Even in a series that's as big as it is on using your favorite characters, there exists a scarce few units that simply won't work no matter how hard you try, and the fandom knows it.
Do keep in mind that due to how the series works and the trope's clarifications of what counts and what doesn't count, that units that start out weak but can potentially get stronger don't qualify; a Low-Tier Letdown example has to have no such potential to speak of, either due to issues with their class, kit, or setup that's Inherent in the System or being non-functional at even the lowest level of play. For that reason, make sure to include examples of units that either lack any meaningful reward even through training them, and are widely known throughout the fandom as such.
For characters that are hated because they are overpowered in the series, click here.
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
- Even by the literally-sluggish standards of his class, Arden is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game, and contextually is one of the all-time worst armor knights in the entire series, only rivaled by fellow Letdowns in Gwendolyn and Meg. He is an armor knight, which is already at a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor movement and the inability to pass certain terrain, but armor knights have had useful units before in the series, with even bad units in the class across the series potentially evolving into power-houses with enough investment. Arden, however, has it magnitudes worse due to being in a game utterly infamous for its huge maps. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is completely superfluous, since there are no situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high Strength score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful, besides using the arena, requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). Whilst he does gain good weapon ranks and the powerful Pavise skill upon promotion, Arden's movement capabilities are nearly unchanged and worst of all, he can't actually pass Pavise down to any children he has. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and can potentially meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even without considering the fact he's an armor knight and the disadvantages he provides, what advantages he does provide are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. The game's auto deploying all your units means Arden is not entirely useless, but he's still pretty dang close. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because another character, Lex, provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776
- Thracia is a game that's considered to have one of the most generally useful rosters in the series, with nearly every unit having at least something to offer. This makes Cain, Alva, and Robert all the more impressive for lacking any kind of selling point. A trio of cavalry units, they join about halfway into the game at very low levels with customarily low stats, to the point that they struggle to handle even generic enemies at a point in the game where most of your army can one-round (effectively turning the map into a rescue mission). Their weapon ranks are terrible, with Alva starting off with E Lances despite being a lance knight, and their classes are far less of a selling point in Thracia, due to the dismount mechanic forcing them off their horses indoors (which makes the weapon rank problem all the worse). However, what really pushes them here is their total lack of character-specific traits: only one of them has movement or leadership stars (Robert has one movement star), and only one has a high FCM (Robert is highest with 3, Cain and Alva have 1), none start with any skills, and none have a personalized weapon, all things that most units in Thracia can boast at least two of—the closest thing they have is one-sided supports with Glade and Selphina, who are considered filler units at best but are still held in far higher regard. Their only redeeming quality is that their growth rates aren't bad, but in Thracia, that matters far less than in other games, and it still leaves them held back by their classes and lack of unique qualities when raised. Given that they're also some of the least characterized units in the game (if not the series altogether), it's not uncommon for people to compare them to generic green units. Robert's attributes are a bit better, but he's an archer, meaning that he can't counter at close range.
- Miranda is generally agreed to be the worst non-Joke Character in the game (whether she's worse than Shannam is a real question), and even among fans of "Est"-type characters, she's regarded as nothing worth talking about at best and outright useless at worst. Her standout growth rates — while it would be excellent in most other games in the series — scarcely matter in Thracia, where stat caps are generally low and Crusader Scrolls can give anyone good growth rates, making Miranda's one-selling point a moot one. This is compounded by how Miranda has to deal with bad starting weapon ranks, bad starting stats, no unique weapon, a skill that requires her to get attacked when she has wet-tissue durability, and coming in at a point where just about anyone can handle the majority of enemies. To add insult to injury, if she promotes into Mage Knight, she actually loses movement on indoor maps (which is most of the remaining ones), lower than even a General or High Priest. And all that's on top of the fact that Sara shows up around the same time and is generally agreed to be one of the best Est-type characters, meaning that not only do you have a much better option to pour your work into, even if you did try using Miranda, you wouldn't have anything worth discussing due to her kit making her inherently bad by design.
Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade
- While Roy is very popular as a Lord with the casual fandom, his performance in his home game leaves a lot to be desired. Despite joining with perfect availability, he's notorious for only being able to promote literally three chapters away from the True Ending of the game - and in the case of the Bad Ending, one, long after most of your other units would have promoted and neared their caps. Even though Roy does get a unique sword with 1-2 range that gives +5 to Defense and Resistance, this delay alongside the long time Roy is without level caps are the reasons why he never gets to live it down. It says a lot that Roy can only shine with the Binding Blade, and only because he is literally the only character who can use it.
