Video Game / Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade

aka: Fire Emblem 7

Once, dragons and men coexisted. They shared a peace forged in wisdom, a peace that lasted many generations. All that was lost when mankind disrupted this balance in a sudden onslaught.
Man fought dragon in a savage war that shook the foundations of their world. This war was called The Scouring.
Defeated and humbled, dragons vanished from the realm. In time, man rebuilt and spread his dominion across the land and on to the islands beyond.
A thousand years have passed since those dark days ended.

— Opening

Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade — originally released under the title Fire Emblem in Western countries and known colloquially as Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword — is the seventh installment in the Fire Emblem series, released on the Game Boy Advance in 2003 and rereleased on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2014. It is notably the first Fire Emblem game to be released outside of Japan.

The Blazing Blade is a prequel to Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, taking place about 20 years prior. The game stars Eliwood, Roy's father, as he investigates the disappearance of his own father with his friends Hector and Lyn, leading them to clash with a brotherhood of assassins called the Black Fang.

In terms of gameplay, The Blazing Blade is a Mission-Pack Sequel to The Binding Blade, using the same core mechanics with some minor additions like weather effects and special victory conditions. (Not every chapter has a victory condition of "Seize the enemy's throne", as those in Binding Blade had.) The biggest change comes from the inclusion of two story paths: Eliwood's Tale and Hector's Tale. The original story is Eliwood's Tale, played normally on the first go-around with Eliwood as the protagonist after completing Lyn's Tale (a 10 chapter tutorial/prologue designed specifically for the international audience). Hector's Tale is unlocked after the game is beaten once and can be selected on repeat playthroughs instead of Eliwood's Tale after Lyn's Tale is completed. (In fact, after completing the game once, it's possible to skip Lyn's tale altogether.) Hector's Tale makes Hector the main Lord and protagonist instead of Eliwood (changing the narrative slightly to accommodate for this), increases the difficulty, includes some extra chapters and characters, and provides new story information not given in Eliwood's Tale. Multiple story paths would later be used in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Fire Emblem Fates, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, though the three games handle the execution differently.

Another addition is the Tactician, a somewhat customizable character. They don't participate in combat, but they are the one In-Universe that directs the army and act as the player's surrogate. The Tactician is a precursor to the much more intricate Avatar unit used in later games Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Fire Emblem Fates, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

The Blazing Blade is followed by Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, which takes place on the continent of Magvel in a new continuity.

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Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade provides examples of:

