YMMV / Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • The names of Dieck and the Aureola tome sound fine at first, but then you realize that they're one letter off from something very phallic. Dieck's recruitment quote in Fire Emblem Heroes doesn't help.
    "You my new employer? If you want to hire Dieck, you better be ready to pay for Dieck."
  • In the Gringe fan translation patch, an A-Support between Lance and Clarine has the former say the following line. It's supposed to refer to his kind manners, but it just sounds... wrong in a different context.
    Please forgive my breeding, milady.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Not many know that whatever Lilina is wearing on her head is actually based on French Hoods/kokoshniks and not a weird-looking headband or a nurse hat.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • The Binding Blade is popular in Japan for its more back-to-basics approach following the more complex Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 and for its characters feeling familiar, while everywhere else, it's very divisive for all of these reasons. This stems from another case of this trope, as Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, which The Binding Blade is a Whole-Plot Reference to, is one of the most beloved games in the series in Japan, while it was never officially released anywhere else, even when it was remade for the Nintendo DS (in contrast to Shadow Dragon being localized), leaving Western fans with no Nostalgia Filter. Judging by review scores, Japan seems to consider The Blazing Blade a case of Sequelitis, while Western fans think the exact opposite.
  • And by extension, Roy. In Japan, he's one of the most popular characters in the entirety of Fire Emblem, while in the West, though he does have his fans (particularly the Super Smash Bros. crowd), he's usually regarded as a Base-Breaking Character at best.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Sigune in the Ilia route suffers from being a boss who can't use her biggest strength... her mobility. She also has no countermeasures against bow-users and has somewhat mediocre stats. It's a bit of a let-down for the current Flightleader of Ilia.
  • The True Final Boss, Idunn, is barely any stronger than the boss that just preceded her, has less HP than said boss on Normal mode, can't do ranged attacks, and the Binding Blade destroys her so utterly that a moderately trained Roy can one-round her... and an untrained Roy, at his base stats with no more than promotion gains, still kills her in three hits. Sure, it's possible that Idunn is made weak on purpose as she never wanted to fight, but still.
  • Jahn, the Pre-Final Boss, is nearly as bad, since despite being an ancient dragon who has waited more than 1,000 years for his revenge and is at his strongest, he's not much more difficult than Idunn, and he lacks Idunn's spoilered excuse.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • While he has a massive and vocal fanbase (thanks in part to Super Smash Bros.), Roy is among the most divisive Lords in the series. Character-wise, his detractors consider him a Flat Character with no interesting character interactions and who fails to have an arc, while his fans consider his supports to give him a much-needed look at his character and his role as the Static Character a fitting role considering the story. Gameplay-wise, he is universally agreed to be a subpar unit, but fans are divided on whether this makes the gameplay less interesting for turning many maps into Escort Missions or more interesting by making the player rely less on their Lord as a powerhouse. Taking both gameplay and character into account, his fans often point out that his low stats tie into his insecurities and lack of experience as revealed in his supports, considering this Gameplay and Story Integration making his journey more believable, but his detractors argue that this was done better by other Lords, often pointing to Leif as being a more effective execution of the concept.
  • Sophia. She's infamous among players as a Low-Tier Letdown, but she's been shown to have quite the fanbase, as she retains rather high positions in popularity polls concerning The Binding Blade characters, so people either find her one of the most interesting characters despite her flaws, or just a waste of space in the roster.
  • Larum, either you find her shtick of being out-there and excitable hilarious and cute, or you find it incredibly annoying. It even gets to the point where people are divided on whether her inclusion on the A-route makes it even better than the B-route, or it just entices one to go down the B-route to gain the overall solid Elffin, which brings ire from those who like Echidna, because that means you can't get Elffin together with Echidna and the blame is usually put on Larum.
  • Ogier is in the well-liked Mercenary class and shows up with great growths and an Armorslayer (good!)... at level 3 with poor bases, Hero Crests at a premium, and jockeying for room as a swordsman against Rutger, Fir, Roy, Dieck, six Cavaliers, and possibly Shanna (bad). He also has a decent design and an interesting support with Lilina where he displays a sad background as a result of his Humble Hero origins and the Values Dissonance of his upbringing (good!)... and most of his other supports are just bland conversations about sword training or Larum being annoying (bad). His fans adore him and consider him one of the game's most worthwhile units, while detractors nickname him "Armorslayer" and put him on permanent bench duty with his fellow Ostian knights.
  • Despite being a likeable character personality-wise, Lilina falls under this in two different ways:
    • Gameplay-wise, her magic growth is ridiculous, she supports with Roy easily, and she's required to recruit certain characters. She also has catastrophic speed and defense growths, and joins at level 1 at a point where Lugh (who is on par with her) should be around level 8. It's generally agreed that she's very effective when babied a bit, but this sparks the question of whether it's worth it to do so. Opinions tend to be either "she's the best unit in the whole game" or "she's a ball and chain."
    • To a greater extent, her relevancy to the game's overall plot has been met with huge debate. Is Lilina actually plot relevant despite most of it only being set in the first eight chapters? Or is she just irrelevant overall and was only advertised as if she had any importance? There are also those who wished she would retroactively ascend to lord status, due to Hector playing a major role in the prequel, as well as how Intelligent Systems treats her as such in modern material. Her Legendary Reveal trailer from Heroes was also met with minor backlash from detractors, as they feel she wasn't "important enough" to get a Legendary, while others feel the opposite.
  • Cath has a sympathetic background that comes to the fore in her supports, and one of the more involved recruitments in the game. Said recruitment also involves her impeding your efforts for multiple maps, and when she finally joins, her stats really do not impress, even with her maximum Hard Mode Perks. Fans tend to find her a fascinating character who isn't really worse than any other Thief considering her role, or an incredibly annoying character whose only utility is that you can steal her lockpicks when she shows up.
  • Cecilia. Some regard her as one of the game's worst units for her terrible base stats and growths and poor performance on her joining chapter. Others consider her one of the better choices, because she happens to be in the excellent Valkyrie class and her poor stats aren't especially relevant to her role as support (and Clarine, the other Valkyrie, has pretty poor stats herself). There's also the people who like her personality versus the people who are grossed out by her nature as a possible love interest to Roy.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Chapters 11(Echidna) and 10(Bartre) are That One Level for first-time players, but they can also be one of the most fun and entertaining maps for veterans. The high amount of side objectives (treasure to be attained) and recruitable characters, and the sheer chaos of several armies converging in one town, test the player's skill to the limit. Those who have mastered the game's mechanics and are able to adapt to the ever-changing battlefield will be rewarded greatly. It also helps that the song that plays on these maps, For the Commanders, is often regarded as one of the best tracks not only in this game, but in the entire series.
  • Chapter 22, The Neverending Dream is often regarded as a solid chapter both gameplay-wise and story-wise, serving as a climax to the story and being one of the hardest chapters in the endgame for the right reasons. Add in the fight against Zephiel, and you get a very memorable chapter.
• Breather Level:
  • Chapters 8x and 21x come off of two particularly difficult chapters and aren't really as difficult as the chapters that came before them. 8x Is mostly a chance to get some easy kills for your freshly recruited Magikarp Power characters such as Lilina and Ogier, with the only remotely difficult part of the map coming from the boss, Henning (in fact, the difference in difficulty between the chapter and him is so high he can single handlely make the level unbeatable). 21x on the other hand is just incredibly lax compared to the warfront that is Chapter 21 and doesn't have much beyond the fog-of-war gimmick. Both chapters also have traps that are either incredibly easy to spot, or are practically a non-issue due to their pityingly low damage.
