Even in a series that's as big as it is on using your favorite characters, some units are just gonna steal the spotlight from your favorites.
Do keep in mind to only include units on this list if they are The Scrappy for being high-tier; they have to be a character that gets a demonstrable hatedom or dislike because of their hyper-competent performance, even if they're liked as characters, though other reasons that can increase this problem are also very much possible as well.
For characters that suck and are widely known for it in the series, click here.
Fire Emblem Gaiden & Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
- Dread Fighters are one of a few Tier 3 promotions, and are given a boost to Resistance and a skill that reduces magic damage by half in a game where Resistance growths are nonexistent. That alone makes a Dread Fighter extremely powerful, but they also have 7 movement in a game where other non-mounted classes have 5 at best. They're also the only class that can loop back to Villager without the use of the Pitchfork item, which allows them to gain even more stats. Many players, regardless of the version of the game, hate how broken and objectively better Dread Fighters are, for just invalidating almost all the other classes.
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem & Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
- Kris is already a pretty controversial character in the fandom due to their Canon Foreigner status and accusations of being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad or a Creator's Pet, but one thing that really doesn't help the debates is that Kris is incredibly powerful. Not only can they start in eight different classes with parameters that are at least above average in just about every category, but they also have a pretty lengthy prologue and tutorial where they'll pretty much always be your best character and where most of the units you use won't be playable again for a good while. This means, invariably, the best way to play New Mystery is to have Kris solo the tutorial, and then join up with Marth's gang as a level 10 or so Disc-One Nuke that can proceed to turn even Lunatic into a joke.
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776
- Ilios is an odd case of a character who isn't considered top tier, but still gets dislike for being stronger than another character. In his case, he's one of the game's Mutually Exclusive Party Members, being impossible to recruit if you already have Olwen. Olwen is one of Thracia's most popular characters, owing to her Character Development and her tragic relationship with her brother Reinhardt, not to mention her impressive potential... but she also joins with pretty awful bases as a prepromote, while Ilios joins with already competent stats in the same class. This means efficiency-minded players tend to ignore Olwen in favor of Ilios, which annoys people who like Olwen, especially when Ilios is nowhere near as fleshed out.
Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade & Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
- Mounted classes have traditionally been strong, but these games' incarnation of the Paladin class is considered a step too far by many fans. Not only is it a Master of All statistically, along with great movement, Canto and rescue utility, but it can use Swords, Lances and Axes in these games, and an E rank in axes is all it needs to wield the 1-2 range Hand Axe. Not helping matters is the games' Crutch Character units having this class.
- Marcus in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade gets this treatment from some. Considered to be a Crutch Character and "waste of exp" early in the game's lifespan, fans later realized that his base stats were just good enough to carry him through most of the game, and he only needs to gain a couple of points of Speed on a 35% growth to double everything he needs to for its entirety. With the game's weak enemies and his access to Javelins and Hand Axes, much of the game boils down to "point Marcus at the enemy and watch them die." Those who play to watch units grow find him Boring, but Practical with an emphasis on "boring", while his brokenness even on Hector Hard Mode drove more hardcore players to the later games' higher difficulties. However, many still use him as intended, or dislike using him at all, as he'll handily have the lowest stats of any of the five potential Paladins, and Kent and Sain have Lyn's ten chapters to grow to outperform him.
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
- Seth, a Crutch Character who goes well past his intended role into being flat out overpowered. Despite initially being a Crutch Character, Seth has really good growths and starting stats for a pre-promote, high rank in both Sword and Lances, and joins on the very first level, making him really good out of the gate much like Marcus in the previous games, and he only gets better as you use him. Not using Seth at all is considered closer to a challenge run than a Seth only run in fact. Worse, even if the player makes an effort not to over rely on him, he's still the best cavalier in the game by a wide margin, beating out all the other options like Forde and Kyle, and would only really lose out if a player actively never uses him, and only focused on other characters, which would mean intentionally making the game harder. Despite being a popular character, he tends to be looked at as a bad unit, in that he's so good that not using him is a major handicap, and some players hate using him because of that.
Fire Emblem: Awakening
- The second generation units, while popular as characters, tend to be seen as so powerful that it makes the game unbalanced, and makes the first gen units almost completely inferior as a result. Each kid inherits stats, growths, skills, and classes from their parents, giving them more versatility, power, and starting strength than either parent, and they quickly outperform their parents with ease when put into similar roles. Even kids that aren't viewed as top tier like Laurent are still going to be stronger than than their parents, making some dislike using them because they outclass their parents so much. It doesn't help that on harder difficulties, the game becomes so hard that the second generation units became practically mandatory because of the advantages they have, with only a select few parents being viable.
