Anti-Climax Boss: The final boss is widely considered to be the most pathetic final boss in the franchise. Most other final bosses can be one-shotted because the character (often the main character or someone with a special weapon, i.e. Julia in Genealogy and Tiki or Nagi in Shadow Dragon) has a weapon that almost doubles the damage done to them and bypasses defense entirely. Veld, meanwhile... is practically just an upgraded Mook. You can literally take him out without even using a special weapon or having Leif lay a finger on him. There is literally nothing stopping you from having a thief yoink his weapons out from under his nose and bonking him upside the head with your unpromoted level 1 Marty. It's kind of a disappointing end to a Nintendo Hard game.
Ass Pull: At the final chapter, Manfroy casually mentions Quan's death (Leif's father) was in reality orchestrated by Veld himself via leaking information from Quan's movements in the Aed Desert to Travant. Given this reveal comes pretty much out of nowhere and that after petrifying Eyvel, Veld has been absent for nearly 90% of the story, many players feel this is a very cheap attempt to make the player hate Veld even more while trying to make up for his lack of screentime. They also feel it takes away from Travant as a villain, since rather than him killing Quan and Ethlyn entirely on his own terms, the reveal makes him come off as yet another pawn of the Loptr Church.
Audience-Coloring Adaptation: Not the game itself, but rather a specific character; Reinhardt. There are lot of fans of this game who hate the fact that Reinhardt has more or less become the most popular and recognizable character because of his reputation as a Game-Breaker in Fire Emblem Heroes, despite how minor of a role he actually has in the game proper and how his character is a complex deconstruction ofhis characterarchetypes that is often treated as a straight example. Fans were already divided when he and sister Olwen got variants that took up two spots on Thracia's first dedicated banner when it still had little representation, but it got even worse when he got another variant in the Dancing Soiree seasonal banner, when at that point none of the Jugdral lords had gotten a single variant yet. It doesn't help that the developers seem to like shipping him with Ishtar, despite the fact that she already has a canon lover in the form of Julius and his devotion to a woman who doesn't love him back was a negative quality in the game itself, which has made fans very fearful as to how they will handle Reinhardt in potential Jugdral remakes.
Awesome Art: The game's art design is one of its most widely praised aspects, especially after the rather scattershot artwork of the prior games. The character portraits look excellent for Super Famicom game, lacking the weird proportions and baffling hairstyles of Genealogy, while still being fairly distinctive and lively. And the character designs, done by Mayumi Hirota, are similarly beloved, looking characterful while still being clearly grounded in the rather gritty universe of the Jugdral games. Notably, it mostly averts the trend towards Stripperific designs that cropped up in some games in female characters. The female sword-wielders are all depicted wearing pants, and the two pegasus fliers in Leif's army modestly have their legs covered in what appears to be tights — a rare design decision in this franchise. Kaga clearly loved working with Hirota, claiming she was the first person to understand how he envisioned his characters and making her the lead character designer on TearRing Saga.
Though the fandom is pretty small, fans either hate Marty due to being a Low-Tier Letdown, and what little characterization he's given to be a timid coward who easily caves into peer pressure. Others feel he's a Lovable Coward with a gameplay purpose as a packmule, and like his implied relationship with Dagdar.
Carrion as a unit is very controversial. He has a lot going for him such as being able to switch between two weapon types when he's mounted thanks to his Cavalier class, (which is rare for unpromoted units in Thracia) high growths, a movement star and a high PCC, but it's all hampered by his abysmal starting stats and weapon ranks. This leads to a divide on just how much he's worth using by more hardcore players.
Lifis. On one hand, some players are fine with an amoral asshole as a Thief instead of a Lovable Rogue to put emphasis on just how desperate Leif's band of merry men are to liberate Thracia and Leonster (as well as adding another emphasis on Reinhardt's flaw as explained in Draco in Leather Pants) and he added variety in the type of people you recruit. On the other hand, you have players who just plain hate him and think he's absolutely unforgivable for this very reason, and especially when the favors he blackmailed Safy with was basically 'sexual favors' and he's not planning to honor her request to start clean (to the point that some are okay with letting him turn into a Deadlord). Lifis was basically close enough to be a proto-Makalov.
