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* ''[[ScrappyMechanic/FireEmblemHeroes Heroes]]''
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* Many of the older games with supports allow you to build support points by having units end their turn next to each other. The problem is that this can take dozens, if not hundreds, of turns. For example, [[https://fe7.triangleattack.com/guides/supports this guide]] reveals that it takes a total of ''200 turns'' for Serra and Florina to get an A support.
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* Many of the older games with supports allow you to build support points by having units end their turn next to each other. The problem is that this can take dozens, if not hundreds, of turns. For example, [[https://fe7.triangleattack.com/guides/supports this guide]] reveals that it takes a total of ''200 turns'' for Serra and Florina to get an A support. ''Engage'' rectifies it by allowing the player to build support points with two of their units outside of battle in the Somniel, but even then it still requires grinding.
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* In the original Japanese version, units could only be promoted if they had Master Seals. This isn't uncommon for the series, but ''Radiant Dawn'' has such a huge cast and not enough Master Seals that it made using units really difficult when there didn't need to be such restrictions. While Ike, Sothe, and Micaiah did get promoted to tier three classes, the way chapters are handled meant you could potentially still have tier 1 units in later maps, which was a huge problem for the Dawn Brigade because several start off a tier 1 units. The western release saw this issue and made it where hitting max level would automatically promote the unit, making Master Seals instead a way to promote characters earlier.
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* Several features relating to the Armored class lines have gotten criticism for resulting in the class line being a LowTierLetDown.
** In many early games like ''Gaiden'' and ''Mystery of the Emblem'', Armored classes never get any increase to their already terrible movement stat upon promotion even when other classes like Archer, Cleric and Myrmidon got increased move upon promotion, meaning Armored classes went from having one less movement than other infantry units in their base class, to being two or even three movement behind infantry units at their final tier when the class is supposed to get more powerful. The remakes of ''Shadow Dragon'' and ''Mystery of the Emblem'' fixed this, resulting in the classes being more helpful. However the ''Gaiden'' remake, ''Shadows of Valentia'', kept this feature, which was criticized.
** Armored classes typically have strict restrictions on what kinds of terrain they can move on, similar to cavalry units. Unlike the high move cavalry units, though, Armored classes have the lowest movement in the game and frequently have no method of getting past terrain they can't cross, whilst cavalry units usually gain the ability to cross tough terrain after promotion or [[DualModeUnit can dismount]]. For example, ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'''s fourth chapter has mountains that the armored Arden cannot cross, meaning he cannot fight the boss. Chapter 14x of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThracia776'' has perhaps the worse case, as Dalshin literally cannot complete the escape map due to hills blocking off the way of the escape square, making the chapter unintentionallyUnwinnable if Dalshin is deployed.
** The low movement stat of the Armored classes in general is viewed as a frustrating mechanic as it makes difficult for them to keep up with the rest of the army and the class is never powerful enough to warrant such a low movement stat.
** In many early games like ''Gaiden'' and ''Mystery of the Emblem'', Armored classes never get any increase to their already terrible movement stat upon promotion even when other classes like Archer, Cleric and Myrmidon got increased move upon promotion, meaning Armored classes went from having one less movement than other infantry units in their base class, to being two or even three movement behind infantry units at their final tier when the class is supposed to get more powerful. The remakes of ''Shadow Dragon'' and ''Mystery of the Emblem'' fixed this, resulting in the classes being more helpful. However the ''Gaiden'' remake, ''Shadows of Valentia'', kept this feature, which was criticized.
** Armored classes typically have strict restrictions on what kinds of terrain they can move on, similar to cavalry units. Unlike the high move cavalry units, though, Armored classes have the lowest movement in the game and frequently have no method of getting past terrain they can't cross, whilst cavalry units usually gain the ability to cross tough terrain after promotion or [[DualModeUnit can dismount]]. For example, ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'''s fourth chapter has mountains that the armored Arden cannot cross, meaning he cannot fight the boss. Chapter 14x of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThracia776'' has perhaps the worse case, as Dalshin literally cannot complete the escape map due to hills blocking off the way of the escape square, making the chapter unintentionallyUnwinnable if Dalshin is deployed.
** The low movement stat of the Armored classes in general is viewed as a frustrating mechanic as it makes difficult for them to keep up with the rest of the army and the class is never powerful enough to warrant such a low movement stat.
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* ''Shadows of Valentia'' gives really low Resistance growths to units (there is a 0 - 8% chance of getting a boost in Resistance depending on the unit). Therefore, classes that are strong against magic are likely to be the only ones with a Resistance stat in double figures and magic is just as dangerous as it normally is, especially late game (particularly Celica's route) where powerful magic users are increasingly prominent. Granted, the original ''Gaiden'' gave '''everybody''' 0% in the Resistance column, but it's still frustrating for newer fans to come in and have even their Mages and Pegasus Knights (classes known for their Resistance in other titles) have such low Res stats.
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* ''Shadows of Valentia'' Valentia''
** The game gives really low Resistance growths to units (there is a 0 - 8% chance of getting a boost in Resistance depending on the unit). Therefore, classes that are strong against magic are likely to be the only ones with a Resistance stat in double figures and magic is just as dangerous as it normally is, especially late game (particularly Celica's route) where powerful magic users are increasingly prominent. Granted, the original ''Gaiden'' gave '''everybody''' 0% in the Resistance column, but it's still frustrating for newer fans to come in and have even their Mages and Pegasus Knights (classes known for their Resistance in other titles) have such low Resstats.stats.
** As mentioned above, the Soldier/Armor class line never gains movement upon promotion, meaning they'll be slower than usual when they reach tier 3 and are competing with infantry units with a whopping 3 more movement, but the remake also removed the large movement increase from the Speed Ring and nerfed the range of Warp. This has been criticized for making the soldier class line, already not great in the original, even more unappealing.
** The game gives really low Resistance growths to units (there is a 0 - 8% chance of getting a boost in Resistance depending on the unit). Therefore, classes that are strong against magic are likely to be the only ones with a Resistance stat in double figures and magic is just as dangerous as it normally is, especially late game (particularly Celica's route) where powerful magic users are increasingly prominent. Granted, the original ''Gaiden'' gave '''everybody''' 0% in the Resistance column, but it's still frustrating for newer fans to come in and have even their Mages and Pegasus Knights (classes known for their Resistance in other titles) have such low Res
** As mentioned above, the Soldier/Armor class line never gains movement upon promotion, meaning they'll be slower than usual when they reach tier 3 and are competing with infantry units with a whopping 3 more movement, but the remake also removed the large movement increase from the Speed Ring and nerfed the range of Warp. This has been criticized for making the soldier class line, already not great in the original, even more unappealing.
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* The fatigue system. It forces the player to cycle through numerous characters in a game with a finite amount of experience.
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* The fatigue system. It system, which makes a unit unusable for one chapter if the number of actions they take exceeds their max HP. This system forces the player to cycle through numerous frequently rotate out their party and use more characters than they otherwise would. Opinions are split on whether this, by itself, is a good thing; however, it's also balanced in such a game way that some units are punished far more and for no good reason. Characters with high HP can have a finite amount of experience.long run before fatigue hits them, while the weaker and lesser used ones that the system is encouraging you to pick up will ironically get much less time. But nobody is hit harder than staff users, as their HP is typically low ''and'' using high level staves is the only action that gives you multiple fatigue points.
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* The localization of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' changed the effectiveness multiplier from 3x might to 2x might (minus a few weapons that always had a 2x multiplier). This was supposed to make the game easier, but in practice serves to make bow users like Will and Rebecca even ''[[LowTierLetdown worse]]'' than they were before, as they're now frequently unable to OneHitKill the flying units they're supposed to counter. Meanwhile, Pegasus Knights and other flying units become even more [[GameBreaker broken]], as they're now far more durable against enemy Archers.
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[[folder:Radiant Dawn]]
* The Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
* In the Japanese version, Wrath and Resolve had chance-based activations on top of the [[CriticalStatusBuff HP thresholds]] they required previously (Wrath being Skill% and Resolve being Strength%), which many felt was an overkill {{Nerf}} and added needless amounts of luck to the game. [[{{Woolseyism}} The localizations removed these triggers.]]
* Biorhythm could be a pain in Path of Radiance, but Radiant Dawn took it one step further and had it change every turn, while broadening the potential boosts/penalties from it to potentially debilitating levels, ''and'' having it affect treasure pickup rate too.
