YMMV / Fire Emblem Fates

YMMV Tropes with their own pages:

• Base-Breaking Character
• Broken Base
• Fan Nickname
• Fanon
• Game Breaker
• Memetic Mutation

A

• Abandon Shipping:
  • Some fans have stopped shipping the Avatar with the Nohrian and Hoshidan royals, due to them growing up thinking of the former group as their actual siblings and the latter group being their actual siblings. That said, there are still those who ship them, especially since the Avatar turns out not to be related to either group at all, making this more of a murky example than a straight one.
  • Similarly, some fans stopped shipping Azura with the Nohr and Hoshido siblings when they found out she was raised as siblings with the Hoshidans and pre-release material hinted that the Nohr siblings were her actual genetic half-siblings. This isn't true, but it still made some uncomfortable. Ironically enough, however, it's revealed that she is actually Corrin's cousin in Revelation - Corrin and Azura's mothers were sisters - which only served to turn off even more people from the ship. Not only that, but many fans found it hypocritical for the game to seemingly go out of its way to say that Corrin's supposed blood relatives were in fact not related to allow S Supports with them, yet the story seemed to heavily favour shipping Azura with Corrin.
  • The Avatar's interactions with Lilith in the first few chapters sparked a small amount of shipping, but that completely evaporated when the Hidden Truths DLC revealed she's essentially their sister. And not in a Not Blood Siblings way either.
  • Played a bit straighter with a Female Avatar/Rhajat, which was one of the more popular Avatar ships for a while thanks in great part to her being the female Bisexual Option. When the localization played up Rhajat's negative qualities in her S-support with the Avatar, many people were left puzzled at best or angry at worst. While Rhajat and the ship are still quite popular for some, others have turned against the character and the pairing (paired with huge levels of Never Live It Down), and others simply resorted to shipping Rhajat with Selkie, Mitama or Asugi instead.
  • Fans started ditching Hinata/Oboro when the localization came out, thanks to a certain line^note "When I talk about Lord Takumi, it's like a fantasy or an ideal. But you're real. You're right here, in the flesh, telling me you love me." in the S-support heavily implying that she is settling.
  • Ophelia and Soleil was a very popular ship prior to the games' release in the West on account of their fathers' massive amounts of Ho Yay. However, a number of people jumped ship when they realized the B and C supports involved Soleil coming on too strong in trying to ask Ophelia for a date and fangirling her body, resulting in Ophelia running off in frustrated tears. Their A support involves them patching things up (Soleil apologizing and realizing she went too far, Ophelia forgiving her and giving her a second chance), but to many fans the damage was already done and they felt too uncomfortable to keep shipping it.
  • While some apply Fanon Discontinuity, Avatar/Flora still took a hit after the release of the Spooky Scramble DLC (though it was never released outside Japan), thanks to the excessively awkward implications caused by her conversation with Jakob, which still happens if she's married to the Male Avatar. Worse still is that in the previous game a DLC map had a conversation between a woman and her crush, but Cordelia didn't have the conversation with Chrom if she was married.
  • Laslow/Charlotte was never the most popular ship to begin with. But what little support it had was completely lost when it turned out their S-Support basically amounts to agreeing to having an open marriage.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • "Blow gently." The context is that you're blowing away bath steam, but it can still be taken as something else. Doesn't help that the text appears as your spouse's face fills the entire lower screen. If you fail that (I.E you don't know where your microphone is) you get a "Blow harder next time!" message. Especially hilarious if it's a male character you're doing it to.
  • From Hinata and Hisame's B support, it sounds like Hisame caught his father masturbating. They're talking about Hinata talking to his sword:
    Hisame: I thought you would be embarrassed if I spoke up. It seems I was right. Besides, there's no need to hide it. I've seen you doing it before.
    Hinata: O-oh. You have? That doesn't make me feel any better...
  • The Avatar's supports with Scarlet mention "magic gunk". Until you get the context for it, a lot of their dialogue comes across as extremely dirty.
  • The scenes where Garon is watching Azura dance. In context, he is in great pain, as she is attempting to purify him with magic. However, many fans thought Garon looked like he was enjoying it, which puts a whole other spin on things. Not helping matters is that one of the song lyrics during the sequence is "hard as a stone".
  • Percy's confession line when S-supporting a female Avatar has him say, "I get to marry you and ride a dragon everyday?". Although he's supposed to be talking about his wyvern, the Avatar could very well be the dragon he rides.
  • Although he's actually saying "need," instead of "eat," the audio for one of Asugi's marriage quotes sounds like this.
    "When I'm with you, I don't eat anything else in the world! Even chocolate!"
  • The final line of Silas' and Oboro's S-Support. In context, she's overcoming her prejudice against Nohrians after falling in love with him. However, since Sophie's paralogue becomes available right after this line, it can make you wonder... Good at what?
    Oboro: I look forward to seeing just how good a Nohrian can be!
• Adorkable:
  • Corrin tends to act like this when trying to confess during a S-support, the male more than the female. The Male Avatar also seems unused to getting hit on, as he gets flustered whenever women flirt with him, lapsing further into this. A particularly hilarious example is from Caeldori's S Support:
    Caeldori: Yes. You have many wonderful qualities, but the one I admire most is your compassion... So...I want you to teach me...about love.
    Avatar: Agh—um—er—you—what?!
  • Keaton's dog-like behavior, especially his inability to stop his tail from wagging whenever he is happy or excited.
  • Being a ridiculously Nice Guy in spite of his Hot-Blooded nature makes Hinata come across this way.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Silas having little character other than his devotion to the Avatar and seemingly being the only one to remember his past with them led a lot of people to theorize he is The Mole, possibly one of Iago's spies. He isn't, though those suspicious traits of his along with the fact that he lacks any actual Hidden Depths is the reason he is disliked by some. Other people interpret his supports with Camilla and Elise as him being only in it for Corrin's adoptive sisters. This is sent up in his supports with Sakura on the Hoshido path — because Corrin initially didn't remember him, Sakura becomes convinced that Silas is under some sort of curse or spell making him believe he's Corrin's friend, though she doesn't go so far as to accuse him of being a mole.
  • After a while, people noticed that many of Azura's actions ^note Conquest: Sidestepping a proper explanation of Valla and giving Corrin the push into conquering Hoshido; Revelation: Convincing Corrin to fight both the Hoshidan and Nohrian advance forces — making them an enemy of both countries — and then talking them into jumping off a cliff would make more sense if she was a sociopathic villain manipulating Corrin. There is also the less extreme view that she's very apathetic, and doesn't try very hard to thwart the villain ^note she's actually not trying hard because she's seen the consequences if she says too much. On the other hand, she suffers that same death anyway in Birthright and Conquest because she wasted her energy helping Corrin fight a symptom instead of the root cause.
  • Is Forrest truly a crossdressing man, or is he a trans woman living in a world without the language or ability to understand the concept? This debate can get... heated.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Orochi's complicated Anime Hair is an exaggerated version of the real-life shimada hairstyle, often worn by Japanese geisha.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • While the story in Japan was not hailed as absolutely amazing (Fates was actually review-bombed on Amazon Japan), there is a much more significant appreciation for the issues that revolve around the Nohrian royals' survivor guilt and trauma, with the notion of the royals coming to eventually stand against their father being seem as very significant. This, combined with a far more favorable approach to the cast, led to Fates being considerably more well liked there than in the West, where the Nohrian royals' perceived indecisiveness drew a lot of ire.
  • Dwyer was the second most popular male second-gen character in Japan, second only to fan-favorite Forrest. International fans largely ignore him, as he is something of a letdown due to his personal skill having no use outside of My Castle battles.
  • In Japan, Jakob is the most popular non-royal male and was voted the number one marriage candidate for the female Avatar. The Western fandom overall has much less patience with his jerkass tendencies. This might explain why his son was also received less warmly by said fandom.
  • Takumi is very popular amongst the Japanese, who love him for being a deep and believable character in his supports. He even came in first in the Famitsu popularity poll. In the West, while he still has a lot of fans, he's more of a Base-Breaking Character due to his rude attitude and the reasoning behind it being polarizing.
  • Nina was the highest ranking second-gen female in Japan, and one of the highest ranking females in general. In America, she's much more polarizing since Yaoi Fangirl is a Discredited Trope in the West.
  • A lot of Western fans dislike Male Kana's localized supports for many reasons. One, he has a bland parent-child support with his mother, the Avatar (it's the same as female Kana's generic mother support, and she actually has a unique support with her father, the Avatar). Secondly, in the international version, he is reduced to being a romantic Butt-Monkey in his localized supports, having little personality beyond "cute kid" (Morgan was either a troll or a Nice Guy, Female Kana has her abandonment issues expanded on).
  • Garon, Hans, and Iago rank decently on Japanese popularity polls,^note Which is the reason why all three of them had their Scrappy entries on this page removed. but Western audiences don't hold nearly the same level of affection due to their looks and motivations contributing to the story's Black-and-White Morality, undermining the Grey-and-Gray Morality that the developers were aiming for.
• Anticlimax Boss:
  • Leo in Birthright Chapter 18 is built up as a powerful opponent and the confrontation with the Avatar — who he considered his brother/sister — is an emotional one, but he's a joke of a boss. He has very low stats for a Level 12 promoted unit (he has better stats bar HP when he joins as a playable unit in Conquest Chapter 14, and at Level 2), so he poses little threat to the player, and he's fought in a very small map that makes it easy to just run up to him and beat him in one or two turns. There is a good in-story reason for this, though.
  • Garon is the second-to-last boss of both Birthright and Conquest, but he's not very threatening. His main weapon is an axe, which naturally has low accuracy (especially if against an opponent with Weapon Triangle advantage). As long as the Avatar hasn't been reclassed to a non-sword wielding class (and/or is in a class that can't use lances and in turn Dual Naginata), they can just walk right up to Garon and use the upgraded Yato to easily take him out in a round or two. This is more obvious in Conquest, as his map there is more open and straightforward with less units blocking your way.
  • If you trained the Avatar well, Xander can become this in Birthright Chapter 26, as it will only take one or two hits from the Noble Yato to down him, on top of this being possible to do in one turn. It doesn't help that this comes after Elise's death, and it's especially jarring given that Xander was a walking Hopeless Boss Fight in Birthright Chapter 12. Again, his sudden weakness has an in-story reason, though.
  • Revelation Chapter 26 reveals that Gunter is Scarlet’s killer and a vessel for Anankos. However, between his unimpressive stats falling short of the generic enemy units around him, Corrin and Azura’s surrounding spaces healing and boosting their allies courtesy of their late mothers, and the map just not being very big, the chapter should end very quickly.
• Ass Pull: While Birthright does hint to your army containing The Mole, the revelation that it was a Brainwashed and Crazy Takumi comes out of left field. The person who was controlling him, Iago, was never shown to possess brainwashing powers, and had no significant interactions with Takumi prior to the reveal. Also, although Takumi was mind-controlled in chapter 10, he is quickly snapped out of his trance by Azura and becomes playable for the rest of the game. The fact you have full control over his actions on the battlefield, coupled with the game providing no hints that he hadn't made a full recovery, contradicts the plot twist.
• Awesome Music: The one thing the game's Broken Base can unanimously agree on is that the soundtrack is amazing, even for a Fire Emblem game. Take a seat — we're gonna be here for a while:
  • The final boss theme in all routes, "End of All", is a wonderful and climactic endgame track that really sets the mood for a tense final battle. The track is mostly the same in all three routes, but the lyrics that are sung in the middle of the song are dependent on the route you choose.
  • The boss themes of both routes for battles against the opposing siblings ("You of the Light" and "You of the Dark") are both epic and heartrending at the same time; the themes are brimming with the emotions carried by the siblings on the battlefield.
  • "Road Taken" is this game's equivalent to the Conquest tune from Awakening, playing on skirmish maps. It is one of the loveliest pieces in the game, while its battle variant makes for an energetic and wonderful fight theme.
  • The English dub's version of "Lost In Thoughts All Alone" manages to equally match the original Japanese version in terms of awesomeness, thanks to Rena Strober's amazing singing. Azura's dancing scenes during both the Nohr and Hoshido routes in particular are a shining example of an English translation of an originally Japanese song done right.
  • "Thorn in You" and its battle version play during Chapter 6 and the battles against Xander or Ryoma near the end of Birthright and Conquest, respectively, and boy does it help set the mood. The normal version is fittingly depressing, with a soft piano and violins playing throughout. The battle version manages to keep the tragic aspect and ramp up the drama with a bombastic orchestra, which helps make the battles against your beloved siblings all the more tear-jerking and climactic.
  • "Condemnation" completely nails the sound of the Irish/Scottish/western European culture that the kingdom of Nohr is so heavily inspired by. It's telling that many fans consider it to be their favorite track despite the fact that it plays so often.
  • Ditto for Dusk Falls". And "Pray to the Dark". Honestly, it's probably easier to say that the entire OST of Conquest is one big CMOA.
  • "A Dark Fall" is an appropriately foreboding track which captures the complex emotions of war, especially when you're forced to go against the ones you love.
  • Its Hoshido counterpart, "Alight", is no slouch, and captures the wistful feeling Corrin must be facing upon returning to Nohr after so many struggles, with the final battles against their beloved family lingering just before them.
  • "Misery in Hand" is full of intense woodworks and East Asian beats, completely encapsulating Hoshido's inspiration, making for a truly awesome piece to listen to as you duel off against the Hoshidan royal retainers and Shura.
  • "Past Light" and its Storm variation are utterly beautiful, like nature itself in musical motion, and show why the OST of Birthright stacks up just as well to Conquest.
  • "Lost King's Supper", Garon's boss theme (in his human form), maintains the same western European feel of the other Nohrian themes, but the chaotic beat gives it a high-tension feeling of wrongness that well befits the mad tyrant.

B

• Best Known for the Fanservice: The primary reason for the game's Fan Nickname of "Waifu Emblem". Though other entries have also had their share of fanservice Fates is the one that became most infamous for it, between the face-touching minigame, the poorly justified return of the children mechanic, the prominent use of the Not Blood Siblings trope, the inclusion of a Meido class, some of the more stripperiffic designs (particularly Camilla's), and certain choices of characterization which fans accuse of being otaku pandering.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Conquest's maps are well received for giving much more diverse objectives than just "Rout the enemies" or "Defeat the Boss". It's generally accepted that Nohr if not the entire game may have been given the short end of the stick storywise, but it has much more interesting maps.
    • Conquest Chapter 10 is both this and That One Level. Veterans of the series love it exactly because of how difficult it is, without being unfair. It's the first map to introduce ballista and fire orbs, meaning you have new toys to play with, and is also the first map where enemy royals start using Dragon's Vein on you, meaning you need to improvise quickly. It being a Defend map adds another layer of strategy, especially if one wants to grab all the villages. Players usually admit that despite the amount of time they spent on it, they had a lot of fun doing so.
    • Despite its controversial story status, Conquest Chapter 15 is an extremely interesting map unlike anything seen before in the series: the map is split into two, with no connection between the two halves, and you clone your party with the copies taking on the bottom half. The replicas share inventory and HP with the originals, so if one equips a certain weapon, their clone does the same, and items obtained exist for both copies, but limited items carry over their uses. Essentially, you have to plan your strategies around your characters being in two places at once. There's also a risk-vs-reward element in the objective: you can either escape on the top part or defeat the boss on the bottom. Do you cut your losses and run or go for more EXP and some stat-boosting items? It's a gigantic Mind Screw, but an extremely fun one. This map is revisited in Chapter 19 of Revelation with the exact same mechanics and layout, but more units for you to have fun with.
    • Chapter 24 of Conquest, the cherry blossom forest, has Dragon Veins that affect the movement of all your units. Whenever you use the Dragon Veins, the movement of the land units increase while the fliers' movement decreases. When the boss uses her Dragon Vein, however, the total opposite occurs with flier movement increasing instead, and unlike all the other Dragon Veins, hers respawns after a few turns or so, so she can keep reusing it. It is a very fun map, and you have different ways of approaching it. You could hit the Dragon Veins yourself and go on the offensive, rushing your land units closer to the boss, or wait for the boss to hit them and go on the defensive and protect yourself against the oncoming enemy fliers. Your own flying units are also affected by the Dragon Vein, so you could even have them take advantage of the extra movement when the boss uses it. The map is fun, offers a lot of strategies on how to approach it, and also has great music and aesthetics.
    • The finale of Conquest as well is the previous map turned backwards. Instead of dividing your team up, you're all charging down while fighting off powerful enemies from the side, dodging cover while Takumi tries to send waves of death down the map at you. What's more, when you finally reach Takumi, he is no slouch. Sure, it's a Humanoid Abomination, but when paired up with a clone, using a skill called Bold Stance that gives it the pairup mechanics from Awakening (minus random Dual Guards). A rush, but damned if it isn't an aesthetically pleasing and a fun end.
  • For a non-Conquest map, Shigure's paralogue. It is a ship map, but unlike most ship maps where you can park your tanks along the choke points and then send everyone else in as clean-up, the two ships attacking you alternate, and while the ships do hit you around the same general area, it's not exactly the same. This means the player may have to think carefully about pushing too far ahead (as non-fliers cannot get off the ship that is away from yours) and prepare for the next wave on the other side, while getting ready to push the boss on the top ship.
  • Percy's paralogue has an interesting twist on the traditional Rout objective. All of the enemies of the map, not including the boss, are mercenaries who have been tricked into thinking that the player's army are wanted bandits. Using the Dragon Veins that are scattered throughout the map makes all of the units within a certain range realize that the user is not an outlaw, but rather royalty, which means that they're attacking the army of a noble, flee the map, and bribe the player to forget that this ever happened to the tune of 500G per unit that flees. While there's no direct penalty for killing the mercenaries, thus allowing players to take the straightforward approach if they so choose (and be rewarded in EXP), it's also possible to instead play the map as a risk-reward system, luring as many units as possible into the Veins, trying to figure out the best opportunity to use them without the unit acting as bait getting overrun while being equipped with weak weapons in order to not kill the mercenaries when they're attacked, and potentially making well over 10000G for their trouble when all's said and done — which, while a nice bonus in Revelation, is particularly helpful when playing Conquest, a game where opportunities to drum up extra cash are limited without DLC.
• Broken Base: Has its own page.