# to F

• Action Girl: Lyn is one of the most notable ones in a franchise chock-full of these. Other warrior women in this game include Fiora, Farina, Louise, Vaida, Rebecca, Nino, Isadora, Florina, and Karla. Serra and Priscilla also become these after promotion.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Lloyd and Linus. You fight one before the other, the first one is always misled into thinking you're a gang of corrupt nobles and evil people (who the Black Fang was originally founded to combat) but upon finding out you aren't, begin to question the leadership of the Black Fang, and refuse to fight you through underhanded methods and do not want to hurt any non-combatants. They don't join you because they had to do some thinking, but are killed by Limstella for their quintessence. The other is similarly misled because they think you killed their brother.
  • Even some villains who seem really nasty are revealed to have sympathetic qualities upon dying, such as Limstella.
• Alliterative Family:
  • Eliwood and his parents, Elbert and Eleanora.
  • The Pegasus Knight sisters all have their names starting from "F"; Fiora, Farina and Florina.
• Alliterative Name: Durandal is sometimes referred to as the Blazing Blade, though it is also sometimes referred to as the "Sword of Sacred Fire".
• Another Side, Another Story: Hector Mode, which follows a slightly different path from Eliwood's, as Hector takes some detours that Eliwood does not.
• Anti-Armor: Armorslayers, Heavy Spears, Hammers and the Lords' starting personal weapons do a ton of extra damage to units wearing heavy armor.
• Anti-Cavalry: Longswords, Horseslayers, Halberds and (again) the personal weapons the Lords start with are very effective against mounted units.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Merlinus does not take up a deployment slot anymore, though he is stuck as an immobile tent for most or all of the game. Like his older version, he merely retreats if he reaches 0 HP. However, the only drawback is that surplus items can't be sent to the convoy if he's absent, forcing you to discard items.
  • Mercifully, the game averts green unit stupidity in its first instance with Erk. While he will run around and seek out fights with enemies if you played through Lyn mode (and possibly gave him experience), he will otherwise stay put and wait to be recruited, which is great because he's Level 1 with low bases. Also mercifully, Zephiel will stay put behind cover and heal when wounded, making a rough chapter slightly easier.
  • After clearing the game once, Lyn Hard mode is unlocked, which is virtually the same as normal mode, with the only difference is that the Forced Tutorial is removed. Also, clearing Lyn Hard mode grants you the option to play either Eliwood's tale or Hector's tale on normal if the player wishes to do so.
• Anti-Magic: Kishuna the Magic Seal creates a 10-by-10 tile void where tomes and staves are useless. Players and enemies alike can still cast spells into the zone if they're outside, though.
• Anti-Villain: The majority of the original Black Fang is revealed to be manipulated by Sonia into doing Nergal's bidding, and was once a force of good.
• Arranged Marriage:
  • Marquess Araphen and Madelyn were arranged to be married, but Madelyn eloped with a nomad in protest.
  • Desmond and Hellene also had an arranged marriage.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI has 3 types of priority targets: weaker foes, unarmed foes, or one of your Lords (if they're nearby). While this seems reasonable at first, the AI doesn't understand when following these parameters can be extremely inefficient, such as attacking weak third-party units instead of the more dangerous and vital player units.
• Artistic Age: The three lords of this game haven't reached 18 years old throughout the 2-year timespan in the story (Eliwood and Hector are 16-17, Lyn is 15-16, though age lifted into 18-19 outside of Japan) but they look at least in their 20s. Rebecca and Nino are 15 and 14 respectively and while their faces and the rest of their body fit their age, they are drawn with very long legs in official art, giving an illusion of making them look older as well.
• Auto-Pilot Tutorial: The game forces you to make specific moves for a turn or two and then return control.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The S-rank weapons in the final chapter are too heavy to use compared to their effect, plus you're getting them at the end with almost no enemies worth using them on. The Sol Katti in particular is too unwieldy on Lyn's Fragile Speedster frame to let her double attack, something her fighting style depends on.
  • Nino would be a textbook case of Magikarp Power in that she starts at a low level and weak bases but has high enough growths to become a split atom once she's trained up. The main problem is that she starts at level 5 unpromoted when endgame can be as few as 3 chapters away (Eliwood's story, no sidequests), which means you have to go far out of your way to babysit her and feed her severely weakened enemies (that your other units need). The other Magikarp Power characters give you enough time to train them up without that much hassle, and if you need a powerful sage, Pent or Erk are solid alternatives that require much less effort.
  • Using Matthew or Legault as an Assassin. While you have plenty of time to train them up to Level 20 Thieves (and they are both quality units), the earliest Fell Contract you can obtain is Sonia's sidequest (a few chapters before the end of the game). If you buy it for 50,000G at a secret shop, you have even less time to train them up. Jaffar is recruited the same sidequest chapter as you fight Sonia anyways, and comes at Level 13 promoted with great bases- most notably a nearly-maxed out strength stat.
• Babies Ever After: Most of the future heroes from The Binding Blade get a mention in the epilogues. A young Roy and Lilina even have cameos during the last cutscene.
• Badass Longcoat: Raven and Linus (Heroes), and Lloyd (Swordmaster). Both are custom sprites, by the way. Because they're that awesome.
• Badass Preacher: Renault used to be a highly skilled fighter, and is implied to have gathered many bodies for Nergal's morph experiments. He became a bishop in an attempt to atone for his past actions.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Canas, given that he has access to Nosferatu (which essentially drains life force... what Nergal does.) yet he is perfectly fine with it all.
• BFS: The sword Durandal is about the same length as Eliwood's horse.
• Bittersweet Ending: Reading the epilogue about all the characters after the final level really feels this way if you let a lot of them die...
  • Even without any casualties, The Blazing Blade still has a bittersweet ending. Sure, the Dragon Gate is closed, Nergal's mad schemes have been put to rest for good, and Eliwood and Hector went on to rule Pherae and Ostia for fifteen or twenty years... but Bern's royal family is still royally screwed up, Athos and Bramimond are dead (not that anyone missed Bramimond, but still...), all of those Robin Hood types from the Black Fang have been killed or scattered to the winds, and fifteen short years later, a new tyrant sits on Bern's throne...
    • Not to mention that Ninian either has to say goodbye forever to the man she loves, or to her brother; and either way in turn, Nils won't ever see any of the new friends the two of them made ever again.
    • Priscilla has three potential love interests and a large slew of male characters for her supports, but the only one she can actually end up marrying is Erk. The other two (Guy and Heath) wind up leaving her due to class differences (Guy is a nomad, Heath's a mercenary from Bern, while Erk studied under noblemen). In both, she winds up crying. Good grief.
    • Without support grades to change their ending, the following disappear and are never seen again: Dart, Raven, Renault, and Jaffar.
    • Matching up your supports in particular ways can lead to the worst possible endings. Get Ninian with Eliwood, and it's implied she dies. If Nino gets with Erk, they both disappear. In Karel and Dart's supports, it's implied that Karel will kill Vaida. If Vaida got with Heath, then he probably died alongside her. Priscilla's issues are mentioned above, and finally, if Isadora gets with Renault, then she ends up in a covenant, and if she gets with Legault, then they end up fighting each other in battle. Cheers to a happy ending!
  • For those Doomed by Canon, see the entry below.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • The Rapier, Mani Katti, and Wolf Beil are effective against horseback and armored units, but are described to be only effective against infantry in the English version. The Sacred Stones fixed this with the Reginleif, but kept the same description for the Rapier.
  • Guy's ending gave him the title "Mounted Swordsman" despite his lack of skill and interest in riding horses being the reason that he focuses on his sword arm. His title in Japanese is 駆ける剣士 ("kakeru kenshi", lit. "galloping swordsman"), but the translators decided to interpret it as "mounted" (because his fellow tribesmen are mostly Nomads), disregarding the reason why he doesn't do so in the first place.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Even after claiming the Sword of Plot Advancement and the help of the 11th-Hour Ranger Athos, our heroes are still no match for Big Bad Nergal. Too bad he just teleported in and is about to grab the girl he needs to take over the world. Oh, no, wait. Nergal simply leaves after declaring his invincibility and delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Book Ends: If Eliwood and Ninian reach an A Rank for their Supports, the story ends the same way the two of them are introduced in Lyndis' story: Eliwood holding Ninian in a Bridal Carry.
• Boss Bonanza: The final chapter pits you against a total of 9 bosses, and when you're done with them you fight the Final Boss.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Chapter 7 revolves around a ballista in the center of the map. Despite being engineered by a regular mook, the game treats him as a Mini-Boss both within and outside the story: the placement of the ballista allows him to target any units that try to leave the player starting point, while hiding behind a mountain range that only Florina - who is weak to arrows - could bypass.
• Boss Rush: Nergal resurrects and supercharges 8 bosses, releasing them one per round. You must defeat them all before you can challenge Nergal.
• Bowdlerize: In the original Japanese script for Farina and Florina's B support, Farina mentions how Florina accidentally drank some alcohol at a festival, got drunk, and sang the Pegasus Counting Song at a festival. In the localization, the reference to alcohol is removed and Farina says that Florina simply comes out of her shell at festivals.
• Breaking Old Trends: Starting with this game, the map preview that was included before the preparations screen in the first six games was abandoned in favor of chapter intros, and even remakes of games that had it dropped the map previews. Players can still view the map of a current chapter manually, however.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Siblings Raven and Priscilla made a promise when they were kids to marry each other once they got older. Priscilla brings it up again during their Supports and attempts to pursue the relationship.
• Broken Record: Denning is a Morph made to repeat the message "This is a message from Lord Nergal. 'I await you on the Dread Isle'".
• Call-Forward: Quite a few, which are often mistaken for Sequel Hooks by players who don't know this game is a prequel. Most infamously, in The Stinger, Zephiel is approached by Jahn, The Man Behind the Man of Binding Blade, who asks why he has awakened a demon dragon, to which Zephiel responds with a Slasher Smile. It is presumably for this reason that the EU release removed these scenes.
• Captain Obvious: You can pay a fortune teller to give you mission-specific advice. They might end up telling you something you likely already knew ("You want magic and healing, so bring casters.") or just say "Don't die."
• The Church: The Church of Saint Elimine. Most monks, clerics, and bishops are members of it. Not clear what they actually teach, though, other than it was founded by a light magic-using member of the legendary heroes who drove away the dragons in the ancient war. (said founder was vaguely referenced as later having Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence.)
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Much like the other games in the series, the AI is unaffected by Fog of War.
  • Bosses reduce Assassins' chance to One-Hit Kill with a crit. The final boss, the Fire Dragon, is completely immune to it.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: Nils' augury for Chapter 30 recommends both moving as a group and avoiding entering the temples strewn across the map. Moving as a group will essentially result in being surrounded, moving in three separate groups being far more practical, and the temples contain a few stat boosting items and new a playable unit.
• Continuity Snarl: The game suggests both that Uther is much older than his younger brother Hector (having taken care of Hector since their parents died when Hector was a child) and that he is only a few years older (being "young and new to the throne" of Ostia). Matthew's dialogue with Hector in Lyn's tale suggests that Uther was already marquess then, but a year later in Eliwood's and Hector's tale he is still busy setting up his court, and he is specifically noted elsewhere as having become marquess only recently.
• Contract on the Hitman: Sonia sends Jaffar and Nino to kill Prince Zephiel on behalf of his father, and then orders Jaffar to kill Nino afterwards so they have a scapegoat. Lucky for her, Jaffar picks now to turn good and tries to sacrifice himself in a Last Stand against his former masters only for Eliwood and co. to show up and save them both.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: The boss of each chapter is half as likely to be hit by the Assassin class's One-Hit Kill technique. The final boss is completely immune to it.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: In contrast to The Binding Blade handling the character archetypes closely to the original, the playable characters in this game play with, subvert, or even avert the usual personalities and traits that come with their archetypes, which can be found in better detail on the character pages. Some prominent examples are the Cleric (Serra) and the Troubadour (Priscilla) being enthusiastic and demure respectively instead of the opposite, the red and green cavaliers (Kent and Sain) swapping personalities/stat specialties, a very gentle-natured axe fighter (Dorcas), the Myrmidon recruited from the enemy (Guy) is an idealistic youth while the first Mercenary is a brooding Byronic Hero, and the first thief you get (Matthew) being a spy working for the nobility as opposed to just another ruffian.
• Crash-Into Hello: Hector meets Florina, one of his possible love interests, when she plummets out of the sky and he winds up breaking her fall... and that of her pegasus.
• Crouching Scholar Hidden Badass: Don't let the monocle fool you. Canas will be nearly unstoppable once he reaches Druid form.
