Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance / YMMV

Anti-Climax Boss:
- Oliver, since Light tomes have very low Might. He's far better as a player unit in Radiant Dawn.
- Shiharam, mainly because almost no one survives once Ike uses Aether.
- Dragons can't do ranged attacks in Path of Radiance, which sucks for Ena as she can be easily pounded into the ground with Thunder magic.
- Petrine's not actually that weak overall, but her Magic stat is low and she comes equipped with a Magic Lance that isn't all that good to begin with. It makes for a somewhat disappointing boss fight. It's really too bad, since Petrine can actually be a fairly serious threat if properly equipped.
- Ashnard on Normal and Easy doesn't move from his spot, and can be taken down only by Ike, Ena or Nasir (whichever one you got from fighting the Black Knight), and any of the 3 new units of your choice (Tibarn, Naesala or Griffca). Despite this, Ashnard isn't that difficult to finish off in one turn with all three of these units attacking him in the same turn, especially with these latter three's relatively high damage against him. A completely different story on Hard and Maniac, though, where he can move 10 spaces and gains a second form after defeat.
Anvilicious: The game is not subtle with its anti-racism message. One of the reasons the Branded are considered a wasted plot is because of the much needed nuance they would add if they were ever mentioned outside of support conversations.
Awesome Music: Some of the best music in the Fire Emblem franchise comes from this game.
- The game starts with a great Opening Theme. Path of Radiance starts with a rather short one, but it sets the mood for game perfectly.
- "Rally the Spirit".
- Of course, the recruitment theme, and Oliver's theme.
- "Congregation of Ambition" is an excellent final map theme, one that also ends up serving as the map theme for the final chapter of Book V of Fire Emblem Heroes and also fits that chapter quite nicely.
Base-Breaking Character:
- Makalov, oh boy. It's very easy to hate him and treat him as The Scrappy because he is an unrepentant scumbag. But the other half of the fandom thinks that he's actually a refreshing character, a recruitable character who's a rather realistic portrayal of an unrepentant asshole gambler, so he's not a typical goody two shoes (or secretly is) and also think he's kind of a Love to Hate character that just happens to be recruitable. His not-so-horrible gameplay data also makes this camp tolerate him more and think that the hatred against him are just overblown. He doesn't change much come the sequel aside from being less viable gameplay-wise, so anything that's said to him here can be applied to his sequel self.
- Soren. Some fans love him for his cold and snarky personality, his tragic backstory, and the amount of Ho Yay he has with Ike, seeing it as valuable LGBT+ coded representation. Others take issue with his softening in Radiant Dawn and dislike the amount of Ho Yay he has with Ike, believing it to be pandering to a specific crowd to the expense of others. This is more directed towards his Radiant Dawn counterpart, but it occasionally bleeds into this game.
- Ilyana, for both games but it started here. While many love her for her design and being a decent Mage, others dislike how one-note her personality is (most of her interactions are jokes about her being a Big Eater) and feel it sticks out like a sore thumb in a cast full of Hidden Depths.
Breather Level: Chapter 14, for being very straightforward compared to Chapters 13 (defense mission that requires you to fight raven Laguz on boat maps and think more strategically than usual, especially if you want all the treasure and you want to recruit an extremely frail NPC) and 15 (desert map in which you fight Laguz). Chapter 14 is as simple as sending your army along two paths and taking enemies as they come, with the only threats being the Feral Ones at the end and the boss. Hard Mode adds Fog of War, but all that really does is increase your chances of accidentally killing Makalov.
Broken Base: There is something of one over how to view and respect Ike's character. Ambiguous sexuality aside, some fans like to focus on Ike's more endearing and compassionate side, while others like to focus on Ike's manliness, especially in Radiant Dawn. While there's a lot of overlap, there are fans who focus primarily on one side and tend to exaggerate it; at worst, the former camp can depict the Radiant Hero as overly soft and flanderizes his Ship Tease with Soren, while the latter camp can overglorify him out of Testosterone Poisoning and likens him to over-the-top manly characters like Captain Falcon and Guts.
Cliché Storm: Path of Radiance is this for Fire Emblem, backstory and setting aside. Elincia even explicitly fills the same role as Guinivere and Nyna. Until she suddenly dons armour and jumps on her grandmother's pegasus. There are those, however, who think that this is exactly what makes it so much damn fun.
Character Perception Evolution: Gameplay-wise, Ike used to be considered the best unit in the game during its early meta, and one of the best lords in the series, due to how strong he would get at the end of the game with his high growths and having exclusive access to the Ragnell plus Aether, while to argue otherwise was met with mockery in discussions on old Fire Emblem forums. As players evolved however, they started valuing contribution throughout the whole game rather than just a unit's potential at the end of the game, as well as realizing that superior movement, having access to 1-2 ranged weapons, and not being locked to an undesirable weapon type were serious boons to a unit's viability. With Ike being a sword-locked foot unit that starts off weak and takes a long time for his growths to make him strong (while being proned to being stat screwed if unlucky with his growths), who also can't promote nor get Aether until over halfway into the game, and doesn't get the Ragnell (which is also his only 1-2 range option) until the final few chapters in the game, players realized that Ike really doesn't contribute that much for most of the game and isn't the One-Man Army that fans used to hype him up as, resulting him in plummetting down tier lists. This became especially apparent when Western fans started playing the Japanese-exclusive Maniac difficulty, where Ike outright struggles for most of the game. Sarcastically calling Ike or other characters "pwnage incarnate" even became a minor meme within the fandom to mock this prior overhyped perception of Ike in POR, as quoted from the prior linked forum thread arguing the topic.