C

• Camera Screw: If your units fight in a very cramped area (such as an alley or a narrow hallway), the camera has very little room to move around.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Odin, Selena, and Laslow are actually Owain, Severa, and Inigo. The Multiverse references aside, it's still blatantly obvious since their personalities, voices, and appearances are exactly the same (albeit the trio are Older and Wiser here) and all their supports with other characters are filled with nods and hints towards them being the exact same characters.
  • Azura is related to Valla royalty. She still has a royal icon and can use Dragon's Vein despite being Not Blood Related to either family, so even if you don't know the full significance of Valla, it is pretty obvious by process of elimination. And once you find out the Avatar isn't related to their Hoshidan siblings, their relation to Valla royalty becomes obvious too, especially with Azura saying in Conquest Chapter 15 that only the two of them can use water to travel to and from Valla.
  • Anthony betraying the heroes in Revelation is so obvious that everyone except Corrin had already turned hostile toward him in the previous chapter.
  • Gunter is The Mole in the Revelation route. He gets an unusually high number of appearances in that route, he suspiciously can't support at all (a trait usually reserved for captured units and Einherjar), and, in the English dub at least, the voice Corrin hears right before Scarlet dies is clearly that of Gunter's.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: Wondering who to marry? Ask the competitive side and they'll tell you to marry a second gen unit, not even batting an eye at the squicktastic implications since it provides a stronger Kana in addition to being able to get every child unit in the game while not having to marry an Avatarsexual if playing as a male. Other players choose not to do this due to said implications, and are perfectly fine either missing out on a child (with Dwyer, Hisame, and Rhajat being common children that are never recruited) or marrying one of said Avatarsexuals. Gunter also is an extremely common marriage choice in LTC or Speedrun playthroughs due to the incredible boosts his personal skill gives the Avatar, while casual fans despise the pairing for its Wife Husbandry implications.
• Catharsis Factor: Fighting Iago and Hans is very satisfying after what they put you through in the game. In Birthright, having Takumi land the killing blow on Iago is well-deserved karma, while Conquest has the player being forced to put up with them for essentially the entire game.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Generals are back to being intimidating in the battle animations like in previous games, as opposed to Awakening which depicted them as clumsy and comical. In addition, Generals ironically have a significant advantage over any Mages thanks to the new weapon triangle where lances can beat tomes/scrolls, meaning despite their low Resistance, they are way more effective for mage hunting.
  • As another class example, Swordmasters and Berserkers got their innate critical bonuses back, which is a welcome return after they had their Critical Hit Class aspects stripped in Shadow Dragon and Awakening. Berserkers especially, as they epitomized Unskilled, but Strong in Awakening and were more used for their skills and Pair Up stat boosts than actual combat. Now they're a force to be reckoned with again.
• Common Knowledge: It is often claimed that Takumi is the only Hoshidan not to immediately trust or like Corrin in Birthright, who is otherwise Loved by All there. While this is true if one is referring to the Hoshidan royal family or what is seen in the story, several supports show this is not the case, with characters such as Saizo and Hana initially showing distrust or dislike for Corrin at the start of supports with them due to their upbringing in Nohr.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In online matches, expect to see a lot of Master Ninjas and Swordmasters due to their high speed, power, and access to powerful and useful weapons. Kinshi Knights are also fairly common, thanks to high movement and bow/yumi access, as well as Azura with Warp due to being able to sing from anywhere on the map being a Game-Breaker in some situations.
• Complete Monster:
  • Hans is a Nohrian criminal previously arrested for murder who, after his release from prison, served as a soldier for the Nohrian army. When ordered by King Garon to test Corrin's abilities, on what was meant to be a simple recon mission, Hans murdered a Hoshidan to initiate a conflict. Despite initiating the conflict as ordered, Hans continued to try and kill more Hoshidans for fun, abandoned the group during the conflict, and later on attacked Corrin on a bridge, needlessly trying to kill Gunter in the process. In the Birthright route, Hans gets promoted to a commander, and demands that his men fight against each other for real saying that he wants to see real blood. When he finds Corrin and the group, he orders his men to throw their lives away if it means weakening Corrin, and threatens to have King Garon kill the families of those who hesitate. In the Conquest route, when ordered to suppress a rebellion occurring in Cheve, Hans ignores the rebellion and decides to slaughter innocent villagers who took no part in it. He later gleefully kills Hoshidan prisoners who were promised to be spared if they surrendered. Hans is willing to do anything if it means he'll get ahead in life, and while he claims to kill out of loyalty for King Garon, Hans only follows Garon's orders if it means he can be rewarded for what he loves doing.
  • Iago, the right-hand tactician of King Garon of Nohr, excels at sorcery and illusions. In Birthright, Iago tries to instigate a feud between Corrin and the Wind Tribe by disguising some of the tribalists as Faceless to be killed. Later, Iago cruelly attacks Flora despite being in the wrong, tries to have Corrin and their group digested alive by a resurrected Fort Dragonfall, and is implied to be behind Takumi's aggressive state. In Conquest, fueled by nothing more than contempt for Corrin, Iago constantly tries to get the heroes slain, including a Faceless ambush in the Woods of the Forlorn and telling the warring Hoshidans where they'll be. In one notable instance, a Faceless tries to attack Corrin, but this results in Lilith's demise instead; Iago remarks he never liked her anyway. By the time Nohr's invasion begins, Iago's worst crime is his enabling and organization of the genocidal conquest of Hoshido, personally slaughtering anyone who stands in the way of Nohr, and relishing in the violence he causes. Finally, his dislike reaches the point where he outright attacks Corrin at the end of the route in front of the Nohrian siblings, going against his own king's initial orders. Manipulative and cruel, none of the heroes approved of Iago's actions, and even the peace-loving Corrin wanted him dead.
  • Kotaro, the Daimyo of the Kingdom of Mokushu, is a cold-blooded tyrant driven entirely by his own ambitions of conquest and power. Making a secret deal with King Garon to aid in his invasion of Hoshido in exchange for gaining its territory after the war's end, Kotaro plays both sides to maintain the illusion of neutrality, capturing and executing any Hoshidans who visit Mokushu to ensure no one knows of his dealings. Before the events of the story, Kotaro had a dispute with Saizo and Kaze's father, whom Kotaro proceeded to murder in cold blood for lecturing him on the inhumanity of his actions. Invading the nation of Kohga some time after, Kotaro launched a genocidal invasion on the peaceful nation, slaughtering entire villages and killing all of Shura's friends and family while scattering the few survivors. While he attacks completely unprovoked in Birthright and Revelation, he holds off due to his alliance with Nohr in Conquest, which leads to Corrin and his allies discovering him holding Kagero hostage, making Kotaro act to kill them all as a "tragic accident". As a final insult, Kotaro gloats about all the suffering he caused, and taunts that he will build his new castle over the graves of his enemies.
• Contested Sequel: Overall, the game is seen as making some steps forward from Fire Emblem: Awakening, but also taking some steps back. They combine to put its quality compared to its immediate predecessor up in the air.
• Critical Backlash: Fire Emblem Fates was exposed to a lot of hatred across the internet for its story and characters, with the hatedom of the fandom being so strong that it openly lent itself to a lot of flame wars and a deeply Broken Base. But given both the fact the game was Vindicated by History (see below) and the extreme amount of hate the Conquest storyline gets online, many who play it after being exposed to said hate often have this reaction, feeling that while it still has its issues, it's nowhere near as bad as some make it out to be.
• Critical Dissonance: The game has seen a huge Broken Base being created in the wake of its release, a good number of controversies, was labelled a "trash game" by some western social media and gaming forums and many people threatened to outright boycott the game upon its Western release over the changes to the content. In spite of this, it got high review scores across the board and got the largest US launch of any game in the series.
• Crosses the Line Twice: You know how Flora immolates herself at Chapter 17: Lost in the Ice? Well if you have foresight of that by playing Birthright first and having access to the weapon DLC, you'll be able to supply Flora in Conquest with a forged Flame Shuriken. Double points if you give the weapon names such as "Pure Hotness" or "Fiery Death." One can only imagine the reactions of the players upon seeing that name in your castle.
• Cry for the Devil: The True Final Boss has a tragic backstory you only learn of through DLC, but man, is it painful. Anankos foresaw his own descent into madness and tried desperately to stop it, but everything he tried either didn't work or made things worse. Humans grew scared of him and shunned him during this time, making his insanity worse. Everything finally culminated in an Accidental Murder of his best friend and the only person left who still believed in him, which broke his mind completely. When you learn this, and especially how he used to be a genuinely kind man, it's hard not to feel sad when fighting the twisted beast he's become.

D

• Demonic Spiders:
  • Bows got a major buff in this game, having insane attack power (even moreso than axes). Though this is offset by Archers' inability to attack at close range, the Conquest route gives some of them the Counter skill to return direct attack damage, making them dangerous to engage from any position.
  • Apothecaries have as much Strength and Defense as armored classes while still having great Skill and Speed and some of the highest HP of regular enemies, and they also have a skill that makes healing potions more effective, and will carry at least one to make use of it.
  • Master Ninjas have high Skill to trigger critical hits and enough Speed to double nearly everyone, often carry the Poison Strike skill to drain the health of any unit that fails to defeat them in one round, have access to Silver Shuriken (-4 Speed, Defense, and Resistance to the target) to wear down even the toughest tanks, and tend to appear in large groups. On Lunatic Mode, those in the late game gain Inevitable End, which lets their hidden weapon debuffs stack.
  • Normally, Generals are Mighty Glaciers that can easily be one-rounded by any decent magic user due to their terrible Speed and Resistance. When given the skill Wary Fighter, however, they cannot be doubled at all, making them much harder to kill.
  • Berserkers, especially those with Silver Axes and Brave Axes, are brick walls with a ton of HP that can dish out huge amounts of damage. They are a staple in late game maps and commonly grouped together with Generals, Sorcerers and Heroes, covering up for what's left of their weaknesses.
  • Swordmasters have a high crit chance and solid speed in addition to their equally high evasion rates and access to Astra, a skill that boosts their attack power to 2.5 its original value.
  • Stoneborn in Boo Camp DLC. They deal tons of damage from a very long range and can freeze your units in place for one turn if they manage to hit (which is likely to happen due to some of them having Certain Blow). To add insult to injury, they give pitiful amounts of EXP compared to Faceless.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Setsuna's inattentiveness, struggles to read others' emotions, limited range of expression, short and blunt manner of speaking, indications that there's much more going on in her head than she verbalizes or shows, and fixation on a few fields (archery and chemistry) all suggest she's somewhere on the autism spectrum.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Nintendo and Intelligent Systems tried to be more inclusive by making the Avatar the first bisexual Fire Emblem Lord. That said, there's only one Gay Option per gender, and those options are a sadist, and a stalker whose obsession is so great that it transcends death, space and time. And that's not even getting into Soleil, a bisexual character whose "bi" part seems to only exist for fanservice and comedy (at least in Japan), and who is also quite the stalker herself.

E

• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game:
  • The gameplay in Birthright is generally seen as nothing too special, being for the most part like Fire Emblem: Awakening with a couple of new mechanics added, though the story is considered quite well-written in comparison to Conquest and Revelation.
  • Revelation's gameplay suffers from a heavy reliance on gimmicky chapters, as well as its infamously poor unit balance, but many people enjoy the supports between the otherwise version-exclusive characters. The fact that it has the happiest ending of all three routes is a plus.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Perhaps due to the depth of her character and her tragic story, Flora is surprisingly very popular with both the East and West despite only being able to support two people and being an optional recruitment. She frequently gets a lot of fanart and scores highly in polls.
  • Oboro, especially in Japan. Despite being a fairly minor character compared to the royals, she managed to place among the top 10 of a Famitsu poll and the top five of the official popularity poll due to her cute voice, quirky personality and surprising depth. And also being a battle monster wielding a spear in battle, the closest you can get for a Hoshidan Nephenee.
  • Charlotte was not very popular when first revealed, but started gaining a lot of attention once the game came out and importers began translating her supports, which tend to be either very sweet or just plain hilarious (for an example of both, see her supports with Nyx and her supports with Niles). Being considered the perfect wife for Xander by both fans who pair for stats and shippers who love their supports also helps give her a boost.
  • Arthur is also immensely popular in quite a few circles, especially in America. On top of being an incredibly Nice Guy with some hilarious moments due to his accursed luck, Arthur also boasts an extremely hammy performance from Cam Clarke that is one of the few things from the localization universally considered to be good. Furthermore, he's an impressive unit with fantastic HP, Strength and Skill, and good Speed and Defense, making him into a powerful Lightning Bruiser when trained right.
  • Haitaka is by far the most beloved of the recruitable boss characters, due largely to being an extremely powerful unit on par with or even exceeding other characters of the same niche, like Oboro. He is also the only readily available Spear Fighter in Conquest.
  • Even though he isn't without controversy, Niles may be one of the most unexpectedly popular characters at this point. When he was first revealed, he didn't get much fanfare. Once it was revealed he'd be the Gay Option for a male Avatar, fans started to take a liking to him. His... interesting supports, particularly his one with Camilla, have resulted in a lot of (positive) notoriety. It doesn't hurt that he's pretty much the only bowman for quite a while on the Nohr route, where archers are very useful. This reflects in the poll results; he was ranked 7th for the most popular game in the Fates poll and peaked at 16th place on the first Choose Your Legends poll, which in turn earned him his spot as a DLC character in Fire Emblem Warriors.
  • A nameless (and thereby recruitable) Master of Arms in Conquest Chapter 23 gains the skills Rally Strength, Rally Speed, Rally Defense, and Rally Resistance in Lunatic Mode (he only gets two of the four in Hard) and is at the center of a formation of other Elite Mooks, granting him the Fan Nickname of "Rallyman" and occasional characterization in fanfics as A Father to His Men whose charisma inspires his men to greatness.
  • For a character that appears in only one chapter of one route, Layla has gained a lot of fans for her cute and unique design. Many wish she was a playable character and she's often requested for Heroes.
  • Selkie is very popular among the child characters, being high up in the Heroes poll among Fates characters.
• Even Better Sequel: Gameplay-wise at least, compared to Awakening. While the game's plot and characters are rather divisive, most fans agree that the gameplay in Fates is a major improvement over that of Awakening. This is especially true in Conquest (and Revelation to a lesser extent), as while its plot is seen as the weakest of the three versions, there's considerably more variety in objectives than either "rout the enemy" or "defeat the boss", and the gameplay is much harder as well.
• Evil Is Cool: Nohr's portrayal as the more morally-ambiguous faction certainly didn't harm its popularity, especially among earlier fans of the series who are drawn to its difficulty.

