Fire Emblem

This page is about the Fire Emblem'' series as a whole. If you were directed here from a link discussing a specific game in the series (probably going to be #7/Rekka no Ken because of its international name), please correct the link to point to the correct page dealing with that specific game or story universe.''



"Together we fight, together we live. (Tomo ni tatakai, tomo ni ikiru.)"

- Japanese motto of the series

A Turn-Based Strategy series developed in-house by Nintendo's Intelligent Systems, also responsible for fellow Turn-Based Strategy series Nintendo Wars. The series innovated strategic role-playing games, later popularized in the west by games such as Final Fantasy Tactics. The series has spanned thirteen games so far on seven systems. Moreover, the series, being roughly as old as genre mainstays Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, helped make and codify many tropes of the strategy RPG genre.

The series was originally a Japan-exclusive series with no western releases until two characters from the series, Marth and Roy, appeared as unlockable fighters in Super Smash Bros. Melee, introducing the series as a whole to western gamers. They proved to be very popular characters among the English fanbase, garnering enough interest in the franchise to warrant the international release of the next game; all subsequent games in the series have been released worldwide, save for the twelfth title. Incidentally, Marth and Roy were originally only supposed to be in the Japanese version, included to promote the upcoming release of Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals; the intent was for the localization team to dummy them out in the translation process as they would theoretically hold no interest to international games. Instead, the localization team at Nintendo of America liked them and decided to leave them in, and the rest is history; this is why the original Japanese voice actors are used, as a reflection of neither of their games being released in English.

The series' appeal comes from its unique flavoring of the typical grid-based strategy game with RPG Elements. The games emphasize Character Development and story in addition to strategy and unit building... even relatively minor characters (of which there are a great many) and included mostly just to flesh out the player's army, receive lots of Backstory and interaction with the other characters. Fans of the series spend just as much time admiring the depth and intricacy of the characters and setting as they do debating over the Character Tiers.

Another thing to note about the series is the handling of death: 99% of the time, dead characters stay dead. Only six games (out of twelve) offer ways to revive dead characters, and they are all heavily limited in use. The series is generally Nintendo Hard as well, with variations in difficulty from game to game ranging from relatively easy to mind-crushingly difficult... and the bonus difficulty modes recently cropping up just make them even harder.

The series is semi-linear, as each verse will feature between one and three interrelated games before moving on to a new universe.


 * Fire Emblem: The Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light (Famicom, 1990) is the franchise's debut, starring Prince Marth of Altea (who would appear in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl before the remake of the first game was released internationally). It tells of his efforts to win back his homeland and the entirety of Akaneia from the Dolhr empire, and of his search for his family's Ancestral Weapon Falchion, which is needed if the dragon emperor Medeus is to fall. A Fan Translation was completed in 2011.
 * Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Nintendo DS, 2008/2009) is a remake of the first game, and is generally counted as the eleventh in the franchise. It is the first game in the series to have a vaguely decent multiplayer mode, complete with online play, and has a new feature that lets the player switch the classes of their units at will; otherwise, it's pretty much a straight remake with only a few additions and modifications. With the release of Shadow Dragon, Marth is now the record holder for "longest delayed solo debut after a debut in another series."
 * Fire Emblem Gaiden (Famicom, 1992) is the second game, taking place in the same world as the first game but on the fairly distant continent of Barensia, and its plot has minimal relation to that of the first game. It's the odd duck of the series, playing quite differently (falling closer to the typical bounds of the Eastern RPG genre) and featuring a lot of unique gameplay elements that haven't been seen since (or only in its spiritual successors Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and Tear Ring Saga). A Fan Translation was completed in November 2009.
 * Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (Super Famicom, 1993) is the third title in the series, comprising both a compressed remake of the first game and a completely new sequel, giving players the option to skip to the sequel if they're already familiar with the original game. It was the subject of a two-part OVA series in Japan, which surprisingly did get dubbed into English long before Super Smash Bros Melee. A fan translation was completed in March 2008.
 * Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem Heroes of Light and Darkness (Nintendo DS, 2010), generally counted as the twelfth title, is a remake of Book 2 of Mystery of the Emblem. Unlike Shadow Dragon, it is far less of a direct redo: it reincorporates characters left out of the original Mystery of the Emblem, introduces those from the Satellaview chapters and Shadow Dragon, alters the story slightly and implements a completely new subplot, as well as the inclusion of a player created character. It includes remakes of the four Akaneia War Chronicles chapters as bonus content, as well as completely new bonus chapters as downloadable content. For reasons unknown, it didn't receive an English release, and it's very unlikely to ever happen at this point, so a fan translation was completed.
 * BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia War Chronicles (Super Famicom / Satellaview, 1997) is a series of four Satellaview broadcast games based on the Mystery of the Emblem engine, telling a number of sidestories set before the beginning of the first game and between the first and third. Remakes of the four chapters were included as bonus content in New Mystery of the Emblem. These games are generally not counted in the numbering scheme of the Fire Emblem series, though Guinness World Records does count them.

This series then moved onto a new set of characters and a new world, set in the same universe as the Akaneia games but hundreds or thousands of years in the past, according to Word of God.


 * Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (1996, Super Famicom) is a game that spans decades and generations: after several chapters with one party, the game continues with the children of the original characters. The game is quite unusual elements for the series: its chapters are enormous, requiring the capture of multiple castles, and Shipping is a gameplay mechanic upon which the ability to use several Infinity +1 Swords hinge. Even so, it's consistently popular among the base and is argued by many to be the best game in the series as a result of its engrossing plot and deep character development system.
 * Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (1999, Super Famicom ) is a Midquel taking place toward the end of Genealogy of the Holy War's decade-long Time Skip. It's both more like a normal Fire Emblem game than its predecessor and quite different to most others: it returns to normal-sized chapters and maps, but it implements a few new gameplay mechanisms including the now-standard Fog of War, and the completely-forgotten fatigue meter. It's also notoriously Nintendo Hard, even by the standards of the franchise as a whole.

With the Super Famicom in its last throes, the series was retired for three years, making the N64 the only Nintendo console not to see a Fire Emblem release, though one had been announced as a fourth game in the Akaneia saga. The game was scrapped, but according to some accounts, it's elements were recycled into Maiden of Darkness, which became Sword of Seals (see below). The series reemerged in a completely new universe and in portable form on the Game Boy Advance.


 * Fire Emblem: The Sword of Seals (Game Boy Advance, 2002) stars Roy, Fire Emblem's other representative in Super Smash Bros. Melee, as he attempts to repel the invading forces of Bern. The game received a mixed reception among fans, as it was forced to drop (due to technological constraints) many of the complexities the series had picked up on consoles, and the characters lacked depth in the opinion of some players. It did, however, introduce the super-popular "Support" feature, which allows characters to build their relationships by spending a lot of time together in battle and remains a big draw for the series. It's also the hardest of the three GBA Fire Emblem games.
 * Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword (Game Boy Advance, 2003) was the franchise's international debut and the beginning of it finally averting No Export for You; it was released in the west as just Fire Emblem without the subtitle, but for the sake of differentiation, almost no-one calls it by its western name. A Prequel to Sword of Seals, it stars Roy's father, Eliwood, as he investigates the actions of the Black Fang brotherhood of assassins with his friends Hector and Lyn. This game remains a favorite of many western fans because it features one of the longer quests of the Western released games, and features a large amount of replay value.
 * Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (Game Boy Advance, 2004) took place on a new world, Magvel, and starred the vaguely incestuous twins Eirika and Ephraim of Renais, as they dealt with the sudden antagonism of their southern neighbours Grado and tried to stop the resurrection of the Demon King. It serves as something of a Spiritual Successor to Gaiden, bringing back some of said game's exclusive mechanics such as a traversable world map and random monster encounters on said map, as well as implementing its own ideas like branching class promotion. While by no means bad, the game is looked down upon by fandom because the story mode is comparatively short and rather easy, especially due to the ease of Level Grinding afforded by its unique features, and for its story and characters being generally thinner than average. It was rereleased on the Nintendo 3DS as one of the ten GBA games distributed for free as part of the Ambassador Program.

The series made its long-awaited return to home consoles in 2005 in another new universe with the release of...


 * Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (Game Cube, 2005) stars mercenary Ike, the first non-noble main character of the series, as he aids Princess Elincia in reclaiming her kingdom of Crimea after its fall to the suddenly-aggressive nation of Daein. This game reimplemented the anima magic triangle and the skills system in full, in addition to implementing new features like the base menu, bonus experience and the laguz, a Petting Zoo People whose combat revolves around transforming into animals. The series brought back many of the gameplay elements from the Super Famicom games that had to be dropped from the GBA ones, such as the skill system and hit-and-run tactics.
 * Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii, 2007) is a direct sequel to Path of Radiance, taking place three years after its beginning. The game is divided into four parts, each starring a different main character. The first arc features Micaiah, the leader of the Dawn Brigade, in her work to liberate the country of Daein from its abuse at the hands of its post-war Begnion occupation, an act which instigates the conflict to come. Following arcs feature Elincia, now queen of Crimea, dealing with rebellious nobles, and Ike and his mercenaries aiding the Laguz kingdoms in a war against an apparently corrupt Begnion, with the final arc bringing all the characters together in order to avert the end of both Beorc and Laguz. The game can be rather divisive, since many felt the removal of detailed support conversations made the characters far more bland and a lot of reviewers considered the game "too hard", while others praised the added challenge and the new mechanics the game added.

After the two remakes of Marth's games (see above), a Fire Emblem title for the Nintendo 3DS was announced on September 13th 2011 amidst a large number of other upcoming 3DS releases.


