YMMV / Fire Emblem: Code of the Black Knights

• Anti-Climax Boss: Much like Fomortiss, while the White Weapon has much better stats than him, he's still easily beaten by the large amount of S-ranked weapons you got throughout the chapters. Even without them, you have a lot of game-breaking units that can easily sweep through it. Granted, there's a plot explanation for this, but getting the bad ending is actually harder than beating the White Weapon, and Black Weapon presents a tough, yet much better challenge. Then again, there's a secret chapter available if you beat White Weapon in less than 3 turns...
• Game-Breaker: While the game is balanced to ensure that anyone can be equally good, some units and classes are considered to be better than others.
  • Noir. What makes her good is how extremely versatile she is: Aside from having the constitution and stats to wield Dark Tomes properly, her statline, which is supposed to make her a Jack of All Stats, in practice makes her a Master of All, which can make her class choices equally powerful: As a Grandmaster and later Queen, she is the second best Support Party Member aside from Subaru, due to having Rally Spectrum and White Pool, while having her promote into Spectre allows her to learn Ignis to use both of her Strength and Magic to great levels, upon promoting into Naga's Fang, she not only can ignore terrain penalties due to being a flying unit, this makes her fearsome to defeat when giving a Fili Shield, which negates her flying weakness. Finally, her personal weapons are great, as Gawain effectively makes her a tank against physical weapons and deals effective damage to armored and horseback units, and Avalon is basically a souped-up version of Gawain, making it the best Dark Tome weapon aside from the Lucifer Comet, and unlike the latter, Avalon is impossible to lose due to being a required drop. There's a good reason the game subtly nudges you to level up Noir to 14 before the end of Chapter 8.
  • Bishops/Mothers have access to Slayer, which allows them to deal additional damage to monsters and Rune Knights, which later stack up quite a lot post-timeskip, essentially compensating for their low Magic cap. Later, their third-tier promotion class, Messiah/Matriarchs have access to Powerstaff, making them the best staffbots aside from Dark Druids. One particular unit, however, stands out from the rest, and that one is Elizabeth, because of her personal skill Light Slash, which converts her Skill stat and multiplies it by 1.5, which when combined with some of the Light Tomes that have innate crit such as Shine, ensures that almost every attack will be a critical hit. Later, she can get Wrath when leveling up as a Bishop, which increases her already high crit to ridiculous levels if her health is less than 50%, which when combined with Miracle, will ensure that any enemy that doesn't have a high Resistance stat will be obliterated. Her only weakness is anyone that is wielding Protection, and the Final Bosses have Foresight, which prevents enemy skills and crits from damaging them, but is still appriciated for her niche as a Light Magic user.
  • Apocalypse Riders, aside from having Luna to pierce the enemies' Defense stat, exchange Canto for Galeforce, which allows them to take an Extra Turn if they manage to defeat a unit. Combined with Luna's Defense-piercing attack, this can result in the class practically overshadowing Dragonheart in every way, meaning that most units are more intended to go for Apocalypse Riders aside from Lowell, who can transfer his Crit+15 to the class, resulting in a flying Berserker unit. Later updates downright nerfed the class by making Luna exclusive to
  • Walker can promote into Trueblade, which gives him Killing Machine, a skill that multiplies his critical rate by 2. Considering the fact that Trueblade has high skill, when combined with Walker's Zweihander Technique, which converts weapon weight into crit, meaning that it will guarantee that every attack is guaranteed to be a critical hit. And if combined with Astra, this pretty much guarantees that enemy would be dead. Rose, who can promote to Dread Fighter if possible, also can have access to Killing Machine, but she's usually better off going Whisper.
  • Summoners/Necromancers have the ability to summon Phantoms, and much like Sacred Stones, are easily able to exploit the enemy A.I. to target them, even if they happen to be near a Glass Cannon or a Squishy Wizard, which can heavily make a difference in tight scenarios. But Wait, There's More! Upon leveling up to 10, Phantoms learn Poison Strike, which allows them to take off a good chunk of the enemy's health by 20%, making them good choices for suicide attacks. There's a good reason you only can potentially get 2 in the game: Sei, who just happens to be two levels away from obtaining her Level 15 skill and then promoting, and Kayleth, who is basically a Summoner Sei on steroids. Then again, why would you even use Annabel as a meat shield?
