YMMV / Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

BEWARE OF UNMARKED SPOILERS!

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• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Arvis' final actions in the game. Did he arrange for Seliph to receive the Tyrfing just because he wanted Seliph to save the children from the Loptr hunts? Or did he also intend to set up a Suicide by Cop situation where he would be killed by Seliph? He had to have known he would eventually fight Seliph since he had been assigned to defend Chalphy Castle by Julius; and considering he was very remorseful for being Manfroy's Unwitting Pawn, he may have become an outright Death Seeker by this point. He also pointlessly taunts Seliph by calling Sigurd, Seliph's father whom Arvis personally murdered, "pathetic" right before the battle; an action that feels out of character for him at this point in the story. Arvis most surely knows that Seliph wants to avenge his father's death, so was this actually Arvis trying to provoke Seliph into attacking and killing him?
  • Lewyn, particularly regarding his attitude change in Gen 2. It's revealed at the end of Genealogy that he's been possessed by Forseti for at least the last half of the game, but it's up in the air as to when exactly the possession started (after his death and subsequent revival? As soon as he inherited the tome?) and how it contributes to his behaviour: if he has a Forseti-shaped hole in his personality and whatnot, if he's more Forseti than Lewyn at that point, if he's more Lewyn than Forseti but is putting up a Jerkass facade because he knows that being Back from the Dead (and possibly only temporarily) means that he can't live a normal life, etc.
  • How much of Julius' actions were truly his or Loptous' is debated. The adaptation suggests he almost has a Split Personality, with Julius being the kind and loving fiancee and Loptous the monstrous tyrant.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Lachesis' three paladin bodyguards in chapter 2 are infamous for constantly confusing "protecting the princess" with "charge every enemy in range" (Their actual AI is 'if there is an enemy in range, attack it. If not, try to move towards Lachesis'). They aren't very likely to immediately die with their good defenses and high HP (unless they run into Zane and his Horseslayer), but they are very competent at stealing the player's experience and messing up their formation, seeing as how they move right after the player, but before the enemy. On top of all that, you also need to keep all three of them alive in order to get the Knight Ring, which their aforedescribed AI actually makes quite easy once Lachesis is recruited and Zane and his company are taken out, but it's keeping them alive to reach that point that's the problem.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Julius, the final boss, if you use the plot-dictated method involving Julia and Naga. If you want to do anything else, the final boss becomes a SNK Boss. It is still entirely possible to kill him without Naga, but it requires a lot of patience, as you can only do a tiny bit of damage every turn (20 to be exact, assuming Seliph's attacks hit), and he regenerates 15 HP every turn (or berserk Gallus and pray Julius gets hit by a HP to One with about 30% accuracy, which can be done only once). (He's immune to skills and criticals thanks to his Nihil.) And hope that he doesn't decide to cast Meteor on whoever you have healing Seliph—he's known for charging (Charge or Accost, a skill that causes combat to act as though another "attack" command was issued, and it can proc on itself, causing combat to last until death in some cases...) those in his meteor range to death (he also has Wrath, so if he's at 35 HP and decides he's gonna meteor someone, say a quick prayer for that character, cause he/she is dead).
  • Manfroy is a straighter example. For someone who was effectively the Big Bad for most of the story, he certainly isn't very impressive. He has the same equipment as every other Dark Bishop before him and statwise he isn't any better than, say, Ishtar, so any good unit can easily take him down on their own.
  • King Chagall in chapter 2 is by far the easiest boss on the map, being only level 10 when every other boss was between level 14 and 22. Worse yet, despite being stationary and guarding a castle, he has only a silver blade for offense, so anybody capable of using a ranged weapon can effortlessly attack him without fear for retaliation. He does shape up a bit for the following chapter, though.
  • Lewyn's uncles, Dukes Maios and Daccar, are armed with the formidable Tornado tomes, but their Baron class gives them a very low magic stat for that point in the story, so they should pose no danger whatsoever.
  • King Dannan follows a similar model as Chagall above. He is a very high-level enemy with good stats for that part of the game, but is a stationary boss with no ranged weapons, fighting the player with only a silver axe when he could use the Helswath instead. He goes down without too much of a fight.
  • King Travant, like Dannan, fights the player in their sole confrontation armed with a generic silver lance instead of relying on the Gungnir. He has some good skills and a strategic advantage as a flying unit on a very mountainous map to make him more dangerous, but he still pales in comparison to both his children in the danger he poses. This is a little disappointing when you consider how much trouble he was built up as by the story. Then again, one of the most common readings of him at that point is that he's a Death Seeker...
• Ass Pull: It is known that Julia is Deirdre's daughter and has major Naga blood, so this is averted when she gets the Naga Tome at the eleventh hour... however, it's not explained as to why the Naga Tome is superior to the Loptous Tome (as it can pierce right through its defensive powers), when it's made known that light and dark magic are on even ground in terms of power in this game.
• Base-Breaking Character: In terms of just gameplay, Lene vs. Laylea. Originally, Laylea was considered by many to be better than the unit she replaces, Lene, due to her coming with the Charisma skill (which gives units within three spaces of her +10 extra hit and avoid, and combined with Diarmuid and Nanna, who also have the skill, gives +30 extra hit and avoid), being able to get the Barrier Sword^note which boosts resistance by 7 when equipped and can be sold to other units, and also her brother Charlot being able to get the only Berserk staff in the entire game^note which when afflicted on an enemy, will cause them to attack their allies. However in recent years, people began to argue that Laylea isn't a better unit than Lene, arguing that compared to Diarmuid and Nanna, Laylea^note being, much like her counterpart and said counterpart's mother, a utility unit with only token self-defense capabilities, sub-heron defensive base stats, horrendous growths in literally everything, and no promotion, as opposed to Diarmuid, a Free Knight who promotes to a Ranger/Forrest Knight, and Nanna, a Troubadour who promotes to a Paladin shouldn't be anywhere near combat, as well as saying that a third Charisma user in a playthrough where she and her brother Charlot are the only substitutes just becomes superfluous. Lene supporters also point out that she is able to join with both the Leg and Knight Rings right when you get her^note as opposed to Laylea who has to buy the rings with the help of a lover and thief, which takes longer, though many counter back that the Leg Ring shouldn't be getting passed down to Lene anyway and realistically Lene has to buy it from Seliph (who really needs it) just like Laylea does and argue that the Barrier Sword doesn't give a big enough effect to be worth getting and that the Berserk staff is very situational. As such, it's become a debate as to who the better dancer for the second generation truly is.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Even nowadays that it isn't the only 'Fire Emblem' with breeding mechanics anymore, people usually still know what you're referring to if you call it "the one with the incest."
• Broken Base: The game as a whole is very polarizing. Fans love it for how well it tells a story through gameplay, an unparalelled scope of the war, the dark themes, deep worldbuilding, a story so good it's a contender for best plot in the series, and the unique gameplay mechanics that make it stand out from other Fire Emblem games. Detractors don't like it because of slow-paced overly long maps, the abusable grindy arena that's almost a necessity, unnecessarily clunky trading between allied units, enemies being able to autoequip the weapon that counterattacks yours, the unbreakable long-range weapons and status staves the enemy has, game-changingly-potent items being barred behind secret events with no indication of where they are or who needs to trigger them, huge imbalance between fast mounted units and infantry who can't catch up (exacerbated by the large map size), and the complex/obscure romance and inheritance system that makes the latter half of the game ridiculously easy or hair-pullingly hard. The story is nearly universally praised, but the gameplay is a matter of fierce debate. Whether it holds up today or is incredibly dated depends on who you ask.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Killing Manfroy and Hilda is easily one of the most satisfying moments in the game, especially if the latter is killed with Arthur/Amid or Tine/Linda. Those still bitter with Travant's actions may also find satisfaction in killing him with Leif and/or Finn. For the first generation, it comes from killing Chagall, especially with either Eldigan's best friend Sigurd or his sister Lachesis doing the deed.
  • An extra catharsis for Hilda: She is a highly abusive mother who coveted for the glory and riches of high authority position all while torturing and abusing others for fun, most especially Tine. This was why she kept pressuring Ishtar for marrying into status and position to Julius rather than her own feelings. The player can then initiate the greatest irony of all of that by pairing Tine with Seliph, making her the Empress of Grannvale, a position that Hilda would almost certainly covet above all else; after every atrocity Hilda committed to reach that point, Tine achieves it just by being herself, a gigantic middle finger to Hilda. Any wonders why Seliph/Tine is amongst one of the biggest Fan-Preferred Couple in the second generation?
