YMMV / Fire Emblem Gaiden

A-B

• Abandon Shipping:
  • Genny and Saber were often considered each other's Implied Love Interest in the original game due to being the only two characters to marry unnamed people in their endings. The remake revealing that Genny is only 15 and Saber is 34 caused a lot of people to jump ship. Additionally, other characters marry unnamed people in their endings now, and Genny and Saber get no supports while every Official Couple from the original did.
  • Lukas/Alm had a bit of a following prior to release, until a datamined leak revealed their ages: Alm is 17 and Lukas is 24. Needless to say a lot of people didn't feel right about the age difference and jumped ship. There are still those who like pairing them, but most prefer a brotherly relationship.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Alm is advertised as a representation of Duma, and Celica as one for Mila. But what if it's the other way around? Doesn't help that Celica's color palette resembles Duma's, and same for Alm and Mila...
    • Mila is established as emotional, resourceful, compassionate, and stubborn. All are traits that drive Alm to fight, keep him alive, allow him to amass and lead the Zofian army, and the main reason he chose to leave home and persist in his campaign, respectively. He constantly strays from his main goal to help and recruit others, he's emotionally expressive, which is how he constructs his leadership skills by expressing his troubles and insecurities for feedback. Alm is not an ambitious warmongeror, and is offended when Celica suggests he's one. Nearly all fights are thrusted upon him; Compared to Celica who also dislikes fighting but is less adverse if it means she gets what she needs. He initially opposed a counter-campaign against Rigel, in which an otherwise Duma-representative would've begged for.
    • Celica doesn't express Duma's Social Darwinist views or lust for battle, but she does have a very blunt sense of responsibility. She believes in responsibility and the pursuit of personal power (Reclaiming Mila's Temple to further understand what's happening in Valentia), even if it is self-destructive and makes her emotionally closed off. Like how Duma cast aside his emotions for mankind in order to have them learn to fight for themselves rather than relying on a god's benevolence. Celica is willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of her responsibilities unlike Alm who is hesitant to go to war with Rigel.
  • Rudolf refusing to let Berkut participate in his Thanatos Gambit by Alm's hand in a cold, unforgiving manner. Was Rudolf actually trying to Kick the Dog, or did he know about Berkut's issues regarding sympathy and was trying to spare him in the only way he knew how? And if you subscribe to the Kick the Dog interpretation, this brings Massena's assertion that Rudolf really loved him into question — is he deliberately lying to spare Berkut's feelings, or is he delusionally white-knighting Rudolf?
• Angst? What Angst?: In Acts 4 and 5, Alm has no real reaction to the fact that he is now the Emperor of Rigel, despite his earlier insistence that he had no desire to become king of Zofia, beyond bland acceptance.
• Ass Pull: While likely due to limitations of storytelling at the time in gaming, the original version of the game's reveal of Alm being the heir to Rigel comes out of nowhere and lacks any foreshadowing at all except for for the fact that Alm has a brand like Celica. The reveal that Rudolf is his father also comes this way because there was no way to even guess a fact like that. The Echoes remake made this a major plot point to address and it's given much more buildup to justify it.
• Awesome Art: If there's one thing most fans can agree on it's that the new character designs by Hidari in Echoes are absolutely gorgeous.
• Awesome Music: These games have a whole page for awesome music. Yes, the soundtrack is just that good.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Clive has just as many supporters as he does detractors. Those for him find his Supporting Leader status interesting, like his constant interaction with other characters (notably Mathilda), and enjoy his character arc. Those against find him rather boring and wish that of all the characters to receive extended screen time, that it wasn't Clive. This is to say nothing of his viability (or lack thereof) as a unit and him "getting between" ships that involve Mathilda which his haters project on him.
  • Rudolf is either a well-executed Tragic Anti-Villain and a nice plot twist on the usual Tin Tyrant/Evil Overlord tropes, or a total idiot who started a bloody war just to make Alm kill him and usher in an era of peace, when he could've just used his influence as king to help the world without causing damage (albeit the fact that Jedah and Duma do not answer to him may mean that despite being emperor he didn't have as much power to change things as one would expect).
  • Faye from the Echoes remake is also split on supporters vs detractors. While her design is generally cute, and having a female character allowed for more diversity, her overall characterization is a point of contention: having an unrequited crush on Alm as her main character focus^note Even to the point where, though she accepts that Alm doesn't feel the same way, she never does get over him even in her endings. During a few conversations, she seems a bit pleased when she hears Alm and Celica are having troubles, and has a moment of weakness trying to assure him that she's the only one he can count on... however, if Alm doesn't recruit her while Celica does, Faye is quite happy to see her old friend again, and gets a support bonus with her (along with Mycen), so while there are moments of inner conflict she still doesn't hold Celica in contempt. How the player regards the Hopeless Suitor and All Love Is Unrequited tropes in-of-themselves also plays a big part in how Faye is regarded., her lack of supports with the cast at large (leaving it up to the player how well or not she fits in, whether her character is deep enough or not, etc), and her sole support (other than Alm) being with Silque^note In which Faye is uninterested in conversing unless it was about Alm, though later on she does mention feeling guilty about this, and tries to befriend her for real. Whether this prior aloofness is a result of loneliness, not knowing how to talk to someone she's never met before (unlike her childhood friends), and/or a result of the war itself taking a toll on her, is all up for debate. Silque having a dedicated fanbase also didn't help, in regard to how Faye initially treated Silque..
  • For Celica, the debate is over if she is a well written female Lord who is given realistic flaws and has a character arc that is consistent with the game's story, as well as being an overall likeable character, or if she's a hypocritical character who constantly makes stupid choices. Not helping is how the game portrays her flaws and beliefs, which led many to debate if she's unsympathetic, or if that was the intent. The debate over Celica can get particularly nasty, outside of her voice acting.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Fear Mountain map in the original, where you fight Nuibaba, begins with an extremely Purple Prose-laden Opening Monologue. None of the other maps in the game have an Opening Monologue, so it feels like an omniscient narrator suddenly enters the story just to vanish immediately afterwards. This is kept in the remake, but it also has narration present at other points in the story to make it feel more natural for Echoes' storytelling.