Common Knowledge: Ike being the only non royalty/noble Lord is a common statement amongst players. Technically, this is true, as at the start Ike, is just a normal mercenary under his father, but this statement leaves out the fact that Greil was once a Rider of Daein, which are basically the top generals/warriors in Daein, making Greil (or as he was known then, Gawain) essentially a former noble in terms of his position in Daein. So while yes Ike isn't royalty or nobility on his own, he's not just a "normal" Lord like he tends to be claimed to be, since his father was a highly ranked person in Daein. This ultimately puts him in a not too different position from Alm, another Lord who spends a majority of the game not in the nobility.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Muarim, the peak of Laguz units right up until Endgame. He's got the attack power of Mordecai while being fast enough to attack twice almost every time, like Lethe. What attacks he doesn't dodge will meet a No-Sell, and on the occasion an attack does get through, he has a crap ton of health to tank it with for his level. He's probably the only unit you can trust to not immediately die against Naesala should the two fight. Topping it all off is his movement range, which is among the best in the game—and all of this is accounting for the Demi Band lowering his stats by default. As a result, Muarim easily beats out pretty much every other possible party member introduced after him and will be a party mainstay.
Complete Monster: Ashnard, the "Mad King" and the pinnacle of a Social Darwinist, became the King of Daein by getting his father to sign a blood pact, and then invoking it, killing everyone who was in his way to the throne, as well as countless other innocent people. He then proceeded to kill his own father, therefore becoming king. After finding out about the Dark God (really the goddess of chaos, Yune) sealed in Lehran's Medallion, he decides to release it. This requires a war that spans the whole continent, so he decides to begin by invading the next country over. He also, after finding out that his own son Soren was unable to transform into a dragon like the child's mother Almedha used to be able to, decides to hold him captive to get hold of the kid's uncle, the oldest son of the king of Goldoa. He then proceeds to warp Rajaion's body and turn him into something resembling a wyvern, and then uses him as a mount. His ideal world, the one that he wishes to create, is one where the only thing that matters is power.
Crack Pairing:
- Shipping Ike with Marth is pretty popular due to both characters appearing in Super Smash Bros. and, in some cases, due to the whole debate on Ike's sexuality and due to Marth himself being viewed as a "twink" despite having a canon wife. Ike/Lucina also exists as a heterosexual equivalent.
- Going outside of the Fire Emblem universe, Ike is also shipped with his Smash-mate Solid Snake quite a bit. Just like Ike, Snake is a manly character with a very similar ambiguous sexuality and Ho Yay situation.
Critical Dissonance: While the game was well-received and Ike is one of the most popular Lords in the series (if not the most popular), it sold very poorly in its native Japan.
Crosses the Line Twice: The boss of the chapter "Solo" is holding the unarmed population of a monastery hostage to gain leverage and some human shields. He is the most hilariously, unapologetically vile man your army has personally met thus far, and he seals it with his death quote:
Schaeffer: ...Gwaar... Haaaarr... Haaaaaa... Shoulda brought... more priests... Or some... babies... Dang...
Crossover Ship: Ike has no apparent interest in romance and doesn't have much fondness for royalty, yet the non-Fire Emblem character he's most commonly paired with, thanks in part to Super Smash Bros., is Princess Zelda, namely the the Twilight Princess version that was featured in the series until Ultimate.
Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Path of Radiance is regarded as having one of the best plots in the franchise, particularly the depth of its world-building and how well it sets up plot threads that pay off in Radiant Dawn. However, the gameplay is generally regarded less favorably, due to being relatively slow-paced (especially in comparison to the three previous GBA entries) with a high emphasis on the Enemy Phase, and various other Scrappy mechanics.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Nedata, the Pirate Mini-Boss in Chapter 9 in Path Of Radiance is very well-loved due to being a hilariously stereotypical pirate who even has his own Villain Song. Many wish he was recruitable, and making him playable with the AR Code to recruit enemies is very popular.
- Greil consistently ranks among the Top 100 in Heroes "Choose Your Legends" polls, which is very impressive for an NPC who never becomes playable and dies seven chapters into the story. He's loved for being a loving father to Ike and Mist while still being a badass mercenary leader, his compelling backstory, his extremely cool legendary axe (which was made a usable weapon in Radiant Dawn and Heroes), having one of the better English voices and being considered one of the better-handled examples of Plotline Death in the series: being around long enough that the player cares for him while also dying at just the right point to kickstart Ike's Character Development.
- Marcia is yet another popular Pegasus Knight for her pluck, adorableness, and amazing gameplay usefulness. Her schtick of adding food in place of swears helps. It's also for this reason that people are more than eager to hate Makalov, because Marcia got put through hell due to his unrepentant antics, and her massive fanbase think that she didn't deserve such hell from a surprisingly realistic gambling addict of a brother, and in turn makes her a "realistic" approach of someone who tried hard to make a living while also having to cater with a relative that has a severe gambling addiction.