* The Whisper's Mastery Skill Bane. Unlike most other Mastery Skills which are glorified Critical Hits and deal triple damage, Bane does an HPToOne attack. Not too bad if it activates on the first attack and the Whisper can double the opponent to finish them off, but it's quite possible for it to activate when they're about to land a killing blow and instead Bane activates, leaving the enemy still alive. And just to add insult to injury, Volke has the Assassin class which not only boasts higher stats, but has the Mastery Skill Lethality which has the same activation rate as Bane, but is always a OneHitKO should it activate.
* Elincia's Mercy skill is similarly disliked. While she has it equipped, she will leave any enemy she would otherwise kill with 1 HP. This wouldn't be so bad if obtained early, where it could set up kills for weaker units, but Elincia instead learns it in Part 4, a point where the player is expected to already have a strong army, and it's ''forced'' onto her. Fortunately it can be removed, but many wonder why it even exists. (Its only potential use is on NewGamePlus, where [[spoiler: Pelleas]] joins at a low-ish level at the same time)
* Shove and Canto were changed from innate abilities to unremovable Skills that took up Capacity, and the Mastery Skills earned by third-tier units on promotion are also unremovable, as a result, almost every unit has far less potential for Skill customization than their ostensible Capacity suggests; the only real exceptions are Laguz and units who join with a really good Skill already equipped (e.g. Nolan and Nihil, Nephenee and Wrath), because automatically held Skills don't take up capacity, but they'll stop being free if you remove them.
* The Laguz's transformation meters. In Path of Radiance, the idea was that you got access to a few characters who were absurdly powerful, if you were patient enough to get them around the map while the meter filled up. However, in Radiant Dawn, your human units are roughly as powerful as a transformed laguz or even moreso, and thus they're left as average units without anything to make it worth it to wait for the meter to fill. Even worse, Laguz transform meters now deplete every ''combat'' instead of every turn, leading to already weak types like Cats running through their meter in the blink of an eye. It's telling that Laguz mainly see use through the Royals, who can transform permanently, or the Wildheart skill (which does the same for non-Royals, but with slightly weakened stats).
* Hard/Maniac difficulty removing the ability to highlight enemy units' attack range and the weapon triangle. The former doesn't really make the game harder but instead just makes the game play slower, as the player has to spend each turn painfully counting spaces from each enemy to safely place their units, which can additionally get complicated when terrain and ledges are added in with different movement penalties for each class ([[GuideDangIt that also can't just be looked up ingame]]). With the latter, the logic is it's a mechanic the player can more actively take advantage of than the AI, but in practice its removal serves to make the OP units like Haar and Ike (and OP weapon types like Axes) even better when they can just juggernaut through enemy units they would have had WT disadvantage against, while making weaker units (and weaker weapons like Thunder magic) worse when they can no longer take advantage of the WT to perform better.
[[/folder]]
* The Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
* In the Japanese version, Wrath and Resolve had chance-based activations on top of the [[CriticalStatusBuff HP thresholds]] they required previously (Wrath being Skill% and Resolve being Strength%), which many felt was an overkill {{Nerf}} and added needless amounts of luck to the game. [[{{Woolseyism}} The localizations removed these triggers.]]
* Biorhythm could be a pain in Path of Radiance, but Radiant Dawn took it one step further and had it change every turn, while broadening the potential boosts/penalties from it to potentially debilitating levels, ''and'' having it affect treasure pickup rate too.
* The Whisper's Mastery Skill Bane. Unlike most other Mastery Skills which are glorified Critical Hits and deal triple damage, Bane does an HPToOne attack. Not too bad if it activates on the first attack and the Whisper can double the opponent to finish them off, but it's quite possible for it to activate when they're about to land a killing blow and instead Bane activates, leaving the enemy still alive. And just to add insult to injury, Volke has the Assassin class which not only boasts higher stats, but has the Mastery Skill Lethality which has the same activation rate as Bane, but is always a OneHitKO should it activate.
* Elincia's Mercy skill is similarly disliked. While she has it equipped, she will leave any enemy she would otherwise kill with 1 HP. This wouldn't be so bad if obtained early, where it could set up kills for weaker units, but Elincia instead learns it in Part 4, a point where the player is expected to already have a strong army, and it's ''forced'' onto her. Fortunately it can be removed, but many wonder why it even exists. (Its only potential use is on NewGamePlus, where [[spoiler: Pelleas]] joins at a low-ish level at the same time)
* Shove and Canto were changed from innate abilities to unremovable Skills that took up Capacity, and the Mastery Skills earned by third-tier units on promotion are also unremovable, as a result, almost every unit has far less potential for Skill customization than their ostensible Capacity suggests; the only real exceptions are Laguz and units who join with a really good Skill already equipped (e.g. Nolan and Nihil, Nephenee and Wrath), because automatically held Skills don't take up capacity, but they'll stop being free if you remove them.
* The Laguz's transformation meters. In Path of Radiance, the idea was that you got access to a few characters who were absurdly powerful, if you were patient enough to get them around the map while the meter filled up. However, in Radiant Dawn, your human units are roughly as powerful as a transformed laguz or even moreso, and thus they're left as average units without anything to make it worth it to wait for the meter to fill. Even worse, Laguz transform meters now deplete every ''combat'' instead of every turn, leading to already weak types like Cats running through their meter in the blink of an eye. It's telling that Laguz mainly see use through the Royals, who can transform permanently, or the Wildheart skill (which does the same for non-Royals, but with slightly weakened stats).
* Hard/Maniac difficulty removing the ability to highlight enemy units' attack range and the weapon triangle. The former doesn't really make the game harder but instead just makes the game play slower, as the player has to spend each turn painfully counting spaces from each enemy to safely place their units, which can additionally get complicated when terrain and ledges are added in with different movement penalties for each class ([[GuideDangIt that also can't just be looked up ingame]]). With the latter, the logic is it's a mechanic the player can more actively take advantage of than the AI, but in practice its removal serves to make the OP units like Haar and Ike (and OP weapon types like Axes) even better when they can just juggernaut through enemy units they would have had WT disadvantage against, while making weaker units (and weaker weapons like Thunder magic) worse when they can no longer take advantage of the WT to perform better.
[[/folder]]
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* ''Radiant Dawn''[='=]s Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
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* Many of the older games with supports allow you to build support points by having units end their turn next to each other. The problem is that this can take dozens, if not hundreds, of turns. For example, [[https://fe7.triangleattack.com/guides/supports this guide]] reveals that it takes a total of ''200 turns'' for Serra and Florina to get an A support.
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* Treasure hunting on desert maps is a nasty mix of LuckBasedMission and GuideDangIt. Certain areas on the map have a chance to give treasure (although it's guaranteed for a Thief), but there's no way of knowing where those areas are unless you have a guide. To make matters worse, Thieves are slowed by the sand, unlike casters and fliers, so it's rather hard to get them all over the map to pick up the treasures, even if you know where the treasures are.
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** In the Elibe games, while tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, who thankfully is already playable by the time you reach Chapter 8, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guides]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapters even more annoying. Granted, in ''The Sacred Stones'', the requirements system was completely removed, and in return, only has one Gaiden chapter that doesn't have any.
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** In the Elibe games, while tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, who thankfully is already playable by the time you reach Chapter 8, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guides]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more gimmicky requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapters even more annoying. Granted, in ''The Sacred Stones'', the requirements system was completely removed, and in return, only has one Gaiden chapter that doesn't have any.
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ditto
Games with their own pages:
[[index]]
* ''[[ScrappyMechanic/FireEmblemEngage Engage]]''
[[/index]]
[[index]]
* ''[[ScrappyMechanic/FireEmblemEngage Engage]]''
[[/index]]
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[[folder:Engage]]
* Starting up an Emblem's paralogue will automatically disengage the Emblem to the person who is engaged to it. If you change your mind and go back to the world map, the Emblem doesn't automatically re-engage itself, which can be a real pain if you forget to do it before entering a battle.
* Enemies killed by Lyn's doubles don't give experience points. Seeing as the doubles use high-crit Mani Kattis, this is more common than it sounds. Although given that said doubles only have 1HP, they usually won't last ''too'' long for this to become a big issue.
* Leif's ability ''Adaptable'' makes the user counter with the best weapon available when engaged on Enemy Phase. While this sounds like an excellent ability, the game's idea of "best weapon available" often causes more harm than good. For example, if a unit is holding a silver great lance and is attacked by a lance-wielding enemy, they'll choose to counter with a killer axe instead, even if countering with the great lance would have done more damage. Additionally, Leif's set of Engage weapons consists of both physical and magical weapons as opposed to sticking to one side of the spectrum, which can cause problems like a MagicallyIneptFighter automatically switching to the Light Brand to do middling amounts of magic damage. Its one saving grace, though, is that it prevents the user from being broken.
