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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/Blazing Blade 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
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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 several games so far on several 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 and most recent title. Incidentally, Marth and Roy were originally only supposed to be in the Japanese version, included to promote the upcoming release of Fire Emblem: Binding Blade; 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. Up until the 3DS era, only six FE games offer ways to revive dead characters, and they are all heavily limited in use [1]. 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. Later games would establish a Casual Mode that simply has characters taken out of a fight and then return for the next stage, but this is an optional feature that can be disabled or not.
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: Shadow Dragon and the Blade 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 Archanea 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 Valentia, 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 spiritual successors like Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Tear Ring Saga and Fire Emblem Awakening). A Fan Translation was completed in November 2009.
- An Updated Rerelease named Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia was released for the 3DS in 2017. More details about it are below.
- 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, 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, though there are Fan Translations.
- 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. 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 Archanea 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[2]) is a Midquel taking place toward the end of Genealogy'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 The Binding Blade (see below). The series reemerged in a completely new universe and in portable form on the Game Boy Advance.
- Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (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 considered as the hardest of the three GBA Fire Emblem games.
- Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (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 Binging Blades, 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 (GameCube, 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 the former Fortune Teller Micaiah, the leader of the Dawn Brigade, in her work to liberate her beloved 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 2011 amidst a large number of other 3DS releases. Several others would follow from then on:
- Fire Emblem: Awakening (Nintendo 3DS, 2012) It stars yet another blue-haired swordsman named Chrom and another Player Character, Robin (Reflet in Japan). 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 animesque bent, plus a 2.5D map and 3D fights. It introduces new mechanics like Pair-Up, where two characters can tag team their enemies, while also restoring the Lovers/Inheritance deals from Genealogy of the Holy War.
- Fire Emblem: Fates (Nintendo 3DS, 2015/2016). It follows similar mechanics to Awakening, but it makes the Player Character, Corrin (Kamui in Japan) the main lord. It's also divided in three games in itself: Birthright (following a cast coming from Hoshido, a Medieval Japan-like land, with an easier to master and more simple gameplay for the new fans coming from Awakening), Conquest (following the people from the Medieval Europe-esque Nohr, with more complex gameplay for fans already familiar with the series), and the DLC-only Revelations (a Golden Path that fully explains the story and has elements of both Conquest and Birthright, gameplay-wise).
- Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Nintendo 3DS, 2017). A remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, combinging its oldschool game mechanics (like the return of the Fatigue mechanic) with new ones (Mila's Turnwheel alias the chance to "rewind time" in game a little, Classic and Casual Modes, etc.) It also gives the Gaiden cast more Character Development via giving them more detailed backstories and supports, and adds new charas like Faye (Alm's Unlucky Childhood Friend), Fernand (Clive's Face-Heel Turn-ed best friend), Prince Berkut of Rigel (the heir of King Rudolf and Alm's cousin), Rinea (Berkut's girlfriend) and Conrad (Celica's half-brother). It also depicts the origins of Grima, the Big Bad from Fire Emblem Awakening.
- Fire Emblem: Warriors (Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch, 2017). A hack-and-slash game in the line of Dynasty Warriors, and actually made by both IntSys and Koei. It features the twins Rowan and Lianna, the heirs of the Kingdom of Aytolis, who fight to recover their lands with the help of their best friend Prince Darius of Gristonne and of many fighters from several Fire Emblem games (almost all from the Archanea, Awakening and Fates universes).
In the meantime, there was also a FE game of sorts released for the Wii U...
- Tokyo Mirage Sessions # FE (Wii U, 2015). Co-made with Atlus, this is more or less a crossover between the FE series and Shin Megami Tensei. Taking place in modern-day Tokyo and featuring real-life locations such as Shibuya and Harajuku, the game centres around hostile beings known as Mirages who seek to harvest energy known as Performa from humans and are responsible for several disappearances. The story follows a group of youngsters (Itsuki Aoi, Tsubasa Oribe, Eleonora "Ellie" Yumizuru, Kiria Kurono and Mamori Minamoto) who become allied with friendly Mirages based on characters from the Fire Emblem series (Caeda, Draug, Chrom, Tharja, Virion, etc), and merge with them to become Mirage Masters. Under the guise of the Fortuna Entertainment talent agency, led by the kids' Team Mom Maiko Shimazaki, the Mirage Masters fight to protect innocent people from the enemy Mirages and find out who is behind the attacks.