 * Fire Emblem: Awakening (Nintendo 3DS, 2012) is set in the world of Akaneia 2000 years after Mystery of the Emblem (but technologically unchanged from its era) and stars Chrom, a blue haired swordsman and dissident of Marth. The game brings back the world map system of Gaiden and The Sacred Stones, reintroduces the skill system in a similar form to its Tellius incarnation, and sports a graphical style reminiscent of the Tellius games with a more cartoonish bent, with a Two Point Five D map and 3D fights. A new feature introduced allows units to gang up on enemies when next to an attacking ally. The player avatar from New Mystery of the Emblem returns with a more important though still secondary role, as did the second generation from the 4th though they join the main cast via time travel instead of replacing them via time skip. Was translated, but with substantial cuts (among others the avatar could originally have 3 personalities per sex, plus a 4th mute option. The translations limit this to only one personality each for male and female), censorship and rewrites (several characters have entirely different personalities). Also notorious for the introduction of DLC to not just the series but first party Nintendo games in general.

It was eventually followed by
 * Fire Emblem Fates (Nintendo 3DS, 2015/2016 international) is mechanically a successor to Awakening, but takes place in its own universe. Released in three parts, each a separate campaign after a shared prologue. Proved to be an extremely controversial game thanks to the split, poor map design in two parts, and a greater focus on romance with the player avatar. It was made even more controversial by the Cut and Paste Translation it received, complete with large sections of cut content, censorship and total character rewrites even more substantial than Awakening received. The translation was so badly received a fan translation that began (and made substantial progress) before the English release after previews made the deficiencies overwhelmingly clear.
 * Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Nintendo 3DS, 2017) another remake, this time of Gaiden. Largely dropping the new and controversial mechanics of the previous two games in favor of blending more modern with Gaiden's unique gameplay elements. Considered to be an improvement mechanically, though did little to change Gaiden's infamously open and featureless maps. The translation quality improved greatly over the previous, but still had several flaws.

In 2018 after several teases another game was fully announced
 * Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Nintendo Switch, 2019) which apparently takes place in its own universe. While little was announced, it's not even entirely clear who is the main character (press release refers to "your protagonist", possibly another avatar), characters now lead units of faceless minions Langrisser style. Towns have returned from Gaiden, though the press release mentions "in some parts" so it's more likely an expansion of the base system instead of a return of the world map.

Fire Emblem is one of the featured series in the Super Smash Bros. franchise, debuting in Super Smash Bros. Melee due to popular demand from the Japanese fanbase. Melee features Marth and Roy as unlockable playable characters; Brawl has Marth and Ike playable, Lyndis as an Assist Trophy, and the Castle Siege stage, a nonspecific amalgamation of typical location themes and tropes present throughout the series as a whole with a stylistic focus on the Tellius canon. 4 added Robin (the avatar from Awakening) and Lucina as playable characters while featuring another amalgam stage based on the recurring arenas in the series. 4 would add Corrin (the avatar from Fates) as a character while also re-adding Roy via DLC Ultimate returned all characters and both stages. Ultimate adds the killing edge as an item, Tiki and the Black Knight as assist trophies and adds Chrom as a playable character for some reason.

See also: Tear Ring Saga, the next game made by Fire Emblem creator Shouzou Kaga after leaving Intelligent Systems and the franchise, which is basically Fire Emblem

"I am not human. This heart and this body are constructs. Yes, as is this sorrow."
 * Action Girl: Tons of them. Once you start playing a game, expect your army to be joined by plenty of beautiful girls who kick tons of ass. Armies and mercenary groups in Fire Emblem are very equal-opportunity as far as gender is concerned, and we'll leave it at that.
 * Aerith and Bob: On one hand, you have names like Guy, Joshua, Mia and Edward; on the other, you have names that are rarely used modernly, like Kieran; and on yet another, mythological references like Oguma and Roland; and THEN, you have Biblical names that are rarely used (for good reasons, most of them were smote) like Nabal (or however you translate it). When you have have Loads and Loads of Characters and One Steve Limit is in effect, you need every name you can get.
 * Alas, Poor Villain: There's several spread around the series, usually for Anti-Villain characters. The most recognizable to Western fans would be Limstella from the first export.