Breather Level: The Munster escape arc (Chapters 4-7) has surprisingly some of the more brutal areas in the game despite being early on, with the chapters being hard for different reasons: forced dismounting in the first three chapters, an objective in Chapter 4 that leads you to split the team to do several things at once and an annoying final room, annoying enemies in the Armor Knights or the mages with Elfire in Chapter 6, and the reinforcement Cavaliers with Rapiers and recruiting Shiva in Chapter 7. Luckily for the player, Chapter 8 is a change of pace from those frantic chapters before it: it's short and only has a bunch of axe-wielding enemies, with a side objective that consists in capturing the boss before he mounts on his wyvern after 15 turns, so it's pretty easy if you know what you're doing.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The Fatigue mechanic was likely intended to curb this trope, so that players wouldn't be able to keep using their best/favorite characters for each battle, instead having to rotate between the ones best suited for each map. Because of this, even Game Breakers like Osian or the priestesses are kept from cheesing the entire game, instead being restricted to around two levels at a time, so that the player would still be challenged in levels where they're forced to use their lower-tier units.
Contested Sequel: While its reputation has grown with time and it tends to at least be respected nowadays, Thracia was and is a controversy magnet. It is downright ludicrously unbalanced and tends to be most difficult for players who want to see everything, as well as those trying to beat the game blind, and it's similar enough to modern entries that it tends to throw people hard when they encounter its more archaic aspects. This makes it either one of the most unfair games due to its habit of smacking the player in the face with cheap nonsense, or one of the most fun games due to how most of its cheap nonsense can let the player smack it right back. The story and characters are another point of contention. Detractors argue that most of the cast has no personality and no plot-relevance in a pre-supports era (with a couple having almost no dialogue whatsoever) and the story is a rather no-frills version of the standard Fire Emblem "noble retakes their homeland" plot. Supporters argue that Gameplay and Story Integration gives both the story and the characters a lot of life and depth, and note that the writing, while sparse, is overall solid, with a noticeably more worldly and down-to-Earth tone than most other games and Leif having a genuine character arc that parallels the story as a whole.
Critical Backlash: Its reputation as "the hardest game" has gotten this with time, with many fans pointing out that, in reality, Thracia isn't so much hard as it is somewhat obtuse (not helped by previous bad translations) and RNG-heavy, with most enemies being very weak and the player having many powerful units and abusable mechanics at their disposal.
Draco in Leather Pants: Reinhardt is often treated as if he's an honorable Anti-Villain who's just on the wrong side of the conflict. His actual arc is about the revelation that despite his absurd power, noble lineage, and presentation as the second coming of Thrud, he's ultimately a passive man who doesn't do anything good and is very much guilty of moral cowardice. This contrasts with the actual heroes, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits with shaky skillsets from all across the lower-class spectrum, who still step up to defend their homelands despite deadly odds.
Salem for being the first playable dark magic user, having good stats, and being able to use staves.
Many of the Manster escape arc playable characters could count. Since you are put into a position where you're forced to use anyone you can in a notoriously high Difficulty Spike, the characters that you do get in that frame of time are often lauded. Notable examples include Fergus, Karin, and the entirety of the Magi Squad (Machyua, Brighton, Lara, and Asbel).
Much like the previous game, Olwen and Reinhardt of the Friege army are two of the most well-remembered characters from the game. Olwen for her solid uses and engaging story between her, her brother, and Kempf, and Reinhardt for being a Ludicrous SNK Boss with a strong role as the game's Camus archetype, as well as his rapidly growing popularity from the Fire Emblem Heroes fanbase. Kempf, while being a slimeball, has the notoriety of being a proto-Narcian, who himself is a popular villain.
Sara has quite the sizeable fanbase thanks to her unique position in the story, interesting interactions with others, and potential as a Game-Breaker, in addition to being vital in getting the best ending.
Penta-Axe General. A random enemy in Chapter 23 who, for some inexplicable reason, is level 20 (higher level than the boss of the map), carries five different axes and, unlike any other Mook in the game, has the Charisma skill. Thanks to Cake Attack's Let's Play, he immediately became a Memetic Badass akin to "3-13 Archer" from Radiant Dawn.
Chapter 5 is known as "the fan translation killer" — the game as a whole is already notoriously difficult to hack due to its messy code, but Chapter 5 has an unusually high concentration of Developer's Foresight which obligates prospective hackers to translate a lot of short strings and then somehow wedge them back into the ROM without messing up anything else.
Osian is sometimes referred as the "Pugi/Vouge Man/Boy", because he's very notable for his Game-Breaker personal axe.