In 2017, a new FE game was released - Fire Emblem: Heroes (mobile phone app for Android and iOS, 2017). A FE game geared towards mobile phones users, it mixes tactics and unit training. It follows the adventures of Prince Alfonse and Princess Sharena from Askr, plus the Anna from their world, who summon a person from Earth to help them in their quests; the "Summoner" (default name: Kiran) does it via calling forth the people from different FE universes, again from the Archanea games onwards.
After all of this, the Fire Emblem franchise continues in the Nintendo Switch.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch, July 2019). This new game takes place in the continent of Fódlan, divided into three realms (among other smaller territories): the Adrestian Empire, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance. The protagonist and Avatar/Lord is known as Byleth Eisner, they can be male or female, and they work at the Officer's Academy as an instructor for the three noble houses of the academy: the Golden Deers (from Leicester, led by Claude), the Black Eagles (from the Adrestian Empire, led by Edelgard) and the Blue Lions (from Faerghus, led by Dimitri).
- Tokyo Mirage Sessions # FE Encore (Switch, 2020). An Updated Rerelease of the aforementioned Tokyo Mirage Sessions.
- Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch, June 2022). A sort-of sequel or Alternate Universe-like game to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but in the hack-and-slash style of Fire Emblem: Warriors. Its main protagonist and Lord is Shez, a mercenary who enrolls in the Officer's Academy as a student rather than an instructor, whereas Byleth and his/her father Jeralt become Hero Antagonists...
- Fire Emblem: Engage (Switch, January 2023). A new game that takes place in the continent of Elyos, which has enjoyed a millennia of peace after a Fell Dragon that besieged it was sealed away by several Heroes. The new main character and Avatar/Lord is Alear, can also be a guy or a girl, and after sleeping through that whole millennia itself they wake up to fight the Fell Dragon via not only gathering his/her army, but also by summoning the Lord characters from previous games through magical rings known as Emblems.
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. Later games added characters like Lucina, Robin (the Avatar) and Chrom from Awakening, plus Corrin (the Avatar) from Fates and Byleth (also the Avatar) from Three Houses to the roster.
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 on the PlayStation!
- 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.
- Aliens Made Them Do It: Manfroy brainwashes two half-siblings into breeding as part of his plan in Genealogy of 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 4s 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, 3, and Gaiden with notably the Fire Emblem : The Complete book, and Drama CDs. Not even the new games are free: Awakening, Fates and Echoes all have drama CD's and their artbooks also include quite a bit of info.
- 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 unless they have Causal Mode enabled.
- 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. Fates has the Disrobing Gale tome and the Raider weapons which double as this and The Nudifier.
- 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.
- From the 3DS games onwards, the games' style has become even more Animesque. It was even deliberately invoked in Awakening, which was made in a sort-of Darkest Hour for the franchise: the developers betted on its more anime-like and commercial style to bring "new blood" to the fandom and increase sales, or it'd be the last game of all. It worked.
- Artifact Title: Averted. With the exception of Jugdral (where it gets a brief mention in 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 once the highest ranked general in Daein, a notoriously militarized country. And then there's the Black Knight, who trained under Greil, 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 FE 7 and FE 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 FE 8, you must siege a castle with an army less than one fifth the size of the enemy's (not entirely new for FE, 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, Sephiran, saying,"Finally, I'm dying.
- Mages in PoR, 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) PoR has a seperate 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.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Basically every game finishes with one.
- Badass: Each Fire Emblem game is basically a World of Badass.
- Badass Adorable: The game has many, many units that are cute as buttons and deadly on the battlefield.
- 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, and so are Awakening and Fates.
- Badass Normal: Again, several, but Nephenee is a BEAST.
- 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.
- 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, since if she intervenes the rebels will see it as a chance. 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, Eldigan 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 from Genealogy of the Holy War, the Black Knight aka General Zelgius of Tellius, Prince Berkut of Echoes, and the Death Knight aka Jeritza von Hyrmn / Emile von Bartels from Three Houses. The last one can be recruited into the cast, but only in the Crimson Flower path; all of them are summonable in Heroes.
- Black Screen of Death
- Blind Idiot Translation: The Spanish translation of The Blazing Blade has an amount 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.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Most of your primary Axe-users are like this, and it seems to be a personality requirement for Berserkers.
- Bodyguard Crush: At least two or three per game.
