History LowTierLetdown / FireEmblem

* In most of his appearances, Marth is somewhere between a very good Lord and a GameBreaker, which makes his appearance in the DS remake of ''Shadow Dragon'' all the more unusual for how underwhelming he is. Marth's statline, though more than serviceable in the NES and SNES games, becomes laughably mediocre in ''Shadow Dragon'' on any difficulty higher than Normal, being a MasterOfNone who isn't particularly tanky, fast, or hard-hitting. Moreover, Marth also suffers due to the change in weapon mechanics: in the NES and SNES games, weapon triangle did not exist and the inability to reduce weapon weight meant that Marth's sword skills were prized, but in the DS games, weapon triangle is more important than ever and weapon weight barely matters, which puts Marth at a massive disadvantage in a game where axes are almost nonexistent outside of the early game and lances are everywhere. His potential utility as a bosskiller with his Rapier is totally outdone by Caeda, who gained a forgeable effective personal weapon, but with higher base Might, a better weapon type, and a wielder who is much faster than Marth and infinitely more mobile. Then the reclass system puts Marth on a bad footing, as he's among the few units who can't reclass at all, nor can he promote to boost his stats or gain additional weapons--he has a higher level cap, but even with it, he still lags behind when capped out. And on top of all that, he doesn't even have a good matchup against the FinalBoss, something that normally even weak Lords can boast: he gets doubled at his max-level averages on Hard 1, and on Hard 2 or higher, he will ''always'' get doubled, even with capped Speed, meaning that even with Falchion's effective damage, throwing him at Medeus is very likely to end in a Game Over. He isn't even your best option for dealing with Medeus, thanks to the existence of Tiki and Nagi, who deal more damage, don't cause a Game Over on death, making it possible to revive them with Aum, and don't require you to sacrifice the Starsphere and Lightsphere, not to mention the heavily-buffed Ballisticians that can plink Medeus to death at range or fish for crits. The only thing Marth can really boast is his ability to access the convoy mid-battle; otherwise, he tends to spend most playthroughs trudging from village to village, seeing as little combat as possible. Tellingly, ''New Mystery'' did a lot to help him out: his bases and growths were buffed, axe enemies became a lot more common, several swords were buffed (including the sole ranged sword), and he gained the Binding Shield to serve as a pseudo-promotion that also gave him just enough Speed to duel Medeus.

** In contrast to the game's lopsided and downright-baffling ''character'' balance, the ''class'' balance for the most part is actually surprisingly good - even commonly low-tier classes like Armor Knights and Archers have a place in Lunatic Mode due to the former's survivability in that difficulty's EarlyGameHell and the latter being ''especially'' useful for attacking from afar without fear of retaliation, especially in Lunatic Reverse. However, there's one class that is notably worse than any others, much to the disappointment of its fans: '''Warrior'''. The reason why is simple; [[OvershadowedByAwesome it's overshadowed by more specialized classes]]. Its caps are blown out of the water completely by Berserker caps, its role as an archer is done better by Snipers having a better Speed cap, bow rank, and access to the Longbow, and much of what it offers only comes for its T1 form, Fighters, which is universally regarded as one of the best options for the GameBreaker Avatar Kris to use aside from the Armor Knight.

* Even by the [[StoneWall literally-sluggish standards]] of his class, '''Arden''' is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game, and contextually is [[MedalOfDishonor one of the all-time worst armor knights in the]] ''[[MedalOfDishonor entire series]]''. He is an armor knight, which is already a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor movement and the inability to pass certain terrain, but Arden has it magnitudes worse due to being in a game utterly ''infamous'' [[MarathonLevel for its huge maps]]. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is completely superfluous, since [[UnderusedGameMechanic there are no situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger]] (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high Strength score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful, besides using the arena, requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). Whilst he does gain good weapon ranks and the powerful [[NoSell Pavise skill]] upon promotion, Arden's movement capabilities are nearly unchanged and worst of all, he can't actually pass Pavise down to any children he has. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and ''can'' potentially meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even considering the fact he's an armor knight, the advantages he provided are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. The game's auto deploying all your units means Arden is not entirely useless, but he's still pretty dang close. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because [[OvershadowedByAwesome another character, Lex]], provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.