- Nephenee also has a significant following, due to her being a Shrinking Violet farm girl with a rather cute design. She's also popular for being the first playable Soldier in a localized game (the series previously had Lukas and Forsyth from Gaiden, while Ephraim's base Lord class in The Sacred Stones is the closest thing one can get to Soldiers in the GBA titles). She actually coined the unofficial term "Nephenee Syndrome", which refers to characters who are mostly mediocre in gameplay unless you pour half your resources into them (which would make anyone good), but invariably receive so much investment due to player favoritism that they become good anyway. In fact, her popularity led her to being one of the earliest non-main characters to appear in Fire Emblem Heroes.
- Astrid is one of the most well-loved characters in this game, and considered a very solid unit and character. Many were disappointed with what became of her in Radiant Dawn. And just as many rejoiced that it's this fan favorite version of 'runaway noble' that got included in Fire Emblem Heroes.
- Devdan. He fights like ten men.
- Oliver too. He's the most beautiful character in the game, owing to his having descended from Gheb himself. He was even beautiful enough to transcend legends and return in Fire Emblem: Awakening immortalized as an Einherjar, and to grace the battlefields of Fire Emblem Heroes with his glorious presence complete with a wondrous voice for all to hear.
- Jill Fizzart. For an optional recruit that's mostly inconsequential throughout the game, she has a lot of extra perks for her: She has a beautiful case of Character Development from being an openly racist girl into a 10% Jerk 90% Gold Hearted Girl, she is heavily featured during the attack on Daein when facing her father Shiraham, where there were a lot of extra scenes about her and she could even defect to her father if you screwed up, while still remaining sympathetic. Having an early-mid availability and being a flying unit made her a decent unit, as well. Because of this, Jill remains as one of Tellius' fan favorites that she still remains beloved in Radiant Dawn where most of the development stuck. Intelligent Systems might have noticed this and thus continually delayed her well-awaited appearance in Fire Emblem Heroes until the last quarters of 2020 to keep the fans baited for long and when she did appear, there were tons of rejoicing.
- Stefan may be saddled with an utterly obscure recruitment method, but he is still incredibly popular for his sheer badassary. His status as the Disc-One Nuke of the mid-game of Path of Radiance and his Stepford Smiler attitude make him very beloved.
- Bastian is also moderately popular due to his exuberant personality and for being The Chessmaster.
- In a non-character example, the Tellius incarnation of the Soldier class as a competent playable class and its promoted forms, Halberdier and Sentinel, are largely beloved, essentially being the lance-wielding counterparts to Swordmasters and Berserkers. Improving Soldiers and creating and inserting Halberdiers become a very common practice in the Game Mod community for the GBA trilogy, and the lack of this form of Soldier in Fire Emblem: Awakening was much bemoaned.
Evil Is Cool: Just as Ike is one of the most popular heroes, the Black Knight is one of the most popular villains in the whole series for his badass design, memorable boss fights, his tragic backstory, and the ambiguity over his true morality. He even got his own Mii costume in the fourth Super Smash Bros. game and an Assist Trophy in the fifth.
Fandom Rivalry: There's often heated debates between fans of this game and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Not only are both of them among the more popular games in the series, as well as those with the most well-received stories, but both games' protagonists are the children of mercenary band leaders who die early on in the game. Some fans of the Tellius games resent Three Houses for its popularity, and claim that's only due to recency bias.
Fan-Preferred Couple:
- Some fans still wish Mist could have married Rolf instead of Boyd. Most are usually civil about it, but at times it can enter Die for Our Ship territory.
- While Geoffrey/Elincia and Lucia/Bastian are reasonably popular, there's a good number of fans who prefer Elincia/Lucia.
- Despite Ike being a Chaste Hero, four ships involving him - Ike/Soren, Ike/Ranulf, Ike/Lethe, and Ike/Elincia - are popular with the fandom. The in-game Ho Yay definitely helps in the case of Ike/Soren, as has the rise in popularity of LGBT ships in The New '10s (including the "daddy"/"twink" dynamic in general).
Fountain of Memes: Devdan, given that he's got some of the funniest support conversations ever in the entire game (most notably with Nephenee). Double so with his reappearance in Radiant Dawn under the name of Danved while claiming that he is most certainly not Devdan.
Game-Breaker:
- Titania. Similar to the prior Marcus and Seth, she is the strongest character in the party during the hardest part of the game. Her stats are high all-around, she has the best weapon type in axes, she has access to all the advantages of her Paladin class (including moving after attacking, two weapons at base, better rescuing capabilities, and greater mobility in general), and unlike many other Crutch Character units in the franchise, her growths are among the best in the game, meaning a maxed-out Titania tends to be at worst a bit below-average (but still a One-Man Army) next to a fully-raised cavalier. Even the XP loss usually associated with Crutch Character units is compensated for by BEXP, and Titania's ability to clear maps and fulfill objectives quickly will ensure the player gets even more BEXP.