  • Chapter 17 on the Ilia route comes right after the long-range tome and status staff hell of 16 and 16x, and is a relatively simple map with weak reinforcements, and a shortcut letting you skip most of the enemies opens up a few turns in. Not as true of the Sacae Chapter 17, which is a Fog of War map.
• Broken Base:
  • The game's cast. It's one of the largest casts in the series (discounting the games that added to a previously established cast such as Radiant Dawn or New Mystery) and there are certainly many to choose from, however many argue this makes the cast much more underdeveloped or flat since the quality of their supports and characterization had to be thinly spread out, and that they're hard to get attached to, while others still enjoy the cast and find with so many characters to choose from, it's a fun and varied one that still has several interesting aspects about them.
  • There's also quite a bit of disagreement on how the cast is handled in terms of gameplay. The various units you get are all over the place in terms of usefulness. Some, such as Rutger or Melady, are insanely good while others, such as Wolt or Wendy, are just flat-out bad. To some, this leads into a nasty case of Complacent Gaming Syndrome where players will find themselves using the same handful of units. To others, the unbalanced nature of the cast allows each unit to feel unique, making subsequent playthroughs more fun.
  • On a gameplay level it's contested whether it represents a fun challenge with well-designed maps that have a lot going on, enemies that can actually fight back and pose a threat as opposed to turning into handaxe fodder by the midgame, and a focus on often neglected tactical decisions, or a boring, overly difficult slog only livened up by cheap shots, with overindulgent terrain design, where everyone struggles to hit anything and battles become as much a test of luck and patience as skill and tactics. This is at least partly due to the game favoring prepromotes over raising units from scratch and providing a steady drip-feed of new units; for players who want the iron man experience it's practically designed to kill off your units but make sure you can scrape something together in time for the final boss, but other kinds of player not so much. Better as a Let's Play is sometimes invoked.
  • Lilina fans tend to not get along well with Caeda fans. Fans of the latter do not like the former simply for being a blatant Expy, which, ironically, is only slightly true as Lilina still has a fair amount of differences that makes her stand out against Caeda, such as being a mage and her marrying Roy being optional, and have a tendency to overexaggerate how The Binding Blade handled her plot relevance. On the other hand, it's vice versa, with Lilina fans criticizing Caeda for doing nothing plot-impacting or lacking a defined personality in any of the games she's featured in. It also didn't help that Caeda has always placed lower than Lilina in every Choose your Legends, and the latter was popular enough to even get a Legendary variant first.
• Catharsis Factor: It's actually possible to let a well-trained and promoted Lilina beat up Narcian, Zephiel, and Brunnya, three people who are responsible for leaving her father, Hector, to die in Araphen. Unfortunately, the only downside to this is that she doesn't have any unique battle quotes with any of them.
• Cliché Storm: Evil nation invading the land, the ruler turns out to be a Disc-One Final Boss with darker forces at work, and the game's cast largely follows archetypes set by the very first Fire Emblem title to a T. That being said, the game does play a bit with some of Fire Emblem's most conventional tropes, most notably the dynamic between Zephiel and Idunn being a complete reversal of the usual human conqueror/royal + supernatural benefactor pulling the strings^note i.e. Lyon & Vigarde/Fomortiis, Validar/Grima, Garon/Anankos, etc. since Zephiel is the real Big Bad while Idunn is just a puppet to him; furthermore, he's not really "cruel" to Idunn or out for personal power or whatever - he really is just that much of a nihilistic misanthrope, but by that token he sees no reason to be "unnecessarily" cruel, especially to those who can help him.
• Common Knowledge: No, Zephiel did not fight Hector directly, he merely left him to die. Narcian and Brunnya were responsible for the mortal wounds he received.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The majority of playthroughs take the "A" paths of the Western Isles and Ilia/Sacae (the former for having certain units be better, the latter for being easier), which means Dayan, Bartre, and Elffin tend to get discussed somewhat less.
• Contested Sequel: The Binding Blade is a rather divisive title, particularly outside of Japan. Being the followup to the very creative Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776, The Binding Blade let go of many of their revolutionary additions, preferring a back-to-basics approach reminiscent of Mystery of the Emblem, while still keeping some key basics like weapon triangles and the series-standard Support system. As such, there are fans who consider it to be not worth their time in light of its predecessors and its prequel, while other fans enjoy it for what it is in spite of this and may actually enjoy some of the simplification considering some of the more glaring mechanics of the Jugdral duology. Thracia 776 fans particularly get into some heated arguments with Binding Blade fans because of how similar they are - both are among the more difficult games in the series and have a Lord that is relatively weak from a gameplay perspective, a bit of weakness that is reflected in their character (thus leading to intense debates about whether Leif or Roy is the better/worse Lord). Some fans, both those who like and dislike the game, are eager to see a remake (possibly acting as a second generation for The Blazing Blade) that fixes its issues.
• Critical Backlash: While it is generally agreed that Roy is one of the worst units in a gameplay sense and that he is held back by both his low starting stats and promoting too late in the game, some fans argued that calling him the worst lord in the franchise sounds too farfetched, noting that (at least on the first half of normal mode) he can still tackle enemies just fine, and his growths are decent regardless of how well the player trains him. The fact that much of the ire towards his gameplay performance comes from Hard Mode doesn't help.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Cavaliers are this in Hard Mode Chapter 4 and 7: not only are their stats obscenely high at this point in the game, but they also fight in swarms and can easily outmaneuver the player characters in the flat, open areas they're encountered in. These enemies are so dangerous that the game gives the player a Halberd in Chapter 3, and while this weapon can One-Hit KO Cavaliers, it's not a guarantee due to its shaky accuracy and the low speed of the characters that can wield it.
  • On the Sacae route, the Nomadic Trooper unit is extremely fast, has access to bows to one-shot most fliers or poke melee units outside their range, gets fought in open plains that favor it heavily, and has access to swords, meaning surrounding them or confronting them inside their range isn't as viable. It's not uncommon for players to refuse to raise Sue or Sin just because it avoids the risk of going to Sacae.
  • Wyvern Riders are always some of the strongest enemies due to their Lightning Bruiser status, and the later parts of the game are absolutely flooded with them. Dealing with the Wyverns is so important that Klein and Igrene often see use in the lategame solely because they can one-round Wyverns on Hard when given decent equipment. Their promoted equivalents border on Boss in Mook Clothing and will require either a Legendary Weapon or a crit to bring down.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • In general, discussing the parentage of Roy and Lilina (and occasionally Wolt, Sue, Raigh and Lugh) often results in very heated arguments.
  • Marcus provides an amusingly literal example, in that his A-support with Lilina has him convince her to confess her feelings towards Roy. However, the mechanics of the game make it impossible for her to get A-supports with both Marcus and Roy at the same time, so the only way for the player to see both of them is to deliberately kill off Marcus.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • In Chapter 4, the enemy cavaliers are much nastier than anything you've faced before and can even endanger Marcus if you let them gang up on him; this marks the point where your previously servicable-to-mediocre units (Wolt, Bors, Wade, Lot) can barely hit or scratch enemies anymore. The game also has Rutger suddenly appearing and moving, though this will probably only work the first time around.
