History YMMV / FireEmblemTheBindingBlade

** The names of Dieck and the Aureola tome sound fine at first, but then you realize that they're one letter off from something very phallic...

* TheScrappy: Merlinus is grumpy and bitter for good reason, but many fans found him to be an asshole who took up way too much screen time before the real meat of the plot kicked in. Gameplay-wise, he takes up a spot on your roster rather than the game asking if you want to deploy him, and if his HP reaches zero at any point you lose all the items he was holding for you. Luckily, unlike in [=FE7=], you don't have to bring him out to send items. In recent years, he has also started earning a lot of ire for being seemingly the reason most of the cast (particularly Lilina) gets shafted, due to him being Roy's adviser and the just about only person he interacts in the story with, whereas fans feel other characters such as Lilina, Marcus, Klein, Cecilia, Perceval, and Douglas were more deserving of his role while characters like Elffin and Guinivere (both who occasionally chime in) could use a little more screen time.

** Breakable walls are absurdly bulky in this game, with ''100'' HP at its highest. This makes it more annoying and tedious for units to break through them, not only for wasting weapons used just to break a single wall, but it also hinders the player's tactical progress.

** The Support Conversation system was considered awesome when it was first released. Until later games where its weakness starts to get more visible, aside of the primitiveness of the conversations, only certain Supports with Roy can change that character's ending, unlike newer games where a non-Lord character can be shipped with another non-Lord to have a paired ending. Back in those days, people would call Roy a pimp, but after this, people could easily say Roy is a 'relationship hogger' that gets all the fun, not sharing it with his army.

* SlowPacedBeginning: While the opening chapters do a good job of subtly teaching the player how to approach the game, they can be very tedious and are comparatively simple compared to the other chapters. The Western Isles is where the game starts to pick up massively, as the chapters are much more complex while still being very manageable, and this generally holds true for the rest of the game. This is especially present on Hard Mode where there are quite a few candidates for ThatOneLevel in the beginning.
* {{Squick}}: Pairing Eliwood with Fiora and Hector with one of Fiora's younger sisters in ''The Blazing Blade'' could potentially result in Roy's paired ending with Lilina becoming incestuous (should the player also pair them up), due to the fact that they can potentially become direct cousins if Eliwood's wife is Fiora and Hector's is one of the former's sisters. Avoiding this is doable though.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The relationship between Guinivere and Zephiel is underused in the game's story. They interact once, and Guinivere spends most of the game wanting to stop him without doing much to convince him otherwise. As a side effect of this, the games attempt to make Zephiel look like a TragicVillain ends up being wasted as despite Guinivere telling Roy their backstories, nothing is done with it and Zephiel remains just a fairly straightforward villain.

* CatharsisFactor: [[spoiler:It's actually possible to let a well-trained and promoted Lilina beat up Narcian, Zephiel, and Brunnya, three people who are responsible for [[YouKilledMyFather leaving her father, Hector, to die in Araphen]]. Unfortunately, the only downside to this is that she doesn't have any unique battle quotes with either of them.]]

** Due to how the cast as a whole functions, ''Binding Blade'' is rather odd with what counts as a GameBreaker and what isn't--this is mostly due to the fact that CrutchCharacter Marcus is not as overpowered as later ones, and enemies scale to the player much more quickly. Because of this, the game's portions are practically defined by who stomps what part: Marcus stomps the earlygame, Rutger stomps the midgame, and he's joined by Melady and Perceval in stomping the lategame.

** Somewhat uniquely, ''Binding Blade'' is generally seen as lacking a true GameBreaker--this is mostly due to the fact that CrutchCharacter Marcus is not as overpowered as later ones, and enemies scale to the player much more quickly. Because of this, the game's portions are practically defined by who stomps what part: Marcus stomps the earlygame, Rutger stomps the midgame, and he's joined by Melady and Perceval in stomping the lategame.

** Roy's full name being "Elroy", as it would continue his family's ThemeNaming of having an "El-" prefix in their names.

* FandomRivalry: Curiously, fans of ''The Binding Blade'' and fans of ''The Blazing Blade'' don't get along very well despite the latter being the prequel to the former. Most of it comes from the fact that for a long time in the fanbase, ''Blazing Blade'' was seen as the superior game, due to it setting the standard in the West of what a ''Fire Emblem'' game should look like. This meant the differences between the two games were [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks seen as inherent flaws]] to ''Binding Blade,'' like the significantly higher difficulty, accuracy problems, entirely Seize-focused maps, and imbalances among the playable cast. People also judged ''Binding Blade'' as a poor sequel, since it barely follows up on the plot of ''Blazing Blade'' (paradoxical in and of itself, since this game came out '''before''' ''Blazing Blade'') and is overall rather simple and lacks the character-focused storytelling that ''Blazing Blade'' used. This then created something of a CriticalBacklash among fans of ''Binding Blade'', who began to reevaluate ''Blazing Blade'' as a MissionPackSequel with a reliance on FakeDifficulty and gimmicks and minimal actual challenge, and its plot as melodramatic, pandering, and full of holes.