- Mounted units in general, especially flying mounted units. Moving further than infantry has always been an inherent advantage, but Path of Radiance is especially bad about it. Mounted units consistently make up the entirety of the top tiers for tier lists due to most of the characters being solid or excellent units and having lots of utility. It further helps that this game's version of Canto (cavalry and winged cavalry being able to use unused movement spaces after taking an action) lets them use them after attacking too, making them even more versatile for hit and run attacks. On top of that, the strongest growth-boosting item in the game, the Knight Ward, can be used by cavaliers and paladins to essentially pick up a free 30% to their Speed growth.
- The BEXP system is both lauded for being an Anti-Frustration Feature easing EXP burden on certain characters and derided as an easy option to break the game in half. If players are so inclined, they can save up every bit of BEXP they can, recruit Jill, then instantly turn her into a Wyvern Lord to trivialize the rest of the game single-handedly, and this is just the most egregious example. It's telling that BEXP was reworked considerably in Radiant Dawn and that most challenge runs of Path of Radiance stipulate "No BEXP allowed."
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Path of Radiance is one of the core Western fandom's most beloved Fire Emblem titles of all time. It's also the second-lowest selling title in the franchise's history in its own country, with only Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 selling lower.^note
Good Bad Bugs:
- In the North American version of the game, if the skip tutorial option is selected, in the next chapter Ike will have four swords in his inventory. No reason was given for why this was the case but this greatly helps a player out early on since Ike can make sure his early sword can be saved better, and the player can chose to sell them for more money then you are supposed to have at the start.
- In the Japanese version, if you forge a weapon with a crit chance to have no crit chance, the game mistakes this as not being zero and causes it to loop around to having maxed crit chance, meaning every hit will crit. This of course breaks the game heavily, as basic weapons like Iron weapons can become better Killing weapons.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Many lines in this game become painfully ironic after playing Radiant Dawn. But since the game's data makes it obvious the developers already had the plot of the sequel in mind when they wrote this game, this was probably intentional. Examples include:
  - Ike: "And this General Zelgius seems sincere enough to me."
  - Rhys: [In the epilogue] "Finally...it's finally over. At long last, we can return to a life without war. Praise the goddess." (Not only is an even worse war coming, but it's all caused by said Goddess! Or, at least, by a guy who'll stop at nothing to wake her up...)
  - The last words of Sephiran's Sequel Hook in this game: "It appears your trials are just beginning, my gallant, young hero... May the goddess ride with you." end up sounding really dark when you realize said goddess is the final boss, and Sephiran knows this better than anyone. So in other words, it's not so much a 'good luck' as it is a death threat.)
  - In Chapter 21, Soren gives Elincia a very blunt account of what happens when a country loses a war - its citizens are oppressed and persecuted even worse than the Laguz are. He later distrusts Begnion, claiming they're only helping them win the war to serve their own interests. At the time, everyone dismisses him as just being his usual Jerkass self... but then the sequel shows what happened to Daein after you beat them, and how corrupt Begnion really is.
  - Many of the party's interactions with Oliver and especially Naesala. Playing this game alone gives you the impression Naesala is an utterly horrid man who eventually serves as an ally of convenience because you helped one of the few people he genuinely likes and justifies his serial puppy-punting with vague statements about how much his nation is relying on him. Once Blood Pacts are introduced, though, you realize this is far more literal than it sounds. Oliver is a bit more subtle, but note how he always talks about "protecting" Reyson after buying him as a slave. Just what he tells himself so he can sleep at night, right? Nope, he's totally sincere, and what's more it's implied he of all the Senators was left out of the loop on who really signed the Heron Clan's death warrant.
  - Tauroneo's battle quote with Ashnard ends with him declaring "Throughout Daein, I, Tauroneo, will be known as the king killer. Come! Let me earn my name!" While he cannot actually damage Ashnard due to the latter's blessed armor, in Radiant Dawn he actually can be made to kill the king of Daein during a Senseless Sacrifice on the latter's part (albeit only if Micaiah can't bring herself to do it and doesn't interrupt him on the second playthrough onward).
- Crimea is a real place, but it's small, mostly obscure. Until 2014, that is, when it became a flashpoint of Ukrainian-Russian tensions in the aftermath of Euromaidan and by extension ended up all over the news. And then they got annexed by Russia.
- Mordecai declares he'd want nothing to do with a goddess that supposedly decreed Branded should not exist to Stefan in Path of Radiance. Late in Radiant Dawn, Yune informs Stefan that the "goddess' decree against Branded" is a load of poppycock.
- In Ike's C support with Oscar, Oscar quips that Soren's such a picky eater that "he'd stop eating if he could." Much later, in Ike and Soren's A support, it's revealed that Soren nearly starved to death as a child, which definitely changes the tone of that line.
Ho Yay:
- Even in this game, when Elincia's crush on Ike was still being teased, he still had noticeably more interaction with men than women, was far closer to Soren and Ranulf than her, and is blatantly unimpressed by Calill and put off by Aimee.
- Boyd's Support with Ulki. It's meant to be framed as awkward, but by the end of their very first support conversation, Boyd has complimented Ulki's face, and Ulki has said Boyd has nice hair and that he likes his large arms. Okay, fellas...