  • Chapter 7 in particular is infamous for being a Luck-Based Mission in that it is nearly impossible to guarantee that all the NPCs survive to be recruited and all your units survive the onslaught of enemies, especially the tanks-on-wings known as Wyvern Riders. The worst part is that shaky hit rates for most of your army means that you really need all hands on deck to gang up on and kill tough enemies, even some of the useless units, or they'll survive to either rush back to be healed by the two Physic priests or kill one of your own units you need.
  • Henning is one of the toughest bosses to kill in the game, with stats and endurance that wouldn't be out of place 5 chapters from then... This doesn't even include the Throne boosts. If you engage him in close-combat, you risk being hit hard by the Steel Blade. If you try to chip at him with a ranged weapon, he starts throwing Hand Axes. Often the safest (and cheapest) solution is to have him equip his hand-axe, have Rutger lay into him with a Killing Edge, and then pray for the best.
  • Scott has decent speed, great strength, and a high critical rate, and is the boss of the game's first Fog of War chapter.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lilina is very popular among the fanbase for being a very capable Mage unit, being the daughter of the popular Hector, and having heartwarming interactions with much of the cast, particularly Roy. A lot of fans wish she was a secondary Lord like her father in the prequel as opposed to being a "disposable" unit like most of the cast^note The prequel is released in a later date and it was about then that Hector became popular and made people notice Lilina more than just being "disposable", and then the rest is history; in fact, many fans (particularly in Youtube, for those who like to make lists) like to say that she 'has more presence than Roy' despite her not getting the adequate push from the game^note Not without a point: she's inheriting Ostia, the largest and leading part of Lycia Alliance, Roy is from the smaller Pherae. In the first Fire Emblem Heroes Choose Your Legends poll, she placed 49th overall (out of 791), beating other fan-favorites such as Masked Marth, the Black Knight, and Sigurd.
  • Narcian is pretty popular despite being an irredeemable Jerkass who thinks only of himself if only because he's so fun to watch. The higher-ups seem to be aware of his popularity, as he's prominently featured on advertisement for series 5 of Fire Emblem 0 (Cipher) along with main character Roy and Lilina, and his card was one of the first shown for The Binding Blade. On top of that, he appeared in the first Fire Emblem Heroes gameplay trailer, complete with English voice acting provided by Kaiji Tang (who, interestingly, voices another Ensemble Dark Horse in the series - Owain).
  • Karel is pretty liked due to his transformation from a vicious Blood Knight to a wise and reliable Warrior Poet.
  • Fir is one of the most popular swordswomen in the series for her captivating appearance, naïve yet likable personality, and ties to Karel, Karla and Bartre. The fact that she also just so happened to look like Lyndis may have also contributed to her popularity overseas.
  • Echidna is a powerful, useful pre-promoted Jack of All Stats, and a somewhat unique female member of the Hero class with a forceful, yet playful Action Girl personality. Not coincidentally, the path that recruits her is very popular, especially with those looking for a good challenge.
  • Niime is also very popular despite joining late into the game, both for being a snarky Cool Old Lady and for being surprisingly good by late-game pre-promote standards. It also helps that she's the mother of Canas from The Blazing Blade.
  • Rounding out Canas' family being Ensemble Darkhorses, there's Hugh, who many love for his hilarious lines, great bases, and cool design. He does need to be paid in order to use him, and he's not an amazingly good unit, but that adds to his charm.
  • Shanna's positivity and optimism have endeared many to her. It helps that she can be one of the better units if she's trained up thanks to her tremendous speed and acceptable strength.
  • Clarine might just be one of the most popular troubadours in the entire series, with her hilarious dialogue with Narcian and amazing dodge rates earning her a ton of fans.
  • Klein, with his good looks, pleasant personality, and overall solid unit power (especially considering he's a prepromote Sniper). The boost in popularity he got from Heroes doesn't hurt either.
  • Igrene, the game's other sniper, is one of the more popular characters in the game for her design and status as an overall useful midgame unit. Additionally, her support conversations, backstory, and relationship with Astolfo have earned her quite a number of fans.
  • The twins Lugh and Raigh are loved by many for their tragic yet heartwarming story, their usefulness in gameplay, and for being the sons of the very popular Nino from The Blazing Blade.
  • Not long after the release of Heroes, Fae has become a very popular character, thanks to her adorable cheerfulness and her dragon form resembling a chicken.
  • Class-wise, Nomads are one of the most popular choices among pre-Bow Knight classes for their Mongolian feel and being an incarnation that has a horse before promotion, with many preferring the characters amongst this class more than their Archer counterparts. On an individual level, the characters Sue and Sin both have pretty solid followings for their great performance in combat, to the point that most feel they singlehandedly render foot archers obsolete.
  • Rutger ranked second in the popularity polls, and for good reason: his character design was well-received, his personality, and for the fact he is useful throughout the entire game.
  • After first appearing in Heroes in his bridal variant in 2021, Saul became quite popular amongst fans, with many enjoying the fact that he takes his job as a priest seriously (such as being tasked by Yoder to fulfill serious tasks and successfully finishing them), which some found to be surprising despite his tendency to flirt on women only to be met with failure. That, and there are also people who make Better Call Saul or affectionately call him Saul Goodman due to sharing his name with the lawyer of the same name.
  • Among more competitively-minded fans, Perceval and Melady are well-loved for both carrying entire maps on later portions of Hard Mode and having fairly interesting supports—Perceval being a rare Camus Expy that doesn't choose My Country, Right or Wrong, and Melady for her well-written angst about her status as a traitor. They're also the main figures in some of the more popular fandom ships.
• Epileptic Trees: In a meta sense, many fans theorized that Lilina will either retroactively become a lord character or otherwise have a much larger role in a hypothetical remake, based on how most official media treat her as such, as well as Hector being promoted into lord status in the prequel. It is also noteworthy that she shares a lot of traits with other lord characters, such as having a dead father and becoming a ruler of her country by the end of the game, both of which are traits Roy doesn't have. This has become more noticeable in recent years, since she makes appearances together with the other Elibe lords in the "Love Abounds" banner from Heroes, and the cover art◊ of the Elibe duology original soundtrack, as well as getting a Legendary Variant in the former, joining the ranks other lord characters and a few plot-significant non-lords.
• Evil Is Cool: Zephiel utterly destroys everyone in his path until endgame, and he goes about it in the most awesome of ways. His combat animations alone are dripping with coolness. In fact, if you turn off the game's music, his theme overrides the option.
• Fandom VIP: For some reason, The Binding Blade has become quite a subject of three commissioners (japanbrowser441, Hierarchyofmeme, and IgreneforCYL) and their respective characters from this game (Sophia, Fir, and Igrene). What those three have in common is that they are all known for commissioning tons of art of their respective characters to the point where they are given a boost in popularity. In the case of japanbrowser441 himself, it's often concluded half-jokingly that he's either rich or spending his lottery money.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Taking The Blazing Blade into account, there is quite a bit of fanfiction and fanart that explores the possibility of Roy being quarter-dragon through his possible mother Ninian.
  • It's also a popular topic among fans to speculate what happened to Lyn after The Blazing Blade, as since this game was made first and she debuted in the prequel, she gets no mention of her existence.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Lugh is affectionately referred to as "Banana Mage".