* Growth rates in ''Engage'' are unusually low for a game that allows for class changing. Individual characters typically have below average growths across the board (most capping around 40 percent), and classes barely give any additional bonuses as well. The result is a lot of artificial difficulty because units struggle to get decent level-ups in classes they are seemingly meant to be in; for example, Alfred isn't very viable for some because his growths are very weak for someone the game seems to think is meant to be a strong cavalier given his importance in the game. Even Alear, the main character, has low growths, making it harder to use them. This is likely meant to encourage more careful play, and to use the Emblems more carefully, but it can make playing on harder difficulties unappealing to some due to how weak the cast can feel. Unless the player uses the [[BribingYourWayToVictory DLC-walled Starsphere]] to boost the growths of a given character, it can take a lot to really feel like the player has a strong team. Somewhat related to this, many of the characters who join early on - not just [[CrutchCharacter Vander]]- often end up being benched in favor of a later recruit who fills a similar role.
** Related to growth rates, the game is relatively stingy with experience, and player units can often end up falling behind the advised level for story maps, not just on [[HarderThanHard Maddening]]. There is the ability to level grind, but since the skirmishes have higher-level enemies than the story chapters, it's obvious that [[AntiGrinding the game is discouraging you from doing so]].
* The rather difficult skirmishes are also an example in and of itself. While they would be good ways of helping weaker units catch up, the fact that they're more difficult than the story missions makes them less than practical for this purpose. [[HarderThanHard Maddening]] has another problem, since the skirmishes are much rarer on that difficulty. Even worse, the skirmishes also tend to scale every single enemy in a given skirmish to whoever is the strongest unit you have, making training your weaker units even harder to level up than necessary.
* As in previous games, gaining HP during a level-up won't increase a unit's current HP along with it. However, it's particularly annoying here because certain abilities, like Chain Guard and Claude S's Wind God, are contingent on the unit being at full HP, meaning that an HP level-up can screw over their next-turn gameplan out of nowhere despite never actually getting hit by an enemy.
* From a cosmetic standpoint, not being able to use a character's "default outfit"[[note]]The outfit that a unit wears in their starting class, official artwork, and during Support[=/=]Bond conversation[[/note]] outside of their starting class in battle can be a letdown for players who prefer the character's unique outfit over the generic class outfits, a contrast towards ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses Three Houses]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes Three Hopes]]'', which had the option to do so as a [=QoL=] feature, albeit ''Three Houses'' not having the option until Version 1.1.0, while ''Three Hopes'' has it from launch (and in both cases the option did not work for mounted classes). This means that units who start in a Base class will inevitably have to abandon their default attire if the player wants to promote them to an Advanced class and make them stronger. Prepromotes and Special (Thieves, Dancers, and [[spoiler:Fell Child]]) classes avoid this problem to an extent, but that means that they cannot switch to another class if they want to keep their default outfit. Being forced to use the generic outfits (specifically those with {{fanservice}}sy designs like the Sage and Warrior) can be particularly problematic for Anna and Jean, both of whom are too young to be subjected to fanservice elements.
* The Fell Xenologue [=DLC=] introduces ''several'' new Scrappy Mechanics:
** Each map has a fixed class loadout for every deployable unit. Although this allows for a tighter balance within the map, these loadouts are not balanced among each other, particularly in earlier maps where some units have an unpromoted class while others have a promoted class. Additionally, Bond Levels and inherited Skills from the main game still apply, which will dictate character selection more than the fixed loadouts anyways making the mechanic pointless.
** Each deployable unit also has a fixed inventory, with often very bizarre choices for certain characters/classes. To the game's credit, you can Trade with other units before a battle to get a more ideal inventory for your deployed units, but it's a hassle to do it before ''every'' battle.
** The characters that join after completing the Xenologue join at an internal level of 20, irrespective of your progress in the main story. This leads to there being no good time to actually complete the Xenologue: do it too late in the main story, and the new units CantCatchUp, do it too early in the main story and Paralogues will scale to the new units making them potentially UnintentionallyUnwinnable, do it at just the right time when your party is at about lv. 20 (mid-Solm) and [[spoiler:you'll be at a massive disadvantage for actually completing the Xenologue as you just lost most of your Emblem Rings]].
** Another reward for completing the Xenologue is access to the Enchanter and Mage Cannoner classes. These classes require a new item each for switching to them, and you get one of each for free after completing the Xenologue. Want more? You can buy the items in the shop...for ''tens of thousands'' of gold, where grinding random maps only get you a few thousand best case.
** To make matters worse, you have to replay the DLC to get the rewards again on a new playthrough, which is time-consuming at best and frustrating at worst. At least in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', you only had to complete Cindered Shadows once to get the rewards.
[[/folder]]
* Starting up an Emblem's paralogue will automatically disengage the Emblem to the person who is engaged to it. If you change your mind and go back to the world map, the Emblem doesn't automatically re-engage itself, which can be a real pain if you forget to do it before entering a battle.
* Enemies killed by Lyn's doubles don't give experience points. Seeing as the doubles use high-crit Mani Kattis, this is more common than it sounds. Although given that said doubles only have 1HP, they usually won't last ''too'' long for this to become a big issue.
* Leif's ability ''Adaptable'' makes the user counter with the best weapon available when engaged on Enemy Phase. While this sounds like an excellent ability, the game's idea of "best weapon available" often causes more harm than good. For example, if a unit is holding a silver great lance and is attacked by a lance-wielding enemy, they'll choose to counter with a killer axe instead, even if countering with the great lance would have done more damage. Additionally, Leif's set of Engage weapons consists of both physical and magical weapons as opposed to sticking to one side of the spectrum, which can cause problems like a MagicallyIneptFighter automatically switching to the Light Brand to do middling amounts of magic damage. Its one saving grace, though, is that it prevents the user from being broken.
* Growth rates in ''Engage'' are unusually low for a game that allows for class changing. Individual characters typically have below average growths across the board (most capping around 40 percent), and classes barely give any additional bonuses as well. The result is a lot of artificial difficulty because units struggle to get decent level-ups in classes they are seemingly meant to be in; for example, Alfred isn't very viable for some because his growths are very weak for someone the game seems to think is meant to be a strong cavalier given his importance in the game. Even Alear, the main character, has low growths, making it harder to use them. This is likely meant to encourage more careful play, and to use the Emblems more carefully, but it can make playing on harder difficulties unappealing to some due to how weak the cast can feel. Unless the player uses the [[BribingYourWayToVictory DLC-walled Starsphere]] to boost the growths of a given character, it can take a lot to really feel like the player has a strong team. Somewhat related to this, many of the characters who join early on - not just [[CrutchCharacter Vander]]- often end up being benched in favor of a later recruit who fills a similar role.
** Related to growth rates, the game is relatively stingy with experience, and player units can often end up falling behind the advised level for story maps, not just on [[HarderThanHard Maddening]]. There is the ability to level grind, but since the skirmishes have higher-level enemies than the story chapters, it's obvious that [[AntiGrinding the game is discouraging you from doing so]].
* The rather difficult skirmishes are also an example in and of itself. While they would be good ways of helping weaker units catch up, the fact that they're more difficult than the story missions makes them less than practical for this purpose. [[HarderThanHard Maddening]] has another problem, since the skirmishes are much rarer on that difficulty. Even worse, the skirmishes also tend to scale every single enemy in a given skirmish to whoever is the strongest unit you have, making training your weaker units even harder to level up than necessary.
* As in previous games, gaining HP during a level-up won't increase a unit's current HP along with it. However, it's particularly annoying here because certain abilities, like Chain Guard and Claude S's Wind God, are contingent on the unit being at full HP, meaning that an HP level-up can screw over their next-turn gameplan out of nowhere despite never actually getting hit by an enemy.
* From a cosmetic standpoint, not being able to use a character's "default outfit"[[note]]The outfit that a unit wears in their starting class, official artwork, and during Support[=/=]Bond conversation[[/note]] outside of their starting class in battle can be a letdown for players who prefer the character's unique outfit over the generic class outfits, a contrast towards ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses Three Houses]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes Three Hopes]]'', which had the option to do so as a [=QoL=] feature, albeit ''Three Houses'' not having the option until Version 1.1.0, while ''Three Hopes'' has it from launch (and in both cases the option did not work for mounted classes). This means that units who start in a Base class will inevitably have to abandon their default attire if the player wants to promote them to an Advanced class and make them stronger. Prepromotes and Special (Thieves, Dancers, and [[spoiler:Fell Child]]) classes avoid this problem to an extent, but that means that they cannot switch to another class if they want to keep their default outfit. Being forced to use the generic outfits (specifically those with {{fanservice}}sy designs like the Sage and Warrior) can be particularly problematic for Anna and Jean, both of whom are too young to be subjected to fanservice elements.