C-D

• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • The Masked Knight in Echoes is Prince Conrad, Celica's thought-to-be-dead brother. Even without all the foreshadowing in-game, several people correctly guessed his identity based on his appearance alone, before the game was even released. The hair was a huge giveaway. Additionally, Celica frequently mentions she had a brother who she assumes died. There's no way the plot would bring up something like this unless it was going to be important.
  • Alm's true identity as Rudolf's son and true heir of Rigel is foreshadowed very heavily throughout the story, with Desaix's death quote practically saying it outright. The remake adds even more foreshadowing into the mix with Berkut's interactions with Alm (where at some point Berkut sees Alm's Birthmark of Destiny), giving Alm a signature weapon that specifically can only be used by those with royal blood and having Alm constantly comment on how "familiar" Rigel feels, possibly due to the reveal being a Late-Arrival Spoiler in Japan, and to a lesser extent overseas thanks to Alm's appearance in Awakening DLC.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Detractors of Berkut find the final battle against him very rewarding and satisfying, due to the fact that he sacrificed his love Rinea in exchange for more power against Alm, and overall being a prideful dick.
  • Letting Atlas, Catria, or Palla get the killing blow on Grieth can be quite satisfying, since It's Personal for all three of them.
  • Killing Jedah is very satisfying after all the atrocities he did such as offering two of his daughter’s souls as sacrifices to Duma, forcing Celica to watch as Alm fights his way to Rigel Castle, up to the point where Alm kills his father, thanking Alm for killing Rudolf, offering Celica’s soul to Duma, and sadistically watching Alm and Celica fight to the death for his amusement. Having either Alm, Celica, Conrad, Mycen, or Sonya land the killing blow is well-deserved karma.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Regarding the villagers, expect to see most players promote Gray into a Mercenary, Tobin into an Archer, Kliff into a Mage, and Atlas into an Archer, both to make what is arguably the best use of their growths ^note Gray has the highest Strength growth of the initial villagers (tied with Faye in Echoes) and also tends to gain Skill and Speed; Tobin is primarily geared towards high Skill; Kliff's most prominent attributes are Speed, Skill, and Defense, in that order; and Atlas has average or lower growth rates for everything but his already exceptionally high HP and Strength and to prevent them from having to keep pace with an oversupply of certain classes depending on the route (most notably Cavaliers for Alm and Mercenaries and Mages for Celica). While the improved growth rates in Echoes do allow more flexibility when it comes to promotion choices, old habits from Gaiden die hard. Curiously, Echoes subtly advises the player to go these routes for the first three if they examine certain spots at Ram Village: Alm observes a scorch mark on the side of Mycen's house from Kliff practicing fire magic, an arrow left behind by Tobin after archery practice, and a slashed fence that came about as a result of his swordfighting with Gray. As for newcomer Faye, though she's versatile enough to be, at worst, competent in all of her classes, more lean towards magic-oriented classes like Mage and Cleric over Cipher's depiction of Faye as a Pegasus Knight. ^note Heroes additionally shows Faye in the Archer class, though this is a male-only class in Echoes. Cleric is the more popular option, owing to Faye being the only unit to learn Anew (which has the same functionality as a Dancer) as well as having early access to Physic.
  • A set of free Downloadable Content allows players to obtain an item called a Pitchfork, which allows any unit except for Alm and Celica to change class into a Villager and subsequently promote into another class whilst keeping their stats from their original class, and is the closest thing Echoes has to Second Seals/Heart Seals from the prior 3DS games. Only three Pitchforks are obtainable in a single playthrough, and almost all players elect to use them to change Lukas, Forsyth, and Valbar from Knights into Dread Fighters, as their high HP, Str, and Def from starting as Knights combined with the Dread Fighter's high everything else and innate ability to halve all magic damage makes them into veritable One-Man Armies, on top of being able to use the "Dread Fighter loop" to have an infinite number of level ups if the player so desires. Other uses for the forks are pretty much never discussed, as nothing is anywhere near as efficient as simply using them to turn those three characters or just any other character you happen to like into the near-Game-Breaker that is the Dread Fighter.
• Complete Monster: Desaix is the chancellor of Zofia and the head of a rebellion to overthrow King Lima of IV and seize the throne for personal gain. He clandestinely murdered many of the children fathered in Lima's Royal Harem to keep away any and all rivals to the throne. When Sir Mycen tried to stop him, Desaix put the blame on him and had him banished. One particular instance involved a fire, during which Desaix ordered Slayde to kill both Princess Anthiese, better known as Celica, and Prince Conrad during the king and the royal guard's absence, as well as killing everyone else in the royal villa in order to avoid witnesses. By the game's beginning, Desaix conquered the Zofian castle and killed King Lima. Although the Deliverance was formed in order to oppose Desaix, he manages to capture the Zofian knight Mathilda, Clive's lover, to use as leverage to force his surrender. After suffering a defeat from the Deliverance led by Alm, Desaix retreats to his fortress and announces Mathilda's execution as a show of power. When the Deliverance arrives, he orders his archers to kill her slowly and painfully. Although he claimed he could be a better king than the hedonistic Lima, Desaix is nothing more than a power-hungry, traitorous, and murderous man driven by personal ambition rather than the good of Zofia.
• Contested Sequel:
  • Gaiden has retroactively become one, as the Oddball in the Series. Its RPG Elements are either seen as underused and interesting or out-of-place and poorly executed, and its larger yet more simplistic maps are seen as refreshing or bland and lazily designed. This has led Gaiden to be one of the most divisive games in the series pre-3DS, and before Echoes' announcement, was under debate on whether it deserved a remake at all.
  • Echoes is also considered one, for while it's generally seen as a Polished Port and many fans of the older games who disliked Awakening and Fates see it as a return to form, several of the mechanics and map design being retained from Gaiden has led to a case of Early-Installment Weirdness for others, especially compared to its immediate predecessors' tighter gameplay. In addition, the overall amount of characters and supports is limited, which has brought FE's long-standing "quality vs. quantity" argument regarding them to a head. There’s also the fact that the highly divisive Act 5 remains intact, for the most part.
• Continuity Lockout: Certain elements of both versions of the game only make sense if you have played the first game in the series. Namely; who the Whitewing sisters are, what Archanea even is, and why Zeke's identity is important. None of these things, even in Echoes, are really explained, so they seem to come out of nowhere and leave questions more so than answers.
• Crack Pairing:
  • Lukas/Conrad has a fair amount of support despite the two never interacting in-game. It could be because on top of their ages being very close to each other's (24 and 21 respectively) they're both handsome, polite, soft-mannered ginger studs and fans see them as aesthetically pleasing together.
  • Clive x Kermit the Frog is starting to gain a following on Tumblr and Twitter.
  • Kliff x Linde had a decent following when the game first came out, but died down somewhat as of now. The basis of this ship came from the fact that both are great mages, capable of using Aura, and both of their endings mention finding love.
  • Faye x Gordin is a pairing that has stoked interest, partially owing to them sharing the same class in Heroes, as well as Gordin's physical resemblance to Alm.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Witches are something players going for a No Casualties Run will quickly come to dread, especially on Alm's route. Since Resistance is very difficult to raise in this game, the witches' magical attacks will consistently deal high damage against the player's units, god forbid they land a critical hit. They also ability to teleport anywhere on the map and attack on the same turn. Even worse, some maps have bosses that summon more witches (The final map has TWO OF THESE). The only saving grace is witches use an A.I. Roulette that often causes them to make stupid decisions, but they only need one good move to cost the player a unit. Additionally, since enemy magic users tend to have decent Resistance stats, they are even harder to kill if they are on terrain that increases their chance to avoid physical attacks.
  • Dread Fighters are a pain to fight as well, even more so on Celica's route. With a skill that halves magic damage, in an FE game where nearly every other unit's Resistance is absolute shit. 7 spaces of movement, in an FE game where most soldiers can only move 4-5 spaces, a class that only Pegasus Knights and Cavalry could even ''run'' from.. Superior speed and skill, in an FE game where terrain bonuses might as well set a unit's hit rate to 0%. And since most of Celica's army uses magic... Great fun!
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Tatiana isn't exactly well-liked by Camus/Nyna shippers. While the original merely heavily implied Zeke chose her over Nyna, it still left it somewhat ambiguous. The remake outright confirms he marries her, and if Tatiana dies in-game, his ending states that Zeke still didn't return to Nyna, just vanishing forever this time since losing Tatiana shook him to the core. The bashing mainly takes the form of using Tatiana's secret desire for Zeke to not regain his memory to paint her as a Manipulative Bitch who doesn't care about his happiness, even though canon itself shoots such an interpretation down: Tatiana is not the kind of person who keeps her thoughts to herself (and Zeke easily realizes when she tries it), she tells Alm that she feels guilty for even wishing that Zeke's memories could stay gone, and immediately adds that if Zeke truly wished to return to a past beloved, she would allow him to.
  • Some Clair/Mathilda fans on Tumblr do NOT take the presence of Clair's brother Clive kindly. The fact that Echoes clearly establishes Clive and Mathilda are romantically involved (complete with Clair supporting their relationship and even trying to steer Delthea away from her Precocious Crush on Clive) does not sit well with them, as they believe Mathilda should romance Clair or other women instead.
  • Gray and Boey sometimes get a similar treatment from fans, since canon places them as the closest to love interests for Clair and Mae respectively and that means they can't easily be shipped with other girls either.
  • Some Faye "supporters," especially on Tumblr (again) aren't much better. Some try to blame Faye's misfortune in love on Celica and passive-aggressively bash her for getting the guy Faye wanted, conveniently ignoring that Celica has conflicts of her own related to her and Alm ^note (namely, the misunderstandings between the two that trigger the route divisions and her whole "Secretly Selfish" deal). Others try to "fix" Faye by just as passive-aggressively dismissing her feelings on Alm while shipping her with girls (especially Catria or Clair), ignoring the creepy implications coming from it ^note (namely, them using anti-lesbian stereotypes like "women will turn lesbian if they get burned by men" and "female/female relationships are inherently more pure and wholesome" to "fix" Faye's problems).
  • Fernand/Berkut shippers, particularly on Tumblr (yet again), do not take kindly to Rinea's existence, thinking of her as a generic Love Interest who solely exists to be Woobie bait.
  • Both of the game's lords get hit with this hard. As mentioned above, Celica is not well liked by Faye/Alm shippers, and the same goes for Alm/Clair supporters. As for Alm, he is despised by those who don't like the straight pairings, particularly by those who ship Celica/Mae, who accuse the canon Alm/Celica ship of being Strangled by the Red String.
• Disappointing Last Level: From a purely gameplay standpoint, Act 5 is much more boring than the previous ones, being mostly a long slog through a dungeon and then the frustrating final map.
• Draco in Leather Pants: While Berkut has been well-received as a villain with sympathetic traits and Hidden Depths, some of his fans sweep his flaws and darker sides under the rug and try to either make him pass as a poor victim of the circumstances or blame Rudolf for everything he did.