  • Many fans called Fae "chicken" because of the Divine Dragon's feathery appearance less resembling dragons.
  • Though not very common, people would sometimes call Lilina "Flame Queen", based on her heavy association with fire and her ending.
• Fanon:
  • Fanfiction usually has Lilina's mother die defending Castle Ostia from the rebels, as fans feel it's a much more dignified way to go for Lyndis/Florina/Farina (or whoever else) than something like dying from childbirth or illness.
  • Roy's full name being "Elroy", as it would continue his family's Theme Naming of having an "El-" prefix in their names. Several fans additionally believe that Roy considers his full first name an Embarrassing First Name.
  • On a similar note, after Wendy's name was localized as Gwendolyn, a number of fans began treating Wendy as her In-Series Nickname.
  • Some believe that Dorothy was the offspring of Dorcas and Natalie from the prequel, and was abandoned at St. Elimine Church prior to the events of this game. Believer of this theory point to her striking similarities to Dorcas: eyes, hair color, naming convention, personality, weapon choices in bows (which Dorcas acquires after his promotion), and even Fire affinity.
  • Thanks to a winner of an old Japanese photo contest for Melee (which was later referenced◊ in Roy's DLC trailer for 3DS/Wii U), curry as Roy's Trademark Favorite Food has become very well-engrained in FE and Smash fanfiction.
  • Most fans would often draw Lilina wielding the Armads, which her father had as his prf weapon in the prequel. In 2020, she did get a card◊ that's exactly like what the fandom thinks in Cipher.
  • Klein and Clarine's support chain include Klein chewing out Clarine for making another healer cry because she healed Klein before Clarine had a chance to. The other healer is never named, but most fans assume that is the Cleric, Elen, mainly because she is the only named female healer to be enough of a Shrinking Violet to have the reaction Klein describes.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Among old-school parts of the fandom, Melady/Guinivere and Perceval/Elffin are quite popular, and tend to show up together. Both Melady and Perceval are heavily devoted to their noble, and many of their supports deal with their relationship and their suffering, and Perceval adds the dynamic that his noble is in disguise and has to play around it. The characters are also extremely popular in their own right due to their great power and good designs. Melady cannot support Guinivere (as Guinivere can't be deployed in the campaign) and has a boyfriend, but as said boyfriend dies, it doesn't much impact the ship's popularity.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • As the game that overhauled Genealogy's "Love and War" system into the modern Support mechanic, fans often consider the Elibe titles the gold standard when it comes to Support writing quality, character development, and proper romantic escalation when appropriate. But, while the five-Support cap and slow growths left most players unable to see most of them in one playthrough and did much to hide the problem, Elibe had its fair share of broad comic fluff, poor character development, and weakly developed romance in its conversations. Later titles merely had quality control issues from the sheer number of Supports and the "marriage and children" mechanic muddying up the issue. Awakening in particular got hit pretty hard just for removing the five-support limit, which many fans wanted to see gone, which in turn made the issue much more blatant.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses has faced backlash for giving Byleth, Manuela, and Hanneman (All of whom are professors) the option to romance playable students^note Even when most of them have reached their 20s post-timeskip, and a few are already adults. However, many haven't realized/noticed that this isn't a new problem; it actually traces all the way back to Binding Blade, with Roy having the option to marry his teacher Cecilia... in a Game Boy Advance title that came out in the year 2002... except it's done in an even worse manner than in Three Houses, despite the latter having more supports that exaggerate this issue further. It's especially odd, considering that all of Roy's supports with his teacher are platonic at best and have little to nothing to contribute to the problem.
• Friendly Fandoms: Fans of Binding Blade and its predecessor game Thracia 776 tend to be on surprisingly good terms, given their difficulty, large casts containing both Memetic Badass and Memetic Loser characters, abuseably-fun mechanics, and low-key obscurity in the wider fanbase owing to No Export for You. They also get along with fans of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, due to it being more or less a stealth remake of those two games and a lot of the same factors as Thracia.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Due to how the cast as a whole functions, Binding Blade is rather odd with what counts as a game-breaking unit and what isn't, therefore it is generally seen as lacking a true game-breaking unit—this is mostly due to the fact that Crutch Character Marcus is not as overpowered as later ones, and enemies scale to the player much more quickly. Because of this, the game's portions are practically defined by who stomps what part: Marcus stomps the earlygame, Rutger stomps the midgame, and he's joined by Melady and Perceval in stomping the lategame.
  • Just like the other two GBA titles, the Arena can net you theoretically infinite money and experience. Unlike the latter two however, support bonuses are actually added to characters whenever they challenge the arena. This results in much less defeats, and can even max the levels of characters incredibly early. It's easy to see why the future arenas no longer do this.
  • Hard Mode Perks are famous in this game, and are considered one of the most fun reasons to play Hard Mode—certain characters, such as Melady and Perceval, become almost explosively overpowered upon recruitment.
  • This is one of the only two games in the entire series where you can buy boots, an item that tends to be extremely rare, with only one or two appearing in one map. Therefore, if you have lots of gold that you get from selling valuable items like promotion items, and your bulky flyer has both a Member Card and a Silver Card, and enters the secret shop found in a patch of grass in Chapter 21, you can buy as many boots as possible, at the discounted price of 4000G. As a result, it's possible to let one or more of your units have maxed out movement, meaning that said unit will be zooming through the map like a lightning bolt. It helps that Binding Blade isn't very stingy when it comes to using gold compared to other games.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The first game to feature selectable difficulties, but it had a rather clumsy way of managing it: rather than hard-coding different stat bonuses on Hard, it instead effectively gave enemies a bunch of invisible level-ups worth of stat increases. Recruitable characters had hard-coded stats... unless they appeared after the first turn, in which case they got those free levels too. In some cases, this meant they effectively started with ten free levels.
  • The underflow bug regarding Hugh's stats (which sadly only exists in translation patches). Normally, at full price, he'll start off as a Jack of All Stats comparable to Lugh. However, if possibly paid the lowest amount of gold possible, then his Magic stat (and sometimes his skill stat) underflows it to ridiculous levels. While he unfortunately loses it when fighting an enemy as his stats revert back to the capped Mage stats, when promoted before the former happens, he gets to keep a much higher Magic stat (and potentially a capped Skill stat too), allowing him to hit as hard as a highly-leveled and trained Lilina. This has led to some jokes at how Hugh might have inherited Niime's ridiculous magic stat from her, and a minor house rule that specifically forbade the use of this glitch in tier lists. Unfortunately, this was fixed in the v1.1b translation patch by gringe.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Roy's desire for a world where humans and dragons live in harmony becomes this due to the prequel, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, revealing Roy's father Eliwood befriended a pair of dragons, one of them potentially becoming his mother.
• He's Just Hiding: In The Binding Blade, Sacae was invaded by Bern, and most of the populace in Bulgar was massacred in the process, which led to a lot of casualties in that city. While not explicitly mentioned (Given Binding Blade was developed and released first), this implies that Lyn, the only protagonist of the prequel who isn't mentioned in this game, was among those people who were killed there, though depending on who she marries at the end of The Blazing Blade, she may have also died from giving birth and might never get the chance to witness the Disturbance nor the Bulgar massacre. However, some fans doubted that the character died, concluding that Lyn was either simply just hiding somewhere, most likely somewhere safe in Sacae, or dealing with Bern's army on her own.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This wouldn't be the last Intelligent Systems game about a red hero who teams up with a blonde girl to stop the girl's brother, who's a purple-clad king with genocidal goals.