• Character Perception Evolution: In the early days of the game's fandom Sylvia's substitute kids Laylea and Charlot were near-unanimously considered better than Lene and Coirpre thanks to Laylea's Charm skill and Charlot's Paragon and Berserk Staff. As the meta evolved, fans realized there was more merit in pairing Sylvia than they initially thought (Lene gains access to inheritance while Coirpre can inherit strong staves for immediate utility and doesn't need experience to perform in that role), and which set is better is now a matter of debate, as explained under Base-Breaking Character.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • While some pairs are popular based off of chemistry, in regards to getting the best stats for the 2nd generation, you will see a lot of Midir/Edain, Beowolf/Lachesis, Brigid with either Dew or Chulainn, Ayra with either Lex or Naoise, Lewyn with either Erinys or Tailtiu, and Silvia either unpaired or with Claud.
  • The balancing in Genealogy of the Holy War in general can very generously be described as "interesting", frankly, with several units and weapons being flat-out better than others, leaving often not a lot of variability as far as strategy and tactics are concerned. The first three and a half chapters in particular can usually be summed up as "Sigurd kills everybody, while Quan, Finn and Lex try to help out as best as they can, while everybody else scrapes by." There is a good reason that this game is given the Fan Nickname "Horse Emblem" with how prevalent cavalry/flying units are in the meta when the maps tend to be humongous.
• Complete Monster: Bishop Manfroy is a Dark Priest and leader of the Loptr Church. Manfroy was determined to obtain revenge on the entire continent of Grannvale for forcing him to live in the desert, and thus spends years patiently paving the way for the return of the evil dragon, Loptous. Using assassination and manipulation, Manfroy creates a massive war, which initiates the chaos necessary for his plans. To create Loptous's vessel, Manfroy kidnaps Deirdre, the wife of Sigurd, cruelly and gleefully erases all her memories of her beloved husband and son, and places her for his pawn Arvis to find, fall in love with and marry, despite the fact that she is his unknown half-sister. With his goal achieved, Manfroy awakens Loptous in Deirdre's son Julius and sets about constructing a nightmarish dictatorship where children are sacrificed and any who resist are massacred. In the end, Manfroy, with nothing less than sadistic relish, exerts mind control over Julius's twin sister Julia to make her kill her beloved friends. In his cameo in the Interquel, Thracia 776, it is revealed that Manfroy murdered his own son-in-law, and drives his own daughter into madness. If Manfroy's granddaughter, Sara, is not recruited, Manfroy will zombify his own granddaughter into one of the Deadlords to do his bidding. Manfroy manipulated everyone around him, was cruel even to his own family, and enacted an endless regime of nightmarish suffering on the entire continent. It is clear that Manfroy has abandoned all potential good qualities solely to facilitate his own greed and personal desire for revenge.
• Crack Pairing: You can potentially pair any available male with any available female, but it'll take some work for the couples who don't interact in the main story. Once the player understands how the romance and inheritance mechanics work, and if they start pairing people up for items and stats rather than for their in-story relationships, a lot of the resultant pairings are like this.
• Cult Classic: The Jugdral games are the only ones in the franchise that have never enjoyed big international exposure (while Roy's tale was never released in the west, he did make an appearance in Super Smash Bros.) or been updated to a more recent generation. All the same, it's still among the most well-loved entries in the franchise.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Weissenritter in the final map. A group of generics comprised of 3 Brave Sword Heroes, 3 Killer Bow Snipers, 3 Elwind Sages and 3 Fortify High Priests unlike most of the other generic groups. What makes this even worse is the fact that these generics are deployed along with Ishtar and the Pegasus Sisters. Killer Bows and Brave Swords are so accurate that not even the Forseti User can safely dodge them, Elwind is the strongest generic tome the Sages can use, and they will dismantle the many units you have that are weak to magic, and the High Priests are so fast that even they can take an eternity to kill. You also can't just leave them alive - if they get into Ishtar's leadership aura they become nigh-unbeatable, you need to Shoot the Medic First or Fortify spam will undo your work and the Killer Bows and Brave Swords are so light that the Snipers and Heroes are perfectly capable of doubling anything without a sword. This is saying nothing of having to deal with Ishtar and the Pegasus Sisters at the same time.
  • Any enemy with status staves, due to the bizarre mechanic of enemy weapons having no durability usage making them infinite use.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: A lot of fans consider Genealogy of the Holy War's story to be the absolute best in the series because of its Game of Thrones-like political intrigue and plot twists. However, the gameplay is rather divisive, as many consider it to be tedious due to the overly large maps and outdated at best due to the interesting, but unbalanced additions it brought to the series.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Ayra is not the main character, but she's so widely adored that many fans consider her the best female character in all of Fire Emblem. Her design, hotheaded attitude, fierce devotion to her family, incredible badassery, and perfecting the Navarre archetype by being the first of the Myrmidon/Sword Fighter class are all contributing factors to her popularity, which leads to her getting a few successors in the next few games. She gets to appear as a Spotpass character in Awakening, and is the only female character from Genealogy to place in the top 100 of the first "Choose Your Legends" poll. She would eventually make it into Fire Emblem Heroes, where she earned her place as one of the single best units in the game, and is beloved by the fandom for her art, skills, voice, and usefulness.
  • In a similar manner, Lex is often praised since he's a more honest to god Hot-Blooded fun guy to bash evildoers in the face with enough baggages of being the White Sheep of his own house, to the point that people suspect that he's basically a 'proto-Hector', and he's on a horse while having a lot of tools to make himself a fast-growing ass-kicking machine (the Paragon skill and Brave Axe). He might not have Major Holy Blood and his own house was basically the Black Sheep of the whole Crusaders descendant thanks to his dad and brother, but Lex certainly earned the praise of the fandom. Being often considered a good match for the aforementioned Ayra (and can potentially boost her by giving her a Brave Sword) also helps his case.
  • Finn, for being the only character playable in both generations, as well as Thracia 776, and being a solid character in both games. In a series-wide poll conducted by Famitsu, Finn came in the top ten alongside well-loved characters like Lyn, Ike, and Hector, and was the only Jugdral character to do so. (Notably, he was one of only two in that list who weren't Lords, the other being Tiki.) Many, many fans saw his introduction in Heroes as a merely decent free unit whose potential can't be readily achieved as a disappointing way to treat him.
  • The House of Friege is full of these: from memorable one-shot bosses to tragic antagonists and recruitable characters that have a great deal of depth to them, the Frieges have quite the noticeable impact on the story as a whole. The midquel, which features the House of Friege in a more prominent antagonistic role, certainly helps with their popularity.
    • Though probably debatable, despite being considered by some as a Low-Tier Letdown and being the last person to join you in the first generation, Tailtiu is actually popular enough that she spawned a lot of fanarts for a late-joiner and people actually bore with her Low-Tier Letdown stats and sometimes get surprised when she turns out pretty good. Reasons? Must be because she's probably the closest one to being Moe amongst the first generation as the youngest girl of the team, and very much a Genki Girl to boot, something that the more depressing saga quite needed, and she does have moments of vulnerability that don't look forced. Of course, all in all, it makes her downward spiral to depression and death even more depressing, and contributes heavily to her children's depressing stories. When Genealogy got its first dedicated banner in Fire Emblem Heroes, Tailtiu ended up being featured in the main banner alongside Sigurd and Deirdre and as the game ages, Tailtiu has been considered an easily accessible, yet still powerful mage unit (as opposed to other rarer blue mage units, including her niece Ishtar below) thanks her personal Tome of Thoron, and received unanimous praise for it (as opposed to the original game where accessibility was a lot of times considered a problem for her).
    • Arthur and Tine for their depressing backstory and respective snark and Moe. Tine also gets a very gradual Character Development from a textbook Shrinking Violet to a proper Silk Hiding Steel, making her also well beloved.
    • Amid and Linda are perhaps the most lauded replacement children of the lot, so much so that sometimes, Tailtiu is considered an acceptable sacrifice (to get killed off or get through the 1st generation childless) because there is a chance Amid & Linda could turn out better than Arthur & Tine, and they're the only replacement children that aren't just some random faces (being part of the Freige house, and even mentioning Tailtiu in the final chapter). Their characterizations—Amid being a cool, fairly badass yet rational revenge-seeker with a clear, understandable motivation, and Linda being a chipper Plucky Girl who wants to do the right thing despite the chaos engulfing her family and feeling a bit torn on Amid's quest for revenge—also help a lot, and Linda being cute as a button◊ also helps a lot. Not to mention, Tailtiu's fate as well as Tine's suffering is considered to be one of the most depressing moments in Fire Emblem history, and sparing them that can seem merciful. Although it is debatable whether or not Linda is better than Tine or vice versa.