- Poor Gwendolyn, also known as Wendy, has an uphill battle to contend with that left her notorious in the fandom as an unintended Joke Character. Being ostensibly a Magikarp Power character who's in the Armor Knight class, Gwendolyn has such hideously poor bases that on Hard Mode she's one-rounded by an archer on her join chapter, joins one (two, if you're going for the Gaiden chapter) chapter before an axe-centric set of levels, and worst of all is an Armor Knight in a game that's unfriendly to Armor Knights by default. While Bors and Barthe are bad for a variety of reasons, they avert this trope due to the former's near-perfect availability and the latter's workable bases, meaning they can at least come to do their jobs well with what they're given. Gwendolyn's growths aren't even that especially impressive compared to her brother Bors, and being in a game with large maps and low move on top of low bases means that she's simply going to do so much worse than almost every other character in the game even if trained to a level that caps her out in every stat. She's widely held as both the worst unit in the game and a contender for the worst unit in the series, which is disappointing because she does have a fandom that likes her for her design, her being the first Tier 1 female Armor Knight in the series, and for how bad she is even in spite of her start.
- Sophia is not much better. Joining in Chapter 14: Arcadia as a Level 1 Shaman with base stats even base Roy could laugh at, Sophia is regularly one-rounded if not one-shot by every unit on her joining chapter, and even with a Flux tome she struggles to get hit rates above 40% or 50% on a good forecast. Even by Est standards, who at least do get good should you go through the pain of training them, she has mediocre growths, which combined with the investment needed to get her good, has her as a lost investment even by the standards of Ests. She's regularly held out alongside Gwendolyn as two of the worst units in the game, and some of the worst in the series.
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
- The Blazing Blade is a game that's easy enough that even the lowest tier units can generally see use with favoritism. Karla, the little sister of Karel, is an exception to this. She's recruited literally a handful of chapters away from the end of the game, outright requires that the player train Bartre to use himnote , and then survive an engagement with him... and even with 10/5 Bartre, she joins with base stats that he could easily sneeze at, and is sword-locked in a game where swords are considered very weak due to lack of a reliable 1-2 range option. This altogether gets Karla notoriously solidified as arguably the worst Swordmaster in the series, with the only one that rivals her for that title being Shannam in Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, who's a Joke Character.
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
- One of the most infamous units amid Beorc characters is Meg. Meg joins as your first Armor Knight in the Dawn Brigade, but with her stats as a wholesale, good luck getting her to help in any meaningful way. She has growths comparable to Amelia and (debatably) the aforementioned Gwendolyn, being a feminine Armor Knight with a great Speed stat, but while Amelia has the benefit of being in a game with grinding that makes anyone easily usable, Meg is like Gwendolyn in being out of luck. Not only is she in a game where there's infinitely better recipients for BEXP, she's in a game where caps matter, and her caps run directly contrary to her stat growths with her Speed cap being at a miserable 30 Speed (which would be great in other earlier installments, but for Radiant Dawn, is pitiful). This leads her to having no use compared to the Black Knight (during levels he appears), Gatrie or even her father Brom, and she's widely known for it as such.
- Fiona is the daughter of a former member of the Four Riders of Daein, yet she has absolutely abysmal base stats that are noticeably worse than the Green Units she rides up with, on top of being level nine, making it seem like her level was raised without adjusting her stats to matchnote . Making things even worse is that due to her join time, she only has a scant few chapters that put her otherwise-significant advantage as a mounted unit to use, especially as her Third Tier caps are terrible and the last five chapters of the game are all indoors. She's easily the worst cavalier in the game, and even if coddled, really doesn't do enough to stick out, which is all the more of a let down considering she has on paper really good growths and a good Affinity.