The trio of Alva, Cain and Robert, often along with their leader Selphina, are frequently referred to as the Scrub Squad thanks to their poor performance; in the case of the former three, it's their low base stats and level, and in the case of Selphina, it's her poor growths and inability to counter up close (an issue which also plagues Robert).
Fountain of Memes: Kempf. The old translation patches gave him several pop-culture based lines, even including a Shout-Out to Abridged Bandit Keith ("Those idiots have fallen to my trap! In America!) or insulting Olwen with this gem: "What are you going to do, kill me? Stupid bitch." Because of this, Kempf became noteworthy for memetic reasons (aside of coining the 'self-important vain evil general of the empire' type of characters), expect either '(In) America' or 'Stupid Bitch' jokes attached to Kempf... and even more so after he was confirmed for Fire Emblem Heroes in the beginning of Book IV, since it was his first official exposure...in America! Long story short, Kempf used to be Thracia 776's meme man himself... until Reinhardt's Heroes incarnation usurped that from him, just to add up reasons why Kempf is pissed and jealous at Reinhardt.
At one point in Chapter 4x, you open a door that appears to contain a few chests. You can't tell what else is in the room due to the fog of war. Upon opening it, you see a generic female mage and a knight alone together in there against the back wall while a pretty serious skirmish is going on right outside the door. It appears you may have walked in on a pair of lovers in the middle of a tryst in the dark and the man seems pretty mad about being interrupted given that he charges at you with a devil's axe.
In Chapter 12x, if you have Safy talk to Tina, Tina will inform Safy that Perne threatened her with terrible things to get her to cooperate... like dangling a caterpillar in front of her face.
The Pugi/Bhuj/Vouge is a Disc-One Nuke to end all Disc One Nukes; with high might, crit chance, and 1-2 range it can utterly destroy anyone in its way, and skyrocketed Osian into Memetic Badass territory.
The Crusader Scrolls negate non-Wrath critical hits while effectively changing growth rates. Put enough scrolls on any single unit and they will become absolute monsters.
Status staves in general. While still useful in the later entries, they were balanced by the reduced staff range and limited uses. Here, most staves beyond the basic ones have infinite range, and they can be easily stolen from enemy units. The various Warp and Rewarp staves you can get allow warp-skipping to ludicrous degrees, allowing a player to abuse Instant-Win Condition to get around some of the more difficult chapters.
Asbel is considered one of the best mages in the series for this: his gigantic Speed means he doubles almost everything, his promotion to Sage boosts his Magic substantially, his Grafcalibur tome has high might and a crit rate that is multiplied by his high PCC, and as a magic unit, he ignores the defense boost given by thrones. When equipped and leveled, Asbel can one-round almost every throne boss in the game.
If Olwen is given the Vantage skill and she is equipped with 2x times attack Dire Thunder tomes and is receiving Charm/Support bonuses, she is pretty much invincible unless she faces any enemy with a %chance to deflect or avoid an attack in its totality. And even then she can just get the Nihil scroll to negate such skills.
If the player waits until Ilios is obtained, by consuming the Wrath skill on him, it is possible to have a character with a 60% top chance to avoid ANY form of deadly attack whenever he is attacked + the constant chance to counter kill in one hit almost anything (preferably with a magic tome for 1-2 range attack) while having a 20% (25% if using the rare "Thunder Sword) to obtain back the amount of damage dealt to the enemy back to him.
Giving Sara the "Sol" scroll makes her a second Ilios, improving her already very high combat quotient to a peak.
Mareeta is the only unit that can learn Astra, which is arguably the strongest skill in the game. While Galzus already comes equipped with the skill, he is only playable for the last three maps in the game. Furthermore, Mareeta comes with her own exclusive brave sword that has a critical of 20 and gives her Nihil. Plus, she is one of the few units that has a Pursuit Critical Coefficient of 5, which means her critical hit rate will be multiplied by 5 during a follow up attack. She also comes equipped with Luna, and if you take the harder route for Chapters 16-17, then she can obtain Sol. When promoted to a swordmaster, she learns Adept, and skills can stack in this game, which means she has the potential to wipe out any unit in one turn.
Heartwarming Moments: If you succeed in using the Kia Staff to un-petrify Eyvel near the end of the game, you get to see the person in question have an emotional reunion with those who care for her, especially her adoptive daughter Mareeta, as well as Leif and Nanna, who view her as a mother.