E-H

• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The general consensus on the Echoes remake is that its gameplay is relatively weak due to retaining a lot of the original game's outdated mechanics and bland map design. But its writing, voice acting, and characters have received a lot of praise and are generally cited as the main reason to play the game.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gray's snarky yet loyal personality in the remake has made him one of the most well-received members of the earlygame and a minor Fountain of Memes to boost it even further. Many see him as a great step-up from his original incarnation.
  • Mae also tends to be a total fan favorite, partly because of the utterly stellar job Cherami Leigh does in voicing her and selling the character. Being a big, adorable sweetheart with a believable plot arc helped, too.
  • On top of being the more popular choice for recruitment between herself and Deen, Sonya has gathered a huge following for being an absolutely stunning Proud Beauty with a great personality and voice, and for her plot relevance as Jedah's daughter.
  • Despite his extremely minor role in the story, Leon in the remake has attracted a sizable fanbase, as the series's first openly gay character while not making him feel like a total stereotype. Being Celica's only archer outside of potentially Atlas also helps.
  • Seazas, a Palette Swap boss in the original who didn't even have dialogue and was the only character Adapted Out of the remake, is a frequent subject of fan art, tributes and discussions. "Remember Seazas" is often jokingly said in the fandom. All this, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the guy also being labeled a Memetic Loser for the exact same reasons.
  • Silque is well-liked for her kind personality, cute looks and usefulness as a healer. Her voice actress singing The Heritors of Arcadia helps a lot, too.
  • Brigand Boss. He doesn't even have a name and serves only as a Gazzak-like character, the early bandit leader meant to be disposed in the earlier stages. For some reason, he has a spot in Fire Emblem Heroes' Choose Your Legends event and he actually scored well for someone of his caliber, not even his progenitor, Gazzak, got a spot. Because of this, many has clamored for more exposures of the Brigand Boss anywhere, to the point where they was a lot of rejoicing when he actually made into the game.
• Fan Nickname:
  • As soon as Tatiana's Exemplar model was revealed, the fandom nicknamed her "Palutena".
  • Alm's armor design in Gaiden is referred to as his "Dong Armor" in some circles.
• Game-Breaker: It wouldn't be a Fire Emblem game without a couple of these.
  • The Dread Fighter class is considered to be the best class in the game. Fast, hard-hitting, access to powerful swords like the Brave Sword, and a skill that halves magical damage in a game full of enemy mages and low resistance growths. Not only that, this class is capable of looping back into a Villager with all the class options that entail, making them capable of capping their stats with enough time and patience. Keep them alive and they can trivialize some of the game's challenge.
  • The Pitchfork. A free DLC item that allows anyone (bar Alm and Celica) to become a Villager, which opens the door to a myriad of possibilities that can turn subpar units to great ones if you know what you're doing. For example, popular candidates are members of the Baron classes being changed into the aforementioned Dread Fighters. Small wonder why its availability is limited.
  • The combo of Warp and Rescue, possible with Silque and a Cleric Faye, allows one to safely use a "slow but sure" strategy, RNG notwithstanding: have Silque warp a unit to a troublesome enemy, get the kill, and have Faye bring them back to safety. Rinse and repeat. This strategy helps especially on Nuibaba's map.
  • Archers armed with a maxed out Killer Bow gain access to the Hunter's Volley skill, which guarantees two hits even if the archer is slower than his target. The Killer Bow itself has a 20 crit rating, and Hunter's Volley adds another 10 on top of that. Combined with a potential range of 5 thanks to the Sniper's Bowrange+2 passive ability and they'll be able to pick off most enemies in the game with ease from well beyond the front lines.
  • Towards the end of the first act you'll have to fight Slayde and Desaix, the latter of whom drops a Dracoshield, which gives its owner a whopping 13 point boost in Defense and Resistance, as well as healing 5 HP every turn. While it takes an extaordinary amount of effort to acquire due to Desaix being so tanky, and him retreating if Slayde is defeated first, if you do manage to kill him, the Dracoshield completely trivializes Alm's path, making a character a nigh-unbeatable tank early on, and still providing a decent boost to the defender of your choice in late game.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Revenants in the original Gaiden. They are not even remotely threatening, but their attack animations are so long, and while most of their stats are nonexistent, their HP is high enough to survive a round of combat to attack again and prolong killing them even more. You don't even get much experience out of them (for example, level 1 Clair gets 12 experience from a level 1 Revenant). Even worse when you encounter Cantors summoning Revenants, in which case just about every enemy phase just keeps going, and going, and going... Echoes made revenants less annoying by greatly speeding up their attack animations.
  • Cantors in general take a while to kill. They aren't really "hard" per se, but they just don't let up on the summoning, and it can get tedious after a while. Gargoyle Cantors are especially annoying due to just how many they throw at you and how the Gargoyles have enormous movement. You may want to turn animations off to save the time of seeing Gargoyle after Gargoyle slowly die.
  • Gargoyles themselves count. They have low Attack stats and can't equip weapons, so they're rarely a threat except to characters with very low Defense. But they have high movement, often appear in large numbers and their high speed makes doubling them difficult, making them surprisingly durable. Gargoyles encountered later in the game can also inflict a status that prevents your mages from casting spells. And as stated above, Cantors often summon them.
  • Then there are the Mogalls. Two of their skills make them a royal pain; the first is Great Terror, which means Expel won't work on them, and the second, Divide, causes them to occasionally spawn a new Mogall in at random. Thus, you're stuck fighting a self-multiplying enemy by picking them off one at a time, and with their high Speed, half of your army (at most) is going to be able to double and thus ORKO them. That being said, Seraphim and Blessed weapons will still work against them, and since they're airborne, any archers with Anti-Fliers can do additional damage to them. Have fun with the final map, which is loaded with these at the start and feature ''two bosses who can summon more'', neither of which die quickly.
  • Reinforcements on the world map. Starting in Act 3, enemy leaders will summon small armies to the map, which either reinforce other armies or move on their own. These are often small groups of enemies that aren't much of a threat, but are extremely irritating as they'll often block parts of the map you want to move to, add extra enemies to already difficult fights, get in the way of turning in sidequests, and sometimes another will spawn right after defeating one. Both Alm and Celica's halves of the map have their own reinforcements to deal with, forcing you to switch between armies often, and Celica's part of Act 3 has it particularly bad, having two spawn points in different parts of the map, one of which won't stop until you beat That One Boss Grieth. Furthermore, if you try and move into a space adjacent to a reinforcement army, it'll "ambush" you, letting the enemies move first and not letting you re-order your characters, often resulting in a dead Cleric because she happened to be right in the line of fire and there's no way you could've possibly known.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Chronologically, when Alm said to Celica that without her wisdom, all he would do is to fight and conquer whatever stands in his way without hesitation or remorse. Two millennia later, we see the consequences of Walhart, a descendant of Alm who is exactly doing what the Saint-King did, but without a woman with a personality like Celica at his side to temper his foul parts of his personality.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening also shows that the peace and unity achieved by Alm and Celica uniting Valentia didn't last, since the continent is implied to have broken up into separate kingdoms before being united under Walhart's rule.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Dread Fighters are one of a few Tier 3 promotions, and are given a boost to Resistance and a skill that reduces magic damage by half in a game where Resistance growths are nonexistent. That alone makes a Dread Fighter extremely powerful, but they also have 7 movement in a game where other non-mounted classes have 5 at best. They're also the only class that can loop back to Villager without the use of the Pitchfork item, which allows them to gain even more stats. Many players, regardless of the version of the game, hate how broken and objectively better Dread Fighters are, for just invalidating almost all the other classes.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Saber and Grieth are stereotypical pirates in every way, complete with eyepatches, yet their (final) class is Dread Fighter, which is based off a ninja. Years later, the Pirates vs. Ninjas trope came into existence.
  • Chapter 2 is a succession of nothing but boat maps broken up with the occasional island, which means many wanted Celica off of a boat long before they wanted Guts off of one. Ironically enough, the English dub of the 2016 anime adaptation contains voice actors from Echoes, with Conrad being voiced by Guts from the original anime and the movies.
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, Takehito Koyasu played Lon'qu, a Myrmidon, while in Fire Emblem Fates he played Niles, an eyepatch-wearing bow user. Then it was announced that that Koyasu would be voicing Saber in Echoes, who is basically both his previous roles combined.
  • When Conrad was revealed, a lot of fans joked that, after the events of the game, he must have given his mask to Zeke since Zeke is actually Camus, who heads to Archanea for Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem. The art book for the game released nearly a year later heavily implies that this actually took place.
  • Before the voice cast for Fire Emblem Fates was revealed, a popular guess was that Xander would be voiced by Marc Diraison, due to voice sounding similar to the early reveal footage. When Fates came out, it was announced David Stanbra would be playing Xander instead. Than Echoes comes out and Marc Diraison was revealed to be voicing Conrad, who is also an older brother and a Cavalier.
  • For many fans, their favorite moment involving Boey was his infamous scream in Act 4. In an interview alongside Allegra Clark during an online charity stream event in November 2018, Chris Hackney revealed that when he was auditioning for Boey, one of the lines he was given was just "aaaaaaa." Hackney literally won the role of Boey by screaming.
  • Leon's unrequited love for Valbar becomes this after Three Houses caused frustration for some players about how two characters' paired endings with the main character were platonic due to the fact that both of them were married, just like Valbar, making Leon's character arc more meta. The fact that most of the frustration came from the fact that they were available to both genders of the main character, which mislead people into thinking that they were the Gay Option, only makes it more noticeable.
• Ho Yay:
  • Python and Forsyth. Their standard endings are pretty normal, but the bad endings they get if the other dies are very similar to those of the game's couples. Forsyth will only marry a nameless woman if Python dies, just like Tatiana losing Zeke and Python will experience a personality change and die young if Forsyth dies, just like Clive if he loses Mathilda.
  • Conrad's ending has shades of this, mentioning how many suitors had fallen in love with him. Many have noted that the term "suitor" is mainly used for males.
  • Fernand has some of this towards Clive thanks to a couple of Memory Prisms. In one, Clair teases him about how close he is to her brother, bonus points for coming right after Fernand had been nagging her about finding a husband. There's another one where Mathilda, Clive's own girlfriend/fiancée, also comments on how close they are in a way that makes her sound slightly jealous, and then notes how happy Fernand seems to be when he's talking about Clive.
  • Some of the new story material found in Valentia Accordion says that Rudolf and Mycen were close in their youth. Very close. In fact, when Rudolf hands a newborn Alm to him, Mycen outright says "I love you most dear" (followed by him questioning what kind of father would give up his newborn son). There's also the fact that Mycen never did marry...