* The Fell Xenologue [=DLC=] introduces ''several'' new Scrappy Mechanics:
** Each map has a fixed class loadout for every deployable unit. Although this allows for a tighter balance within the map, these loadouts are not balanced among each other, particularly in earlier maps where some units have an unpromoted class while others have a promoted class. Additionally, Bond Levels and inherited Skills from the main game still apply, which will dictate character selection more than the fixed loadouts anyways making the mechanic pointless.
** Each deployable unit also has a fixed inventory, with often very bizarre choices for certain characters/classes. To the game's credit, you can Trade with other units before a battle to get a more ideal inventory for your deployed units, but it's a hassle to do it before ''every'' battle.
** The characters that join after completing the Xenologue join at an internal level of 20, irrespective of your progress in the main story. This leads to there being no good time to actually complete the Xenologue: do it too late in the main story, and the new units CantCatchUp, do it too early in the main story and Paralogues will scale to the new units making them potentially UnintentionallyUnwinnable, do it at just the right time when your party is at about lv. 20 (mid-Solm) and [[spoiler:you'll be at a massive disadvantage for actually completing the Xenologue as you just lost most of your Emblem Rings]].
** Another reward for completing the Xenologue is access to the Enchanter and Mage Cannoner classes. These classes require a new item each for switching to them, and you get one of each for free after completing the Xenologue. Want more? You can buy the items in the shop...for ''tens of thousands'' of gold, where grinding random maps only get you a few thousand best case.
** To make matters worse, you have to replay the DLC to get the rewards again on a new playthrough, which is time-consuming at best and frustrating at worst. At least in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', you only had to complete Cindered Shadows once to get the rewards.
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* The Fell Xenologue [=DLC=] introduces ''several'' new Scrappy Mechanics:
** Each map has a fixed class loadout for every deployable unit. Although this allows for a tighter balance within the map, these loadouts are not balanced among each other, particularly in earlier maps where some units have an unpromoted class while others have a promoted class. Additionally, Bond Levels and inherited Skills from the main game still apply, which will dictate character selection more than the fixed loadouts anyways making the mechanic pointless.
** Each deployable unit also has a fixed inventory, with often very bizarre choices for certain characters/classes. To the game's credit, you can Trade with other units before a battle to get a more ideal inventory for your deployed units, but it's a hassle to do it before ''every'' battle.
** The characters that join after completing the Xenologue join at an internal level of 20, irrespective of your progress in the main story. This leads to there being no good time to actually complete the Xenologue: do it too late in the main story, and the new units CantCatchUp, do it too early in the main story and Paralogues will scale to the new units making them potentially UnintentionallyUnwinnable, do it at just the right time when your party is at about lv. 20 (mid-Solm) and [[spoiler:you'll be at a massive disadvantage for actually completing the Xenologue as you just lost most of your Emblem Rings]].
** Another reward for completing the Xenologue is access to the Enchanter and Mage Cannoner classes. These classes require a new item each for switching to them, and you get one of each for free after completing the Xenologue. Want more? You can buy the items in the shop...for ''tens of thousands'' of gold, where grinding random maps only get you a few thousand best case.
** To make matters worse, you have to replay the DLC to get the rewards again on a new playthrough, which is time-consuming at best and frustrating at worst. At least in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', you only had to complete Cindered Shadows once to get the rewards.
** Each map has a fixed class loadout for every deployable unit. Although this allows for a tighter balance within the map, these loadouts are not balanced among each other, particularly in earlier maps where some units have an unpromoted class while others have a promoted class. Additionally, Bond Levels and inherited Skills from the main game still apply, which will dictate character selection more than the fixed loadouts anyways making the mechanic pointless.
** Each deployable unit also has a fixed inventory, with often very bizarre choices for certain characters/classes. To the game's credit, you can Trade with other units before a battle to get a more ideal inventory for your deployed units, but it's a hassle to do it before ''every'' battle.
** The characters that join after completing the Xenologue join at an internal level of 20, irrespective of your progress in the main story. This leads to there being no good time to actually complete the Xenologue: do it too late in the main story, and the new units CantCatchUp, do it too early in the main story and Paralogues will scale to the new units making them potentially UnintentionallyUnwinnable, do it at just the right time when your party is at about lv. 20 (mid-Solm) and [[spoiler:you'll be at a massive disadvantage for actually completing the Xenologue as you just lost most of your Emblem Rings]].
** Another reward for completing the Xenologue is access to the Enchanter and Mage Cannoner classes. These classes require a new item each for switching to them, and you get one of each for free after completing the Xenologue. Want more? You can buy the items in the shop...for ''tens of thousands'' of gold, where grinding random maps only get you a few thousand best case.
** To make matters worse, you have to replay the DLC to get the rewards again on a new playthrough, which is time-consuming at best and frustrating at worst. At least in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'', you only had to complete Cindered Shadows once to get the rewards.
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The concept of promotion can prove quite uneven: the gap in promotable classes between ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' and its remake clearly expresses just one example.
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* The concept of promotion can prove quite uneven: the gap in promotable classes between ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' and its remake clearly expresses just one example.
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** In the Elibe games, while tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, who thankfully is already playable by the time you reach Chapter 8, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guides]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying.
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** In the Elibe games, while tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, who thankfully is already playable by the time you reach Chapter 8, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guides]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter chapters even more annoying.annoying. Granted, in ''The Sacred Stones'', the requirements system was completely removed, and in return, only has one Gaiden chapter that doesn't have any.
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* Though it first appeared in ''Thracia 776'', the unlock requirements system used for the sidequest chapters in a few games is very ill-received:
** In the Elibe games, while tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, who thankfully is already playable by the time you reach Chapter 8, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guides]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying.
** In ''Shadow Dragon'', the Gaiden chapters only being accessible by having only 15 or less units alive upon completing certain chapters, or in the case of the final Gaiden chapter, only being accessible if the player both didn't get the Falchion and have Tiki dead. They were meant to be a MercyMode to help players that lost an extreme amount of their units, as they're also a significant stepdown in difficulty from the normal chapters while supplying the player with a new unit that's better than a replacement unit, and in the case of the final Gaiden chapter, they're given a downgraded Falchion and Nagi (who is essentially a replacement Tiki that's levelled up some), to help ensure the player doesn't end up completely unable to beat Medeus. However players generally try to keep everyone alive if possible, even units that they have no intention to ever use, and will often reset when they have units die instead of continuing on, especially if they lost units they were actively investing in. As such very few players actually saw these Gaiden chapters through their own normal play, and players took this mechanic as barring them content without intentionally killing off their units, made worse by the fact that the game has a large playable cast and gives you characters left and right. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing when ''New Mystery'' removed this.
* The Biorhythm exclusive to the Tellius games wasn't well-received for fluctuating how well your units fight each turn. As it gets lower, accuracy and evasion rates are lowered (and vice versa for high Biorhythm).
** In the Elibe games, while tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, who thankfully is already playable by the time you reach Chapter 8, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guides]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying.
** In ''Shadow Dragon'', the Gaiden chapters only being accessible by having only 15 or less units alive upon completing certain chapters, or in the case of the final Gaiden chapter, only being accessible if the player both didn't get the Falchion and have Tiki dead. They were meant to be a MercyMode to help players that lost an extreme amount of their units, as they're also a significant stepdown in difficulty from the normal chapters while supplying the player with a new unit that's better than a replacement unit, and in the case of the final Gaiden chapter, they're given a downgraded Falchion and Nagi (who is essentially a replacement Tiki that's levelled up some), to help ensure the player doesn't end up completely unable to beat Medeus. However players generally try to keep everyone alive if possible, even units that they have no intention to ever use, and will often reset when they have units die instead of continuing on, especially if they lost units they were actively investing in. As such very few players actually saw these Gaiden chapters through their own normal play, and players took this mechanic as barring them content without intentionally killing off their units, made worse by the fact that the game has a large playable cast and gives you characters left and right. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing when ''New Mystery'' removed this.
* The Biorhythm exclusive to the Tellius games wasn't well-received for fluctuating how well your units fight each turn. As it gets lower, accuracy and evasion rates are lowered (and vice versa for high Biorhythm).
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* Though it first appeared in ''Thracia 776'', the unlock requirements system used for the Gaiden chapters in the Elibe games is ill-received. While tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guide]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying. It's not surprising that the unlock requirement system for chapters like this is seldom-used nowadays.