* MemeticMutation:[[Memes/FireEmblem shares a section with its prequel here]]

* MemeticMutation:
** [[SuddenlyShouting YOU!]] Guess what? Money is important![[labelnote:Explanation]] A memetic line from a villager in the first chapter (dubbed "The Money Man" by fans) who suddenly jumps into a discussion about using your money wisely.[[/labelnote]]
** The scene where Zephiel [[CurbStompBattle wipes the floor]] with Cecilia is verging on this, with jokes about Zephiel kicking her ass in ridiculous ways becoming increasingly popular. [[http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/241/246/260.gif For example]].
** [[http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/886/104/ffa.jpg Do you even crit?]][[labelnote:Explanation]] Going off of Rutger's MemeticBadass status, his ability to reach over 100% on crit has become a meme of its own.[[/labelnote]]
** Lilina-Marcus S Support.[[labelnote:Explanation]]Lilina's support with Marcus is about her preparing to confess to Roy... which thanks to the game's Support Engine will never happen because a character can only have A Support with one character, and since Marcus is her A Support... But there is a workaround! Marcus can then get killed, freeing Lilina's Support slot, as long as Roy isn't taken. Fans takes Marcus' death this way as his S Support with Lilina, [[HeroicSacrifice giving his life]] so she can ''finally'' confess and marry Roy.[[/labelnote]]
** [=FE6=] RNG BUGGED [[labelnote:Explanation]]The low hit rates of weapons across the board, the very sturdy enemies, and the weapon triangle bonuses being lower than in the other GBA games produce a lot of extra misses in player phase (and in enemy phase, but players tend to remember their misses more than the enemy's). It also doesn't help that there is a genuine bug that makes a 100% hit missable, even though it's a MillionToOneChance roughly speaking.[[/labelnote]]

** The names of Dieck and the Aureola tome sound fine at first, but if you decide to remove one letter off of both... uhhh...?

** In Chapter 4, the enemy cavaliers are much nastier than anything you've faced before and can even endanger Marcus if you let them gang up on him; this marks the point where your previously servicable-to-mediocre units (Wolt, Bors, Wade, Lot) can barely hit or scratch enemies anymore. The game also introduces its first ClassicVideoGameScrewYou in the form of Rutger suddenly appearing and moving, though this will probably only work the first time around.

** Roy's promotion is probably supposed to be epic. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7DPtwaODj0 It just turns out cheesy]], considering his sprite-set is the same in both classes and literally all that's changed is the position of the sword.

** Some believe that Dorothy was the offspring of Dorcas and Natalie from [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade the prequel]], [[ParentalAbandonment and was abandoned]] [[DoorstopBaby at St. Elimine Church]] prior to the events of this game. Believer of this theory point to her [[UncannyFamilyResemblance striking similarities]] to Dorcas: eyes, hair color, naming convention, [[TheEveryman personality]], WeaponOfChoice in bows (which Dorcas acquires [[PrestigeClass after his promotion]]), and even Fire affinity.

** Igrene, the game's other sniper, is one of the more popular characters in the game for her [[DarkSkinnedBlonde design]] and status as an overall useful midgame unit. Additionally, her support conversations, [[OutlivingOnesOffspring backstory]], and [[StarCrossedLovers relationship with Astolfo]] have earned her quite a number of fans.

* DifficultySpike: Two well known early chapters in Hard Mode are infamous for separating the wheat from the chaff among your units, 4 and 7.