Hype Backlash: A side effect of the heavy praise that the games started getting years after their debut; some fans find the Tellius games to be underwhelming compared to their reputation and/or don't see what the big fuss is all about. It doesn't help that the games are slightly outdated in some respects compared to the better-selling 3DS entries and Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: Similar to Roy, Ike is far more well known/popular with fans because of his appearances in the Super Smash Bros.. series, mainly Brawl, in part due to how poorly both of his home games sold in Japan and worldwide.
It Was His Sled:
- Greil dies at the hands of the Black Knight. This one is so bad that by 2017, Nintendo was spoiling it themselves in Fire Emblem Heroes adverts.
- Soren is a branded. The first game tries to pretend for a short bit Soren has a spirit in his body that leaves the mark on his forehead, but by the sequel and Heroes, Soren is straight up open about his branded nature. Though the fact he's the heir to Daein's throne is still left in the dark to him and most people who haven't played the Tellius games.
It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The game has come under criticism for this in recent years, as the game on the whole gives you some really powerful characters, and experience is plentiful. Not helping this is the removal of Maniac mode overseas.
Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: This game and the sequel contain several horribly evil villains, but you may have a hard time recognizing that when a majority of people prefer to profess their hatred to the Jerkass extraordinaire that is Makalov (AKA, the unrepentant gambler that causes nothing but trouble for anyone he came across and especially his hardworking sister Marcia and all he just wanted was just to get rich for personal gains).
LGBT Fanbase: Due to Ike's extremely close friendships with males and lack of defined opposite-sex marriage partners like other Fire Emblem protagonists, as well as the large number of attractive men of different types, these games are among the most popular in the series with yaoi and general LGBT fans in a similar vein to Voltron: Legendary Defender. It doesn't hurt that its 3DS successors, which introduced marriage, handled the topic of same-sex relationships very questionably, as opposed to the Tellius games downplaying the aspect of romance in general (leaving much to the player's imagination).
Love to Hate:
- Ashnard is one of the most popular villains in the series, in spite of, or even because of, being a Complete Monster with no redeeming aspects. He's an openly Ax-Crazy king wearing Spikes of Villainy who rides a terrifyingly awesome mount that isn't a wyvern, but an actual dragon, he revels in his evilness without feeling cheesy or falling into Stupid Evil, his Social Darwinist personality gives him an actual philosophy behind his actions without gaining him any sympathy, and his gameplay performance on the higher difficulties matches his reputation in-story. While Lyon set the standards for Tragic Villains in Fire Emblem, Ashnard is commonly cited as an example of an utterly irredeemable villain done right.
- From the playable characters, there's Shinon. He's a smug Jerkass and the only openly racist party member who doesn't grow out of it, but many players can't bring themselves to fully dislike him due to his dickishness being hilarious and his genuine usefulness as a Crutch Character. It helps that part of his utility is his Provoke skill, encouraging the player to use him as a punching bag for enemies, and you need to have Ike beat him up to recruit him back. Many rejoiced when he was added to Heroes.
Magnificent Bastard:
- Volke the "Fireman" is an ever professional assassin loyal to only gold and reputation. An infamous killer who'll do any job no matter how dirty, he was hired by Greil to kill him if he fell to Lehran's Medallion, but when he died, Volke decided to work for his son Ike to keep his deal. Disguise as a thief, Volke took advantage of the Greil's Mercernary needing one to join them, all the while extorting money from them for his services. Once Ike manages to garner the funds to bribe Volke, Volke reveals his true identity as an assassin and tells of his deal with Greil, offering the same deal as his father, serving as his assassin, as one of his most lethal fighters in the war, and his contingency if he goes berserk. In Radiant Dawn, Volke returns under Bastian, sent to capture Izuka, before extorting more gold from his client to kill his former client, then joining the battle against the Begnion and Ashera for a massive fortune uncaring of the fate of the world.
- Naesala, the King of Kilvas, is a Raven Laguz who is introduced cheerfully working with the Daein army and betraying them to loot their ships for the betterment of Kilvas. Selling his friend, the Heron Laguz Reyson into slavery for benefits to Kilvas, Naesala does intend to recover him, and later assists the army against Daein to rescue Reyson's sister Leanne. Constantly manipulating and betraying his allies, it turns out Naesala is under a Blood Pact to the Beginon Senate, to force them to do his worst deeds or risk his entire nation dying. Finding a loophole in the Blood Pact, Naesala is able to break it and join the heroes to achieve a final freedom for Kilvas and live happily ever after with Leanne.
- Nasir is a White Dragon Laguz sent by Daein to act as The Mole against the Greil Mercenaries. During his time with them, he begins to inform Daein of their plans and steals Lehran's medallion from Mist, wrapping it in a cloth to avoid its insanity-inducing effects. When Soren begins to suspect he's been sending information to the enemy, Nasir keeps him from telling everyone by threatening to reveal his mixed blood. After Nasir's granddaughter Ena is defeated, he helps her escape by getting in Ike's way and facing imprisonment. Nasir later breaks out and rescues Ena from Nados Castle before it collapses. Desiring Ena's safety but also regretting his treacherous actions, Nasir is forgiven for his betrayal after rejoining the war effort against Daein.
