Fire Emblem Tellius/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

  • Anticlimax Boss:
    • Oliver in Path of Radiance. He actually far better as a player unit in Radiant Dawn.
    • Shiharam, mainly because almost no one survives once Ike uses Aether.
    • Dragons can't do ranged attacks in Path of Radiance, which sucks for Ena as she can be easily pounded into the ground with Thunder magic.
    • Petrine's not actually that weak overall, but her Magic stat is low and she comes equipped with a Magic Lance that isn't all that good to begin with. It makes for a somewhat dissapointing boss fight. It's really too bad, since as shown here, Petrine can actually be a fairly serious threat if properly equipped.
  • Anvilicious: Racism's bad, m'kay?
  • Awesome Music: "Rally the Spirit".
  • Base Breaking Character: Makalov. The fans either love him for his jerkassery, his pink hair and orange armor. Or hate him for his jerkassery, his pink hair and orange armor.
  • Breather Level: Chapter 14, for being very straightforward compared to Chapters 13 (defense mission that requires you to fight raven Laguz and think more strategically than usual, especially if you want all the treasure and you want to recruit an extremely frail NPC) and Chapter 15 (desert map in which you fight Laguz). Chapter 14 is as simple as sending your army along two paths and taking enemies as they come, with the only threats being the Feral Ones at the end and the boss. Hard Mode adds Fog of War, but all that really does is increase your chances of accidentally killing Makalov.
  • Canon Sue: Micaiah possesses many characteristics of a Mary Sue, although she is not universally loved by major characters (although most of them with the exception of Soren eventually like her) and in fact commits critical mistakes that Sothe does call her out for. Ike probably also qualifies given that he kind of is universally loved. The fanbases' general mentality to gauge a character's worth based on their battle potential doesn't help.
  • Cliché Storm: Path of Radiance is this for Fire Emblem, backstory and setting aside. Heck, Elincia even looks like Guenivere and Nyna. Until she suddenly dons armour and jumps on her grandmother's pegasus.
  • Complete Monster: Ashnard, Lekain and Izuka are obvious examples. Schaeffer would be one too, but... see below.
  • Crack is Cheaper: Getting Path of Radiance on Amazon is... pricey, to say the least. Even a used copy will set you back a hundred dollars.
  • Critical Dissonance: While the game was well-received, and Ike is one of the most popular Lords in the series (if not the most popular), it sold very poorly in its native Japan.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The boss of the Path of Radiance chapter "Solo" is holding the unarmed population of a monastery hostage to gain leverage and some human shields. He is the most hilariously, unapologetically vile man your army has personally met thus far, and he seals it with his death quote:

Schaeffer:"...Gwaar... Haaaarr... Haaaaaa... Shoulda brought... more priests... Or some... babies... Dang..."

  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Mia due to her personality and being a myrmidon (the fandom's favorite characters all seem to come from this class).
    • Nephenee also has a significant following, due to her being a Shrinking Violet farm girl - and at the same time, she's also one of the most powerful characters in the game, outside of laguz nobles.
      • She's also the first playable Soldier.
    • Devdan.
    • Oliver too. He's the most beautiful character in the game.
    • Volke, Marcia, Haar and Stefan are quite popular as well.
    • Bastian is also moderately popular due to his exuberant personality and heroic Magnificent Bastardry.
    • In a non-character example, the Tellius incarnation of the Soldier class as a competent playable class, and its promoted forms Halberdier and Sentinel, seem largely beloved. Improving Soldiers and creating and inserting Halberdiers (of varying levels of graphical quality) has become a very common practice in the Game Mod community for the GBA trilogy and the lack of this form of Soldier in Fire Emblem: Awakening was much bemoaned.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Petrine, complete with Boobs of Steel.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: There's a small minority of Fire Emblem fans who DON'T ship Nephenee/Heather.
  • Fan Dumb/Hate Dumb: Soren gets loads of this, earning a Base Breaker status. Some fans were definitely not pleased with the fact that he and Ike seem to be the Official Couple for the game given the insane amount of hoops you have to jump through to get their bonus scene. Crosses over with Double Standard since nobody was bitching about Heather's fairly blatant lesbianism.
  • Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Mia and Lethe.
  • Foe Yay: A bit: most prominently between Greil and Petrine, and between Valtome and Zelgius.
  • Fountain of Memes:
    • Devdan.
    • Septimus.