!! ''VideoGame/FireEmblemEchoesShadowsOfValentia''
* While Armored Knight have always received some degree of criticism throughout the series, it's more prevalent than usual in ''Echoes'', where low movement range is even lower than usual ''especially'' noticeable due to how large many of the maps are as well as the [[ScrappyMechanic class never gaining movement in any of their promotions]] unlike the other melee classes. The presence of Witches makes this even worse for them, as they make easy prey for them, and it can be difficult for your other units to get back to them and save them if they're lagging behind. The remake completely removed the features that mitigated their low movement in ''Gaiden'' such as the Speed Ring that gave them +5 movement and the warp spell having unlimited ranged, whilst giving Armored classes nothing but a skill in their final class that halves the damages of bow units. However bow enemies in ''Echoes'' are extremely rare and due to their high movement combined with range, will never attack Baron units, preferring to instead attacking your [[SquishyWizard Magic units]] instead. As a result, Soldier/Knight/Baron is the only class that is recommended for not even one character and characters that start out in the class fell massively compared to the original ''Gaiden''.

* '''Anna'''. While having good availability, she suffers from being a MasterOfNone with no idea what she's meant to be used for, and being worse than other units. Her growths are low across the board except for Speed and Charm, but she has a penalty to Authority, making her good Charm harder to use properly when it comes to using Battalions, and because she has no Supports, she can't get Linked Attacks, making her Charm almost useless. She seems to be aimed at being a JackOfAllStats thanks to her martial skills being spread out around Sword, Box, and Axe, but she doesn't have anything unique beyond her Crest, which has no Heroes Relic to synergize with it, and she doesn't really have unique skills or combat arts to offer. Her bases are okay, but even if recruited as soon as possible, she's likely already overshadowed by the rest of your units. Her MagicKnight option is handicapped by her having a weakness in Reason as well, making it hard to properly use her a magical unit, and she doesn't learn enough unique spells to give her a reason to be invested in. To top all this off, she's upstaged by Yuri, who not only has similar skills and growths as her, but has better skill proficiencies, and a Heroes Relic that synergizes with him very well, on top of better skills and spells by comparison. Due to this, Anna offers nothing of value as a unit, and trying to use her means having to sacrifice a slot, resources, and time on a unit who has poor payouts in the end, and is easily replaceable by so many other units. Her only good thing is her high Luck, which doesn't do enough in game to make it a selling point.

* Even by the [[StoneWall literally-sluggish standards]] of his class, '''Arden''' is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game, and contextually is [[MedalOfDishonor one of the all-time worst armor knights in the]] ''[[MedalOfDishonor entire series]]''. He is an armor knight, which is already a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor movement, but Arden has it magnitudes worse due to being in a game utterly ''infamous'' [[MarathonLevel for its huge maps]]. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is completely superfluous, since [[UnderusedGameMechanic there are no situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger]] (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high Strength score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful, besides using the arena, requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). Whilst he does gain good weapon ranks and the powerful [[NoSell Pavise skill]] upon promotion, Arden's movement capabilities are nearly unchanged and worst of all, he can't actually pass Pavise down to any children he has. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and ''can'' potentially meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even considering the fact he's an armor knight, the advantages he provided are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. The game's auto deploying all your units means Arden is not entirely useless, but he's still pretty dang close. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because [[OvershadowedByAwesome another character, Lex]], provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.

* Even by the [[StoneWall literally-sluggish standards]] of his class, '''Arden''' is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game, and contextually is [[MedalOfDishonor one of the all-time worst armor knights in the]] ''[[MedalOfDishonor entire series]]''. He is an armor knight, which is already a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor movement, but Arden has it magnitudes worse due to being in a game utterly ''infamous'' [[MarathonLevel for its huge maps]]. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is a completely superfluous advantage, since [[UnderusedGameMechanic there are no situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger]] (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high Strength score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful, requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). Whilst he does gain good weapon ranks and the powerful [[NoSell Pavise skill]] upon promotion, Arden's movement capabilities are nearly unchanged and worst of all, he can't actually pass Pavise down to any children he has. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and ''can'' potentially meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even considering the fact he's an armor knight, the advantages he provided are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. The game's auto deploying all your units means Arden is not entirely useless, but he's still pretty dang close. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because [[OvershadowedByAwesome another character, Lex]], provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.