F

• Fan Nickname: Catalogued here.
• Fanon: Has its own page.
• Fanon Discontinuity: While most of the story, begrudgingly, is regarded as canon, some elements are often ignored outright:
  • Many fans dislike the return of second-generation characters and choose to not recruit them, preferring to pretend they don't exist. Fan works that do acknowledge their existence often have them born after the game's main story. This is made much easier than in Awakening, since the kids aren't part of the plot in any way. As an extension of this, the Heirs of Fate DLC receives this treatment as well.
  • The fact that the Avatar and Azura are actually cousins is largely ignored by the fandom due to them being a popular pairing, and how very out-of-nowhere the plot point comes up, and never gets addressed.
  • Those who didn't abandon Avatar/Flora chose instead to ignore the fact that her conversation with Jakob in the Spooky Scramble DLC exists regardless of her married status.
  • More than a few fans prefer to ignore that Corrin is not blood-related to any of the Hoshido royals besides Mikoto due to feeling it undermines the main point of the Birthright route and the game's Central Theme of Nature Versus Nurture.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation:
  • The plot twist that the Avatar and Azura were cousins through their mothers (Mikoto and Arete) being sisters is widely hated among the community, largely because it feels unnecessary, and how it isn't revealed until near the end of Revelation, meaning a number of players had already gotten the two married due to the popularity of them as a ship, and also how somewhat pushed Azura is as a love interest. It doesn't help the game never even acknowledges this or has it be a plot point.
  • The second generation was received much less warmly, both in the West and in Japan, this time 'round. While there isn't anything wrong with it as a game mechanic, many fans feel that the explanation for the kids was idiotic^note they were born during the game and left in an alternate dimension to be raised by other people, the implementation was clumsy^note they can be cut out entirely from the plot and not make a difference, that the entire thing has unnerving undertones^note two of the potential mothers (Sakura and Elise) and one of the fathers (Hayato) are younger than the kids, and it's possible for the Avatar to marry and produce a child with Percy or Midori, who are still children themselves, and is rife with Fridge Horror^note namely about the parents ditching their kids in an alternate dimension and only letting them out when they're of an age to fight, especially in the case of Selena, Odin, and Laslow, as you'd think considering what happened to them, they would never even think of letting their own children grow up without parents.
  • For fans who don't care for shipping them, the explanation that Corrin has no blood relation to any of the Hoshidan siblings according to S-Supports with them and Revelation. Since the game was advertised as exploring the Central Theme of choosing between your biological family or adoptive family, some felt this was undermined how now neither are Corrin's biological family. While Mikoto is Corrin's birth mother, she dies before Corrin's choice and according to Revelation is not native to Hoshido, meaning Corrin cannot even be said to have a Hoshidan bloodline.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Scarlet/Ryoma. Although Scarlet can only support with the Avatar, she receives a fair amount of Ship Tease with Ryoma, especially during Revelation, in which Scarlet ends up suffering a Plotline Death shortly after her introduction. Despite her inability to support with Ryoma, he's her most popular pairing partner.
• Fetish Retardant: For some, Camilla's Ms. Fanservice elements become pure squick due to her being the protagonist's adoptive sister, and the protagonist growing up thinking of her as an actual sister. Her voice in the English dub has exacerbated this for some.
• Friendly Fandoms: While on core Fire Emblem sites the fandom was too much in a multipolar civil war to really form any connections from commonality, in Tumblr at least (where there was generally far more appreciation for the game as it was), there was a lot of overlap in both the Fates fandom and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Both are High Fantasy works centered on dragons with elements strongly geared towards the older female demographic that has often hitched up playing these games, with a lot of attractive characters, being a Hotter and Sexier upgrade versus past games, as well as both having some kind of developmental issues in the process (Fates having its story being massively slimmed down from an overwritten script due to needing to fit so much detail in a game with three routes, and Inquisition outright being a Troubled Production), it was not uncommon at all to see Tumblr communities and fanfiction there in The New '10s to have a direct overlap.
• Foe Yay Shipping: There are plenty of fans out there who ship the Nohr and Hoshido siblings with their foils. (Xander/Ryoma, Leo/Takumi, Camilla/Hinoka, and Elise/Sakura.) Although in Revelation, they all become Fire-Forged Friends... which has just added more fuel to the shipping.
• Fountain of Memes: While the game as a whole has plenty of quotable material, Takumi tends to be the one most often quoted, mocked, praised, or whatever. Between all of the betrayal memes and pineapple memes, Takumi may have just won the lottery in meme quantity.
• Fourth Wall Myopia:
  • In Conquest, Corrin and Azura are criticised as "Going along with" Garon's Evil Plan to invade Hoshido in order to reveal that Garon was really a goo monster who was Dead All Along, whilst the Nohrian siblings are also criticised for not believing them. They've been criticised as "Morons" for not believing that they have something to prove about Garon but can't outright tell them. While we the viewers know that Corrin & Azura are indeed correct, the characters in-universe do not - in fact, Corrin & Azura have literally nothing that they can do to provide any kind of proof to support their claim, beyond simply using the Hoshidan throne. This also ignores one other obvious reason: Xander, Camilla, Leo, and Elise all have much more regular contact with Garon.
  • The siblings are all criticised for not instantly believing Corrin and Azura in Revelation. Not only does the Curse of Valla prevent them from saying anything, but they also, once again, have zero proof beyond "You have to believe me". For that matter, Azura's not even correct that Anankos was manipulating Garon "Subtly"!
  • Many of the game's critics have also pointed out that the curse of Valla was a Just Eat Gilligan that could simply be "Beaten" by having someone reveal it, and then use their disappearance as "proof". But the characters have every reason not to do that since they have no real way to know just what happens if you speak of Valla.

G

• Game-Breaker: Like the past game, there's enough game breaking skills to warrant its own page.
• Genius Bonus: A lot of the game's worldbuilding makes so much more sense if one understands Chinese geomancy and East Asian symbolism:
  • If one catches the connection to the First Dragons' power in the Dragon Veins and their relation to the practice of Feng Shui, it becomes readily apparent why Azura, the Avatar, Anankos, and other associates of Valla have such a strong water motif. One of the central ideas behind Feng Shui is that among the parts of nature making up the world, Chi (analogous to Dragon Vein power) flows best in water (shui). It also ties in with why Takumi is so powerful when possessed by Anankos that he becomes a Final Boss: second to water, the next best part of nature to gather and read the flow of chi is the Fujin Yumi's element, wind (feng).
  • It's very easy to miss, but the symbols that appear when you activate a Dragon Vein aren't made-up. They actually represent the Fire Dragon, Ground Dragon, Water Dragon and Wind Dragon among the First Dragons; the Fire Dragon represents an avian bird of some kind and is depicted as destroying structures and being strengthened by nature, the Ground Dragon represents a felid-like creature who can warp the ground around it to move nature while being strengthened by the earth, the Water Dragon is a tortoise wrapped around a snake and responsible for the manipulation or receding of water and also putting out flames and is given shape by metal, and the Wind Dragon is a Eastern dragon who represents using wind to control the physical spaces around it while being strengthened by water. If one hasn't caught on, not only is this is exactly what The Four Gods represents — respectively Suzaku, Byakko, Genbu and Seiryu — but it's also the fundamental principles as reflected in game of what element strengthens which and what element controls the other in Feng Shui!
  • The existence of Anankos completes this by giving an extra trifecta to the five sacred weapons and his role with the other dragons. Takumi's weapon obviously represents Wind, while Ryoma's Raijinto is actually tied to Fire in Feng Shui, while Xander's dark sword represents the winter and is tied to Water, while Leo's ability to manipulate the earth and gravity is tied to Metal. And meanwhile, at the center of it all is Yato — and what does Anankos and Valla represent? A land below the ground and the center of the Earth, and represents the land below. And then you realize Earth controls Water... then you recognize how not only is Anankos represents Earth and is Kohryu, but also makes literally all of the rest of the five elements fall into place with it as a direct result.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Arthur was received okay in Japan, but he was an instant hit with America, due to his red/white/blue color scheme and his classically heroic appearance, complete with Lantern Jaw of Justice and an outfit that looks suspiciously similar to Captain America's. His resemblance to Gaston has also been noted. Not to mention being voiced by voice acting fan favorite veteran Cam Clarke doing his best American Hero voice acting. His supports have only made him more popular, including such moments as trying to fistfight a bear in Benny's or going on superhero patrols to help random people every morning in Beruka's. It also helps that he's one of the few Conquest-exclusive characters who you aren't forced to fight on Birthright; in fact, he can be convinced to temporarily join your side. So there's no Player Punch for his fans if playing Birthright.
  • Similarly to his father, Percy became well-liked by most of the fandom outside of Japan, even by people who hate the second-generation characters in general, thanks to his Luchador-styled outfit, adorable appearance, and For Great Justice attitude. When it was revealed that the English dub has him voiced by Antony Del Rio, the voice actor of Pit, his popularity skyrocketed even further. By comparison, he was stuck at the bottom of the males on the official Japanese poll, only beating Fuga and Yukimura.
  • GameFAQs has taken quite a shine to Leo, Selkie, Selena, and Midori, to the point where they're guaranteed to be near the top on popularity polls.
  • If the popularity poll is anything to go by, Orochi is the least popular female character in Japan. The West however, took a quick liking to her thanks to her Ms. Fanservice status and fun-loving, mischievous personality.
  • Female Kana scored pretty low on the popular female character poll in Japan. In the English version, she was given a well-received voice actress, and has her abandonment issues expanded on, making her more positively received in the West than her male counterpart.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Samurai and Swordmasters have the "Duelist's Blow" skill, which boosts Avoid by 30 when the user initiates combat. They don't hit hard, but are annoying to fight due to being harder to hit on their turn (where most of the game's fighting occurs).
  • Ninja as well. Shuriken don't hit very hard, but damn if they aren't going to annoy you with their debuffing ability. For an added bonus, a few Ninja can also swap places with their target, thanks to having the Wyvern Rider's Lunge ability equipped — and the AI will often send the ninja to harass the target first, transpose with them, and then gang up on the target, or chain-transpose them away from their supporting allies.
  • The Stoneborn in Conquest Chapter 21. Individually not much of a threat, as they only attack with weak, inaccurate rocks, but their 1-5 range that overlaps with other Stoneborn in just the right places, massive HP and defense, and Wary Fighter, makes them a huge annoyance. They're good at Cherry Tapping your units to death after the Faceless' Savage Blow skills soften them up, so you want to kill them quickly, but Wary Fighter makes this easier said than done.

H

• He Really Can Act: The English version of Shigure's End of All. While the Japanese and Azura versions were already impressive, Shigure's English voice actor does not sing professionally and still managed to nail it.
• He's Just Hiding: Izana in Revelation. Many believe he faked his death, which is in-character for him to do.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Even though they're genuinely liked (for the most part) as characters, the royal siblings are generally regarded as too good at their jobs. Fates has a rather large cast (especially on Revelation), and an Arbitrary Headcount Limit. Naturally, whenever any of the siblings join, several units may wind up being benched for the simple crime of not being able to stand up to the royals they share a potential promotion with. This definitely comes into play in Revelation, when you get all eight of them over the course of the game. One of the biggest complaints leveraged at Revelation at there being no reason to use any of the retainers when the royals exist and do their job better by default. (This greatly annoys players who like any of the retainers.) It says a lot that the siblings not mentioned below are still likely to be superior to the rest of your army, simply because they get advantages regular units can't get. For the most extreme ones though:
  • Takumi deserves special mention for this. On both the routes he is available, he is considered a Game-Breaker due to a mixture of his stupidly overpowered weapon and the buffs to the Archer class bumping its usefulness up to this. He joins early as well: chapter 10 in both Birthright and Revelation. He's also a Base-Breaking Character par excellence, with much of him completely outclassing any and all archers for his slot in Revelation being seen as even worse for it (including Ensemble Dark Horses like Setsuna and Niles).
  • Ryoma practically has no restrictions and blows every other Myrmidon/Swordmaster in the game out of the water. He's not a mounted character like Xander, but his exclusive Raijinto can be used at range, meaning magic and arrows are a joke against him. The Swordmaster class learns Astra, so he can attack more times than he needs to. He's still one of the strongest, fastest characters in the game, so the rest of the army might as well take a nap if he's deployed. All of this make him border on The Dreaded for players of StreetPass battles. What truly solidifies him as this is, even though he's well-liked as a character, he's exclusive to the two easier paths of the game, where you don't need such a Game-Breaker.
  • Xander's Siegfried has all the advantages Raijinto does on a mounted unit in addition to buffing Xander's avoid and defense. Xander himself may not be as fast as Ryoma, but he is otherwise a Master of All in everything that isn't magic related, able to tank better than most tanks and hit harder than anyone not named Charlotte or Camilla. And even then, his Speed can be patched up with favoritism or a Berserker backpack, making him into an utterly horrifying Lightning Bruiser. Him being a mounted unit on TOP of a tank makes him effectively invalidate any Paladins and Generals as soon as you get them, which is especially grating on Revelation where there's a lot of units and a ton of competition for the slot.
  • And of course, Camilla. Take everything about Xander, make it hit harder, give it a class with an ability that is basically anathema to the majority of Hoshidan units (most Hoshidans don't use mounts, and the ones that do (i.e. Mechanists) tend to be less obviously threatening than Nohrian mounts despite possessing game-breaking versatility elsewhere, meaning Trample gives Camilla essentially a free boost to damage) and finish by making them more accurate, faster, and is a Res tank (normally the one weakness besides arrows that flying units that aren't Pegasi have) and you have Camilla. If not for Siegfried, Camilla would be better than Xander in nearly all categories. This is especially inflammatory due to Camilla's, ahem, provocative appearance and Yandere tendencies, which annoys the daylights out of less-skilled players who don't like her character but are otherwise forced to use her as a crutch in Lunatic.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Less than 48 hours after the confirmation of gay marriage in Fates, the United States Supreme Court declared gay marriage legal in all 50 states. Some fans even jokingly claim that the game is responsible for this decision.
• Ho Yay:
  • A new feature in the Japanese version of the game lets the Avatar call up members of your army into their room so that you can... rub and pat them to raise affinity, a la Pokémon Gen VI, or the Project Diva games (but with more blushing). You can do this as either gender, to either gender. Rubbing someone of the same gender is pretty much the most homosexual thing one could do without getting outright sexual. However, this feature was removed for the international release.
  • Silas is extremely devoted to the Avatar, to the point of having snuck a young Avatar out of the castle to take them on a picnic date, despite knowing that such an act could get him executed — which it almost did. He then became a knight for the sole purpose of being reunited with them, and is willing to betray his home country for the Avatar should they choose to side with Hoshido. Because of this, there are some very persistent rumors that he was intended to be either the Gay Option instead of Niles, or a second Gay Option.
  • Camilla and her subordinates are starting to look like Les Yay. Camilla has a thing for strong girls and Beruka is apparently "her favorite", while the normally self-centered tsundere Selena is always super kind to her female friends, which gets mixed reactions. Considering the original Severa brought much Les Yay to Awakening... Additionally, Camilla's supports with a Female Avatar are exactly the same as with a Male, with her actions towards the Avatar being veeeery suspect... And Camilla's interactions with Hinoka bring the whole thing up to Les Yay critical mass.
  • Takumi and Leo's supports have them discover they're similar, and in the A-support Takumi suggests they explore this bond beyond "mere friendship". One could be forgiven for expecting the two to be able to S-support after reading that line. And then the final shot in Revelation has Takumi placing his hand on Leo's back, which no other sibling does with their counterpart.
  • The Beach Brawl DLC has you play as one of the royals + their retainers in a "contest" against the others. If the players choose Leo and win, the victory scene features Niles and Odin absolutely gushing over his surprisingly ripped body. The fanbase immediately ran with this to its logical direction.
  • In Forrest and the Male Avatar's A support, Forrest tells the Avatar how a shopkeep found out that Forrest wasn't a woman, but a crossdressing man and was mean to him. The Avatar attempts to cheer Forrest up, and this exchange happens:
    Avatar: Any world that doesn't appreciate your charms is a fool. The natural response to a fool is to pity their foolishness.
    Forrest: I'm charming, am I?
    Avatar: Extremely.
    Forrest: ...Thank you. That's just the encouragement I needed to stay the course.
    Avatar: That's the spirit. You look great in those clothes. Anyone who says differently is a dunce or a dastard.
    Forrest: Goodness, Avatar.
    Avatar: Hmm?
    Forrest: You protest so vehemently that I begin to wonder if you have feelings for me.
    Avatar: Oh, ah—!
    Forrest: Hahaha...I'm teasing again. In all sincerity, thank you for brightening my day. I really appreciate it.
  • The female Avatar and Scarlet get in on this too, where the Avatar calls Scarlet strong, dignified, and beautiful (among other compliments) and Scarlet mentions that she could "get to like hanging out with a gal who says nice things about [her] all the time". In their A support Scarlet wakes the female Avatar up to go stargazing with her and tells her a Cheve tradition that people who die become stars and how her own parents are dead, which is why she decorates her weapons with sparkly stones like the stars and wonders what color of star she'll have when she dies. It is, overall, a more emotional support than the male Avatar's Scarlet support.
  • Takumi and Hinata get quite a bit of this, too. Hinata is incredibly devoted to Takumi, to the point that Hisame and Kiragi's supports feature Hisame saying that their dads seem a little too close.

