Fire Emblem Fates

A 2015 video game, part of the Fire Emblem series, where Nintendo decided to adopt the Pokémon strategy with another franchise to gain more money, creating two physical versions of the game and adding a third one as DLC.

Basically, the game revolves around a war between the kingdoms of Nohr, a European-like medieval country, and Hoshido, a Japanese-like medieval country. The protagonist is a Hoshido-born noble that was kind of adopted by the king of Nohr as his own son/daughter. And by "kind of adopted" means that the main character's step siblings do treat him like family, but the adoption involved the main character's real father being killed and the protagonist being kidnapped by the king of Nohr.

All versions follow a similar plot up to Chapter 6, where the protagonist is forced to chose whose side he must take in the war. The decision is already taken for you if you purchase one or other physical version, but the so-called neutral path is added by the DLC, as is the opposite choice.

Developed by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo SPD. Published by Nintendo.

Tropes used in Fire Emblem Fates include:

Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Due to the surface streets of Nohr's capital city, Windmire, experiencing a rise in bandits and Faceless; Windmire's residents have migrated to the sewers of the city, which is large enough to convert into a city and to serve as a battlefield.
An Axe to Grind:
- It's the Weapon of Choice for Fighters, Berserkers, and Wyvern Riders.
- And it comes as an secondary weapon for Generals, Great Knights, Heroes, and Wyvern Lords.
An Ice Person: Flora has ice powers.
Armor-Piercing Attack: Luna is a skill that causes one of your attacks to ignore half of your opponent's defensive stats.
Blade on a Stick: While lances are staple of the series, Fates is the first Fire Emblem entry to include naginatas, which are literally blades on a stick.
Boxed Crook: Hans is a criminal that Xander himself arrested, but Garon decides to recruit him into helping the Avatar with a mission, apparently.
The Cavalry:
- The avatar's first assignment in Conquest is to single-handedly quell a rebellion from the Ice Tribe. Overhearing Iago's plans to interfere, Elise and her retainers come to the Avatar's aid in Chapter 7 to fend off a hoarde of Faceless that Iago had summonned.
- The next level has both of Leo's retainers appearing, commenting that Leo sent them because he felt that Garon's stipulation was unusually harsh.
- Chapter 10 of Conquest is a siege level and there's no end to the invading Hoshidans. But the situation changes when Camilla and her aides delegate their mission to Xander and Leo to help the Avatar and their group drive off the invaders.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The icons for the weapons are colored by their position in the weapon triangle; with red identifying swords and magic, green is for axes/clubs and bows, and spears and daggers have a blue icon.
Damage Reduction:
- Armored Blow reduces the physical damage an unit takes by 10 whenever they initiate an attack
- And Warding Blow has a similar effect, except that it reduces magical damage by 20 points.
- Both Pavise and Aegis are skills that halves the damage received from certain weapons and the difference between the two is that each one individually covers half of the weapons found in the game.
Dark Is Not Evil: The people of Nohr are very into black and gothic clothes, but they are mostly good people.
Dual-Wielding: Although the Swordsmaster class can wield two swords when equipped with certain weapons, the extra sword doesn't have an impact on damage calculation.
Dummied Out:
- Game data suggests that Candace and Nichol were originally meant to be regular party members rather than capturable bosses, as their names are listed among the main army, and they are the only bosses with critical cut-ins and official Twitter icons.
- There are unused skills called Armor Shield and Beast Shield and skill items to teach them within the game, as well as skill items for the enemy-exclusive Winged Shield and Bold Stance skills, but there is no legitimate way to access them.
Fragile Speedster:
- Ninjas and Master Ninjas generally rely on their high evasion to stay alive, which is caused by having a high Speed stat, low Defense, and mediocre health.
- While Samurai and Swordsmasters are moderately more durable and just as evasive as the ninjas, on account on being a front-line class; they typically can't take much of a beating compared to their Nohrian counterparts. Plus, their Duelist's Blow skill boosts their evasion whenever they start an attack.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: Gunther has a big one who clearly was made by a blade diagonally slashing through the left side of his face. If that isn't a non-verbal sign that he is an experienced warrior, nothing is.
