The Last Promise / YMMV

Cliché Storm: Basically everything involving Kelik. The man is basically a walking laundry list of late-2000's edgy anime Anti-Hero tropes played almost completely straight. Black and red colour scheme? Check. A Flaming Sword? Check. An Ineffectual Loner Jerk with a Heart of Gold who warms up to his new friends over the course of his adventure? Check. A Dark and Troubled Past involving an evil brother and a dead best friend? Check. Screen-clearing Special Attack used only in a single cutscene? Check. Extremely-long critical hit animation? Check. Friends with Zoro from One Piece? Check. All of this, and the game is utterly convinced that he's one of, if not THE single-coolest character in the game. And it's absolutely glorious.
Difficulty Spike: Suffers a nasty one around Chapter 25, when enemy stats suddenly start to rival your own units, and there's a lot of them. It dips slightly in the Endgame, but only slightly.
Fountain of Memes: Kelik. From his red and black color scheme and his visual similarities to Ephraim, to his standoffish demeanor, quotes, and even his theme song (literally being a bitcrushed version of His World), everything about him feels straight out of a late-2000s anime fanfiction, and he's all the more memorable for it.
Game-Breaker:
- Inanna manages to somehow avoid the some of the early-joining pegasus knight problems by having high constitution for a Pegasus Knight. What solidifies her status here, however, is the fact that she can get her promotion item, the Elysian Whip, at Chapter 3. This means that with enough level grinding, she can become an early promoted Falcoknight. Furthermore, her growths are great for a class that's supposed to be a Fragile Speedster, as in practice, her great growth in strength can turn her into a Glass Cannon, meaning that not only she can double enemies, but also deal a good amount of damage to them. Last, but not least, she can also take advantage of the Angelic Robes being sold at Chapter 10, meaning that she can turn into one of the most durable Falcoknights, meaning that her only competition is Alice, who is pretty much her except with some missing stats.
- Cia is basically a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Nino from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, except remove Nino's weakness: Her lack of availability. She joins during Chapter 7, and not only she has great growths, but also can patch up her other weakness by also taking advantage of the Angelic Robes in Chapter 10. Last but not least, she also rejoins very early on in Chapter 14, managing to avert Can't Catch Up. Her only weakness is that she's footlocked and has to compete with Emma, but with how Resistance scales lowly compared to Defense, she's very valuable as a combat unit.
- Emma. While she starts off with a lowish Magic stat, she makes up for it by having good speed and surprisingly good defense for a Troubadour, meaning that she can take a good hit or two from physical attacks. This makes her a great healing unit, and she also comes in with a Guiding Ring in her inventory, and she also starts at Level 10, meaning that it's possible to promote her as soon as she joins, making her nigh unkillable while taking attacks with ease.
- All of the three lords (sans Siegfried) perform very well in their niches, one way or another.
  - Shon is based on Eliwood, being the (somewhat) balanced unit compared to Kelik and Anakin. Unlike Eliwood, he starts out mounted, and because of his base class being a Cavalier albeit with some focus on swords, he can also wield lances to fight lance-wielders and sword-wielders more easily, unlike Eliwood, who has to start out wielding only swords. Finally, since he's the first unit you can get in game, not to mention unlocking P-2 requires you to solo the prologue with him, he has a lot of room to grow. His Infinity +1 Sword, Silvans, is basically Durandal, except it's a brave weapon, meaning that Shon can potentially attack twice and maybe even four times, and it's also indestructible and doesn't weight him down as much due to the weapon giving a +3 to Speed, Strength, and Defense, and can be upgraded with the completion of the "Reaching The Heavens" sidequest, improving its might from 13 to 18. Overall, he's one of the better lords to perform as a combat unit. His only weakness is that his defenses are not exactly the best, and his promotion item comes a bit late and the player has to choose who will receive with either Kelik or Shon promoting, and having wait yet another amount of chapters to get his promotion item if Kelik uses it, and he temporarily becomes unavaliable at Chapter 25 alongside 25x and the final chapter.
  - Kelik is basically Lyn, being the swordlocked lord, but Blazer has taken attempts to address any potential weaknesses Kelik may had. It worked, and then some. He comes in with a 1-2 range sword, Flamberge, which addresses his issue of swords not having a somewhat reliable 1-2 range, and he can obtain multiple of these. It also has the fortunate effect of hitting various enemies' Resistance, which doesn't scale a lot compared to Defense. He also has good growths around, boasting a 50% Strength growth, and his Skill and Speed growths also are great overall, along with a decent defense stat. His best feature, though, is his promotion to Legend: His promotion allows him to get a crit bonus similar to Swordmasters and a +2 to Movement, allowing him to be as fast as a mounted unit. Finally, his Infinity +1 Sword, Arectaris, gives him a +5 to speed, ensuring him that he will double almost everyone aside from the Final Boss, who will not double him anyway due his speed nearly on par with him. Overall, he's one of the best footlocked units, with his only weakness being that he has to share his promotion item with Shon, and the only sword-locked unit who can come on par with him is Tekun, who has similar stats to him aside with trading 5% less HP growth for a 30% Resistance growth.