- 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/Bow Knight 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.[3] 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 Bowdlerised 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: Save for Gaiden/Echoes, Fates and Heroes.
- 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 use his mind control powers to have half-siblings Alvis and Diadora breed to create a vessel for their ancestor, a dark god. AND IT WORKS.
- 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. It even was alluded to in Heroes, with a very embarrassed Ephraim trying to dispell these rumors. . . and yet making it sound like a borderline Suspiciously Specific Denial.
- Mostly averted in Awakening, but it resurfaces in Fates. The Avatar can marry his/her siblings from Nohr and Hoshido if the players so desire since they're Not Blood Siblings; Princess Camilla of Nohr is all but spelled to be in love with said Avatar (it's one of the reasons she's so overprotective of them) and can marry the Male one; and the artbooks all but shout that she was the First Love of her half-brother, Prince Leo.
- 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 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.
- In Awakening, the Taguel and the Manaketes cap at 30. If they're reclassed, however, in their new classes they follow the 20 cap.
- In Heroes, the cap goes to 40 for everyone.
- 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...
- However, occasionally the fortune-teller will mention a particular unit--this means you need that unit to recruit another unit.
- Character Development: One of the reasons why the series is such a hit.
- Character Level
- A Child Shall Lead Them: Sanaki, the 13-year-old empress of Begnion in Radiant Dawn, who was 10 in Path of Radiance.
- 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 Seisen no Keifu, 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 "No damage!" 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.
- 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 "No damage!" 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.
- 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 [4]
- Naesala's no slouch in this department, though.
- 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 FE 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.
- 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 his three brothers, also Shamans, fell victim to exactly the same fate.
- 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.
- 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 felt like a coming-of-age story centered around Ike gradually going from untrained ranger, to dealing with his father's death, to finally growing into his new position of command and becoming The Hero. Saving the world from Evil Overlord's war mongering as well as the Dark God. Happily Ever After, right? Wrong...
- At the opening of Dawn we learn that Daein, formerly viewed as a completely one dimensional empire is now under the thumb of Begnion, who isn't being so nice to the war-torn country. Though understandable seeing as how nasty Daein had been, some of the Begnion 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 Begnion practically bailed Crimea out in the first game becoming a serious point of contention. 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.
- Three Houses may have topped Genealogy - it touches several social themes that can be easily extrapolated to the real world (racism, war, meritocracy, sexism, etc.) and plays them more realistically than usual... and out of the four prospect paths (Azure Moon, Crimson Flower, Verdant Wind and Silver Snow) none of them have completely happy endings.
- Deadly Fireworks Display: Let's start with the fact that Ashnard 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.
- Demonic Spider: The Dark Magi with their "reduce to 1 HP" spell in the Genealogy of Holy War. Despite the low accuracy, it still seems to hit you very often for some reason.
- Played totally straight in Sacred Stones with the Bael and Elder Bael enemies. Actual giant, demonic spiders that also fit the trope - as they hit hard, fast, can poison, have a respectable chunk of health and defense, and nearly always spawn on mountain tiles and/or in fog.
- 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 and later, Micaiah and Sephiran.
- 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 Archanea 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.
- Estrogen Brigade Bait: You've got the Bishonens, manly muscular men, children, and Hot Grandpas.
- 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.
- 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 killed Queen Ismaire when she tried to fight back directly even when he told her not to and Riev is a fallen priest who worships and seeks to resurrect the god of evil.
Caellach (to Carlyle): I'm not like that freak Valter. I'm kind to women. |
- Everyone Is Related: Especially in Genealogy of the Holy War, where it's a game mechanic. Additionally, the degree to which the main characters and antagonists are all related in that game is nothing short of boggling.
- Everything's Better with Spinning: Many, many critical hit animations in some way.
- As well as every other winpose in Radiant Dawn.
- Evil Overlooker
- 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.
- 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 [5]
- Eyepatch of Power:
LawrenceLorenz, 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 lies have been spread about them being "unnatural" creatures resulting from the "forbidden" union of beorc and laguz (who are "punished by Ashera") as a way to prevent anything like what happened to Lehran with Altina.
- Most characters get better though - except Shinon, who is a Jerkass and remains unrepentant even throughout Radiant Dawn.
- Fan Nickname: The official term used when a unit becomes a different class, on both sides of the Pacific, is Class Change. Since units get a boost in stats, weapon proficiency, and/or a level reset, (Western) fans always say they promote.