• Hollywood Homely: Dorothy. Her plainness/homeliness, particularly in the full artwork, comes from the fact that she has brown hair, brown eyes, and brown clothes. Her sprite portrait gives her a less flattering haircut, too.
• Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: Barring the titular weapon itself (As it doesn't count for this trope), Roy's popularity in Super Smash Bros. had completely overshadowed his own game (at least outside Japan, since it was never released overseas), to the point where many people outside of the Fire Emblem fandom even forget that Roy is a character from that franchise and not Super Smash Bros. itself. As a result, people tend to call The Binding Blade as "The game with Roy in it".
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: The game's plot and cast tends to get accusations from fans solely for having heavy similarities to Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem, with Binding Blade also dealing with an evil empire raiding all other countries, the final boss being an evil dragon, and some characters having heavy resemblance to those of the Archanea games (i.e. Melady and Minerva). However, there are fans that also felt that Binding Blade does several things quite differently to give it its own identity, which includes, but not limited to, the final boss being an Anti-Villain that can be spared depending on the player's actions instead of said boss being completely evil and needed to be killed, and have the main lord's father survive rather than get killed, though there are also those that never acknowledge this, instead willing to continue to negatively compare The Binding Blade with the Archanea games.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Hector dies at the beginning of the game. The prequel had already made it clear that this would happen to him eventually, and it was also made blatantly obvious on the Fire Emblem Heroes Meet The Heroes webpage.
  • Elffin is the allegedly deceased Prince of Etruria, Myrddin, and Larum is Douglas's adopted daughter.
  • The sidequest chapter requirements also became a case of this throughout the years thanks to fansites posting guides on how to unlock them, reducing the tediousness of trying to achieve the last three chapters, as well as the Golden Ending.
• Just Here for Godzilla: It's very common to play the game just to learn what Roy was actually like.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Despite Roy being a Memetic Loser and having a favored pairing with Lilina, that has not stopped Roy from being shipped with literally all of his support partners and more.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • While Roy is very popular as a Lord with the casual fandom, his performance in his home game leaves a lot to be desired. Despite joining with perfect availability, he's notorious for only being able to promote literally three chapters away from the True Ending of the game - and in the case of the Bad Ending, one, long after most of your other units would have promoted and neared their caps. Even though Roy does get a unique sword with 1-2 range that gives +5 to Defense and Resistance, this delay alongside the long time Roy is without level caps are the reasons why he never gets to live it down.
  • Poor Gwendolyn, also known as Wendy, has an uphill battle to contend with that left her notorious in the fandom as an unintended Joke Character. Being ostensibly a Magikarp Power character who's in the Armor Knight class, Gwendolyn has such hideously poor bases that on Hard Mode she's one-rounded by an archer on her join chapter, joins one (two, if you're going for the Gaiden chapter) chapter before an axe-centric set of levels, and worst of all is an Armor Knight in a game that's unfriendly to Armor Knights by default. While Bors and Barthe are bad for a variety of reasons, they avert this trope due to the former's near-perfect availability and the latter's workable bases, meaning they can at least come to do their jobs well with what they're given. Gwendolyn's growths aren't even that especially impressive compared to her brother Bors, and being in a game with large maps and low move on top of low bases means that she's simply going to do so much worse than almost every other character in the game even if trained to a level that caps her out in every stat. She's widely held as both the worst unit in the game and a contender for the worst unit in the series, which is disappointing because she does have a fandom that likes her for her design, her being the first Tier 1 female Armor Knight in the series, and for how bad she is even in spite of her start.
  • Sophia is not much better. Joining on Chapter 14: Arcadia as a Level 1 Shaman with base stats even base Roy could laugh at, Sophia is regularly one-rounded if not one-shot by every unit on her joining chapter, and even with a Flux tome she struggles to get hit rates above 40% or 50% on a good forecast. Even by Est standards, who at least do get good should you go through the pain of training them, she has mediocre growths, which combined with the investment needed to get her good, has her as a lost investment even by the standards of Ests. She's regularly held out alongside Gwendolyn as two of the worst units in the game, and some of the worst in the series.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • King Zephiel of Bern was once a cheerful, idealistic youth cruelly betrayed by his cruel father King Desmond. Faking his own death, Zephiel killed his father, becoming disillusioned with humanity and helped to unseal the dragon tribe, including the Demon Dragon Idunn, to punish humanity for their sins. Leading Bern in a war of seeming conquest, Zephiel instead intends to unleash Idunn, using the war as a clever front. Even when cornered by the young hero Roy, Zephiel uses himself as bait to keep his plans going, unrepentant to the end.
  • General Murdock has been the retainer of King Zephiel ever since he was young and can match his liege in wit and combat. Conspiring with his master in killing Zephiel's abusive father and taking the throne, Murdock helped launch his massive conquest of the continent. As the head of Bern's three generals, Murdock was responsible for Bern's successful war efforts, conquering most of Ilia and assist in the conquest of Lycia, all the way taking advantage of Roy to eliminate liable allies as pawns while replacing them with his own trusted soldiers. Impressed by Roy, Murdock confronts him in Shrine of Seal while guarding the Binding Blade, leading Bern's elite army to face him in the largest battle in the war with countless elite soldiers of all classes. With massive strength and endurance, Murdock stands as a massive wall against the army, only falling after a long battle of attrition, with his only dying regret being that he can't protect his master any longer.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Rutger, aka "Critger", thanks to his ability to get over 100% chance for a crit◊ with a support triangle with Clarine and Dieck. Many players use him to take on the rather dodgy bosses this game sports.
  • Lilina is often considered the one running the pants in the relations with Roy due to her immense magical power and being the daughter of Hector, who was widely known as a massive ass-kicker that she inherits his ass-kicking genes. It also helps that Roy is often seen as a Low-Tier Letdown during the game's run, so Lilina is often the go-to character to carry the game (between the two, anyway) once Roy hits Level 20 and has to wait until near end game when he gets the Binding Blade. And so, at times, Lilina is often seen as a Violently Protective Girlfriend (in canon, she's actually much more meek).
  • Melady's ridiculously overpowered nature tends to make her this among fans of Hard Mode. Hell, even in Normal Mode she's one of the best units in the game, to the point of almost being a Lightning Bruiser.
  • Eliwood, unlike his younger self from the prequel, serves as this due to being the only named father of a lord character to show up onscreen and survive, despite the fact that he never appears again past the first chapter. However, what really made him this is that he's ridiculously powerful when unlocked in the trial maps, thanks to his surprisingly good stats and maximized strength, which is ironic, considering that he's supposed to be sick.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Unlike in Super Smash Bros., Roy is seen by most fans as this, either statwise, characterization-wise, or both. And despite landing second place in the male's division of the first Choose Your Legends round, he's been having miserable luck in Heroes, as all (but one) of his variants are deemed mediocre due to the meta changing consistently overtime, and therefore without extensive elite tweaks, none of them would be able to catch up.
  • Good lord, Wolt. Despite him being Roy's milk-brother and showing up very prominently on the packaging, due to his really poor base stats and merely OK growths, Wolt is a character who usually becomes really irrelevant really quickly, especially compared to other archers, and he has zero presence in the story outside of a single line of dialogue in the first chapter. He is almost always considered the worst character of the Gordin archetype.