I-M

• Iron Woobie: Clive watched as the kingdom he had dedicated his life to serving fell into chaos thanks to Lima's incompetent rule, and then after that as Desaix took the throne. He formed the Deliverance to fight back along with his lover, his sister, his subordinate/friends and his best friend, but it was clear from the start that it was a losing battle. Ultimately, he loses Zofia Castle, seemingly rendering everything the Deliverance had done up to that point moot, and what is left of his ragged forces are forced to take refuge in Terror infested catacombs. Sometime after that, Mathilda was captured by Desaix and held hostage; he refused to surrender but was also too afraid to make any sort of move, leaving the Deliverance in a stalemate. It's little wonder that multiple characters note that the war and leading the Deliverance is taking a toll on him. He eventually tried to pass his role as leader off to Mycen and then Alm, but even that didn't fix everything: Fernand, his friend from childhood (and who has his own issues, as said below), betrays him and calls him a mockery of his former self. He can potentially lose the love of his life and his beloved sister over the course of the game, and no matter what Fernand will die in his arms with Clive powerless to save him. Yet in spite of all of this, he always acts kind and understanding towards all his troops, and only ever shows outward distress in the direst of situations. The sole permanent way to eventually break him is having Mathilda die, as his ending changes into one where he dies young - and he still goes down fighting pirates.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: Ironically, given the game is well-known for being the Oddball in the Series, Echoes is most frequently criticized for stubbornly sticking to the original game's design, even in places where everyone and their grandmothers agree it's showing its age.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Among the new characters added to the remake, Berkut is generally considered to be a solid new villain addition to the story, often being praised as one of the best villains in the series. In contrast, Faye, the new playable character on Alm's route, is easily the most polarizing addition due to coming off as a Clingy Jealous Girl who seems to be pleased with Alm and Celica's relationship troubles, as well as acting like a Jerkass for most of her and Silque's support. Fernand is also seen as an unsympathetic and one-note Jerkass compared to Berkut, though the DLC's expanded story beats did help win some of his detractors to him.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • It goes without saying that Celica has been shipped with a fair number of characters, both within reason and those that are far more...questionable for her. The most popular choices for her are Alm, Mae, and Saber, though she's also been shipped with Faye, Boey (usually as part of a One True Threesome with Mae), and Conrad, her own brother. And that's not taking into account the other games she's appeared in!
  • Speaking of Saber, he's potentially got more ships than her. Not only has he been shipped with Celica, but he's also been paired with Mae, Boey, and Genny (who are all teenagers mind you), as well as the other three mercenaries on Celica's route (Jesse, Kamui, and Deen) and Sonya.
• Love to Hate: Desaix and Slayde are scumbags without any redeemable qualities, but due to how they're written and acted one can genuinely enjoy despising them, making them stand out in a series with often one note antagonists. While Jedah is slightly more sympathetic, his antics to serve the Duma Faithful can also make him fall under this.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Jedah leads the Duma Faithful with an iron will and unshakeable faith. Allied with the Rigelian Empire, Jedah focuses primarily on Celica and her group, preying on the former's Fatal Flaws so he can take her soul to cure Duma of his madness. Showing naught but full loyalty to Duma, molding himself and everyone loyal to him to Duma's doctrines, Jedah controls the heroes up until the end where the Falchion, the one item that can kill Duma, is released. Despite the atrocities he commits in the name of Duma, Jedah is furious the heroes would rather live in a world with an unsure future as opposed to an era of certainly in Duma's chaotic shadow, proving his devotion genuine.
  • Emperor Rudolf I was among the few to realize the gods Mila and Duma degenerated from madness, meaning he had to ensure the future of Valentia by any means necessary. He leads a grand conquest of the Valentian continent to feed a starving Rigel as well as make himself a target for a group of heroes to defeat so Rigel and Zofia could unite. Despite leading a war of aggression, Rudolf ensures minimal casualties are sustained and a trusted ally, Ezekiel, keeps his more militant commanders in check. By the time his infamy reaches the ears of Alm, his plan has been set in motion. Before his final battle, he orders his men to surrender upon his death to ensure no further casualties. He may have made mistakes, such as enabling Berkut's pride or telling no one but Mycen of his real heritage, but in the end, his gambit worked: his son became the first king of a united Valentia that lived on for millennia.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Clive, due to his mediocre growths that were barely changed for Echoes. This is twofold because his personality is forgettable in spite of being the leader of the Deliverance, since he has little to speak of outside of being a Nice Guy without any interesting aspects (like fellow Nice Guy Lukas' lack of emotions) and his love for Matilda.
  • Seazas, a one-shot boss character that was Adapted Out of the remake (Berkut replaced him in his chapter), has been getting this treatment from the fandom.
  • Deen is very prone to mockery for being so much less popular as a choice for recruitment than Sonya, especially since you can still get his Brave Sword by killing him. Which was ironic that back in Fire Emblem: Awakening, Deen was the one who got an Einherjar as opposed to Sonya (though this was mostly due to Deen being one of the few characters from the original Gaiden to actually have official manual art).
  • Garth became one after Heroes' second Choose Your Legend poll where he was tied with Bloom for last place, both of them receiving a measly 7 votes to their name.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own section here.
• Misaimed "Realism": The game balances out the Unbreakable Weapons by assigning each weapon a weight value that reduces the holder's speed, making them less likely to double attack. While this makes sense for physical weapons, why should magical spells have weight, especially in an installment that lacks tomes? Even some natural weapons have a weight class - apparently Duma is weighed down by his own eyeball.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • In-Universe, the Deliverance considers Desaix to have crossed this, not by killing the widely hated Lima IV, but by assassinating Lima IV's children and then pinning the crime on the beloved General Mycen.
  • Jedah crossed it before the story when he sacrificed two of his three daughters to Duma. If not this, then manipulating Celica into venturing to Duma Tower and corrupting her into another brainwashed Witch.
  • Berkut crosses it when he sacrifices his love Rinea to gain more power against Alm and turns her into a witch, after he hears her confession that she never cared about being empress and loved him no matter what he made of himself, and misinterprets it as an admission that she never believed in him and gleefully expected him to fail like he did. Once Alm notices Rinea, he is shocked and disgusted to find that Berkut was willing to sacrifice his loved one without a care in the world for more power.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The spell Sagittae hits the enemy ten times in rapid succession when it lands. Land a critical hit, and you get to hear the glorious critical hit sound ten times in rapid succession too. For extra pleasure, play it in slow motion!