- Fan Translation: Given that all the Fire Emblem games from Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light to The Binding Blade were never released outside of Japan... They vary somewhat in quality and level of completion; only one or two are thoroughly complete.
- 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.
- Can be averted from New Mystery onwards, since Casual Mode disables the trope save for characters like the Avatars of the games, Marth (but not Caeda), Chrom...
- 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 StaffChick with a Torch staff and/or Thief-type classes.
- Forced Tutorial: The Blazing Blade
- Fragile Speedster: Myrmidons, Pegasus Knights, Thieves.
- Gaiden Game: Fire Emblem Gaiden (and Echoes) 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 has 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: ESPECIALLY in Fates, where Blue Blood characters can use the Dragon Veins to modify the stages.
- 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 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.
- Seisen no Keifu 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 - a dark god possessing prince Yurius - 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!"
- Seisen no Keifu averts this, with "damn," "hell," and "bastard", among other profanities, showing up in various amounts. However, it is a Fan Translation.
- Newer games will include this trope AND some Precision F-Strikes. The aforementioned "Dastard" becomes pretty much an Ascended Meme.
- It seems Nintendo was slipping in Radiant Dawn, however.
- 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 recurtiable, though. He has custom growth rates only playable characters have those.
- 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.
- He Knows Too Much: In Seisen no Keifu, this is certainly Alvis's excuse for killing Sigurd at the end of Chapter 5. Natasha and Knoll also get this in Sacred Stones, but barely escape and manage to join the cast.
- Heroic Bastard: Guinivere in Fuuin no Tsurugi is a female version of this trope; Soren and Stefan in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are also both heroic and illegitimate. Same goes to all the Nohr Royals save for Xander in Fates (and MAYBE the Avatar themself), plus Prince Claude and Dorothea from Three Houses.
- Heroic Lineage: Every lord, Genealogy of 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. (Until Awakening, where the Red Knight is a woman and she can marry either the Lord or the Green Knight, if the player desires)
- Hidden Elf Village: Arcadia, and Kupala in Three Houses
- 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 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
- Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Typically divided into those that open doors and those that open chests, though Thieves in most games get universal lockpicks.
- Insufferable Genius: Lute from The Sacred Stones comes off like this.
- 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 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 Binding Blade.
- 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.
- Eremiya from New Mystery and Pheros from Awakening, too.
- 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 Lehran 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 PoR 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.
- 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.
- 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 "Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light" with a straight face. It's not easy.
- Shadow Dragon and the Blade 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 Seisen no Keifu 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: Save for the Birthright path of Fates, which is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Medieval Japan.
- 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 Binding Blade 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: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the player map theme from FE 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 FE 3 Book 2.
- Binding Blade: Arena battle theme is a remix of the player battle theme from FE 4, and the Trial Map player and enemy map themes are based on their equivalents from FE 2.
- Blazing Blade: Arena battle theme is a remix of the player battle theme from FE 5.
- Sacred Stones: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the FE 4's Prologue player map theme, and the arena battle theme is a remix of the FE 2 player battle theme.
- Path of Radiance: The Trial Map map theme is a remix of FE 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 FE 8, and the arena battle theme is a remix of the FE 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 Blazing Blade, 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 Binding Blade) 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 Blade.)
- 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 Export for You: The entire series until, well, you know...
- Sadly, given how late it is in the lifespan of the Nintendo DS and how long it's been since its Japanese release, New Mystery of the Emblem seems to have headed this way too. Nintendo has made no comment on the notion of translating it, nor have they issued a cease and desist order to the fans who are doing their own translation.
- Averted from Awakening onwards, since all the games that followed have been translated and brought to the West. And have become VERY popular among gamers.
- Non-Entity General
- No Hero Discount: Played straight in every game, but taken to ridiculous extremes in Radiant Dawn when the last three merchants IN THE WORLD still charge you full price for supplies, as they accompany you on your quest to slay GOD. If you fail they will turn to stone, but apparently they're not even willing to hand over another silver card.
- Non-Linear Sequel
- No One Could Survive That: The Black Knight is buried under Nados Castle when it collapses. He survives.
- The Notable Numeral: This series positively loves this trope. Used for the heroes of legend, and for notable enemy corps.
- Nostalgia Level: Chapter 14 (with 1-10 being a tutorial) of Blazing Blade is in the same place and identical to Chapter 4 of Binding Blade, with the same character as the boss. Hector Chapter 25 of Blazing Blade 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 Binding Blade.