* Even by the [[StoneWall literally-sluggish standards]] of his class, '''Arden''' is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game, and contextually is [[MedalOfDishonor one of the all-time worst armor knights in the]] ''[[MedalOfDishonor entire series]]''. He is an armor knight, which is already a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor move and inability to pass certain terrain, but there have been plenty of other units and games that made the class avoid this fate due to meaningful (if [[CoolButInefficient inefficient]]) niches to be gained in even the class's worse performers. Arden, however, is a case made far worse by virtue of being in a game utterly ''infamous'' [[MarathonLevel for its huge maps]]. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is a completely superfluous advantage, since [[UnderusedGameMechanic there are no situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger]] (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high Strength score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful, requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). Whilst he does gain good weapon ranks and the powerful [[NoSell Pavise skill]] upon promotion, Arden's movement capabilities are nearly unchanged and worst of all, he can't actually pass Pavise down to any children he has. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and ''can'' potentially meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even considering the fact he's an armor knight, the advantages he provided are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. The game's auto deploying all your units means Arden is not entirely useless, but he's still pretty dang close. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because [[OvershadowedByAwesome another character, Lex]], provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.

* Even by the [[StoneWall literally-sluggish standards]] of his class, '''Arden''' is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game by an overwhelmingly massive margin, and contextually is [[MedalOfDishonor one of the all-time worst armor knights in the]] ''[[MedalOfDishonor entire series]]'' aside from [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade Gwendolyn]] and [[VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn Meg]]. He is an armor knight, which is already a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor move and inability to pass certain terrain, but there have been plenty of other units and games that made the class avoid this fate due to meaningful (if [[CoolButInefficient inefficient]]) niches to be gained in even the class's worse performers. Arden, however, is a case made far worse by virtue of being in a game utterly ''infamous'' [[MarathonLevel for its huge maps]]. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is a completely superfluous advantage, since [[UnderUsedGameplayMechanic there no situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger]] (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high [=HP=], Strength and Defense score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful, besides using the arena, requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). Whilst he does gain good weapon ranks and the powerful [[NoSell Pavise skill]] upon promotion, Arden's movement capabilities are unchanged and worst of all, he can't actually pass Pavise down to any children he has. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and ''can'' meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even considering the fact he's an armor knight, the advantages he provided are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. The game's auto deploying all your units means Arden is not entirely useless, but he's still pretty dang close. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because [[OvershadowedByAwesome another character, Lex]], provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.

* Even by the [[StoneWall literally-sluggish standards]] of his class, '''Arden''' is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game by an overwhelmingly massive margin, and contextually is [[MedalOfDishonor one of the all-time worst armor knights in the]] ''[[MedalOfDishonor entire series]]'' aside from [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade Gwendolyn]] and [[VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn Meg]]. He is an armor knight, which is already a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor move, but there have been plenty of other units and games that made the class avoid this fate due to meaningful (if [[CoolButInefficient inefficient]]) niches to be gained in even the class's worse performers. Arden, however, is a case made far worse by virtue of being in a game utterly ''infamous'' [[MarathonLevel for its huge maps]]. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is a completely superfluous advantage, since there should almost never be any situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high [=HP=], Strength and Defense score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). He doesn't become much better once he's promoted, either. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and ''can'' meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even considering the fact he's an armor knight, the advantages he provided are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. The game's auto deploying all your units means Arden is not entirely useless, but he's still pretty dang close. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because [[OvershadowedByAwesome another character, Lex]], provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.

** Every single unit on this list is dwarfed by one in particular though: '''Bantu'''. While all the other units are notoriously bad enough to qualify as a LowTierLetdown (by virtue of having no MagikarpPower to speak of whatsoever), they could at least theoretically keep up with extreme favoritism. Bantu absolutely can't--he can't reclass, his growths are awful, his bases are awful, his class is utterly gimped for the game it's in, he has only 6 move that he can't reclass out of, and he's seen as strictly inferior in every conceivable way to Tiki, a unit who in this game is not seen as worth it in the slightest. Even when capped out in every stat, something impossible without hacking, rigging, or pouring literally all the game's stat-boosting items into him, he's ''still'' mediocre at best.