• Dark Action Girl: Sonia and Ursula are deadly, high-ranking members of the Black Fang, who stir up plenty of trouble throughout the story. The Black Fang also has plenty of Pegasus Knights and Troubadours, classes that were still Always Female at this time in the franchise.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Canas will remind people that Shamans study ancient magic, not dark magic, but he also knows firsthand that the forces he's handling are extremely dangerous and must be treated with caution. His three brothers succumbed to it, and ended up as Empty Shells.
  • Bramimond may be nothing more than a mirror, but his aid to Eliwood and company is undoubtedly heroic.
  • Nergal was originally just an ordinary Shaman trying to rescue his wife and reunite with his kids, and he needed a big boost of power to accomplish that...
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Despite the above, every practitioner of dark magic suffers from this, or at least risks it:
  • Canas lost his brothers because of it and knows that he may lose himself as well. Perhaps fortunately, he dies too soon to make it an issue for him.
  • Teodor knows the risks perfectly well and deliberately pursues the forgetfulness.
  • Bramimond has no personality of its own and simply mimics the personality of those to whom it converses, with No Biological Sex or any other defining characteristics.
  • By the time Nergal got the above-mentioned power boost, he had forgotten all about his family.
• The Darkness Before Death: Isadora's last words if you let her die:
  "Harken... Where are you? I... I can't see anything..."
• Dead Guy on Display: Once the party arrives at Dread Isle, the Black Fang leaves behind the corpse of Leila for them to find to try and get them to turn back. Instead, what they get is a few Berserk Buttons pressed.
• Defector from Decadence: Why some recruitable characters leave the enemy side. Legault left the Black Fang because he was forced to kill a wounded member of their team he cared about and Heath left his mercenary company because he refused to kill women and children (in your party).
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Hector can be seen in an Early-Bird Cameo. However, if you send Matthew in, you actually get an alternate scene in which some Foreshadowing is dropped. You can also get an alternate scene with Serra.
  • Recruiting Karla requires that an appropriately leveled Bartre fight her and survive a round of combat. The game not only has lines of dialogue for if this happens or Karla kills Bartre(which is likely to happen given she has the Weapon Triangle advantage and is a Critical Hit Class), but also if Bartre kills Karla or if he tries to fight her without a weapon.
• Detect Evil: Nils and Ninian have the strange ability to sense impending danger, but can't do much about it. It's the first sign that that they're not... normal.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Marquess Araphen's fiancee eloped with a Sacaean nomad. Needless to say, that made Marquess Araphen extremely bitter, especially towards Sacaeans.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The whole first half of the game leads up to a showdown with Darin in Chapter 19. You kill him, and Ephidel, who then gets unceremoniously sucked into the Dragon's Gate and presumably slaughtered by a dragon when the real Big Bad makes his intentions and ability known. If you take Sain into the battle on Eliwood's mode, he has some special dialogue at the start about how he and the others think this is the final battle and how he'll slay Darin For Great Justice.
• Doomed by Canon: Nino, Jaffar, and possibly Erk are killed by bounty hunters or are in hiding. Roy's mother is implied to have died giving birth to Roy, meaning this can either be Fiora, Ninian, or Lyndis. Whoever Hector marries is never mentioned in Binding Blade, and the possibilities include Florina, Farina, and (again) Lyn. Karla dies of illness some time after giving birth to Fir. Canas dies trying to stop a blizzard, and his son is raised by his grandmother — both appear in The Binding Blade. Not to mention, the Black Fang. Hector dies onscreen in The Binding Blade, and he's actually told that he'll die a violent death for taking Armands; furthermore, outside sources say Oswin dies in the same battle, protecting Hector. Athos and Bramminond don't make it to The Binding Blade. Rath's grandfather and daughter are both in The Binding Blade, but neither of them mentions him, implying the worst. Nino is on the run, regardless if she's married or not in her endings, and her sons mention that the priest who ran the orphanage they were in was killed — in Lucius' ending, he starts an orphanage, so it's possible that he died as well. Given her loyalty to Bern and Zephiel, and the fact that she never appears in The Binding Blade, it's not looking great for Vaida, and possibly Heath as well. This has a lesser impact on Western players who never got The Binding Blade.
• Dual Boss: Lloyd & Linus and Ursula & Jerme challenge you in pairs during the final chapter's Boss Bonanza, and Jasmine and Paul accost Pent in the desert. Notably, Lloyd and Linus and Jasmine and Paul share A supports with each other, making them more dangerous than their stats may initially suggest.
• Dual Wielding: Assassins wield dual daggers (actually swords for gameplay purposes) and Pirates wield dual axes.
• Dub Name Change: A few of the character's names, and Caelin is named Ciaran in the Japanese version. The European version also changes Ostia, Laus, and Bern (all of which are the names of real-life cities in Europe) to Ositia, Lahus, and Biran... except on the map scenes, where they're still called Ostia, Laus, and Bern.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Lucius, a monk with long blond hair, actually confuses Serra and Sain. In Lucius and Serra's C support, she starts out hostile to him while assuming he's a pretty girl, but ends up becoming smitten with him after he reveals he's a man.
• Dying as Yourself: The reanimated boss morphs you fight in the final chapter all regain their color and smile right before dying.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Hector makes a short, plot-unrelated appearance in Lyndis' story.
  • Ursula also makes a short appearance in Lyndis' story in a gaiden chapter.
  • Renault can be visited in a shrine during Kishuna's first appearance even though he cannot be recruited until near the end of the game.
  • Isadora also has a very brief appearance in the first chapter of Eliwood's story, before he sets out.
  • Heath briefly shows up in the Hector mode exclusive chapter, Talon's Alight, way before the chapter where he is recruited.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Blazing Blade marks the first time that the series allowed the creation of any avatar-type character. Like most such avatar characters, Mark serves as the tactician for the team. Unlike later avatar characters, Mark is not a combat unit and has no appearance options whatsoever, with even their gender not affecting their appearance and only actually affecting a few lines of dialog.
  • Blazing Blade also further experiments with Convoy mechanics - where Binding Blade had made the Convoy unit mobile and dependent on dodging large numbers of attacks to level up, Blazing Blade makes the convoy initially immobile and has the unique leveling mechanic of gaining a level for each time it survives a map. Later games would all do away with having a separate Convoy unit entirely and simply make it accessible through the main lord.
  • Dancers/Bards can use rings, which are items used to buff another unit for the next turn. These have never appeared before or since, but are something of a precursor to the later Rally skills with a larger and more focused effect.
  • Blazing Blade is the first Fire Emblem to have multiple story paths with different main characters (previous titles had used branching routes, but always as different options for a single main character), with Lyn's Tale being a prologue/tutorial to the main story and being followed by either Eliwood or Hector's Tale, which are about 90% the same with Hector's Tale having a different first chapter and a different late-game chapter to acquire a legendary weapon (with both events happening in both routes, but only one being a played chapter) and several additional chapters, CGs, and sidequests, but otherwise containing all the same content as Eliwood's Tale. Later games that would feature multiple routes would have significantly different content on each route.
  • Blazing Blade is the first game with player-placeable hazards and barriers. The former, Mines, would never return, while the latter would show up in much the same form in Radiant Dawn and as single-chapter obstacles in Fates. It's likely that the nature of these items was simply considered too hard to balance for them to become staples.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: Getting the "Bad" ending (Suspect Mind) involves completing the game with an overall D or E rank. This is actually harder to achieve than it sounds since a number of factors (like total turn count and money) go into determining rank, so you actively have to sabotage yourself in specific ways to get your rank that low.
• Early Game Hell: While not the most pronounced example in the series, the Hard Mode bonuses given to early enemies makes them significantly more threatening to your party members not named Hector, Oswin, or Marcus. You also do not start with 5000 gold like in Eliwood Mode, leaving a single Red Gem in Chapter 11 (which can be easily missed) as your only source of cash for a while, practically forcing you to sell the Chapter 12 Secret Book to get more equipment. Once past this point, the enemy stats do not scale evenly and the player gets more powerhouse characters, making things overall easier.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Played with. Most of the Black Fang Mooks are not individually threatening and rely on their numbers, and most bosses are not overwhelmingly difficult on most modes (though a few become nastier in HHM). However, the important members are a challenge to take down, particularly Linus, Lloyd, Sonia and Limstella.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: Athos joins your party in the final chapter.
• Eleventh Hour Super Power: Athos comes with legendary weapons for each of the Lords, plus some extremely powerful weapons for himself.
• Elite Four: The Four Fangs are the four most elite members of the Black Fang, each with their own Red Baron titles: Ursula "the Blue Crow", Lloyd Reed "the White Wolf", Linus Reed "the Mad Dog", and Jaffar "the Angel of Death". They all report to Brandon Reed, the boss of the Black Fang. There's some competition among them, as another Assassin, Jerme "the Death Kite", laments Jaffar taking his spot among the Fanga and hopes the earn his spot back by killing the party. Former member Pascal Grentzer "the Crazed Beast" was expelled and imprisoned after he killed an entire village to take out one target and Sonia offers to pardon him and restore his rank if he kills the party.
• Elopement:
  • Lyndis's parents eloped. Her mother, Lady Madelyn, was the daughter of the Marquis of Caelin. Her father, Hassar, was the leader of the Lorca Tribe, one of the three tribes of Sacae, a group of nomadic people. In order to stay together, Madelyn left Caelin to live with her lover on the Sacaen plains.
  • In the Japanese version, Guy and Priscilla's paired ending. Guy considered giving up on Priscilla, because of their different backgrounds, the former being a nomadic mercenary and the latter being a noblewoman. However, seeing her cry is too much for him and the two agree to elope. In the English version, this is completely removed because of a mistranslation.
• Escort Mission: Living Legend, where the mission is to rescue the Mage General Pent from a bandit attack in the desert. A desert Rout map with dozens of brigands, mages, and wyverns surrounding an NPC Sage sounds like a miserable time, until you notice Pent being competent enough to incinerate every enemy stupid enough to cross his path. In a hilariously ironic twist on the usual conventions of this type of mission, the requirement for this chapter's Sidequest is to gain at least 700 EXP, so the actual challenge is not so much about rescuing your escort as it is stopping him from getting too many kills: you are basically protecting the bandits from Pent!
• Even Bad Men Love Their Daughters: King Desmond towards Guinivere. Dampened by the fact that he apparently believes himself to be the only one allowed to love her.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Uhai holds Lyn hostage, but only to deliver a message to the enemy so they won't shoot him, and to make himself look like a more vicious opponent. Even though he could have easily killed her, he lets her go because he says it is shameful to hold hostages during battle and he notes that they are both Sacaeans. When he dies, he tells the party the way to the Dragon's Gate.
  • The Ganelon Bandits are disgusted by the way the Taliver bandits work. And they are even offended when you ask if they belong to them.
    • Note that they are disgusted by the Taliver bandits' practice of wastefully killing women, rather than profitably selling them into slavery. So Evil has standards, but the standards themselves are pretty Evil.
    • This is actually a case of Blatant Lies, as Migal, after swearing how they don't kill women, proceeds to attack Lyn.
  • Even such a ruthless assassin as Jaffar balked at the way Sonia treated Nino.
• Facepalm: Kent when Sain introduces himself to Florina, as shown here◊.
• Fantastic Racism: The Sacaeans are treated poorly by most of Elibe's other countries due to both their nomadic lifestyle and their cultural pride. This becomes a point of contention for Lyn during her story, and in her supports with Eliwood, she expresses fear of being ostracized in Caelin's court due to her mixed blood.
• Fog of War: Darkness or inclement weather affect some chapters. Either using a Torch or moving your Thief/Assassin can increase visibility greatly.
• Forced Tutorial: "Lyn's Tale" is a 10 -chapter prologue to the main quest that explains the game's mechanics in great detail, complete with forced moves and luck manipulation. The first time you play it, the tutorials are unskippable unless you link with Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (only possible in Japan since The Binding Blade wasn't released overseas). This was arguably a good thing for the Western release as this was the first official Fire Emblem game to release in the West, so newcomers would have no idea how the game is played.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Many characters are the parents of people who appear in Binding Blade, yet were never mentioned by their kids. To handle this, the Where Are They Now epilogue mentions several characters were killed offscreen in between games.
  • Hector swears to protect his children until the day he dies. In Chapter 3 of Binding Blade, Roy meets a dying Hector.
  • We learn the Bern royal family is having...trouble, but after Eliwood saves the prince's life, the mother promises to try to make amends. Given what eventually happened the previous game, that didn't turn out well. The dad tries to kill the prince many times and almost succeeds, the embittered prince kills his dad, locks up his little sister, sets out to take over the world. And nobody knows what happened to his mom. Do you regret saving him now?
• Fragile Speedster: Lyn on a typical playthrough depends on dodging and landing double attacks. If the Random Number God is generous, she'll end up as a Glass Cannon as well, or even a Lightning Bruiser instead.