    • On the villains’ side is Ishtar and her brother Ishtore. Both are tragic antagonists who need to be defeated, with Ishtar being the Camus of the generation and having a close role to the Big Bad Julius, and Ishtore being the Small Role, Big Impact minor boss that drives part of the conflict for everyone in the Friege nobility. Ishtar gets a very special mention though, as she placed the highest of all characters in the game in the second round of Heroes's "Choose Your Legends" poll at 43rd.
  • Ced, for being memetic-levels of badass and for being a Hero of Another Story in his own right.
  • Other popular substitutes people enjoy are Muirne, Hawk, and Laylea. Muirne for how she's a mere commoner in a wide-scale Holy War and still able to keep up while having an arguably deeper relationship with Seliph than Lana, and Hawk for being almost as powerful as Ced despite being a substitute and just being cool. Both were rather high in the "Choose your Legends" poll by substitute standards. Laylea wasn't that high in the CYL votes, but people enjoy her in the same way as Amid and Linda, considering her being able to be more superior than Lene as well as looking like a mature dancer in the same way as Tethys. Thus far, Muirne tends to be the top voted Substitute Character whenever Fire Emblem Heroes had their annual Choose Your Legends event, while she might not surpass a majority of children characters, she already cemented herself as an Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Arden is usually the butt-end of weak jokes thanks to being an Armor Knight in Horse Emblem, having no Holy Blood, and his homely appearance, often leading to him being forgotten after a few chapters. Despite this, in the first "Choose your Legends" poll, he ended up being the third-most popular character from this game, just behind Sigurd and Ayra. Out of nowhere, he's also one of the first Jugdral characters added into Fire Emblem Heroes, though not in the official Holy War banner.
  • In spite of being seen as a Low-Tier Letdown by some, Patty does have a sizable amount of popularity among fans. Like Joshua, we suspect it's the hat.
  • Regardless of one's opinion towards Lachesis and Leif, one thing that many agree upon is the Master Knight class is really awesome. Interesting for Magikarp Power character tropes in Fire Emblem series, the Master Knights are popular for both casual, and hardcore fanbase of the series. For casuals, Master Knight is one of the most satisfying and over the top character classes in the series thanks to their amazing stats and coolness of the instant ability to use almost every weapon ^note In this game, weapon ranks are gained per class change instead of having to grind for them, further encouraging players to experiment with Master Knights and assign them into multiple roles. For hardcore players, Master Knights are one of few units who require extensive babying that is absolutely worth it. Thanks to the combination of their versatility and the ability to use any utility staves on horseback, getting a Master Knight as fast as possible is crucial for low turn counts and efficiency runs.
• Epileptic Trees: A common fan theory is that Ishtar is pregnant, and that shapes her decision to march onto Seliph's army alone in the endgame. If she really wanted to avenge her family, she'd have a greater chance by fighting beside Julius. If she wanted to keep their child from becoming Loptous' next vessel but didn't want to turn on her lover, well, then it suddenly makes sense.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Battle of Belhalla is sometimes 'affectionately' nicknamed 'BBQ Party', since it involves an 'invitation' and something getting burned.
  • Genealogy of the Holy War has been referred to several times as A Song of Ice and Fire Emblem or Fire Emblem: Game of Thrones because of its heavy slant towards political intrigue and morally ambiguous characters, plus hero-killing and incest. Interestingly enough, the A Game of Thrones book was released a scant three months after Genealogy of the Holy War.
  • Genealogy of the Holy War is commonly referred as "Horse Emblem" or "Genealogy of the Holy Horse", as the huge maps encourage using cavalry units for their high movement.
  • "The Murder Twins" for Larcei and Scáthach, two of Ayra's children who will often rack up a lot of kills, just like their mother.
  • "Horseti" for a Forseti-wielding Arthur, since a high-mobility killing machine is pretty memorable.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Because Seliph and Julia are actually half-siblings, they can't be paired up through normal means, but rather start at a nearly full relationship meter that gradually decreases. Despite this, many fans prefer to pair them together as there are many Ship Tease moments between the two, mostly in the form of Shipper on Deck comments. Also, it is technically possible to circumvent the decreasing love meter by exploiting a glitch in the "jealousy" system.
  • If you take account on characterization, not gameplay prowess (in which any pair is fair game), you're more likely to see the pairs of Lex/Ayra, Azelle/Tailtiu and Finn/Lachesis among fanarts that pair the ladies with their prospect husbands. (To compare with some other suitors: Chulainn is often forgotten since he's out of the way, Lewyn already has a canon wife according to Thracia 776 (Erinys), Dew is typically used a pick-up father for any remaining pairing that has a unmounted sword-wielding child, and Beowolf is something of a Base-Breaking Character). Because of Azelle/Tailtiu, Edain's Fan-Preferred Couple tends to boil down between either Jamke or Midir, neither pairing having a clear lead over the other. Some of these pairings were referenced in Kaga's Notes and even used in the Mitsuki Oosawa manga, which further boosted fan-preference for them.
  • A particular case is Brigid: Because only one of her three predestined pairings (Jamke) is considered to be somewhat decent (and even so, he has his flaws, such as giving Febail low accuracy, or giving Patty the somewhat counter-productive Charge skill), an entire slew of Fan Preferred Couples have sprung up, the most popular of which are probably Brigid/Dew, Brigid/Lex and Brigid/Chulainn.
  • Going against the first sub-bullet, there are some who still considered Lewyn/Tailtiu their OTP for Tailtiu, since Lewyn is one of the Game Breakers of the first gen, and the pairing will result in Forseti falling into Arthur's hands; both of them being foot units, and arguably easier to pair together than Azelle and Tailtiu (since Azelle becomes mounted upon promotion, and tends to outpace Tailtiu), certainly helps, as does the dialogue between Lewyn and their daughter Tine, which is one of the few times he shows any emotional vulnerability during the second generation. On top of all this is the fact that Tailtiu and Lewyn appeared in Fire Emblem Heroes much sooner than Azelle and Erinys did.
  • In the second generation, you have fans pairing Seliph with Tine due to the couple drawing many parallels to Sigurd and Deirdre, which Tine lampshades herself in her lovers conversation with Seliph in the final chapter. Since Seliph's journey is supposed to be a reconstruction of Sigurd's, Tine rejecting Seliph's offer to stay back at home from the final battle seems to be coming full circle considering a very similar situation happened to his parents that obviously did not end well. Additionally, many fans see this in a catharsis light as well: Tine was abused to hell and back by Hilda for no apparent reason other than sadism while Hilda continued to desire for a higher position in royalty by pressuring her own daughter Ishtar to marry Julius for the position. Pairing Tine with Seliph, who would end up being the new Emperor of Grannvale, was basically a middle finger to Hilda's desires by having Tine gain all that Hilda coveted after years of her abuse.
  • Shannan/Oifey has a small following, primarily as an alternative to the below-mentioned Squick of having them end up with girls half their age (or, in Shannan's case, his cousin), and also because the idea of them essentially becoming Seliph's two dads is quite sweet.
• Game-Breaker:
  • If you play your cards right with the pairings in the first generation of Genealogy, you can end up with a whole army of Game Breakers. Justified, since most people wouldn't have a clue on their first time through that pairing people up was actually extremely important, never mind which pairings were good or bad, and the game doesn't take it easy on you, so the few couples that the game does push on you (i.e. Lewyn/Erinys) result in characters that have to take up the slack for the generic replacements.
  • Special mention goes to any magic user who inherits Forseti, the resident overpowered tome that grants tremendous speed to the user and dishes out phenomenal damage, especially Ced or Arthur.
  • Lex is a goldmine of Disc-One Nukes; he comes at turn 2 of the very start of the game with Paragon (which doubles experience gain), gets a Brave Axe near the end of Chapter 1 if you know where to look, and is arguably the best father in the game, as he passes down his Paragon skill to both of his children, along with minor Nál blood and solid growths. He's one of the biggest ways to make both generations much easier.
  • Sigurd is considered one of the best units in the entire franchise, given his ridiculous power, high growths, excellent mobility, and tendency to snowball almost instantly. Jokes about how it's rumored there are other playable characters in Generation 1 are pretty common.
