Fire Emblem Jugdral/YMMV

": ", YOU DASTARD!""
 * Anticlimax 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 an MK Walker where he's not a full-on SNK Boss. It is still entirely possible to kill him without Naga, but it requires a lot of patitence, 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 (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 Duel, 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).
 * A straight example on the other hand is Manfroy. 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.
 * 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.
 * 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."
 * Complete Monster: The game is really good at this.
 * Queen Hilda of Freege.
 * Bishop Manfroy is responsible, directly or indirectly, for almost everything that happens in the plot, to the point that he's pretty much the game's Big Bad.
 * First Generation: he manipulated various rulers and dukes, causing the war against Isaac by, while also . During this time, he worked primarily with , whom he was blackmailing with knowledge of . Later, he . And as the cherry on top, he.
 * Second Generation: a while before it started, he, and also . And after all of that? . Go. To. HELL. Manfroy.
 * Duke Danann isn't much better. He runs the entire country of Isaach straight into the ground by the time the second generation starts.
 * Crack Pairing: In Genealogy of the Holy War, 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 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: This is the only sub-franchise that never enjoyed big international exposure (while Roy's tale was never released, he did make an appearance in Super Smash Bros.) and as of yet hasn't been updated to a more recent generation. However, it remains to have a strong following.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: This timeline in general, Genealogy of Holy War amongst titles, and Ayra.
 * Fan-Preferred Couple:
 * 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 amongst fanarts that tried to pair the ladies with their prospect husbands (to compare with some other suitors: Chulainn is often forgotten since he's kind of optional, 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 Midayle, both of them not having a clear lead yet. Note: some of them got used for the Mitsuki Oosawa manga, which also further boosted the preference for these couples.
 * 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.
 * Foe Yay: Ayra's fight with Lex in the Oosawa manga reeked with this, not helping that the two's respective kindgoms were at war with each other, yet they still develop their relationship despite of 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.
 * Franchise Original Sin: For some folks. It was the first game to feature character pairing as a major mechanic (and even a story beat), which even in the 90s led to quite a bit of "shipping wars" in Japan, and pretty much forced The Binding Blade onwards to at least have the "support" mechanic (often explicitly romantic) and later served as the basis for Awakening and Fates using versions of the same pairing system, leading to the birth of names like "Shipping Emblem" and "Waifu Simulator". It still makes perfect sense for this game, but there are very old-school fans who feel it began a trend of drifting the series away from epic tales of conflict to the more "shipping"-focused stories of the 21st century.
 * Game Breaker: If you play your cards right with the pairings in the first generation, 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.
 * Special mention goes to any magic user who inherits Holsety. Especially Sety 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 Neir blood and solid growths. He's one of the biggest ways to make both generations much easier.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Despite being a fan-favorite among English speaking Fire Emblem communities, Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu gave the Jugdral games the lowest review scores of the Fire Emblem series.
 * Famitsu might not have liked them, but Genealogy of the Holy War was the best-selling Fire Emblem game ever in Japan. Thracia 776 didn't sell very well, but then again, it was released for the SFC in 1999 and in regular cartridge form in 2000, being the second to last SNES game. (for reference, the Nintendo 64 debuted in 1996).
 * Which makes it more of a 8.8 then.
 * No, Japan loves it too.
 * It Was His Sled: The ending of Gen 1 in which seems to be known by everyone now.
 * Jerkass Woobie: It's not clear how Woobie-licious Arvis is, but it's undeniable that the man's life sucked balls ever since he was a child. His portrayal in the Oosawa manga is quite sympathetic too. Read chapters 8 and 11 to see how.
 * Memetic Mutation:
 * "I kill Tailto for Linda"..
 * And Ferry? She. Has. FURY!!
 * Moe: For a dark game, there's a lot of adorable girls to go around, most blatantly Silvia, Tailtiu and then her daughter Tine.
 * Moral Event Horizon: . And shortly beforehand,.
 * Narm:
 * As if the narmification of the via limited graphic quality wasn't enough, a very antiquated word usage in some fan translations ruins it all over again.


 * It doesn't help that the whole (the incident mentioned above) is represented as . Wha…?
 * Older Than They Think:
 * Genealogy of the Holy War 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 to Eleven: 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 Fire Emblem Awakening's marriage system first is in for quite a shock should they play Genealogy of the Holy War.
 * 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.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: Dismounting in Thracia 776, Knights specializing only in Lances spontaneously losing their ability to use their Weapon of Choice and being forced to use Swords when they get off a horse is completely illogical. This also turns makes all of the Lances acquired Vendor Trash in the later chapters.
 * Shipping: It's a game mechanic in Genealogy of the Holy War. 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 sex appeal.
 * Strangled by the Red String:
 * Finn and Lachesis are pretty close to an Official Couple. The Oosawa adaptation of Genealogy of the Holy War 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 Fin and Lachesis are both playable in Genealogy of the Holy War, 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 Fire Emblem 4 can come off as this due to lack of conversation or even hint of any relations.
 * That One Boss: All of the Mjolnir 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.
 * That One Level: Chapter 1 is seen by many as a very difficult level despite being the first non Prologue level. The main setup of the level is that Verdane sends a large wave of Fighters and a few Warriors to attack your castle, meaning you'll need to deploy your army to counter them. However, while that is already difficult since you have only a few sword users, you also have the addition of Dew and Edain, who are attempting to flee the Verdane's main castle, prompting them to send a second smaller army of the same units to kill the two. The level quickly turns into a race to safely get to Edain and Dew before they are swarmed and killed, something that is borderline Guide Dang It because you have to make your movements almost perfectly and rely on forests for extra avoidance. Meanwhile, the first Verdane army consists of a few Warriors with bows, and a mini boss with a Hand Axe, meaning the player is forced to essentially throw Sigurd at the head and pray he doesn't get too badly damaged. If you aren't careful as well, you'll possibly have to kill Ayra if you don't claim Castle Genoa before fighting her, and there is the optional Lex's Brave Axe event that takes a lot of time to complete but give great rewards. Worse yet, after taking Castle Genoa, Elliot will appear off to the top left with a large group of Cavaliers, which might make some players panic and retreat to defend their castle, only for Eldigan's army to arrive and deal with the problem. If Dew and Edain aren't safely within the core of Sigurd's army by then, this can easily lead to their deaths. In general, the level is just way too big with too many things going on at once for some.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Jamke's relevance to the plot largely ends after the first chapter, 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 of the Holy War, units without Holy Blood are generally left to the side narratively as well.
 * Tier-Induced Scrappy:
 * As armored units, Arden and Hannibal suffer from low Speed and movement in a game infamous for having enormous maps.
 * Do NOT mention wanting to use your high priests as combat units. Ever.
 * Silvia and her children (Lene and Coirpre) aren't well-liked either: forum discussions will practically implore you to kill Silvia or not pair her up and take the substitutes Laylea and Charlot (basically both Lene and Coirpre are going to be garbage in combat no matter who their father is unless Coirpre is Lewyn's son, and Laylea and Charlot come with Charm and Paragon respectively, two skills that make them much better at their non-combat jobs). Lene's star as a character has risen some thanks to Fire Emblem Heroes.
 * Lester is rather infamous among the community, as unless he's given the right setup, he's among one of the weakest units in the entire game. Even with the right father, he has somewhat middling results as he is typically deemed as solely a hit-and-run unit who can be felled quite easily. Some players even ignore using him at all and focus on pairing to make Lana stronger, or even go with his substitute Deimne who is somehow about as good if not better than him.