High-Tier Scrappy: Ilios is an odd case of a character who isn't considered top tier, but still gets dislike for being stronger than another character. In his case, he's one of the game's Mutually Exclusive Party Members, being impossible to recruit if you already have Olwen. Olwen is one of Thracia's most popular characters, owing to her Character Development and her tragic relationship with her brother Reinhardt, not to mention her impressive potential... but she also joins with pretty awful bases as a prepromote, while Ilios joins with already competent stats in the same class. This means efficiency-minded players tend to ignore Olwen in favor of Ilios, which annoys people who like Olwen, especially when Ilios is nowhere near as fleshed out.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Kempf's envious hatred for Reinhardt was always part of his character, but by the time he was added to Fire Emblem Heroes, his old rival had gotten such a huge reputation as a magical death machine that his predictably bitter remarks about him come off as meta-jokes about Reinhardt's newfound popularity. What's more, Reinhardt had become such an overwhelming presence that his popularity's been met with its fair share of backlash, so you'll find no shortage of people nodding along with the biggest jackass in Friege.
"I had heard I would be honored as a "grand Hero" here, and I believed my fame had spread even to this world... And YET it seems I am cursed to hear the same damned name everywhere I go! Reinhardt, Reinhardt, Reinhardt!
"All this praise for Reinhardt... Ludicrous! Name one thing I cannot do better!"
Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: At this point in time, Reinhardt is arguably more well-known than Thracia 776 if his popularity in Fire Emblem Heroes is any indication, to the point where some people consider him an original character there. The fact that he and his sister Olwen were added first before Leif, the actual lord of the game, doesn't help. Leif finally coming to Heroes a year after its release didn't really do much to dispel this, since on the same banner Leif was in, Reinhardt received a variant that shared a color with him.
Thracia is a game that's considered to have one of the most generally useful rosters in the series, with nearly every unit having at least something to offer. This makes Cain, Alva, and Robert all the more impressive for lacking any kind of selling point. A trio of cavalry units, they join about halfway into the game at very low levels with customarily low stats, to the point that they struggle to handle even generic enemies at a point in the game where most of your army can one-round (effectively turning the map into a rescue mission). Their weapon ranks are terrible, with Alva starting off with E Lances despite being a lance knight, and their classes are far less of a selling point in Thracia, due to the dismount mechanic forcing them off their horses indoors (which makes the weapon rank problem all the worse). However, what really pushes them here is their total lack of character-specific traits: only one of them has movement or leadership stars (Robert has one movement star), and only one has a high FCM (Robert is highest with 3, Cain and Alva have 1), none start with any skills, and none have a personalized weapon, all things that most units in Thracia can boast at least two of—the closest thing they have is one-sided supports with Glade and Selphina, who are considered filler units at best but are still held in far higher regard. Their only redeeming quality is that their growth rates aren't bad, but in Thracia, that matters far less than in other games, and it still leaves them held back by their classes and lack of unique qualities when raised. Given that they're also some of the least characterized units in the game (if not the series altogether), it's not uncommon for people to compare them to generic green units. Robert's attributes are a bit better, but he's an archer, meaning that he can't counter at close range
Miranda is generally agreed to be the worst non-Joke Character in the game (whether she's worse than Shannam is a real question), and one of the worst "Est"-type characters in the series. Her standout growth rates scarcely matter in Thracia, where stat caps are generally low and Crusader Scrolls can give anyone good growth rates, and Miranda has to deal with bad starting weapon ranks, bad starting stats, no unique weapon, a skill that requires her to get attacked when she has wet-tissue durability, and coming in at a point where just about anyone can handle the majority of enemies. To add insult to injury, if she promotes into Mage Knight, she actually loses movement on indoor maps (which is most of the remaining ones). And all that's on top of the fact that Sara shows up around the same time and is generally agreed to be one of the best Est-type characters, meaning you have a much better option to pour your work into.
Ronan, surprisingly, became this as a result of a Let's Play by Mekkah, where he, in a fit of fantastical luck, had his first two levels both increase Movement . This caused Mekkah to make Ronan a core member of his squad, where Ronan immediately started earning his keep. He solidified his legend when he tragically perished in Chapter 13, causing an outpouring of grief from the viewers. Fans also suspect that thanks to Mekkah's LP, Ronan memed his way into Fire Emblem Heroes, being included in the third official batch of Thracia 776 characters.