N-S

• Narm:
  • If a character falls in battle in Echoes, other characters may tearfully lament their fallen comrade during the post-battle results screen. What should be a Tear Jerker can become silly if playing on Casual, since Permadeath is turned off and the characters are fine. For example, Est having a breakdown from losing Catria or Palla comes across as her being a major drama queen.
  • Celica's plot-based Class Change is a powerful moment in-story. However, due to the way Class Changing works in this game ^Explanationyour stats are increased to match the new class' base stats if they're lower, and left unchanged otherwise, it's very possible she'll get no stat gains (besides HP) from this, and the only change in her model is a headband and shield.
• Narm Charm:
  • One of Forsyth's victory quotes in Echoes is the absolutely groan-worthy "I'm a Forsyth to be reckoned with!" However, his characterization as an earnest, hard-working man who's a bit of a dweeb, coupled with Chris Cason's delivery, makes the line rather fitting for him to blurt out.
  • Alm's original Dong Armor is so ridiculous it loops back around to being funny. The news that it was coming back for his alt in Fire Emblem Heroes was met with much rejoicing.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Take a shot every time Celica's deal with Jedah is brought up when discussing her character. Pretty much every discussion of her will have someone mention this, and how it makes her an idiotic character, regardless of the story reasons why she did it.
  • Those who dislike Rinea tend to focus on her being Berkut's wet blanket girlfriend, ignoring the fact that she does care about him regardless of his troubled circumstances.
  • Conrad's Get a Hold of Yourself, Man! got blown way out of proportion among some fans on tumblr not long after release, with people calling him a "woman beater" for it despite him feeling bad about it afterwards and Boey calling him out on it.
  • Berkut's descent into madness is well setup, but most people tend to only talk about him as the guy who yells "Lies!" during his Sanity Slippage.
• Not Badass Enough for Fans:
  • Since Celica is sensitive and kindly plus secretly insecure and the end of the game has her facing the consequences of such a huge and glaring Fatal Flaw, she has become the target of several "weak", "dumb" and "damsel in distress" accusations.
  • Similarly, some of the hate leveled at Rinea comes from the fact that she's a shy and unagressive Nice Girl who is uncomfortable with Berkut's more aggressive moments, making some players call her a pointless Neutral Female, though unlike Celica, Rinea is never shown doing anything useful in the game or holding any actual beliefs herself. Unlike many Neutral Female characters in the series, she has no purpose other than to be a measuring stick for Berkut's morality, never interacts with anyone other than Berkut, and stands by wringing her hands about how war is bad instead of doing anything about it (begging the question of why she married a Proud Warrior Race Guy general like Berkut in the first place if she hates war and court politics so much^note As seen in a Memory Prism, Berkut was fairly kind to her (and continued to be), hinting at a somewhat-lengthy relationship that led up to the present, where unfortunately the war then led to Berkut's other traits taking precedence (and worse). Also, Rinea was looked down upon by many for her family's impoverished state, yet despite believing in the divisions between nobles and commoners, Berkut didn't seem to care about Rinea's diminished status because of his feelings for her.) or taking a more proactive approach in helping mend her fiance's rapidly-declining mental state.
• One True Threesome:
  • The idea of Tobin/Gray/Clair popped out as soon as the game was released in the West. Tobin and Gray have crushes on Clair, but are also very loyal Vitriolic Best Buds who explicitly reject the idea to break their friendship if Clair chooses one boy over the other. Clair and Gray marry if both of them live, but if this happens and Tobin dies, their happy ending changes to one where Gray mourned Tobin so intensely that he fell in drunken depression, Clair was the one who helped him back on his feet, and when they had a firstborn son Gray named him after his dead best friend.
  • Mathilda and Clive are a mix of Battle Couple and Sickeningly Sweethearts, but Clive has two very handsome companions named Lukas and Forsyth who look up to him a lot. Those who can't bring themselves to break up Clive/Mathilda have suggested adding either Forsyth or Lukas to their hook-up.
  • Forsyth and Lukas are also friends with Python, an archer who is very Ambiguously Bi. Naturally, the fandom has begun to latch on a potential Lukas/Forsyth/Python trio... Helping fans' cases with this one is the fact that Forsyth himself can be interpreted as Ambiguously Bi thanks to his possible endings, making it very easy to ship him with Python anyway. Then, toss in their good friend Lukas, and the OT3 writes itself.
  • Celica/Mae/Boey has gained a bit of traction for those who don't want Mae to lose her Babies Ever After ending with Boey, but still like the idea of her in a relationship with Celica. It helps that her supports with them are both very lovable.
• Player Punch: Sonya and Deen are mutually exclusive characters - meaning the only reason one of them is dead is you had to pick which one you DID want. However, most players consider Sonya because missing out on her causes her to never get revenge on Jedah or put her sisters out of their misery.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • From a gameplay standpoint, the remake has done this to many characters, giving them better stats, growths, and spell lists.
    • Est is a good example for both versions. She was viewed as the weakest of the sisters from the other two games they appear in, and, despite her potential to be the strongest, was often dismissed (not unfairly) at that as being Awesome, but Impractical. Gaiden's system, allowing for the player to encounter more enemies, coupled with Est's much earlier joining time compared to the previous game makes her a much more viable unit.
  • From a story standpoint, the remake does this to nearly everyone. Most characters in the original only had one or two, total, lines of dialogue, resulting in Gaiden's non-protagonist cast being considered among the least memorable in the entire series. Echoes not only fleshes out the characters' personalities while adding full voice acting and support conversations, but it also does what very few other FE games have done: have characters continue to comment on plot scenes past their recruitment. This is particularly notable for Gray and Tobin, who go from bland, flat characters to Those Two Guys of Alm's routes. And on the villains' side, Rudolf had his motivations expanded so they actually make sense (see Unintentionally Unsympathetic), while Jedah went from a fully straight example of the series' Sinister Minister trope to one of its more complex portrayals, where he actually explains why he's right. Of course, some still think that he is far too Obviously Evil, since his portrayal in the manga had him look far less deformed.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The games' insistence on giving characters low Resistance growths. Unlike most games in the series, Gaiden and even Echoes give characters absurdly low growths for Resistance, despite how heavily magic is used by enemies. Meanwhile, enemies often have a solid Resistance stat that effectively punishes the use of magic by players and also punishes them for fighting magical units. To give context, most mages have a Resistance growth of 3, and characters who start as Mercenaries or Villagers (and Randal) have a zero percent growth rate there. In fact, the units with the highest growth rates for Resistance are Genny, Conrad, and Emma, who have pitiful five, eight, and ten percent Resistance growths respectively (and Emma is a DLC character). This results in magic enemies having an absurdly easy time damaging units, hence why Witches are considered extra frustrating.
  • Armored Knights never gain a single point of movement in any of their two promotions, this is unlike every other melee class or even archer, and means Armored Knights get less useful as the game goes on as it eventually means they're competing with melee units that have a whopping three movement points over them for a rather literal case of Can't Catch Up. Whilst the original game included a ring that increased movement and had a spell that allowed Armored units to be warped to any spot on the map, the remake removed all these features from the game. Many point to Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem, as handling this issue better, as in that case, General was given an additional point of movement over their base form, Armored Knight and as a result shot up alot in usefullness.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Gaiden was free of this trope, but Echoes brought it to the table. To keep this concise and short:
  • In both games, Clive and Mathilda are an Official Couple as long as both of them live ^note (If not, either Clive dies young while fighting pirates, or Mathilda replaces him as commander but never marries). The het-hating part of the fandom has begun to bash or ignore Clive to favor pairing up Mathilda with other women, especially Clair and Sonya.
  • Fans of Celica and Faye have been spotted fighting it out both regarding their characters and whether one or another girl is the best Love Interest for Alm. One side says that Faye is a no-personality yandere who gets in the way of Alm and Celica's destined love, whereas the other side calls Celica's Childhood Friend Romance with Alm is nothing but Token Romance.
  • Saber/Celica has gained a following on Tumblr, especially among fans who are newer to the franchise; unsurprisingly, some of them have accused Alm and Celica of being Strangled by the Red String. Alm/Celica fans have not taken that kindly, calling the Saber/Celica fans "creepy" for shipping Celica with an adult man twice her age like Saber.
  • Shippers of Boey/Mae often butt heads with those who ship Mae/Celica. Fans of the latter often argue that Celica is constantly shown to be as supportive of Mae as she is of her throughout the main story and their supports while Boey does nothing but argue with her. On the other side of the fight, fans of the former have pointed out that Boey and Mae have multiple conversations during the game that don't involve any bickering, as well as many instances that show that they genuinely care for each other's physical and emotional well-being; plus, they accuse the most rabid Mae/Celica fans of hating Boey/Mae solely for being a heterosexual ship.
• Shocking Moments: Grima's appearance in the postgame labyrinth.
• Stoic Woobie: Ezekiel, aka Zeke, is a kind-hearted and handsome Reasonable Authority Figure who turns out to have had one hell of a Dark and Troubled Past as Camus, the Anti-Villain from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, plus he didn't have it easy in Valentia either due to his amnesia and how, despite his girlfriend Tatiana's unconditional love, he was treated harshly until Emperor Rudolf put his faith in him. And he's also Forced into Evil by having Tatiana taken prisoner by Nuibaba. Regardless, Zeke rarely if ever discusses his huge problems with Alm or Tatiana, remains stonefaced and strongwilled, and keeps going on. Pretty much the only way to truly break him is killing Tatiana off.
• Strangled by the Red String: A portion of the fandom views the Alm/Celica relationship as this. He helped her recover from grief and they formed a strong bond. That's a fine basis for a romance, except that they were ten-year-olds at the time, and dialogue from Gray implies that they only actually knew each other for a short while. This makes it seem unrealistic that seven years later both are still devoted to each other to the point of Single-Target Sexuality, especially since they get into a fight the first time they meet again as teenagers because they've changed since childhood.^note Though other flavor text from an NPC, as well as Conrad's account of the royal villa's burning during Act 4, indicates that Celica may have lived in Ram Village for as long as 3 years and built the foundation of her relationship with Alm during a good chunk of that timeframe.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • While Fernand's argument is based on classism rather than logic, he's not entirely wrong when he questions Clive's decision to hand command of the Deliverance to a country bumpkin who had never seen combat until about a couple of weeks ago. Even if Alm is the grandson of Mycen, Alm isn't Mycen, the people have no reason to throw their support behind someone just because they are related to someone. This is especially true after the reveal that Alm is not Mycen's actual grandson.
  • It's clear that Berkut's gone over the deep end by the time he claims Rudolf never loved him. However, his on-screen interactions with Rudolf and the fact that he kept a life-shattering secret from him give Berkut no reason to believe otherwise at this point, and any information to the contrary comes posthumously from Massena's mouth. Even if Rudolf did truly love him, the fact he never acknowledged Berkut in a positive way to him directly, nor let him know of his plans, meant Berkut thought Rudolf had lied to him his whole life.
• Superlative Dubbing: The English version has received near-universal praise for its English voiceovers, with many of the leads and major supporting characters in particular (Kyle McCarley as Alm, Erica Lindbeck as Celica, Max Mittelman as Gray, Robbie Daymond as Tobin, Cherami Leigh as Mae and Chris Hackney as Boey) rarely going without praise, and with Mittelman's Gray and Leigh's Mae getting particular focus as stand-out performances that helped the characters become fan favorites. On the villains' side, Ian Sinclair's Berkut has received immense praise for his genuine-sounding downward spiral. The English version of "Heritors of Arcadia" is also often agreed to be superior to the Japanese version.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: For some who really weren't fans of the previous 3DS games and preferered the older titles, Echoes was a nice surprise going back to gameplay/story more like the older games.