"Caellach (to Carlyle): I'm not like that freak Valter. I'm kind to women. Riev: Ah, Valter... You're a beast. You're bound to no country. You care nothing for friend or foe. Kill a man, claim a woman... You live for nothing more, you wretched beast."
 * Aliens Made Them Do It: in Genealogy of the Holy War.
 * All Swords Are the Same: Non-magical weapons are broken down into four categories: swords, lances, axes and bows. Not accounting for all of the different styles and variations of weapons that different classes can wield, any character that can use a weapon type can use every weapon of that type. It's absurd enough when any sword used by a Hero becomes a claymore while it becomes a katana when wielded by a Swordmaster, but when it gets to where equipping it to an Assassin turns it into a pair of knives, it starts to get just a tad silly.
 * Averted in the Tellius and Jugdral games: a weapon has the same appearance regardless of who equips it.
 * All There in the Manual: A crapload of info about Fire Emblem 4's universe and background story is only revealed and/or told with more details in author's notes and guidebooks, such as the Treasure book and the now-closed blog of Shouzou Kaga (the creator of the series). The same applies to Fire Emblem 1, Fire Emblem 3 and Fire Emblem Gaiden with notably the Fire Emblem : The Complete book and drama CDs.
 * Anachronism Stew: Happens a lot where fashion is involved in the pseudo-European worlds of Fire Emblem. The biggest offender is Vika, whose outfit looks like it came hot off the runway in modern Milan.
 * And Now for Someone Completely Different: Done in many of the games.
 * Animorphism: Various titles in the series feature characters that can shapeshift into dragons, with Path of Radiance adding different species of felines and birds, and Radiant Dawn adding wolves.
 * Anyone Can Die: With how they treat death, the game was apparently designed with that thought in mind. The player can avert this, but it becomes irritatingly difficult.
 * Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Yes, the games do expect you to fight armies of fifty to over a hundred enemies with only twelve to fifteen people. When you usually have about thirty to forty characters to choose from at that point. Averted in the fourth game, but you only get up to twenty-four units at a time anyway.
 * Aristocrats Are Evil: Inverted. Nearly all of the heroes are of royal or at least noble lineage and except for the occassional Big Bad, nearly all other characters of blue blood, especially rulers, are usually shown to be open-minded, kind, helpful and actually caring for their people. Simultaneously played straight since many enemies are also nobles, with a tendency for minor enemy nobles to be of the simply jerkish, power-abusive type, whereas enemy kings tend to have greater, world-changing, but malevolent plans and intend to pull them off at all costs.
 * Armor-Piercing Attack : Armorslayers, Heavy Spears and Hammers are effective against armored foes.
 * Art Evolution: The series used semi-realistic sprites for battle until the GBA era, where it switched to a more cartoony, expressive style. As of Path of Radiance, they've switched back to realistic models, although Radiant Dawn uses more vibrant colors to make the models stand out.
 * The Sacred Stones had also been experimenting with pre-rendered 3D graphics for some of the new units and spells. The next handheld game Shadow Dragon then primarily used a semi-3D style. Needless to say, gamers weren't too pleased with that style in either game.
 * Artifact Title: Averted. With the exception of Jugdral (where it gets a brief mention in Fire Emblem 4's ending and calls it "seal of fire" instead of Gratuitous English), every universe is given its own "Fire Emblem".
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn: Elincia, first Princess and later Queen, is a phenomenally useful and powerful unit; the Laguz Royals seem to follow this as well, although in the case of the Beast and Bird Tribes, it is stated to be more Asskicking Equals Authority.
 * Ike, as leader of the Greil Mercenaries, takes this trope and runs with it, being the most powerful unit in both games, which is saying something. His father, who founded the mercenary troupe Ike now runs, was . And then there's the Black Knight, who trained under, and was The Dragon to the first game's Big Bad. All three characters spent some time as the strongest human in the world.
 * Anyone who has played the GBA games has found that the lords Hector and Ephraim, from Fire Emblem 7 and Fire Emblem 8 respectively, can be serious physical powerhouses, capable of dishing out damage and either not taking any at all or not getting hit at all, also respectively. It should also be noted that in the first level you play as Ephraim in Fire Emblem 8, you must siege a castle with an army less than one fifth the size of the enemy's (not entirely new for Fire Emblem, except that you only have 4 units, Ephraim included), and Ephraim can generally stand his ground, if not kill everything on the map without so much as dropping a bead of sweat.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Triangle attacks give an automatic critical, but require three specific units of the same type (usually pegasi) to surround an enemy, and many enemies you'd like to Triangle have at least 2 sides blocked, preventing its use.
 * If you're playing one of the games where the units who can Triangle Attack are fliers, and the game has movement conservation after attacks for mounted and flying, you can execute up to three Triangle Attacks in a turn (four in Radiant Dawn). It's still a lot of hassle, though.
 * In the endgame, someone actually managed to do the Triangle attack 10 times, resulting in the target,, saying, "Finally, I'm dying."
 * Mages in Path of Radiance, upon promotion, can learn to use knives instead of staves, if they want. While it sounds theoretically awesome to have a unit that can both use weapons and magic, in practice, it's really useless because: 1) Path of Radiance has a separate stat of magic attack power and for physical attack power. Guess which one knives use, and which one mages barely have anything of. 2) Mages are really squishy, so they're better off attacking from range anyway. 3) The most practical use for knives, therefore, would be to defeat an enemy with a high magic resistance. In that case, you'd be better off using a physical fighter to begin with. 4) Healing staffs in Fire Emblem are Boring but Practical to the max and even gain a mage extra EXP when in use. Trading them off for knives is a very bad deal.
 * Badass: Each Fire Emblem game is basically a World of Badass.
 * Badass Adorable: Several, but Amelia from The Sacred Stones stands out.
 * Badass Army: It is fairly common for the player's army to slaughter their enemies to the man while sustaining no casualties.
 * While up against armies between twice and five times their size, no less.
 * Badass Family: Genealogy of the Holy War is pretty much defined by this.
 * Badass Longcoat: Raven's Hero outfit, Lloyd the Swordmaster, Soren and Sothe's 3rd tier outfits, etc.
 * The art design for Genealogy of the Holy War (going by the pictures for the Trading Card Game) uses this for about half the characters...
 * Badass Long Hair: Just about every Myrmidon/Swordmaster.
 * Badass Normal: Again, several, but Nephenee is a BEAST.
 * Beauty Equals Goodness: Generic boss portraits often play this straight to an almost facepalming extent.
 * Big Damn Heroes: At the end of Act 2 of Radiant Dawn, Lucia is about to be executed by rebel Crimean forces with Queen Elincia looking on helplessly. Just as Lucia is about to be hung, the Greil Mercenaries show up out of nowhere to rescue her in such a heroic fashion that it really counts as Crowning Moment of Awesome as well.
 * Also, in Chapter 1 of Genealogy of the Holy War, Eltshan and the Cross Knights massacre Elliot's soldiers when they attempt to capture Evans.
 * Big Fun: Brom and his daughter Meg of Tellius are pretty much our heaviest characters of their gender. However, they both remain rather upbeat and cheerful, if not slightly oblivious.
 * Black Knight: Camus from Shadow Dragon, Ares / Aless from Genealogy of the Holy War, and the Black Knight of Tellius.
 * Black Screen of Death
 * Blind Idiot Translation: The Spanish translation of The Blazing Blade has an ammount of typos that counts by dozens, and Fae was turned into a boy for no reason. Later games avert this, except Amelia from The Sacred Stones, she also refers to herself as male when promoting.
 * Bodyguard Crush: At least two or three per game.
 * Boisterous Bruiser: Most of your primary Axe-users are like this, and it seems to be a personality requirement for Berserkers.
 * Boring but Practical: Cavaliers are probably the least "exotic" of all unit types, yet their mobility, all-around good physical stats, and powerful promotions make them the default go-to combatants.
 * Bow and Sword in Accord: Alm, after his promotion, Lyn, after her promotion, and the Nomad/Ranger/Horseman classes. Warriors can use both bows and axes, although they're limited to crossbows in Radiant Dawn. Certain generals and paladins can opt to use both lances and bows too.
 * Bowdlerise: Not as bad as other examples. Nintendo holds nothing back when it comes to death and the consequences of war (some dialogue can pretty descriptively violent for E-rated games). But other things such as drinking and swearing can be omitted. Best example is probably Lucia/Janaff's Path of Radiance support, in which any mention of drinking is instead replaced with "a night on the town" or something similar. In the same vein, some of the more explicit, unsavory messages are also ignored completely.
 * It's generally held that it's a good thing that Seisen no Keifu wasn't officially translated and released; with its use of incest as a plot point, and since it would have been released in Nintendo's censor-happy SNES days, it would very likely have been Bowdlerized to high hell... then again though, there's also the issue of its 1996 release date, meaning if it were localized, it would have been probably overshadowed by the Nintendo 64 since Nintendo tended to push it more on NA and EU consumers.
 * Breakable Weapons
 * Broken Record: "This is a message from Lord Nergal. 'I await you on the Dread Isle.'" Denning is one of the more popular characters because of it.
 * Brother-Sister Incest: Disturbingly enough, a recurring theme in the series. Toned down in the localizations [presumably to give Nintendo plausible deniability], but still noticeable.
 * In fact, part of Manfroy's plot in Genealogy of the Holy War is to.
 * And here is the 4th games family tree, and that's just that is absolute going by fixed/Thracia 776.
 * The fourth game might be the only instance where two cases of Brother-Sister Incest were snuck in by disguising them as Kissing Cousins.
 * To the English-speaking fandom, Eirika and Ephraim are infamous for the ridiculously strong overtones of this they have going, to the point that even now rumours abound about how their Japanese A-support ending actually does result in an incestuous marriage and said ending was bowlderised in the English version.
 * But for Me It Was Tuesday: Ashnard does this with Jill when you choose to have her attack him.
 * Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: In Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, normal humans are referred to as "beorc", though beorc usually refer to themselves as humans, while laguz (the game world's other humanoid race), who dislike beorc, use the word "human" as an insult.
 * Call Forward: Plenty of them exist in Shadow Dragon and Blazing Sword. Often, neither of them make sense to non-Japanese players, as the games to which they call forward never got released outside of Japan.
 * Cap: Typically, characters can level up to level 20 in a base class before changing to a higher class and again going to level 20. In Genealogy of the Holy War, however, promotion occurred at level 20 and the character then went on to 30. In addition, each class has stat caps that play a large part in determining Character Tiers.
 * And in Radiant Dawn, laguz go up to 40, while beorc go to 20, promote, go to 20, promote again, and then cap at 20.