G to N

• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Pent and Louise are happily married. They also start with an A support ranking because of it. If one of them falls, the other permanently leaves the party too in order to help the other off the battlefield and the two return home.
  • Renault the Bishop was a Mercenary in his backstory. There's some confusion over the timeline, but it's possible he spent centuries slaughtering people to gather quintessence for Nergal. And his stats show it — his HP and Defense are ridiculously high for a Bishop, while his Magic is atrocious.
  • Chapter 8 treats the ballistae as a threat in-game, as it's positioned to hit units that carelessly wander into its range near where you start.
  • In the final chapter, you might realize by checking their profiles that brothers Lloyd and Linus have an A support, the only enemies that do. They can put that to good use if you lure them together.
  • Both chapters that Wallace can be recruited in are Fog of War maps.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Due to supports being doable anytime and in any situation in Eliwood/Hector's story, some of them may not reflect truth. They can be divided into:
  • Mentioning a unit's presence when that unit might be dead or not in your army. For example, Priscilla to Guy: «Well, I saw you around, so I asked Merlinus», when Merlinus' recruitment may not have been recruited yet (he joins in Chapter 16 automatically if missed in Chapter 13x).
  • Mentioning a unit's participation in the battle when they may have not come. For example, Oswin to Serra: «Lord Hector and Lord Eliwood are on the front line», when depending on the story, Hector or Eliwood may not have come.
  • Mentioning a unit's inventory which might be different from the description. For example, after Lyn checks whether Florina has a weapon and healing supplies, Florina replies, «Let's see... A vulnerary... And, um... My lance is here...», when Florina can have an empty inventory.
  • In story, the Black Fang is treated as a small, elite group of assassins. In gameplay, they number in the hundreds and only their generals could qualify as elite; they don't seem to be much different from any other army in the franchise. It's particularly obvious in "Battle Before Dawn", where what should be an inconspicuous mop-up meant to kill three people involves Ursula bringing dozens of soldiers with her and engaging in a pitched battle while tossing around thunderbolts.
  • Further, the Black Fang's policy of "Eliminate the weak, salvage the strong" regarding their own wounded members makes little sense gameplay-wise when they frequently have healers around to keep their fighters alive. The most jarring example of this is the Troubadour that shows up with Damian's hit squad in Port of Badon, who is there to preserve its comrades in one of the few times the Black Fang actually strikes like assassins.
• Gameplay Protagonist, Story Protagonist:
  • One of the most extreme examples. Technically, the player is not playing as any of the lords (Lyn, Eliwood, and Hector) that we see go through their struggles, technically the player is playing as a tactitian commanding which units to attack and defend.
  • Done on another level in Hector Mode, where Hector gets the Can't Drop the Hero treatment and forced promotion, but Eliwood is still the protagonist of the story.
• Gangplank Galleon: Chapter 17E/18H "Pirate Ship" takes place on the titular pirate ship, where the protagonists are pursued by the Black Fang in their own ships. The player has to survive the waves of enemies for several turns, though killing the leader ends the chapter immediately. This is the first ship level introduced in the franchise 11 years after Fire Emblem Gaiden's Act 2.
• Genki Girl: Subverted with Serra, who acts genki but is more of a Stepford Smiler. Rebecca is more of the real deal. Nino also acts rather Genki in some of her supports.
• Good Powers, Bad People: Kenneth, a boss who is of the Bishop class uses light magic. In fact, the characters are quite shocked to find a Bishop is fighting them and wanting to kill them.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Played with; most characters follow conventions, but Brendan, the leader of the Black Fang, has noble intentions despite being on the opposing side and evil in appearance.
• Go Out with a Smile: In the final dungeon, Nergal creates Morphs of practically every major boss in the game. When you kill them, their pale portraits turn into normal colors, they close their eyes, and they smile in an almost relieved fashion, as if thanking you for killing them.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: This almost borders to White-and-Grey Morality in a couple occasions. Several Black Fang bosses are indeed bad people, especially Pascal (his chapter is called Crazed Beast for a reason). However, Uhai is above taking hostages, especially a Sacean woman. Lloyd, Linus, and Ursula likewise are not bad people, and Jaffar certainly looks evil at first until you recruit him. Darin, Jerme, and Kenneth are clear cut assholes, but it's heavily implied that Nergal had influenced them into doing what they did or becoming who they are by the time you meet them. This especially seems the case when they are resurrected as Morphs. Hell, Nergal takes the cake when it comes to the most despicable villains and the most tragic of them all.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Many of the gaiden chapters require you to complete a chapter in a set amount of turns or to visit a certain village, but Chapter 19xx is notorious for having very strange ones: Leveling your Spoony Bard to level 7 (which means Level Grinding and lots of it) on your second playthrough of Lyn's tale (see Forced Tutorial above), choose Hector's Story after completing the prologue and kill the Optional Boss in Chapter 19x (itself a Side Quest).
  • There's also a gaiden chapter unlocked by making sure your party gets a certain amount of experience while the enemy throws itself at a One-Man Army NPC. If you max out Ninian's levels by then and there is nobody for you to heal constantly it would be impossible to get experience points after most of the enemies are wiped out.
  • While you will inevitably fight and kill both of the Reed brothers, the game uses a somewhat obscure method to determine which one you fight first in "Four Fanged Offense": the combined levels of your three Lords.
  • The boss and map for "Pale Flower of Darkness" is determined by the total EXP of your Hero Crest users^note Dorcas, Bartre, Guy, Raven versus some of your Guiding Ring users^note Serra, Erk, Priscilla, Lucius. And depending on the map you got and your actions there, you will either get Karel or Harken.
  • Of all the characters in the game. Karla has a particularly obscure recruitment method. You need to be on Hector's Story, you need to bring Bartre to "Battle Preparations" (the optional shopping trip before the final battle), and he needs to be promoted and at least Lv 5. Do all this and she appears on the map, and you have to have them fight, with both surviving a round of combat (which practically requires Bartre to hold the Iron Rune since Karla is a Swordmaster). This makes sense if you've played Binding Blade, where Bartre joined as a Warrior (albeit only at level 2) and had a daughter with Karla, but since that game was No Export for You, Western fans were left with no hints to this recruitment.
    • Even Japanese players who played Binding Blade and may have made the connection between Bartre and Karla still had at best a Moon Logic Puzzle figuring out where to recruit Karla: That her daughter Fir was first seen in Binding Blade at the arena outside of Castle Ostia is pretty much the only clue that Karla is recruited at the arena outside of Castle Ostia.
  • There is a scene with Hector that addresses his Black-and-White Morality views towards the Black Fang… which can only be viewed under very specific circumstances: it only appears on his route, Lloyd must have been the boss of “Four-Fanged Offence”, and Hector must be the one to finish Linus in “Cog of Destiny”; this triggers a scene with Hector and Athos, with him shaken that the man he just killed was almost exactly like him, a fiery younger brother who loves his level-headed older brother. Few people find this by accident because the hints are subtle, there’s no scenes with that kind of requirement, and you’re unlikely to consider sending the axe-wielding Hector (who has poor Res.) against a boss using a Light Brand.
  • Good luck finding the Secret Shops and all their incredibly useful wares without a guide (though at least these are actually supposed to be secret, and they do have a slightly different map tile to indicate that they are there). Or for that matter, the locations of treasure on the desert map.
  • Good luck getting the promotional items for pirates (Ocean Seal) and thieves (Fell Contract); the former's hidden in the sand in Chapter 22(E)/23(H), while the latter's obtained by beating Sonia in a gaiden chapter. You can buy them later...from a secret shop, in Chapter 30(E)/32(H), and they go for 50,000 gold each.
  • Some of the rankings mechanics are not as obvious as they look. For example, the "Funds" ranking is not just how much cash you have on hand; it counts the value of all items in your possession too, right down to their their number of uses left. (The buying value of your items, not the selling value; if you sell that White Gem for 10,000 gold, you actually lose 10,000 gold.) Have fun getting an S rank without knowing that...
  • Because Pent and Louise are already married, their support ranks to each other has already reached A. However to unlock the conversations they must talk to each other in 3 specific maps to do so. If you miss one you cannot unlock future conversations.
  • The Support system, all of it. Despite the massive amount of backstory tucked away in the supports, the game never explains how they work at all, nor are they acknowledged in any of the in-game tutorials; an unaware player could easily play through the entire game without knowing they exist.
  • Assassins (or rather, technically any class with the Silencer skill can pick up placed mines and put them in their inventory. Thieves can disable mines but not reclaim them. This is not mentioned anywhere in-game.
• Hard Mode Mooks:
  • Maxime is a named Elite Mook who always appears in Battle Before Dawn, but his stats are only barely above an average promoted enemy on most modes. Hector Hard Mode jacks his stats up to an insane degree, and changes his position to make it much more likely you'll have to fight him, turning him into an actual threat.
  • Hector Hard Mode makes significant changes to the enemy composition of a few maps: its version of Cog of Destiny is populated by magic users like Druids, Valkyries and Sages instead of physical classes, and its version of The Value of Life replaces nearly every enemy with a Berserker.
• Hate Sink:
  • Nergal and his minions are evil, sure, but even they have their fans and Nergal has a fairly sympathetic backstory if you jump through hoops to get the secret sidequest mentioned above. The Black Fang are ultimately sympathetic despite their terrible deeds. But pretty much the entire fandom wants King Desmond dead. Want explanation? Here's a rundown... shall we say that if he got over his loser complex, then Zephiel wouldn't be driven to misanthropy and would have turned out to be a good King, thereby averting the events of The Binding Blade and the deaths of many innocents and Hector. Yep, Desmond actually caused the horrible war and the deaths of many favorites by being a horrible father to Zephiel.
  • Sonia is one of the more despicable antagonists, being a horrific Abusive Parent to Nino who is responsible for subverting the Black Fang to Nergal's purposes, among other atrocities.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: A fate of many sympathetic members of the Black Fangs. Among others, at least one member of the Reed family will experience this in any given playthrough. Whichever Reed brother is fought in Four-Fanged Offensive will begin to have their doubts about the Fang's course but be killed by Limstella before they can learn more, while the other brother willingly fights the heroes to the death in Cog of Destiny out of misguided revenge. Additionally, if Night of Farewells is unlocked, Brendan similarly misses any chance at redemption as Sonia kills him.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The tactician's name can be changed. Should you choose not to, they will go with "Mark."
