is so broken that she no longer cares whether she or anyone else lives or dies.
    • Seiðr from Book VII. She's disturbed to realize that she will eventually become the evil Golden Seer known as Gullveig no matter how much she doesn't want to. She's forced to strike down her "sister" Heiðr when the latter's curse turns her into a monster, only to learn that her master King Njörðr manipulated her into doing the deed in order to complete his plan to turn her into Gullveig.
    • Gullveig herself qualifies. The one we see in the main story is a Seiðr who is so completely irreparably lost in despair that she no longer acknowledges her existence as Seiðr beyond a necessary form for her to become Gullveig and actively aiding in the cycle of her own torment to perpetuate in her creation. Her Choose Your Legends 7 Brave variant however is somewhere in-between, where she still hasn't completely fallen to despair, yet is still very far down there. She has gone through the cycle of her birth, rebirth, and subsequent destruction of the world that she is, in her own words "nearly worn through". Her Forging Bonds story makes it clear that she feels completely hopeless yet is at least willing to give some new event in the cycle that she's never seen some chance to break it, and her dialogue in her level 40 conversation even suggests that the one thing she wants more than anything else is to finally die. And if her present day self in chapter 10 is any indication, she may even have tried to do it herself too! With Brave Gullveig, Seiðr is slowly losing herself. Story Gullveig makes it quite clear that by that point after many more loop cycles, Seiðr is long gone. For one final added point, every single one of Brave Gullveig's arts all show her with slight bags under her eyes, showing she is at the end of everything, just completely tired, worn out, and done.
  • Woolseyism: A few rather...unfortunate quotes from Ephraim in "Sibling Bonds" were altered in the international versions. In particular, it should be noted how the popular "Disgusting" was never there in the original quote, simply trailing off in ellipses.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?:
    • Many people weren't digging Nifl's very... impractical heels, to the point where they questioned how she could even walk with them.
    • Ascended Laegjarn's design is openly mocked for converting the horns in her hair into a helmet, which not only looks silly, but the inner parts of the horns are also glowing red, which make it look like animal ears instead of devil horns. Additionally, her flaming eye on its own is a neat concept, as it's based on her father Surtr and their god, Múspell, but the way it was drawn almost immediately led to Sans jokes. On top of that, her upper chest is open, which also exposes her breasts. Compared to Ascended Fjorm who lost some Fanservice in exchange for a more armored look, Laegjarn looked as though she did the exact opposite; trading off some armor for fanservice instead.
    • The redesigns/seasonal outfits for most of the characters tend to have a mixed reception, but a notable example of this is Gwendolyn, whose art is drawn by Masao Tsubasa, looks unrealistically skinny despite wearing very heavy armor, and this is especially jarring, since her original art doesn't even depict her like that.
    • To say many were disappointed as soon as Brave Adult Tiki was revealed would be a massive understatement, to say the least. People expected her to be wearing something along the lines of Bantu's robes, Naga's attire, or Marth's attire, the three most associated characters with Tiki. Instead, her attire was based on the outfit she wore as a child in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem. Not only did this piss off MANY fans who voted for Adult Tiki, but it also felt like salt in the wound after Intelligent Systems ignored Tiki's adult self after the first year in favor of her Child variant, who received an alt every year.
    • Heiðr's monster form has the unfortunate distinction for having... Non-Mammal Mammaries that just look tacky and weird, to the point that players mocked it for being a questionable design choice.
    • A good number of people were weirded out by Rearmed Lucina's outfit. While the rest of it is seen as okay, what generated this reaction is the exposed thigh window, with some drawing comparisons to that of Female Corrin's. Some were also feeling concerned about the practicality of the thigh window, most notably with Lucina getting severely pierced in that area.

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