* '''Anna'''. While having good availability, she suffers from being a MasterOfNone with no idea what she's meant to be used for, and being worse than other units. Her growths are low across the board except for Speed and Charm, but she has a penalty to Authority, making her good Charm harder to use properly when it comes to using Battalions, abnd because she has no Supports, she can't get Linked Attacks, making her Charm almost useless. She seems to be aimed at being a JackOfAllStats thanks to her martial skills being spread out around Sword, Box, and Axe, but she doesn't have anything unique beyond her Crest, which has no Heroes Relic to synergize with it, and she doesn't really have unique skills or combat arts to offer. Her bases are okay, but even if recruited as soon as possible, she's likely already overshadowed by the rest of your units. Her MagicKnight option is handicapped by her having a weakness in Reason as well, making it hard to properly use her a magical unit, and she doesn't learn enough unique spells to give her a reason to be invested in. To top all this off, she's upstaged by Yuri, who not only has similar skills and growths as her, but has better skill proficiencies, and a Heroes Relic that synergizes with him very well, on top of better skills and spells by comparison. Due to this, Anna offers nothing of value as a unit, and trying to use her means having to sacrifice a slot, resources, and time on a unit who has poor payouts in the end, and is easily replaceable by so many other units. Her only good thing is her high Luck, which doesn't do enough in game to make it a selling point.

* '''Miranda''' is generally agreed to be the worst non-JokeCharacter in the game (whether she's worse than Shannam is a real question), and even among fans of "Est"-type characters, she's regarded as nothing worth talking about at ''best'' and outright useless at ''worst''. Her standout growth rates -- while it would be excellent in most other games in the series -- scarcely matter in ''Thracia'', where stat caps are generally low and Crusader Scrolls can give ''anyone'' good growth rates, making Miranda's one-selling point a moot one. This is compounded by how Miranda has to deal with bad starting weapon ranks, bad starting stats, no unique weapon, a skill that requires her to get attacked when she has wet-tissue durability, and coming in at a point where just about anyone can handle the majority of enemies. To add insult to injury, if she promotes into Mage Knight, she actually ''loses'' movement on indoor maps (which is most of the remaining ones). And all that's on top of the fact that Sara shows up around the same time and is generally agreed to be one of the ''best'' Est-type characters, meaning that not only do you have a much better option to pour your work into, even if you ''did'' try using Miranda, you wouldn't have anything worth discussing due to her kit making her [[InherentInTheSystem inherently bad by design]].

While Armored Knight have always received some degree of criticism throughout the series, it's more prevalent than usual in ''Echoes'', where low movement range is even lower than usual ''especially'' noticeable due to how large many of the maps are as well as the [[ScrappyMechanic class never gaining movement in any of their promotions]] unlike the other melee classes. The presence of Witches makes this even worse for them, as they make easy prey for them, and it can be difficult for your other units to get back to them and save them if they're lagging behind. The remake completely removed the features that mitigated their low movement in ''Gaiden'' such as the Speed Ring that gave them +5 movement and the warp spell having unlimited ranged, whilst giving Armored classes nothing but a skill in their final class that halves the damages of bow units. However bow enemies in ''Echoes'' are extremely rare and due to their high movement combined with range, will never attack Baron units, preferring to instead attacking your [[SquishyWizard Magic units]] instead. As a result, Soldier/Knight/Baron is the only class that is recommended for not even one character and characters that start out in the class fell massively compared to the original ''Gaiden''.

* While '''Roy''' is [[BreakOutCharacter very popular as a Lord with the casual fandom]], his performance in his home game leaves a lot to be desired. Despite joining with perfect availability, he's notorious for only being able to promote literally three chapters away from the True Ending of the game - and in the case of the Bad Ending, ''one,'' long after most of your other units would have promoted and neared their caps. Even though Roy ''does'' get a unique sword with 1-2 range that gives +5 to Defense and Resistance, this delay alongside the long time Roy is without level caps are the reasons why he [[NeverLiveItDown never gets to live it down]]. It says a lot that Roy can only shine with the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Binding Blade]], and only because he is literally the only character who can use it.

While Armored Knight have always received some degree of criticism throughout the series, it's more prevalent than usual in ''Echoes'', where low movement range is [[UpToEleven even lower than usual]] ''especially'' noticeable due to how large many of the maps are as well as the [[ScrappyMechanic class never gaining movement in any of their promotions]] unlike the other melee classes. The presence of Witches makes this even worse for them, as they make easy prey for them, and it can be difficult for your other units to get back to them and save them if they're lagging behind. The remake completely removed the features that mitigated their low movement in ''Gaiden'' such as the Speed Ring that gave them +5 movement and the warp spell having unlimited ranged, whilst giving Armored classes nothing but a skill in their final class that halves the damages of bow units. However bow enemies in ''Echoes'' are extremely rare and due to their high movement combined with range, will never attack Baron units, preferring to instead attacking your [[SquishyWizard Magic units]] instead. As a result, Soldier/Knight/Baron is the only class that is recommended for not even one character and characters that start out in the class fell massively compared to the original ''Gaiden''.