  • The second generation is full of potentially broken units, but most would probably agree that Ares takes the cake, even though he isn't even a customizable character. Between his 90% strength growth, his immediately starting off with a Holy weapon, and his powerful skill load-out (Pursuit, Continue/Adept, and, with Mystletainn equipped, Critical), he has some of the best offense in the entire game (and this is a game filled with offensively overpowered units). He also starts with a horse and access to a second weapon type, giving him all the strategic versatility one can dream of. Statistically, his biggest weakness (low skill) is being compensated for by Mystletainn (+20 skill), so speed is really his only concern, and his starting stats are actually very solid. On top of that, he also boasts the Ambush/Vantage skill, which, combined with above-mentioned overpowered offense makes him almost un-killable by enemy melee units when he has Mystletainn equipped. And on top of all that, he is also one of the very few units with good Resistance, so when the game in the last two chapters suddenly starts throwing powerful mages and staff users at you, he is one of the few units not forcibly relegated to a supporting role.
  • A rare case of an item being considered a Game Breaker within the series: the Thief's Band, found in a village late in Chapter 8. Getting to the village is a daunting task though; apart from the fact that a Brigand begins assaulting the village the moment it becomes available to access, there's an enemy Thief Fighter near the village who not only steals your unit's gold upon a successful hit, but is also armed with a Wing Clipper to intimidate your flyer (Fee/Hermina) from approaching. Provided that you endured these obstacles, the item is all yours. The Thief's Band automatically grants the Steal skill (a skill normally exclusive to the Thief class line) to the user while it is in the user's inventory, allowing them to steal gold from every enemy they strike without needing to use the weak and inaccurate Thief Sword. This means that if a unit successfully survives a round of enemy phase, their pockets will be filled with the enemy's cash, letting them easily afford expensive items or repairs in the shop. Giving this bad boy to powerful frontline units such as Ares or your Forseti user, and now repairing your expensive Holy Weapons becomes significantly a non-issue.
• Gameplay Derailment:
  • Seliph and Julia were not supposed to be pairable. They have a negative love growth, and it's later revealed that they're half-siblings. But that didn't stop many players from exploiting glitches (most commonly the jealousy mechanic) to make them lovers, as the two are commonly teased together.
  • It is theoretically possible through Save Scumming to make sure that Quan and Ethlyn continuously dodge and/or kill the Thracian dragon knights pursuing them and actually survive in chapter 5. This will eventually result in them making their way to Phinora castle and seizing it, though the game will continue on as if they died anyway.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Sigurd is a very popular Lord to western fans, as he is often considered a badass exceeding that of other lords well-loved in the west such as Hector and Ike, and western fans tend to see his son Seliph as something of a minor Replacement Scrappy. Japanese fans, on the other hand, prefer Seliph to his father, due to his relatively kinder nature and that his own badass cred is earned rather than being right there in the beginning.
• Goddamned Boss: Any boss with Great Shield/Pavise can be rather annoying to deal with—the skill provides a percentage chance equal to the boss's level to simply ignore an attack. The only way to circumvent this is the Nihil skill, which is fairly uncommon in the first generation, and it's a class skill of Generals and Barons, which are both incredibly sturdy to begin with. One of the most infamous cases of this, though, is Bordeaux, one of the bosses in Chapter 2, who needs to be beaten quickly to unlock access to a number of highly valuable villages (one of which contains the incredibly valuable Bargain Band). Due to both his natural bulk and his Pavise skill, sometimes he can just... refuse to die for a few precious turns, leaving those villages to burn down.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Silvia's first conversation with Sigurd is pretty funny, until you look up her age and find out she's fourteen... and then think about the Hooker with a Heart of Gold implications from before and the "special dance" she offers to Alec. (Which is confirmed in a roundabout way when Silvia explains her backstory in the Oosawa manga.) Even for a medieval setting, the idea of a girl that young making her living like that is both cringeworthy and depressing.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Seliph tells Lana "Nuns and warfare do NOT mix!" at the start of Chapter 6. Fire Emblem: Awakening would later introduce the War Cleric class, and resulting NUNSWITHAXES meme.
  • The jokes and criticism about how overly reliant the game is on mounted units becomes extremely funny after the release of Fire Emblem Heroes, where the meta was once dominated by a a team composition called Horse Emblem due to how powerful teams of mounted units were. And true to form, Sigurd makes his debut with a treasure trove of skills that make him a defensive powerhouse, all while mounted on horseback. Meanwhile, his son Seliph isn't a mounted unit and was considered one of the single worst units in the game until his Tyrfing got a major overhaul with refinements, as well as his legendary variant made him into a cavalry unit.
• Ho Yay: Shannan, to the point of being Ambiguously Gay. His conversation in chapter 7 where he remarks on Seliph finally "growing some muscle" and then getting distracted all the time certainly raises a few eyebrows, especially contrasted with his unfazed reaction to Patty/Daisy's and Larcei/Creidne's attempts to flirt with him. This becomes particularly interesting when you remember that Shannan was a Hero-Worshipper of Sigurd during the first generation...
• It Was His Sled:
  • Even if you don't know much about the game, there's a good chance you already know that the ending of Chapter 5 leads to Sigurd and almost everyone else in your army being murdered. It's such a huge twist that it overshadows almost every other aspect of the narrative, especially since the game's lack of any official translations make it one of the most obscure Fire Emblem titles.
  • Julia is Seliph's half-sister.
• Jerkass Woobie: Depending on your interpretation, Lewyn in Gen 2. While generally the harshest among Seliph's army and not a particularly pleasant person (he's not going to win any parenting awards if Ced and Fee are his kids, for sure), his life is fairly depressing after the Battle of Belhalla: he actually did die in that battle, his mother is soon killed, his wife is likely dead by the present depending on who she is (canonically, Erinys), he had to abandon his family and his beloved country (with Thracia 776 mentioning that the people of Silesse now hate him for that), and his uncaring attitude could very well just be a facade in an attempt to cut off his ties with the world. At the end of the game, it's entirely possible he goes back to being dead, and even if not, Word of God notes in an interview that it's impossible for him to go back to his old life.
• Love to Hate: What Manfroy did is very horrible, but at the same time, he's such a master planner that it becomes a quality for his villain credit. It also helps that Manfroy is effectively the Evil Counterpart to the player themselves in a meta sense: Leading a band of fanatically loyal supporters in a war across the continent, defeating his enemies that numerically outnumber him through careful strategizing, and pairing up two people in order to breed super-powerful second generation children sounds suspiciously like what the player themselves is probably doing all along.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Even by the literally-sluggish standards of his class, Arden is generally singled out as the worst unit in his game by an overwhelmingly massive margin, and contextually is one of the all-time worst armor knights in the entire series aside from Gwendolyn and Meg. He is an armor knight, which is already a disadvantage strategically for the player due to armor knights having poor move, but there have been plenty of other units and games that made the class avoid this fate due to meaningful (if inefficient) niches to be gained in even the class's worse performers. Arden, however, is a case made far worse by virtue of being in a game utterly infamous for its huge maps. His intended use is to defend the player's castles while everybody else fights on the frontlines, which is a completely superfluous advantage, since there should almost never be any situations where the player's castles are in any acute danger (and even then, one can simply teleport back a unit from the frontlines using the Return or Warp staves). Despite boasting a high HP, Strength and Defense score, he's also one of the offensively worst units in the game due to his complete lack of offensive combat skills, being stuck with nothing but a B-rank in swords until he promotes (locking him out of using silver swords, steel blades and even iron blades), and being one of the few units that genuinely struggles with accuracy due to his poor skill stat. Any attempt to make him useful requires holding back the rest of the party back both strategically (letting him catch up to the frontline) and tactically (as he usually needs to borrow stronger weapons from teammates, such as the Hero Sword, which is better served in the hands of literally everybody else who can wield it). He doesn't become much better once he's promoted, either. While there are many other units in the game that are considered sub-par or even bad, such as Hannibal and Iucharba, they can at least contribute by defeating fodder mooks without necessarily handicapping the rest of the party, and can meaningfully turn into powerhouses with enough investment and effort. Not Arden; even considering the fact he's an armor knight, the advantages he provided are so borderline nonexistent that the very act of trying to get him out of his rut gimps the rest of your army and doesn't even give you a powerhouse worth talking about. He's even one of the least used characters in the first generation's character pairing system, because another character, Lex, provides very similar, but generally superior benefits for his children.
• Magnificent Bastard: Orphaned at a tender age, Arvis of Velthomer managed to climb his way up the ladder of power and prestige. Once war and corruption threatens to tear Judgral asunder, Arvis aspires to construct a peaceful empire of equality. Although he employs ruthless methods like assassination and deceit, Arvis's dream is pure and admirable. Managing to claim land after land without much trouble through his machinations, Arvis caps off his conquest by slaying his last opposition, who he had outed as a traitor, in Belhalla. Crowned Emperor of Grannvale, Arvis makes the utopia he sacrificed so much for. When the second half of the plot proceeds to tear down his dream, Arvis does his best to subvert the Child Hunts, fight back against Manfroy's manipulations, and ultimately gives Seliph the Tyrfing needed to put an end to the evils plaguing Judgral. This shows that Arvis, while ambitious and unfettered, held enough standards to ensure his own sins were ultimately undone for the sake of a better world.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Ayra is considered by some to be the Action Girl of the series, being the first female Myrmidon-type^note the game was released before the name "Myrmidon" began to be used. She can easily be made a Game-Breaker if she's given the Brave Sword, which, combined with her Astra skill, can allow her to hit an enemy ten times in a row. Her kids are just as badass as she is.