  • Gwendolyn tends to receive mockery along these lines, with a lot of jokes about her laughably bad performance on her joining chapters, her lack of payoff for the effort you need to put into her, her incredibly generic supports and personality, and her Heroes redesign being seen as one of the worst. Her oddly fervent defenders in the early days of the fandom only spiced things up. It's not uncommon to claim that the javelin in her inventory contributes more to the war effort than she does.
  • Sophia is seen as one of the worst, if not THE worst unit in the game for having terribly low base stats upon joining that make leveling her up or just using her in general a major pain. She also debuts in a map with Fog of War, meaning it's very possible for an enemy to suddenly one-round (or even one-shot) her in enemy phase. It also doesn't help that she is a level 1 shaman that appears two chapters after the debut of a recruitable level 12 shaman with better stats and viability.
  • For a villainous example, there's Jahn, the Pre-Final Boss. He's frequently mocked for being almost as easy as the True Final Boss of the game, especially after attempting a Badass Boast that he completely fails to back up.
• Memetic Molester: Cecilia was hit with this status big time due to the fact that she is one of Roy's marriage options, despite being much older than him, which is very controversial within the fanbase. Ironic considering that Cecilia isn't even the oldest woman out of Roy's possible love interests.
• Memetic Mutation: shares a section with its prequel here.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Zephiel definitely crosses it when he remorselessly has his forces trounce Hector, the man who saved his life 20 years earlier, in an unexpected surprise attack, not even recognizing that the former saved his life, and then letting him rot in the dungeon to die from his wounds.
  • Narcian crossed it when he used his lieutenant, Flaer as cannon fodder to escape the Lycian Alliance.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The stinging crack of a Critical Hit landing, so long as it's your unit's attack and not the enemy's. Bonus points if it coincides with the sound of a killing blow.
  • The klang of an enemy's attack bouncing off your unit for zero damage. One of the very few redeeming factors of the Armor Knights/Generals is that this is practically the only time that you get to hear this sound.
• Narm:
  • Roy's promotion is probably supposed to be epic. It just turns out cheesy, considering his sprite-set is the same in both classes. It doesn't help that the game equips the Binding Blade, meaning that the intended reveal of him wielding it instead results in him... turning around?
  • The sheer number of non-Bern people defecting to Bern for no explained reason other than fear of Bern's military might, is hard to take seriously.
  • Zephiel's defeat of Cecilia is meant to be a terrifying show of strength, but between his over-the-top critical animation (he spins like a freaking top), Cecilia missing him completely, and the fact that Cecilia somehow survives being hit for three times her maximum HP, it just looks hilarious.
• Never Live It Down: Jokes about Hector becoming an insane Boyfriend-Blocking Dad who will do many not-nice things to Roy if he does anything romantic with his daughter Lilina. Truth is, he is barely in The Binding Blade (he dies about an hour into the game and his last plea to Roy was to keep his daughter safe) and thus has little to no characterization. And while fully playable in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, that was only ever acknowledged in his B-support with Eliwood, and even then, this was before his daughter (or Roy) was born. And while some interaction does shows up in Fire Emblem Heroes, Roy's romance (or not) with Lilina is only slightly hinted and although Hector knows, he doesn't mind. The 67th chapter of Fire Emblem Heroes: A Day in the Life does show Hector angrily chase Roy (who was with Lilina) down a hallway, while Eliwood tries to calm him down, but given this is from a Gag Series spin-off, it's not considered canon.
• Nintendo Hard: This game is often considered to be one of the hardest games in the series, and fans will usually put it up there with Thracia 776, which also garnered a similar reputation. This is partly Early-Installment Weirdness; most games released after it are deemed much easier and the very next game was the Western fandom's gateway drug. Factors include strong enemies, high throne bonuses, poor hitrates, side chapters that either require a certain character to be alive, the preceding chapter being cleared under a certain amount of turns, or both, uneven route design, and a fair number of chapters that just aren't fun. The character balance is also often criticized via factors like Roy's ultra-late promotion and the game's seeming preference for mediocre pre-promotes, as if the game were taking an Iron Man playstyle for granted. Chapter 14 is often held up as the worst offender in the game for stacking together everything people don't like about the level design in one place; a Fog of War desert map that has a severely underleveled Shaman and a mount-reliant Valkyrie join you, swarms of enemies, and a bunch of secrets to find, including a side mission time limit. Most of the mechanics that gave Thracia 776 this reputation have been either altered or dropped, which mitigated Binding Blade's reputation somewhat, but while the former still allows players to even the playing field with numerous unique weapons, utilities from skills, and stat growth items, the latter doesn't have such luxury outside of prepromote units and legendary weapons with low durability, causing it to still deemed to be harder for many players; in essence Thracia's fans can argue that while obtuse, the game is still committed to its outdated design in a way The Binding Blade, recognizably the same engine as the other GBA games, does not.
• No Yay: Doubles as Squick. The ending of Roy marrying Cecilia has garnered its share of backlash, due to a mix of Roy being a teenager (15)^note Although the ending does not specify how old Roy is when he actualy marries her compared to Cecilia being an adult (mentioned to be in her 20s), and the fact that a teacher falling in love with their student is something that's been widely frowned upon nowadays due to the unhealthy and traumatic consequences of it. It doesn't help that while their support conversations don't contribute to this issue, their paired ending can come across as Cecilia grooming her own underaged student into getting married and becoming the ruling couple of Pherae. For people uncomfortable with this pairing, it is fortunately extremely easy to avoid unlocking, given how Cecilia is likely overshadowed by pretty much every other magic user in your army by the time she joins. The controversy has long outlived the original game, as in Heroes, when Cecilia got a bridal variant which, while fine on its own, only damaged her reputation further in the eyes of those who dislike her, as the banner she's featured in is themed around Roy's marriage options.
• One True Threesome: A platonic example; Roy/Lilina/Wolt is a popular threesome in the fandom, largely thanks to the optional tutorial that included the trio as playable characters. It also had a nod in Heroes during a Tempest Trial event in 2019 that starred the three together in both the opening and closing cutscenes.
• Player Punch: Hector's death. As a reminder, many Western players started out playing the prequel, the first localized game of the series, and witnessed Hector being an all around fun and badass dude. And then they play the next chronological game and finds out that he's killed off not so nicely. God damn it.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: In the western fanbase, the game tends to be praised for the gameplay, map design, and difficulty, all of which attract people wanting something that is complex but not difficult to get into like some of the earlier entries. The story though tends to be viewed as boring or simplistic, partially because of the lack of a proper localization meaning it relies on fan translations, but also because the story doesn't do a lot to leave a lasting impression for some.
• The Scrappy: Merlinus is grumpy and bitter for good reason, but many fans found him to be an asshole who took up way too much screen time before the real meat of the plot kicked in. Gameplay-wise, he takes up a spot on your roster rather than the game asking if you want to deploy him, and if his HP reaches zero at any point you lose all the items he was holding for you. Luckily, unlike in FE7, you don't have to bring him out to send items. In recent years, he has also started earning a lot of ire for being seemingly the reason most of the cast (particularly Lilina) gets shafted, due to him being Roy's adviser and just about the only person he interacts with in the story, whereas fans feel other characters such as Lilina, Marcus, Klein, Cecilia, Perceval, and Douglas were more deserving of his role while characters like Elffin and Guinivere (both who occasionally chime in) could use a little more screen time.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Building Supports require that you tether two characters to each other for a long period of time (upwards of 240 turns for some characters) before you can unlock a support conversation. It's even worse in this game, where you can only accumulate a total of 120 support points for ALL characters in any given chapter. Also, there's only one love interest per character, and only Roy gets paired endings.