Memetic Badass: Ike himself. He's generally held as one of the manliest and most powerful Nintendo characters of all, rivaling Captain Falcon in this respect but with slightly more canon justification. A series of polls on GameFAQs' Super Smash Bros. board was dedicated to determining whether Ike truly could solo other Smash and Nintendo characters in canon — surprisingly, he was voted to lose against Falcon himself, without the Chuck Norris-like memes usually associated with the Captain.
Memetic Loser: Gromell, the boss of Chapter 25, is legendary for this status in Japan, and somewhat in the West as well. He has a Bolt Axe, a weapon that deals magic damage instead of physical, which is a questionable choice for someone of the magically-inept Wyvern Lord class. While it can damage physical units somewhat, magic users will take little to no damage, and will hit back hard thanks to Gromell's terrible Resistance. He has the Resolve skill, which multiplies Strength, Skill and Speed by 1.5 while under half HP. Normally a terrifying skill... but the Bolt Axe is magical, so the strength bonus does nothing. Finally, it's possible for him to be killed by his own men dropping a rock on him, something that players love to show off. Gromell became the first non-recurring boss in the series to get a card in FE Cipher because of his infamy.
Memetic Mutation:
- Moldy Onions!
- Eat Rock! Hehe, eat rock, I'm clever.
- Should've had more hostages...or babies...dang...
- Any line from the Greil vs Black Knight cutscene.
- Calling the Black Knight the "Burger King".
- Calling Devdan "Mekkkah", similar to calling Jagen "Dondon151" since he uses him as an avatar of sorts
- Maniac Mode is a big meme as of late 2010s because of how badly it handles difficulty. It ups the quantity but not the quality of enemy units (meaning you get frequently surrounded by numerous weak enemies) and turns an already slow game into a slog. A common joke/challenge is how many common household duties one can perform during a single enemy phase, turning the game into an Idle Game of sorts.
Moe: Mist, Ilyana, Astrid, and Sanaki. A lot of people think this of Rhys as well.
- An interesting quirk of this is that Sanaki's "moe appeal" is in-universe, and gets invoked by Lekain as he explains just how Sanaki was used as a tool by the Senate. It ultimately ends up bordering on deconstruction, since her moe appeal has, without her even realizing it, made her life and the lives of many others hell:
  Lekain: In an unprecedented move by the senators, we elevated Sephiran to prime minister, keeping him serving as close to you as possible. This plan, radical as it was, proved far more effective than we dared dream. A young, handsome prime minister and an adorable moppet of an apostle brought the people's support to incredible new heights. Apparently, the common citizenry is gullible enough to blindly follow any leader who is sufficiently attractive. Enamored as they were, no one ever seemed to care whether or not you could hear the voice of the goddess. With the new apostle and prime minister, the political landscape became unrecognizable. Even in the face of overtly unreasonable legislation, the two of you would stand on the balcony... a smile and a wave later, the people would cheer and go on with their happy lives.
Moral Event Horizon: Ashnard crossed it when he abandoned his lover, took his son hostage in order to lure in the boy's uncle, whom he turned into a mount, and then abandoned his son after that. Though, given revelations in Radiant Dawn (namely, that he murdered a thousand of his father's subjects with a blood pact curse in order to gain the throne), he may have crossed it earlier than that.
Narm:
- The Japanese voice-acting is fine, but English dubbing is... something else. Characters like Greil and the Black Knight are fine — even genuinely delivered well, perhaps. However, with characters like Ike, and espeically his sister, Mist, the emotion levels go up and down at random points. There's only a handful of scenes, regardless, so the scene in which Greil fights the Black Knight and the ending cinematic shows just how good the English voice-acting could've been if it had better direction and higher production values. Those actually carry the emotional weight of the CGI animations.
- Whenever a character cries in a conversation in the English version, it's written out as them going "Whaaaaaaa". Not only does this make characters look silly by having grown people make such a stereotypical crying noise, but the choice of spelling makes them look like they're asking a question instead. Good luck reading it without thinking of Waluigi's signature "Wa" too.
Nightmare Fuel: The basement of Gritnea Tower. Or rather, a dungeon filled with Laguz corpses. The description alone is bad enough, but the CG image shown to accompany it....
- Also, it never shows the corpses. Based on the horrified reactions they bring, at least one fan has theorised that actually showing them would have resulted in a higher age rating.
Once Original, Now Common: This was the first Fire Emblem game to use mild profanity in its Western localization, with "damn(ed)" used as a Precision F-Strike twice during the game - a rarity for Nintendo at the time. Because later Fire Emblem games used profanity much more liberally (starting with its own sequel Radiant Dawn), the game's frequent use of Gosh Dang It to Heck! outside of these two instances can come across as stilted, especially since Path of Radiance was rated T for Teen and would not have appealed to children.
Older Than They Think: Nephenee is often mistaken for the first playable character in the Soldier class, which was exclusive to enemies and other non-playable units in the GBA games. The series had previously had playable Soldiers in Fire Emblem Gaiden, such as Lukas, who joins in the beginning of that game.
Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: A possible explanation, a la Kingdom Hearts II, for why Ike seems to be so much closer to Soren and Ranulf than to any of the female characters. Ike's supposed descendant Priam in Awakening suggests, if only mildly so, that this may be the case. This didn't stop fan theories though.
Play-Along Meme: The game has a character named Devdan. In its sequel, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn there's a man called Danved, who insists that "Danved is definitely not Devdan" and joins the party, so the fanbase likes to pretend the same.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- Skills are lost for no good reason if it was taken off a character.
- Biorhythm can be annoying, but it's not as bad as it will be next game.
- The Laguz's transformation meters. It makes non-royal Laguz units so much less flexible, and requires players to be so much more cautious with their placement at the end of turns to ensure they don't untransform while being assaulted on the Enemy Phase. The result is that even with items to mitigate the transformation meter, Laguz perform a lot worse than equivalent Beorc units, and require really overpowering stats or abilities to be useful. Even with OP stats, Laguz will often get overlooked by players for inferior Beorc units so they don't have to deal with the meters.
- The lack of an ability to completely skip combat animations, especially when Path of Radiance maps are notoriously crowded with weak enemies and only get exponentially more crowded as the difficulty rises. Speedruns have been known to eschew otherwise good characters like Soren solely because they slow down the game too much. Notably, the DS games gave the ability to completely skip over the Enemy Phase.
- After Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones resurrected the "Promotion" option for Thief allowing them to be useful mid-late game, this game however does away with it - aside from Volke, whose promotion you have to pay to obtain. This meant Sothe wound up completely useless - unless that was, you wanted to transfer his stats into Radiant Dawn, but a lot of people didn't know this when they first played in 2005-2006.
- The general consensus on the Japan-only Maniac difficulty is that Western players aren't missing much. Most of the mode's new difficulty comes from simply multiplying the number of enemies you must face, making them more durable and reducing how much experience they give out. Rather than requiring more strategy and skill to overcome, this moreso just turns combat into a lengthier attritional grind to get through; a worrying prospect in a game that already has a reputation for being slow-paced. Most players, even those interested in playing Fire Emblem for the challenge, are content to just stick with Hard mode.
Scrappy Weapon:
- Knives, at least for the Sages. When mages promote, they gain the option to use either staves or knives. Mages universally have high magic and low strength, meaning their choice upon promotion is either to become a new healer who is automatically effective due to the former, or a woefully inept physical attacker due to the latter. Volke is the only user actually keeping knives from being useless as a whole, since poor Sothe is too tragically underleveled upon recruitment to see use with them much.
- The Corrosion skill. While a lot of skills generally fall into Useless Useful Spell, Corrosion has the distinction of being 100% useless. It degrades enemy weaponry with each confrontation, meaning in enemy hands it at least manages to be a nuisance to you; however, enemies always carry weapons at unblemished durability, so there is no chance of them breaking in the time it takes to kill them, several times over. Worse still, this can actually backfire if you're hoping to pick up a droppable weapon from said enemy and would thus like it in the best condition possible.
- Most of the effective weapons get this, due to the change in formula from x3 to x2 and many of them also being ridiculously undertuned stat-wise. The specialized weapons like armorslayers and hammers have weights in the high tens, making them near-impossible to wield in the early-game, while wind tomes have such bad base damage that you're almost universally better off with thunder. Bows are also held in low regard, due to Path of Radiance being very Enemy phase-focused.
Slow-Paced Beginning: The first few chapters involve Ike and his fellow Greil Mercenaries fighting mere bandits. The plot doesn't really kick off until they encounter Elincia and get drawn into Crimea's war with Daein.
Stoic Woobie: Soren is the most obvious example, although admittedly he loses some of his stoicism in the scenes that make him the most Woobie-like. Except for his B Support with Ike.
That One Boss:
- Defeating the Black Knight is more or less a matter of luck. And even then you have to do it in just four turns, which is harder than it sounds. Die, and you have to do the entire map beforehand over again.
- Berserk Ashnard in Hard Mode is no slouch either, not because of his stats, but because he actually moves. And like the BK, unless you prepare specific combinations of skills on specific characters beforehand, it mostly comes down to getting lucky with Ike's Aether. And Ashera help you if you run out of Physic staves...
Suspiciously Similar Song: Tibarn's theme, "Brave General, Brave King", lifts part of its melody straight from "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
That One Level:
- Chapter 13: It's a sea level mixing ravens and land units. There's no less than seven chests here, so you'll want Volke (who is fragile) and Sothe (who just joined at level 1 and is thus extremely fragile) both on the map here so they can raid them (which you'll need to do if you want one of those rare Occults), inbetween constantly dying. There's two recruitable players here, so you'll have to waste at least two turns talking to them, too. Soren/Ilyana and Rolf (who you brought along to deal with the ravens) will be dying when Volke and Sothe aren't, not to mention whatever healer you brought along. But that's okay — you won't even have both feet on the enemy ship before Astrid dies, because that's what happens when a Level 1 recruit is hanging around a mission thirteen chapters in^note. Even assuming everything else goes the best of ways, about half of the enemies are myrmidons, who have uncanny critical rates and will thus cause resets indiscriminately even if they crash headlong into a tank. But then, everything finally goes smoothly, and you're almost there, and — crap; you forgot to guard the cabin, didn't you? Recruiting, chest raiding, and guarding the cabin — all on a defense mission? Rage Quit material, indeed.