- Astrid, which is all the more saddening when her performance in the prior game was rather good. On paper, Astrid is meant as a Magikarp Power unit: she joins very underleveled with bad base stats, but she has the Paragon skill that doubles her XP gain, making her much easier to train... except that in Radiant Dawn, you can freely swap around unit skills, with the only penalty being that they don't initially take up capacity on their users. The moment you take Paragon off Astrid (which is something most people will do, as it's hugely beneficial to anyone who has it and good to swap around in a game that is very stingy with XP), she loses the only reason to consider using her. But even if you do decide to let her keep Paragon and try to train her up, her status as a bow unit means that she has no enemy phase before promotion (handily cancelling out her XP boost), her growths are mediocre by Radiant Dawn standards, and on top of all that, she's barely ever around: she appears for only four chapters up until Part 4, and she's overshadowed by nearly every other unit you have in all of them. The only minor niche she has is a decent third-tier Speed cap, but not only does this require you to train her up all the way into endgame, but her Speed isn't high enough to actually hit that cap reliably. Basically, to make Astrid good requires you to sandbag the rest of your army, and even once you have trained her up, you still don't get anything worth talking about.
- By the worst Laguz unit in the game, and by far the worst Beast Unit in the series, is Lyre. Joining with terrible growths and a pitiful base 7 Strength in a game that hates Cat Laguz, it's almost impossible for her to actually do damage. She doesn't even come with any items or skills in her inventory for you to give to better units, unlike other bottom-feeders in the series.
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
- In most of his appearances, Marth is somewhere between a very good Lord and a Game-Breaker, which makes his appearance in the DS remake of Shadow Dragon all the more unusual for how underwhelming he is. Marth's statline, though more than serviceable in the NES and SNES games, becomes laughably mediocre in Shadow Dragon on any difficulty higher than Normal, being a Master of None who isn't particularly tanky, fast, or hard-hitting. Moreover, Marth also suffers due to the change in weapon mechanics: in the NES and SNES games, weapon triangle did not exist and the inability to reduce weapon weight meant that Marth's sword skills were prized, but in the DS games, weapon triangle is more important than ever and weapon weight barely matters, which puts Marth at a massive disadvantage in a game where axes are almost nonexistent outside of the early game and lances are everywhere. His potential utility as a bosskiller with his Rapier is totally outdone by Caeda, who gained a forgeable effective personal weapon, but with higher base Might, a better weapon type, and a wielder who is much faster than Marth and infinitely more mobile. Then the reclass system puts Marth on a bad footing, as he's among the few units who can't reclass at all, nor can he promote to boost his stats or gain additional weapons—he has a higher level cap, but even with it, he still lags behind when capped out. And on top of all that, he doesn't even have a good matchup against the Final Boss, something that normally even weak Lords can boast: he gets doubled at his max-level averages on Hard 1, and on Hard 2 or higher, he will always get doubled, even with capped Speed, meaning that even with Falchion's effective damage, throwing him at Medeus is very likely to end in a Game Over. He isn't even your best option for dealing with Medeus, thanks to the existence of Tiki and Nagi, who deal more damage, don't cause a Game Over on death, making it possible to revive them with Aum, and don't require you to sacrifice the Starsphere and Lightsphere, not to mention the heavily-buffed Ballisticians that can plink Medeus to death at range or fish for crits. The only thing Marth can really boast is his ability to access the convoy mid-battle; otherwise, he tends to spend most playthroughs trudging from village to village, seeing as little combat as possible. Tellingly, New Mystery did a lot to help him out: his bases and growths were buffed, axe enemies became a lot more common, several swords were buffed (including the sole ranged sword), and he gained the Binding Shield to serve as a pseudo-promotion that also gave him just enough Speed to duel Medeus.
Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
- Hoo boy... the eponymous Updated Re-release of Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem takes the previous game's already-dubious balance and lights it on fire before tap-dancing on the ashes. It's as a result one of the worst offenders in the series in terms of lopsided unit balance:
- In contrast to the game's lopsided and downright-baffling character balance, the class balance for the most part is actually surprisingly good - even commonly low-tier classes like Armor Knights and Archers have a place in Lunatic Mode due to the former's survivability in that difficulty's Early Game Hell and the latter being especially useful for attacking from afar without fear of retaliation, especially in Lunatic Reverse. However, there's one class that is notably worse than any others, much to the disappointment of its fans: Warrior. The reason why is simple; it's overshadowed by more specialized classes. Its caps are blown out of the water completely by Berserker caps (its advantage is supposed to be a higher Defense cap, but its base defense growth is a pitiful 5%), its role as an archer is done better by Snipers having a better Speed cap, bow rank, and access to the Longbow, and much of what it offers only comes for its T1 form, Fighters, which is universally regarded as one of the best options for the Game-Breaker Avatar Kris to use aside from the Armor Knight.