 * And in Shadow Dragon, Marth, ballista users and thieves can go up level 30 to make up for not promoting... funnily enough, units with a level 20 cap, but can promote are always (barring certain exceptions) superior since they get more stats, total.
 * Captain Obvious: In Blazing Sword, you can pay a fortune teller to give you mission-specific advice. It's almost always along the lines of "Bring lots of lances. Swords and axes are good, too. You want magic and healing, so bring casters. You know what? Just bring everything you can. Use the forest for cover. Talk to green units and visit villages and stuff. Don't die."
 * However, occasionally the fortune-teller will mention a particular unit: this means you need that unit to recruit another unit.
 * Hilariously enough, the fortune teller is replaced by Nils about halfway through, who has the completely opposite problem: his advice is vague to the point of uselessness, and usually amounts to "They're dangerous, so you'd better be very careful. And move as a group. Don't die." Well, at least the kid does it for free...
 * Character Development: One of the reasons why the series is such a hit.
 * Character Level
 * Chickification: Tends to happen with manga adaptations. Love interests tend to show no indication that they can fight, or even heal. Julia gets hit with this in the Fuyuki adaptation of Genealogy of the Holy War: even if she wants to be useful, she doesn't pick up a single weapon. And she's supposed to beat the Final Boss. The Oosawa manga averts this with its many female characters; the only girl who doesn't show any fighting skill is the cleric.
 * A Child Shall Lead Them: Sanaki, the 13-year-old empress of Begnion in Radiant Dawn, who was 10 in Path of Radiance.
 * Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Can happen due to the Point of View-change mechanics in Radiant Dawn. Of all characters, Jill probably holds the record for the total amount of times in a Verse where a character can be persuaded into switching sides.
 * Naesala's no slouch in this department though.
 * Church Militant: Several character classes such as the Monk, Bishop and Valkyrie who can use magic to attack. There are also Priest and Cleric classes, while unable to do damage can heal units and put enemies to sleep/berserk/silence with the right equipment.
 * Color-Coded Armies: A Type I in the sprite-based games, moving to a Type IV with the move to 3D models.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Enemy units are completely unaffected by Fog of War.
 * In some games, the enemy units may receive reinforcements... at the start of the enemy phase. This basically means that, short of prescience on your part, an enemy can appear out of a fort or the edge of the map that you thought was safe and beat down your helpless healers and archers before you can react.
 * In Genealogy of the Holy War, when enemies have, say, an Iron Axe (close range) and a Hand Axe (can be thrown, but weaker), they will switch between these weapons depending on what range you are attacking them from. Naturally, you cannot do the same thing. Also, in this game, enemy weapons have unlimited uses, which is especially annoying when the enemies have powerful healing or status-inflicting staves (which usually have less than 10 uses when you are the one using them).
 * Convenient Color Change: When units switch alliances.
 * Crippling Overspecialization: Archers are helpless in a melee unless they're the kind who have swords and horses too, and some classes like Clerics and Priests have no combat skills whatsoever.
 * Radiant Dawn attempted to balance this more by giving Crossbows to Archers and allowing staves to be used as weapons should a staff-user be attacked (though is a common reaction to getting hit with a staff). That being said, Healers should still never be attacked, and the Marksman class is almost a Game Breaker.
 * Also as long as a healer has a staff equipped, they treat themselves at the beginning of each turn with it (if the staff inflicts a status effect it cures it) with no cost. This brought about a new way of Level Grinding.
 * Crutch Character: Examples in every title, being something of an ever-present. The first of the archetype, Jagen, is famous in this role in the Fire Emblem community, and they are, in fact, called "Jeigans" within the fandom. In fact, he used to be the Trope Namer.
 * Crystal Dragon Jesus: The churches in most of the games are vaguely Roman Catholic in organization, but they usually worship "saints" (i.e. legendary heroes).
 * Cute Bruiser: The entire series is rife with presumably adorable characters, usually quite young, who can kick untold amounts of ass.
 * Darker and Edgier: On the whole, when really looking at the various installments, Radiant Dawn could seriously be considered one of the darkest, or at least more mature, of the Fire Emblem games. Most certainly if you look at its former, Path of Radiance.
 * To explain: Path of Radiance felt like a coming of age story centered around Ike gradually going from untrained ranger, to, to finally growing into his new position and becoming The Hero. Saving the world from Evil Overlord's war mongering as well as the . Happily Ever After, right? Wrong...
 * At the opening of Radiant Dawn, we learn that, is now under the thumb of , who isn't being so nice to the war-torn country. Though understandable seeing as how nasty had been, some of the  soldiers are shown to maybe enjoy their dominance over its' former enemy a bit...too much. The game unfolds from there with increasingly complicated and intricate plots, characters who were once one-dimensional getting more developed, becoming more sympathetic and believable, and country to country relations being realistically portrayed with the past war actually weighing heavily, namely how . Where the first game definitely ran on Rule of Drama and even a bit of Rule of Funny, the sequel takes everything from the first and makes it much more... hard hitting.
 * However, the darkest of the series, of course, would be Genealogy of the Holy War. That one though seems to be deliberately going for a Crapsack World, rather than Radiant Dawn's more "realistic" approach.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: Well, in some games, the player can recruit users of Dark Magic for his party, who usually are pretty decent people. They often prefer to call it "ancient" magic rather than "dark" magic though.
 * However, at the same time, Evil Is Not a Toy (or rather, darkness). Just look at Bramimond, likely the most powerful heroic darkness user in Fire Emblem history. It practically cost him his soul to master the darkness.
 * Or get some of Canas's supports, in which he explains that.
 * Deadly Fireworks Display: Let's start with the fact that is the only final boss in this series that doesn't fall victim to this trope and go from there...
 * The Assassin one-hit KO special critical animation actually has firework-looking flashes going on.
 * Desert Skull: These can be found in the desert levels of the Game Boy Advance games. Rare items can be dug up in the nearby sands.
 * Discount Card: The Silver Card halves all shop item prices when held by the buyer.
 * Divergent Class Evolution: Dragon Riders and Pegasus Knights were essentially the same class in most games, using the same weapons and having the same vulnerability to Bows and (where applicable) Wind Magic. The former had more Strength and Defense, and the latter had more Speed and Resistance. Radiant Dawn switched the Dragon Knights' Lances for Axes, and switched their Bow/Wind vulnerability for a vulnerability to Thunder magic.
 * Doomed Hometown: Most of the games begin with the heroes' entire country being invaded.
 * Do Well, But Not Perfect: All but the last of Shadow Dragon's Gaiden Chapters require that you keep your army at 15 or fewer units to unlock them... and the last one exists to give you another chance if you're missing both Tiki and Falchion, your best bets at beating the final boss. Of course, there are ways of getting both...
 * The Dragon: One per game, the most notable being the Black Knight, who acts as The Dragon for Ashnard.
 * Dragon Rider: A group of character classes; initially renamed "Wyvern Riders" when the games started being translated, probably to prevent Fridge Logic regarding how the main point of Blazing Sword was to prevent dragons from returning to the world; from Radiant Dawn onward, they reverted to being called dragons. The Japanese version is also inconsistent on this; in the Akaneia games, they are wyverns (here a degenerate dragon subspecies), but were considered proper dragons in pretty much every other title (save for The Sacred Stones, the one instance where they actually WERE just wyverns).
 * Drought Level of Doom
 * Dual-Wielding: Assassins and Pirates in the GBA games, though this is purely aesthetic and happens even if they just have one sword/axe. Gameplay-wise, this simply isn't possible. Also, in the backstory of the Tellius games, the ancient hero Altina duel-wielded a pair of legendary BFSs.
 * Dynamic Difficulty
 * Easy Mode Mockery:
 * In Shadow Dragon, if you enter a chapter with fewer surviving units than the maximum allowed for the map, you be given generic replacement units. The names of the replacement units at first follows numbers theme naming (Unil, Dua, Quattro, etc). However, if you still keep suffering casualties, the new unit names will be Auffle, Wymp, Lucer, Owend, Rejek, Wieklin, Laim, etc.
 * An unintentional version exists in early NTSC copies of Radiant Dawn, where just having Easy Mode Path of Radiance save data on your Game Cube memory card when attempting to initiate an Old Save Bonus from said game will cause Radiant Dawn to crash. This was rectified in the PAL version and in later prints of the NTSC version, or by sending the disc to Nintendo for repairs.
 * Elemental Crafting: Typical order is Iron < Steel < Silver in terms of damage output and the reverse for durability, so weapon selection is not as straightfoward as in some other games. Legendary or unique weapons typically have high damage and decent durability. In Genealogy of the Holy War, all weapons had a flat 50 uses, so there was no reason not to switch to silver weapons when available except maybe the cost of keeping them in good repair.
 * Weight is a strange issue: Steel is often heavier than Silver, and thus carries a higher penalty to attack speed, but by the time you get Silver weapons, your units will likely be too strong to care.
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The weapon and spell triangles.
 * Eleventh-Hour Ranger: Usually at least one character in several titles, who joins at nearly maxed out level. Gato/Gotoh is perhaps the most well-known one.
 * Epic Fail: In some games, such as Fire Emblem 7 and Fire Emblem 8, it is possible for a unit to kill themselves by attacking a wall or snag with the Devil Axe. Here is an infamous example.
 * Escort Mission: Sort of: some missions have you defending NPCs, but the NPCs in question are either irrelevant to your success, powerful fighters in their own right, or very easy to defend, so it's not really all that frustrating. In some cases, you can have one of your tankier units Rescue the NPC and turn the map into a simple survival scenario.
 * One notable exception: the chapter in Blazing Sword where you have to cross the map covered in darkness and fight your way through a significant number of enemies to rescue The White Prince, who has mediocre combat skills and one defender. Thankfully, his defender is an awesome Assassin, but he's only got so much durability on that sword. And if the Prince dies, you lose.
 * Estrogen Brigade Bait: You've got the Bishonens, manly muscular men, children and Hot Grandpas.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Every Fire Emblem has at least one scene where one of the villains -and not a sympathetic one!- comments on how even more evil one of his comrades is, and how that's terrible. A good example is how Caellach and Riev view Valter in The Sacred Stones, due to the way he is implied to victimize women. Keep in mind that Caellach is a sociopathic Career Killer who, and Riev is a fallen priest who worships and seeks to resurrect the god of evil.