I

• I Knew It!:
  • After the first trailer focused on an eastern-style army fighting a western-style one, many fans correctly guessed you would be able to choose which side to fight for.
  • After Kaden's reveal, people began guessing that Nohr would have a faction-specific shapeshifter that was a wolf. In the "introduction" trailer, there's a glimpse of a man turning into a large wolf: this man would turn out to be Keaton.
  • A lot of people speculated that Odin, Laslow, and Selena are Owain, Inigo, and Severa respectively. Turns out that this is the case with the supports with each other and Corrin.
  • After noticing that Corrin can potentially Support with both sets of their siblings, many assumed that both families and Corrin were Not Blood Siblings after all. This turns out to be true — Corrin was born into Hoshido royalty, but only the queen was their biological relative. The others were raised as stepchildren, with the king being their biological father.
  • Almost every fan guessed that Midoriko would be shortened to just Midori. Those fans were right.
  • A lot of fans also guessed correctly that Crimson would become Scarlet in the localization, due to that being an actual name in English while also being a shade of red.
  • Some fans guessed that Soleil's romances with male characters other than Corrin and Forrest would be removed from the localized version.
• Informed Wrongness: The Avatar's meeting with Kotaro on Conquest has them turning against him because he captured Kagero and is holding her prisoner. Never mind the fact that she is the right hand of the de facto king of the nation you are at war with, and is someone you would probably want taken out of the equation. In addition, evidence of Kotaro's other acts of dickery (razing Kohga and murdering Saizo the Fourth) comes purely from the mouth of two completely untrustworthy sources: a pirate who tried to rob and kill you 30 minutes ago on behalf of said enemy nation and the left hand of the aforementioned enemy king who would obviously stand to gain quite a bit from turning Nohr against its allies.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Mozu as well. Having lost everyone she loved and cared about in the village destroyed by the Faceless (and having to watch her mother die right in front of her), one really has to feel sorry for her. And despite all of this, she's a competent Magikarp Power Plucky Girl. Not to mention that while she does occasionally cry about it in her supports, Mozu always ends up becoming even more useful to the army.
  • Elise has had a very hard life, barely knowing Garon before he underwent Sanity Slippage, having a mother who never loved her and drifting apart from Xander, her Big Brother Mentor and Parental Substitute, due to his duties. And if you play Birthright, things get even worse for her, ending with her being killed by said brother. Despite all this, she still manages to be one of the kindest and most optimistic characters in the game and the only sibling who never fights the Avatar under any circumstance, fully believing in peace between both kingdoms until the end.
  • Princess Sakura was traumatized by her father's death and the Avatar's kidnapping, especially because she later learned about some rumors that say SHE was supposed to be kidnapped by Nohr, not them. She has almost crippling anxiety and insecurities. She loves her siblings a lot, but is emotionally distanced from Hinoka (and it takes Hinoka a while to realize it) and, in Conquest and to lesser degree towards the end of Birthright, she can't do lots to help the very troubled Takumi. And yet she learns to become a White Mage and miko (which, according to Azama, is rare among Hoshidan nobles), refuses to just give up even if the Avatar doesn't choose Hoshido, takes up arms in Conquest despite hating warfare, is the first of all the siblings to join the Avatar in Revelation even with all the scorn the Avatar gets from both warring sides for their indecisiveness, gains the love of several of her love interests for her Silk Hiding Steel traits rather than her cuteness (including even Nohr's princes in Revelation) and remains sweet, helpful, kind and loving no matter what.
  • Queen Mikoto has not had a very good life. First, she was the lover of Anankos' good side and had his child, but Anankos eventually left her and their child for their safety and she went on to marry King Sumeragi. Then her husband was killed and her child was taken from her. Shortly after being reunited with said child, she dies protecting them. The assailant? The reanimated corpse of her husband Sumeragi, being controlled by her former lover Anankos. And yet, this woman never really lost her gentle smile, ruled wisely over Hoshido itself, raised the Hoshidan siblings plus her protegée Azura lovingly as if they were her birth children, was among the few who accepted Orochi the way she was despite her family's bad fame, and even as she died, she did so calmly and telling the Avatar that she was relieved they were safe.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Since Conquest aimed to be challenging even to Fire Emblem veterans, it has been criticized by some people for being too hard for its own good. Having to deal with tough enemies with tricky skills, numerous cases of That One Level, and limited chances to strengthen your army has proven to be more frustrating than fun for less skilled players, even on the lowest difficulty setting.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: At the same time, Birthright has been panned by series veterans for being too simple. A lot of the game can be trivialized with resident Game-Breaker Ryoma, who tosses aside most of the challenge the game has on Normal and Hard. Even Birthright Lunatic is considered easier than Conquest Hard and has its late-game be more like a meat grinder than anything else.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Some Fire Emblem fans, mainly those who disliked Awakening, have accused the initial reveal trailer of this, as the game features the same artstyle and looks to be fairly similar in gameplay mechanics, much like the relationship of the Game Boy Advance entries in the series. Mitigated by the many gameplay tweaks offered over Awakening and the steeper challenge of Conquest mode specifically designed to accommodate their requests, but brought back with the announcement that marriage will be returning, along with children.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Unless one has completely shut themselves off from news about this game since its release, then chances are pretty good that they know that the Avatar is not related to any of their siblings. On the other hand, since S-rank supports are possible with all of them, it's rather a giveaway: Nintendo's not really going to release a flagship product with that particular taboo ready to violate.
  • Laslow, Selena, and Odin actually being Inigo, Severa, and Owain rather than expies of them is also very widely known, probably because these characters would have been widely hated otherwise, and in fact were until this was discovered.
  • The events of Chapter 5, to English-speakers. The First-Episode Twist was fairly well-hidden in Japanese marketing, but the first official English dubbed trailer heavily hinted at it, Nintendo Treehouse showcased story scenes from it immediately afterwards that mention it frequently, and later promotional videos showed Chapter 5 in its entirety, meaning most English-speakers were made aware of the twist before the release of the games.
  • The Plot Twist of the Avatar and Azura being cousins is pretty widely known on the Internet, due to the fans' confusion and anger about it giving it a lot of discussion on internet forums.
  • Given how it isn't hinted at until the end of her Paralogue, Soleil's bisexuality was probably intended to be a surprise, with her asking a girl out being a Wham Line regarding her character. Given how controversial she became, this is usually the first thing anyone going into this game knows about her.

J

• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Takumi. He has gentler sides that come out with his family and subordinates, but it's also true that he brings quite a bit of his own grief on himself. Most of his behavior can be traced back to his frighteningly low self-confidence and his mistakenly believing that no one in his family loves or even cares for him. This is the main reason he can act so abrasive, as he is resentful of the Avatar for being lavished with love and attention, even when the Avatar isn't to blame for it and doesn't deserve it either. It's especially strong in Conquest, though his aggression towards the Avatar does have some justification, his resentment is strong enough to make him far more pliable to Anankos' More than Mind Control.
  • Niles's Dark and Troubled Past left deep scars on him, both physical and psychological, that turned him into a sadistic person who enjoys bursting the bubbles of people who've lived charmed lives; his supports have stated that he savors the moment where he can personally force people to feel pain and suffering for the first time. This is thanks to being abandoned by both his parents and the gang who pretty much raised him, the latter instance leading to a Despair Event Horizon, and his growing up in wretched poverty that led him to steal. It's also heavily implied he was sexually abused in some instances, though it doesn't define him the way his abandonment issues do.

L

• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Female Corrin. She is usually paired with Xander, Leo, Takumi, Jacob, Kaze, Saizo, and Silas. And those are just are the more popular ships.
• Love to Hate:
  • Anankos is not as beloved by the fandom as villains like Arvis, Lyon, and the Black Knight, but is at least considered to be a vast step-up from Grima by virtue of having a personality and backstory. He's also seen as superior to Garon, so in the end the fanbase appreciates him for being a hateable antagonist with some depth.
  • Kotaro is a total scumbag only concerned with expanding his own nation for petty reasons, and killed Saizo and Kaze's father. Cutting him down, especially with Saizo or Shura, is extremely satisfying. Being one of the few openly villainous Japanese-themed characters, being That One Boss in Conquest, and sparking incredibly awesome battle dialogue with the characters It's Personal for definitely helps, as does the fact fans of older games may recognize his motives as very similar to Erik of Laus, another character fans Love to Hate.

M

• Magnificent Bastard: The ruthless yet exceptionally honorable Leo is the genius second prince of Nohr, painstakingly formulating tactics to ensure the fewest casualties in his country's invasion of Hoshido. The sharpest of the royal siblings, he makes his introduction sparing Corrin from Garon's wrath by pretending to kill Hoshidan prisoners Rinkah and Kaze, allowing Corrin to spare their lives. In Birthright, he swears to punish Corrin for their betrayal of Nohr. He ambushes them in the Woods of the Forlorn, whose Hoshidan-repellent swamps cripple most of their army, and attempts to draw on his resentment and envy of Corrin to try and kill them. Realizing he still loves them, however, he concedes after his defeat, making amends with them and warning them of the threat Xander poses. Succeeding the Nohrian throne after Xander's demise, he establishes peaceful connections with Hoshido. In Conquest, he moves behind Garon's back, sending Niles and Odin to help Corrin quash the Ice Tribe rebellion, and later shares valuable advice with Corrin about subverting their father's orders indirectly. In Revelation, despite not being an ally to Corrin, he saves Sakura from Zola and guides Corrin to where Takumi and Izana are being held. After investigating Corrin's claims about Garon's true nature, he eventually comes around, vowing to avenge his father's honor. Slaying the reprehensible Zola and Iago in every route where he has the opportunity, Leo shows his shrewd nature even when casually interacting with his allies, helping mend their shortcomings and acting as a source of wisdom to all.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Prince Leo aka 'Book Bro', due to being shown using what appears to be very powerful magic in the second trailer.
  • Hana became one after the reveal of her personal skill (when the user kills an enemy, all adjacent enemies lose 20% of their HP) and her Pervert Revenge Mode on the Avatar in the My Castle trailer. One user on Serenes Forest has even said she'll be "the second coming of Mia".
  • Takumi from a gameplay standpoint, as both his status as a Game-Breaker as a playable character and That One Boss as an enemy are legendary among the fanbase. Ryoma as well, for the same reasons.
  • Azura quickly became one once it was found that her Strength growth was higher than both the Path of Radiance and infamous Heroic Build Radiant Dawn version of Ike. A fan-made image of her slamming Ike into the ground was even born from this and became popular enough to be a meme in its own right.
  • On a certain image board, Gunter skyrocketed to this position after hackers managed to discover him looking very intimidating and powerful late in the third route.
  • One of the enemy units in Chapter 23 of Conquest (on Lunatic difficulty), a generic Master of Arms with 4 Rally skills, started to become quite popular after players learned that capturing him greatly helps to ease the late-game difficulty of Conquest. This has led players to dub him the "Rallyman", encouraging units to Never Give Up!
• Memetic Loser:
  • Shura in Conquest is often executed by many players so they can gain extra Boots. It doesn't help that his bases in Conquest are the lowest of all routes.
  • Rinkah sees no end to the fandom bullying her for her "painted-on abs" and overall poorness as a unit compared to her powerful appearance.
  • The West may be fond of Silas, but that doesn't stop them from ribbing him about his best friend, the Avatar, completely forgetting about him, even after he basically dedicated his life to them.
  • Lilith is often ridiculed for getting killed by Hans (Birthright) or a generic Faceless (Conquest) in a rather sudden and forced Heroic Sacrifice. It doesn't help that she has virtually no other role in the story beyond the introduction of the Astral Plane.
  • Male Corrin eventually turned into one. Almost from day one, fans have vastly preferred his female counterpart due to his lack of interesting customization options on top of his already uninteresting base design and being short a potential spouse which can cause at least one additional character to be permanently missable. Not remotely helping matters is the fact that the avatar has a large number of controversial character flaws and behaviors that many players find to be more (though not entirely) palatable with a female protagonist. It would get worse for him in the ensuing years, as his appearance in Super Smash Bros. was overshadowed by his female counterpart again despite getting most of the advertising time, and the official Fire Emblem Heroes character poll had him not only crash out of the top twenty by the end, he actually lost out to other losers like Eliwood and Dorcas. Another blow is that Fire Emblem Warriors and Fire Emblem Engage have female Corrin be considered canon, which didn't help his reputation in the slightest.
  • Hoshido as a whole has been getting this treatment. This primarily stems from the fact that Nohr is much more well-liked than Hoshido, which has lead to the former getting much more representation than the latter. Given that Nohrians also go through more overall strife than Hoshido due to poor soil and a bad economy, Nohrians are also seen as much more badass than Hoshido. This is best displayed in Fire Emblem Heroes where Nohr has had 11 seasonal variants compared to Hoshido's 4. The New Year's banner was Hoshidan themed, and even then the only Hoshidan on the banner was Takumi, the other units being Azura and Camilla. And to top it all off, every Hoshidan royal has lost a Voting Gauntlet thus far. Special mention goes to the Hair gauntlet, however, where Ryoma lost to Soren in the first round, and Hinoka and Takumi both lost to Shanna, with the latter losing in the final round too.^note  However, it should be noted in the aforementioned gauntlet, there is indeed an element of luck, so take the losses with a grain of salt. Still noteworthy.
• Memetic Molester: The May 31st Direct unveiled a new feature where the Avatar can call people to their room and rub their face, immediately landing them this label among the fanbase. Because of this, the international release toned down this feature; you can still call characters to the Avatar's room, but can only rub the spouse when they’re sleeping to wake them up.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page here.
• Memetic Troll: Azura. Due to how the curse of Valla is handled in the story (i.e, barely mentioned), fans joke that Azura is either making up the curse's existence, making the curse seem more powerful/deadly than it actually is, or some combination of the two, just to mess with everyone.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • Niles has been (with some caveats) completely embraced by the LGBT Fanbase despite being a Too Kinky to Torture bisexual male. It helps that some of his dialogues are genuinely funny, he's very useful in gameplay for being the only default bow user in Conquest, and he has quite the Hidden Depths in his supports, and he's extremely handsome.
  • Similar to Niles, Arthur debuts in his game as a parody of over-the-top American superheroes cursed with a bad luck streak a mile wide, and he's far more popular in America than in Japan. Factors include the fact that he's a surprisingly high-potential unit when trained, has a ton of Hidden Depths as well as numerous well-written supports, and in spite of his status as a Cosmic Plaything, the story treats his earnest desire to do good and infallible optimism with the utmost respect, which elevates his parodic status to outright affectionate levels for many.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • The game has two realms with very different sets of morals and very different world-buildings associated to them. Both are supposed to be seen as possessing pros and flaws which are incarnated in their Royal Families: despite their differences, they all love the Avatar, who belongs to both groups, with all their hearts and will not react well to him or her choosing one over another or, in Revelation, not choosing a side. However, the fans have decided to latch on one Royal Family/Kingdom and bash each other, portraying their chosen "family" as innocents whose flaws must be ignored or swept away to fetishize their suffering, while the other one is downgraded to Evil Incarnate. The most rabid Nohr fans creepily reduce the genuinely tragic Nohrian Royal Family into helpless and fetishized victims who should never be called out for their own mistakes; the most rabid Hoshido fans paint Nohrians as nothing more than card carrying villains blindly following an Avatar who is little more than a deluded fool so they can have some sort of petty revenge or appease King Garon.
  • Prince Forrest is a Wholesome Crossdresser and Action Fashionista who explicitely says he's a guy despite his girlish tastes in clothing and openly states that he's uncomfortable whenever he's mistaken as a girl. A part of the fandom, however, insists that Forrest is a trans girl, despite evidence to the contrary.
• Misblamed:
  • Among the many things purists of the Japanese scripts will use to attack the localization, a common complaint is the number of name changes to longstanding Fire Emblem classes (for example, changing "Pegasus Knight" to "Sky Knight"). These name changes actually existed in the Japanese version and were present largely as a stylistic decision (Nohr classes are written in katakana like Fire Emblem names traditionally are, while Hoshido are written in kanji and hiragana) that was Lost in Translation.
  • Treehouse is often blamed for things like the Skinship mechanic. In reality, that was more of a Nintendo choice than anything, and the developers supported its alteration. Word of God confirmed that the team did not like the mechanic and it was originally even worse then the finalized version was.
• Moe:
  • The normally serious Lucina behaves like the nicest girl in the universe towards the Avatar despite being lost and confused.
  • Severa (as Selena) is still a tsundere, but has mellowed out quite a bit and is more likely to show kindness.
  • Laslow/Inigo's shy but caring nature puts him into this territory, despite being a Casanova Wannabe. Especially since he's mellowed out since Awakening and has several genuinely heartwarming supports.
  • Due to his Gentle Giant nature and genuinely kind personality, many people consider Benny to be this.
  • Felicia is the most commonly cited example in the game.
  • This particular reason is why the Female Kana is more loved, at least in the west.
  • Clumsy archer Setsuna, Country Mouse Mozu, Genki Girl Hana, foxboy Kaden, and Ax-Crazy Peri also qualify.
  • The Avatar's Hoshidan sisters, Sakura and Hinoka. Hoshido isn't nicknamed the Land of Moe for nothing. Although Elise does qualify too.
  • The Female Corrin can be this as well, especially if her more petite form is chosen and the Female Kana's voice can be chosen for her as well, and... her eyes are huge.