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* The Biorhythm exclusive to the Tellius games wasn't well-received for fluctuating how well your units fight each turn. As it gets lower, accuracy and evasion rates are lowered (and vice versa for high Biorhythm).
** ''Radiant Dawn''[='=]s Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
* Having to ''kill off your own characters'' to get sidequests in ''Shadow Dragon''. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing when ''New Mystery'' removed this.
** ''Radiant Dawn''[='=]s Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
* Having to ''kill off your own characters'' to get sidequests in ''Shadow Dragon''. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing when ''New Mystery'' removed this.
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* The Biorhythm exclusive to the Tellius games wasn't well-received for fluctuating how well your units fight each turn. As it gets lower, accuracy and evasion rates are lowered (and vice versa for high Biorhythm).
**''Radiant Dawn''[='=]s Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
* Having to ''kill off your own characters'' to get sidequests in ''Shadow Dragon''. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing when ''New Mystery'' removed this.games.
**
* Having to ''kill off your own characters'' to get sidequests in ''Shadow Dragon''. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing when ''New Mystery'' removed this.
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* The unlock requirements system used for the Gaiden chapters in the Elibe games is ill-received. While tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guide]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying. It's not surprising that the unlock requirement system for chapters like this is mostly retired starting with ''The Sacred Stones''.
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* The Though it first appeared in ''Thracia 776'', the unlock requirements system used for the Gaiden chapters in the Elibe games is ill-received. While tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guide]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying. It's not surprising that the unlock requirement system for chapters like this is mostly retired starting with ''The Sacred Stones''.seldom-used nowadays.
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* A highly criticized mechanic in the Elibe games is the unlock requirements system used for the Gaiden chapters. While tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guide]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying. It's not surprising that the unlock requirement system for chapters like this is mostly retired starting with ''The Sacred Stones''.
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* A highly criticized mechanic in the Elibe games is the The unlock requirements system used for the Gaiden chapters.chapters in the Elibe games is ill-received. While tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guide]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying. It's not surprising that the unlock requirement system for chapters like this is mostly retired starting with ''The Sacred Stones''.
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* A highly criticized mechanic in the Elibe games is the unlock requirements system used for the Gaiden chapters. While tame requirements exist,[[labelnote:For Example...]]In ''The Binding Blade'', the only requirement to unlock Chapter 8x is to just keep Lilina alive, and in ''The Blazing Blade'', you just needed to visit the northern village in chapter 13 to unlock the gaiden chapter that follows afterwards.[[/labelnote]] many players found most of them to be incredibly tedious to do and [[GuideDangIt most of the time, neither game even bothered to tell you how to unlock them to begin with, forcing players to rely on guide]]. three of the most notable outliers of this include the requirement for chapter 14x of ''The Binding Blade''[[note]]It requires a turn limit of 25 and keeping Sophia, a character that suffers a lot from being an underleveled SquishyMage, alive[[/note]], and in ''The Blazing Blade'', that of chapter 19xx,[[note]]This chapter is locked behind Hector's tale; Nils must reach at least level 7 in Lyn's tale, and Kishuna must be defeated, both of which are incredibly tedious to do[[/note]] and of chapter 22xE/23xH[[note]]While it requires Hawkeye to be recruited and alive, which isn't so bad, you also have to gain at least 700 EXP, but the biggest issue with it is that Pent as an NPC can potentially take away most of that from you since he's powerful enough to handle most enemies on his own[[/note]]. While all the requirements in ''The Binding Blade'' are at least just a simple "Clear chapter within [number] turns" and/or "Keep a certain character alive", ''The Blazing Blade'' adds more requirements for some of them (i.e. obtaining a certain amount of EXP), which makes unlocking those chapter even more annoying. It's not surprising that the unlock requirement system for chapters like this is mostly retired starting with ''The Sacred Stones''.
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[[foldercontrol]]
The concept of promotion can prove quite uneven: the gap in promotable classes between ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' and its remake clearly expresses just one example.
* Weapon weight, which reduces a unit's attack speed, has proven a thorny issue to address throughout the series. There have been four different ways to deal with it, each with a logical reason behind it, and each one unbalanced in favor of certain classes and builds:
** "No Buffer" (AS decreases by full weight): Favors sword users and archers whose lighter weapons allow for better speed retention. Rationale: any weapon can weigh anyone down;
** "Build/Constitution" (Unit slows if weight exceeds build/con): Favors bulky units with at least decent speed, as well as the fastest units who can take the speed loss and still hit hard. Rationale: bulkier warriors can handle weight better;
** "Strength" (Same as above, only with strength): Favors fast units with the strength to keep all their speed. Rationale: the stronger a unit becomes, the more weight they could handle;
** "No Weight" (Weapons have no weight whatsoever): Favors all fast units, especially those with issues over the two prior methods. Rationale: a properly trained warrior should never be burdened with their weapon.
* FogOfWar is widely hated. In theory it's supposed to add an extra layer of strategy to certain chapters, and encourage the use of high-vision classes like Thieves or Torch-carrying units as scouts. There's just one problem: ''[[TheAllSeeingAI enemies are COMPLETELY immune to it]]''. They know ''exactly'' where you are and don't need any scouting to be able to attack you. If one of your units runs into an unseen enemy during movement, their turn immediately ends. The AI is, naturally, not bound by this. Altogether, it frequently adds up to losing characters to enemies you couldn't ''possibly'' have seen coming. Rather than a fun new mechanic, it's just a [[FakeDifficulty handicap to the player.]]
* In games with supports, the five-support limit tends to fall into this- you can only see five support conversations per character per playthrough, and each support chain has three supports. While meant for game balance, support bonuses are quite small, and it means you can't see most of the game's conversations without playing the game through ten times.
* Weapon weight, which reduces a unit's attack speed, has proven a thorny issue to address throughout the series. There have been four different ways to deal with it, each with a logical reason behind it, and each one unbalanced in favor of certain classes and builds:
** "No Buffer" (AS decreases by full weight): Favors sword users and archers whose lighter weapons allow for better speed retention. Rationale: any weapon can weigh anyone down;
** "Build/Constitution" (Unit slows if weight exceeds build/con): Favors bulky units with at least decent speed, as well as the fastest units who can take the speed loss and still hit hard. Rationale: bulkier warriors can handle weight better;
** "Strength" (Same as above, only with strength): Favors fast units with the strength to keep all their speed. Rationale: the stronger a unit becomes, the more weight they could handle;
** "No Weight" (Weapons have no weight whatsoever): Favors all fast units, especially those with issues over the two prior methods. Rationale: a properly trained warrior should never be burdened with their weapon.
* FogOfWar is widely hated. In theory it's supposed to add an extra layer of strategy to certain chapters, and encourage the use of high-vision classes like Thieves or Torch-carrying units as scouts. There's just one problem: ''[[TheAllSeeingAI enemies are COMPLETELY immune to it]]''. They know ''exactly'' where you are and don't need any scouting to be able to attack you. If one of your units runs into an unseen enemy during movement, their turn immediately ends. The AI is, naturally, not bound by this. Altogether, it frequently adds up to losing characters to enemies you couldn't ''possibly'' have seen coming. Rather than a fun new mechanic, it's just a [[FakeDifficulty handicap to the player.]]
* In games with supports, the five-support limit tends to fall into this- you can only see five support conversations per character per playthrough, and each support chain has three supports. While meant for game balance, support bonuses are quite small, and it means you can't see most of the game's conversations without playing the game through ten times.
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* In games with supports, the five-support limit tends to fall into this- you can only see five support conversations per character per playthrough, and each support chain has three supports. While meant for game balance, support bonuses are quite small, and it means you can't see most of the game's conversations without playing the game through ten times.
to:
* In games with supports, the five-support limit tends Having to fall into this- you can only see five support conversations per character per playthrough, and each support chain has three supports. While meant for game balance, support bonuses are quite small, and it means you can't see most of the game's conversations without playing the game through ten times.''kill off your own characters'' to get sidequests in ''Shadow Dragon''. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing when ''New Mystery'' removed this.
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''Franchise/FireEmblem'', as a long-running franchise that has changed over the years and experimented with certain mechanics, has its share of mechanics that are rather unpopular.
[[folder:Multiple Games]]
* {{Permadeath}}. Other games like ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' have it too, but often they at least give you a ''chance'' to revive downed characters. In ''Franchise/FireEmblem'', however, characters are gone forever the moment they hit 0HP. This one mechanic has probably caused more [[RageQuit rage-resets]] than any other in gaming history. The idea is that players should take their units seriously and not simply toss unit after unit at the enemy like they're disposable ammo, but some fans point out that {{permadeath}} in practice turns into [[SaveScumming "restart the chapter if somebody dies"]] and that the only way to have a "true" experience with the trope is to [[SelfImposedChallenge only ever use saves to suspend gameplay]]. For those who don't like this, ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem New Mystery of the Emblem]]'' onwards introduces Casual mode (with ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' bringing it to the west), in which defeated units are only gone until the end of the chapter.