"Largo: That's strange... Tauroneo: ... Largo: Hey, Tauroneo! Tauroneo: Hmm? Largo: Don't you think this army is a little odd? I mean, heck! It's not every day that you see soldiers from this many countries all mixed into one army. I've traveled and fought in a lot of strange places, but this is the first time I've seen anything quite like this. Tauroneo: You're right. There are even former Daein soldiers in this army. There is no shortage of nationalities, to be sure."
 * Everyone Is Related: Especially in Genealogy of the Holy War, where it's a game mechanic..
 * Everything's Better with Spinning: Many, many critical hit animations in some way.
 * As well as every other winpose in Radiant Dawn.
 * Evil Old Folks: The villains always have a couple of old men on their side. They'll usually be a Sinister Minister or Mighty Glacier.
 * Evil Overlooker
 * Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Lots of 'em. You can tell whether or not you can obtain an item from an enemy if the name is flashing in its menu. Lightened up in Ike's games, where you could finally use Thieves to steal enemy equipment, provided the enemy didn't currently have it equipped and its theft wasn't specifically prohibited.
 * Expy: The Archetypes.
 * Ike was also at least partially based on Hector (http://www.nintendo.co.jp/nom/0505/1_3/index.html).
 * Ike is a total expy of Berserk's Guts in all but personality, from starting off as a humble mercenary to his BFS and overall appearance in Radiant Dawn. This is even more emphasized by the way he poses and carries himself in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
 * The female default "My Unit" can easily be mistaken for Mia while the male "My Unit" looks more than a little like Ike (it gets even closer when you add a headband through an info conversation). They both even share a default class.
 * Eyepatch of Power: Lawrence Lorenz, Sevr, Haar.
 * Faceless Goons: You can easily tell whether a character is a nameless mook or a main character by whether their eyes are visible. Soldiers will always be shown with their helmets obscuring their eyes; in the Tellius games, Laguz soldiers' eyes are (mostly) obscured by their hair.
 * Fake Difficulty: Radiant Dawn, where Hard Mode disables the ability to check the enemy's movement and attack range. You have to count them yourself.
 * Fantastic Racism: The various shapeshifting Laguz tribes are called "sub-humans" by many beorc/humans. This is not limited to your enemies; some between chapter dialogue has your own characters referencing your own laguz characters as sub-humans. And it goes both ways too... a laguz calling a beorc 'human' is the same as a beorc calling a laguz 'sub-human', and it happens more than once.
 * Most characters get better though... except Shinon, who is a Jerkass and remains unrepentant even throughout Radiant Dawn.
 * While Lethe learns to treat beorc better, she still makes sweeping generalizations about them, implies they are inferior in their customs, and the word "human" escapes her lips sometimes.
 * To be fair, Shinon's a jerkass that seems to like to find reasons to hate everybody, so him being racist doesn't make too much of a difference in his character. The dude can even form a bond with a Laguz unit in Path of Radiance.
 * There's also the Sacaens in Blazing Sword, which are referred to as "nomadic mongrels" and such by the villains.
 * Radiant Dawn takes this to a new level with the Branded, who are despised as mongrels with no place on Tellius by both beorc and laguz alike. It doesn't help that laguz have a sort of acquired sense for sensing them which manifests as uneasiness if not outright hostility, they can be mistaken with people who have made pacts with a spirit by beorc, and.
 * Faux Action Girl: Stats notwithstanding, there are a few of these. See the character page for more details.
 * Final Death: Everyone, if you're careless enough to lose them.
 * Though important non-Lord characters just get a major injury so they can still participate in the plot.
 * Or because it's the Prequel, and they're confirmed to live. If you're not confirmed to live, good luck with that.
 * Marth's games and Genealogy of the Holy War have the Aum and Valkyrie staves, respectively. Each can revive an ally that's died in battle, though they only have a single use and can only be used by certain people, and while the Valkyrie staff can be repaired, it's incredibly expensive to do so.
 * Fishing for Mooks: There are enemies that only move when you're on their line of sight. Thus the best way to defeat them is putting a strong unit just on the edge of their movement range to kill them one for one, or lure them out with an unarmed Crutch Character and then rush them with your other characters.
 * Fog of War: Some stages are covered in fog, darkness, sandstorm, blizzard or anything else that would hinder your vision. Be sure to bring Torches, a [[Staff Chick with a Torch staff and/or Thief-type classes]].
 * Forced Tutorial: Blazing Sword.
 * Fragile Speedster: Myrmidons, Pegasus Knights, Thieves.
 * Gaiden Game: Fire Emblem Gaiden and Thracia 776; the former actually has the word "Gaiden" on its title.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation: Subverted with the Crutch Character you get at the beginning of the game who have a justified in story reason for not being able to grow well (e.g. old age, sickness). Also, the defining characteristic of the two different types of fans of the games.
 * Geo Effects
 * Give Me a Sword
 * Gladiator Subquest
 * Global Currency: Some nations are implied to use different coinage, but the merchants there take your money just the same.
 * Gonk: Many bosses will be this. There will always be at least one on the side of the good.
 * Good Costume Switch: Recruited enemies change sprites from red to blue. Generally averted with the 3D games.
 * Good Hurts Evil: Played with: Light spells in the GBA games are more effective against people wielding Dark magic, and Bishops in The Sacred Stones do massive damage to the Demon King's monster servants. But then, in every game, you'll infallibly face an evil holy man as a climax boss, who is subject to the same rules as yourself. On top of that, by the end of each game, you'll typically get ahold of some divine weaponry designed specifically for dealing with the final boss and/or its ilk.
 * Genealogy of the Holy War also zigzags this. On one hand, Light and Dark magic are neutral against each other (and everything else for that matter). On the other hand, the only way to do anything beyond scratch damage to the final boss - - is by using the strongest light spell, usable only by one particular unit.
 * Good Scars, Evil Scars
 * Gosh Dang It to Heck: Variation, characters use archaic slurs like "Craven cur!" "Blackheart!" and "dastard!" (the root of dastardly).
 * It seems Nintendo was slipping in Radiant Dawn, however.
 * Then again, a Soldier does say "Moldey Onions".
 * Not to mention Marcia ("Oh, crackers.").
 * "What in the blazes?" is also pretty common
 * "HORNET HAIRS!"
 * Genealogy of the Holy War averts this, with "damn", "hell" and "bastard", among other profanities, showing up in various amounts. However, it is a Fan Translation.
 * Guilt Based Gaming: "W fell in battle in Chapter 2 and vanished from the pages of history." "X fell in battle in Chapter 14 and vanished from the pages of history." "Y started up a flower shop after the war, and is known to grow the best specimens in the land." "D fell in battle in Chapter 9 and vanished from the pages of history." etc.
 * Heel Face Turn: If one of your enemies has a name and a face, either they are a boss or they will join your party if you fulfill certain conditions (usually just talking to them with a certain character in your party). Occasionally both.
 * Another easy way to tell if a unit is recruitable is to check its stats: if their Luck Stat is reasonably high for his level, then it is usually safe to conclude that it can be recruited. Mooks and Bosses in many of the games either have really low Luck or none at all, as a balancing measure to having superior numbers and equipment than your own units.
 * Subverted by Gale in Sword of Seals. Highly prominent non-boss enemy, with strong ties to two recruitable characters (his girlfriend Miledy and her younger brother Zeiss)... yet he cannot be recruited himself.
 * There is strong evidence that he was planned to be recruitable though. He has custom growth rates only playable characters have those.
 * He Knows Too Much: In Genealogy of the Holy War, this is certainly at the end of Chapter 5.
 * Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Varies; in the old games, all knights, paladins and generals wear helmets, while cavaliers don't. In Path of Radiance, Titania and mist(upon promotion) are the only mounted units not wearing helmets. In Radiant Dawn, the only characters who have helmets are Aran, Nephenee and Haar; Jill is back to being helmetless, and Kieran loses his helmet upon promotion.
 * Heroic Bastard: Guinivere in The Binding Blade is a female version of this trope; Soren and Stefan in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are also both heroic and illegitimate.
 * Heroic Lineage: Every lord, Genealogy of the Holy War has this as a game mechanic.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: You have to have one of your people make one to advance in Shadow Dragon.
 * Hero of Another Story: Fire Emblem 4 is particularly susceptible to this, given the epic nature of the storyline and cast. Examples include Eltshan and Leaf (who actually gets to BE the hero of his "other story" in Fire Emblem 5).
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: A surprisingly large number of characters in the games are like this. Lucius and Raven are the obvious example, but the red and green knights are almost always Heterosexual Life Partners, as are the best friends of any lord.
 * Hidden Elf Village: Arcadia.
 * Hide Your Lesbians: Strangely enough Heather has a line about "joining because of all the pretty girls" removed in the localizations, but her homosexuality is still kept obvious.
 * Also, Florina's horrific androphobia, in addition to the way that she flat-out says "I love you!" to Lyn at the end of Lyn's Mode...
 * Hit Points
 * Hypocritical Heartwarming: Colm of The Sacred Stones repeatedly tells his childhood friend that she's useless and getting in the way on the battlefield, causing her to cry... which is something nobody else is allowed to do.
 * I Let You Win: The Black Knight in Path of Radiance, according to a Woolseyism.
 * It is also implied that Joshua rigged the coin toss he makes with Natasha, allowing her to win so he can join their side. And also so he won't have to kill her.
 * Inconsistent Dub: In the Spanish translations, it's almost impossible to find a class that has has the same name more than twice in a row. Particularly bad for The Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance, as they were published on the same day in Europe yet have wildly different translations for several classes.
 * Infallible Babble
 * Insufferable Genius: Lute from The Sacred Stones comes off like this.
 * Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Typically divided into those that open doors and those that open chests, though Thieves in most games get universal lockpicks.
 * Involuntary Group Split: When Eliwood/Hector's party walks into Kishuna's trap in the Nabata Desert.
 * Item Crafting: Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn and Shadow Dragon.
 * Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Fire Emblem Jugdral and Fire Emblem Tellius play this trope at its best. Both have incredibly rich worlds, tons of deep characters and complex story lines with mysteries that are delivered little by little. So much that they are considered among the best stories ever written by Nintendo.
 * Justified Tutorial: Ike is still a rookie in Path of Radiance's prologue, and the tutorial is his father's way of making sure he's up to task.
 * Just Think of the Potential: Lyon and the sacred stone of Grado.
 * Killed Off for Real: When any character runs out of HP (unless plot specific, which is very rare). Goes hand in hand with Anyone Can Die and can lead to some serious Video Game Caring Potential.
 * Large Ham: Sain, full stop.
 * Kieran from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn as well.
 * Oliver from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn in a more literal sense on top of the actual trope's meaning.
 * Sain pales in his hamminess and bravado in the face Wallace, who is never shy to remind everyone and everything that; "A GIANT WALKS AMONG YOU!"
 * Wallace and Vaida's support conversations are essentially Ham-to-Ham Combat.
 * Left-Justified Fantasy Map: Elibe and Tellius. Archanea, Jugdral and Magvel avert this though.
 * Level Grinding: Arena Abusing, though The Sacred Stones also had the Tower of Valni and various Revenant skirmishes to use between chapters.
 * If you have a healer and attacker with several spare staves and weapons, you can trade hits with a (not overpowering) boss and gain experience for participating in combat and healing your attacker. Lots of conditions though.
 * Light Is Not Good: Radiant Dawn and to a lesser extent Sword of Seals.
 * Also Kenneth, who says that he delights in the suffering of man, then proceeds to pull out some holy spells on you.
 * Renault is also an example of this, just look at the information revealed in his supports, though Good Is Not Nice might be a better fit in his case.
 * Riev, a very clearly evil bishop of Grado. However, he is noted to have been dubbed a heretic, and he was originally from Rausten, but was kicked out for said heresy.
 * Lightning Bruiser: Social Knights, or Cavaliers as they are called this side of the Pacific.
 * Living Crashpad: Hector finds himself in the "something soft" position to both Florina AND her Pegasus! Which is ironic in that he wears so much armor, you'd hardly expect a soft landing.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Thus invoking Character-Magnetic Team and Hitchhiker Heroes.
 * Luck-Based Mission: Battle Before Dawn in Blazing Sword gives no guarantee that you'll reach Jaffar in time to keep him alive in Hector's Hard Mode. If he dies, you don't get a side chapter.
 * Also Ike's fight with the Black Knight in Path of Radiance. Ike at capped strength does 9 damage, you have 10 blows (if you raised Mist, and Ike doesn't have to waste a turn on an elixir), the Black Knight has 60 HP and recovers 6 HP every turn for 5 turns. It involves no skill whatsoever and hinges entirely on whether he activates his Aether skill at least once (or whether he hits the Black Knight on every single attack). If he does, you win. If he doesn't, you don't. Simple as that. The odds are a bit better (but still random) if you use the Wrath/Adept combo instead of Aether, but the opinions for giving that to Ike are mixed.