** While most characters avert this due to being well-drawn enough to look like their ingame portraits (Perceval and Douglas) or aren't meant to look pretty (Gonzalez and Niime), it's often pointed out that the character illustrations for this game, drawn by Eiji Kaneda, were notorious for the body proportions that gave almost everyone exaggerated limbs to the point of NoodlePeople[[labelnote:*]]Oddly, this issue was also present in the art of the previous game ''Thracia 776'', but it still managed to avoid the valley regardless[[/labelnote]], and large heads that look a bit too disproportionate for their bodies. Granted, the art isn't too bad [[VideoGame/FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight compared]] [[VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden to]] [[VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem other past]] [[VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar games]], but since then, Kaneda's artstyle has improved quite a lot since 2002, so it's safe to say that the art for this game hasn't aged well.
*** [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/e/ef/FEFT_Lance.png Lance]], especially, was hit hard by this, since [[YouDontLookLikeYou he hardly looks anything like his in-game portrait]], and instead looking way too young. The exaggerated proportions aren't helping matters at all either, since it just makes him look freakishly slender. Alen, on the other hand, doesn't look too bad though.
*** A lot of the younger characters are drawn with larger eyes... except the details on them look too [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/c/cb/FEFT_Sophia.png realistic and glossy]], to the point where they clash with the cartoonish anime-styled artwork. Not helping this are their faces; they hardly delve into UglyCute territory at all, they look just ''that''. Worth mentioning that Clarine's official art is... [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/0/01/FEFT_Clarine.png something]].

* TierInducedScrappy:
** Roy is ''incredibly'' notorious among the fanbase for this. He has poor base stats, growth rates that are good but aren't enough to make up for his bases, and a REALLY late promotion even by ''Fire Emblem'' Lords standards. While his promotion also gives him an amazing EleventhHourSuperpower in form of the Binding Blade, it does not stop him from being mediocre for the majority of the game. He is at least somewhat effective in the early game, due to his accuracy being good and his rapier letting him deal decent damage to cavaliers, but past that point, there's a reason he's earned the nickname "Backpack Lord."
** Sophia. She's next to ''impossible'' to train since she joins at a point where virtually every enemy will kill her in one round. And unlike many other late-joining high-growth characters, the result isn't all that worth it as her final stats are near identical to Lilina's, who joins ''far'' earlier. What makes players really hate her though, is that you're ''forced'' to use her in the chapter she joins... which happens to be a Fog-of-War Desert map with tons of flying enemies, and she has to survive to unlock the sidequest chapter, turning the whole thing into an annoying EscortMission. Thankfully, she has full movement in it, but she's still an easy liability.
** Then there's Gwendolyn, who some consider even WORSE than Sophia despite joining earlier. She's very fragile for an Armor Knight and in fact can be one shotted in her joining chapter, with it being difficult to give her the levels she sorely needs due to her being limited to lances (until promotion) having the usual Armor Knight movement and coming before a very axe-heavy portion of the game. Even once trained she still has the movement issue that Generals suffer from and isn't very practical to use thanks to the constant seize format of maps in the game. Thankfully, she isn't necessary to keep alive like Sophia, but she still has little going for her. Tongue-in-cheek debates over which one is worse are common.
** The route-exclusive characters Juno and Dayan are the very embodiment of LateCharacterSyndrome, with poor stats and growths with very little room to grow as well as being outshone by their competition in their fields. The only saving grace they have is that they can make for good rescue-chaining, Juno has the Triangle Attack (though that in itself is AwesomeButImpractical), and Dayan comes with an A-rank in bows right before the wyvern-infested hellhole that is Chapter 21.
** Wade, as far as axe users go, is by far one of the worst in the series. His lack of speed and strength will get him doubled, then likely killed by the enemy. In a game where {{Permadeath}} is enabled, using him is just asking for trouble, particularly when there are better axe users to use, such as Gonzalez.

* MagnificentBastard: King Zephiel of Bern was once a cheerful, idealistic youth cruelly betrayed by his cruel father King Desmond. [[FakingTheDead Faking his own death]], Zephiel killed his father, becoming disillusioned with humanity and helped to unseal the dragon tribe, including the Demon Dragon Idunn, to punish humanity for their sins. Leading Bern in a war of seeming conquest, Zephiel instead intends to unleash Idunn, [[KansasCityShuffle using the war as a clever front]]. Even when cornered by the young hero Roy, Zephiel uses himself as bait to keep his plans going, unrepentant to the end.

* NeverLiveItDown: Jokes about Hector becoming an ''insanely'' OverprotectiveDad who will do many not-nice things to Roy if he does ''anything'' romantic with his daughter Lilina. Truth is, he is barely in ''The Binding Blade'' (he dies about an hour into the game and his last plea to ''Roy'' was to keep his daughter safe) and thus has little to no characterization. And while fully playable in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'', that was only ever acknowledged in his B-support with Eliwood, and even then, this was before his daughter (or Roy) was born. And while some interaction ''does'' shows up in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'', Roy's romance (or not) with Lilina is only slightly hinted and although Hector knows, he doesn't mind. The [[https://fire-emblem-heroes.com/ja/manga/part/index.html#part67 67th chapter]] of ''Manga/ADayInTheLife'' does show Hector angrily chase Roy (Who was with Lilina) down a hallway, while Eliwood tries to calm him down, but given this is from a gag manga, it's not considered canon.