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • Naesala, the King of Kilvas, is a Raven Laguz who is introduced cheerfully working with the Daein army and betraying them to loot their ships for the betterment of kilvas. Selling his friend, the Heron Laguz Reyson into slavery for benefits to Kilvas, Naesala does intend to recover him, and later assists the army against Daein to rescue Reyson's sister Leanne. Constantly manipulating and betraying his allies, it turns out Naesala is under a Blood Pact to the Beginon Senate,to force them to do his worst deeds or risk his entire nation dying. Finding a loophole in the Blood Pact, Naesala is able to break it and join the heroes to achieve a final freedom for Kilvas and live happily ever after with Leanne.
    • Ashnard, though you don't find out about it until his back story and motives are explained in the second game, well after his death. In the first game, he just comes off as being Ax Crazy.
    • Non-villainous examples include Nasir, Bastian, Naesala and Soren (although the last becomes more of a Guile Hero by the end of Path of Radiance).
    • Sephiran, who is The Man Behind the Man to everyone. Lekain thinks he's one, but is more of a high-functioning Smug Snake.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Skills are lost for no good reason if it was taken off a character.
    • Biorhythm can be annoying, but it's not as bad as it will be next game.
    • The Laguz's transformation meters. It makes non-royal Laguz units so much less flexible, and requires players to be so much more cautious with their placement at the end of turns to ensure they don't untransform while being assaulted on the enemy phase. The result is that even with items to mitigate the transformation meter, Laguz perform a lot worse than equivalent Beorc units, and require really overpowering stats or abilities to be useful. Even with OP stats, Laguz will often get overlooked by players for inferior Beorc units so they don't have to deal with the meters.
  • "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: Path of Radiance was the first Fire Emblem game to use mild profanity in its Western localization, with "damn(ed)" used as a Precision F-Strike twice during the game... a rarity for Nintendo at the time. Because later Fire Emblem games used profanity much more liberally (starting with its own sequel Radiant Dawn), the game's frequent use of Gosh Dang It to Heck! outside of these two instances can come across as stilted, especially since Path of Radiance was rated T for Teen and would not have appealed to children.
  • That One Boss: Defeating the Black Knight is more or less a matter of luck, unless you've gotten Mist leveled up reaaaaaal well. And even then you have to do it in just four turns, which is harder than it sounds.
  • That One Level:
    • Chapter 17: It's disliked for being separated into 4 sections, and if you're not comfortable with your equipment setup past the first section, then too bad because you don't get to edit your items from section 2 onwards. The chapter also just looks dreary, and while that is the effect their going for it makes the chapter very bland to look at. On the bright side, it did introduce a system that allowed you to call for reinforcements to bolster your ranks and bring in spare items, but they take quite a few turns to show up.
    • Maniac Mode Chapter 26: It is the logical extreme of Maniac Mode's unfathomably high amount enemies, with almost half of the (already incredibly large) map filled up with enemy units. It is regarded by many as one of the biggest slogs in the entire series for many Maniac players.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The losses of the mercenary and hero classes were also met with complaining, although Ike basically counts as one in all but name, especially in the sequel.
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy: Myrmidons/Swordmasters may just be at their worst in Path of Radiance. Not only do they have the usual issues of lacking 1-2 range and being a Fragile Speedster with a low strength cap, but they also are in a game with a heavy mount dominance and in the Japanese version they lack their usual innate critical rate (it was added in the English release). Thankfully, most of the characters within the class are beloved enough that they still remain popular, but they are almost always regarded negatively on tier lists and such.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Astarte's status in the game could be viewed as this, but if anyone cared, it'd probably be for Sadly Mythtaken reasons. The translators renamed her Ashera though, so unfortunate implications abound when she's used for the church stand in.
  • The Woobie: Among others, Tormod, Muarim and Ena definitely count.
  • Woolseyism: "Mist" was changed into "Alja" in the German version since "Mist" literally means manure.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

  • 8.8: The GameSpot review pans Radiant Dawn for not including Mii support and being too much like the rest of the series. And being hard on Easy Mode. And not including motion controls, which resulted in a very bad review anyway. And guess which console was being criticized by the same site for using motion control in too many games?
  • Anticlimax Boss:
    • How to beat The Black Knight: give Ike a damn Hammer. Wait two turns. Even without a hammer, he's still a fairly easy boss, especially when compared to Deghinsea, Sephiran and Ashera. The hardest part of that fight is keeping him alive long enough for your other characters to get the Wishblade from Levail. No doubt as payback to the insanity of the first duel in Path of Radiance. It's entirely luck-based.