N

• Narm:
  • Flora's suicide in Birthright. Ashamed of herself for submitting to Garon's threats against her people, Flora sets herself ablaze... but the cutscene not only depicts her standing perfectly still as if nothing's happening, but even has her calmly continuing her apologies and farewells while on fire.
  • Lilith's Heroic Sacrifice in the Birthright and Conquest routes is considered to be far more hilarious than sad due to the insane suddenness of it, with Lilith basically flying in out of nowhere to shield Corrin after being largely removed from the story. In the Conquest version, it also prompts an overly melodramatic line from Corrin:
    Corrin: Why does someone as pure as Lilith have to die, that I might live?
• Narm Charm:
  • "Lost In Thoughts All Alone" ("if ~ hitori omou" in the Japanese version) is an Award-Bait Song with some rather cheesy lyrics, especially in the English dub. That said, the song itself is well liked across the whole fandom, and the singers for both the English and Japanese versions sound very impressive, making for a very memorable tune.
    Sing with me a song
    Of birthrights and love
    That light scatters to the sky above
    Dawn breaks through the gloom
    White as a bone
    Lost in thoughts all alone
  • Marth's English voice is high-pitched, corny, unrealistic, and hammy compared to other characters, but is also endearing and fits his character.
  • Clothing Damage will carry over to cutscenes. It can be quite charming seeing units with holes in their clothes and covered in dust going through dramatic cutscenes, especially if the scene is set right after a fight.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Soleil is mostly remembered for the controversy over her Japanese supports with a male Avatar, which have undertones of Bait-and-Switch Lesbians. While the in-game dialogue states that she's bisexual^*her supports with Forrest state that she's okay with male partners, but prefers women, fans still go at each other's throats debating her sexuality. The fact that her support line with the Avatar was completely rewritten to remove the Slipping a Mickey subtext, and most of her other S-Ranks were redone so that the only men she can end up with romantically are the Avatar and the feminine Forrest is very telling. Some still feel "too little, too late" and are upset that she still cannot S-Support girls, although such a change is beyond the scope of localization.
  • Takumi is infamous among some fans for repeatedly calling the Avatar a traitor for pretty much all of Conquest and about half of Revelation. Putting aside the fact that Takumi spends much of the game under The Corruption, he's far from the only Hoshido character to have a venomous hatred of Nohrians (case in point being Oboro, his own retainer, who is more often than not paired with him) and that many of his supports show he's actually a pretty good guy, many fans will never forgive his behavior.
  • Rhajat is a Dark Magical Girl who wants to have friends but is damn bad about it despite her tries, tears up◊ when her father Hayato brings up her loneliness, and isn't completely incapable of being kind to others.^note (The "Mother" supports are generic, so all of Rhajat's mothers will basically say the same thing to her.) However, the fandom focuses only on the questionable localization of her supports with either of the Avatars. Granted, these changes are very notorious, but don't completely excuse how Rhajat's remaining good traits are continuously ignored.
  • The Avatar weeping for a good number of character deaths makes people think that they do this even for enemies who have personally wronged the Avatar such as Hans and Iago.
  • Some people over-exaggerate Corrin's anger towards Nohr shown in the first few chapters of Birthright, calling them "bloodthirsty" and acting like they're like that for the entire route. While Corrin is a bit more aggressive in Birthright than they are in Conquest, most of their aggression is reserved for characters like Hans and Garon, and they do have their moments of diplomacy^note (such as letting Silas join, very nearly succeeding in talking down Keaton's Wolfskin pack, being reluctant to fight Flora and openly shocked at her death, and sparing Leo and Camilla while almost getting Camilla to join them in Chapter 13).
• Nintendo Hard: Conquest is designed to be the harder route, with difficulty akin to earlier Fire Emblem titles. This includes limited experience and money, more complex victory/defeat conditions, and maps that are quite fiendish by Fire Emblem standards. Even those playing Phoenix mode will find challenge in this route.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Despite the mixed reception to the games' Western localization and the divisiveness of the game as a whole, the game still managed to sell 300,000 copies during its opening weekend, making it the fastest-selling game in Fire Emblem history. Ironically, the massive controversy surrounding its localization probably increased the awareness in the general public that isn't as concerned with the various disputed elements.

O

• Older Than They Think:
  • Localizations changing controversial elements isn't new to the series at all; in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, a support featuring Ewan startling Amelia was originally of him looking up her skirt in the Japanese version. There's also aging up characters; Nowi from Awakening is a big example, but it's also even been done back in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, where Lyn's age was raised from 15 to 18.
  • The removal of the Weapon Durability mechanic, the "new" Ragnarok spell, and characters being able to wear accessories actually first appeared in Fire Emblem Gaiden. People think they originated in Fates because Gaiden is one of the most obscure games in the franchise.
  • Saizo and Kaze are not the first Cain/Abel duo to not be Cavaliers: Kain and Alva from Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 were Lance Knights instead. They're also not the first Cain and Abel in the series who can end up fighting each other: Abel appeared as an enemy in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 and could be fought with Cain, though there was no special dialogue. However, they are the first members of the duo to not be any kind of mounted unit.
  • This isn't the first time in the series a character from a previous game has appeared under a Paper-Thin Disguise: Sirius in Mystery of the Emblem did it first, and Danved in Radiant Dawn played it for laughs.
  • The Western fandom was shocked by the presence of incest within the game, despite the fact that incest has made an appearance in previous games — most notably in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, where it was directly plot-relevant. Most of the incest in this game isn't actually blood-related, with the sole exception being a set of potentially Kissing Cousins, the Avatar and Azura, which is perfectly legal in Japan and even some parts of the West, including many US States, whereas the main pairing in Genealogy of the Holy War was incest between two half-siblings.
  • Towards localizations in general — allegedly, a lot of people didn't know about changes to avoid things being Lost in Translation, woolseyisms, or Cultural Translation made to localizations until this game came about. Many people are also unaware that 8-4's localization of Awakening took this approach, too, changing just as much, if not more, than this game.
• OT3: The younger brothers and their retainers (more precisely Leo/Niles/Odin and Takumi/Oboro/Hinata) have become this in much of the fandom, especially after the former trio's Scramble Party event, which consists of Niles and Odin praising Leo's shirtless body.

P

• Pandering to the Base:
  • Both routes of the game seem to be going for this, as the Hoshido route is designed to be more accommodating to newcomers with its style being similar to Awakening (which attracted many new fans to the series), and the Nohr route is being tailored to be more challenging in order to appeal to the fans of the earlier games that felt alienated by Awakening's changes to the series' core formula.
  • The inclusion of Awakening's Severa, Inigo, and Owain, due to their popularity was considered this by some fans.
  • Similarly to the above, the inclusion of three child characters who are Expies of Tharja, Gaius, and Cordelia, again due to their popularity. As an added bonus, it's even implied that these characters are the preincarnated or reincarnated versions of their Awakening selves.
  • Some believe the inclusion of the child/second generation characters in general was this for those who liked the mechanic in Awakening, due to the kids in Fates having no real in-story justification for being there, unlike in Awakening where Set Right What Once Went Wrong was the real core of the plot.
  • One popular Western critique of the title is that it is only the Japanese base being pandered to. The above expy characters were the winners of a Japanese popularity contest that did not factor in any Western votes (Tharja in particular is much more controversial to Western fans, and Gaius is less popular than Henry). Worse, many fans have even accused this pandering as causing a bias in the storytelling, with the Japan-inspired Hoshido being wise, benevolent, Martial Pacifists with a very optimistic campaign, and the Nohr faction, which was much more popular in the West, having a generally badly-handled story that was a bit too much like the "evil campaign" fans didn't want.
  • On a more positive note, the third pack of DLC included conversations for various characters who couldn't support in-game, which included huge amounts of Ship Tease for Ryoma/Scarlet and Jakob/Flora, the two most popular opposite gender pairings that couldn't support in the main game. Needless to say, this was received very positively by fans. Though the Jakob/Flora one was met with some annoyance because it still happens when Flora is married to the Avatar, unlike say, Cordelia's DLC conversation with Chrom.
• Periphery Demographic: The game's demographic was largely targeted at mid-to-late teens in the West and Japan. Despite this, the game — far moreso than almost every other Fire Emblem with the exception of Three Houses — had a massive demographic of late-teen-to-adult young women that largely make up Tumblr, Archives Of Our Own and other such female-friendly fandoms of which the game's largest fandom profligates there. This is in part of the multitude of strong female characters, the Cast Full of Pretty Boys, and many female-oriented demographic appeals such as Jakob, Niles, Xander and Kaze being very popular S-Support options for a female Corrin. This wasn't just in the West, it should be noted; many complaints the Japanese fandom had with Fates there was that it was too much of a "gal game" for their liking, and even the game's official tie-in manga, Fire Emblem if: The Crown of Nibelung, was outright classified as a Josei manga there.
• Player Punch:
  • As mentioned in the other pages for this game, it will make you feel guilty if you didn't pick the other route, as there are unavoidable deaths of beloved characters that occur on the opposite side in each path. Even the third route sees some unavoidable deaths, such as Scarlet.
  • Birthright Chapter 26 has Elise's death. This is just after Hans and Iago are rightfully killed for their crimes while Camilla and Leo are spared. Soon after, Xander commits suicide by the Avatar's hands out of guilt.
  • Lilith's appearance in Hidden Truths 2, as she is depicted as a heartless monster in comparison to her sweet and helpful nature in the main story. Fortunately she snaps out of it in the end.
  • The Hoshido portions of Conquest end up horribly wrong for the heroes, as their attempts to conquer Hoshido with minimal bloodshed is defied by the atrocities caused or influenced by Garon, Hans and Iago. This includes having to slay the usually laid-back Kaden and his pack before they kill your party out of paranoia, Ryoma committing seppuku to prevent the Avatar from being executed for sparing his life, and Takumi's resentment towards the Avatar leads him to suicide, allowing him to be fully consumed by Anankos' hatred and rage.
  • Revelation Chapter 24 features Queen Mikoto, who is revived and apparently brainwashed as one of Anankos' servants. One might assume that she will end up like the other brainwashed victims, yet she appears to be like how she usually is while alive and even helps you with avoiding traps along the way...that is until the final door, where she outright lies to you and choosing the door she suggested will trigger an explosive trap, heavily damaging your troops in the process. All while she of all people wishes you to die horribly on the spot. It's easy to be tricked considering how convincing her act is.
  • In Heirs of Fate 6, the moment you face off against the zombified parents. And for an added shot to the genitalia, Takumi wields the same special weapon he had as the Final Boss of Conquest. Especially bad because Ryoma, Xander, and Leo are carrying generic silver weapons.
    • And, on top of that, you can make the princes, as well as Midori and Asugi, face off against their uncles as well as their dads, and you get special dialogue for doing so.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story:
  • Although the fandom has widely praised Fates for its gameplay improvements over Awakening, the overall writing in the main story itself is seen by some as one of the most flawed and incomplete narratives in the entire franchise. For a variety of reasons, this is often attributed to the marketing's promises of a morally-grey story but it's inability to have lived up to the fandom's high expectations, even if the cast of playable characters and many of the support conversations (ultimately) remained well-liked by the fandom at large.
  • Between the three games, however, Conquest's story is considered the most controversial of the bunch for trying to portray moral complexity while siding with seemingly obvious antagonists. In spite of such, however, it's also widely agreed to have the best gameplay of the three routes, and arguably the best in the entire series, with clever map design and enemy skill sets as well as a much better balanced (yet still challenging) Lunatic mode than Awakening.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • A few have started popping up for the more popular ships, using the Avatar's Canon Name of "Corrin". Thus far Male Avatar/Azura has been dubbed "Azurrin", Female Avatar/Xander "Coriander", and Female Avatar/Jakob is... Cornkob.
  • When shipping the both royal families together, there's "Ryomarx" for Ryoma/Xander, "Caminoka" for Hinoka/Camilla, "Leokumi" (or occasionally "Takuleo") for Takumi/Leo, and "Elisaku" for Sakura/Elise.

R

• Replacement Scrappy: The Awakening expies in Hoshido are derided for being carbon-copies of their original counterparts, especially Rhajat, who gets the most hate from quite a bit of the Western fanbase. Being an expy of the widely-divisive Tharja from Fire Emblem: Awakening on top of being the only female Bi Option was enough to send her to Base-Breaking Character territory, but the localization didn’t help matters by playing up her stalker traits and toning down her sympathetic ones in her supports with the Avatar. It doesn't help that she's a child unit, which many fans are opposed to pairing with the Avatar on principle.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Archers as a class have historically been among the lower-tier characters in the Fire Emblem series, especially when locked to the weapon. This game's variations on bowmen have been met with much praise, especially Hoshido's Archer->Sniper line because of Takumi (a Game-Breaker) and Nohr's Outlaw->Adventurer line since Niles (a great Utility Party Member and Ensemble Dark Horse) is one of Conquest's best units.
  • Similarly, Armor Knights and Generals were also often considered some of the weakest classes in the series in earlier games, but here they are much improved. This is due to the lowering of HP growths and the nerfing of evasion making raw Defense a lot more useful, Attack Stance helping their offense, and the playable members of the class having very good growths in general. Generals also get a new skill that prevents both them and their opponents from double-attacking (no consequence to them because they never double anyway), which vastly improves their tanking ability. Effie is often considered a borderline Game-Breaker in the early-game of Conquest, a major rarity for an Armor Knight.
  • The Taguel in Awakening were a very unpopular element in the Japanese fandom, with both Yarne and Panne ranking near the bottom on the popularity polls. Fates' Wolfskin and Kitsune are significantly better received, with high-ranking votes in the Japanese popularity polls.
  • Lunatic Mode is generally agreed to be much better handled than it was in Awakening, being considered difficult for the right reasons now rather than being filled with Fake Difficulty. And Lunatic+, which most fans felt only added more cheap luck-based difficulty, is gone altogether.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Corrin usually gets this depending on the story path chosen. A Hoshido-aligned Corrin, for example, is usually called a blood-thirsty sociopath who doesn't even try to spare innocents by Nohr fans, a Nohr-aligned Corrin gets called an Ungrateful Bastard who has a case of Stockholm Syndrome, in addition to being a prick who decided to ditch their morals by siding with an invading country while a Corrin that doesn't side with either of them deserves getting hate from both kingdoms and deceived by various people in that route. Male Corrin gets it the worst, to the point where some of his detractors pretty much pointed all the character's flaws to him, even when those flaws apply to the female version as well.
  • Similarly, whichever family the player doesn't side with tends to get this from parts of the fandom. Some people who prefer Conquest tend to call the Hoshidan siblings self-righteous and act like they don't even try to help anyone else, while some Birthright fans say that the Nohrian family are Card Carrying Villains and Extreme Doormats to Garon.
• Rooting for the Empire: Before the game was launched, most of the fanbase originally wanted to side with Nohr, due to either the gameplay of the Conquest route being more reminiscent of the earlier games in the series or the presence of Camilla and all of the protagonist's other adopted siblings. Plus, they have the whole 'Conquistador' look going for their troops, and Fire Emblem has not had an 'evil' campaign before. And then there's people who prefer it out of spite because they see Hoshido as basking in Story Branch Favoritism.