  • Finn for being a badass in both games, not to mention the only character who is not only playable, but manages to survive the entirety of the game's events. Like Ayra, he can also get a Brave weapon, and his role in the story is pretty significant too. Some compared Finn to Marcus in this respect.
  • When arguing about broken Fire Emblem characters, Sigurd also gets mentioned a lot. His main competitor in this category is Seth. Unlike every other Lord in the series, Sigurd is a pre-premote and yet avoids being a Crutch Character.
  • Ced, or more specifically Forseti-wielding Ced. One LP of the game had the player commenting "Anyone who attacks Ced deserves to die, period." A Forseti-wielding Arthur is also regarded as this for a similar reason.
• Memetic Mutation: Shares a section with its interquel here.
• Moe: For a dark game, there's a lot of adorable girls to go around, most blatantly Sylvia, Tailtiu, and Tailtiu's daughter Tine.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Arvis brings the brainwashed and amnesiac Deirdre in front of her husband, Sigurd, to taunt him, just before he kills Sigurd and his entire army. And shortly beforehand, Travant assaults and slaughters Quan's entire army in a desert. The catch is, Travant's army are flying Wyvern Knights, Quan's army is made up of Cavalry hindered by the desert. Quan's beautiful wife Ethlyn got killed, her 3-year-old daughter Altena is captured by Travant and is used as a hostage so Quan drops the only thing that could save him: the Gae Bolg. Then Travant kills Quan in cold blood, and takes Altena and the Gae Bolg to Thracia.
  • When you were first introduced to Hilda on screen, you might think she's just a particularly sadistic duchess, but nothing special when you compared with others like Danan or Bloom. She even tried to make you think that she's just trying to preserve the Freege house reputation and also avenging her son Ishtore. Then you sent Tine/Linda to face her and she starts gloating happily about how she drove Tailtiu/Ethnia to her depressing death and rubbing it to their faces that she enjoyed every bit of it. That's the point that all her 'positive' points are swept over and everyone starts demanding her blood for righteous vengeance on those poor ladies.
• Narm:
  • Deirdre and Sigurd's romance goes beyond Fourth-Date Marriage. After meeting each other once, both of them are pining and a separation of just a few turns is enough for them to say things like "I was afraid I'd never see you again!" Even if you interpret 1 turn = 1 day, that's a pretty short time to be saying wistful things like "I tried to forget you" about a person you've known for ten minutes.
  • Midir's first lover conversation with Brigid is basically "Edain's got a twin! Score!" couched in more flowery terms. No wonder Brigid's Chapter 5 conversation is asking if she's just a Second Prize to him.
  • As if the narmification of the Battle of Belhalla via limited graphic quality wasn't enough, a very antiquated word usage in some fan translations ruins it all over again.
    Sigurd: ARVIS, YOU DASTARD!
  • While the sound direction and the script for the scene can be very heart-wrenching, the whole Battle of Belhalla (the incident mentioned above) is represented as tiny little Super-Deformed mages casting Meteor over an equally cutesy army Wha…?
    YT commenter: There's hardly a more faith-rocking experience than losing this many friends in one sitting. (...) Though, to be honest, the little Fire Emblem sprites of the mages casting Meteor are just a little too... cute... to truly affect any person. I'd love a remake of this game.
  • When Arvis executes Sigurd, it is strongly implied that Sigurd doesn't even try to fight back while he is being incinerated alive, due to being in catatonic shock over his wife Deirdre being brainwashed and taken away from him. In one of the intro cutscenes of the game (which reenacts Sigurd's execution scene with an in-game battle animation, at around 7:22) that can be unlocked after completing the game a certain number of times, not only did Sigurd survive a single hit from Valflame, but he also manages to gracefully jump towards Arvis on his horse and strike him with his Tyrfing, making it look as though Sigurd wanted to get in one last attack purely out of spite, making what is supposed to be a tragic scene unintentionally funny than it is supposed to be.
  • Many of the lovemaking scenes in Mitsuki Oosawa's manga adaptation are this, natch, as is Sigurd's ridiculously heartfelt declaration of love to Deirdre:
    Sigurd: A fate in which I cannot kiss you is a fate I will not recognize!
  • The Oosawa manga keeps up with the narm with its massive, terrible, downright hilarious levels of Off-Model. As in "yaoi hands"-level of it.
  • An earlier fan-translation had the placeholder text of "I'm supposed to say something if I'm alive here, but it hasn't been translated yet." This actually made its way into several Lets Plays of the game (including one on the Something Awful archive), so it became very jarring for a random character to suddenly break the fourth wall.
  • When Seliph speaks to the spirits of Deidre and Sigurd after slaying Arvis, he gets a Life Ring from them afterwards. This is humorously misinterpreted as Seliph finally "getting a life" after what was supposed to be a serious and emotional moment with his departed parents.
  • The chapter introduction screens showing the next leg of the journey on the map have been mocked for constantly introducing "new" characters with reused portraits and usually blatantly giving away which characters will end up being portrayed in a flattering light.
  • The combat walking animation for unmounted axe users has been described by many players as a crab walk. These threatening axemen suddenly lose a lot of menace.
• Never Live It Down:
  • One of Sigurd's most memorable, if not the most memorable, traits is being burned to death. This was even lampshaded by Sigurd himself in Fire Emblem Engage, where he mentions a painful memory with fire in his and Diamant's bond support.
  • Both of the first Generation Nordion's are synonymous with their actions. Lachesis for having at least 2 romantic relationships, Eldigan for being loyal to Chagall until it kills him, and both of them for the Brother–Sister Incest vibes (not helped by the Oosawa manga making it a major subplot).
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The infamous aftermath of Chapter 5. The battle is over... or so you think, then suddenly the entire army is decimated by a horrifying and fiery Death from Above via a Meteor shower. Not just Sigurd, but most of the army as well. The very idea of it or even trying to imagine it happening, given the limited hardware of the Super Nintendo, is quite chilling.
  • Oosawa's rendition of Sandima's Fenrir spell is really not pretty. Naoise is one of those struck down and has a horrifying case of Bad Black Barf. Worse, Ethlyn and Edain have no idea where to begin on healing it.
  • The Child Hunts. Children are forcibly taken from their families to be brought to the capital where they fight to the death and the losers are sacrificed to an evil god. The few survivors end up as nobles of the Empire... but in reality are little more than brainwashed pawns.
  • This woman named Hilda is one of the few cases of a Nightmare Fuel incarnate. She is an utter Sadist that delights in torturing other people for no apparent reason other than fetish, and even moreso if the political environment of Granvalle actually gave her excuse to indulge in it, and with that she had free reign to torture Tailtiu/Ethnia and their daughters Tine/Linda, with the former ending up breaking and killing the cute ladies, and even it is implied that she doesn't see her own family as highly as her children would think; since she constantly pressured Ishtar to marry Julius... mostly for her own sake of getting more glory. She jumps at the chance in doing the aforementioned Child Hunt, gleefully killed every parents (especially mothers) that dared to protect their children with no remorse at all, despite other nobles, including her husband Bloom, having reservations on it. And making it worse is that she absolutely had no excuse, even when compared to the Loptr Church members like even Manfroy, and the chances of psychopaths like her to exist in real life is also quite probable. While Child Hunts are everywhere, living in the vicinity of Miletos District, especially her headquarters in Chronos, is an utter nightmare with Hilda in charge, those villagers were right when they say that Hilda is more like a devil in human skin. She's a nightmare to the downtrodden and it is also a nightmare to have her as a family member.
  • While we don't see it, Jugdral's entire history is full of horrifying elements. The "Jugdral Chronology" that plays during the game's intro lists several events from Loptous' reign, including instances of mass murder with death tolls in the thousands. After Loptous' defeat, most its worshippers were driven underground to inhospitable places such as the Aed Desert, but as several villages reveal, actual or suspected worshippers were regularly rounded up and executed throughout the continent. While the only Loptr we see are unambiguously evil, Seliph's dialogue with Lewyn after conquering Aed also makes it clear that many in the sect were normal people worshipping Loptous because it was the only god they ever knew.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Genealogy is where the weapon/magic triangle and weapon ranks originate from, although Thracia 776 was the first game to use the "modern" weapon ranking system (ranks from E to A; weapon usage increases the rank). The biggest mechanic of all, though, is the marriage system that Fire Emblem: Awakening cranks up; due to the fact that all of the kids in the second generation had their classes set in stone, only a small selection of fathers are optimal for each child (admit it, are you really going to have Arden be Ced the Sage's father?), so anyone who knew of Awakening's marriage system first is in for quite a shock should they play Genealogy.