* Any game where enemy reinforcements spawn at the end of the Player Phase instead of the end of the Enemy Phase. This can very easily result in a unit getting killed because the game decided to spawn a group of enemies right on top of them without giving you a chance to react. While sometimes the reinforcements are marked by certain tiles such as castles or staircases, other times they come out of nowhere with no way of planning for them except [[TrialAndErrorGameplay playing the chapter over and over until you learn all the spawn points]] and/or [[LuckBasedMission getting lucky]]. It can also be hard to tell when the reinforcements will spawn, making it difficult to prepare for them. This had mostly been phased out of the series by the time it reached western audiences, but for some reason, it was back in the Hard modes (and above) of ''Shadow Dragon'', ''New Mystery of the Emblem'', and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening Awakening]]''.
** Additionally, later on in some long maps, reinforcements appear right at the start of the map. Hope you didn't leave any weaker units behind at the start - they're sitting ducks for them. Also, while ''Blazing Sword'''s reinforcements at least politely wait a turn before moving, there's a mostly stationary unit that stands at the start of the map easily able to be torched if let unguarded against such reinforcements. (Thankfully, there's not much punishment to losing Merlinus.)
** ''Echoes: Shadows of Valentia'' gives us reinforcements on the world map. While enemies showing up on the world map is something that happened in ''Awakening'', here they move and need to be engaged when encountered. If there happen to be other enemies on the spot the reinforcements appear, you engage them too and if the enemies move to your position they attack first. Even worse, Celica's side of Act 3 has ''two separate spawn points'' for the map reinforcements.
** ''Three Houses'' only includes this mechanic on Maddening mode. The Divine Pulse mechanic allows you to rewind time if you lose a unit to this, but the charges are finite, and an ambush you aren't prepared for can end up forcing you to waste some.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Genealogy of the Holy War]]
* Mounted units, or rather, the drawbacks of not being one - there is no other game that widens the gap more than this one does. Those with the misfortune of going on-foot are stuck eternally lagging behind in the biggest maps the series has ever had. Not only that, there's many things that make the imbalance even worse. Mounted units can also move after combat, so they're not only better at getting around, they're better in the fight as well. Tools that could have let units catch up easier, like the Warp staff, are nerfed so you can only warp to owned castles. Mounted units get +1 movement after promotion; foot units don't, assuming they remain on-foot.
* Unlike all the games before and after this one, units can't just trade items between each other. To "trade" the holder needs to sell their items to a pawnbroker, where the receiver then needs to fork up the money to buy it for themselves (something the game itself [[GuideDangIt never tells you]]). This is paired with each unit having their own separate wallet, and money also can't be traded most of the time. The apparent purpose of this whole system was to make each unit's inventory much more rigid, helping to give them distinct identities based on what they acquire for themselves. But it ends up amounting to a ''lot'' of extra inventory management (plus arena grinding for money) if you don't want to handicap your units, and turns the simple act of receiving items/money into a tough choice, making for a pretty clear reason why it was never used again.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Thracia 776]]
* The Dismounting feature is the most prominent. Intended as a {{Nerf}} for mounted units as it made them fight on foot using swords during indoor levels. However, it only ended up hurting Lance Knights and Axe Knights, who were forced to illogically use swords when they dismounted rather than the weapons they trained their entire lives with. Worst of all, the player army was left with no indoor Lance users apart from their Generals: Xavier and a promoted Dalsin, though both have a starting E rank in lances, which means they're better off using other weapons anyway. Keep in mind the final chapter took place indoors, and Lances were pretty much BetterOffSold.
* Many players liked the [[NonLethalKO Capturing System]], claiming it added a new layer of depth to the series. It has one incredibly aggravating problem, though. Units who can't fight are automatically captured. Normally this makes sense; after all, it saves you viewing an OverlyLongFightingAnimation when you know how the fight's going to turn out, but it also means your healers will be captured ''if an enemy so much as touches them''. Sure, you can get them back by killing the captor, but they still will have swiped ''[[SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear the healer's entire inventory.]]'' Long story short, an enemy so much as touches your healer, you lose all their staves. On the plus side, this does mean that ''enemy'' staff-users are very easy prey, and if you do lose a healer, it's generally trivial to capture the enemy right back and retake your possessions (some players even ''deliberately'' do this, sending a healer to the frontlines so the enemy will be forced to carry them around).
* Status effects. In this game, they last ''for the entire chapter'' unless cured (and status healing staves are in VERY short supply). Especially annoying since [[ReligionOfEvil Dark Mages]] are very common enemies, and the standard dark spell inflicts poison. Worse still, when you later recruit a Dark Mage of your own, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard his magic DOESN'T inflict poison!!]] Oh, and sleeping characters can be one-touch captured as above. That said, the two above factors also mean that sleeping an opponent and then capturing them is one of the more foolproof methods of dealing with a boss.
* Healing staves, on characters with less than 10 Skill, have a chance to miss. In the early game, this can be pretty damnably frustrating.
* On that note, ''any'' attack can miss. Or hit. Unlike in every other game in the series, Hit chance has a floor of 1% and a ceiling of 99%, which means that no matter how outclassed your enemies are, you always have a chance to miss them and they always have a chance to hit you.
* The fatigue system. It forces the player to cycle through numerous characters in a game with a finite amount of experience.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Engage]]
* Starting up an Emblem's paralogue will automatically disengage the Emblem to the person who is engaged to it. If you change your mind and go back to the world map, the Emblem doesn't automatically re-engage itself, which can be a real pain if you forget to do it before entering a battle.
* Enemies killed by Lyn's doubles don't give experience points. Seeing as the doubles use high-crit Mani Kattis, this is more common than it sounds. Although given that said doubles only have 1HP, they usually won't last ''too'' long for this to become a big issue.
* Leif's ability ''Adaptable'' makes the user counter with the best weapon available when engaged on Enemy Phase. While this sounds like an excellent ability, the game's idea of "best weapon available" often causes more harm than good. For example, if a unit is holding a silver great lance and is attacked by a lance-wielding enemy, they'll choose to counter with a killer axe instead, even if countering with the great lance would have done more damage. Additionally, Leif's set of Engage weapons consists of both physical and magical weapons as opposed to sticking to one side of the spectrum, which can cause problems like a MagicallyIneptFighter automatically switching to the Light Brand to do middling amounts of magic damage. Its one saving grace, though, is that it prevents the user from being broken.
* Growth rates in ''Engage'' are unusually low for a game that allows for class changing. Individual characters typically have below average growths across the board (most capping around 40 percent), and classes barely give any additional bonuses as well. The result is a lot of artificial difficulty because units struggle to get decent level-ups in classes they are seemingly meant to be in; for example, Alfred isn't very viable for some because his growths are very weak for someone the game seems to think is meant to be a strong cavalier given his importance in the game. Even Alear, the main character, has low growths, making it harder to use them. This is likely meant to encourage more careful play, and to use the Emblems more carefully, but it can make playing on harder difficulties unappealing to some due to how weak the cast can feel. Unless the player uses the [[BribingYourWayToVictory DLC-walled Starsphere]] to boost the growths of a given character, it can take a lot to really feel like the player has a strong team. Somewhat related to this, many of the characters who join early on - not just [[CrutchCharacter Vander]]- often end up being benched in favor of a later recruit who fills a similar role.
** Related to growth rates, the game is relatively stingy with experience, and player units can often end up falling behind the advised level for story maps, not just on [[HarderThanHard Maddening]]. There is the ability to level grind, but since the skirmishes have higher-level enemies than the story chapters, it's obvious that [[AntiGrinding the game is discouraging you from doing so]].
* The rather difficult skirmishes are also an example in and of itself. While they would be good ways of helping weaker units catch up, the fact that they're more difficult than the story missions makes them less than practical for this purpose. [[HarderThanHard Maddening]] has another problem, since the skirmishes are much rarer on that difficulty. Even worse, the skirmishes also tend to scale every single enemy in a given skirmish to whoever is the strongest unit you have, making training your weaker units even harder to level up than necessary.
* As in previous games, gaining HP during a level-up won't increase a unit's current HP along with it. However, it's particularly annoying here because certain abilities, like Chain Guard and Claude S's Wind God, are contingent on the unit being at full HP, meaning that an HP level-up can screw over their next-turn gameplan out of nowhere despite never actually getting hit by an enemy.