  • Bolting, Berserk, and other long-range spells, more so in this game than in any other game; nearly every chapter in the second half has several mages with Bolting hidden behind walls or swarms of enemies.
  • The all-around low hit rates are one of the major reasons the game is so divisive among fans. Rather than allowing the player to overcome the RNG through competent strategy, it makes the game even more based on RNG than is expected from the series. Granted this applies to the enemy too, (In fact, usually moreso than the player) but it's still a major annoyance; enemies don't have to care if one lucky cheap shot wipes out someone important or wastes a valuable use of a powerful weapon.
  • Breakable walls are absurdly bulky in this game, with 100 HP at most. This makes it more annoying and tedious for units to break through them, not only for wasting weapons used just to break a single wall, but it also hinders the player's tactical progress.
  • This game is very heavy on ambush-spawning reinforcements, and only some are telegraphed by terrain or dialogue. They can be quite nasty too, like Archers appearing with no warning in places where you're likely to place fliers, or very strong squads of Cavaliers or Wyvern Riders.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Rutger/Lilina had started appearing in fan art at the start of The New '20s after one person started commissioning art of the two together, despite them having no supports or any real in-game interaction.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: While the opening chapters do a good job of subtly teaching the player how to approach the game, they can be very tedious and are comparatively simple compared to the other chapters. The Western Isles is where the game starts to pick up massively, as the chapters are much more complex while still being very manageable, and this generally holds true for the rest of the game. This is especially present on Hard Mode, where there are quite a few candidates for That One Level in the beginning.
• Squick:
  • Pairing Eliwood with Fiora and Hector with one of Fiora's younger sisters in The Blazing Blade could potentially result in Roy's paired ending with Lilina becoming incestuous (should the player also pair them up), due to the fact that they can potentially become direct cousins if Eliwood's wife is Fiora and Hector's is one of the former's sisters. Avoiding this is doable, though.
  • Some fans had this reaction by the way Narcian interacts with Clarine in chapter 4, which comes off a bit too much on the former wanting to rape the latter. Clarine also being stated to be in her teens makes it a lot worse, which indicates that Narcian is going to rape someone who's underaged.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • "Beneath a New Light" is an almost note-for-note copy of the main theme from Independence Day.
  • "In the Name of Bern" bears a heavy resemblance to a segment of the song "Lunar Sea" by Camel.
• That One Boss: If you're in a breather level, the boss can and will kick your ass.
  • Leygance, the boss of Chapter 8. He's the first boss to be a promoted unit, with an appropriate jump in stats. On Hard, he totals 59% Avoid and 19 Defense on his Throne, meaning characters who can hit him barely scratch him and characters who can hurt him can't hit. As he's a lance-user, the reliable old Armorslayer gets weapon triangle disadvantage, while the Hammer has advantage but has terrible accuracy anyway (even Zelot will miss more than he hits). His 10 Speed also puts him out of doubling range for most characters.
  • Henning, the boss of Chapter 8x. He's a Hero, meaning he's extremely fast, and he hits extremely hard. On Hard, he totals around 41% base Avoid... and he's sitting in a Throne for another 30% on top of that. He also has a decent Defense of 12, boosted to 15 by his Throne, meaning when you do hit him, it isn't gonna kill him (Marcus or Zelot with the Silver Lance do only 9-10 damage and get doubled in return). His Resistance is comparatively terrible, but the Throne patches that up, too, and with his Hand Axe, he can easily one-shot Lugh or Lilina after they scratch him. Pretty much the only character who even has a chance of taking him down quickly is Rutger, and that's only if Rutger's been promoted.
  • Gel, the boss of Chapter 19 of the Sacae route, is often seen as a major reason to avoid the Sacae route if you can possibly manage it. With a colossal 27 Speed on Hard, literally nothing in the game, not even a Speed-capped Swordmaster, can double him. He also has the signature Swordmaster insane crit rate, so even if he doesn't hit as hard as some bosses, he has rather good odds of getting lucky and one-rounding super-tanks like Melady and Perceval, or even one-shotting frailer bosskillers like Rutger. And due to aforementioned ludicrous Speed and his gate bonus, he has an Avoid in the 80s, meaning that even a Killer Lance user will struggle with hitting him reliably. His Light Brand can't crit at range, but he can still reliably knock 20 HP off anything that attacks him, and due to his absurd Avoid and relatively good Resistance, the only thing that really stands a chance against him is a very well-trained Anima-user with a Fire tome. (By contrast, his counterpart in the Ilia route, Sigune, is generally considered a Breather Boss.)
  • Murdock, as befitting a Camus. On Hard, he's actually stronger than Zephiel in some stats, with higher Defense and hitting harder with his Tomahawk (that's right, he outdamages Zephiel). The Tomahawk also gives him permanent 1-2 range with a powerful weapon, and while its accuracy is poor, Murdock has 23 Skill, making it not a problem for him. He's quite slow and easy to double, but it hardly matters because he has an absolutely ridiculous 31 Defense on a throne; at that point, even legendary weapons struggle to do more than annoy him. Oh, and he's on a time limit.
• That One Level:
  • The various "gaiden" chapters are generally not well-liked in the fanbase, to the point that there exists at least one mod to straight-up skip them and simply provide you with the relevant Legendary Weapon when you finish a chapter. Unlike many cases (with the exception of the Sacae gaiden, which is notoriously nasty), this isn't so much because of their difficulty as it is their much more gimmicky designs in a game that otherwise prides itself on being straightforward, and several being tedious to complete. 8x has those flame pillars that go up every turn with slow animations, 14x has bridges of water that slowly raise and lower, forcing half the army to wait, 16x has a ridiculous excess of status-users and long-range tomes, along with tight corridors... Tragically, a lot of these gimmicks came back for future games.
  • Hard mode is notorious for its Harder Than Hard difficulty, but these two spikes are particularly egregious and really stick out.
    • Chapter 4. The initial waves of cavaliers have absurdly high stats for their level that make going around them a pain, not helping are the nomads who while relatively squishy have good enough stats to maim, if not kill quite a few of your units. That's not even accounting for the pirates who put your team on a very strict time limit to reach the south most village (which has the highly valuable Angelic Robe). Chapter 4 is the point where the difficulty of hard mode shows its true colors and puts your team through the wringer. Expect to see characters die quite a bit.
    • Chapter 7. Swarms of powerful enemy units, including cavaliers and mercenaries, storm your still developing army, a pair of wyvern riders with abnormally high stats for this point in the game will fly amok and pick off your weaker units (there's a third, but he'll only attack when you move into his range), and the three recruitable characters will quite often gleefully commit suicide^note While Zelot can last a while, being a pre-promote and all, and Noah spawns reasonably close to your army, Trec will drop dead in an instant. To top it all off, if you take too long and hang around the southern portion of the map, cavalier reinforcements will rush you, with one in every four always being a level 15 with a Silver Lance. Without proper training and supports, especially for Alen and Lance, this map can force a player to restart their entire file.