Fire Emblem Fates
- Even though they're genuinely liked (for the most part) as characters, the royal siblings are generally regarded as too good at their jobs. Fates has a rather large cast (especially on Revelation), and an Arbitrary Headcount Limit. Naturally, whenever any of the siblings join, several units may wind up being benched for the simple crime of not being able to stand up to the royals they share a potential promotion with. This definitely comes into play in Revelation, when you get all eight of them over the course of the game, with one of the biggest complaints leveraged at Revelation at there being no reason to use any of the retainers when the royals exist and do their job better by default, which greatly annoys players who like any of the retainers. It says a lot that the siblings not mentioned below are still likely to be superior to the rest of your army, simply because they get advantages regular units can't get. For the most extreme ones though:
- Takumi deserves special mention for this. On both the routes he is available, he is considered a Game-Breaker due to a mixture of his stupidly overpowered weapon and the buffs to the Archer class bumping its usefulness up to this. He joins early as well: chapter 10 in both Birthright and Revelation. He's also a Base-Breaking Character par excellence, with much of him completely outclassing any and all archers for his slot in Revelation being seen as even worse for it (including Ensemble Dark Horses like Setsuna and Niles).
- Ryoma practically has no restrictions and blows every other Myrmidon/Swordmaster in the game out of the water. He's not a mounted character like Xander, but his exclusive Raijinto can be used at range, meaning magic and arrows are a joke against him. The Swordmaster class learns Astra, so he can attack more times than he needs to. He's still one of the strongest, fastest characters in the game, so the rest of the army might as well take a nap if he's deployed. All of this make him border on The Dreaded for players of StreetPass battles. What truly solidifies him as this is, even though he's well-liked as a character, he's exclusive to the two easier paths of the game, where you don't need such a Game-Breaker.
- Xander's Siegfried has all the advantages Raijinto does on a mounted unit in addition to buffing Xander's avoid and defense. Xander himself may not be as fast as Ryoma, but he is otherwise a Master of All in everything that isn't magic related, able to tank better than most tanks and hit harder than anyone not named Charlotte or Camilla. And even then, his Speed can be patched up with favoritism or a Berserker backpack, making him into an utterly horrifying Lightning Bruiser. Him being a mounted unit on TOP of a tank makes him effectively invalidate any Paladins and Generals as soon as you get them, which is especially grating on Revelation where there's a lot of units and a ton of competition for the slot.
- And of course, Camilla. Take everything about Xander, make it hit harder, give it a class with an ability that is basically anathema to the majority of Hoshidan units (most Hoshidans don't use mounts, and the ones that do (i.e. Mechanists) tend to be less obviously threatening than Nohrian mounts despite possessing game-breaking versatility elsewhere, meaning Trample gives Camilla essentially a free boost to damage) and finish by making them more accurate, faster, and is a Res tank (normally the one weakness besides arrows that flying units that aren't Pegasi have) and you have Camilla. If not for Siegfried, Camilla would be better than Xander in nearly all categories. This is especially inflammatory due to Camilla's, ahem, provocative appearance and Yandere tendencies, which annoys the daylights out of less-skilled players who don't like her character but are otherwise forced to use her as a crutch in Lunatic.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Lysithea, though a popular character, is regularly criticized for being the best mage in the game, rendering all but healing focused mages obsolete. Not only does she have some of the best Faith and Reason spells like Seraphim and Dark Spikes for effective damage output, on top of Warp for extra utility, but her Magic growth ties with the DLC character Constance for the highest in the game. Unlike Constance though, Lysithea has two Crests, one of which is the Crest of Gloucester, which lets her use the broken Thyrsus staff to get additional range on her spells without having to equip the New Game Plus-exclusive Craft Dragon Sign, and her personal skill, Mastermind, lets her level in classes twice as fast as everyone else note and move between many classes to get skills. Already that makes her really powerful, but she's recruitable on all routes if the player wants, and isn't as hard as some characters to recruit, meaning she can quickly be recruited and upstage all other non-healer focused mages, to the point of the game being harder without her due to other mages lacking the same advantages she hasnote . Her only downsides are not having some of the more unique spells, or having much healing support, but the trade off for raw magical damage, especially when she becomes a Gremory, makes her so good that she is often criticized for being too powerful.note
- The Wyvern Lord class is often disliked, as its high power, unmatched movement, and easily negated weaknesses boil the endgame meta down to "make everyone a Wyvern Lord as fast as possible", and the class tends to be not hard to get. It's not the only flying class in the game, but since it isn't gender-locked or Downloadable Content, it gets most of the ire for being superior to just about all the other physical classes.
Fire Emblem Engage
- The DLC Emblems get this reaction from some. While the Bracelets are undoubtedly very powerful, many feel that they're too good, which undermines a number of chapters which are designed around the player having access to specific emblems (the most obvious examples being Chapters 11 and 22, where the player loses the Emblem Rings). Furthermore, some feel that the DLC giving you access to SP-boosting items invalidates much of the game's balancing, as it gives the player immediate access to some of the game's more powerful skills right off the bat.
- Kagetsu gets some dislike for having such incredible base stats and growth rates that he's effectively an objectively better version of some early joining characters like Lapis (who is also an infantry sword-wielder), which frustrates their fans. He also joins with an internal level of 15/1, meaning he has no trouble leveling up despite being pre-promoted.