S

• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The fact that My Castle codes are region-locked has a lot of fans salty.
  • For some reason, the Western release adds in a 5-minute wait timer between online PvP matches. While people who only play PvP casually aren't too bothered, hardcore PvP players find this arbitrary wait time to be a major annoyance and hoped it gets patched to behave more like the Japanese version, which unfortunately never happened.
  • The Skip to Branch of Fate, meant to be Anti-Frustration Features so the player doesn't have to replay Chapters P-5 every time they want to play another route, has a few issues. Firstly, it only carries over levels from your most recent Chapter 5 save, rather than letting you choose. The reason this is an issue is because a file that went on to Birthright won't serve well for a Conquest run, as Rinkah and Sakura don't join there so all EXP they gained is wasted. And on the flip side, switching from a Conquest file to a Birthright file will likely result in an underleveled Rinkah and Sakura, which is especially bad for Rinkah since she tends to struggle early on. Even worse, players who want to change their Avatar's gender will be stuck with a Lv. 1 Felicia or Jakob as both of them are considered separate characters. This is especially problematic on Conquest or Revelation, as the Avatar's servant is one of the few units they have for a while and so having one who dies in one or two hits makes the already present Early Game Hell even worse. And the extra levels on the other servant are useless as by the time they rejoin, they're auto-leveled to around 13 anyway. These factors often make it better just to start a brand new game.
  • The Boo Camp DLC is supposed to be Fates's equivalent to Awakening's EXPonential Growth, a DLC designed to help you level up your characters. The problem is that, unlike EXPonential Growth, the enemies in Boo Camp scale to where you are in the story, which means if you use it late game, you'll get very little potential for EXP and the enemies will be Elite Mooks. This is more annoying on Conquest since this is the only way to level grind, and because the DLC was released a week after the game, those who got the game early would need to redo their playthrough to make maximum use of it, since it is designed to benefit early game. And if you thought all that was bad, the normal enemies the map are aggressive and actively seek you out to battle upon entering their danger area, unlike the Entombed from EXPonential Growth which simply tried to flee the map and couldn't kill you unless you engaged battle with them yourself or blocked the exit. The only use it can have later on is to get Dragon Vein points easier, build supports (which is already possible via online My Castle battles), level weapon ranks, and pass the My Castle time quicker, but none of that is the intended use for it.
  • The process of obtaining the Second Generation units has several issues. The first is that the Paralogues that players need to complete to get them scale levels for enemies. This wouldn't be so bad, and it makes them excellent grinding opportunities in Conquest, except that after chapter 18, the children stop scaling with them and don't gain any levels past unpromoted level 20 until you use the special scaling promotion item in their inventory (so you can choose what they promote into). This means that certain children (most infamously Shiro and Ignatius) can become nigh impossible to get because they're uncontrollable suicidal green units who can't use their promotion items until you get to them, surrounded by enemies 10 to 20 levels above them. The other problem is that it is unnecessarily restricting to get all the child units with a male Avatar; the player will have to marry him to one of Flora, Reina, Scarlet, Anna, or one of the Second Gens if they want every child due to how the developers set up the possible pairings. This raises a number of problems: Flora and Scarlet are late-joining, semi-version exclusive characters who the player is unlikely to acquire before getting an S-Support, (Reina is a semi-version exclusive too, but at least comes about 1/4th into Birthright and Revelation) Anna is only available via DLC, many fans oppose marrying the kids on principle, and Scarlet is killed off in Revelation before one could reasonably expect to get an S-Support with her without knowing to go grind her out.
  • Weapons that either slowly but repeatedly nerf the user's stats or cut their attack stat in half until the next attack are pretty much reviled, especially the silver weapons, especially since you can buy enough iron weapons for a +2 forge or enough steel weapons for a +1 forge (both of which have comparable might to silver weapons) with the money a silver weapon costs, making them essentially pointless. It doesn't help that all of the melee-based S rank weapons have the latter penalty, making them an extreme case of Power Up Letdown, especially with the greatly-reduced speed of gaining weapon ranks. The only weapons of this type that are considered worth using are the shuriken and daggers (as they tend to have really good debuffs that more than justify using them in certain situations).
  • Many levels have enemy reinforcements that show up without warning, can move the same turn they appear in, and have the Void Curse skill (which prevents them from awarding Experience Points to the player's units). Their only purpose is to disrupt your progress by blocking your path, though this can be especially aggravating if they target your vulnerable units.
  • You cannot save between Chapter 27 and the Endgame in any path, unlike the game's predecessor. Lose, and you must start over from the beginning of Chapter 27. It doesn't help that the Endgame (especially Conquest's) maps are one of, if the most, most grueling of the campaigns. Also, any inventory you expend in Chapter 27 doesn't carry over to the Endgame. That includes valuable items like Rescue, Physic, or tonics. This also means EXP or Support points gained in both chapters are lost. The best you can do is battle save (Casual Mode) or Bookmark (Classic Mode). This feature returns in Revelation except even earlier!
  • While it was considered a good step forward to include the Gay Options of Niles and Rhajat, choosing to actually pursue that option means you can never acquire Kana (or Nina, for that matter, if you marry Niles as a male). While it makes sense from a biological perspective, many fans were disappointed that they were essentially being punished for choosing the same-sex options, and had hoped for some kind of Hand Wave such as adoption or magic.
  • A cosmetic example: If you enter the bathhouse in your castle, there is a chance that you'll walk in on a unit of the opposite gender, either causing you to freak out and run (usually if you're female) or get booted out with some scatching words/physical assault (usually if you're male). Given that there is no way to determine who's in the bathhouse before entering and there doesn't seem to even be anything in Flavor Text that amounts to a schedule, this basically means a roughly-50% chance every time you enter to be chewed out for something that isn't your fault.
  • To acquire Skills in gameplay, a unit needs to not only be at the appropriate level, but also level up each time to get one skill. For example, if a character changes into Mechanist at Level 15 to get Duplicate, they will have to level up a total of either 2 or 4 times, getting Locktouch and Poison Strike if they weren’t a Ninja or Master Ninja beforehand, Golembane and finally Duplicate, placing them at Level 19, one level before Max, where a unit can’t level up any further and thus get more skills unless an Eternal Seal is used but not only is this a costly endeavour, by then, the player has likely reached near the endgame. What makes this even more problematic is that the different Classes may not only have weapons the units not have put any work into, meaning they’re stuck starting with E-Rank weapons, (unless they’re 2nd gens, who gain higher weapon growths in the weapons they don’t start with the later they’re obtained) they also provide a different set of extra stat boosts for Levelling, causing a potential loss of important stats and gain of useless ones along the way, on top of potentially having Maxed Stats for some Classes, stopping units from getting further stats boosts in there as they could in another Class. (I.E. Master Ninja capping at a low level of Strength, whereas General has a much higher Cap.)
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • It is popular to do runs of just one class. Due to the prevalence of seals that change class of close allies, you can increase the number of characters in that class. It's actually possible to have everyone on the Nohr route be Heroes. Other popular one-class runs include Maid/Butler Runs and Malig Knight Runs.
  • Another one, which adds a bit of Video Game Caring Potential but is a lot harder than it sounds, is to spare any named character you aren't forced to fight. In any chapter where the objective isn't Rout (this is more common on Conquest due to the greater objective variety), non-boss named characters do not need to be killed. Since some of them are directly in your path and have brutal skill combinations, you often have to go very out of your way to spare them without losing any of your own characters, and you'll miss out on experience. But to some, avoiding the deaths of beloved characters is worth it.
  • Another is similar to the "Casual Challenge" in New Mystery and Awakening, but with Phoenix Mode as an anti-frustration feature if you give up. You select phoenix mode... But play as if you are on "Classic" mode wherein you try to avoid letting any units die.
  • "Corrinquest" run. Similar to an "Ironman"^note Not resetting to bring back units playthrough, you can only use Avatars that have been recruited from other players' castles. Similarly is using Captured units only.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Thanks to the average health growth being lower in most games, generic enemy units being more powerful, the addition of skills that work against you just as often as in your favor, it's safe to say that a lot of people might be surprised when going from Awakening directly to Conquest. And, in general, the game is considerably harder than Awakening: even Birthright, the route made to be easiest, is harder.
• Ship Mates: It's very common to find people who ship Corrin/Leo to also ship Azura/Takumi within both the Western and Japanese fanbases.
  • Similarly, people who ship Corrin with Leo also tend to like pairing Xander with Charlotte, possibly due to Charlotte's line in the drama CD where she asks Corrin to introduce her to whichever of the princes Corrin doesn't marry herself.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Camilla and Charlotte is a fairly popular ship among certain fans due to Charlotte's desire to marry a wealthy noble or royal and Camilla's love of strong women. However, they don't share as much as a single support conversation with one another, and none of the DLC addresses this.
• Special Effect Failure: During Before Awakening, Chrom's closeup sprite uses the flipped one where he faces the right in dialogue. This never happened in Awakening itself and almost always adjusted based on Chrom's position.
• Squick:
  • Pairing the Avatar with a second-generation kid is a lot more unnerving to some fans this time around, due to the fact that there is no possibility of a Jailbait Wait for any of the younger characters before they have their own child, and the Avatar mentioning to Rhajat that they used to babysit her and the other kids. Oh, dear. Ironically, the competitive side is all for marrying a second gen unit, simply for an even stronger Kana.
  • Pairing the little sisters with pretty much... anybody has gained a similar reaction due to, one, the obvious age gaps between them and the males, and two, the fact that they actually get pregnant and give birth during the game. It doesn't help that they're so young that most children they produce come out even older than they are. For this reason, pairing Sakura with Hayato has become common, due to them being so close in age. Unfortunately, Elise does not have such a potential husband around her age on the Nohr side.
  • Some people's dislike of pairing the Avatar with any of the siblings stems from the fact that they don't stop referring to them as such after the S-support. In the Japanese version, Takumi even called her "sister" while proposing. Yes, they're Not Blood Siblings, but it's still unsettling to hear.
  Takumi: I can no longer think of you as a sister, because I love you, Avatar-nee-san.
  • There's also the ability to marry Gunter in Conquest, which is incredibly creepy once one plays Revelation and sees that the Avatar is something of surrogate replacement for Gunter's dead child. And Gunter already came across as a Parental Substitute in his Conquest supports on top of that. Squick at its finest. Very ironically, Gunter's very good Pair Up bonuses has made him a common candidate among some hardcore Conquest players, even though it's one the player would most likely never consider in a normal playthrough.
    • Ditto for Yukimura, a man who based on his appearance and behavior appears to be in his forties (though, like nearly every FE character, he has a Vague Age) and who admits to having babysat the Avatar as a child in his supports, making him a clear-cut case of Wife Husbandry for many people.
    • Ditto again for Fuga, who was Sumeragi's best friend. He may not have had any part of raising the Avatar, but is old enough to be their father. And if the female Avatar marries him, that means his adoptive son Hayato's daughter Rhajat will be obsessed with her step-grandmother. Also, Kana will technically be Rhajat's uncle in this case, but he and Rhajat can still S-Support.
  • Nina's Yaoi Fangirl personal skill works while she's adjacent to any Paired-Up males. This includes brothers, fathers and sons, and her own father. Yes, you can make her fantasize about Parental Incest for gameplay benefits.
    • It's also implied she ships Niles with Silas (and, in the Japanese version, Leo); it's uncertain whether her penchant for writing fiction extends to her dad, but if it does... *shudder*
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: In a series that almost always averts this trope, due to the games usually being linear, Fire Emblem Fates has an exception in the form of its hub world, My Castle. Aside from the metric butt-ton of customization and upgrade options, you get to partake in the lottery, fight in the arena, cook to give stat bonuses to your units, decorate your soldiers with accessories, visit other castles to battle, trade, gain skills and buy items, and visit the sauna for some Fanservice. Because of the genuine perks associated with maintaining your hub world, the fun involved and its out-of-the-way presence compared to the main story, it's not unheard of in the slightest to hear players rack up way more time in My Castle than the main campaign.
• Stoic Woobie:
  • Azura suffered from abuse in Nohr and Fantastic Racism in Hoshido, is cursed with powers that are vital to winning the war but slowly kill her when used, and is literally unable to tell anyone what she knows about the Greater-Scope Villain due to another curse; the result of all this has left her incredibly jaded, but she never complains and never gives up trying to help.
  • Saizo. He found out who was responsible for the death of his and Kaze's father, and went to go take revenge... which simply resulted in him getting his eye slashed out and almost dying. Oh, and he never told Kaze about this, so he had to suffer alone about it for years, and in their supports Kaze himself is incredibly shocked at the amount of secret suffering his brother has gone through. Then there's the fact that, depending on the route taken, he and Kaze can end up fighting each other, which counts for both of them. And yet Saizo keeps carrying on his duties, keeping his inner troubles aside...
• Strangled by the Red String: Like Awakening, some S-supports are handled worse than others, giving this impression, but it's especially notable for pairing the Avatar or Azura with their siblings:
  • While it's understandable that the Avatar and their siblings would feel okay about falling in love thanks to a lack of blood relation between either side, it can seem a bit strange to have one say they've "always" loved the Avatar; the Nohrians because they were raised as siblings and viewed each other as such, or the Hoshidans because they believed the Avatar was their blood sibling for years (except Ryoma, who knew all along — his father made him promise to not tell anyone, including the Avatar, of this fact).
  • Azura and Ryoma or Takumi, should they get married. Like the Avatar and the Nohrian siblings, she grew up viewing them as brothers — and both their supports involve them trying to grow closer as brother and sister. If they reach S-rank, it suddenly turns out they were always in love with her all along, and she pretty much just goes along with it.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: The English voice acting is very polarizing. Many praise certain performances {particularly Arthur, Kaden, Leo, Jakob, Saizo, Percy (Antony Del Rio), Takumi (Roger Rose), Oboro (Marisha Ray), Xander (David Stanbra), Keaton, Ryoma, Shigure and Midori (Sarah Blandy). The dubbers also got someone who can actually sing (and very well) to voice Azura: the Broadway singer/actress Rena Strober. By dubbed song standards, "Lost In Thoughts All Alone" (both the main version and the secret fourth verse, sung by Shigure in the Heirs of Fate DLC) is generally agreed to be very good. There's also Elise (Natalie Lander) and Sakura's voice acting, which kept their endearing qualities but also made them sound much older to avoid any implications of characters having sex with a minor. But some complain about the direction of other characters' voice-work: Camilla and Hinoka, for instance, are accused of sounding either too old (Camilla) or too gravelly (Hinoka); Felicia's voice acting is accused of being too deep and too bored, particularly compared with the energetic Japanese performance; and Nyx's is very high-pitched and Genki Girl-like, with many comparing it to a dying mouse (especially in her battle grunts), which clashes with both her serious and mature lines and Japanese voice. Male Kana has a very high-pitched and grating voice that is ill-received especially compared to Male Morgan. The biggest complaint from critics by far was Effie (Marisha Ray, which stands out since Effie sounds different from the voice she used for Oboro and Mikoto, which are well-received) whose new, low-pitched voice accompanies a somewhat-contentious change in age and personality for the character. The debate got even more heated when dual audio was revealed to not be present, though this is most likely thanks to the presence of two actual singers in the Japanese cast (Renka and VALSHE) that would've been significantly more expensive to license.