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Lyn and Florina, Hector and Eliwood, Raven and Lucius, Sain and Kent... there's a long list.
• Hide Your Lesbians: Lyn and Florina and Lucius and Raven have paired endings despite that normally being reserved for lovers, and their supports are very easy to read as them getting together... but the game never properly refers to them as anything more than friends.
• Honor Before Reason: Sacaens supposedly never lie or break a promise, ever.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • Subverted with Vaida. She has her stats buffed to max in the chapter she appears as a boss, but she can be defeated by highly leveled units with an A-support level. She can also be rendered an easy kill by using the Mine Glitch ^note lay down a mine, wait for an enemy to walk on it, then reset the game. Upon resuming, all enemies are controllable for one turn to take her Spear (her weapon is the source of all her overpowered stats) though killing her means that you can't recruit her later.
  • Double subverted with Fargus in The Port of Badon. He can be defeated with enough Arena Abuse BUT no matter how the fight goes, the very act of attacking him gives you a Non-Standard Game Over, since he is your ride to the Dread Isle.
• Hufflepuff House: Justified with House Cornwell, which fell to Ostia well before the events of the game. It's only ever mentioned in the support conversations of Raven and Priscilla, both of whom were former nobles of the House that survived its destruction.
• Hypocrite: The game itself will be this to you. In the first chapters of Lyn's story, the characters will tell you "command me as you will" and variations, right before pointing out the only command you can give them.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Hector, arguably. Through almost all of the game, he only uses his right hand to cleave through just about everything in his path. When he equips Armads, he switches to his left...and swings it like it's nothing. Eliwood and cavaliers in general also switch hands after promotion (Eliwood from right-handed to left-handed, cavaliers from left-handed to right-handed) with no discernible effect.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Dread Isle, the nickname of the island of Valor. Among pirates, it's infamous for its rough waters nearly guaranteed to run any ship aground. Among everyone else, it's a creepy island where dark mages go to study, many of whom never return.
• Informed Attractiveness: Lyn is repeatedly stated by numerous characters to be extremely beautiful; despite definitely being so, this being Fire Emblem, there are many other female characters who are also far above average in the looks department.
  • Eliwood mentions Lyn's Sacaean heritage, that she's "striking" — so perhaps it's something in her movement or her complexion. Her battle animations are decidedly elegant.
  • The Reed brothers are written to be foils for each other in most respects, and in several instances Lloyd is mentioned as being the more attractive of the two; again, this being Fire Emblem, both brothers are on par with the rest of the cast.
• Informed Kindness: General Bauker of Laus is allegedly not such a bad guy, according to the NPCs, but he never displays any sympathetic traits or a hint of regret for the sack of Caelin. Made particularly jarring since his commanding officer Bernard, the boss of the very next level, accepts his own death as justice for Laus's brutality.
• Interface Spoiler: Lyn starts the first chapter as a completely normal girl living alone as a nomad in the Sacae plains — except that, according to the stats screen, she's a Lord.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Can be done with Eliwood and Ninian, a human and a half-human/half-dragon.
  • Also done in the game's backstory with Nergal and Aenir, a human shaman and a female dragon. They're all but stated to be Ninian's (and Nils's) parents.
• Island of Mystery: The Dread Isle again. Investigating it is one of the main points of the game.
• Jack of All Stats: Kent, Sain, and Lowen, the cavaliers of the game, all fall into this category, with certain specialties emerging from otherwise-balanced stats; Kent has the best skill and speed, Sain has the best strength, and Lowen has the best defenses. Eliwood serves as this role among the three lords, although with Fire Emblem's mostly luck-based level-up system, care must be taken to avoid letting him end up a Master of None.
• Lady Land: If Farina's support conversation with Karla is to be believed, Ilia's society is dominated by women as most of them are able to be breadwinners by being pegasus-mounted mercenaries (as pegasi only allow women to ride them) while the men either work as farmers or having an inferior knight brigade in comparison.
• Last of His Kind: Twofold for Lyn: she, along with ten or so escapees, is the last of Sacae's Lorca Tribe (they were slaughtered by bandits months before the game proper begins), and she becomes the sole member of House Caelin - if not before the game's end, then not too long afterwards. In regards to the latter, her mother was the sole heiress before running away from home and died six months before Lyn's story begins; her grandfather, Caelin's marquess, had to deal with his own younger brother poisoning him for months to obtain the throne, and was brutally stabbed almost a year later - though he received treatment for both and survived from both his willpower and robustness, he'd still be close to sixty if not older and the damage to his body would have taken its toll until he finally expired sometime before or during the epilogue.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Certain NPCs (recruitable or not) will run in and attack the first enemy they see no matter how suicidal it is. Watch as Erk the squishy mage picks a fight with a decent-sized army if left to his own devices.
  • The AI in general is this; unless specifically programmed not to, it will always attack if it's able to.
  • Mercifully averted with Zephiel, who's smart enough to stay put and use cover in the form of a pillar tile, and other mission-critical people. Although Zephiel will, for some reason, leave his cover and stay there if he uses an Elixir (but he might just move onto another pillar).
• Leitmotif: Lyn, Eliwood, and Hector each have one, although technically they're variations of the same theme, of which you will hear plenty in this game.
• Life Energy: "Quintessence" is used by Nergal to empower his magic, inevitably killing those from whom he drains it.
• Light Is Not Good: Kenneth is a powerful user of Light Magic who is completely devoted to Nergal, and if anything his skill in Light Magic only increased after Nergal used quintessence to reanimate his body.
• Lightning Bruiser: Don't let Hector's armor fool you, he's quite fast in addition to being strong and and well-armored. Lyn also tends towards this as a hard-hitting speedster, although her lack of armor means she could also be a Glass Cannon depending on how the Random Number God smiles on you.
  • Other classes in general count too, especially mounted and flying ones who have sturdy attacks and defenses and unrivaled movement speed.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Inverted; magic-wielding enemies in Hector Hard Mode become increasingly dangerous over the latter half of the game, necessitating units with high Resistance to stand a chance.
• Living Crashpad: Florina is nearly shot out of the sky by a company of archers, and both she and her pegasus fall on top of Hector, who's surprised but apparently no worse for wear.
• The Load: Whoever your main lord is before they get the item that promotes them in Cog of Destiny. It's very possible for them to hit level 20 well before Cog of Destiny (this is usually the case), and then they can't gain any experience, so you have good reason to not let them fight even when you can't do so.
• Long-Lost Relative:
  • It's all but stated that Nergal is Ninian and Nils' father, with the biggest hint being his extended death quote, which you can only get by doing an extremely obscure sidequest in Hector's Hard mode. In it, he mentions the children's mother, Aenir. Other relatives are Dart, who is Rebecca's long-lost brother Dan, Priscilla's brother Raymond is Raven, and it's strongly hinted that Canas is Nino's uncle.
  • The main plot of Lyn's story has her discovering an entire long-lost side of her family, as she was unaware of her Lycian heritage until she met Sain and Kent. To compound this, she and her elderly grandfather are the only members of House Caelin left when her story ends, and then he passes away after the main story and regardless of Lyn's fate (which can involve either staying in Lycia via marriage or returning to the Sacae Plains), she requests Caelin be folded into Ostia.
• Lord British Postulate:
  • Fargus. Although an enemy, fighting him is implied to be rather a bad idea, and to end the chapter, all anyone has to do is talk to him. However, it is quite possible to kill him, especially with an arena on the same map that can used to bring a member of your party up to his level. It's still rather a bad idea, as killing or even attacking Fargus will still result in a Nonstandard Game Over.
  • Vaida in "Unfulfilled Heart" is similar; although you don't get a Nonstandard Game Over for attacking her, you don't gain anything but a regular boss amount of EXP from it either, and you won't be able to recruit her in "Cog of Destiny."
  • Oddly enough, killing Kishuna in Chapter 22x is significantly harder on Eliwood mode than Hector mode. Unlike Hector mode, he just doesn't move at all from the center of his cell, making only reachable by a Longbow, and he will warp away after a single attack, so you have one round of combat for a super high-levelled Sniper to try it and hopefully hit and crit both attacks.
• Lost in Translation: Nergal's wife, Aenir, who is also Nils and Ninian's mother, is mentioned by name exactly twice, and both are mistranslated. In the first mention, the name of a person is treated like the name of a place, and in the second, a completely unrelated word is accidentally substituted because the Japanese words are similar. This made it considerably more difficult for English-speaking players to figure out the connection.
• Love at First Punch:
  • Bartre met his future wife Karla when she beat the crap out of him in an arena (or vice versa), gradually falling for her when they meet again much later.
  • Also, Lyndis was almost hit by Hector swinging his axe around and then she told him so. That was the start of their Slap-Slap-Kiss.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • In Battle Before Dawn, there's no physical way to reach Jaffar in time to guarantee that he will live on any mode, but especially Hector Hard Mode. If the enemies kill him before he can use his Elixir, then he dies, meaning you don't get a side chapter (and you can't recruit him). In fact, Zephiel, who you need to protect, can be killed 3 turns before you can get to the area.
  • Attempting to defeat Kishuna in "Prisoner of Magic" can be tough. He has an incredible health, good defense, enough Evasion to ensure that nobody at this point in the game except Lyn, Eliwood, and Guy will have more than a 50% chance to hit him at all, and is a living Anti-Magic field. He won't fight back, but you have to take out every last hitpoint in a single turn or he'll disappear. While you aren't required to kill him to proceed with the game, you do have to kill him to reach Chapter 19xx.