  • At the ending screen, you are given a final grade on your commanding performance which is affected by four stats during the game. One of those stats is affected by how fast you complete a chapter. So, by definition, Genealogy of the Holy War predates Advance Wars by five years in its introduction of the ranking system.
• Player Punch:
  • In Chapter 5, it is quite painful to watch Quan and Ethlyn ambushed and cut down in the Yied Desert. Your army is, by then, technically in the area — but there is no way to reach them in time. And that's just the start of the hits in this chapter. In which all of the characters you played are killed off. For fans of these characters, it made them really look forward to have Leif or Finn personally kill the culprit, Travant, in Chapter 9, to hell with his sympathetic motives. Same goes with Seliph killing Arvis in Chapter 10 for the latter tragedy.
  • A lot of players usually mourn at the fate that befell Tailtiu. The cheeriest girl from the first generation received the most depressing death, being taken away from home and horribly abused by her sister-in-law, partially to protect her daughter, until she couldn't help but cry at every day, and died due to illness contracted by the abuse and her despair as a shadow of her former self. Even those who thought that she's a bad unit for her generation will think that her death is depressing, and said sister-in-law likes to gloat about enjoying such torture... which makes the players feel more obligated to have Tailtiu's children take bloody vengeance upon her.
  • The Sadistic Choice regarding Eldigan's fate: you either fight him or have Lachesis talk to him. No problem, right? Talking to an enemy unit usually spares them—nope, talking to him means sending him back to what ultimately gets him executed. Lawful Stupid he may have been, but it can still be a bit of a punch, knowing that he was one of Sigurd's best friends and remembering how earlier in the game he went out of his way to protect Evans and take out Elliot's army on Sigurd's behalf. All in all, it makes you want to send someone, specifically either Sigurd or Lachesis, to stab the ever-loving crap out of Chagall in the face. Repeatedly.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Thieves in Fire Emblem 1 and 3 suffered strongly from their function being useful, but ultimately a liability long-term as deploying one meant babysitting a unit who couldn't promote or make up for their lack of combat prowess. This game introduced the Thief Fighter promotion, allowing them to hold their own in combat so that you don't have to babysit units that can be taken out by Mooks, albeit all the playable Thieves do have a rocky start to overcome until they can become formidable fighters themselves, due to their very low strength and lack of Follow-Up. Future games (Notably Blazing Blade) would expand upon this.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The lack of item trading feature. Because units cannot just give each other items, they're forced to sell their items to the shop and have another unit buy it back at twice the price it was sold for. Units also have their own separate gold reserves that they can only trade to each other under very limited circumstances^note Lovers can give each other their gold, and thieves can give gold to other units, but can only receive gold from their lover, which means some units will end up perpetually strapped for cash if they need pricey items but aren't the ones who first acquired them, doubly so if they're poor fighters who can't earn gold in the arena.
  • This is to date also the only Fire Emblem game with no self-healing items (unless you count the Renewal/Life Ring), like Vulneraries or Elixirs. Instead there are awkwardly placed churches on the map that restore HP of units that stand on them at the end of the turn, but never seem to be where you need them, charge the unit's money and don't even provide an evasion bonus for the unit in question. This may not seem a big issue given the large number of units in this game that can use staves (and thus heal other units), but the first generation starts you off with only Ethlyn, who merely comes with a Heal staff and can't even bring up a single heavily damaged unit up to full health in a single turn due to her low magic. Your next option for healing won't appear until the central part of Chapter 1, when you get Edain. And since you are fighting almost exclusively axe-users who all hit like trucks, it is an exercise just to guarantee the survival of the entire army up until that point.
  • The marriage and children system in this game, which was phenomenal for its time, will likely come off as this to anyone who's played Awakening, due to a nifty dose of Early-Installment Weirdness. It's never made clear exactly how the love system works or which conversations give love points, meaning it's easy to accidentally end up with pairings you don't want. Only a very small set of pairings even get conversations, everyone else is Strangled by the Red String. There's a cut-off point for every 1st generation marriage that the game never tells you about because it involves a major plot twist, and not marrying or killing off a female results in you getting weak "substitute" characters later on. The children's classes are all fixed, so only a very small number of fathers are viable for each, and making the wrong pairings can result in some of them being outright useless, or render legendary weapons Permanently Missable
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • All magic that aren't Wind-based. The only difference between the three classes of magic is weight^note Attack Speed is determined by (Speed - equipped Weapon Weight), if player AS is 1 higher than enemy AS, the unit can double, assuming they have Follow-Up (or the Follow-Up Ring). The game does keep track of negative numbers, meaning an unit with -2 AS will double a unit with -3 AS. with Fire being the heaviest, Thunder being less so but still very heavy, and Wind being the lightest. There is literally no reason to use Fire or Thunder if Wind is available. Because of how heavy Fire magic is, it is much better to fight off Wind magic with Wind instead of with Fire for better hit-avoid matchups. As for the other tomes, Dark is enemy-only and what few Light tomes you get are also cripplingly heavy. Axes are also fairly bad due to similar weight issues, aside from the Brave Axe which is a hidden weapon in the first generation. It's telling that you never get the legendary Fire and Thunder tomes or the legendary axe, even when those kind of weapons can be strong in the hands of the enemy.
  • Lances, in the hands of the player with the exception of the Slim Lance, Brave Lance, and Gáe Bolg. Though one might expect them to be right in the middle of swords and axes, when it comes to weight, they skew much closer to the latter.^note The Iron sword weighs 3, compared to the Iron Lance's 12 (the Slim Lance instead weighs 6) and the Iron Axe's 18. This means that agile sword enemies can easily circumvent the weapon triangle disadvantage, and even magic swords end up being more effective for 1-2 range than Javelins, due to their light weight and the overall low Resistance of physical enemies. On the other hand, lance enemies can end up being the player's bane (especially in Chapters 2 and 9) since most playable characters wield swords, and the enemy doesn't need to care with their units dying as much as the players'.
  • In Chapter 6, the player is given the option of outfitting Julia with one of two weapons depending on which mini-boss' castle they capture first. Even though it makes much more sense for her to get her mother's Aura tome, almost everybody playing the game picks Nosferatu tome instead. Not only is it much lighter than Aura, its health-leeching effect (otherwise present only on the Lands Sword, which has much lower durability) turns Julia into an almost undefeatable combat unit, and, as a bonus, is also capable of bypassing enemy Generals' and Barons' Pavise skill.
• Shipping: It's a game mechanic in Genealogy. Who you pair up determines what characters, with what stats, you get in the second generation. Thus, Ship-to-Ship Combat is about mechanical benefits as much as it is about romantic chemistry and sex appeal.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: The Ishtar/Seliph pairing have been slowly getting traction from fans over the years. Despite Ishtar's questionable actions throughout the game, many people have created fanworks where she gets redeemed and even hope a potential remake goes for that direction, as well. The desire to pair Seliph with Ishtar comes from fans who wants to see their potential dynamic and others for the irony of Seliph stealing Ishtar from Julius not unlike how Arvis brainwashed and stole Deirdre from Sigurd a generation prior.
• Squick:
  • A lot of the incest can fall into this, with half-siblings Deirdre and Arvis marrying and having children (although Deirdre was hypnotized at the time and Arvis didn't find out that they were related until later in life) being the biggest, and arguably most well-known, example. Taken even further with Julia, who's all but stated to be in love with Seliph... her half-brother. Julia herself is the result of inbreeding (she's one of Deirdre's and Arvis' children), making this particular example worse. Yikes.
    • And the best part? Arvis remained heavily in love with Deirdre, even after discovering that they were related. This is the same guy who's implied to have something of an Oedipus Complex. Just look up pictures of Deirdre and Cigyun, Deirdre and Arvis' mother. They almost look identical...