- Even to any fans of Magikarp Power units throughout the series, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone to defend Jubelo, who is arguably the worst Mage/Sage in the series. Which is a shame, as he was already of dubious but nonetheless-passable use in the original game, but only became exponentially worse in the remake. Jubelo is unique among other units in this sub-section by you getting him very early on, so on paper that should mean he alongside other units can at least snowball despite bad bases, but good luck getting him to do anything. Having a bafflingly low -2 base Magic in his starting class, this gives him a 1 Magic stat, when the rest of his bases are already below average even by Level 1 unit standards. To compound this, his growths aren't even especially inflated compared to other high-growth units, meaning they don't do nearly good of a job at getting him out of his abysmal start. This renders him barely usable on Normal, and practically unviable on any difficulty higher, especially Lunatic. When the game gives you plenty of viable mages such as Merric, Linde and Arlen, and when even milquetoast units like his own sister Yuliya can serve as healbots, there is no meaningful reward to training him and going through the pain of using him just to end up with a unit who will be outclassed by every other magic-using character in the game.
- As a wholesale, every single unit that joins after Chapter 12 save some very few exceptions is hit with this hard. The game outright inverts a lot of the trends in the series of pre-promotes being good or outright Game Breakers, with many of the latter half of units in the remake having barely adjusted base stats from the SNES days, which leaves them barely passable on Normal and gets them utterly demolished on higher difficulties. These units, known as Free Silvers, are seen with disappointment for having such awful stats and only having high growths and good weapons ranks to make up for it (and good luck training them with those stats unless you use any of the possible Game-Breaker options home to this version). There's literally no reason to use any of the units to join after the Sable Knights, with the possible exceptions of Katarina, Xane, Nagi, and Michalis.
- Even by Free Silver standards, the Wolfguard/Coyote's Men that join in Chapter 19 are pathetic, which is made all the worse by the fact that they're some of the hardest units to recruit in the game (requiring you to go far out of your way, and then recruit each one in succession from the enemy side, while dodging swarms of incredibly powerful dracoknights). Once they're in your army, their stats are on par with units from Chapter 4, their growths are not nearly enough to save them, and they don't have anything worth noting—something made all the worse by their extremely late join time. On the highest difficulty, the only thing they can see use for is suicide attacks, and even then, they're frequently not that great at it.
- Every single unit on this list is dwarfed by one in particular though: Bantu. While all the other units are notoriously bad enough to qualify as a Low-Tier Letdown (by virtue of having no Magikarp Power to speak of whatsoever), they could at least theoretically keep up with extreme favoritism. Bantu absolutely can't—he can't reclass, his growths are awful, his bases are awful, his class is utterly gimped for the game it's in, he has only 6 move that he can't reclass out of, and he's seen as strictly inferior in every conceivable way to Tiki, a unit who in this game is not seen as worth it in the slightest. Due to the remake's different mechanics on Manaketes, Bantu can only launch or take 60 attacks due to him being able to use the Firestone. Even when capped out in every stat, something impossible without hacking, rigging, or pouring literally all the game's stat-boosting items into him, he's still mediocre at best.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Cyril is normally a decent Magikarp Power character thanks to having a personal skill that boosts his growths, and having very high-value affinities and a good selection of combat arts, but on the Silver Snow route, he's a borderline unusable unit on anything above the lowest difficulty (due to infinite level grinding being possible), and even then doing so is not a good idea. The reason is because he joins one chapter before the timeskip, giving the player only a few free periods to level and train his skills, time that can better be spent doing other things or empowering your already invested-in roster before the timeskip. Furthermore, unlike other characters from outside the chosen house, that either gradually promote to higher classes or start off in one, Cyril is always recruited as a Commoner, the base class all units share, meaning he starts off with lower bases than his level should have due to the auto leveling keeping him to the Commoner's growths, and only has a B rank Axe and Bow skill (made worse by Maddening Mode making his Bow rank C+), meaning he can't go into any class above Intermediate (mainly Archer and Fighter), and promoting to anything above that is likely to fail. Worse, his strengths are covered by so many other characters (Bow is covered by Shamir who starts as a Sniper, Axe Flyer by Seteth who starts as a Wyvern Rider, etc), that he can't hope to catch up and make use of his full potential unless really coddled in a short time, at which point the player would be handicapping themselves. So instead of a Magikarp Power unit like on the other routes, you have a Late Character Syndrome unit that takes so many extra resources to make good, that doing so comes at the cost of all of the other units available.