  • Trying to kill Kishuna in "Genesis", where he retreats as soon as you attack him or open the door to his chamber, forcing you to kill him in a single battle, which is almost impossible to do without a critical hit and probably tougher than getting the critical would be. (And his position makes him impossible to hit with anything other than a Longbow, though in Hector's Story he at least moves around enough to be within range of a regular ranged weapon.) This time, though, you aren't actually supposed to defeat him, and there's nothing lost if he retreats rather than being defeated.
  • Chapter 11 in Hector's story involves Hector and Matthew sneaking out of a castle while being pursued by assassins. There are only two of you and over a dozen of them. This is the very first chapter of Hector's story, meaning the one and only thing you could possibly have done in preparation is to level up Matthew during Lyn's story. Good strategy is absolutely vital, but in the end, much of the mission is praying you don't get screwed by the RNG. Chapter 12 isn't much better, as you only have Hector and Oswin in the north side surrounded by a couple dozen enemies that will kill Matthew and Serra if they get a chance. If you're unlucky, it's entirely possible for Hector to get overwhelmed and killed before you can have Marcus reach them to help out.
• Mage Killer: Pegasus Knights have high Resistance stats, letting them eat up magic damage and thus make great anti-magic units.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Nino is infamous for this: she comes at a low level very late in the game, but train her up and she'll be able to blow away anything that comes her way. Also a case of Lamarck Was Right: one character mentions that Nino's family is filled with extremely skilled magic users, including Nino's own sons, Lugh and Raigh, in The Binding Blade.
  • Downplayed with Eliwood. Mid-to-late game Eliwood? Quite decent, though not overwhelmingly so. Early game Eliwood? A walking liability who struggles to kill even Mooks when he has advantage. It's quite common to send Eliwood into a conflict that any other sword-fighter would make a Curb-Stomp Battle, and see Eliwood limp away with a sliver of health left or get killed on the next turn, costing you the game.
  • Most units that you get at level 1 qualify for this, though to less infuriating extents. Beginners are often nonplussed at how weak Rebecca and Florina are at first, but veterans know to train them up and really achieve impressive results.
• Master of None: Eliwood can be like this, if the RNG goes badly. While by no means a terrible unit, his "balanced" stat growths are pretty lackluster when Lyn and Hector's unbalanced ones enable them to kick so much ass.
• Mercy Kill: In Cog of Destiny, the Reed brother you didn't fight earlier has gone off the deep end because said other brother died, and thinks your army is responsible. You might think, if you know the trick to get him off the throne, that you could invoke Video Game Caring Potential and spare him in an attempt to clear up the misunderstanding... except it's a rare case of a throne map where the objective isn't to seize the throne, but instead to kill all of the enemies. Even if Nino pleads with him, you must kill the surviving Reed brother.
• Mighty Glacier: Knights and Generals, full stop. They can hit hard, the problem is having them keep up with the rest of your units.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The game starts with a minor noble trying to usurp his brother's territory, and another minor noble going missing a year later (who appears to be in cahoots with another minor noble plotting rebellion against the rest of the republic); the main characters later learn that all of this is being orchestrated by a mad sorcerer who is attempting to use the resulting discord to summon dragons and destroy the world.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: The game plays exactly like its predecessor, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, and reuses assets from it extensively. Additions include rain and snow, map objectives other than "Seize", interstitial artwork in cutscenes, and blinking animations for all character portraits.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Two cases of mistreatment of one person inducing another to commit a betrayal:
  • After Ephidel told Helman that he would send some Black Fang goons to scare Eliwood away from Santaruz, said goons actually tried to kill Eliwood. Helman loved Eliwood like a son and did not take kindly to the Black Fang's attempt on Eliwood's life, so with his last breath he betrayed the Black Fang.
  • Even such a ruthless assassin as Jaffar balked at the way Sonia abused Nino. Between that and Nino's kindness to him, he decided to betray Sonia.
• Modular Epilogue: If certain character pairs max out their Relationship Values via Supports, the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue describes their shared (often romantic) relationship instead of giving them individual endings. Many of these are mutually exclusive, since each character can only get the full A Support with one other character. For example, Eliwood gets one of four endings depending on which (if any) of his love interests he gets an A Support with. The previous installment, Binding Blade, has the same system, but the only alternate, paired endings are ones with Roy.
• More Despicable Minion: For as vile as Nergal is now, he's ultimately a Tragic Villain who lost sight of his original goal and most of his humanity in pursuit of the power needed to achieve that goal. Two of his creations, however, are at least as despicable as he is whilst earning themselves no pity or sympathy.
  • Ephidel is a smug, sadistic, scheming murderer who tries to incite a civil war in the Lycian League and whose actions lead to the death of Eliwood's father. The only regret anyone has about his death is likely that they didn't get to kill him themselves.
  • Sonia is a narcissistic, sadistic, selfish, abusive, delusional monster who turned the Black Fang from a glorified vigilante group to a band of thugs who will kill anyone for coin, neglected and abused Nino for years after killing the rest of her family, and tried to start a civil war in Bern. Nobody sheds a tear for her as she dies still deluding herself that she's human and not a Morph.
• Motive Decay:
  • The Black Fang were always a group of assassins, but apparently they started off as a noble one that targeted the unjust. This slowly slipped away when Nergal had Sonia infiltrate by marrying their leader, Brendan, and so Nergal had his own group of psychopaths and fanatic followers added...
  • This is the crux of Nergal's entire backstory. He sought powerful magic to open the Dragon's Gate so he could see his dragon wife again. Unfortunately, The Dark Side Will Make You Forget, and he now remembers none of his motives besides "get power" and "open Dragon's Gate". This tragically causes him to use his own children as pawns in his plan, and even in death he only regains vague memories of his former self, as seen in his extended death quote.
    Nergal: Why? Why must I lose? More power... I must be... stronger... I... Why? Why did I... want power? Aenir? Don't... under...stand...
• Mugging the Monster: In the desert chapter, a group of bandits rob Count Pent of his magical artifact he just dug up. Even as they attack him, he expresses regret in having to fight back. The results are so messy that the player might have a hard time getting EXP before he wipes the floor with all of them.
• Mutual Disadvantage: Kishuna, on his first apperance. While it seems great that the many enemy mages and powerful boss cannot cast, your own mages can't do so either, and can't heal using staves within the magic seal radius. Paradoxically, this seal actually makes killing the boss harder, as he will unequip his heavy Bolting tome and become harder to hit, and trying to kill Kishuna himself in one turn is a Luck-Based Mission without magic.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After Eliwood unwittingly kills Ninian.
• Mythology Gag: Three of the dancing rings (Filla's Might, Thor's Ire, and Set's Litany) are a reference to Crusaders Fjalar, Thrud and Sety of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. Fittingly enough, the rings are associated with fire, thunder, and wind respectively; which are the elemental powers specialized by the crusaders.
  • An Anna appears in this game, as is usual. This one mentions that she's dating a pirate named Jake, which was the same name as her boyfriend in the first game.
• Near-Villain Victory:
  • It won't be apparent on your first playthrough, but Lyn's group stumbles by sheer chance upon Nils about halfway through her story, rescuing Ninian from the Black Fang in the process, holding up Nergal's plans for a year.
  • Another one that won't be apparent on your first playthrough: the brigands that Ephidel sent to "scare" Eliwood away from Santaruz outnumbered Eliwood and his company; if it weren't for Hector's timely arrival, Eliwood might never have reached Santaruz or learned anything about the rebellion plot until it was too late. And if he and Hector hadn't quelled the rebellion, they never would have been in a position to interfere in Nergal's dragon-summoning ritual. As Nergal said, Hector's presence was his "greatest miscalculation."
  • Yet another not-so-obvious one, but in "Port of Badon", the only thing between Nergal and success is Fargus and his boat. If you attack him, he gets angry and withdraws his aid. Cue a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Next Thing They Knew: It can happen between Kent and Fiora if you decide to pair them up. While it's not outright stated that this is what happened, it's rather evident that this is the case. You can best appreciate the irony of it all by watching it here.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If you get the best Tactician rating, the game says that you "changed the course of history" and that "Bern and Etruria (the countries fighting in The Binding Blade) so desired this skilled mind that they went to war." Granted, they still go to war if you do poorly, but…
  • Etruria and Bern go to war even if you don't do excellently, but for completely different reasons that have nothing to do with the Tactician. In light of Desmond's tyranny and paranoia and the Tactician's many attacks on Bern troops throughout the game (which had to be done very efficiently for an A or S Rank), and the fact that the Tactician revealed the location of the Shrine of Seals (a closely guarded national secret of Bern) to the Mage General of Etruria, it's likely that the war mentioned in the "best" ending was started by Desmond rather than Zephiel.
• Non-Entity General: The Blazing Blade is the series's only aversion.
• Nonindicative Name: With a moniker like "The Blazing Blade," you would expect Durandal to be a Flaming Sword; it isn't. If anything the previous game's Binding Blade fits that description better.
• Nostalgia Level: Several chapters in The Blazing Blade take place at the same location as a chapter in Binding Blade. Some of them even have similar objectives and story elements. To wit:
  • Chapter 14 of The Blazing Blade◊: Chapter 4 of The Binding Blade◊ (Laus). Both chapters involve fighting Erik of Laus holding a troubadour from Etruria looking for her brother hostage.
  • Chapter 23 (Lloyd) of The Blazing Blade◊: Chapter 2 of The Binding Blade◊ (Bern/Pherae border)
  • Chapter 27 of The Blazing Blade◊: Chapter 21 of The Binding Blade◊ (The Shrine of Seals)
  • Chapter 28 of The Blazing Blade◊: Chapter 8x of The Binding Blade◊ (Durandal's cavern)
  • Chapter 30 (Hector mode) of The Blazing Blade◊: Chapter 12x of The Binding Blade◊ (Armads' cavern)
  • Chapter 29 of The Blazing Blade◊: Chapter 8 of The Binding Blade◊ (Inside Castle Ostia)
  • Chapter 29x of The Blazing Blade◊: Chapter 7 of The Binding Blade◊ (Outside Castle Ostia)
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: When Lyn visits the southern village in Chapter 3, the villagers automatically assume she is part of the bandit group.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In the penultimate battle, you fight Morphs of many of the previous bosses. None of them can talk.
  "......"