Glade became this when he was revealed to be the lowest-ranked character in the entire series in the "Choose Your Legends" poll of Fire Emblem Heroes, with a measly 17 votes to his name. A ton of one-scene-only NPCs scored higher than him. Marty, Ronan, Troude, and Selfina's knights also tend to be mocked at times for their performance in gameplay. At the very least, Glade performed better in the next Choose Your Legends, gaining 535 votes, leaving the 'least voted playable character' position to another unit from this game: Hicks, with 9 votes in total.
Also, Leif himself, in more ways than just this game. He had an uphill battle in terms of fame when compared to the other Lords in the whole franchise. To wit:
The previous game already had some people decide that between the hedgehog haircut and his not very convincing attempts to act adult and mature, he was more Adorkable than anything else. When this game gave him below-average growth rates (when they were some of the best in the previous one) and highlighted his strategicerrors, he quickly became a synonym for a disappointing Lord character. He isn't even the only unit capable of wielding the Bragi Sword!
His game is considered the most Nintendo Hard of all Fire Emblem games, thereby scaring off casual players from him.
He's also the only Lord who doesn't fight any sort of Eldritch Abomination in the end, he just fought Veld, an underling of the chief Dragon of the overall setting (Manfroy). So... Leif didn't have something to boast compared to other Lords.
Shouzou Kaga screwed him off by releasing his game at the last days of Super Famicom, therefore he lost a lot of advertising chances.
After the release of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Leif has become the least known and popular Lord since the previous title holders were actually Alm and Celica, and the remake clearly made them more popular. Thankfully, due to gaining more popularity via Heroes, Leif had since passed this dubious honor down to Rowan and Lianna, both of whom became more obscure over the years due to how long the twins had gone without any further appearances beyond their debut and how a majority of fans forget their existence.
His game was the last to receive a proper fan translation. By the time Thracia 776 got a proper fan translation, Genealogy of the Holy War, Binding Blade and New Mystery of the Emblem have long been fan-translated and Gaiden got an official remake.
Even in Fire Emblem Heroes, he got completely sidelined by Reinhardt, who has two alternate versions and as the meme goes, Leif looked like 'a side character in Reinhardt's game' for those unaware. This one is thankfully mostly mitigated with the release of Leif's Legendary variant in Heroes, which is a Horse Archer with Meisterbogen (Master Bow in Thracia 776), and an exclusive special skill that makes him move and attack again in the same turn, on top of his S Drink exclusive skill his regular variant has as well, making him one of the best Horse Archers in the game. And it's the second Jugdral Legendary as well, in which Leif preceded Seliph in getting that variant and only upstaged by Julia.
Yet again, Leif finds himself upstaged in Fire Emblem Engage, where not only is he one of the weakest Emblem rings in the game, but Olwen(who is unlocked after Leif's ring is obtained) is inarguably the strongest and most desired bond ring, with many players joking about how she is the actual Thracia Emblem. It seems poor Leif will never escape the shadow of Dire Thunder. The fact that he's also the only Emblem in the entire game to get stolen twicewithin the span of two chapters doesn't help.
Moral Event Horizon: Raydrick fully crosses the line in Chapter 5, where he forces Mareeta to fight her adoptive mother Eyvel under the influence of the Shadow Sword.
Never Live It Down: Kempf gets this from his infamous "In America!" quote from an old fan-translation, with him often being pictured next to stereotypical American clichés or memes.
Replacement Scrappy: While Ilios is by no means The Scrappy in his own right, he still gets this treatment as the potential replacement character for Olwen. While Olwen is riskier to use and requires greater investment to be effective, many players still prefer her for her earlier join time, greater contribution to the story, and stronger Character Development; and will only begrudgingly use Illios if they either can't keep Olwen alive or prefer practical characters. The lack of an in-universe justification for this dilemma (with Ilios being unable to join Leif's army with Olwen present, despite him not showing any resentment for her or her cause) doesn't help matters at all.
The Scrappy: Selfina's knights - Cain, Alva, and Robert - are considered some of the most flat, unnecessary, and downright boring units in the series, with them being no better than the generic mooks you fight and being outclassed by several other alternatives. Not helping this is the fact that they literally have no interactions outside of their death and escape quotes, meaning it's entirely possible to go through the whole game without them saying a word. While the lack of dialogue for Cain and Robert are Hand Waved - Cain is a brooding, silent type, while Robert is cripplingly bashful - neither are satisfactory explanations.