T

• That One Attack:
  • Seal Defense, the class skill for Hoshidan Spear Fighters, lowers the enemy's Defense by 6 points at the end of the battle. The wielder doesn't even have to damage the target to Seal them, just enter combat and live, so there's no real work-around other than having so much Defense in the first place that 6 less points isn't a big deal or being capable of one-rounding them so the skill never goes off. And the AI is smart enough to hit you with the skill first, then Zerg Rush while your Defense is down.
  • Seal Speed, one of the class skills of the Spear Master, drops the enemy's Speed by 6 points at the end of the battle. This debuff makes the unit highly susceptible to double attacks, on top of preventing them from doubling enemies themselves.
  • Poison Strike, a skill present in Ninja derivatives and Faceless, causes the unit being attacked to be dealt damage equal to 20% of their health if the unit who initiated the combat survived, regardless of whether or not the aggressor did any damage. Near the end of the game, the ninja enemies not only deal out Defense debuffs with shuriken, but will also be certain to do enough damage through Poison Strike to put your tanking units in a tough spot. HP in Fates is relatively low compared to other games in the series as it is, so this is particularly irritating.
  • Counter and Countermagic, two class skills that work off the same principle. Countermagic means that if the unit is attacked by a magic attack, the attacker suffers the same amount of damage, while Counter returns ANY damage dealt by an attacking adjacent opponent. Hard difficulty tends to give Countermagic to Generals or Counter to Snipers, effectively removes the most reliable method of dealing with those classes, and the final chapter of Conquest puts BOTH skills on three Spear Fighters. The only way to deal damage to them without getting hurt is to either rely on counterattacks or use bows and other ranged physical weapons.
  • Hexing Rods cuts the target's maximum HP in half until the end of the battle. It has a range of 10 and three charges, allowing the user to cripple a good portion of your army if they’re not taken out quickly.
  • Astra is an offensive skill learned by Swordmasters. It lands 5 hits, each doing half of the predicted calculation, for a total 2.5 damage bonus. Worse yet, swordmasters have a very high crit chance and speed, meaning even a General or Great Knight will likely die to this skill.
  • The Conquest Lunatic-only skill "Inevitable End" allows debuffs to stack. The game has a tendency of sticking this skill on shuriken-wielders and Enfeeble-staff users, with the latter dropping all your stats by 4.
• That One Boss:
  • Xander in Birthright Chapter 12, on Hard or above. He's essentially a mobile Hopeless Boss Fight in the same vein as the Black Knight from Chapter 11 of Path of Radiance, except that he's on the map and gunning for you right from the start, so chances are he will probably reach you before you clear the chapter unless you use the Easy Level Trick. Surviving him at this point is all but impossible, which makes the map a lot harder than it'd normally be. On Normal, Xander won't move unless you get into his range, and doesn't show up immediately on top of that, so he doesn't qualify there.
  • Takumi in Conquest Chapter 13. Being a Sniper, a promoted unit, at a point in the game where the player is very likely to not have any promoted units of their own (aside from Camilla, who, as a flying unit by default, gets shot down nearly instantly if Takumi gets the chance) is bad enough, but unlike most of the promoted bosses before him, he's entirely mobile— an ability that he's more than happy to take advantage of, thanks to the Sniper's natural mobility and the Fujin Yumi allowing him to ignore movement penalties from Field Terrain. The result is a boss with a movement range that outclasses most of your units, and one that's fast enough and strong enough to kill all but the toughest units in a single turn if they happen to be within his range. The good news is that, as a Sniper without a bow capable of hitting targets who are adjacent to him, he can be boxed in and rendered helpless after he gets his first attack in, but getting to that point requires a unit capable of luring him in without getting killed in the process.
  • Kotaro is just an annoying Wake-Up Call Boss in Birthright and Revelation, but he's a monster in Conquest Chapter 17. He's a Master Ninja, which already makes him good at dodging, but he's also standing on a throne that further boosts his evasion. Said throne is surrounded by caltrops, which provide defensive penalties to any unit standing on them, deals damage at the start of your turn, and can only be defused by a unit with Locktouch. He's also armed with a Flame Shuriken to take advantage of his solid magic stat, and has the Trample skill, which gives him an impressive +5 damage per hit against non-mounted units. On Hard and above, he is given a Silver Shuriken to pick off units with high Resistance and two additional abilities: Duelist Blow further cranks up his evasion on attacks that he starts and Grisly Wound deals damage at the end of the battle.
  • Takumi in Conquest Chapter 23. Not only does he have high stats, the Fujin Yumi, and the natural critical bonus of a Sniper, he also has some very deadly skills. On all difficulties, he has Point Blank (letting him attack from melee range with his bow, thus negating the weapon's main flaw) and Vengeance (boosts damage according to 50% of HP lost). On Hard and above, he gains Bowfaire (+5 damage to Bow attacks) and Rend Heaven (adds half the enemy's attack power to his damage). Both Vengeance and Rend Heaven activate based on Skill x 1.5, and Takumi has one of the absolute highest Skill stats in the game, so you'll be seeing both a lot.
  • Oboro in Conquest chapter 23 is almost unavoidable, has very high stats and a Silver Naginata, starts out paired up with another enemy for even higher stats, and on Hard or above packs Luna and Counter. A Luna from her will spell death for nearly anybody.
  • Ryoma in Conquest Chapter 25, who's practically a mandatory SNK Boss. His defense is absurdly high for a Swordmaster, and even a well-trained Avatar might not stand a chance, forcing you to fight through the incredibly overpowered other enemies on the map and defeat Saizo and/or Kagero. Even then, your other units probably won't stand a chance against him either.
• That One Level:
  • From Conquest:
    • Chapter 10: Unhappy Reunion is infamous for being one of the most difficult maps in the entire series. The player has to hold out for 11 turns and defend four green tiles near the starting position. If a single enemy steps on there, it's game over. The map has a lot of choke points to defend against the oncoming enemies, but there are also houses that provide an incentive to break formation and visit for items, even if it means putting a unit at risk. While defend maps in previous games usually gave a few turns of leeway, this one has reinforcements show up pretty much every turn. On Turn 7, things take a turn for the worse when Takumi activates a Dragon Vein and the water in the harbor is drained, thus allowing enemies to walk around your units and get to the defend point more easily. On harder difficulties, enemies also have skills that can really screw the player over, like Oni Savages having Lunge to bring them closer to the defend point and displace the player's units out of formation, while Hinata and Oboro have Mov +1 to improve their mobility.
    • Chapter 17: Den of Betrayal, also known as the ninja cave or Ninja Hell, is a Marathon Level made of narrow corridors that lead to several open areas, most of which have spikes that will injure the player's units if they are standing on them. Only units with Locktouch can disarm these spikes. Saizo is on the map as an ally NPC and he can also help disarm the traps. He's not invincible however, and ensuring that he survives will yield a Speedwing, providing an incentive to keep him alive. What further complicates this map are the Dragon Veins, which will alter the map's layout completely. Some walls will fall, while others will rise, opening up some paths and closing others. The usage of these Dragon Veins needs to be planned carefully, as the player's units could potentially be blocked off if not placed properly. To make matters worse, most of the enemies on the map are Ninjas or the promoted Master Ninjas, who have high Avoid, weapons that poison and debuff, and can attack through walls. Finally, the boss is Kotaro, who boasts a ridiculous amount of Avoid, boosted further by terrain, while the terrain of his boss room will be completely detrimental to the player's units.
    • Chapter 19: Kitsune Lair is infamously known for being the one chapter in the entire game where you fight Kitsune and Nine-Tails, outside DLC. And those classes, in this specific chapter, can literally become intangible, meaning that you can't attack them. In turn they can't attack. Unless they conveniently decide to become tangible and target you while you're surrounded since several of them have Pass. Another thing is that probably a good 80% of the map is covered in forest and expect the enemies to make use of it. At times, they will purposely avoid attacking to go into an area that gives bonuses.
  • From Revelation:
    • Chapter 7 is a maze covered in darkness. The player is unable to explore unlit areas unless they have a unit end their turn at the edge of the illuminated rooms, which makes them vulnerable to the enemies that spawn immediately after. The main problem with this map is its complex design and unreasonable length, considering that the player is unlikely to have more than three units at this point in the game.
    • Chapter 9's gimmick is that gusts of wind will move the player's units at the end of the enemy's turn, potentially leaving them stuck in areas with high enemy density. While Conquest Chapter 20 employs the same mechanic, the fact it takes place near the endgame means players have a much stronger party and can make preparations to tackle it.
    • Chapter 10's gimmick is that the entire map has been frozen in a block of ice, requiring units to waste their turns attacking it in order to slowly carve a path towards the goal. Destroying certain sections of the iceberg will cause enemies to spawn, making it unwise to proceed unless you have a backup unit to dispose of them. It's not uncommon for players to take up to 50 turns to complete this level, which is not helped by the fact you are encouraged to destroy the entire iceberg, since every enemy that spawns carries a valuable item.
    • Chapter 12 takes place in a frozen sea, with the player's party scattered helplessly across three boats while enemies can freely move in to attack them. This setup means it's impossible to split healers and attackers in an even enough formation, making each individual group of units considerably weaker. The way to clear this map is to have everyone Pair Up on two boats to have six units on each and survive until the sixth turn, after which Dragon Veins will appear and finally enable the player some degree of mobility.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Shiro's paralogue is near impossible if attempted near the endgame, as all enemies are promoted and can easily kill the boy within a single turn. To make matters worse, Shiro spawns very far away from the party, is an unpromoted NPC and will automatically target the nearest opponent. While using the Rescue staff on Shiro can mitigate much of the mission's difficulty, there is a chance some players won't have access to it, since it breaks after just two uses and can only be bought a limited amount of times.
  • Ignatius' paralogue is even worse; much like Shiro, Ignatius spawns far away from the party, with an enemy with a Freeze staff placed in between them with a hefty sum of enemies as well. The ninjas in the map waste no time rushing towards Ignatius' position, and they're armed with the Poison Strike skill, which chips away at Ignatius' health bar, rendering his defensive stats as a knight superfluous. Unlike with Shiro, who can be teleported by a Rescue staff without much consequence, the goal of the mission is to prevent the enemy from setting foot on Ignatius' position, in front of a village, rendering this strategy null. Woe to those who attempt this mission in the late game, where the enemies' strengths are accelerated but Ignatius' stats are stagnant. It is highly advisable to get this mission out of the way (and by that extent, get Benny to S rank with someone else as soon as possible) to avoid making this mission even more difficult than it already is, a tall order in Conquest where replayable missions are nonexistent without DLC.
  • Siegbert’s paralogue can be pure hell. The gimmick is that enemies will continue to spawn in endlessly, either from one pool or sometimes even two in Lunatic after each turn with Dragon Veins needed to be used to close them off, all enemies not already on the field when the battle starta having Void Curse so you can’t even get EXP from them. On top of endless reinforcements, the terrain of the map is absolutely filled with forestry, making traversing difficult for most units, all the more troubling if you try to spread out your units to reach the Dragon Veins. Using the Dragon Veins can clear out some of the terrain, but that can also make the enemies reach your units quicker, giving a Sadistic Choice of either clearing out Dragon Veins as quickly as possible while risking enemies dogpiling your units or trying to go more steadily but letting more enemies spawn. All of this is topped off by the selection of enemies in the area with the top-end pools spawning in Ninjas/Master Ninjas, Cavaliers/Great Knights who carry Armorslayer and Beast Killer and Knights/Generals with one of the two spawned having Wary Fighter and a Mercenary/Hero standing over the Dragon Vein spawning the Knights/Generals with a Knight/General and a Troubadour/Strategist with Freeze in hand both nearby. And being at the top end means those three pools will likely be the last ones to be dealt with, leading to the reinforcements most likely spawning those in constantly each turn.
  • Royal Royale is widely considered to be the hardest DLC mission. The player must pick one of the Nohr or Hoshido royals and, assisted exclusively by their two retainers, defeat all other royals and their retainers. All units in this level have different stats, inventories and skills than in the player's main file, and are thus weaker than normal. Though the map's Dragon Vein creates duplicates of the party, the enemies are aggressive and more than capable of overwhelming the player's units.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Even among the divisive opinions on the English dub's voice direction, critics of Effie's voice and personality changing change from a soft-spoken Lady of War despite all of her strength-related quirks into a hard-talking Sully/Kjelle expy are particularly vehement.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Corrinsexual (can only marry the Avatar) characters in this game suffer from Demoted to Extra even more than they did in Fire Emblem: Awakening, with most having the Avatar as their only support option. This means they get barely any Character Development or relevance outside of their recruitment, which is a shame as many are Famed In-Story. This hurts especially because in Awakening there was at least a somewhat clear, albeit still somewhat arbitrary, cutoff point, in that after Lucina's recruitment the recruitment chapters for the other second generation characters open up and everyone recruited afterward are "Avatarsexual". In Fates there is no such cutoff point, making who can and can't be paired up even more arbitrary. Shura probably suffers from this the worst: he has a very extensive backstory that ties in to both Hoshido and Nohr, and was involved in Azura's kidnapping, part of what started the war in the first place. And you have a choice whether to kill or spare him, which is presented as an important one... only for him to never be mentioned again afterwards. He can't even support with Azura nor Saizo, another character who wants revenge on Mokushu.
    • Remedied somewhat with the third DLC, which features new convos for many of these characters that greatly expand on them, though, unfortunately, Shura still can't talk with the aforementioned two characters.
    • Out of all of the Corrinsexual characters, Reina also may be the one that gets it the worst. She has no real impact on the plot in any of the three story routes whatsoever unlike the other Corrin-exclusive characters who do something of importance on at least one of the routes even if it's just as a chapter boss, and despite having the exact same job as Orochi (Mikoto's retainer), Orochi can be supported with all of the guys but Reina can only be put with the Avatar, with no clear reason as to why.^*A reasonable guess (at least partly) would be her age, as she is visibly (and heavily implied to be) a good deal older than most of your army. And being given the same support options as Orochi would include the likes of Hayato. (Although Orochi herself is apparently old enough to have reliably babysat Takumi, and she can still support and even marry him and the even-younger Hayato.) She also gets no supports to expand on her character besides the Avatar, and Reina and Orochi don't even get a support conversation with each other, despite being partners.
    • Yukimura is another pretty bad case of this. He's another of Mikoto's retainers, as well as the technical leader of Hoshido while Ryoma is away, but he has no supports with Mikoto's other subordinates or the Hoshidan siblings. Those could've been used to greatly flesh out Yukimura himself and his relationship to the royal family, as well as give some insight on Hoshidan politics. He can't support with Shura either, despite being the one to hire him to kidnap Azura.
  • Many fans feel the 2nd gen characters are decent characters individually, but are wasted by their complete irrelevance to the main story (especially compared to Awakening's non-Lucina 2nd gen characters, who, while also not exactly important to the story, still had plot-related reasons for appearing in that game) and the awkward explanation for their existence. Special mention goes to Nina, who is introduced in her paralogue as an interesting character with a morally ambiguous trait, which is afterwards mostly dropped in favor of her Yaoi Fangirl antics. Many wish her deeper aspects were explored more.
  • On the Birthright route, Gunter never makes another appearance after his presumed death, which was just screaming Disney Death (and correctly on both other routes). This removes any chance of conflict with the player's old mentor. Would his loyalty to his post or fondness for his protege win out? Neither! His fate is left forgotten. He does get another mention in the chapter where Hans is fought for the last time... But it happens so quickly, and it's his only mention afterwards, so they may as well have not even bothered.
  • Garon, unfortunately. Many people were hoping to see a compelling antagonist who was a good father and/or was truly doing what he felt was the best for his people, even if it meant a war of naked aggression against a peaceful neighbor. Turns out, we never actually see the real Garon in-game; what's present is his corpse possessed by a slime monster being controlled by Anankos, with malevolent intentions and no real character depth. Made worse by the game's references to younger Garon. Xander describes the father he knew as a stern but brave man who one day changed. Likewise, Garon was listed as one of the few to obtain the Rainbow Sage's blessing. However, none of these traits are explored in the present due to his possession. It's particularly bad on the Birthright route, where you don't even learn about his past, meaning he lacks the Tragic Villain qualities he has on Conquest. To add insult to injury, not only is he absent for a large majority of the Revelation route, but he doesn't even get a boss fight and is instead devoured immediately by Anankos when he finally makes an appearance in front of the heroes, meaning he does not get to briefly revert like Sumeragi or Arete.
  • The sisters generally don't have much of an impact on the story, with Elise being the only one with a major role. She's also the only one of the four that can die. Hinoka, conversely, gets the absolute worst of it to the point where Azura is the only one to fill the big sister role and Scarlet getting more screentime in comparison. Camilla and Sakura still speak up from time to time in story moments on their respective playable routes, and their characters are pretty decently explored even on the opposite routes where they amount to, respectively, a two-off boss and an NPC-miniboss. Sure, admittedly Hinoka gets her late game boss chapter in Conquest as well... and that route gives her more lines than in]] Birthright, where she's supposedly a main character! Much of this can be chalked up to her not existing in any form in the original story drafts. Still, Hinoka is especially egregious in that her entire reason for becoming a Sky Knight in the first place is because of the Avatar's kidnapping... only for her to get basically nothing in the present. You'd think she'd get a little more importance, if only based on that.
  • Lilith had a unique and interesting design, and it's established early on that she's been with the Avatar and the Nohrian royal family for many years. In the third chapter, she saves the Avatar from falling into the Bottomless Canyon, only to then become a living explanation for the My Castle feature and not be featured again in the story or have any further interactions outside of it. That is, until she sacrifices herself to save the Avatar in Chapter 24 of Birthright and Chapter 21 of Conquest. Unlike other Plotline Deaths in the game, this one comes literally out of nowhere and many players found it difficult to have much of a reaction to it due to how little screen-time she is given prior to it, so it's considered pointless by many. In Revelation, she survives, but has no further role in the story after Chapter 3. Made worse by the fact that players who don't buy the Hidden Truths DLC map pack or look for information on it online will never find out that she was born from Anankos's insanity, which means she's the Avatar's sister.
  • Odin, Laslow and Selena are confirmed by the Hidden Truths DLC to actually be Owain, Inigo and Severa from the previous game, called by Anankos' soul to recruit his child Corrin from Nohr and kill his original self. Unfortunately, the three are no more relevant to the actual story than any other retainer, and even when Corrin gets on the right track to fighting Anankos in Revelation, it's entirely because of Azura, making the roles they were given in the DLC feel like an afterthought.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • According to the game's backstory, the scarcity of resources was one of the main reasons why Nohr started its war against Hoshido, with the invasion taking place after the latter nation refused to provide aid. When Silas brings this up late in the Birthright path, Ryoma explains he had no idea of what the Nohrians had to endure and vows to assist them once the conflict is over. Despite this serving as a good plot point to make Nohr sympathetic while also making Hoshido more flawed, it never gets used again, and is barely referenced outside of that single point. Not even Garon mentions it as a justification, only appearing to be a megalomaniac who just wants to rule over everything, which leaves its inclusion feeling unnecessary.
  • Azura barely gets any interaction with the two royal families outside of supports, despite technically being part of both just like the Avatar, so those hoping to see some family drama on her part will be left disappointed. It's especially grating on Conquest, where the Hoshidans won't stop giving the Avatar a piece of their mind for turning on them but have absolutely nothing to say to Azura on the matter (unless you send her to attack them... which is unlikely for obvious reasons), and the Nohrians barely notice that she's back. It gets more Egregious by the fact that she can't even support with Camilla, thus reducing her family interactions even more, despite the fact that Camilla states in Revelation that she remembers Azura and feels bad about not interacting with her much before.
  • Silas and Kaze joining the Avatar regardless of route could have been interesting, especially since they both have one path where this means abandoning their homeland. And yet the Nohrians (bar Xander) never seem to care about Silas defecting, and none of the Hoshidans (bar Saizo) ever say anything to Kaze. Extra egregious in Kaze's case, since he has nothing to say during the invasion of Hoshido in the last few chapters of Conquest.
  • In all three routes, many soldiers at Cheve outright rebel against Garon and try to join Hoshido. While on Conquest the rebellion is easily defeated, on the other two routes it goes off fine. This opens up the idea that other sections of Nohr may try to rise up against Garon, but nothing of this nature is ever discussed again. Apparently, Cheve is the only place that wants to rebel against Garon, not counting the Ice Tribe.
  • Quite a few people felt this way about the third person to surpass the Rainbow Sage's trial. It is discussed/shown between routes that both Sumeragi and Garon visited him in the past, followed by a knight whose name isn't known to anyone and is from an unknown land, then later Xander, and lastly the Avatar. Especially after playing the other two paths, one might expect to learn the identity of and perhaps meet this knight in Revelation, holding the expectation that they would be from Valla and thus cannot be discussed by many people because of Anankos's curse — this also being the case with matters such as the name of Valla itself when Azura and the Avatar fall into it during Conquest or why Garon suddenly turns into a dragon at the end of Birthright — but this mysterious knight is never officially revealed.
  • A fair amount of fans felt that due to the Hoshido nobles having no actual blood ties to Corrin (Queen Mikoto is genuinely Corrin's mother, but dies early on and isn't actually native to Hoshido), that siding with Hoshido has little to no incentive due to how their blood ties was the route's main selling point.

U

• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Takumi in Conquest. While the narrative paints him in the most negative light out of all the Hoshidan siblings, it's not hard to see why he's acting the way he is even ignoring his possession. His grudge against his sibling, Corrin, seems at least somewhat justified considering that Corrin left Hoshido, a nation under siege, to fight on the side of Nohr, whose king not only kidnapped them, but is also responsible for killing Takumi's father and mother, ordering the razing of several innocent villages to the ground, and starting the war in the first place. And despite this good precedent, the narrative still presents said grudge as being more the fault of Anankos, with his soul in Corrin's Afterlife Antechamber actually remorseful for holding a grudge for so long.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Hana, Sakura's retainer, at least in her C Support with Corrin where she gets mad at Corrin for being kidnapped as a toddler because it made Sakura cry.
  • The general Nohrian army, including Corrin in Conquest, can come off as this due to their loyalty to Garon. It's only briefly mentioned in Birthright that conquering other nations is a necessity for obtaining resources, but having Garon as well as Iago and Hans calling the shots still crumples any attempt for the story to avoid Black-and-White Morality. Corrin and the Nohrian royal siblings constantly cower before Garon's cruel commands, and only pursue the honor and peace they constantly spout at their convenience, making all the "Nohrian scum" sentiments from their enemies feel quite deserved. Despite knowing that Garon kidnapped Corrin at a young age, wanted Corrin dead just for showing mercy to prisoners of war, and used them as his own personal suicide bomber, Xander in Birthright is somehow appalled to hear Corrin call Garon "evil", has the gall to call Corrin a traitor for deserting the tyrant, and dies refusing to abandon him. In Conquest, Corrin and the Nohrian siblings are constantly objecting to Iago and Hans' brutality, yet they need to be shown that the root cause Garon is a literal monster before they even consider fighting him, and Corrin still decides that the "path to peace" means throwing Hoshido under the bus just to keep the support of their Nohrian siblings when they finally turn on Garon, all the while claiming that their happiness is the price of the ordeal.
  • To some, Ryoma retroactively comes off as this following the revelation he knew all along Corrin was not related to him or the other Hoshidan siblings by blood. While his anger at Corrin siding with Nohr in Conquest is justified due to the atrocities the kingdom committed, the way he often berates them specifically for turning on their bloodline despite knowing full well they are not biologically related can come across as disingenuous guilt-tripping.