    • If she can avoid being shot down by bows on the way across the map, Elincia can charge straight up to Ludveck and use her just-obtained Infinity+1 Sword to carve him up in one round (on easy and normal mode, at least). Haar can also slaughter him with a Hammer.
  • Arc Fatigue: Part III is by far the longest part, and it's also where some of the most controversial moments are seen. Eventually between all of the switching perspectives, long chapters, and the story constantly on the move at a break-neck pace, Part III can really burn a player out.
  • Awesome Music: Some of the best music in the Fire Emblem franchise comes from this game.
  • Base Breaking Character:
    • Geoffrey is, for better or worse, a standard Knight in Shining Armor. Just how he's seen in the fanbase varies wildly on whether that is a good thing. Notably, he is the only character that can be in a relationship with Elincia at the end of the game. Whether he is a perfect match that complements her empathetic and emotional nature nicely or is a boring stiff that exists to shut off potential ship tease with characters like Ike or Tibarn is up for contention. His eventual relationship with Elincia might also seem egregious for being a breach in the chain-of-command, considering how seriously he takes knighthood. Finally, there is the near execution of his sister, which he accepts with resignation, was it symbolic of his dedication to knighthood or a wasted opportunity to give conflict to Geoffrey which would make him more human? His availability and use is also up for contention. In both games, he has very poor availability but this is somewhat balanced by having the Paragon skill which helps him level him up quite quickly.
    • Stat-wise: Edward. He's either one of the best characters in the game for having some of the best growths in one of the best classes, or one of the worst for coming in with very weak base stats (especially lack of defense) and requiring significant investment to really shine on the harder difficulties. His usefulness generally depends on what difficulty you're playing; Part 1 on Hard Mode really isn't kind to Magikarp Power characters, while Edward will get off the ground really fast on Easy. He also tends to generally appeal to more casual players who'll play on the lower difficulties and spend more time/resources raising such characters, rather than to the more hardcore players playing for efficiency and lower turn counts, that will brush them aside without them offering significantly greater reward at the end than the competition.
  • Breather Boss: Hetzel, who only uses staves on the first part of 4F.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Nailah.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Laguz Royals, Ike in both games, and most tier 3 characters. To specify, there are now 60 levels to grow up, and each 20 levels you go up a "tier" (which the game calls a "class change"), and get pre-set stat bonuses (contrasting normal level-ups, where it's random). In the other games, there were only two tiers. Now there are 3, and even though most of your units come in tier 2 anyway, their stats become so ridiculous that many people consider the Endgame the easiest part of the game.
    • Averted with the tier 3 characters in the Japanese version: units don't "Class Change" upon leveling up, but need to use the Master Crowns to reach third tier, so the number of third tier characters is somewhat limited.
    • Haar. Lightning Bruiser, excellent mobility, plenty of availability, weak to only an uncommon type of Magic, masters the best weapon type in the game, is essentially a flying tank... it's safe to say that Haar is one of, if not THE, best units in the game. Such is his influence as a Game Breaker that among Fire Emblem fansites, when drafting tier lists for any game in the franchise (and even other games), it's not uncommon to refer to the absolute top tier as the "Haar Tier".
  • Goddamned Boss: Sephiran's oddly low HP (50) for a late-game boss is to lull you into a false sense of security. Thanks to Mantle, he's healing 40 of that every turn, so essentially, the only way to subdue him is to gang up everyone and take him out in one turn. You also need Nihil on those who will attack him if you don't want him to Corona-bomb someone to death. However, he's got another dirty trick that is almost literally cheating: those magic spirit mooks always standing adjacent to him? They have an unadvertised Guard skill that will start directing attacks away from Sephiran when his HP is low. You have to remove all four of them before you can finish the job. Do this too slow, and he'll use Rewarp to move somewhere else. Rude and rather lame, but it makes sense in context: see Death Seeker in the main section.
  • Ho Yay/Les Yay:
    • Among the males most prominently Ike with his all-male support endings, especially Soren with whom he has loads of subtext in both games.
    • Among the females, there is Heather who pretty much flirts with every woman she meets (Nephenee, Lucia, Ilyana... even giving hyperbolic compliments to Elincia without meeting her).