* From a cosmetic standpoint, not being able to use a character's "default outfit"[[note]]The outfit that a unit wears in their starting class, official artwork, and during Support[=/=]Bond conversation[[/note]] outside of their starting class in battle can be a letdown for players who prefer the character's unique outfit over the generic class outfits, a contrast towards ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses Three Houses]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes Three Hopes]]'', which had the option to do so as a [=QoL=] feature, albeit ''Three Houses'' not having the option until Version 1.1.0, while ''Three Hopes'' has it from launch (and in both cases the option did not work for mounted classes). This means that units who start in a Base class will inevitably have to abandon their default attire if the player wants to promote them to an Advanced class and make them stronger. Prepromotes and Special (Thieves, Dancers, and [[spoiler:Fell Child]]) classes avoid this problem to an extent, but that means that they cannot switch to another class if they want to keep their default outfit. Being forced to use the generic outfits (specifically those with {{fanservice}}sy designs like the Sage and Warrior) can be particularly problematic for Anna and Jean, both of whom are too young to be subjected to fanservice elements.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Other individual games]]
* Weather in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' was very much a one-and-done mechanic, and with good reason. Essentially, what it amounted to was that every so often on certain maps, it would start raining or snowing, which reduces the movement of nearly all units. There's never a point where the player can really meaningfully exploit this, and it's most common on maps where the goal is to reach an objective, so most of the time, all it does is make maps more tedious.
* The reclass system in ''Shadow Dragon'' created something of a BrokenBase. Some think it adds an element of customization to your army, while others think it misses the point of every character being unique. ''Awakening'' fixed this by limiting every character to only 3 class paths (although reclassing is also a bit of a GameBreaker, at least for the postgame...). ''Fates'' tried for the middle ground by offering reclass options, but maintaining the unit's level, preventing the abuse possible in ''Awakening''.
* The Biorhythm exclusive to the Tellius games wasn't well-received for fluctuating how well your units fight each turn. As it gets lower, accuracy and evasion rates are lowered (and vice versa for high Biorhythm).
** ''Radiant Dawn''[='=]s Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
* In games with supports, the five-support limit tends to fall into this- you can only see five support conversations per character per playthrough, and each support chain has three supports. While meant for game balance, support bonuses are quite small, and it means you can't see most of the game's conversations without playing the game through ten times.
* ''Shadows of Valentia'' gives really low Resistance growths to units (there is a 0 - 8% chance of getting a boost in Resistance depending on the unit). Therefore, classes that are strong against magic are likely to be the only ones with a Resistance stat in double figures and magic is just as dangerous as it normally is, especially late game (particularly Celica's route) where powerful magic users are increasingly prominent. Granted, the original ''Gaiden'' gave '''everybody''' 0% in the Resistance column, but it's still frustrating for newer fans to come in and have even their Mages and Pegasus Knights (classes known for their Resistance in other titles) have such low Res stats.
* Supports in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' face a few issues.
** The first is that you can't guarantee paired endings, since characters will pair up with whoever they have gained the most support points with among their A ranks. And in the case of ties, pairings are given priority in order of Black Eagles > Blue Lions > Golden Deer > Church/Non-Students. [[GuideDangIt The game doesn't tell you any of this, of course]], so it either takes trial and error to get the paired endings you want, or you simply have to not achieve A ranks but miss out on conversations.
** The second is the matter of the S ranks, which only Byleth can achieve. You can choose Byleth's S rank partner only before the final maps of each route, meaning that to max them out for completion's sake, you have to go through all of those final maps over and over and over. Making this worse is that Crimson Flower and Azure Moon both have two-part final chapters.
** Finally, some support levels ''cannot'' [[PermanentlyMissableContent be raised past a certain point in the story]], and the only way the game lets you know is [[GuideDangIt telling you after the fact that you missed your chance]]. There may be understandable reasons why supports are unavailable, but you won't know why until you actually see those supports.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Multiple Games]]
* {{Permadeath}}. Other games like ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' have it too, but often they at least give you a ''chance'' to revive downed characters. In ''Franchise/FireEmblem'', however, characters are gone forever the moment they hit 0HP. This one mechanic has probably caused more [[RageQuit rage-resets]] than any other in gaming history. The idea is that players should take their units seriously and not simply toss unit after unit at the enemy like they're disposable ammo, but some fans point out that {{permadeath}} in practice turns into [[SaveScumming "restart the chapter if somebody dies"]] and that the only way to have a "true" experience with the trope is to [[SelfImposedChallenge only ever use saves to suspend gameplay]]. For those who don't like this, ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem New Mystery of the Emblem]]'' onwards introduces Casual mode (with ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' bringing it to the west), in which defeated units are only gone until the end of the chapter.
* Any game where enemy reinforcements spawn at the end of the Player Phase instead of the end of the Enemy Phase. This can very easily result in a unit getting killed because the game decided to spawn a group of enemies right on top of them without giving you a chance to react. While sometimes the reinforcements are marked by certain tiles such as castles or staircases, other times they come out of nowhere with no way of planning for them except [[TrialAndErrorGameplay playing the chapter over and over until you learn all the spawn points]] and/or [[LuckBasedMission getting lucky]]. It can also be hard to tell when the reinforcements will spawn, making it difficult to prepare for them. This had mostly been phased out of the series by the time it reached western audiences, but for some reason, it was back in the Hard modes (and above) of ''Shadow Dragon'', ''New Mystery of the Emblem'', and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening Awakening]]''.
** Additionally, later on in some long maps, reinforcements appear right at the start of the map. Hope you didn't leave any weaker units behind at the start - they're sitting ducks for them. Also, while ''Blazing Sword'''s reinforcements at least politely wait a turn before moving, there's a mostly stationary unit that stands at the start of the map easily able to be torched if let unguarded against such reinforcements. (Thankfully, there's not much punishment to losing Merlinus.)
** ''Echoes: Shadows of Valentia'' gives us reinforcements on the world map. While enemies showing up on the world map is something that happened in ''Awakening'', here they move and need to be engaged when encountered. If there happen to be other enemies on the spot the reinforcements appear, you engage them too and if the enemies move to your position they attack first. Even worse, Celica's side of Act 3 has ''two separate spawn points'' for the map reinforcements.
** ''Three Houses'' only includes this mechanic on Maddening mode. The Divine Pulse mechanic allows you to rewind time if you lose a unit to this, but the charges are finite, and an ambush you aren't prepared for can end up forcing you to waste some.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Genealogy of the Holy War]]
* Mounted units, or rather, the drawbacks of not being one - there is no other game that widens the gap more than this one does. Those with the misfortune of going on-foot are stuck eternally lagging behind in the biggest maps the series has ever had. Not only that, there's many things that make the imbalance even worse. Mounted units can also move after combat, so they're not only better at getting around, they're better in the fight as well. Tools that could have let units catch up easier, like the Warp staff, are nerfed so you can only warp to owned castles. Mounted units get +1 movement after promotion; foot units don't, assuming they remain on-foot.
* Unlike all the games before and after this one, units can't just trade items between each other. To "trade" the holder needs to sell their items to a pawnbroker, where the receiver then needs to fork up the money to buy it for themselves (something the game itself [[GuideDangIt never tells you]]). This is paired with each unit having their own separate wallet, and money also can't be traded most of the time. The apparent purpose of this whole system was to make each unit's inventory much more rigid, helping to give them distinct identities based on what they acquire for themselves. But it ends up amounting to a ''lot'' of extra inventory management (plus arena grinding for money) if you don't want to handicap your units, and turns the simple act of receiving items/money into a tough choice, making for a pretty clear reason why it was never used again.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Thracia 776]]
* The Dismounting feature is the most prominent. Intended as a {{Nerf}} for mounted units as it made them fight on foot using swords during indoor levels. However, it only ended up hurting Lance Knights and Axe Knights, who were forced to illogically use swords when they dismounted rather than the weapons they trained their entire lives with. Worst of all, the player army was left with no indoor Lance users apart from their Generals: Xavier and a promoted Dalsin, though both have a starting E rank in lances, which means they're better off using other weapons anyway. Keep in mind the final chapter took place indoors, and Lances were pretty much BetterOffSold.
* Many players liked the [[NonLethalKO Capturing System]], claiming it added a new layer of depth to the series. It has one incredibly aggravating problem, though. Units who can't fight are automatically captured. Normally this makes sense; after all, it saves you viewing an OverlyLongFightingAnimation when you know how the fight's going to turn out, but it also means your healers will be captured ''if an enemy so much as touches them''. Sure, you can get them back by killing the captor, but they still will have swiped ''[[SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear the healer's entire inventory.]]'' Long story short, an enemy so much as touches your healer, you lose all their staves. On the plus side, this does mean that ''enemy'' staff-users are very easy prey, and if you do lose a healer, it's generally trivial to capture the enemy right back and retake your possessions (some players even ''deliberately'' do this, sending a healer to the frontlines so the enemy will be forced to carry them around).