  • In general, pairing Oifey and Shannan with any of the Second Generation girls can come off as this due to the big age gaps, with Oifey and Shannan being in their early thirties and most of the girls being in their teens. Shannan/Patty is probably the most common example, as they both join together in the same chapter with a base Love growth of 100, and the conversation where Patty gives Shannan the Balmung also gives 100 love points, so it's very easy for them to end up falling in love with each other.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Finn and Lachesis are pretty close to an Official Couple. The Oosawa adaptation of Genealogy goes in-depth into the relationship, Finn can have a conversation with Nanna if he's her father, and Thracia 776 drops some very strong hints that he and Lachesis were married before she vanished in the desert. The only thing is that during the time Finn and Lachesis are both playable in Genealogy, they have no love conversations the way other plotted pairings do. It comes off like the writers forgot to put that in there.
  • Many pairings in FE4 can come off as this, due to a lack of conversations or other hints of any relations.
• That One Boss:
  • All of the Mjölnir users, but the final Ishtar encounter especially (if only because she has the highest stats). The thing gives a meaty bonus to skill and speed, and coupled with its already high might, it's a force to be reckoned with. Still, you better get used to it, because you fight against it FIVE whole times across the game, and THREE of them are against Ishtar, the most unfair of them all.
  • Another surprisingly straight example is Prince Cimbaeth of Verdane in Chapter 1. Despite being only the third boss in the game, he is quite the Difficulty Spike. Being not only the first promoted boss (or enemy, period), but also the first boss capable of moving around is difficult enough on its own, but with his Silver Axe/Hand Axe combo he has exceptionally good equipment for coming so early in the game. His offensive stats are good enough that he can kill anybody (even Arden) in two hits and he is durable enough that even Sigurd with his Silver sword needs two entire rounds to kill him. And since he stands a 40%-odd chance of hitting even Sigurd, you better start praying. On top of this, he comes also at the end of a very large group of underlings that are very difficult to bottleneck, while your forces at this point have access to only a single mediocre healer (Ethlyn), meaning that you likely have to face him when your army is half-dead.
  • Zane and his knights in Chapter 2. He appears towards the end, and defeating him with no deaths is very difficult. Zane's knights are obnoxious, with at least 15 of them present to rush towards you while you plan a strategy to defeat them and the few options you have due to your mages or other units not having the mobility to take part in the battle and/or lacking the durability to take the enemy phase, and let's not forget that Zane himself has the Horseslayer, meaning that your knights, even Sigurd, will die if he attacks them and hits them. Alec is the only horse-rider immune to the bonus damage due to Nihil, but everyone will be in great danger. Oh, and there also are five Armor Knights with Javelins and three Ballistae. Be especially careful to how you try to move Erinys, as while she has a lot of speed, she's doomed if a ballista gets her.
  • Lamia in Chapter 4. She has an army that composes of four Myrmidons, including two with the Brave Sword, two archers with the Killer Bow and two Thunder Mages with Elthunder. She is also a Swordmaster with both Follow-Up and Adept, and by the time you fight her, it's likely that you didn't kill Pamela, and if she's still alive, she'll return to the castle where she came from with her squad, will go out with more Pegasus Knights if you killed some of them and will attack you. The Myrmidons with the Sleep Sword aren't too bad, but if a unit falls asleep is problematic, the archers could kill your units if they land a crit, making them a pain to deal with, the Thunder Mages are an absolute pain, with them badly injuring and killing your units, as most of them don't have the resistance to withstand them, and the Myrmidons with the Brave Sword are aggressive, fast and the most obnoxious of the bunch, as they will at least deal two hits, and most units won't have enough attack speed to avoid taking four hits. Lewyn can handle them, but even then, he's not too defensive and can't take too many physical attacks
  • Meng, Maybell, and Bleg, the trio of Falcon Knights fought in the final chapter, are considered one of the hardest combat encounters in the game. Each one has Follow-Up, Adept, Critical, and Nihil—that last one is particularly important, because it means they're immune to Critical Hits (which also serves as effective damage in this game), meaning you can't bring them down with arrows. They also have Leg Rings, so they're incredibly mobile, their stats are mostly maxed out, and they wield Lands Swords, which gives them both 1-2 range and Life Drain, and because they're enemies, their Lands Sword have infinite durability for permanent self healing. Meng has four Leadership Stars, so that's a pretty hefty chunk of Hit and Avoid on characters who already have ridiculous Speed and Skill. And because of the way they're set up, they tend to hit Dozel Castle first, then make their way southwest, chewing their way through any stragglers. Oh, and they can Triangle Attack. Pretty much the only unit that has even a chance against them is Forseti Ced, and warping him to Dozel will make it difficult to use him against anything else remaining in the final chapter.
• That One Level:
  • Chapter 1 has Verdane send large waves of axe-wielding units against the player's castle while the player only has a few sword-users and needs to protect Dew and Edain as they flee Marpha. The forests are a double-edged sword, as they offer greater protection but reduce movement. They start next to a village, and Dew can be left here, though Edain will require protection. There is also a mobile miniboss who, at that point, can only be fought by Sigurd. Then there is the challenge of recruiting Ayra and later Jamke, which requires very careful positioning so that they don't kill anyone or get killed before the person who recruits them is in position. Elliot fakes out the player by showing up at the top of the map when everyone is sure to be on the other side of it, which prompts new players to panic and try to hurl their units back home until Eldigan shows up (which could leave the weaker units critically exposed). It's a pretty rough level for newcomers.
  • Chapter 7 is another hard one due to how splintered the new recruits are and their distance via separation from Seliph's army. In order to save Shannan and Patty/Daisy you need to keep Shannan's evasion rate high enough so that he can dodge consistently with his high speed, with one method being banking on Balmung's insane stat boosts, and protect Patty/Daisy to keep the two of them alive until Seliph and co. arrive. Meanwhile Leif, Nanna/Jeanne, and Finn need to hold out against Bloom's army while ideally rescuing the many villages near Leonster, and unlike Shannan and Patty/Daisy, you won't be rescuing them for a while. And then there's Tine/Linda, who you can only recruit if you manage to get her brother Arthur/Amid close enough so that he can talk to her, and you also mustn’t hurt her so that her health falls at or below half or Wrath will activate and most likely kill one of your units. Another thing to note is that Bloom and Ishtore are huge threats at this point in the game, with Ishtore having both the Adept skill and Bolting while Bloom has Mjölnir, which, as referred to in That One Boss, makes him insanely powerful. This chapter is what Chapter 1 was to Gen 1, a difficult follow-up that demands a lot from the player in order to succeed.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Bargain Band in Chapter 2, where brigands from Anphony are destroying villages over the cliffside where you start. However, these brigands are coded as yellow units, making them unable to be attacked until you seize the first enemy castle, which then codes them as enemies. In the turn after that, you get two new units that are relatively nearby to handle the brigands, Lewyn and Sylvia. While Lewyn can easily 2-shot any of the brigands, he does not have Follow-Up, meaning in order for him to one-round them, he needs to bank on crits, Adept procs, or requires Sylvia to be close to him enough to give him another turn. However, the Bargain Band is in the farthest village to the left that is attacked, through many forest tiles which require more movement, which requires Sylvia's help for the first turn in getting there in a few turns (most likely 5 or 6) before the brigand burns the entire village down. Obtaining it this early into the game is hair-tearingly difficult due to how much limited time you have to reach it, and the possible RNG you need to have. You practically have to rush the entire first half of the map in order to get it, which is not easy as it requires getting through two very beefy armies and two ballistae that pressure you from afar. If you fail to get the Bargain Band or no children inherit it, you can't get it again until Chapter 7.
  • To get the Knight Ring at the end of Chapter 2, the three NPC knights who form Lachesis' retainer must still be alive. The first difficulty is Heirhein's army, which is big enough to overwhelm them despite the fact that they are promoted units. The second is their own AI, which is programmed to attack any enemy unit that steps into their range (and being mounted units, this is large). The player has to either keep Lachesis well back, sacrificing valuable experience, rush the battle line ahead to try and support their Leeroy Jenkins charges, or decide the Knight Ring isn't worth the trouble.
  • Getting the Lands Sword in Chapter 3. Lachesis has to talk to Eldigan and persuade him to leave the field. Eldigan's Cross Knights are equipped with Steel Swords and Javelins and he has five leadership stars to boost them and the Mystletainn. At this point, Lachesis is probably still a foot unit, and shepherding her up to her brother before he and his knights kill her or someone else (or several people) is no mean feat. It's especially problematic with Eldigan, since he's promoted, fast and strong and Critical and the Mysteltainn make him crit a lot, which will likely be fatal for whoever attacks is involved in combat against him.