T

• That One Achievement:
  • Echoes features an Achievements system, and one of them is awarded for obtaining all 3 of Archanea's Regalia: the Mercurius, Gradivus, and Parthia. While the Gradivus is obtained during the main story, the other two (without DLC) require evolving a Blessed Sword/Bow at a cost of a whopping 5 Gold Marks each. Gold Marks are extremely difficult to farm outside of DLC, with the only real option being the second-to-last floor of the game's Brutal Bonus Level. Even there, they drop at a 1/6 rate, and you only get 6 chances at the drop per visit to the dungeon. Bear in mind this is also a dungeon with no save points.
  • Speaking of farming things in the Brutal Bonus Level, how about the part where you have to get Valentia's three Regalia? You can only get them as rusted weapons that have a less than 0.2% chance of dropping from enemies, or by breaking pots in the deepest floors of the bonus dungeon for a 0.26% chance of dropping it. Even the Archanea Regalia aren't as hard to get.
  • Blitzkrieg, the medal awarded for clearing the game in less than 500 turns. And yes, everything counts for it: optional encounters, amiibo dungeons, DLC... The turn cap itself isn't too hard to attain, but it means you have to make an entire run aimed at getting that one, with all the constraints it brings. And if you're trying to do it in Hard Mode, recruiting everyone and losing nobody... Godspeed.
• That One Boss: Both the original game and the remake have several, to the point where they may be some of the few FE games to fall under Easy Levels, Hard Bosses rather than the opposite.
  • The Mercenary with the Leather Shield in Ram Valley gives a lot of players trouble, being practically a Boss in Mook Clothing. Most physical attackers will only do Scratch Damage to him, and he's fast enough to double almost anyone. He's supposed to teach the player that they should make one of your Villagers a Mage (Kliff is highly recommended, although Gaiden does not do a good job explaining this), but if they didn't, one can only rely on Silque's 60% accurate Nosferatu spell. And it's a Rout battle, so one has to defeat him to proceed.
  • Jedah. In both encounters with him, he has Duma's Gift, a rather nasty ability that allows him to nullify the attacks of three units attacking him before a fourth can come finish him off. The fact that he can be damaged at all is not immediately obvious, since the info screen says Duma's Gift makes him completely No-Sell anything, with no hints as to how to disable it aside from the words of one villager at Sage's Hamlet. If you fail to kill him then, this ability will reset, meaning you will have to deal with having to attack three more times to no effect before getting another chance to damage him. He also has the Pact ability, meaning that his summoning and Death spells don't cost health, and he is immune to status conditions. Finally, in both of his encounters, he has two extremely powerful items at his disposal: the first being the Dracoshield, which makes him nigh-impossible to kill due to its massive defensive stat bonuses (and if you take too long, he will automatically end the encounter after six turns before you can finish him off, robbing you of the chance to nab the aforementioned Dracoshield from him) and the second being the Animus Ring, which allows him to counterattack from any range (which is made worse by Duma's Gift, meaning you have to fight and get potentially killed by him three times before getting the chance to actually damage him). Many players have mistaken him for a Hopeless Boss Fight because he's that hard. He's technically a Skippable Boss since you can either ignore him during his first encounter, or head straight to the real boss during the second, but good luck surviving if he manages to get his hands on one of your units.
  • Rudolf. He has an obscene 52 HP, 30 Attack, 24 Speed, 25 Defense, and 16 Resistance. He will be able to double even your Dread Fighters, take all but the heaviest blows, and retaliate for massive damage. In addition, he has an Angel Ring that gives him a dangerous boost to his Luck Stat. Finally, he has 9 movement, allowing him to shoot across the battlefield in an instant. Your best bet is to overwhelm him with Delthea's Ragnarok and Kliff's Sagittae and take advantage of his refusal to attack his son Alm, and the chapter mercifully ends once he goes down.
• That One Level:
  • The Necrodragon encounter at the Seabound Shrine isn't too bad on Normal where there's only one of them. On Hard, however, there are two, and both will rush you at the same time. Valbar can only lure/tank one of them at a time, and the Necrodragons have enough movement to reach and one-round most vulnerable characters in Celica's party. The only real method of damaging them is Celica's Seraphim spell, but at this point she won't be strong and/or fast enough to one-round either of them, leaving her exposed to attack. And Leon won't be strong enough to inflict too much damage either despite their weakness to bows. This battle generally requires a lot of luck to win, hoping the Necrodragons miss Celica or that she crits one of them. The only way to reliably have an easy time of it immediately upon reaching it is to give Celica all three of the uses of the speed fountain at the priory so she'll be able to double the necrodragons.
  • Grieth's Citadel combines most, if not all, of the most annoying aspects of the game—desert tiles, Witches, Snipers, and, a Cantor at the very back end of the map that will summon Bonewalkers every other turn. Getting all the way to Grieth is extremely perilous because the only way to reach him is through two narrow corridors, on the other side of which are Snipers who will easily pick off your more fragile units, and the only way to get rid of them at that point is to have your Mages use Thunder (which isn't advised at all), or use Leon or one of the Whitewings, and even those two options are risky. And even if you make it through with no casualties, Grieth himself qualifies as That One Boss—as a Dread Fighter he has incredibly high movement and, with the amount of fragile units in Celica's route, this makes him extremely dangerous. Your best bet is to trap him in the room in the middle and slowly pick him off with ranged attacks until he kicks it.
  • Tatarrah's map isn't too bad on its own, but Delthea makes it extremely infuriating since she has a tendency to teleport and attack units who can easily kill her, ruining your chances of recruiting her. And due to the A.I. Roulette nature of enemy teleportation, Delthea might teleport on the very first turn or wait till you've almost reached Tatarrah and then teleport and get herself killed, making this a Luck-Based Mission. You pretty much have to pray that she attacks someone and survives so that you can then reduce her HP to the point where she can no longer attack, then rush and kill Tatarrah as quickly as possible before he can heal her. This can be mitigated somewhat in Echoes, which allows Alm to learn a skill (Subdue) that will leave her at one health.
  • The Fear Mountain map will be the player's first encounter with a boss who can summon Witches. That's right, those Demonic Spider enemies who can teleport anywhere on the map. As with most encounters with Witches, this battle can be very luck reliant due to their unpredictable A.I., and the best strategy is generally to take out the boss as quickly as possible so that you don't get overwhelmed.
  • Nuibaba's Abode is extremely annoying. Basically, it's a map to assault a mansion where the entrance is in the back side of the map, otherwise the player is forced to only move one tile at a time to get inside the front, forcing them to go through either two narrow paths to get to the entrance. Compounding that is a Cantor that endlessly summons Gargoyles, three Dread Fighters, and three spellcasters. And to top this, Nuibaba is the first spellcaster that utilizes Medusa and it has a wide range that can severely punish a character that is out of position.
  • Several of Celica's maps in Act 3 and 4 are extremely annoying due to the abundance of desert and swamp tiles, which slow most characters down to a crawl of moving one space per turn (then add in that swamp tiles hurt you for 5 HP per turn if you're on them). One standout example is the Desert Stronghold, since most of the enemies are archers who can still hit you even when you're a ways away from them.
• That One Sidequest:
  • For the reasons mentioned in That One Level above, recruiting Delthea. The developers seem aware of this, as in Echoes she's worth the most Renown of all recruitments by far (300, whereas everyone else is between 25 and 100).
  • At the start of Alm's Act 3, you can receive a quest from Zofia Castle to retrieve the Rion Shield. The game tells you it was taken by Desaix, but by the time you get there he's already sold it to Grieth. You end up finding the shield on Celica's route, and need to use a traveling merchant to send it to Alm. Problem is, merchants are one-use-only, and you encounter Celica's only Act 3 merchant before you get the Rion Shield, meaning you might have already used it.