V

• Values Dissonance:
  • Sakura and Elise are both at 15 years old at the youngest, but they can be the mothers of (as in get pregnant and give birth to) various second gen children. This is par for the course given the time period the game is based, in which noblewomen married at very young ages, but very understandably it doesn't stop many players from squirming uncomfortably. Making it worse is the fact that the player is forced to marry them off if they're playing as a male and want all of the child characters. The English version makes it clear both are legally adults, and by giving them older-sounding voices emphasises they are teens at the youngest.
  • There is also the subject of the Avatar being able to marry their siblings. While there are players who find no issue with it since they are Not Blood Siblings, for some others, not having a blood connection doesn't make one suddenly not family, especially if they grew up believing that they were. To them, there's virtually no difference between an adopted/step sibling, and a blood one.
  • The Avatar and Azura can wind up as Kissing Cousins, due to neither knowing about their relation at the time; when they do find out, both they and everyone else promptly ignore it. This is actually a two-fold case of Values Dissonance: cousin marriage is perfectly acceptable in Japan, where the game was made^note it's actually legal in both Japan and many US states, reactions in the West just tend to lean more to squick.
  • Additionally, Azura herself can be married off to both the Nohrian and Hoshidan brothers. She's technically not related to any of them, but she's still Xander and Leo's step-sister, and Ryoma and Takumi's adoptive sister. It's potentially awkward for basically the same reasons as the Avatar marrying them.
  • While the game does try to address complaints from fans over the lack of a Gay Option in Awakening, much of the western fandom have criticized the game for it being extremely limited. Thing is, while Western gamers have long had freedom in sexuality options from publishers like Bioware, Japan is much farther behind in regard to LGBT issues^note (i.e, same-sex marriage can only take place in the Tokyo districts of Setagaya and Shibuya), and games featuring LGBT romantic options tend to be rather niche. Indeed, having not one, but two explicit same-sex options in a major release is actually rather progressive by their standards. On the flipside, there's Forrest, a male character who dresses in feminine clothing and isn't mocked for it (and though his father Leo disapproves at first, he later apologizes and makes an effort to be more accepting of Forrest's crossdressing from that point on). While it's not considered entirely acceptable on either side of of the Pacific, male-to-female crossdressing is much less taboo in Japan (note the centuries-long tradition of onnagata and the Otokonoko Genre) than it is in the West, where such individuals often risk ostracization or violence.
  • When asked about the removal of the skinship mini game and other censorship changes in the Western localization, Nintendo responded that it was due to differences in what is considered acceptable in American media vs. what is considered acceptable in Japanese media.
  • While Conquest's story is hardly seen as amazing in Japan, it's held in higher regard there than in the West. This is because ideals such as preserving social harmony and empathy towards your enemies rather than destroying it/them outright are highly valued in Japan, so Hoshido's willingness to destroy a very sympathetic kingdom rather than even try to preserve is seen as a highlight of the story's Grey-and-Gray Morality. This is also because, as a nation who can be hypersensitive to their past war crimes, it was apparent to those with context that Hoshido was by no means innocent in the He Who Fights Monsters department. Both the implications, context and values are all unfortunately lost on Westerners, who saw Corrin's reluctance to take action as a moment of weakness at best and a death grip on the Idiot Ball at worst.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • There was a raging debate as to whether Subaki's gender was male or female. It's a Gender-Blender Name, and he's a Bishounen, but he's a Pegasus Knight, a class which, with the exception of some nameless enemy units in the older games, has been exclusively female. Then it was confirmed that Pegasus Knights have been renamed into Sky Knights, which is the same class without the female exclusivity, allowing for male Sky Knights. The debate finally ended when the My Castle trailer showed Subaki very clearly in a male hot spring, confirming he is in fact male.
  • This appears to be common with the more traditional Japanese designs of the Hoshido characters. Besides Subaki, Hayato, Oboro, and even Hinata sparked debates about which gender they were before official sources confirmed them.
  • All examples were put to shame when Forrest was discovered. You have a character with a beret, some serious Ojou Ringlets, and is in the Troubadour class which is traditionally a female-exclusive class. Then information comes out that HE is Leo's son.
  • When the game was revealed back in January, before any information about the characters came out, many thought Hinoka was male, what with her Boyish Short Hair and too short a look at her in the reveal trailer.
• Vindicated by History: Fire Emblem Fates was extremely divisive when it first came out, having created more than its fair share of flame wars on the merits of the game's story, characters and localization, all to the point a vocal subsect of the fandom bashed the game on social media for up to an including three-to-four years, with no intermissions of positivity from them in-between. Ironically enough though, with Fire Emblem: Three Houses being released to high marks and well-appreciated within different parts of the fanbase, it actually caused more of a positive retrospect to be had on Fates, not less. There is now a large subset of the fandom that says that Conquest (with highlights including the infamous Chapter 10) had some of the best gameplay the series had ever seen due to the excellent baseline mechanics and fantastic map design. This is likewise coupled with the fact that people also began agreeing Fates had a stellar soundtrack, excellent presentation and generally well-made visual design across the board. Of course, that hasn't changed the general consensus among the fandom that the story writing was weak, but even then people have begun to lighten up on a lot of Fates' cast as a whole, citing many of the best supports in the game as evidence of the characters being much better written than people initially assumed.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Just like in Awakening, the CGI cutscenes are beautifully animated and rendered. Special mention goes to Azura's dancing scenes in both the Hoshido and Nohr routes.
• Vocal Minority: Due to the game's excesses in controversy, Fire Emblem Fates has inspired a massive wave of fan hate and genuine anger directed at the game and blaming it for the series's gradual downfall and openly bullying and harassing anyone who dared to have a wholly unironically positive opinion of the game. This continued for four years up until Three Houses winning the crowd back, so you'd might as well expect that the game was extremely unpopular given how often people harassed and got performatively mad over it. Truth was, the game was to this day the second most financially successful game in the series, a critical darling (see the contrast in the Metacritic score of Revelation versus its User score), and — whether these people liked it or not — a massive influx of fans that have a lot of fanfic writers, fan artists and general enjoyers of the game profligate on Archives Of Our Own, Tumblr and so on. The game's hatedom has mostly cooled its heels in recent years, and while there's still hardly any disagreement on the game's issues (such as the story), it's hard to deny the game left a positive impact on many and that the most extreme of the game's hatedom was largely overblown in hindsight.

W

• Win Back the Crowd: The entire game has been a roller coaster of winning and losing the crowd time and time again on various parts of the internet. Plenty of the things in the game's Broken Base page have done both.
• The Woobie:
  • All of the Royal siblings can become this when you don't side with them. Each one ends up suffering somehow as a result and it all stems from the fact that the Avatar did not join them.
    • Xander in the Hoshido route has to witness the sibling he's loved all his life betray them, and in the most brutal way possible, even calling his father a monster. (They kind of have a point, but it's still harsh.) Then, while forced to fight said sibling, their little sister throws herself in the way, taking a mortal blow, and dies begging the two of them to stop fighting. Is it any wonder his final battle amounts to a Suicide by Cop?
    • In the Birthright route, Elise takes a blow meant for the Avatar by Xander and dies for it with the hopes of peace. This, of course, causes Xander's Suicide by Cop, and she is the only one of your Nohrian siblings to not think you've betrayed them.
    • Hinoka on the Conquest route (and arguably on the Birthright route too, given she gets even less dialogue than Sakura). The main reason why she qualifies is that she was originally weak and was easily the most affected by the Avatar's abduction, making it her goal to bring them back — even becoming a Sky Knight for that purpose. The worst part is that she's obviously suffering a lot of heartbreak because of you not joining Hoshido and is easily the most reluctant to fight you, similar to Elise. Plus she had to grow up earlier to take care of her younger siblings like Camilla and toughen up despite being a very sensitive girl.
    • Camilla refuses to come out of her room after you've beaten her and displays obvious sadness at having to fight you.
  • The Avatar doesn't have an easy time of it, either. Before the game even starts, they've already witnessed one parent being murdered (as a child of, according to fan calculations, roughly five to six years old) and been kidnapped and raised by an abusive father. Before the route splits, they get to watch their other parent die protecting them, then they get forced into a truly Sadistic Choice of which family to support in a war. Depending on what route is taken, the Avatar can end up losing some of their siblings, some of their friends, and even their spouse to a Plotline Death.
  • Scarlet. She is killed in two of the routes. In Conquest, it is mentioned that she was slaughtered horribly to make an example to the other rebels. The other route she dies on is the Golden Path! During the credits, everyone is given a blurb detailing their happy endings... Then it cuts to Scarlet's, which just says that she died, using the same generic message for minor characters who are killed mid-mission, reminding the player that someone was left behind for the best ending. To make things worse, there is a lot of Ship Tease between her and Ryoma, especially when they got a conversation in the third batch of DLC, heavily implying that she has a crush on him... and they can't even support! And just to twist the knife further, she gets the most Ship Tease with Ryoma in one of the routes where she dies.
  • While Heirs of Fate is rough on everyone involved, special mention goes to Shigure. While everyone else is from a Birthright or Conquest timeline, he is actually native to the Heirs of Fate timeline, which turns out to be a Bad Ending to the Revelation path. Despite everyone coming together to try and defeat Anankos, he still managed to kill the entire army with Azura and Shigure as the only survivors, and even then, Azura sang to keep her son alive until she disappeared in front of him. He sets off to find the other children, refusing to tell them the truth about his world in order to keep them around long enough to execute his plan. Said plan involves sacrificing himself to undo all the damage that Anankos caused across the Fates universe, knowing full well that it would kill him or leave him with a Fate Worse than Death. Even when his friends beg him not to throw his life away, he says that he deserves it for deceiving them and plans to Face Death with Dignity.
• Woolseyism: As always, though here much of it consists of name changes:
  • One of the most immediate is the name of the two rival kingdoms. In the original Japanese, they are named Byakuya and Anya, which respectively can be read as "White Night" and "Black Night". Obviously, this can't be replicated in English, so instead the localization went for the much more straightforward pair of Hoshido and Nohr.
  • Benoit's name was changed to Benny in the NoA version, likely to avoid an uncomfortable reminder of Chris Benoit. It can also be treated like a nickname, since some players likely called him Benny before the name was announced.
  • Likewise, Crimson was changed to Scarlet, which is widely considered an improvement since it has the exact same meaning but is an actual name instead of just a foreign-sounding word to Japanese audiences. And on the same boat, while it was one of the names that received the most backlash from purists of the Japanese script, Niles also qualifies. His Japanese name, Zero, sounds cool to some but for many others is hard to take seriously and sounds needlessly melodramatic when one puts together the meaning. Niles is not only an actual name, but it also gets across the meaning much more subtly. And many fans feel that Iago is a much better Shout-Out to Shakespeare Meaningful Name for a Manipulative Bastard villain than Macbeth.
  • Anankos was simply named "Hydra" in the Japanese version, which has no real meaningfulness to it aside from the fact that the mythical hydra was also a water dragon. "Anankos", on top of being a much more creative and mysterious sounding name, is also derived from the Greek "ananke", which can mean "fate" or "destiny", which, obviously, are the two main themes of the game.
  • Midoriko's name was shortened to Midori in the English version. This actually still keeps her Meaningful Name intact and helps with the Totally 18 of the localization (Midoriko translates to "Green child", whereas Midori is "Green" — she is the child of the game's "Green Knight", after all.)
  • Previews of Conquest Chapter 10 and Birthright Chapter 13 have shown that Camilla's obsessive and violent love for the Avatar has been changed into her being more overprotective, in a smothering way. Given that her yandere behavior and pseudo-incestuous feelings could be off-putting, some parts of fanbase may consider this a good thing.
  • NoA also took steps to avoid Story Branch Favoritism for Hoshido in the Japanese version and have the Hoshido characters highlight a more aggressive and hostile side of them. For example, Ryoma calls Xander "filth" in the prologue, and one of Hinoka's voice clips is "Nohrian scum!".
  • Similarly, the lyrics of the Conquest version of Lost in Thoughts All Alone were also made a bit less dark and pessimistic, in particular the first line: "On a path to darkness" became "Embrace the dark you call a home", which emphasises the Avatar's decision to side with their Nohrian family rather than painting the whole route as the "evil path". The final lyrics also lean more towards Good Is Not Soft than Dark Is Evil. For Birthright's version, "The incorruptible silver sword, Will slash in order to wake, Those slumbering hopes" became "A double-edged blade cuts your heart in two", emphasising how there will still be tragedy on this path.
  • Regarding Soleil:
    • The controversial Avatar/Soleil supports were changed while keeping the basic premise of the support the same and avoiding overt bowdlerization. The drugging is changed to consensual blindfolding and the Avatar telling her to imagine him as a girl, while the S Support makes Soleil's bisexuality more clear and has her and him agreeing to get to know each other for real rather than her outright falling for a girl Avatar and settling for him as a guy.
    • Most of Soleil's S Supports were turned into Platonic Life-Partners (except for the Avatar and Forrest, the latter being the closest thing to a girl that she can reach S Support with), thus removing the implication of a bisexual character only being able to have heterosexual relationships. Of course, they still didn't give her any S-Supports with actual female characters (which can't be done without at least major tweaking to the game itself anyway), and now the people who liked her supports with the male characters are angry, too.
    • Despite the Broken Base over her supports, the one thing most agree on is her localized supports with Forrest are miles better than the Japanese ones^note Their Japanese supports involve Soleil constantly hitting on Forrest under the assumption he's a girl, eventually asking him to bathe with her naked, while their localized supports involve them bonding over doing each other's hair, which is definitely a good thing since he's one of the few true romantic supports she has left.
  • The localization rewrote many of the S-supports for the characters who were very much younger than the others (Kana, Midori, and Percy), most probably to avoid implications of pedophilia.
  • Hisame was largely considered one of the more unremarkable second-gen characters by North American fans, being just a serious no-nonsense guy to contrast with his Hot-Blooded father Hinata. NoA took his fondness for pickles, a very minor detail in the Japanese version, and elevated it into an obsession, turning many of his quotes into pickle-based puns. And despite the North American fandom's normal aversion to any changes done to the original script, this is seen as an improvement by some, as it made an otherwise forgettable character into a very humorous and memetic one.
    • Additionally, a gag about Hisame in Japan was that he pickles food - the gag is that he acts like an old man. This is Lost in Translation - so turning his love for pickles into a weird obsession makes it work.
  • Many of the Hoshido characters are actually named after Imperial Japanese fighter vessels, which has some rather problematic implications for some people, so it's understandable that the localization either shortened or outright changed the majority of them. In particular is Hana, which is actually a real Japanese girl's name and adds some additional Theme Naming between her and Sakura.
  • Peri was a major Base-Breaking Character in the original Japanese due to her Ax-Crazy and Psychopathic Womanchild tendencies. Many predicted she would get tweaked in the localization to make her more likable, and it seems they were right. Her Blood Knight status seems to have been toned down a bit and some of her dialogue has been Woolseyfied to become more humorous, similar to the treatment Henry received in Awakening. Her above-average English voice acting has also given a significant boost to her popularity. Though to what degree this helps is up for debate.
  • Jakob was given a more lighthearted personality in the localization and his Jerkass tendencies were toned down, which has been well received by many North American fans who found his attitude and excessively rude demeanor in the Japanese version insufferable. His voice actor also affected a slight British Accent into his voice, which has also been well received (and humorously reminding people of one of the actor's previous roles).
  • Azama was made more funny and likable in the localization, instead of being the borderline-nihilistic jerk he was in the Japanese version. Like Peri and Jakob, he also got an excellent voice actor in Matthew Mercer, and is overall considered to be much improved.
  • Shiro's Paralogue was rewritten so Ryoma just tells Shiro off and no longer slaps him. Considering Values Dissonance concerning parental discipline in Asia and the West, this is most likely a wise option.
  • Selena and Odin's S-Support in the Japanese version heavily implied that Selena accidentally hypnotized a sleeping Odin into falling in love with her, and instead of confessing to this act, she just goes along with it. This leads to her getting married and starting a family with a man under her hypnotic suggestion. The localized version keeps most of the support the same, but now not only has Selena confess to what she did, but Odin also assures her that he was awake the whole time, making it clear that everything is on the level.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Many of the class costumes have bizarre designs that dip too far into fanservice territory, especially for the females. Female Cavaliers wear thongs, despite riding a horse; male Fighters are essentially wearing a leather one-piece swimsuit that shows off their butts while covered in bits of armor; Dark Mages of either gender possess swimsuit levels of modesty; Diviners are only slightly more covered than Dark Mages, despite being this game's equivalent of Mages (which typically wear full robes); female Generals are wearing thongs and their rear ends are exposed, despite wearing heavy plate armor; the female Nohr Noble outfit abandons the armor the male version has entirely for a black leotard with low cleavage and exposed thighs; the Male Ninja looks normal until you realize the sleeves are part of an undershirt of some kind, that apparently lacks a chest section so the wearer can show off just enough of their chest in their mostly open robe top to be tantalizing; the list goes on. And none of these outfits are changed for the second-generation characters, even for the very young-looking Kana, Percy, nor Midori.

---