* FanPreferredCouple: Among old-school parts of the fandom, [[LadyAndKnight Melady/Guinivere and Perceval/Elffin]] are quite popular, and tend to show up together.

** UnintentionalUncannyValley:

* UncannyValley:
** While most characters avert this due to being well-drawn enough to look like their ingame portraits (Perceval and Douglas) or aren't meant to look pretty (Gonzalez and Niime), it's often pointed out that the character illustrations for this game, drawn by Eiji Kaneda, were notorious for the body proportions that gave almost everyone exaggerated limbs to the point of NoodlePeople[[labelnote:*]]Oddly, this issue was also present in the art of the previous game ''Thracia 776'', but it still managed to avoid the valley regardless[[/labelnote]], and large heads that look a bit too disproportionate for their bodies. Granted, the art isn't too bad [[VideoGame/FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight compared]] [[VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden to]] [[VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem other past]] [[VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar games]], but since then, Kaneda's artstyle has improved quite a lot since 2002, so it's safe to say that the art for this game hasn't aged well.
*** [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/e/ef/FEFT_Lance.png Lance]], especially, was hit hard by this, since [[YouDontLookLikeYou he hardly looks anything like his in-game portrait]], and instead looking way too young. The exaggerated proportions aren't helping matters at all either, since it just makes him look freakishly slender. Alen, on the other hand, doesn't look too bad though.
*** A lot of the younger characters are drawn with larger eyes... except the details on them look too [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/c/cb/FEFT_Sophia.png realistic and glossy]], to the point where they clash with the cartoonish anime-styled artwork. Not helping this are their faces; they hardly delve into UglyCute territory at all, they look just ''that''. Worth mentioning that Clarine's official art is... [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/0/01/FEFT_Clarine.png something]].
** While the ingame portraits are nicely drawn and have animated mouths, their eyes do not blink at all and have a fixed stare, making everyone look soulless, with Geese's being notable since he just stares at you with almost no movement. This would later be fixed in the prequel, though unfortunately, it still persists with the shopkeepers, arena hosts, and secret shop Annas.
** The key visual (aka the boxart) for this game also tends to fall into the valley, but Roy and Lilina stand out for looking way too jarring compared to the other featured characters. Roy looks oddly stiff and muscular, and Lilina is drawn with a dull expression, making her look more like she's distracted by a tear on Roy's cape than showing concern for him. That, and her face also looks incredibly off compared to [[https://fireemblemwiki.org/w/images/d/da/FEFT_Lilina.png her art]].
** An in-universe example applies to the war dragons. [[spoiler:They are basically artificial yet soulless manaketes created by Idunn whose sole purpose is to fight, meaning that they do not act like real manaketes at all. War dragons also bear a resemblance to the morphs from the [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade prequel]], in that they are both artificial beings that normally don't act like the ones they're modeled after.]] Aine at least resembles a manakete in a way, but judging from his dialogue, what's off about him is that he barely acts like a real one at all.

* CharacterPerceptionEvolution: Roy was once near-universally hated by dedicated ''Fire Emblem'' fans [[AmericansHateTingle outside of Japan]], being seen as a clichéd protagonist with little personality or character growth, not to mention being one of the worst Lord units in the series. Alongside ''The Binding Blade'' as a whole getting VindicatedByHistory, several factors have helped turn some opinions around on him, including a much more polished FanTranslation of the game that better conveys Roy's character and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemHeroes'' likewise bringing more positive attention to him. Many fans were also able to look back at Roy and see his HiddenDepths, particularly his lack of confidence as a fighter and leader, both of which tie into his weakness as a unit. While he still has many detractors, more international ''Fire Emblem'' fans are more willing to defend him as a decent protagonist at worst. Even those who still aren't fond of him look forward to the prospect of an ''Echoes'' remake strengthening his character thanks to the Archanea remakes managing to flesh out Marth and especially ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden Shadows of Valentia]]'' managing to flesh out Alm and Celica.

** Chapter 21. Reinforcements arrive every turn for 12 turns, almost all of them in a group of three Wyvern Riders and one Wyvern Lord. Also, the boss of the level is incredibly hard if the units brought are not experienced enough. To make things worse, you must finish this within 30 turns, or you cannot go to Chapter 21x and obtain the Apocalypse dark tome necessary for the Good Ending (though this part isn't too hard).