  • Alessio's quests are some of the few in the game that are timed, and while missing them isn't a big deal (the rewards for completing the entire chain are 300 Silver Marks, a Coral Ring, and 900 Renown), it can be annoying for completionists. In particular, his quest at Grieth's Citadel requires you to sell him 5 Steel Lances ^note Which is more than there are available on Celica's route at that point unless the player makes use of the forge (to convert a maxed-out Iron Lance into a Steel Lance), and the three peddlers in Alm's route (to send over the Steel Lances his party has obtained). While you can get lucky and find some randomly in dungeons (specifically Duma Tower for Celica), the chances are very low. Steel Lances are decent weapons, too, so you won't want to get rid of them. If you clear The Last Bastion in Alm's campaign before handing over all five, Alessio will depart from Grieth's Citadel, preventing you from finishing the quest. And even assuming you do hand over any Steel Lances before The Last Bastion, you'll find Slayde and his Rigelian Barons wielding them against you on said map.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • While most of the redesigns in Echoes are universally loved, the only one that's generally agreed as a bit of a downer is the removal of Rudolf's handlebar mustache in favor of a pair of sideburns, likely done to better differentiate the emperor from Sir Mycen.
  • While many aspects of the original's story are considered improved in the remake, some of its most contentious moments, namely Celica's decisions during Act 4, are major deviations from the original plot, and some fans blame these re-writes for making her the Base-Breaking Character she is to newer fans. Another major point of contention was turning Mila and Duma into Divine Dragons, instead of the actual gods they were implied to be in the original.
  • Many fans of the Soldier-Armored Knight-Baron class-line were annoyed that the Speed ring no longer gives a large bonus to the movement stat and that the range of warp was nerfed. Critics point out that an item giving +5 movement and unlimited range were no more broken than 4 move melee units (Barons) competing with 7 move melee units (Dread Fighters). As a result of these nerfs to the Speed Ring and Warp, Lukas and Valbar fell very hard on tier lists compared to Gaiden.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • While Echoes does have Support Conversations to help flesh out the characters, the number is extremely limited compared to previous games, with many units only having one or two people they can support. Even more baffling is that many characters with established relationships, like the siblings Clair and Clive, can't support. While the voice acting, base conversations, and support conversations that do exist are enough to prevent the cast from being Flat Characters, there could have been many more without ever leaving the realm of likely interactions.
    • A number of characters had their backstories expanded on in Valentia Accordion, with notable examples including Saber, Genny, Leon, Jesse, Deen, and Nuibaba. The fact that these characters often had deeper pasts than the game let on makes the limited number of supports even more disappointing.
  • Seazas, a minor boss in the original, is the only character to be removed entirely from Echoes. Given there are several maps in the game that lack bosses and the potential to add mini-bosses, it's odd he was cut entirely.
  • There are a few non-party members in the game that are mentioned or appear briefly that feel like they should've been more involved than they are:
    • Sage Halcyon. The former head of the Duma Faithful, who would have every reason to be invested in Celica's journey and saving Duma from his madness, and who also raised Conrad when he was a child. Despite how important he is, and how personal journeying with the party would be given he was ousted by Jedah, he appears only in the Sage Hamlet and gives no real impact on the story besides giving Celica some exposition and allowing Alm to promote to a Hero. Given how he is shown to be a nice guy, it would have made the Duma Faithful more complex by showing that Jedah was somewhat radical in his ideas, and would have given some justification for the group's existence. Instead he does nothing and feels like a pointless character when you get down to it.
    • Irma on Celica's route is a good example. She is a Cleric captured by Grieth but she knows quite a lot about Celica's mother and some information about Mila's darker side by extension. Despite how important she appears, she leaves once you reach the Mila Shrine and never reappears in the game for any reason.
    • Lukas' older brother is a minor but still notable example. Lukas mentions him in a base conversation and explains that he was very cunning, and convinced Lukas to join the Deliverance. By doing so he set up a Xanatos Gambit; if the Deliverance succeeds, then he would be one of their benefactors and be seen as a hero, meanwhile if it failed, he could claim Lukas acted on his own and not suffer anything for it. Given how cunning this move is you would expect him to appear in game and be some sort of factor, like a boss later, or an NPC who interacts with the heroes. Yet, unlike even the two mentioned above him, he never appears in game. In fact, he never gets any mention outside of that conversation^note (outside of a very quick conversation between Clive and Lukas in one of the Rise of the Deliverance DLCs), which leaves his actions as almost an Aborted Arc.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Slayde threatens to kill Faye as a kid, which seems to be the starting point for her crush on Alm blooming into a full-on obsession, this is never brought up again and the two don't even have any dialogue if they fight in any future maps. Similarly, the first part of Faye's support with Alm has him observing that the war might be taking a toll on Faye, seemingly setting up their last conversation to be them talking about that, or at least the reason for Faye's obsessive nature towards Alm, but this moment is never mentioned again, and Faye is never mentioned to have any issues from fighting.
  • Early in Act 3 on Alm's side, Clive and Fernand get into a brief duel where Fernand tells Clive that Alm isn't actually Mycen's grandson. This causes Clive to go through the rest of Act 3 questioning if he picked the right person to lead the Deliverance and he begins to doubt Alm's leadership for a while. Given the reveal later that Alm is actually Rudolf's son, you would think it would tie into that, with Clive telling Alm this fact, which would lead to Alm questioning who his family really is, and why Mycen would lie to him. Instead, Clive keeps it to himself, only making small comments about Alm's leadership, before it is completely dropped once Alm gives a Rousing Speech to Clive at the Sluice Gate leading into Act 4 that restores his faith in Alm. The execution is odd considering this is a heavy piece of foreshadowing tying into the big twist at the end, yet it only seems to exist to inform the audience that The Reveal is happening.
  • In the prologue, Celica gave Alm her mother's good luck charm before leaving Ram Village. The only time the charm has any significance during the story is when Alm prays to it for Celica's aid when Berkut smashes Nuibaba's mirror and summons Terrors to kill the Deliverance. Somehow it works and Nuibaba's spell is broken, but it's never explained what actually saved Alm with the charm completely disappearing from the plot afterwards and no mention of what happened with the battle ever again.
  • If you leave Kliff and Faye behind in Act 1, they can actually be recruited by Celica in Act 2. Sadly, the game does absolutely nothing with this setup - they have no unique storyline content as members of the Pilgrimage, and the opportunity to see their thoughts on the events of Celica's tale or flesh out their relationship with her is squandered.
  • While minor, some fans were disappointed that the Lucina amiibo cannot deal the finishing blow to Duma, especially when Marth and Roy's amiibo are able to do so just fine.
  • In-game, the sixth bonus chapter seems to have no relation to the game's story and simply serves to establish a link with Awakening. New lore introduced in the bonus Valentia Accordion book heavily implies that Alm and Celica DID travel to Archanea shortly after the war, so one has to wonder why they didn't write a proper post-game story.
    • The game does excuse the trip by saying that Alm and Celica were escorting a merchant back to Archanea. However, that mainly explains the sea battles, and Thabes Labyrith itself has little relation to the rest of Echoes.
    • Additionally, since the epilogue chapter finally sheds light on the history behind Grima, it's a bit disappointing they didn't answer some other questions leftover from Awakening (such as what happened to Alm's Falchion).