O to Z

• Oddly Small Organization: Inverted with the Black Fang. For such a covert assassin guild, they actually have a massive number of mooks to send and in reserve. In other Fire Emblem games, such numbers are usually deployed by the designated evil empire of the game.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: For once it's justified how Nergal keeps throwing larger and larger numbers of increasingly better units for your army to fight. After he was done with the Black Fang, he has logically run out of cannon fodder to throw at you... so he uses stolen quintessence to create vast armies of elite Morphs, beings that resemble humans but come straight from Uncanny Valley. It's implied that even before the destruction of the Black Fang, Nergal was placing Morphs into their ranks.
• Old Save Bonus: In the original Japanese version, transferring save data from The Binding Blade to The Blazing Blade lets players skip Lyn's tale completely without having to clear a first playthrough, alongside immediately unlocking two additional epilogue cutscenes (depending on which ending has been reached) instead of having to play through The Blazing Blade a certain amount of times. Due to The Binding Blade not having an overseas release, this feature went unused elsewhere, with the aforementioned epilogue cutscenes being unlocked by default in the US version.
• One-Hit Kill: A specialty of Assassins. For each attack, they have half of their normal critical hit chance to deal a OHKO, immediately terminating anyone but the final boss, even if a critical hit would barely (or even not) scratch them.
• One-Man Army: Any of your units can potentially be trained up enough to be able to fight through many foes at once. As for NPC instances:
  • Pent in Living Legend vastly outclasses any of the bandits that fights him, to the point that it starts to border on Mook Horror Show. This is actually a bad thing, since you need a certain amount of experience to qualify for the sidequest that Pent can end up stealing.
  • Jaffar will shred through all of the enemies that come after him in Battle Before Dawn, up to and including the chapter's miniboss (at least until his Killing Edge runs out of durability). He's in more trouble on Hard Mode, however, especially Hector's Hard Mode.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The fire dragons summoned from the Dragon's Gate are fairly standard, fire-breathing monsters of enormous strength — one of their CHILDREN is the final boss of the game. In human form, full-blooded of half-dragons are strongly magical in ways contrary to the established magic system, such as being able to forsee imminent danger and have limited clairvoyance.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Many of the Morphs are basically reanimated corpses. They are made of quintessence, which is like life force. New "people" can be made out of the quintessence of the dead or people can be brought back if they are strong enough.
• Parental Favoritism: Guinivere is adored by her father Desmond, while he despises his son Zephiel. Hellene shows affection to her son, but it is fueled by the need for power more than love. Desmond loves Guinivere far more because she was conceived with a mistress that he was genuinely in love with, whereas he had Zephiel with Hellene, and their marriage is a loveless one. To make matters worse, Zephiel is a hard-working prince who desperately wants his father's approval, and Guinivere is stuck beneath his shadow, because she's a girl. It reaches a tipping point when Desmond hires the Black Fang to kill Zephiel (hence the crux of Chapter 26), so that Guinivere can become the heiress apparent.
• Party Splitting: In Genesis, a suddenly-appearing wall in Kishuna's ruins forces the party into two groups that can't reach each other until much later in the chapter.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • For most characters you can recruit during a mission, you get one chapter to recruit them. If you kill them, or simply fail to actively recruit them before completing the level objective, they'll stay behind and you'll never see them again. Merlinus is the most obvious exception; your first chance to recruit him is in a sidequest (Chapter 13x), but if you skip that chapter, he'll join later on (Chapter 16).
  • Accidentally killed the Thief holding the Member Card in "Dragon's Gate" for some reason? You can say goodbye to the Secret Shops and their wares, as you need that card to access them. This is because said Thief doesn't drop it upon death (you need to steal it with a Thief of your own; fortunately Legault can be talked into joining you in this chapter should you forget or didn't want to deploy Matthew) and there is only one Member Card in the entire game. For those who also missed out the Ocean Seal in the desert map and the Fell Contract in Sonia's gaiden chapter, this results in Matthew's, Legault's, and Dart's promotions being off-limits.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Fargus and his crew are pirates, but we don't actually see them doing any piracy. In fact, although they initially want to charge the characters for passage to the Dread Isle, they end up doing it for free since it's an exciting adventure for them.
• Place of Power: The Dragon's Gate empowers dragons in its vicinity. Specifically, it makes the three Fire Dragons at the end of the game much more powerful than the equivalent dragons that Roy fights in The Binding Blade, and it gives Ninian enough power to kill two of those dragons with a single icy blast.
• Player Character: The player is an actual character for the first time in Fire Emblem, known as the Tactician, in line the addition of a strategic advisor in the first Advance Wars game. The Tactician is a Heroic Mime with not much story presence and does no fighting, but they are said to be the one giving tactical advice and orders to the characters.
• Plot Armor:
  • Important non-lord characters will retreat when defeated rather than die, though they remain unusable for the rest of the game. Bartre, Pent, Louise, Rath, Karla, and Nino in particular all canonically survived long enough to have children according to Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, while Marcus, Karel and Bartre return as playable characters.
  • Averted with Hawkeye and Canas since their respective children Igrene and Hugh have already been born at this point. Averted with Rebecca despite giving birth to Wolt several years later, though unlike other examples this seems to be an oversight.
  • Oswin also has Plot Armor because in Hector's Tale he serves the same "score-keeping" function for the Tactician that Marcus serves in Eliwood's Tale; dead men can't keep track of your accomplishments.
  • Subverted with Zephiel, who is not supposed to die in this game because he's the villain of The Binding Blade. If he dies in "Battle Before Dawn" it's game over.
• Plot Hole: In Four-Fanged Offense (either version), the pre-chapter cutscene always has Legault pop up and offer some advice to the lords before becoming a story non-entity again (unless you have him fight his former comrades). Makes sense, but Legault is a missable recruitable enemy who was fleeing the Black Fang at Dragon's Gate, and a particularly slippery one at that, so why does he appear here if you miss him?
• Plot Tumor: While Roy fights artificial beings himself, The Blazing Blade goes much further with exploring the concept of artificial life, and makes Nergal's Morphs much more important to the plot.
• Poor Communication Kills: Queen Hellene seems rather unconcerned that an attempt was made on her son's life, and is clearly confused when Eliwood accuses her of putting Zephiel's life at risk for her ambition. In reality, this is because she didn't know an assassination attempt was made on Zephiel the night before. This very nearly leads to the party losing her support to reach the Shrine of Seals, but Murdock fortunately explains the situation to her.
  • And even so, neither Murdock nor Eliwood told her that the attempt on Zephiel's life had been ordered by King Desmond; she might not have made her ill-fated decision to make it up to him if she had known about his involvement in the attack.
  • Hellene does (very quickly) mention something about hearing that assassins broke into the manse the previous night, but she still doesn't know that Eliwood and company were the ones that saved Zephiel until Murdock tells her. Of course, she doesn't find this out until after Eliwood calls her out, so it still fits this trope.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • Sol Katti, and to a lesser extent, Durandal. They're hyped up to be these ultimate, legendary weapons, and get a juicy damage bonus against the final boss. They also have a weight of 14. Using them will put Lyn and Eliwood at a massive speed disadvantage unless you fed them several Body Rings, allowing most enemies they don't kill in one shot to double-attack them. Considering that you get these in a level inhabited mostly by hard-hitting bosses, this is usually a death-sentence for your lords, and a game-over.
  • Thieves lose their ability to steal on promotion to Assassin, which while a relatively minor ability, still means trading one of the main class gimmicks for better stats.
• Press X to Die: Attacking Fargus leads to this as he's generally too powerful for you to defeat. If you survive, he will be offended at you turning on him and refuse to lend his ship, stranding you. If by no small miracle you manage to kill him, the game calls you out on killing an essential character and gives you yet another Non-Standard Game Over. Yep, it's a lose-lose-lose situation.
• Prestigious Player Title: You are a tactician, giving advice to the Lords who give the actual orders in combat.
• Prolonged Prologue: Lyn's Story is basically ten chapters of tutorial disguised as a storyline which, while important to her character, means little in the grand scheme of things. It is mandatory on the first go and can be skipped on subsequent playthroughs.
• Protection Mission: Two straight examples where you're defending a helpless NPC positioned behind you (Natalie in Lyn's story, Nils in Eliwood/Hector's) against an onslaught. Played with in Battle Before Dawn, in that Zephiel stays in the same general location, can fight decently (but will die if he gets swarmed), and, most importantly, starts much closer to the enemies than you do.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Eliwood or Hector gives one to Nergal just before the final battle, depending on whose story mode you selected.
    Eliwood: If that is what you learned from your encounter, then you are a fool. Do you believe for a moment that, when wise Athos struck down his dearest friend, he felt nothing!? His heart was torn in two, and yet you refuse to understand that! Nergal! I will defeat you! Here! Today!! But...even now, there is no hatred in my heart. You who were born human, you who lost the heart that defines your humanity...For you, I have nothing but pity.
    Hector: You're beyond help, you craven fool! Do you have any idea how Graybeard felt? What it must have meant to cut down a former friend? Are you telling me you don't get it? What happened in the past, what reasons drive you...None of these matter!! I have no compassion or pity for you whatsoever! I care not for your excuses. Prepare yourself, Nergal! With these hands, I shall end your crimes today!!
  • In Hector's story, he delivers another stinger to Nergal in the very same cutscene!
    Nergal: Do you understand? I have power. The power to perform miracles. Oh, yes...Hector. Your brother, Uther, the marquess of Ostia? He's dead, is he not?
    Hector: How—
    Nergal: If you would like, I could make a morph of your brother. It would be well suited for a fragile human such as you. Perhaps a heartless puppet could ease the longing in your soul.
    Hector: Shut up. A heartless puppet? That's you, monster.
    Nergal: ...What?
    Hector: To gain power, you think of no one but yourself. You are devoid of emotion, unable to feel pain or suffering...You are the puppet, Nergal!
• Recurring Element: This game plays with the archetypes by splitting them up between the three Lords. For the direct archetypes that were all in Marth's early party, Lyn comes with the Cain and Abel, a version a Gordin, and Caeda. Eliwood is introduced with Jeigan, another version of Gordin, and Bord and Cord. Hector gets Draug, Lena, and Julian in his starting line up.
• Rejected by the Empathic Weapon: The Mani Katti chooses who wields it, thanks to being blessed by the spirits. Anyone unworthy of wielding it can't even draw it from its scabbard, as Glass finds out. Meanwhile, Lyn can pull the Mani Katti out effortlessly.
• Retcon:
  • The Dragon's Gate concept seems to be something like this; going by what Jahn says near the end of Binding Blade, the dragons, bar himself, Idunn, and the population of Arcadia, were all slaughtered at their weakest by the humans in a brutal genocide. The Blazing Blade reveals they were simply chased into an Alternate Dimension. Granted, Jahn was sealed before that happened so he had no way of knowing, but it still smells faintly of backpedaling. Additionally, several pieces of characterization of parents in The Binding Blade are contradicted by the events of this game, likely due to being written as a prequel.
  • Older Marcus in Binding Blade mentions he's glad that Roy has Lilina, Wolt, and others as his friends, because Eliwood never had any friends his age growing up(although one translation clarifies that he means retainers), despite personally being witness to Hector being his childhood friend and the two of them bonding strongly with Lyn. This likely came about from changing Hector to being younger this game and creating the character of Lyn, who despite potentially being several characters' mothers isn't named there.
  • Niime reminisces that Hugh "tries to be bad like his father [Canas], but he's too kind-hearted", which is weird because despite practicing dark, ahem, "elder" magic, Canas never even approaches being bad personality wise.
  • In Dieck's backstory, it's stated that Klein's parents (Pent and Louise) not only took a six year old to a gladiators game, but were careless enough that he was somehow in the direct path of a loose lion that Dieck ended up saving him from. Further supports with Clarine mention that their parents are unconcerned with the revolt of Etruria and their children's well being, which sounds quite unlike the Pent and Louise we know of.
• Retronym: The localized title was simply Fire Emblem until Fire Emblem Heroes officially gave it the subtitle "The Blazing Blade".
• Rewatch Bonus: In the opening to Nils and Ninian's introductory chapter in Lyn's story, an innkeeper berates Nils, calling him a "plague upon decent folk". At first this just seems like he doesn't want to get in trouble with the Black Fang. After going further in the story, it's revealed that the Black Fang are known for only attacking the unjust and corrupt. If they were going after Nils and Ninian, the siblings would look like villains to those not in the know.
• Royal Rapier: Eliwood can use rapiers. They're an effective Anti-Cavalry and armor piercing weapon.
• Sacrificial Lion: Elbert, Eliwood's father, dies halfway through the story, but not before severely injuring the Big Bad and temporarily derailing his plans, and the character's death is a key turning point in the story.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Dart lays it out in no uncertain terms that attacking Fargus would be a bad move, and just in case you do, you get hit with a double whammy; not only is Fargus practically a Hopeless Boss Fight, but if you try to fight him, you get a Nonstandard Game Over no matter what happens next.