  - Anakin is one of the most versatile units in the game. With his decent growths all around, not to mention being a in a class that is basically Dancer but with Light Magic, he can perform a lot actions well. As a combat unit, while he is limited in this role due the low might of Light Magic, he can deal a good amount of damage to enemies' poor Resistance stat. As a Support Party Member, he can use Motivate to give allies a Extra Turn, and after promotion, gains the ability to use staves. As a tank, he dodges a lot of attacks very well due to his great speed growth. Overall, this makes him one of the best Lords in the game due to his versatility alone, with his only weakness is that his promotion tends to come too early at a time where his stats can be somewhat lowish, but his ability to Motivate others earns him a spot in the higher tiers of play.
Goddamned Boss: Well, more like Goddamned Boss in Mook Clothing, but there's a Druid in Chapter 26 that wields a Seal Staff, causing units to be afflicted with Silence, making them unable to cast spells or use staves. Furthermore, he also is sitting on a throne, giving him both defense bonuses and avoid bonuses, meaning that a unit with at least some good skill will be needed to hit him. Fortunately, you can grab his Seal Staff from his corpse once he dies.
Good Bad Bugs:
- There is only one obtainable Generic Spear in the entire game, located on a tile far off to the side in Chapter 8. Since they're exclusive to soldiers, you'd think only Guest-Star Party Member Ace would be able to use it, but it turns out Storm can also use it due to the way weapon locks work. This gives him access to reliable melee weaponry before he even promotes.
- Letting Lyam kill enemies on enemy phase will give him ludicrous amounts of experience for whatever reason, meaning despite being a level 5 prepromote, he can level up extremely quickly and become your best bow user by a considerable margin until Gary shows up.
Low-Tier Letdown: While the hack did its best to balance out some of the units, some of them tend to fall behind.
- Sword units in general have a hard time in this game, as most of the enemies deployed in the maps are lance users. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, if not for the fact that most of the playable units are sword units, leaving at least two thirds of the cast at the mercy of the weapon triangle at all times.
- Both Storm and Arthur are pretty useful during the first part of the game where they can use their abilities to their finest, with Storm being an Horse Archer and Arthur being a Monk who uses Light Magic to hit poor enemy resistance stats. However, you don't get them back until Chapter 21, which by that point, their niches are filled by multiple units (Storm is overshadowed by Lyam, Haas and Zach being bow wielding units, and the former two are prepromoted AND horseback as well, while Arthur has to contend with Tamiko, Emma, and Anakin). As a result, they're often benched in more experienced playthroughs.
- Ace is pretty much a Master of None. In spite of having great growths, he has terrible bases and starts at a low level, and while it does scream Magikarp Power, in practice, his stats are going to be all over the place, but they're mostly below average. Furthermore, he has to contend with Rex, who doesn't have to contend with Ace's slow start and can promote instantly to Halberdier, which makes his name really Ironic.
- Logan is pretty much a Joke Character. While he has godlike speed, he also has to deal with the fact that he has to contend with Kelik, who is one of the best footlocked units in the game thanks to his 1-2 personal sword, and Tekun, who has better rounded-out stats in contrast with his Fragile Speedster build. Furthermore, recruiting him locks you out of recruiting Asch, who pretty much squashes him out in every stat and starts as a Hero, meaning that he can wield both swords and especially axes, while Logan has to deal with being swordlocked all the time. The final nail in the coffin is that if you do his map, Itsuke doesn't start out with a Energy Ring, and his map is generally considered harder compared to Asch's map.
- Mark is one of the few axe-wielding units in the game, and can be your only axe user for a while if you didn't recruit Asch. However, his promotion item is locked to Chapter 22, which is after Liquid joins, and he pretty much stomps him in every stat possible, along with having Lethality for some reason. He can be easily overlooked as a result.
- Yue has flat-out awful stats for his joining time, and while he does have good growths overall, as a Shaman, his weapons are Dark Tomes, which can weigh him down due to his terrible Constitution, even after promotion. Furthermore, if you're in need of a Dark Magic user, then Rana has superior stats and constitution compared to him, and has a decent staff rank as well.
- Sai, like every other Est unit, suffers from joining late and while he has decent growths overall, they're not enough to compensate for his poor performance. Furthermore, Gary, a prepromoted Warrior, joins with nearly his stats maxed out compared to Sai (albeit with a much later join time), and even has good ranks in both Axes and especially Bows. The final nail is that Howard also joins you if you meet his recruitment conditions in the same chapter Sai joins, making him more redundant than he was.
- Rachel is pitifully weak despite joining in Chapter 27. She also comes as a Sniper, arguably the worst promoted class in the game, without any fliers to kill or hordes of generics to gain experience from.