- 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 Holy War and Lyn(dis) from The Blazing Sword as well as Linde/Linda from Archanea 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.
- 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: The Binding Blade: 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 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: Lawrence in Mystery of the Emblem's Book 2, Sigurd and almost all of his army halfway through Genealogy of Holy War; Hector near the beginning of Sword of Seals, Leila roughly halfway through Blazing Blade and Ninian towards the end (but Brammimond revives her); Greil and Rajaion in Path of Radiance; Pelleas in Radiant Dawn under most circumstances; the decoy in Shadow Dragon... except New Mystery has him (Frey, according to canon) surviving; Corrin's mother Mikoto in Fates, plus Azura at the end of both Conquest and Birthright; Byleth's father Jeralt, in Three Houses.
- Power Glows: From Mystery 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Precision D-Strike: In the NA localizations, The word "damn" is reserved for the worst moments (e.g. main character dying).
- Psycho Serum: The drugs used by Daein on the laguz.
- Precursor Heroes: Ahem.
- 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 Blade, 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:
Largo: That's strange... |
- 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.
- 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
- 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". [6]
- A level that really accentuates this is the church chapter in FE9 (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.
- Reclusive Artist: Shouzou Kaga is quite the enigma. He directed and designed every game through Thracia 776, then abruptly splintered off from Nintendo to start up his own studio, created Tear Ring Saga (which got him and the game's publisher sued for being a little too much like Fire Emblem), made an obscure sequel to it that came out 4 years later, then fell off the radar entirely. What's he been up to since? Your guess is a good as anybody's. It's also not clear why Kaga left Nintendo in the first place, and it seems he hasn't felt like making himself available to talk about it...
- Red Baron: Nearly everyone has a nickname, from Karel "The Sword Demon" to most of the bosses you face; in particular, in Blazing Blade, 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
ShrikeShadow 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 Sacred Stones are each given a gemstone nickname by the emperor when they are promoted to that rank (Moonstone, Blood Beryl, Flourspar, etc).
- 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.
- Redemption Earns Life: For all the mooks who perform a Heel-Face Turn.
- 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 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 Blade, 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. Averted in newer games, however: in Awakening Anna can show up at random in some towns.
- She Is 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 first 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.
- In a Conquest stage, Elise will be incapacitated due to illness... right when Ryoma's army is nearby, and he logically will refuse to help.
- Slap Slap Kiss: Lyn and Hector, Farina and Dart, Serra and Erk/Matthew, L'Arachel and Innes/Rennac/Ephraim, Clarine and Rutger, Awakening's Female Avatar and Chrom or Lon'qu, Saizo and Charlotte, Subaki and Hana...
- During Rebecca and Wil's B Support Conversation, she kicks him in the stomach.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Realism: 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 Blazing Blade. 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. It has the side-effect of depowering the magic users on the player's side if they set in the anti-magic field, so as long as one's careful with it...
- In Awakening, Emmeryn does this to King Gangrel via killing herself (apparently) rather than letting him publicly execute her.
- Spell My Name with an "S": None of the titles before Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade 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 Blazing Blade 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 the second protagonist of Seisen no Keifu. For years he was near-universally referred to as "Celice" by the fandom, but in their summary of the history of the franchise on their Blazing Blade website, Nintendo of America calls him "Serlis". It's possible this was done to differentiate him from Celica, protagonist of Gaiden who was mentioned several paragraphs before, but... The deal was officially sealed in Awakening, which refers to him as "Seliph" when he's a DLC; the spelling remains in Heroes.
- 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.
- Robin from Awakening. As a bonus, he / she is the Player Character.
- Stupid Sexy Flanders: Lucius.
- Also Soren to a degree.
- And Legault, though in a different way.
- Libra, oh Libra.
- Subtext: Florina and Lyn from 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.
- Awakening has lots of subtext between Chrom and the Male Avatar, and between Tharja and the Female one.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Inverted, many of the characters from 7, a prequel, are explained as not appearing in 6 by dying. Canas
is killed by continuity errorsdies 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, while 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. 4 has no headcap limit (though single characters are taking entire cities), 7 avoids having an "army" under the player's control or fighting against one, 9 and 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 PoR. Scallywags of the sea are we! We fight like beasts, an' men do flee!"
- Subverted in Fates, where the two guys who fill this trope (the bosses of Kana's Paralogue) can potentially be captured and have Heel-Face Turns.