 * Actually, there is a flawless way to defeat him involving the skill Parity: if Parity is equiped to Ike, he will deal enough damage to automatically kill the Black Knight in exactly the five turns given due to it's negating some of the Black Knight's skills. It also severely raises Ike's chances to actually land each hit (up to about 95 from 70).
 * And if you want to unlock in the sequel, you need Ike to have at least 27 speed if you want to survive an encounter with him again. This is easy enough if you're using a Path of Radiance save file, but if not, your Ike will have only 23 speed initially, meaning you need to Save Scum in order to make sure he gains speed with every level, or you're screwed.
 * Luck Stat: Vaguely described, it increases accuracy and evasion while lowering the enemy's chance of landing a critical hit.
 * Mad Lib Fantasy Title: Try typing "The Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light" with a straight face. It's not easy.
 * Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light is much easier, but still an example.
 * Magnificent Seven: The mercenary group in Path of Radiance.
 * The Mario: Cavaliers and mercenaries.
 * Meaningful Name: Roy has origins in words meaning both red (hair) and king, Ayra/Ira, while not the names real life origin (where it is short for Irene), is wrath in Latin. These may be coincidental though.
 * Marth is a weird example, early translations gave his name as Mars (you know, after the god of war?), but now Marth seems to be the primary translation
 * Most of the common names have meaning too. Hector was named for Hector of Troy, Leila was named for a harem girl in a poem, Raven was named for the titular raven from Edgar Allen Poe's poem, etc.
 * Hector has a double-meaning: since he has a brother named Uther (you know, like the biological father of King Arthur), he might also be named after Ector, Arthur's foster father.
 * And most characters in Genealogy of the Holy War are named for someone suitably obscure in Celtic mythology. You'll never read The Fate Of The Sons Of Usnach quite the same way again...
 * Soren (Senerio in Japanese) is an interesting case of having two different names, and both of them being meaningful. In Japanese, it's a play on the word "scenario" (Soren being the Tactician), but his English name Soren comes from the Italian name Severino, which means a short, grouchy guy.
 * Does Sanaki dropping giant fireballs of Shakespeare count?
 * Nearly every place-name in the series is either cribbed from or suspiciously similar to the old name for European territories; Crimea, Gallia, Ostia... there's also the world of the Ike games, Tellius, based on Tellus, the Roman name for the mother earth goddess. It's best not to think too hard about these names, as most of them seem to be totally random.
 * Macedon and Lycia are also real places, Lycia being a city and Macedon being the famous home of Alexander the Great.
 * "Elphin" is a pretty good description of his appearance.
 * Medieval European Fantasy
 * Mercy Rewarded: In particular, the Capture feature of Thracia 776.
 * In Path of Radiance, sparing the Laguz bandits in Chapter 15 and the priests in Chapter 22 also rewards you with bonus experience and one of the best staffs in the game, respectively.
 * Mighty Glacier: (Armor) Knights. Clad in full plate armor, wielding heavy spears. Very hard to kill without magic, powerful enough to one shot many other classes, but slow as molasses.
 * Misanthrope Supreme: Zephiel in The Sword of Seals.
 * The Mistress
 * Monster Arena
 * Multiple Endings: Usually determined by specific character supports.
 * Mystery of the Emblem and The Sword of Seals both end early if you didn't get all of the items you need.
 * Musical Nod: Traditionally, the Arena and Trial Map themes reuse musical tracks from prior games.
 * Genealogy of the Holy War: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the player map theme from Fire Emblem 1, and the arena battle theme remixes the player battle them from the same game.
 * Thracia 776: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the first player map theme from Fire Emblem 3 Book 2.
 * Sword of Seals: Arena battle theme is a remix of the player battle theme from Fire Emblem 4, and the Trial Map player and enemy map themes are based on their equivalents from Fire Emblem 2.
 * Blazing Sword: Arena battle theme is a remix of the player battle theme from Fire Emblem 5.
 * Sacred Stones: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the Fire Emblem 4's Prologue player map theme, and the arena battle theme is a remix of the Fire Emblem 2 player battle theme.
 * Path of Radiance: The Trial Map map theme is a remix of Fire Emblem 4's Chapter 10 player map theme.
 * Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem: Arena entrance theme is a remix of Ephraim's first map theme from Fire Emblem 8, and the arena battle theme is a remix of the Fire Emblem 9 player battle theme.
 * My Country, Right or Wrong: Pretty much every single game.
 * Near-Victory Fanfare: Most Fire Emblem games have a tune that plays when there's only one enemy left on the map (often the Boss, but not always), which can get annoying if you grind for Supports.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In The Blazing Sword, if you get the best Tactician rating, the game says (and I quote) that you "changed the course of history" and that "Bern and Etruria (the countries fighting in Sword of Seals) so desired this skilled mind that they went to war." Granted, they still go to war if you do poorly, but...
 * Nintendo Hard: Especially the ones released only in Japan (before The Blazing Sword).
 * Even amongst them, Thracia 776 should be the winner of Nintendo Hard for its "unique" flavor of difficulty. Seriously.
 * Radiant Dawn. Oh, gosh, RADIANT DAWN.
 * New Mystery of the Emblem has Lunatic mode, which between hindrances (certain items no longer exist, certain shops are inaccessible), and buffed computer stats (and buffed computer weapons) is a real trial to beat. However, it unlocks Reverse Mode, which is just like Lunatic mode but enemy units always attack first.
 * No Casualties Run: Thanks to Final Death, this is the default mindset for the majority of players.
 * No Hero Discount: Played straight in every game, but taken to ridiculous extremes in Radiant Dawn when.
 * Non-Entity General
 * Non-Linear Sequel
 * No One Could Survive That: The Black Knight is buried under Nados Castle when it collapses..
 * Nostalgia Level: Chapter 14 (with 1-10 being a tutorial) of The Blazing Sword is in the same place and identical to Chapter 4 of Sword of Seals, with the same character as the boss. Hector Chapter 25 of The Blazing Sword has an objective to capture every castle, mirroring the objective of every chapter from the 4th game.
 * If you look closely in Chapter 29 (31 in Hector's story) of the same game, you'll find the starting area is the exact same place as the boss' area in Chapter 8 of Sword of Seals.
 * The Notable Numeral: This series positively loves this trope. Used for the heroes of legend, and for notable enemy corps.
 * The Obi Wrong: Titania in Path of Radiance. While never actually demoted, her subordinate and student Ike gets promoted to leadership. Unlike most examples, this was actually a source of conflict, and everyone there had to choose whether to follow him or not. Some of them don't. Titania does.
 * One Stat to Rule Them All: Speed. Also, (Physical) Defense in some of the games.
 * One Steve Limit: A few exceptions exist, like Aran from Radiant Dawn and Arran from Shadow Dragon, but the first was named Brad in the Japanese version. A legitimate exception is Lynn from Genealogy of the Holy War and Lyn(dis) from The Blazing Sword as well as Linde/Linda from Akaneia and Linda from Genealogy of the Holy War (recurring NPC Jake will comment on how Jugdral!Linda's name is familiar).
 * Radiant Dawn has Amy and Aimee in the same game. This is another example of a name change clash, the 2nd originally (she keeps this original name in Shadow Dragon) being Larabel.
 * The Sacred Stones had Marisa, whose original name was Marica, which makes Marica and Marcia.
 * Amusingly, Krom's Rapier/Regal Sword/Wolf Beil/Thani/Mani Katti equivalent seems to be an actual "Falchion", prompting shock from the fanbase.
 * Optional Party Member: If you didn't steal soldiers from the opposing side, you'd almost never make it through the game.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: And not even consistent across the various games.
 * More specifically, there are two different kinds of humanoid dragons, Manaketes and Dragon Laguz, that transform into dragons using separate methods. Then we have Wyvern Riders who ride non-humanoid dragons akin to the Pegasus Knights. Two games had Draco Zombies, and a few other varying examples exist throughout the rest of the series.
 * Our Wights Are Different: One of the enemy units in The Sacred Stones.
 * Overly-Long Fighting Animation: Some of the stronger spells in each game. Luckily, you can turn off battle animations.
 * It doesn't help that the animations for everything, but Genealogy of the Holy War and Radiant Dawn are all so stiff, making every animation overly long.
 * Overrated and Underleveled: Too many examples to name, although there are several notable exceptions too, like Sety, Percival, Lord Pent, etc.
 * Pent actually isn't as bad as most prepromotes, and can hold up reasonably well to the other magic-users in the game.
 * Panty Shot: A few characters in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. Ilyana is very prone to them in Path of Radiance.
 * One of Eirika's support conversations questions the practicality of wearing a miniskirt on a battle field, which leads to her flashing Forde.
 * Pegasus:
 * Winged Unicorn: They either grow horns or wear armor with them when their riders promote to Falcon Knights.
 * Perfect Run Final Boss: Sword of Seals: defeating Zephiel with all legendary weapons intact unlocks a few extra chapters, including the real final boss fight.
 * Personality Blood Types: The Japanese version of The Blazing Sword allows you to choose' the blood type of Mark, the player character. To absolutely no effect.
 * The Player Is the Most Important Resource: In Fire Emblem 7, the characters of your party will be stunned at your great abilities upon victory, and especially grateful at the end of the game. However, this is optional: you don't need to "create a tactician" for the main characters to address.
 * Plotline Death:.
 * Power-Up Letdown: Kieran's Gamble. Not so much if you take it off of him and give it to someone with a high accuracy.
 * Snipers in The Sacred Stones have a skill that randomly activates, ensuring a hit... but the game is so easy, and Snipers typically have a very high Skill stat that they almost always have 100% accuracy anyway.
 * In the Radiance games, Snipers are given "Deadeye" instead, a skill which puts enemies to sleep. Would be useful if Rolf and Shinon were even halfway capable of not one-shotting anything they touch.
 * In Path of Radiance, Deadeye also had the passive effect of increasing accuracy by 100%... so any attack that would have had even the slightest chance to hit normally will never miss, and even attacks that would've been guaranteed misses are likely to hit. Most likely nerfed in Radiant Dawn because the change in skill capacity would've made it possible to combine Deadeye and Gamble.
 * Most Beorc Mastery Skills in Radiant Dawn triple the attack's damage on top of their effect (the Sentinels' Impale quadruples damage, but has no other effect; Sages' Flare and Saints' Corona negate Resistance instead; and the Black Knight's Eclipse is Luna with quintuple damage rather than triple because he cheats). Needless to say, few enemies survive long enough to suffer those effects and the ones that could have abilities that prevent them from activating in the first place; strictly speaking, it is literally impossible for anything in the game to survive a hit of Eclipse, including Ashera.
 * Power Glows: From Mystery of the Emblem onward, the series has been quite a big fan of it: whenever a unit attacks with an Infinity+1 Sword, the weapon lets off a split-second Audible Gleam which covers the entire screen.
 * Precision D Strike: In the NA localizations, The word "damn" is reserved for the worst moments (e.g. main character dying).
 * Precursor Heroes: Ahem.
 * Psycho Serum: The drugs used by Daein on the laguz.
 * Punch Clock Villain: Most of the enemies you can recruit are this. A good number of minor bosses will also fit this trope.
 * Quirky Miniboss Squad: A trope this franchise loves. Typically, it's a set of notable enemy commanders. Examples include the three princes from Verdane in the fourth game, the three Dragon Lords of Bern in the sixth game (and Etruria's Three Generals on your side), the Four Fangs in the seventh game, the six generals of Grado in the eight game, Daein's Four Riders in the ninth game... this sometimes goes hand in hand with the use of Red Baron, for example, all the generals of Grado have titles that are related to gemstones. Sometimes one of them can join your army instead. Usually, when you start fighting them, it's a good sign that you're approaching the game's finale, due to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil kicking in and the enemy finally sending his elites after you.
 * Rage Quit: Game mechanic ensuring your allies stay Deader Than Dead when they hit 0 HP conflicts with those who don't want to see their allies die. It's common practice among the fandom to give up on that attempt and restart the chapter, or revert to a save point in the few games that offer the feature.
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The player usually starts with a small core of professionals that know each other, but by the end will have recruited and used a whole bunch of miscellaneous weirdoes.
 * In The Blazing Sword, the player is given both the magic general of all of Etruria (the most magically proficient country in the world) and an illiterate fourteen-year-old girl you recruit from the bad guys. The girl has the potential to be one of the best magic users in the game (it is debatable if she has enough time to realize that potential though).
 * Lampshaded in this support conversation from Path of Radiance:
 * Lampshaded in this support conversation from Path of Radiance:


 * Don't let the title of "army" fool you. In most games, your units are just a unusually large bunch of skilled individuals, not bothering with normal army stuff like uniforms or anything resembling ordered formations.
 * In the GBA installments, however, you can disable the character-specific color display, resulting in them all adopting blue clothing the way they would wear a uniform. Formations are entirely up to you, you can let them loose on the enemy lines if you're confident or go for actual tactics.
 * Random Number God: In addition to the usual complaints about misses and critical hits, the levelling/stats system used in many of the games can, at the whim of the RNG, turn a character into an unstoppable monster or a useless waste of space. Characters with 'average' stat growths (around 30%) are particularly prone to this.
 * Despite RNGs being present in many games, this series somehow has a reputation as the cheapest when it comes to unlikely random events, usually involving the phrase "1% chance".
 * A level that really accentuates this is the church chapter in Fire Emblem 9 (Path of Radiance). The map is very small, so it's all closed quarters, but there are tons of bishops that are blocking your way, but not the enemy's. It takes time to shove the bishops out of the way (or kill them, which is discouraged). The bottom line is that the bad guys are definitely going to get a few hits in, which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't all axe-men with decent critical chance. The boss exaggerates everything above, carrying both a Killer Axe and Killer Bow (high critical chance), high strength (better chance that the critical will kill you), and seems to know exactly when he should pop out to kill someone and when he should hide in the back behind a whole stack of bishops; in other words, unless you really take your time in this chapter, the boss will get some hits in; just hope he doesn't get a critical at the wrong time.
 * Not entirely correct, the aforementioned boss does not move. Although, if you can get a Thief in position next to the boss, you can steal whichever weapon he hasn't equipped at that moment, and then exploit his blind spot in the spaces he can't target.
 * Ranged Emergency Weapon: Hand axes and Javelins have the attack power of the most basic axes/lances with lower accuracy and much lower durability, but have a range of 1 or 2 tiles, opposed to every other melee weapon's 1 (there are stronger versions with the strength of higher grade weapons, but they are rare and typically can not be bought).
 * Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Why are characters like Gheb and Valter looked down upon by their allies, you ask? This trope along with Psycho for Hire and We Have Reserves.
 * Red Baron: Nearly everyone has a nickname, from Karel "The Sword Demon" to most of the bosses you face; in particular, in The Blazing Sword, any Black Fang worth his/her salt has a nickname, from Jaffar, "Angel of Death" to Lloyd the "White Wolf". Even the weaker members get their own nicknames, like Teodor the Shrike Shadow Hawk, that that they prefer to go by rather than their real names.
 * In character endings, each is given a nickname.
 * Grado's generals in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones are each given a gemstone nickname by the emperor when they are promoted to that rank (Moonstone, Blood Beryl, Flourspar, etc).
 * Redemption Earns Life: For all the mooks who perform a Heel Face Turn.
 * Reincarnation Romance: Julius and Ishtar is essentially Azel and Tiltyu's romance reincarnated, one born from an bastard child and the other forced to continue the bitter legacy.
 * Relationship Values: The support conversations.
 * The Remnant: "The Ghosts of Bern" in The Sword of Seals. Also, the remaining forces of Grado in The Sacred Stones are actually called The Remnant.
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Wyvern Riders are traditionally the feature class of the enemy country in each game, in contrast to the more 'graceful' Pegasus Knights. Often times, you face more of them as enemies than Pegasus Knights, and those which are recruitable are almost always on the enemy side.
 * Restored My Faith in Humanity: Gotoh's lost his belief in humans because they used the magic he gave them for fighting wars. Marth restores his faith by... fighting a war (for a virtuous cause, sure, but still...).
 * Ike can also restore Lehran's faith in humanity in Radiant Dawn, albeit only on the second playthrough, and after fulfilling an insane amount of requirements besides.
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something: Discussed and enforced. The only protagonist that doesn't start as one of these came from a country that lacked true nobility. His peers make sure to rectify this issue.
 * RPG Elements
 * The Sacred Darkness: There occasionally is a dark tome among a series' set of Holy Weapons, such as Gleipnir and Apocalypse.
 * Save Scumming: "Start-of-turn-save" in Genealogy of the Holy War, "Battle Save" in Radiant Dawn, and to a lesser extent, the save points in Shadow Dragon at least make Save Scumming possible. Path of Radiance let's you reset if bonus XP doesn't result in enough level ups. On the other hand, the trope is averted in all other games. As most don't have mid chapter saves.
 * Saving the World
 * Say My Name: In Radiant Dawn, Tormod yells "SOOOOOOOOOTHE" when first announcing his presence to the rogue.
 * Also, in The Blazing Sword, a good half of the dialogue between Eliwood and Ninian consists of them saying each other's name.
 * Scaled Up: The Mamkutes/Manaketes are an entire race that can do this.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can: The titular Fire Emblem in three games!
 * Sealed Good in a Can: ...Except that one time the titular object wasn't what we thought it was.
 * Secret Shop: You'll need a card to get in, and the secret shops are usually an out-of-the-way panel that just looks slightly different from the rest.
 * She's All Grown Up: Many characters between the various direct sequels.
 * Shoot the Medic First: This would be a straighter example if the enemy actually had more (and more effective) healers on their side; alas, they don't. Rest assured, put your own Clerics in harm's way, and the enemy will go right after them.
 * Combat Medic: However, once your clerics class up, they learn how to fight back. Typically, your offensive magic units learn to heal when they class as well, making them an inverted Combat Medic.
 * One very poignant example, however, is during Ike's duel with the Black Knight. On the third turn, some reinforcements will appear, including a Bishop with a Physic Staff. If he manages to heal the Black Knight, you won't win.
 * Slap Slap Kiss: Lyn and Hector, Farina and Dart, Serra and Erk/Matthew, L'Arachel and Innes/Rennac/Ephraim, Clarine and Rutger...
 * During Rebecca and Wil's B Support Conversation, she kicks him in the stomach.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Titania and Soren, respectively, serve as mouthpieces to each side of the scale. Path of Radiance itself tends towards realism and cynicism for the most part.
 * Also, this sums up the major personality differences between Eirika and Ephraim.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness
 * Sound of No Damage: In the Game Boy Advance version, any attack that does no damage will make a high-pitched ping sound.
 * Spanner in the Works: Kishuna in the first chapter he appears in The Blazing Sword. The boss of that chapter (who, incidentally, comes off as a chessmaster-type character, what with remarks like "battle is an equation") has long-range magic that will do some nasty damage to your non-magic party members... had the aforementioned Magic Seal not made his conveniently-timed unexpected appearance.
 * Spell My Name with an "S": None of the titles before Fire Emblem have official English releases, the inevitable result (combined with the rather scattered nature of the fanbase) being that different sources have different names for pretty much everyone and everything. Due to the vagaries of Japanese transliteration of foreign names (usually of legendary weapons), the Gae Bolg has been referred to as the Gay Borg in more than one FAQ for Genealogy of the Holy War. For that matter, Nintendo themselves seem to have trouble, turning Turpin into Durban and Almace into Armads. Admittedly, once Archbishop Turpin from The Song of Roland became an axewielding berserker, all bets were off.
 * Nabal/Nabarl/Nabaaru/Navahl/Navarre/The guy with the killing edge in Chapter 3 of the original game that you can recruit, takes the cake. He doesn't even have the same translation in the American and European releases of Shadow Dragon. Neither does Shiida/Caeda.
 * The European version of Fire Emblem 7 can't seem to decide whether it's Ostia or Ositia; Laus or Lahus; Bern or Biran. The world map tends to use the former name, while the rest of the dialogue uses the latter.
 * A strange case is Celice, the second protagonist of Genealogy of the Holy War. He's near-universally referred to as "Celice" by the fandom, but in their summary of the history of the franchise on their The Blazing Sword website, Nintendo of America calls him "Serlis". It's possible this was done to differentiate him from Celica, protagonist of Fire Emblem Gaiden who was mentioned several paragraphs before, but...
 * Spikes of Villainy: Ashnard. Subverted by Harken, Echidna, Jeigan...
 * Spiritual Successor: Tear Ring Saga for the PlayStation, which was designed by Fire Emblem creator Shozo Kaga. In fact, Nintendo sued Enterbrain, the publisher of the game, for copyrights infringement, but lost the case.
 * Also happened within the series. Later installments of Fire Emblem regularly took up features and game elements again that had been absent from the franchise since a certain earlier game. The 8th game can be stated pretty surely to be this for the 2nd game. The 9th and 10th game bring back game elements from the fourth (and fifth?) game. So I guess that makes the 6th and 7th game the spiritual successors to the 1st and 3rd games?
 * Spiteful AI
 * Squishy Wizard: Most magic users have terrible defense. Some try to compensate with crazy dodging skills.
 * Still Wearing the Old Colors: Enemy units that join you typically keep their original armor color.
 * Stone Wall: Armor Knights: although their attack power is average at worst, they have the mobility of a beached whale.
 * The Strategist: The player character in The Blazing Sword.
 * Soren in Path of Radiance and Malledus in Shadow Dragon.