- Chapter 17: This chapter is separated into four sections split across a large map (so large that it wouldn't be out of place in Genealogy), with each section taking place in a different location on said map. The dislike here is that you can't go back to the Base in between these sections for plot reasons, and if you're not comfortable with your equipment setup past the first one, too bad. You don't get to edit your items for your units who were already chosen from the start from Section 2 onwards. The Player can call in two reinforcement units per section to bolster the Mercenaries' ranks and bring in spare items, but they take a couple of turns to show up.
- Chapter 25, Troll-able boss aside, is an unfortunate example of enemies actually having a great strategy against you. Infantry units' only way forward is to climb up the mountain paths to either side, which can't be done without taking ten damage per unit each time due to the rocks being rolled downhill. Of course, you could skip all of that with some flying units to take straight up the cliffside to kill all of the rock-pushers and Gromell himself, but there's a ballista placed at the top which, counting as a bow, will immediately OHKO any flying unit that gets within a sizeable range. The map is essentially Scylla and Charybdis, and the only safe way to proceed is to pick one side and slowly scale it with several tanky characters and continue healing them as they take damage.
- Maniac Mode Chapter 26: It is the logical extreme of Maniac Mode's unfathomably high amount enemies, with almost half of the (already incredibly large) map filled up with enemy units. It is regarded by many as one of the biggest slogs in the entire series for many Maniac players, not at all helped by the long enemy phases even with map-only animations.
That One Sidequest:
- Stefan and Shinon are infamous for being two characters with some of the most cryptic recruitments in the series. The first is pure Guide Dang It!: you need to move one of two specific characters to one specific, out-of-the-way tile in a desert chapter, with only one extremely vague hint to the whole ordeal. (The mention of "strange figures wandering the desert" in a base conversation. Yeah, that's helpful.) Even more annoyingly, if you miss him, you miss both the S rank sword and one of the Occult Scrolls. For Shinon, you need to talk to him with Rolf, an Archer who'll be very weak if untrained, a fact only hinted at if you check the "conversations" section of the Unit menu. After this, you have to have Ike defeat him, which is normally the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you want to do to a recruitable enemy. And he doesn't join until the very end of the chapter, meaning a player could restart after Ike beats him, thinking he's gone for good.
- You get a massive amount of Bonus Exp for completing Chapter 10 without being seen by the guards, i.e. playing it as a pure stealth mission. This is nearly impossible without a turn-by-turn walkthrough, as the guards' movements are erratic and unpredictable, and you need to unlock all the cells before leaving or you'll miss several recruits. (On the Japan-only Maniac mode, it's even worse, as the prisoners all need to escape the map in order to be recruited.)
- Another annoying BEXP condition is completing Chapter 15 without killing a single enemy except the boss. The Leeroy Jenkins enemy AI makes it hard to avoid accidentally killing some during the Enemy Phase, and if you want to do this while also recruiting Stefan, then you're really in for pain.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The losses of the Mercenary and Hero classes were also met with complaining, although Ike basically counts as one in all but name, especially in the sequel.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Stefan. He offers Ike some sword lessons (that actually grant one of the only 4 Occult skills in Path of Radiance), is descended from one of Ashera's 3 heroes, and is clearly less jovial than he lets on. However, he adds nothing except for some special conversations and a Vague Katti. While this fits his obscurity and secrecy, he yields nothing despite becoming the king of a Branded nation.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Branded. Their place in the world, and their relationship to the Goddesses are not examined nearly as much as they could have been. They also don't really do anything with the fact that each of the Ashera's champions has at least one Branded descendant. Soan gets hit the worst by this one.
- There's an offhand mention that the reason that the Beorc oppress the Laguz, is that, once upon a time, the Laguz oppressed the Beorc. Both when this happened and the nature of this oppression are never revealed.
Toy Ship: Mist and Rolf. Also counts as a Fan-Preferred Couple. As with many ships, it was screwed out of a paired ending by Radiant Dawn.
The Woobie: Jill Fizzart is a misguided youth of 17 who starts off hating the Laguz because of the way she was raised in Daein. After having several long talks with both Mist and Lethe of the Crimean Liberation army, she finds out her racism was wrong. She only joined the army to please her father, Commander Shiharam, the only parental figure she knew. As a last-ditch effort to halt the advance of the Crimeans, Shiharam releases the floodgates destroying most of Jill's home of Talrega in a mudslide. After the fight, Jill comes to terms with losing her beloved father. Later on, she meets Commander Haar, one of her father's noble subordinates who proceeds to help her in her time of need. She's an exceedingly sweet girl when she's not being an Innocent Bigot and truly cares about her friends and family. In the second game, she's forced to side with Daein during a war with her former companions caused by the Begnion Senate's blood pact, and it hurts her deeply having to go against Lethe and other Laguz. Mist or Haar can recruit her back, but not without tears.
Woolseyism: "Mist" was changed into "Alja" in the German version since "Mist" literally means manure.

YMMV / Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

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