  • While it pales in comparison to a number of Thracia 776's recruitments, Coirpre/Charlot and Hannibal are probably the worst offenders in Genealogy of the Holy War. Both of them are in Chpater 9. Hannibal is a free-roaming boss; the actual castle he guards is staged by an Elite Mook. Like most castles, any units attached to that castle still standing when you take it are automatically killed. It's made clear, however, that Hannibal is not exactly a willing participant, as his adoptive son was kidnapped and used as an hostage to blackmail him. You have to keep some units to distract his men (note that this is the castle closest to your own, which if taken is an automatic game over) while Seliph and others go past to the next castle, take that, and rescue Coirpre/Charlot, then head back to talk to Hannibal. Killing Hannibal before rescuing Coirpre/Charlot will cause him to freak out and not join your party. This is the first time in the whole game that multiple castles have been around as viable targets, except briefly in Chapter 6 when both Iuchar and Iucharba are still enemies, so it might not immediately be obvious that you can do this. It won't be the last time.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Jamke's relevance to the plot largely ends after Chapter 1, wherein he defects from Verdane because he can't condone the war his father and brothers are waging. This is a shame, given that chapters 2 and 3 revolve around Eldigan's own struggles with My Country, Right or Wrong. Given that Jamke had faced the exact same choice, one would expect that he might express some opinion on the situation. It also hurts Jamke that he lacks any major Holy Blood, meaning he lacks any chance to wield a special weapon, and in Genealogy, units without Holy Blood are generally left to the side narratively as well.
  • Aside from the final lover dialogue and the beginning scene, Naoise does not get any other dialogues (as opposed to Arden who gets several extra scenes lamenting how much he's the butt of joke of things, or Alec who gets a chance to show off his pervert personality with Silvia).
  • Chulainn has exactly three lines in the game, two of which make him basically Ayra's Satellite Love Interest.
  • Beowulf has more hints to his past revealed in Thracia 776 where he is a barely-mentioned Posthumous Character than in this game.
  • In the second generation, Oifey and Shannan as Seliph's mentors end up getting sidelined in favor of Lewyn despite having basically raised him.
  • Many of the 2nd generation male characters (Scáthach, Lester, and Diarmuid are standouts, especially the latter, as he's the only child unit who doesn't have a Lover's conversation in the final map besides Lene, and even she has more character than him) have very little character beyond a certain attachment to their sister.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Most of the game manual art can fall into this really hard due to the varying levels of quality. While several, such as Arvis and Sigurd look amazing, some like Ayra◊ and Edain◊ have freakishly huge eyes, and a massive forehead that just doesn't look natural, and others like Lex◊ and Quan◊ look absolutely ridiculous and Off-Model.
  • On the boxart, something about Seliph's face looks... off and unnatural-looking.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Eldigan. The game sets up a tragedy across two chapters about the Sadistic Choice he faces vis-a-vis his honor and the good of Agustria, with him choosing to serve his king to the end and passing up an opportunity to take the throne himself. Unfortunately, the game already did that with Prince Jamke of Verdane one chapter ago and Jamke decided that his personal sense of honor was less important than preventing his country from destroying itself with a bloody and unprovoked war. Furthermore, Chagall is Obviously Evil, insults and mistreats Eldigan, and has Nordion attacked by an army led by a man who would have almost certainly raped Lachesis had Sigurd not intervened—compared to Batu, Jamke's beloved father who regretted his actions. Although both princes ultimately lost their countries to Grannvale's imperial annexation, Jamke's swift decision to sacrifice his good name for his country's welfare can undercut the sympathy the writers want players to feel for Eldigan.
  • Arion as well. Even Altena remarks that he comes across more as a deluded egoist than the Noble Top Enforcer he is made out to be. While the narrative (and Altena) insists that he is normally a kind and reasonable man, the fact that he doesn't appear at all before chapter 8 means that there isn't a lot of evidence for this, and the most kindness he shows while on-screen is a vague hesitation to kill his sister. Otherwise, the only things he does is sacrifice his soldiers' lives for the sake of a goal that even his father has given up on at that point, and pressure Altena to fight against her will, which makes him come across as a Manipulative Bastard, especially since he seems to be aware of her true heritage. Likewise, Thracia 776 tried to salvage his characterization a little, and arguably succeeded better, despite his relative lack of screen time in said game.
  • Arvis. It's a bit hard for certain players to see through his genuine desire for peace and succeeding in achieving such era (a good, orderly empire beloved by all where equality reigns supreme), and eventually realizing he screwed up so badly that he's doing whatever he can to minimize the problem he created... if it isn't for how his most shining moment is basically his own Moral Event Horizon: The Battle of Belhalla, where he tricks Sigurd into a trap which ends with his death, and shortly before that, shows that he has taken Sigurd's wife Deirdre as his own wife. It's considered such an extremely petty and dickheaded move for some that they cannot see Arvis as an Anti-Villain at all, seeing his death as a Catharsis Factor when Seliph certainly doesn't feel that way in the end.
• War Ship: Ayra's fight with Lex in the Oosawa manga reeks with this, not helping that the two's respective kingdoms were at war with each other, yet they still develop their relationship despite it. Some might see this as a precedent for two more axe male and sword female pairings; the optional Hector and Lyn and the set-in-stone Bartre and Karla, both from The Blazing Blade.
• The Woobie: This game has plenty of them, given the Crapsack World that Jugdral becomes. Special mentions below:
  • It pretty much sucks big time if you are a heroic character from House Friege.
    • Tailtiu: Starts out as a super cheery, devil-may-care Genki Girl that has the markings of a Plucky Girl. The pluckiness starts to shatter the instant her father brands her a traitor along with Sigurd and she felt that her childhood friend Azel is the only one she can turn to. It breaks again when confronting her father and eventually losing contact with her husband after the Battle of Belhalla. Then she gets kidnapped with her infant daughter Tine to Freege, losing contact with her son Arthur, and broken beyond belief due to the torture and abuse of Hilda just to protect little Tine that she degenerated into a depressed woman that dies losing her will to live.
    • Tine: See above. The prospect of being kidnapped since infant age, seeing her mother die protecting her, and spending the rest of her childhood taking further abuses by Hilda now that Tailtiu is gone (like being called 'traitor's daughter'), and Bloom still acting like a controlling uncle instead of protecting her... it's not doing any favors for Tine's insecure self. It was a good thing that there were some kind souls like Ishtar and Ishtore to prevent her going off the rockers. The same also applies for Linda, who takes Tine's role if Talitiu died or had no children.
    • Arthur: Unlike any other children, Arthur pretty much had his life as a normal child robbed from him at the tender age of 7, including the kidnapping of his mother and sister. Other children may have their noble upbringing (Ced/Fee), being in an Orphanage of Love (Seliph & co, Febail/Patty, Lene), be in a good retainer/parent's hands (Leif, Nanna, Julia (yes, Arvis and Deirdre were very kind to her before things went to hell)), or be Happily Adopted (Coirpre). Arthur only had a stranger old lady that picked him up and the rest, he had to fend for himself since young age, shaping up his 'cold' self as mentioned. The same also applies for Amid, who takes Arthur's role if Tailtiu died or had no children.
  • Altena: Kidnapped as an infant by Travant, the man who murdered her parents, and raised to believe that she's his daughter, with the Nea Fuyuki manga suggesting that she had a very unhappy (if not outright abusive) childhood with Arion as her only support. Either way, by the present, she's a Broken Bird, and the bomb that Leif drops on her doesn't help, seeing as how it shakes up everything she's known and pits her against Arion, her Implied Love Interest.
  • Sigurd himself: Gets framed for regicide and capital treason, manipulated into laying the groundwork for The Empire, has his wife kidnapped, brainwashed, and married off to Arvis, one of his only remaining allies, his father dies right in front of him, and he is betrayed by Arvis in his final moment of triumph. And when Arvis is through with him, what's left of him wouldn't fill a matchbox. For the next seventeen years, he is remembered as a traitor and a villain, and his name is only cleared when his son Seliph is able to rise up, clean up his mess, and stop the villains.
  • Finn. After the Wham Episode, he spends the entire timeskip protecting Leif and enduring all the hardship on the way. Come Thracia 776 and its canon, and he would also lose his wife. Even then, Altena and the Gáe Bolg still remain missing (until chapter 9, that is) and his work is still not done. Sure, he's playable in both generations, but that just means he endures more crap.
• Woolseyism: Most characters' names are Japanese renditions of various figures from Nordic or Celtic mythology. With the release of Fire Emblem: Awakening, the localization team is rendering many of them as the original names (e.g. Sigurd and Deirdre, rather than Zigludo and Diadora). On the other hand, some of the changes (Raquesis? Quan?) seem to be just rendering the Japanese renderings back again and making them weirder. It got better once Fire Emblem Heroes was released and did much the same, (e.g. Chulainn and Diarmuid, rather than Holyn and Delmud), as well as retconning Raquesis and Ulster back into Lachesis and Scáthach, respectively.

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