Memetic Mutation:
- "You, Devisian Knights. How much weight... can you handle?"^Explanation
- Blazer did it first.^Explanation
- This is the only Fire Emblem game that has a Canadian.^Explanation
- "This divine lightning shall pierce the skies!"^{Explanation UNMARKED SPOILERS}
- fire emblem the last promise 2^Explanation
Narm Charm: Pretty much everything to do with Kelik is considered extremely cheesy nowadays, but people have taken a liking to him regardless specifically because of how stupid it is.
Not-So-Cheap Imitation: The game became pretty infamous outside of the Fire Emblem fandom for being one of the few non-Pokémon rom hack bootlegs for the GBA to be mass-produced in China and being sold for dirt cheap online (alongside fellow mods Fire Emblem: Requiem, Fire Emblem: Corrupt Theocracy, and somehow both fan-translations of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade/Sword of Seals separately). This lead to a bunch of resellers flooding the second-hand market with the fake yet functioning GBA cartridges and passing them as genuine FE games, sometimes even candidly so due to the carts' decent quality and realistic labels.
Recurring Fanon Character: Kelik became one of the most, if not the most, popular Fire Emblem fan characters of all time largely due to him being a walking 2000's edgy Anti-Hero that is so hard to take seriously that he became very memorable in an instant. There are tons of fanart made for him, is subjected to numerous memes, and is also often joked as one of the many characters suggested to be added to crossover material like Heroes and Engage.
Scrappy Weapon: Charge, the personal weapon of Eduardo, is a brave weapon that you get very early on... and it has 5 might alongside poor hit, meaning that even if Eduardo has enough strength to compensate for it, it tends to perform worse than an Iron Lance. It's better to have Eduardo get an actual brave weapon rather than use Charge, and even if it's used, it's mostly during Eduardo's joining chapter, where he is initially underwhelming but can grow into a decent Paladin.
Signature Line: "You, Devisian knights. How much weight...can you handle?", mainly for all the memes surrounding the quote.
That One Boss: General Lanmark is basically Murdock on steroids. While in The Binding Blade, at least Murdock had a weakness in that he has a low speed stat. Not Lanmark; apparently he forgot that Generals are supposed to be slow and instead starts out at the speed cap for Generals, and his other stats are not lacking. To make matters worse, not even critical hits can even break through him, as he basically has an Iron Rune, which negates critical hits, and the only way to get around it is to have a speed-blessed Althares or Shadow, and the former has to be promoted into Assassin, or use the normally Awesome, but Impractical Triangle Attack (and keep in mind, this is one of the few situations where the Triangle Attack is actually useful for once, which says a lot about him). Thankfully, he still suffers from the weakness of Generals in that Anti-Armor weapons do an good number on him, but good luck trying to get past his massive defense in 25 turns.
That One Level:
- Chapter 20 is just plain evil, thanks to the Wyvern Riders and Wyvern Lords. They'll swarm your position from the get-go, and you'll need to contain them quickly before they overwhelm you, which is far easier said than done. You get three new characters, two of whom are painfully underleveled and quite fragile (the third is a powerful Paladin, and you'll need him to survive). On top of that, the map is huge, forcing your army through a narrow path full of forest tiles which slow your movement speed down, and it's filled with tough enemies which can pose a serious threat to you. Oh, and the boss is painful too, a level 10 Wyvern Lord with good stats and a very powerful Sylmeria Lance. You do have Aircalibur available for your mages, one of whom is good and one who's amazing, so you'd think that would be the perfect choice. Surprise! Sylmeria has the same effect as a Delphi Shield. And to add insult to injury, a character you recruit in a village at the beginning of the map knows why you're being attacked by these Wyvern Riders and could possibly prevent the whole thing, but for some reason, he just doesn't see fit to tell your army's leader what's going on.
- Chapter 25 is the beginning of The Last Promise's infamous Difficulty Spike. The generic Mooks go from having generally inferior stats to your units to having equal stats or even being outright stronger than them. Though this is the standard for the rest of the game, Chapter 25 is particularly heinous for being the first map with such difficult enemies being the norm. Add this to a map filled with overlapping enemy ranges – meaning that you'll rarely be taking damage from one enemy at a time – and you have a recipe for many a lost unit. Chapter 25 in particular also seems to be the level where the RNG decides to just do what it wants in terms of hit probability. An enemy unit with a 38% hit chance can smack you twice in a row will you end up missing on a double attack with 73%. The boss, General Lanmark, has incredibly high stats compared to what you've seen already, especially his defenses, meaning that he'll be a pain to kill. In addition, you'll need to divide your forces to take on this chapter since the map has three main routes, weakening your group's overall power even more... and you can't take it slow and carefully either, since Chapter 25x can only be unlocked by completing this chapter in a certain number of turns.
Vindicated by History: When The Last Promise initially released, it was mocked and decried as "cringe" by members of the Fire Emblem fandom at the time for its clichéd plot and characters and unbalanced map design, which even led to bullying levied at Blazer, causing him to reduce his online presence at the time. As the years went on however, said bullying was called out for the bad behaviour it was, and the fandom at large gained an appreciation for the game (if still a somewhat ironic one).

YMMV / The Last Promise

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