- Anna. While having good availability, she suffers from being a Master of None with an eclectic kit that has no idea what she's meant to be used for, and being worse than other units. Her growths are low across the board except for Speed and Charm, but she has a penalty to Authority, making her good Charm harder to use properly when it comes to using Battalions, and because she has no Supports, she can't get Linked Attacks, making her Charm almost useless. She seems to be aimed at being a Jack of All Stats thanks to her martial skills being spread out around Sword, Box, and Axe, but she doesn't have anything unique beyond her Crest, which has no Heroes Relic to synergize with it, and she doesn't really have unique skills or combat arts to offer. Her bases are okay, but even if recruited as soon as possible, she's likely already overshadowed by the rest of your units. Her Magic Knight option is handicapped by her having a weakness in Reason as well, making it hard to properly use her a magical unit, and she doesn't learn enough unique spells to give her a reason to be invested in. To top all this off, she's upstaged by Yuri, who not only has similar skills and growths as her, but has better skill proficiencies, and a Heroes Relic that synergizes with him very well, on top of better skills and spells by comparison. Due to this, Anna offers nothing of value as a unit, and trying to use her means having to sacrifice a slot, resources, and time on a unit who has poor payouts in the end, and is easily replaceable by so many other units. Her only good thing is her high Luck, which doesn't do enough in game to make it a selling point.
Fire Emblem Engage
- Nil is infamously useless in the Fell Xenologue, due to his poor stats resulting in him doing little damage and dying in one or two hits (which will result in a game over due to his survival being necessary). It's a different story in the main game, but many players have ended up getting frustrated with having to keep him alive during the Xenologue. He can, however, still use Emblem Rings, so most players just make him a Support Party Member with Micaiah, Corrin, or Byleth for its duration. The In-Universe justification for this, being that Rafal was merely faking his weakness all along, only served to make already frustrated players more pissed.
- Almost all of the Emblem Rings and Bracelets range in viability between a bit Difficult, but Awesome to use or easy to use on anyone you give them to, with one exception: Emblem Leif, who is notorious for his Adaptable sync skill (when a foe initiates combat, the ability automatically equips the weapon in the user's inventory that is "best" for countering) getting his bearer killed by switching to weapons that result in them getting weighed down, sometimes in spite of his Build boosts (such as his sync weapon, the Master Lance) and doubled when the weapon they already had equipped didn't. Adaptable can also sometimes botch your Enemy Phase kills, where the skill can sometimes cause you to switch to a weapon that failed to kill the enemy when the one you had equipped earlier could have secured you a guaranteed kill; it's especially bad with Leif's Light Brand, a magic sword that is very strong in the hands of magic users (who likely shouldn't be wielding Leif's Ring), but mediocre in the hands of physically-oriented units. Even ignoring Adaptable however, he is generally lacking in useful abilities outside Vantage, which can be inherited and combined with Emblems who use them better, like Ike or Roy. While it's not impossible to create a workable build tailored towards Leif's kit, it gave him a reputation as the hardest Emblem to use properly and it's not uncommon for him to be used solely as fodder for Vantage, Build boosts, or weapon proficiencies as a result.
Fire Emblem Heroes
- Many bad units have come and gone over the game's lifespan, but none are even remotely as useless as the three main characters of the game: Alfonse: Prince of Askr
, Sharena: Princess of Askr, and Anna: Commander. In addition to the handicap of suffering from very poor generation 1 statlines that hold up very badly in the face of years of Power Creep, they have the unique problem of being unable to utilize merges, denying them a further 23 stat points across the board and crippling their score in the Arena. As a final nail in the coffin, they were three of the earliest units to get weapon refines, which have also suffered from Power Creep that render them mediocre (Alfonse and Sharena) or outright useless (Anna), and they're very unlikely to get any new tools to fix their issues that can't benefit every other unit in the game in their weapon class more. Most of the oldest units in the game have much better options available to the player, but they can still be very much viable if heavy favoritism is shown. In a game of a series whose selling point is that any unit can be viable with enough favoritism, the Askr trio sticks out as the damning exception of being completely unsalvageable no matter what the player does. It's fairly telling that many quests require the player to use one of them in certain battles, potentially using them to deal the killing blow to a boss, demonstrating that using them makes things harder for yourself.