 * August and Dorias in Thracia 776 and Elphin and Merlinus in Sword of Seals as well.
 * Stupid Sexy Flanders: Lucius.
 * Also Soren to a degree.
 * And Legault, though in a different way.
 * Subtext: Florina and Lyn from Fire Emblem certainly seem to share a Xena/Gabrielle dynamic early on in the game. Well, mostly Florina, a Shrinking Violet who admits to being afraid of men. She eventually matures and recovers from it, but the subtext is still clearly there, so much that she and Lyn have an ending. Heather from Radiant Dawn joins because "of all the pretty girls" and refers to every female she has a conversation with (and one she doesn't) as cute or lovely. For dudes, look no further than Raven and Lucius, or Legault mock-flirting with Heath.
 * But Lucius and Legault would be disputed by some confused fans.
 * How could anyone leave out the (admittedly dulled down) subtext between Ike and Soren in Radiant Dawn? Along with Ike's nearly painful discomfort with the various women who express interest in him (and Soren's uncharacteristically explosive reactions), if their support level is high enough, the pair have a special ending that gives a serious "more than just friends" vibe. Besides, they just fit so comfortably into the Yaoi archetype?
 * The only woman who makes Ike uncomfortable is Aimee: he gets along well enough with Elincia and Mia, for example. Then again, Aimee is the only one who really tries to seduce Ike.
 * Also fans have theorised potential for Joshua and Gerik, especially as their paired ending (that alone is suggestive) describes Gerik as never again leaving Joshua's side.
 * Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Inverted, many of the characters from Fire Emblem 7, a prequel, are explained as not appearing in Fire Emblem 6 by dying. Canas is killed by continuity errors dies in a blizzard in his ending. Shin's recruitment has Sue express concern about her grandfather, but not her father (her mother can be explained as being sent away with the woman and children like she was). Nino vanishes so her children can be left orphans. Hector started as a character whose main purpose was to die. Eliwood is ill and close to death.
 * Suicidal Overconfidence: Whenever you elect to attack, the game shows your expected damage and chance to hit. Enemy units other than bosses tend to have poorer stats than your average player character, and will regularly try to hit when the expected damage or chance to hit (or both) are listed at zero, and the PC has a 100% chance to kill said unit in a counterattack. Apparently, using up charges on your weapons are worth more to these idiots than their own lives.
 * Suspiciously Small Army: Takes this Up to Eleven. The Arbitrary Headcount Limit is, on a huge map, around 20 people. Fire Emblem 4 has no headcap limit (though single characters are taking entire cities), Fire Emblem 7 avoids having an "army" under the player's control or fighting against one, Fire Emblem 9 and Fire Emblem 10 state the player controls a vanguard during the parts the story says is army vs army. This doesn't explain every other game though.
 * Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: The weapon and magic triangles.
 * Take That, Audience!: "To this day, historians look back and question how these incomprehensible strategies ever led to victory."
 * Thigh-High Boots: Most of the Pegasus Knights.
 * This Cannot Be!: Every boss has a death quote, so it's quite unsurprising that some of them even say variations of this when they're defeated.
 * This Is Unforgivable!: Yes, this game loves this trope. This stock phrase is used on certain times when you choose to have certain characters attack certain enemy or boss characters, like Ashnard or Nergal, for instance.
 * Those Two Bad Guys: It's a running gag in the series to have the party attacked by a duo of very Gonky bandits with over-the-top personalities.
 * That only happened twice. Also of note: of the four total bandits (two pairs), three had decidedly feminine names... and the duo of Maggie and Rose had the personalities to match.
 * Three. The two pairs in the Elibe games plus the Laguz in Radiant Dawn.
 * They also had pirate counterparts of sorts early on in Path of Radiance. "Scallywags of the sea are we! We fight like beasts, an' men do flee!"
 * Those Two Guys: Every game has two cavaliers, one red and one green, who fit this trope. They usually come as a pair. Oscar and Kieran, Kyle and Forde, Sain and Kent...
 * Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Ike's Aether, Mercenary and Hero critical hits.
 * Oddly enough, however, swords are the only weapon type that doesn't have a common throwable version. The rare sword types that do have a ranged option are usually magical.
 * Timed Mission: In terms of turns, not actual passing time.
 * Too Awesome to Use: Legendary weapons, Hammerne staff, Mines and more.
 * Radiant Dawn averts this by giving a selected weapon for each character unlimited uses for the last 3 chapters.
 * Manaketes seem to fall under this category too (once the Dragonstone runs out, they're useless). However, give one an endgame chapter and no doubt they'll near his/her level cap by the end with several charges to spare.
 * Translation Style Choices: The various localizations offer different angles on characterization. It makes for a lot of Squee amongst fanfiction writers.
 * Trope Maker/Trope Codifier: For the Strategy RPG genre, at least for the Japanese side of the genre's market. It certainly wasn't the first, but it was responsible for many of the defining features and themes now taken for granted in the genre.
 * Tsundere: Is quite often seen in the games. Some notable ones are Lyndis, Hector and Lethe.
 * In New Mystery of the Emblem, the My Unit system and the newly made Base Conversations expanded the characters personality more. Some newly found tsunderes are Nabarl (has a tendency to blush when he is teased), Rickard (when he cooked food with My Unit, he says "I-I didn't make that for YOU anyways...") and Wolf (he says that the Altean Knights are weak and makes other rude remarks when he talks with My Unit, but with the female My Unit, he goes on his dere dere side by asking her to take her to his homeland).
 * Unexpected Successor: Ashnard in Path of Radiance.
 * Unusual Euphemism: Marcia from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn swears with food items. "Oh, crackers, I don't have time for this!".
 * Vapor Wear: Ilyana's 3rd tier outfit in Radiant Dawn, and in one drawing in the idle mode for Shadow Dragon, Sheeda.
 * Video Game Caring Potential: EVERY character you control is named and has their own head-shot. Add to the mix a bit of Killed Off for Real (minus restarting the game), specific endings for every character, and lots of character interaction, you wind up with having to/wanting to restart every level multiple times so that no one ever dies.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: In Blazing Sword, if you can level Nino up fast enough, you can have her kill Sonia, . You can also have her kill, and later on, . In The Sacred Stones, if you're a terrible enough person, you can have Myrrh kill (and since he is the only foe in the game that poses any serious threat, you may just want to). As for Sword of Seals though, nothing quite beats having Miledy kill.
 * In Genealogy of the Holy War, you can...
 * Use the Berserk Staff to force Ishtar to kill her lover Yurius.
 * Have Celice fall in love with Yuria... then have him kill her (if she's L30, he's about the only one who can.... if you want to).
 * War Is Hell: A major plot point of the Tellius saga was that a war engulfing all nations on Tellius would awaken the Goddesses and trigger the Apocalypse.
 * We Cannot Go on Without You: The death of your Lord character means an automatic game over.
 * Also applies during a lot of missions where you don't have to rout the enemy, just defeat the boss.
 * Possibly applies with the seizing of thrones/gates, which guarantees your success no matter how many enemies remain. How does We Cannot Go On Without Our Special Chair sound?
 * Also a tactic used excessively by the AI. You'd think it'd be a little less hasty to throw its valuable healers right in front of enemy fire, or make half an effort to keep its archers away from physical units. But no.
 * Where Are They Now? Epilogue
 * White Mage: The Cleric class, which often upgrades to either another White Mage archetype (often with Holy Hand Grenade magic) or a Red Mage.
 * Why Won't You Die?: Nergal, to Elbert.
 * The Wise Prince: Sigurd in Genealogy of the Holy War, Eliwood in The Blazing Sword, Elincia in Path of Radiance, and Pelleas in Radiant Dawn.
 * Worthy Opponent: The Black Knight in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.
 * The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: in the tenth game. After spending the first chapter getting the "legitimate" heir on the throne, he turns out (which should have been obvious from the start with his Horrible Judge of Character stats) to be horribly incompetent, and easily manipulated for the purpose of creating a world war..
 * You All Look Familiar: All generic enemies look the same. Justified -- sort of -- that nine times out of ten, you're fighting an opposing army, and your enemies are uniformed soldiers. However, if there's an enemy unit that both has a name and isn't a boss, there's a very good chance they can be convinced to defect.
 * Indeed, it is almost Color Coded for Your Convenience, with the change that rather than being 'white' and 'black' it is 'dead sexy' and 'generic or hideous'.
 * You ALL Share My Story
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair
 * You Killed My Father: Most games in the franchise have characters seeking revenge on the villains who killed their parents.
 * You Look Familiar: In The Blazing Sword, some of the characters share mug sprites. For example, Puzon, who is the boss in the level where you meet Merlinus, was apparently killed by Rath in an Earlier chapter. And Rebecca's father can be found in a variety of locales. And Marquess Araphen seems to have gotten a dye-job and joined the Black Fang in the intervening year.
 * The earlier games used shared mugs as well (Fire Emblem 4's "Harolds" are a popular example), but the Famicom games are ridiculous with this: each game as maybe 3 or 4 mugs that are reused for all the oneshot bosses, and even for some of the plot important ones (like Jiol in the first game, and Dozah and Judah in Fire Emblem Gaiden).
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Pegasus knights, most cavalry/aerie, and the occasional sage and swordmaster.
 * Get over here, Nephenee!