  • Many players will often skip Lyn's story and go straight for Eliwood's or Hector's, which you can do after beating the game for the first time. However, the characters that appear in Lyn's story will carry over whatever growths and items bought in her story to the next. Matthew in particular can get hit hard with the nerf bat if you don't play Lyn's story, because if you jump into Hector's story, he's available from the start...at Level 2, on a map that's far harder than Eliwood's first map. This can actually be a big deal if you did her story on Hard Mode - since the tutorials are off, you don't have to forcibly promote Wallace, so you can have either Sain or Kent swipe his Knight Crest.
• Secret Level: Blazing Blade has a great number of Sidequests, bonus chapters that can be unlocked by fulfilling certain conditions, such as clearing the previous chapter in 15 turns or fewer. Blazing Blade is also noteworthy for having a secret level that follows another secret level, resulting in a chapter numbered as 19xx^note Chapter 19xx has a quite large list of requirements. First, it is only accessible on Hector's Tale - even if all other conditions are met, it cannot be unlocked on Eliwood's Tale. Second, Chapter 19x must be unlocked by clearing Chapter 19 in no more than 15 turns. Third, on Chapter 19x, Kishuna must be defeated. Fourth, the game must be continued from a finished Lyn's Tale. Fifth, Nils must have reached at least level 7 before the completion of Lyn's Tale. Only if all of these conditions are met will Chapter 19xx be available.(Sidequests being numbered the preceding chapter with an x appended to the end).
• Ship Sinking: A-supports between certain characters will feature comments of this nature with more-obvious pairings, to play into the game's one-A-support limit. Examples include Hector tossing off Serra just before her A-support with Matthew, and Lyn rejecting Kent just before his A-support with Sain.
• Ship Tease: The game's endings are open-ended for Supports, but the game drops a lot of hints for Eliwood and Ninian as a couple, including a different ending if they reach A support. Additionally, Hector's story has a ton of moments that imply he and Lyn would make a good couple.
• Significant Name Shift: Florina, a Childhood Friend of Lyndis, typically calls Lyndis by the nickname "Lyn." At the end of Lyn's Story, Florina, who has become a knight in service of House Caelin, starts calling Lyn "Lady Lyndis" instead. Lyn reluctantly accepts it, but if she and Florina achieve an A support, she'll notice that Florina has gone back to using her nickname and express approval.
• Sins of Our Fathers: An odd example, since Eliwood was going to fight Nergal anyway, but Nergal specifically wanted Eliwood dead because Eliwood's father had severely wounded him.
  Nergal: "The man who did this to me is dead. I'd like his son's death as compensation."
• Slasher Smile: The epilogue concludes with a now grown-up Zephiel giving a sinister grin, setting up the events of The Binding Blade
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Black Fang's headquarters is located in the mountaintop of Bern, making it very snowy. This is important as it has occasional snowfall that slows down your troops outside of the walls.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Kishuna in the first chapter he appears in The Blazing Blade. The boss (who, incidentally, comes off as a chessmaster-type character, what with remarks like "battle is an equation") of that chapter has long-range magic that will do some nasty damage to your non-magic party members... had the aforementioned Magic Seal not made his conveniently-timed unexpected appearance.
  • Nergal says that Hector is an unexpected variable that ruined everything by helping Eliwood.
  • Eliwood proved to be a spanner in Lundgren's works when he convinced the territories adjacent to Caelin to remain neutral, depriving Lundgren of much-needed reinforcements.
• Sparing Them the Dirty Work: Wallace destroyed the Taliver Bandits, the group that killed Lyn's parents, so that she wouldn't feel consumed by vengeance.
• Start of Darkness: In the epilogue, Zephiel's.
• Stay in the Kitchen: The Lorcas wouldn't allow a woman to lead them, as Lyn can testify.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: First pointed out in Ephidel, then present in all the Morphs.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
  • In "Valorous Roland", there is an enormous amount of enemies who automatically drop Elixers when defeated. Which is good, because they are your only hope of survival if you plan on facing Georg.
  • Toward the end of the game, the party is given access to a sidequest in a town with no enemies, nothing but shops and armories, and 30,000 free gold. And guess what, you're going to need it.
• Suspiciously Small Army:
  • One has to wonder, how small is Caelin's fighting force? Laus, a neighboring Lycian territory, has enough Mooks to fill up 3 chapters, yet when you come to Lyn's rescue, she has only 4 members of Lyndis' Legion (now sworn knights) with her. She states that half the guards were killed in the attack, but the next chapter shows the survivors imprisoned... all 3 of them. Of course, Lyn had fought her way through Caelin's army for three chapters herself, but that was one year previously.
  • Caelin's army before the attack included those three soldiers, Raven, Lucius, Kent, Sain, Wil, Florina, and possibly Lyn herself, plus that many again who were killed in the attack. Granted, an "army" of 18 or 20 isn't that much more reasonable than an "army" of 6.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The Weapon Triangle: Swords > Axes > Lances > Swords. Same goes for magic: Light > Dark > Anima > Light. The triangle gets inverted by the Reaver weapons (Swordreaver, etc.) that reverse which weapon they are strong and weak against, and even amplify the advantages and disadvantages slightly.
• Theme Naming: The ladies of Caelin all seem to have "lyn" somewhere in their name: Marquess Hausen's wife Lyndis and daughter Madelyn; his granddaughter was named Lyndis as well.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • You'll come across several awesome weapons of which there is only one (perhaps 2) obtainable copies and probably be too reluctant to actually use them, save for the final chapter. The best example of this are the 4 "Brave Weapons". They are a powerful sword, lance, axe, and bow, respectively, and only one obtainable copy of each can be found in the game. They guarantee a doubling of your overall strikes (meaning two attacks if too heavy or slow, and four if said character can double-attack normally)... and thus use up their durability fast. They can potentially break after just 5 uses. Eliwood and Hector's starting unique weapons each have two extra copies, one of which are dropped in the chapter right after their promotions.
  • Discussed. When you receive an Energy Ring in Lyn's story, which gives a temporary bonus to Strength or Magic, an NPC mentions that while you should think carefully about when you want to use it, holding onto it and never using it will do you no good.
• Triumphant Reprise: Eliwood's main theme is pretty triumphant, but this minor-key rendition is even more so.
• The Social Darwinist: The Nergal/Sonia-corrupted version of The Black Fang apparently have a creed: "discard the weak, salvage the strong."
• Uncanny Valley: The morphs. They look very similar to humans, except a majority have black hair, pale skin, golden eyes, and red lips. They were also created from the quintessence of living things, mainly that of humans. Most morphs are known to be emotionless, and while Sonia, Limstella, and Ephidel, were programmed to have intelligence, a lot of other morphs don't, with Denning himself only being programed to deliver a message to Eliwood and friends. All of this shows why they always tend to look off compared to actual humans. Subverted with Kishuna since, while he's also a morph, is capable of displaying and feeling emotions, making him feel a bit more human.
• The Unfought:
  • Possible with Sonia, one of the leaders of the Black Fang; she will never be fought if you choose to skip her side-chapter. Limstella will dispose of her instead.
  • Subverted with Brendan, one of the Black Fang leaders. While he is killed in a pre-level dialogue scene, you do fight a morph in his likeness in the final chapter.
  • Ephidel is set up to be a major Climax Boss and would actually make a very convincing Disc-One Final Boss for a first-time player since Lyn's story ended at Chapter 10 and he's seemingly The Man Behind the Man for Darin, who is fought as the boss of Chapter 19 (logically, Ephidel would be the boss of Chapter 20, and that would end Eliwood's story, right?). Then the cutscene after Chapter 19 happens and he is revealed to be a subordinate of Nergal, and then gets killed by a fire dragon in that same cutscene.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • To cause an unwinnable state, the player needs to start a new game on Lyn's tale on Normal Mode, as to cause the Forced Tutorial to show up. Then, the player needs to kill off all non-Lyn characters before Chapter 4. Whether or not this is due to complete and utter stupidity or insanity is up to the player's actions. During Chapter 4, the Forced Tutorial will forcibly move Lyn to the east, as this is the first instance of recruiting a character that starts as an enemy (Dorcas) and the tutorial will force you through the process and move her away from the NPC. Problem is, the map is a 'Defend the NPC mission' and if Lyn is the only character and is forced to waste the first few turns recruiting Dorcas, it becomes completely impossible to prevent a group of enemies from reaching and killing the NPC, which triggers a Game Over. There is no way to avert this if the tutorial is on, as the tutorial will make the first few moves for you.
  • It is also possible to accidentally softlock the game (game is playable but chapter cannot be progressed past) at Jerme's version of Chapter 25 on EHM or HHM if you have no Door Keys or Lockpicks (or their users) remaining, as there are not enough droppable Door Keys to enter all the rooms in Hard Mode. Since the map objective is Rout, you must enter every room and thus the map will be unbeatable.
  • The tiles in "Night of Farewells" on Eliwood Normal mode will never respawn due to an oversight, so if you leave Eliwood on a bridge, and that bridge disappears, and you did not bring any fliers, pirates, or berserkers to the map, it'll be impossible to clear the map, since he is needed to seize the throne, and having him stuck in water without aid will softlock the game.
• Unlockable Content: Clearing Eliwood's story not only unlocks Hector's story but also the option to play a fresh Eliwood/Hector file without the Tactician. All content related to Mark is locked out (such as start-of-chapter dialogues by newly-recruited characters, the Hit/Avoid bonuses from Tactician stars, and the Afa's Drops given by Athos); in exchange, there are unique scenes of the non-chosen Lord visiting the chosen Lord on the latter's day of ascension (see here).
• Unlockable Difficulty Levels: Hector's story is unlocked after completing Eliwood's story, and has six extra chapters (two gaiden chapters and four main chapters, two of which replace chapters in Eliwood's story) while being harder overall. This can be kicked up a notch with "Hector's hard mode".
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Eliwood's Supports with three characters (Lyndis, Ninian, or Fiora) can lead to marriage and having Roy. Ninian is the only one stated as actually loving him without having a Support conversation. This means that you can have Eliwood fall in love with Fiora or Lyndis right in front of Ninian.
  • Did you make anyone fall in love with Eliwood or Hector? They're doomed to die young since they need to be gone by Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. Hope the paired ending was worth it!
  • Since Harken appears as an enemy, you can have Isadora, his fiancee, kill him.
  • Nino can be made to fight her step-family if you have her attack any of the Reed bosses. She's clearly upset about it, Lloyd isn't exactly happy either, and Linus is too far gone to care. It's fully possible for her to kill them (or get killed by) them.
    • Legault, who used to be close friends with the Reeds, can also be forced to fight and/or kill them. Their special dialogue is one of the few times he breaks his Stepford Snarker personality.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • Eagler in Lyn's story is the second-to-last boss and the first promoted one (being a Paladin). He's also the first boss to not be a pushover and will punish any unpromoted unit you send against him unless you trained them up.
  • The sidequest Port of Badon is the first one that isn't just an easy source of free money and items. Either come to sidequests prepared for a rough fight or die. Not to mention that merely attacking the boss is one way to doom yourself to a Nonstandard Game Over, and it is easy to do this by accident.
  • Uhai is the first elite member of the Black Fang you encounter, and a tough boss for that point in the game despite being a stationary boss with no 1-2 range. He combines being both dodgy (fast class parked on a forest) and being surprisingly hard to damage even with magic, so that even players depending on Marcus may have trouble beating him. On Hector mode, even trying to gang up on him in melee range will have him pulling out a nasty Killing Edge.
• Water Source Tampering: The Taliver Bandits tampered with the Lorca tribe's water supply, making it easy for the bandits to massacre the tribespeople, leaving all but few as survivors.
• Weapon Twirling: Almost every critical animation involves weapon twirling.
• Weather of War: In addition to the usual Fog of War, certain chapters have rain or snow show up from time to time, slowing down all units.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 19/20: The Dragon's Gate. Nils and Ninian are free, Nergal is defeated (for now), and Ephidel and Marquess Laus are finally dead... but the gate opens for the first time and a glimpse of, guess what, dragons is seen and Elbert had to pull a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Wham Line: "The ice dragon there... The beast slaughtered by your hand... That is Ninian. The girl you loved." ^note Or if Eliwood and Ninian do not have A support, "the girl who adored you".
• Will Not Tell a Lie: The people of Sacae have a reputation for being too proud to tell lies.
• With My Dying Breath, I Summon You: Nergal summons a dragon as he dies.
• Wizards Live Longer: Athos, Bramimond, and Nergal have lived for many centuries.
• You Bastard!: If you play with a Tactician and get an E or D ranking overall, several characters on the Battle History screen will say something along the lines of either "What were you thinking?", "You need more practice", or just flat out say "You suck" (though some units, namely Jaffar, will say things like this even if you played decently and got a C or B rank). And the ending notes that future historians were baffled at how you led Eliwood and co. to victory with 'such incomprehensible' strategies.
• You Have Failed Me: The Black Fang has a policy where members who have failed or are no longer useful are killed. Legault is actually forced to kill a girl from the group because she was crippled.

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