Dismounting makes its third (Seliph could dismount when he was promoted in the previous game) and final appearance here. Mounted units specializing only in Lances or Axes spontaneously losing their ability to use their weapons and being forced to use Swords when they get off a horse is completely illogical. While this mechanic also appeared in Mystery of the Emblem, it is not as debilitating there as that game doesn't have the Weapon Triangle and uses the Weapon Level system, which applies to all weapon types instead of having separate ranks for each weapon. While Warriors and Heroes can still use Axes indoors, Lances have no such luxury, as there are only two units who can use Lances indoors (Xavier and a promoted Dalsin), and they both start out with an E rank in them. It makes that weapon type Better Off Sold in the later chapters.
You aren't allowed to reposition units before entering battle. The order in which they're deployed is based on their position in the unit selection screen, which is determined by the order of selection from the previous chapter. While generally a non-issue, a few chapters towards the end of the game forcibly splits your party members into generally less than ideal positions.
Pavise blocking all damage (Level % based).
Capturing an enemy, because all stats minus luck, Hp, and build are halved during the process.
The crowning jewel has to be escape chapters. Leif MUST be the last unit to exit the map. Any of your characters still on the map when Leif leaves are automatically captured by the enemy and cannot rejoin you until a gaiden chapter late in the game. The closest the game gets to telling you this beforehand is Leif's refusal to escape first, and in the Shaya patch, a translation flaw causes it to be worded as "When I escape, so does everyone else!", phrasing which implies that it's fine for Leif to escape first. Project Exile, of course, fixes this by rephrasing Leif's refusal as "I'll only [Escape] after everyone else has!"note The brackets indicate a game mechanic, not a synonymous replacement, giving a far better indication that you shouldn't let Leif escape first, but that doesn't make these chapters any less inconvenient, especially since the game is punishing you for having Leif escape too quickly rather than rewarding you for letting other characters escape first like Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn do.
Thracia 776 is so far the only game in the series where healing Staves can miss. It's telling that mechanic was never used in the series again. Staves can also double-cast in the same way normal double attacks work, but this is a bad thing, too, as it can lead to wasting staff uses on healing insignificant amounts of HP.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: Though its status as the most difficult game in the series is contested, and no longer clear-cut and widely-agreed upon, it's still quite a different ballpark when compare to Genealogy, which is already considered one of the more easier FE games.
So Bad, It Was Better: Among longtime fans who played through the game with one of the older translation patches, the Project Exile translation patch has received some criticism for changing Kempf's dialogue to remove the infamous "In America!" line, as well as renaming the Pugi to the Bhuj. This is despite the fact that the Project Exile patch is the first fully completed translation patch for a game that was infamous for not having a good translation patch for years, and the older translation patches also had several bugs and glitches that the Project Exile patch fixes (and in the previous game, Project Naga also prioritized proper translation over keeping some memes). Furthermore, when Osian got into Fire Emblem Heroes, they changed the name again into 'Vouge'.
Any boss becomes That One whenever Saias is on the field. He has a whopping 10 Leadership Stars, giving +30 Accuracy and Avoid to every enemy on the map. He himself can also pelt you with Status Effects like Sleep and Berserk from anywhere on the map, on top of making it harder to hit and avoid everything. Fortunately, he never stays for the entire duration of a chapter, and only appears in a few chapters. It's also possible to scare him off by using Warp to send someone past a certain map threshold that triggers an event to make him leave.
Special mention must be made to Reinhardt. Not only does he appear in a chapter with Saias and his absurd Leadership boost (though he leaves eventually), he's got his own Leadership stars, he's on a horse, carries two different weapons that attack twice consecutively, and also has Pavise (a skill normally assigned to heavily-armored bosses) so he has a 20% chance to make your attack a No-Sell. Furthermore, he also has Vantage (which in this game has no HP threshold, so he will always attack first, and thanks to carrying Dire Thunder and Master Sword, he will always attack you twice before you get to hit him), meaning he attacks first even if you initiate combat. He also has a whopping five movement stars so he's got a rather high (25%) chance to move and attack twice in one turn. If he whips out his Master Sword, expect him to beat whichever unlucky unit to a bloody pulp because he has both Adept (Attack Speed% chance to attack again, which given his Master Sword being a brave weapon, is a rather high chance to proc) and Accost (If HP and Attack Speed exceed opponent's, extend combat, giving him another round to beat up your unit), and Naga help you if he doubles your units, because he has a FCM of 2, making it more likely for him to crit your units into oblivion. There's a reason he's considered an SNK Boss. He is so outrageously cheap that a village in the same chapter gives you a Warp staff, which can be taken as an unsubtle nod from the developers that you're better off not fighting him and taking a shortcut to beat the chapter.