* Status effects. In this game, they last ''for the entire chapter'' unless cured (and status healing staves are in VERY short supply). Especially annoying since [[ReligionOfEvil Dark Mages]] are very common enemies, and the standard dark spell inflicts poison. Worse still, when you later recruit a Dark Mage of your own, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard his magic DOESN'T inflict poison!!]] Oh, and sleeping characters can be one-touch captured as above. That said, the two above factors also mean that sleeping an opponent and then capturing them is one of the more foolproof methods of dealing with a boss.
* Healing staves, on characters with less than 10 Skill, have a chance to miss. In the early game, this can be pretty damnably frustrating.
* On that note, ''any'' attack can miss. Or hit. Unlike in every other game in the series, Hit chance has a floor of 1% and a ceiling of 99%, which means that no matter how outclassed your enemies are, you always have a chance to miss them and they always have a chance to hit you.
* The fatigue system. It forces the player to cycle through numerous characters in a game with a finite amount of experience.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Engage]]
* Starting up an Emblem's paralogue will automatically disengage the Emblem to the person who is engaged to it. If you change your mind and go back to the world map, the Emblem doesn't automatically re-engage itself, which can be a real pain if you forget to do it before entering a battle.
* Enemies killed by Lyn's doubles don't give experience points. Seeing as the doubles use high-crit Mani Kattis, this is more common than it sounds. Although given that said doubles only have 1HP, they usually won't last ''too'' long for this to become a big issue.
* Leif's ability ''Adaptable'' makes the user counter with the best weapon available when engaged on Enemy Phase. While this sounds like an excellent ability, the game's idea of "best weapon available" often causes more harm than good. For example, if a unit is holding a silver great lance and is attacked by a lance-wielding enemy, they'll choose to counter with a killer axe instead, even if countering with the great lance would have done more damage. Additionally, Leif's set of Engage weapons consists of both physical and magical weapons as opposed to sticking to one side of the spectrum, which can cause problems like a MagicallyIneptFighter automatically switching to the Light Brand to do middling amounts of magic damage. Its one saving grace, though, is that it prevents the user from being broken.
* Growth rates in ''Engage'' are unusually low for a game that allows for class changing. Individual characters typically have below average growths across the board (most capping around 40 percent), and classes barely give any additional bonuses as well. The result is a lot of artificial difficulty because units struggle to get decent level-ups in classes they are seemingly meant to be in; for example, Alfred isn't very viable for some because his growths are very weak for someone the game seems to think is meant to be a strong cavalier given his importance in the game. Even Alear, the main character, has low growths, making it harder to use them. This is likely meant to encourage more careful play, and to use the Emblems more carefully, but it can make playing on harder difficulties unappealing to some due to how weak the cast can feel. Unless the player uses the [[BribingYourWayToVictory DLC-walled Starsphere]] to boost the growths of a given character, it can take a lot to really feel like the player has a strong team. Somewhat related to this, many of the characters who join early on - not just [[CrutchCharacter Vander]]- often end up being benched in favor of a later recruit who fills a similar role.
** Related to growth rates, the game is relatively stingy with experience, and player units can often end up falling behind the advised level for story maps, not just on [[HarderThanHard Maddening]]. There is the ability to level grind, but since the skirmishes have higher-level enemies than the story chapters, it's obvious that [[AntiGrinding the game is discouraging you from doing so]].
* The rather difficult skirmishes are also an example in and of itself. While they would be good ways of helping weaker units catch up, the fact that they're more difficult than the story missions makes them less than practical for this purpose. [[HarderThanHard Maddening]] has another problem, since the skirmishes are much rarer on that difficulty. Even worse, the skirmishes also tend to scale every single enemy in a given skirmish to whoever is the strongest unit you have, making training your weaker units even harder to level up than necessary.
* As in previous games, gaining HP during a level-up won't increase a unit's current HP along with it. However, it's particularly annoying here because certain abilities, like Chain Guard and Claude S's Wind God, are contingent on the unit being at full HP, meaning that an HP level-up can screw over their next-turn gameplan out of nowhere despite never actually getting hit by an enemy.
* From a cosmetic standpoint, not being able to use a character's "default outfit"[[note]]The outfit that a unit wears in their starting class, official artwork, and during Support[=/=]Bond conversation[[/note]] outside of their starting class in battle can be a letdown for players who prefer the character's unique outfit over the generic class outfits, a contrast towards ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses Three Houses]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemWarriorsThreeHopes Three Hopes]]'', which had the option to do so as a [=QoL=] feature, albeit ''Three Houses'' not having the option until Version 1.1.0, while ''Three Hopes'' has it from launch (and in both cases the option did not work for mounted classes). This means that units who start in a Base class will inevitably have to abandon their default attire if the player wants to promote them to an Advanced class and make them stronger. Prepromotes and Special (Thieves, Dancers, and [[spoiler:Fell Child]]) classes avoid this problem to an extent, but that means that they cannot switch to another class if they want to keep their default outfit. Being forced to use the generic outfits (specifically those with {{fanservice}}sy designs like the Sage and Warrior) can be particularly problematic for Anna and Jean, both of whom are too young to be subjected to fanservice elements.
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[[folder: Other individual games]]
* Weather in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' was very much a one-and-done mechanic, and with good reason. Essentially, what it amounted to was that every so often on certain maps, it would start raining or snowing, which reduces the movement of nearly all units. There's never a point where the player can really meaningfully exploit this, and it's most common on maps where the goal is to reach an objective, so most of the time, all it does is make maps more tedious.
* The reclass system in ''Shadow Dragon'' created something of a BrokenBase. Some think it adds an element of customization to your army, while others think it misses the point of every character being unique. ''Awakening'' fixed this by limiting every character to only 3 class paths (although reclassing is also a bit of a GameBreaker, at least for the postgame...). ''Fates'' tried for the middle ground by offering reclass options, but maintaining the unit's level, preventing the abuse possible in ''Awakening''.
* The Biorhythm exclusive to the Tellius games wasn't well-received for fluctuating how well your units fight each turn. As it gets lower, accuracy and evasion rates are lowered (and vice versa for high Biorhythm).
** ''Radiant Dawn''[='=]s Support system earned a lot of ire. Despite allowing any character to support another, this came at the cost of reducing the normally rich and CharacterDevelopment filled support conversations to a few generic lines per character. And then things went FromBadToWorse when ''Shadow Dragon'' removed the system entirely. (One of the few cases where the ''lack'' of a mechanic became a ScrappyMechanic) Fortunately it was brought back for the subsequent games.
* In games with supports, the five-support limit tends to fall into this- you can only see five support conversations per character per playthrough, and each support chain has three supports. While meant for game balance, support bonuses are quite small, and it means you can't see most of the game's conversations without playing the game through ten times.
* ''Shadows of Valentia'' gives really low Resistance growths to units (there is a 0 - 8% chance of getting a boost in Resistance depending on the unit). Therefore, classes that are strong against magic are likely to be the only ones with a Resistance stat in double figures and magic is just as dangerous as it normally is, especially late game (particularly Celica's route) where powerful magic users are increasingly prominent. Granted, the original ''Gaiden'' gave '''everybody''' 0% in the Resistance column, but it's still frustrating for newer fans to come in and have even their Mages and Pegasus Knights (classes known for their Resistance in other titles) have such low Res stats.
* Supports in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' face a few issues.
** The first is that you can't guarantee paired endings, since characters will pair up with whoever they have gained the most support points with among their A ranks. And in the case of ties, pairings are given priority in order of Black Eagles > Blue Lions > Golden Deer > Church/Non-Students. [[GuideDangIt The game doesn't tell you any of this, of course]], so it either takes trial and error to get the paired endings you want, or you simply have to not achieve A ranks but miss out on conversations.
** The second is the matter of the S ranks, which only Byleth can achieve. You can choose Byleth's S rank partner only before the final maps of each route, meaning that to max them out for completion's sake, you have to go through all of those final maps over and over and over. Making this worse is that Crimson Flower and Azure Moon both have two-part final chapters.
** Finally, some support levels ''cannot'' [[PermanentlyMissableContent be raised past a certain point in the story]], and the only way the game lets you know is [[GuideDangIt telling you after the fact that you missed your chance]]. There may be understandable reasons why supports are unavailable, but you won't know why until you actually see those supports.
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