Just Following Orders: Hans' reasoning for his actions, that were indeed all ordered by the king of Nohr.
Lightning Bruiser: Statistically, Great Knights and Paladins fall into this role on account of their high movement range and attack power. But the Great Knights are heavily geared towards the "bruising" part while Paladins are little bit more balanced and having a slightly larger movement radius.
Heavily Armored Mook:
- Knights and Generals are infantry clad in reinforced armor and have an oversized shield to go along with it.
- While Great Knights are tangently related, they wear thicker armor, which gives them better Defense than Paladins and a weakness to armor-effective weapons.
Hold the Line: In "Unhappy Reunion" of Conquest you're tasked with defending a road that leads out of a harbor for 11 turns and if a single Hoshidan reaches it, you lose. And fitting in with Conquest's reputation for being the hardest of the three routes, this early level is one of the more difficult maps in it due to the escalating number of enemies.
Honor Before Reason: The Avatar in Conquest refuses to kill enemies that were already defeated and can no longer attack, no matter how badly Garon will see this kind of action.
Leeroy Jenkins: Deliberately invoked, but averted. The test that Garon gives the Avatar seems to be a pacific exploration mission... Until the party meets Hoshidans and Hans provokes them into battle, intentionally. Turns out Garon wanted the Avatar to fight... and die.
Lethal Lava Land:
- Birthright has "Burning Falls," which is technically a river of oil set ablaze, but that doesn't stop the superheated terrain from damaging your army.
- Revelations, on the other hand, actually uses walls of fire in order to form an ever-changing maze in "White Flames."
Living Weapon: Ganglari is able to move by itself. It demonstrates it... by throwing itself and the Avatar down a chasm.
Mega Twintails: Elise's hair is 90% her two giant spiraling twintails.
Mordor: The Bottomless Canyon is definitely this with its nasty weather, threatening-looking rock formations, and lightning, specially by the fact the sky is, according to Gunter, permanently dark.
Multi Melee Master: While there's plenty of promoted classes that are capable of using two or three weapons, in order to keep the list short, there's only two classes that are capable of wielding three weapons: Great Knights and Masters-Of-Arms, who can easily monopolize the weapon triangle.
One-Hit Kill: Lethality, whenever it triggers: Violently kills standard enemies with one hit, no questions asked.
Suicide Mission: Turns out that the mission that Garon gives to the Avatar at the start of the game is supposed to be one of these. If that failed, the king ordered Hans to kill the Avatar by himself and those who were with him.
Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors : It's...kind of complicated, to say the least.
- For starters, the series' mainstay of the bladed triangle of swords, axes, and spears have an effect on one's accuracy and evasion rates.
- But one of the curveballs that Fates throws is placing magic, archery, and throwing knives into the mix by respectively pairing them with swords, axe, and spears.
- And farther complicating things is the existence of two sets of Hoshidan weapons; one of which is effective against specific weapons, while the other is the "dual" weapons, specialized for going against the weapon triangle.
Tough Love: Xander's way of training the Avatar in combat is by basically intimidating him/her into attacking, like saying the Avatar will likely never leave the fortress that is his home-prison unless the Avatar hurts Xander itself.
The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Downplayed because Garon seems to be extremely stressed by his position and is an old guy, but his biological children are gorgeous compared to him.
Ungrateful Bastard: Rinkah's reaction to the Avatar and their siblings' kindness towards her is a promise of revenge for the "humiliation".
Unusable Enemy Equipment:
- While it's possible to obtain weapons and items that are highlighted green in an enemy's inventory; most of the opposition will refuse to part ways with their weaponry even if they died and never got an chance to use it.
- But certain weapons, like star axes and maces, are enemy-exclusive.
You Have Failed Me...: Garon's modus operandi. The only reason the Avatar isn't executed is because he is, after all, the king's son/daughter. But Garon promises a execution if he/she fails a second time... And then it turns out he was going to get the Avatar killed anyway, only a more elaborated way.