  • Angel, much like any other Dancer, has the ability to give a unit an Extra Turn, but unlike other GBA Dancers, she can protect herself with Light Magic, allowing at least some form of self-defense if she happens to get in a tight situation. However, what makes her a top-tier unit is that she gains Re-Move at level 28. With knowledge of how RNG works in the GBA games, the game's difficulty curve suddenly snaps in half, owning to her essentially having a certain chance to get an Extra Turn for certain actions, and with enough lucky procs of Re-Move, she can dance eternally, causing the game to go from "strategic placement of units and praying that the RNG doesn't screw them over" to "full-out assault with one person". Finally, she also gains a promotion into Enchantress, which essentially gives her flight, allowing her to not just catch up, but also can dance over areas she couldn't normally access. Her replacement, Liam, isn't exactly as powerful as her, but is still good enough to do her job well.
  • Chapter 18 Part 3: The Wheel of Fate has an arena available as of Update V1.1. Unlike in Chapter 13, there isn't a turn limit, meaning that there's nothing stopping you from making a detour from there to grind for money and EXP... in practice, however, because Charon's troops will betray him if the battle goes on for too long and thus make Hades unobtainable, this often serves as a time limit anyway... Unless you somehow brought a well-trained Angel with Re-Move, in which case, there is nothing stopping you from Arena Abusing anyway, meaning that the difficulty turns upside-down even-further. Granted, it does require a healer on sight and knowledge of how RNG works in this game, but knowing this can suddenly make things less difficult, freeing up units to train once that's done.
  • Hiryu can potentially be your only Assassin in the game if Hazel and Rose weren't promoted into Assassin, though to differentiate from them, he has Steal+, which allows him to steal anything if his CON and speed is higher than the enemy he's stealing from. And as this review shows, this pretty much includes everything. From monster weapons to even normally unable to use weapons, as long as Hiryu gets a Body Ring, speed is pretty much the only stat that's going to matter for him, up to and including Stone, which is already broken on its own, but also allows anyone to use dark magic, essentially turning them into Rune Knights before you can potentially get one yourself. When combined with Angel's Re-Move, it pretty much turns the rest of the game into a joke.
• Goddamned Bats: Any Light Magic user that is wielding Protection. For starters, Protection grants them the ability to nullify all damage from critical hits and skills, which in the late-game, will happen a lot, especially if they happen to have Miracle, making them even more frustrating to kill.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There are a plethora of bugs relating to Awakened Mithra, including:
    • Having duplicate Mithras in Chapter 16 Part 2: Tower of Glass 2.
    • Using her as a loophole to obtain both Mithra and Lucifer's Comet, even after Alliser is dead. Cue rejoicing from players who just wanted to see him dead after what he did to Drew and countless other children.
    • Fortunately (or unfortunately), all of the aforementioned bugs was later fixed in the December 31, 2020 version of the game.
  • Chapter 7 (Either version) include multiple ways of obtaining infinite money. Both of them were later patched out in an emergency release relating to Endgame C being Unintentionally Unwinnable.
    • Chapter 7: The Holy Knights' March has Mithra's Silence Staff and a Green Gem infinitely respawning even after they've been sold in battle preparations, done by simple resetting the game after selling those items.
    • Chapter 7: The Black Knights' Rise has Schwarze able to visit his village for infinite money and Elysian Whips by simply visiting it again. That being said, this is impractical to do, as eventually the guards WILL figure out that one of prisoners have escaped, thus denying you the rewards for escaping without being noticed.
  • Blaise joining your party in spite of saying otherwise (either, failing a Pacifist Run that chapter, or failing to convince him) can be downright hilarious, as this makes his statements look hypocritical.
• That One Attack: Counter, much like its 3DS incarnations, reflects damage, except unlike there, it has 1-2 range, meaning that unless bow-wielding units have access to a bow with at least 3 range, they're going to be in a world of hurt. Thankfully, no enemies have paired it up with Countermagic.
• That One Level: Chapter 7: The Holy Knights' March is a brutal wake-up call, especially if you're recruiting Sally. For starters, you're routing enemies in a very cramped area, with dangerous Spellslingers throwing out Boltings, Blizzards, and Meteors respetively. One wrong move and you can easily use a unit. Furthermore, while you can temporarily disable the Spellslingers with Magic Seals or Silence, the former also nullifies your magic users including healers, making it that everyone is forced to use vulneraries or elixirs to heal and waste a turn in the process, and the latter, thanks to a change that was meant to fix a infinite money bug, makes it only that Mithra can use it, so if you've haven't deployed her, enjoy an additional spike of difficulty! (Though, thankfully, you can trade it around once you've deployed her). While Chapter 7: The Black Knights' March is easier compared to the former, while including a somewhat tricky stealth mission that can easily be circumvented and has a significantly better reward in the form of free Experience if a successful Stealth Run was completed, also downright removes an Anima magic user (though to compensate, Hall, a Pegasus Knight has surprisingly good stats and growths all-around), and depending if Jin was recruited in Chapter 11, can potentially make Anima tomes completely unusable for a long time.