- 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.
- 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 and 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.)
- Severa from Awakening and her expy Selena from Fates are this as well, and maybe the most straight-up examples. Selena IS an Older and Wiser Severa, hmmm...
- 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, her foster mother, and her parents' murderer. You can also have her kill one of her foster brothers, and later on, re-animated corpses of her foster brother and her father. In Sacred Stones, if you're a terrible enough person, you can have Myrrh kill her zombified father (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 her lover, Gale.
- In Genealogy, the players can...
- Use the Berserk Staff to force Ishtar to kill her lover, Prince Julius.
- Have Seliph fall in love with Julia... then have him kill her. (If she's L30, he's about the only one who can.... if one want to.)
- In Genealogy, the players can...
- 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.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: A lot of characters are named after mythological figures, and while there are a few examples where they make sense, there's clearly some thrown in just for the hell of it. Please don't dig too deeply into why a guy would name his wyvern after the Greek God of Sun.
- 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 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: Subverted in the tenth game. After spending the first chapter getting the "legitimate" heir on the throne, Prince Pelleas, he turns out (which should have been obvious from the start with his Horrible Judge of Character stats) to be a very kind-hearted young man... but also quite incompetent and easily manipulated for the purpose of creating a world war but he isn't really the real heir in the end, and the "legitimate" heir (Soren) never finds out. As a bonus, poor Pelleas's life is completely destroyed as a result of being said heir, to the point of killing him off - UNLESS it's not the first playthrough, where if the player does it right he survives. And then, after Pelleas either reveals that he's not the legitimate heir or is killed, depending on the path the player takes through the story, the country winds up being run by Micaiah, the person who was actually the legitimate heir of the neighboring country of Begnion; she did find out the truth but her sister Sanaki had been running the place pretty well, and she considered Daein her home more than Begnion. (If Pelleas lives, he'll become one of Queen Micaiah's court advisors and do a better job as such than as a King).
- At the end of the Birthright route in Fire Emblem Fates, Princess Camilla refuses to become the Queen of Nohr after the deaths of her father (King Garon), older brother/heir (Xander) and little sister (Elise), since she believes herself to be unfit for the task. The one who reigns is her Teen Genius younger brother, Prince/now King Leo, and it's all but said that he'll do a great job. Heroes, however, has an alternate Camilla who comes from a world where she does become Queen, and she seems to do pretty well as such.
- 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 Blazing Blade, 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 (FE4'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, Desaix and Judah in Gaiden, or Validar in Awakening.)
- Several Awakening bosses do this too.
- Zettai Ryouiki: Pegasus knights, most cavalry/aerie, and the occasional sage and swordmaster.
- Get over here, Nephenee!
- ↑ One use, not even obtained until the penultimate chapter, and only usable by princesses (FE1 and FE11), multiple, but not unlimited, uses, placed out of the way and guarded by multiple encounters (FE2), one use and not obtainable until the penultimate chapter of Part 1 or last chapter of Part 2 (FE3 and FE12), and one use without obscenely expensive repairs for a unit that has issues getting money in the first place (FE4)
- ↑ this was actually one of the last games released for the Super Famicom
- ↑ Even though "A night on the town" can sometimes be referring to more than just drinking.
- ↑ She first joins Ike out of an Enemy Mine situation, but then decides to stick with his forces, betraying her native country of Daein, which Ike and friends are fighting against. When one of the enemy generals they face is revealed to be her father, trying to make her fight him will result in her switching sides to Daein again. She can be promptly recruited back if she has an A-Support with a character in the player's party. In Radiant Dawn, she fights for Micaiah's forces, but can be persuaded to join back to Ike's side. When playing Micaiah's side again, she can (most likely?) be recruited back to Daein again, too. Sheesh, make up your mind, girl!
- ↑ Ike's official class is "Ranger" which is the Mercenary class in all but name, right down to the caps.
- ↑ Any unit with an even mildly decent Luck Stat will usually only get a critical hit against them if the enemy has some sort of bonus to criticals, but early-game myrmidons/mercenaries, wielders of light (GBA games) or thunder magic, and any enemy attacking Knoll can get a tiny chance of a critical. (Swordmasters, Berserkers, and wielders of Killer weapons and higher-level Light/Thunder magic (or Luna in FE7) usually have a better chance and are legitimately dangerous.) These enemies really don't get criticals that often, but you know how it is when they do.