  • Chapter 11A can be freakishly hard if you want all the rewards from a perfect run, which involves recruiting several units that spawn in different portions of the map and saving numerous villages. Oh, and you're on a timer: Brigands spawn on the other end of the map within two turns of two of those villages after five turns. So you have to Leeroy Jenkins a map with a lot of enemies just right to make sure you recruit everyone just right, AND prevent them all from dying to get several items that can promote several units who will likely really need them, which is really annoying since several of the units you have to save are low-level archers that the enemy AI will target and murder if you aren't on top of everything. Oh, and there's more: the AI of the units you need to recruit is notoriously finicky, and one of the units you need might not move and you will be walled off from him by a squad of units you can't kill if you want those rewards. Good luck getting all that done perfectly in seven turns.
  • Chapter 14. Not one, not two, but three things to hinder your movement, plus Fog of War, enemies out the yin-yang, the forced deployment of two characters who can be easily killed, and treasures to find, one of which can only be found by one of those fragile units. Oh, and if you want the Gaiden chapter? You have to finish in 25 turns or fewer and keep alive one of the aforementioned fragile characters.
  • Chapter 16. Aside from all of the irritating enemies with Bolting and Purge, there's a powerful enemy general running around who you must leave alive if you want to go to the gaiden chapter. And you can't simply rush through the level avoiding him, unless you want to skip all of the treasures.
  • Chapter 21. Reinforcements pop up seemingly randomly unless you know what triggers them, almost all of them in a group of three Wyvern Riders and one Wyvern Lord and can quickly overwhelm the player. Even with triggering the mininum number of reinforcements possible, this chapter is what cements Bern's reputation as being a Wyvern-infested hellhole. Also, the boss of the level is incredibly hard if the units brought are not experienced enough. To make things worse, you must finish this within 30 turns, or you cannot go to Chapter 21x and obtain the Apocalypse dark tome necessary for the Good Ending (though this part isn't too hard).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The reaction by vets to the magic triangle's change from fire, wind, and thunder to anima, light, and dark. Oddly, this happened in reverse when Path of Radiance returned to the original triangle, since Western fans signed on as the change was being made.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • In general, this is a big issue with supports: many characters have fairly deep arcs and even development, but because supports are such a Guide Dang It! without a walkthrough and tedious to achieve even with one, most people will never actually see them, leading to the cast coming off as flat.
  • Some of the more positive opinions on Roy amount to this. His supports hint that despite his savvy, intelligent nature and down-to-earth personality, he struggles with being the leader of an army at such a young age, and that he has an inferiority complex about being unskilled and inexperienced in combat (something that would logically tie in to his weakness as a unit). Unfortunately, this angle of his character isn't explored very much either in the main story or his supports.
  • Many fans consider Lilina to be this in light of the prequel. A lot of people believe that she would have made a fantastic Deuteragonist for Roy to play off thanks to their well-written interactions in their supports and because their respective fathers played off of each other very well in The Blazing Blade. But since she can die like all plot-unessential units, their interactions are limited to their supports, her debut chapter, and a special ending where Roy and Lilina marry; she's just another face in the crowd otherwise.
  • Despite playing a key role in Idunn's creation, Jahn ends up being a Minor Major Character and has hardly any appearances apart from giving a lengthy infodump about Idunn's backstory in the first part of the final map and serving as the Pre-Final Boss..
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The relationship between Guinivere and Zephiel is underused in the game's story. They interact once, with Guinivere giving exposition about Zephiel's past and Guinivere spends most of the game wanting to stop him without doing much to convince him otherwise. As a side effect of this, the game's attempt to make Zephiel look like a Tragic Villain ends up being wasted as despite Guinivere telling Roy their backstories, nothing is done with it and Zephiel remains just a fairly straightforward villain.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The tutorial from the extras menu can be overlooked very easily, since it never shows up anywhere else nor is it forced upon, even if a new save file is created. However, compared to the Lyn chapters from The Blazing Blade and easy mode in The Sacred Stones, it only takes place on a separate map designed around it, and is narrated by a specific character (in this case, Cecilia). Unfortunately, upon starting the tutorial, no save file is created at all, therefore resulting in the valuable experience points obtained from it to be lost.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Though this lessened since the late 2010s, fans criticized most, if not all, of Eiji Kaneda's character art for having Noodle People proportions, poses coming off as too stiff and lanky, the eyes on younger characters appearing glossy and doll-like, and the aesthetic of the art feeling very dull in comparison to those of the previous game.
  • The janky anatomy in the game's art are the most notorious example of this, as the average person would be 50% legs, but the art unintentionally goes way too beyond that percentange and instead gives nearly everyone absurdly long legs that just doesn't look human. Someone even made a percentage table for this, concluding that Elffin, of all people, has the highest leg percentage, at 67%.
  • While the ingame portraits are nicely drawn and have animated mouths, their eyes do not blink at all and have a fixed stare, making everyone look soulless, with Geese's being notable since he just stares at you with almost no movement. This would later be fixed in the prequel, though unfortunately, it still persists with the shopkeepers, arena hosts, and secret shop Annas.
  • The key visual (aka the boxart) for this game also tends to fall into the valley, but Roy and Lilina stand out for looking way too jarring compared to the other featured characters. Roy looks oddly stiff and muscular, and Lilina is drawn with a dull expression, making her look more like she's distracted by a tear on Roy's cape than showing concern for him. That, and her face also looks incredibly off compared to her art◊.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The ending with Roy marrying Cecilia was treated as a normal thing since the current Japan age of consent was 13 at the time the game was released, but with the announcement of that age being bumped to 16, the marriage will be considered immoral by current Japanese standards, especially when ignoring the concerns surrounding Teacher/Student Romance. However, because Japan had the lowest age of consent during that time, a marriage like this would not sit well with most countries with an age of consent that's higher than that, especially in the West.
  • Larum's clingy relationship with Roy was Played for Laughs. Their supports showed Larum trying to invade his personal space, despite the fact that it only makes him extremely uncomfortable, to the point where he's telling her to stop. The B and A supports aren't any better, since Larum also broke Roy's emotional boundaries in the former, and in the latter, he's already emotionally drained to the point where they eventually married. Given that this game was released in the early 2000s, clingy relationships were still regarded as "funny" during that time, but in recent years, Larum is now seen as being physically and emotionally abusive towards Roy.
• Viewer Name Confusion:
  • Lilina infamously falls victim to this. Most fans call her "Liliana", even though this mistake is often the result of autocorrect messing it up. While other misspellings exist, "Liliana" is the most blatant.
  • Some fans also tend to mix up Cecilia with Celica, due to how extremely similar their names are (with the main difference being an additional "i" in Cecilia's name).
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Because there is currently no official pronunciation of Eckesachs, almost no one is able to figure out the best way to pronounce it, with Ex-axe and E-ke-sach-ess commonly used as pronunciations for the weapon.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Starting with this game, one of the most widely praised things about the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem games is the battle animations. Whether it's physical or magic, they look amazing, especially when it's a Critical Hit.
• The Woobie: Gonzalez is treated poorly by people in-universe, and it's easy to feel sorry for him. Seeing him get Character Development through some of his support conversations is quite heartwarming.

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