    • Other places people notice Ho Yay include but are not limited to Oscar/Kieran, Tibarn/Reyson and Zelgius/Sephiran.
    • Other places people notice Les Yay include but are not limited to Jill/Mist, Jill/Lethe and Tanith/Sigrun.
  • It Was His Sled:
    • The Greil Mercenaries saving Lucia at the end of Part II. Yes, it was originally a spoiler, since it was never hinted at the beginning. Also, Zelgius is the Black Knight.
    • Greil's death from the first game.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks: "Stop Having Fun!" Guys complained that you could save mid mission in Radiant Dawn, providing an opportunity for Save Scumming (a first for a Fire Emblem game). Others countered that you can't do it in Hard Mode (the mid-battle saves are deleted when you load them).
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks: The GameSpot reviewer said that the game was insanely hard, even on Easy Mode, which contributed to the badly received low score. Up until then, every Fire Emblem was made easier for international release. This one wasn't, except for including some new weapons, and making promotion and forging weapons less of a hassle. It really didn't help that the Japanese Normal, Hard and Maniac modes were renamed Easy, Normal and Hard in the localization. It's quite likely that many reviewers avoided playing Easy out of pride, not realising they were jumping straight into the Japanese Hard (the English Hard was actually a Harder Than Hard mode in the Japanese version, which explains why it's so brutal compared to the HM of earlier games).
  • Memetic Badass:
    • "The 3-13 Archer", a particular friendly archer in Chapter 3-13 of Radiant Dawn, is especially distinguished for Memetic Badass status in spite of want for a name. By an incredible quirk of Artificial Brilliance, the 3-13 Archer has cemented himself in the hearts and minds of Fire Emblem players everywhere.
    • Ike himself. He's generally held as one of the manliest and most powerful Nintendo characters of all, rivaling Captain Falcon in this respect but with slightly more canon justification. A series of polls on GameFAQs' Super Smash Bros. board was dedicated to determining whether Ike truly could solo other Smash and Nintendo characters in canon... surprisingly, he was voted to lose against Falcon himself, without the Chuck Norris-like memes usually associated with the Captain.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Danved is certainly not Devdan. He also fights like ten men.
    • "Give them a sound thrashing!"
  • Moe: Mist, Ilyana, Astrid, Amy, Micaiah and Sanaki. A lot of people think this of Rhys as well. Soren could be, but that might just be something else.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Jarod crossed it when he murdered three innocent civilians in pursuit of the Dawn Brigade, and possibly earlier when he killed one of his own men for failing to capture the Dawn Brigade.
    • Izuka definitely crossed it when he was testing his Feral One drugs on Muarim, although the Feral One drug’s existence to begin with could mean he crossed it sooner.
    • Lekain being responsible for the Serenes Massacre definitely stands out though, particularly since it's one of his few acts that weren't the idea of Sephiran.
      • In fact, because the Serenes Massacre is what caused Sephiran to cross the Despair Event Horizon, Lekain is pretty much indirectly responsible for everything.
    • Ashnard crossed it when he abandoned his lover, took his son hostage in order to lure in the boy's uncle whom he turned into a mount, and then abandoned his son after that.
    • Valtome does it twice, starting by ordering his men into the Kauku Caves (almost certain death) purely to "retrieve corpses" in 3-8. In 3-10, in case there was any doubt, ordering his soldiers (a hell of a lot of men) to attack the unarmed Queen Elincia, who has just managed to avert a major battle between Begnion and the Laguz Alliance. This troper cheered when he got to kill the douchebag in 4-2.
  • Narm:
    • Some of the voiceovers in the scenes in Radiant Dawn's English version. Especially Deghinsea's. A was intended to be a very serious scene showcasing Lehran's plight, but Deghinsea's voice actor decided to play Large Ham and whatever was intended to be serious in the scene vanished in thin air.

Deghinsea: "Hold, hold I say!"

    • Ilyana's death. "I'm dying... on an empty stomach."
    • Ike's memory scene has the child Ike shout in his deep adult voice. It doesn't help that his expression is completely blank.
  • Newer Than They Think: Path of Radiance was the first Fire Emblem game to make Wyvern Lords wield Lances and Axes (instead of Swords), and Radiant Dawn was the first Fire Emblem game to make the Wyvern Rider's weapon an Axe rather than a Lance. The class has been associated with axes every time it has appeared in the series since.
