Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones/YMMV


 * Alas, Poor Villain: A high number of villains are portrayed sympathetically, as good people who are misguided or taken advantage of. Selena, Carlyle, Zonta, Aias,, and of course Lyon.
 * Anticlimax Boss: You will have a bunch of weapons that are super effective against the final boss and if you train the right characters to use them, you can kill him fairly quickly.
 * Also, Valter goes down way too easily and without much ado for someone who's been a major threat for about three quarters of the game.
 * Each floor of the bonus dungeons has a promoted "boss" monster. In Lagdou Ruins though, most of the enemies will be promoted, and the boss is the only one who doesn't scale -- so it's often the weakest enemy on the field by far and has about 2/3 the stats of the surrounding flunkies.
 * Base Breaker:
 * Either you think Eirika is perfectly good the way she is, or the game script is sexist because men want to protect her and she makes mistakes.
 * Innes is either a Jerkass or a Jerk With a Heart of Gold depending on who you talk to. Though this usually depends on who you ship Eirika with.
 * The game itself among the Fire Emblem fandom; detractors say it was too easy and short compared to other games, fans love it for its storyline and worldbuilding and the return of the monsters from FE Gaiden.
 * Broken Base: When the Nintendo 3DS rerelease came around, there was some minor consternation over whether The Sacred Stones was really the best GBA representative for the franchise.
 * Cliché Storm: Evil Empire, turns out the emperor isn't the main villain but actually the dragon, or even not so evil and are lead by more powerful forces, good generals and evil generals with obvious evil ones. There's even a loyal general who is a reasonable authority figure but is so loyal they fight you to the death anyways, and a general who is a reasonable authority figure and defects to the heroes' side.
 * Small aversion with Caellach. Despite the fact that he's an obviously evil person, he's actually the least evil and is just more machiavelian than Riev and Valter (who practice demon worship and are a Blood Knight, respectively).
 * Complete Monster: Fomortiis, Valter, and Riev. Also.
 * Demonic Spiders: The Baels are actual demonic spiders, but they have obnoxiously high enough physical attack and defense to fall under the spirit of the trope as well.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Joshua. We suspect it's the hat.
 * Gheb was just some random Gonk that takes little to no difficulty to kill, but the fandom sees him as a Memetic Molester who stabs others to death with his penis.
 * Game Breaker: Oh so much...
 * The S-class weapons deal ridiculous damage to monsters. The game compensates for this by throwing a shitton of them at you in the final levels.
 * Bishops.
 * It's Easy, So It Sucks: A common opinion from fans of the series (as the rest of the series tend more to Nintendo Hard), given that the freedom to level-grind at any time broke the story mode wide open.
 * At least until the Brutal Bonus Level, which is suddenly able to reduce level-capped characters to fine paste.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Caellach. Affably Evil, clever, ambitious... and That One Boss, to boot.
 * Memetic Sex Goddess: Marisa's sexy legs > you.
 * Memetic Molester: Valter. Admittedly, it's not that much of a stretch as he's far too happy to track the twins down. Also, Gheb.
 * Memetic Badass: Gheb is invincible, and the "Gheb" one fights as a boss is actually his loser twin brother Gleb. If the actual Gheb were used, the game would be impossible.
 * Memetic Mutation: He has an entire patch of this game dedicated to him!
 * Memetic Molester: His weapon in said patch is "Raep Her," for chrissakes!
 * Moe : Amelia, Myrrh (less in the "super cutesy and adorable moeblob" sense and more in the "sweet child who goes through lots of shit" one).
 * Moral Event Horizon: Novala from stage 8 gleefully traps several Renais citizens in the mountains to be killed by giant spiders during the fight after they fail to work as hostages for Eirika's surrender. When Eirika is horrified by this display of pointless cruelty, Novala just laughs and says that this is war; any atrocity is fair game as long as you win.
 * That One Boss: Caellach can be notoriously hard to defeat.
 * To elaborate, Caellach has a close-combat axe...AND a hand-axe. He hits like a damn truck in either one of them, and not even Ephraim will survive at Lvl. 20. You have two options: hope that one of your units survive his attacks, or take the easy path by summoning mooks to slowly waste the uses for his hand-axe to THEN bombard him with magic from far away.
 * That One Level: Ephraim's chapter fourteen. Those Goddamn Berserk staves
 * Tier Induced Scrappy: While loved as a plot character, Knoll is HATED as a playable one for his poor stats and the general weakness of dark magic in this game. Summoners in general are considered the worst overall class, too, though careful use of their summons can prove surprisingly effective.
 * Ironically, immediately following the game's release, there was an Urban Legend of Zelda going around that a rare glitch would make him incredibly good.
 * And of the two potential Summoners, Knoll generally creates better Phantoms than Ewan.
 * It's also considered a terrible idea to make Amelia a cavalier-paladin or heavy knight. Mostly for the fact that you already get three and one paladin already.
 * A majority of the Bonus Characters who have lackluster stats and growths, as well as limited potential.
 * Toy Ship: Amelia/Franz (or Ross, or Ewan). Colm and Neimi may count as well, though they appear to be at the older end of the scale.
 * The Woobie: Knoll, to the point that he actually expresses relief in his death quote. Amelia, who is also a Plucky Girl and refuses to let it get her down. Myrrh, who is already a Shrinking Violet.
 * The country Grado in general has its forces decimated, 85% of its high ranking levels killed off, the entire royal family killed, and then undergoes a massive earthquake after the epilogue.
 * What Measure Is a Non-Badass?: Eirika is often put under the microscope, nitpicked and/or downright bashed for being a sensitive Nice Girl aside of The Messiah and the Action Girl, with some of her haters even openly denying that both she and Ephraim are the protagonists of the game and saying Ephraim is the only lead.
 * Woolseyism: Ismaire's original name was Ishmael. Since that's a male name, it got approximated to the more feminine sounding Ismaire.