Canis, one of the Deadlords in the final chapter, is seen as by far the hardest boss in the game, which is funny when she isn't technically the main boss of her map. She's a Sage, which is not a good thing when she's also sitting on a +10 Magic tile, making her borderline immune to status staves unless you boost up like crazy. You have to fight her in a very cramped room, and kill a rather tough Dark Mage blocking the way to her, which limits the units who can face her. Capped Magic and Skill with extremely high Speed makes her dangerous at first glance. But most importantly, her skill and weapon setup is absolutely maddening: she has Wrath to make player-phase attacks borderline suicide, Nosferatu to Life Drain anyone who even tries it and undo their efforts, Adept to ensure she definitely kills them, and Miracle so that even if you do manage to land a killing blow, she has a 39% chance to just ignore it. Oh, and unlike Reinhardt, who can be skipped or ignored without much issue, if you decide to leave Canis for last while you handle the other Deadlords, she whips out her Berserk Staff and has your units start killing each other, meaning she practically has to be killed first. Players have been known to train up Mareeta or Troude solely because their access to Nihil allows them to turn off Canis's skills and make her much more manageable.
While Canis is the strongest boss period, Gomez is considered notable for being far harder than her relative to the army at the time. He is a Lightning Bruiser par excellence, with great stats in just about every area barring Magic, including rather high Speed. Since he's on a throne, that's a free +10 Defense that makes him difficult for anyone except Asbel to do significant damage to him (and he's so fast that even a Speed-capped Asbel can't double him). His movement star (rare on bosses in general) just makes things even nastier, as it means that he has a small chance to get a second turn in on anyone within his range. And on top of all that, he's a warrior, which doesn't have a Weapon of X-Slaying, meaning that's hard to exploit as well. And let's not even get into the difficulty of taking him alive, Video Game Caring Potential aside.
That One Sidequest: A few units are extremely difficult to recruit in Thracia 776, but Xavier is legendary for this. Each of his eight men has had a loved one taken prisoner by the enemy, and as such they're forced to work for them. You can free the loved ones (who take the form of extremely squishy NPCs), then talk to the men to get them to turn coat. Once each of them has talked to their respective NPC (yes, each one can only talk to one specific NPC), you can recruit Xavier. Note that while his men won't attack the NPCs, other enemies in the stage will, and those who haven't been turned and those who have will attack each other. note Surprisingly, it's not the ones who haven't turned killing the ones who have that's the problem — once they've turned, they're expendable. One of the ones who has turned killing one who hasn't, however, makes it impossible to complete the quest. Also? Same map has four chests placed where reinforcements respond, AND the Member Card. Good luck completing all of them.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Quite a few, sadly. As of now, this game's cast are some of the least developed characters in the series, and there are quite a few characters who had plenty of potential. A select few such as Lifis, Mareeta, Olwen, and Karin do get their time in the sun, but overall the cast is very flat, and the results of the first "Choose Your Legends" poll reflect this, with it being just behind the original Gaiden in terms of votes.
A fan-translation example: Chapter 24x is infamous for its gimmick of invisible teleport tiles that warp units into inescapable rooms where only teleport magic of your own can save them. This is also an Escape map, so anyone left inside these rooms when the map ends is considered dead. The Japanese version gave no hints at this gimmick whatsoever, which many agreed was far too sadistic even by this game's standards. The Project Exile and Lil' Manster patches add some extra lines of dialogue to the beginning of the map that hint at this gimmick, from August, a character who already had several "thinly-veiled gameplay tips" speeches in the original Japanese.
is about the revelation that despite his absurd power, noble lineage, and presentation as the second coming of Thrud, he's ultimately a passive man who doesn't do anything good and is very much guilty of moral cowardice. This contrasts with the actual heroes, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits with shaky skillsets from all across the lower-class spectrum, who still step up to defend their homelands despite deadly odds.