  • Older Than They Think: Nephenee is often mistaken for the first playable character in the Soldier class, which was exclusive to enemies and other non-playable units in the GBA games. The series had previously had playable Soldiers in Fire Emblem Gaiden, such as Lukas, who joins in the beginning of that game.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The Skill Capacity system in Radiant Dawn is very poorly implemented, mostly because Shove and Canto were changed from innate abilities to unremovable Skills that took up capacity, and because the Mastery Skills earned by third-tier units on promotion, which understandably have a high capacity, are also unremovable... and in most cases, have a capacity equal to the amount that the unit was supposed to gain in the first place! As a result, almost every unit has far less potential for Skill customization than their ostensible Capacity suggests; the only real exceptions are Laguz and units who join with a really good Skill already equipped (e.g. Nolan and Nihil, Nephenee and Wrath), because automatically held Skills don't take up capacity.
    • Biorhythm could be a pain in Path of Radiance, but Radiant Dawn took it one step further and had it change every turn! This meant if your Leonardo or Mia were performing wonderfully at the beginning of a chapter, they could suddenly start failing badly near the end. This made a lot of players mad.
    • The Laguz's transformation meters. It makes non-royal Laguz units so much less flexible, and requires players to be so much more cautious with their placement at the end of turns to ensure they don't untransform while being assaulted on the enemy phase. The result is that even with items to mitigate the transformation meter, Laguz perform a lot worse than equivalent Beorc units, and require really overpowering stats or abilities to be useful. Even with OP stats, Laguz will often get overlooked by players for inferior Beorc units so they don't have to deal with the meters.
  • Stoic Woobie:
    • Soren is the most obvious example, although admittedly he loses some of his stoicism in the scenes that make him the most Woobie-like. Except for his Path of Radiance B Support with Ike.
    • After making his promise that there shall be no great war, Dheginsea is not only forced to hide Lehran from the world and persecute the branded, but also sit idle as the Laguz are forced into slavery, since the Dragon's interfering would cause said war. Then Ashnard has an affair with his daughter, uses their child to draw out and kill his eldest, and then warps a brigade of red dragons into Feral Ones. Dheg still remains neutral. Then a great war happens anyway, and his only remaining child Kurthnaga joins the war. He still remains neutral. By the end of Radiant Dawn, Dheg has lost a child, had the other two turn against him, the majority of his people killed, and his hundreds of years of neutrality torn down before his eyes, and all he could do to validate his actions was to continue to uphold his promise, even in the face of Armageddon and the objections of everyone around him.
  • That One Boss: If nothing else, Dheginsea is statistically fearsome: 100 HP, outrageous stats (six of them maxed out), a skill (Mantle) that stops your skills, renders him immune to non-blessed weapons, and heals him for 30 HP every turn, and to top it off, a mastery skill (Ire) that just plain kills you, period. The good news is, by this point, you've had a chance to get three copies of Nihil, which you can simply slap on your three strongest units to even the odds. The bad news is, you're still having to fend off his countrymen in the meantime, and they are no slouches. Another strike against Dheginsea is that (like all the rest of the enemies) he will never retaliate against Kurthnaga or Ena. Not that this helps you anyway, since those two are lucky to damage him at all (this troper used the two of them as roadblocks to stall the reinforcements).
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
    • The generic support conversations in Radiant Dawn were not very well-liked after four straight games of interesting, detailed ones. A fan project was started to create support conversations in the vein of those seen in previous games. Link here.
    • The losses of the mercenary and hero classes were also met with complaining, although Ike basically counts as one in all but name, especially in this game.
  • Toy Ship: Mist and Rolf. Also counts as a Fan-Preferred Couple.
  • Uncanny Valley: The eyes in some of the female characters' portraits are drawn in a very dull complexion with almost no pupils, to the point that they look like marbles or amber. If the eye color happens to be something bright on top of that like red or yellow, this can make said characters seem eerily similar to Killer Robots with Mind Control Eyes. Elincia, Marcia, Jill, Astrid, Micaiah and Calill's daughter Amy are particularly noticeable examples.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Radiant Dawn was rated E10+ by the ESRB despite its dark themes and slightly stronger language than the T-rated Path of Radiance (the word "damn" is used several times, while its predecessor only used "damned" once).
  • Woolseyism: The Black Knight's survival is changed from very silly Phlebotinum Breakdown to I Let You Win using existing reasons.
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