U-W

• Unexpected Character:
  • Echoes features a new sixth chapter that the original Gaiden didn't, and it focuses on the origin story of Grima, the Big Bad of Awakening.
  • Echoes featured DLC for new characters...and of all people, it picked Emma, Randal, Yuzu, and Shade from the Collectible Card Game Fire Emblem Cipher, making their official Video Game debut.
• Unfortunate Character Design: As one can see on the cover of the original Fire Emblem Gaiden, Alm has the infamous Dong Armor, which has a rather... elongated piece of armor situated between his legs and he's posed just awkwardly enough to make it seem... inappropriate.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Celica's argument with Alm at the end of Act 2 is supposed to be seen as a case of Celica being worried and emotional about Alm going to war with Rigel, with her suggesting Alm is trying to grab power. While the game does make it clear that Celica is partially motivated by fear, as she thinks Alm going to war will be his death due to a dream she had, Celica's actions and words make it hard to find her sympathetic for some. Not only does she not tell him her concerns, but she acts like Alm is wrong for fighting back against Rigel even though they were the reason why Zofia was nearly taken over, and the story makes it clear Alm would rather have peace if possible but Rigel isn't backing down. Plus, the fact that Celica then runs off and eventually fights her way to the Tower of Duma, made it come across as her being a hypocrite. While she does apologize for it later, and Alm shows he isn't too upset by it when she does, it made some people feel like Celica was wrong and too hypocritical to agree with.
  • Fernand is written to be sympathetic to a degree, but it can be hard to feel any sympathy for Fernand, because, while he is given a tragic backstory, the game does little to make him have any redeeming traits. From the minute he is introduced, he belittles Alm and the other Ram Villagers simply because they are "peasants", even when his fellow Deliverance members call him out on his poor behavior, and shortly after meeting him, he leaves and becomes an antagonist because Alm is made the leader of the Deliverance. He then goes the rest of the game being openly hostile to his former friend Clive, and tries to kill the heroes because he agrees with Berkut's beliefs. Only when he dies is he even remotely sympathetic, where he realizes how wrong he had been, but by then he had already betrayed his home and friends for petty reasons. For some players, it's only thanks to the Rise of the Deliverance DLC that Fernand is saved from being a Hate Sink, where we see him when he is a Nice Guy.
  • Rudolf in both versions suffers from this:
    • In the original Gaiden, they did the best they could with the limited format, but it was still very hard to write a Well-Intentioned Extremist with complex motivations in an NES game. Firstly, Rudolf never appears until you fight him, his only dialogue in the game is his Rousing Speech pre-battle and dying words to Alm, and all we learn of his motives is Mycen's Info Dump to Alm afterwards, so what we get is an antagonist we're told we should feel sad for after the fact. Secondly, Mila and Duma's madness was not a plot point in the original game, which makes Rudolf's invasion plan make considerably less sense, as it seems his only goal was encouraging Alm to rise up and become a hero, which is something he probably could have done with less bloodshed had he raised Alm himself. (The original gave little justification for why he sent Alm away with Mycen) His sealing of Mila is also given no explanation in the original game, making it look like For the Evulz instead of Necessary Evil. The remake fleshed out his motivations much more, fleshed out Mila and Duma so his actions against them made more sense, and gave him more screentime.
    • In Echoes, his motivations are more sympathetic and he is an actual Well-Intentioned Extremist, but the handling of his relationship with Berkut caused many to see him as this. He basically lied to Berkut about his status as the crown prince of Rigel, never once trying to tell him that he was never going to achieve that, and left him in the dark that he wanted a united Valentia. Thus caused Berkut, someone who already had a rough upbringing, to become focused on gaining power above all else to win the love of his uncle. As a result, when characters talk about Rudolf loving Berkut like a son, there isn't really anything to support that, especially since the only times on screen they interact, Ruldof is dismissive of him.
• Viewer Name Confusion:
  • Due to their extremely similar names, some fans mix up Celica's name with Cecilia's. The only thing that set the names apart is the extra lowercase "i" in the latter name. The resemblance is even closer to Seliph, whose name was spelled as "Celice" in the Japanese version.
  • Tatiana's name is similarly mixed up with Titania, with their names being near anagrams of one another.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Gaiden was once considered a black sheep among Fire Emblem titles, due to its many gameplay differences such as split paths, being able to level grind, and its Unbreakable Weapons. However, later games using some of these mechanics, like Sacred Stones, Awakening, and Fates, made Gaiden feel less out of place. The remake cemented this new position, being very well-received overall.
  • The cast for Gaiden were commonly dismissed as generic afterthoughts, even by Intelligent Systems. The most common perception of them were the generic and inconsistent designs for most of the characters, so much that they didn't even get any spot in the older Fire Emblem TCG, as well as minimal dialogue and involvement in the story. The remake used this opportunity to revamp the character designs and added characterizations to them.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The remake has the production quality of Awakening and Fates, while improving on the quality of the character models and vastly refining the attack animations, even beyond what Fates did in that department compared to Awakening.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: After Berkut breaks down and snaps, he sacrifices Rinea's soul to Duma in his blind thirst for power and revenge, yet Rinea still forgives and takes him back.
• The Woobie:
  • There are many candidates among the cast, but Rinea from Echoes is maybe the biggest example: she's awkward, kind, in love with a man who loves her back but has severe issues that she cannot help him with, and gets turned into a Tragic Monster as an effect of said man's Deal with the Devil. The poor girl has it super rough.
  • Alm suffers a fair amount starting from the last legs of Act 4. First, he defeats and kills Emperor Rudolf, who with his dying breath he reveals Alm is his son, prompting Alm to scream when Rudolf dies; second, in Echoes, he welcomes his cousin Berkut with open arms when he finds him inside Duma Temple, only to find out Berkut is out to kill him after being given power by Duma which ends with Berkut (plus the aforementioned Rinea, who would've probably gotten along well with Alm if shit didn't hit the fan) dying, adding up to Alm's misery; and before that one happens, he is led to believe by Jedah that all he's achieved up until now was All for Nothing. Then all of that is topped by having to reluctantly fight a crazed Witch Celica, and it takes him a LOT to recover her. Yeah, the poor boy has it rough too.
  • Celica keeps her thoughts and needs to herself constantly despite her friends' desire to help her, a huge misunderstanding keeps her away from Alm and leads them to be separated, her quest to find and release Mila isn't easy... and her Fatal Flaws end up near breaking her as the story goes on. For instance, she's forced to watch Alm's confrontation with Rudolf (aka one of her biggest fears) and cannot do anything to stop it, has Jedah constantly preying on her insecurities to convince her to sacrifice her soul, and at the end she's transformed into a Witch right when she was questioning Jedah about the absolute need to give herself up, she and Alm are pitted against one another, and only Mila's power can save her. Yup, this poor girl ALSO has it rough.

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