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Fire Emblem

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Fire Emblem (Franchise)
Together we fight. Together we live.note 
Fire Emblem,
Your spirit shall shine
Across the generations — now, and for all time!
Fire Emblem,
Heroes bringing us hope's light
Journey from distant worlds to still the coming night!
— Fire Emblem Heroes Theme

For the game in the series released under the title Fire Emblem in Western countries, see Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade.

Fire Emblem is a medieval fantasy tactical RPG series created by Shouzou Kaga and developed in-house by Nintendo's Intelligent Systems, also responsible for Turn-Based Strategy series Nintendo Wars. The series pioneered strategic role-playing games, later popularized in the West by titles such as Final Fantasy Tactics, and has spanned fifteen games so far on seven systems. Moreover, Fire Emblem, being roughly as old as genre mainstays Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, helped make and codify many elements of the Strategy RPG genre.

The series has an interesting history for one of Nintendo's longest-running franchises. Started in 1990, Fire Emblem was originally Japan-exclusive with no Western releases, with its first games on the Famicom and later games landing on the Super Famicom. Its existence was relatively obscure overseas until 2001, when characters Marth (from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem) and Roy (from the then-unreleased Game Boy Advance title Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade) made their debut internationally as unlockable fighters in Super Smash Bros. Melee. The two characters proved to be very popular among the English fanbase, garnering enough interest in the franchise to warrant the international release of the next game, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade; all subsequent games in the series have been released worldwide bar the twelfth title, New Mystery of the Emblem. Incidentally, Marth and Roy were originally only supposed to be in the Japanese version, included to promote the upcoming release of The Binding Blade; the intent was for the localization team to dummy them out in the translation process as they would theoretically hold no interest to international gamers.

The series' appeal comes from its unique flavoring of the typical grid-based strategy game with RPG Elements. The games also emphasize Character Development and story in addition to strategy and unit building — even relatively minor characters (of which there are a great many) included mostly just to flesh out the player's army receive lots of Backstory and interaction with the other characters.

Another thing to note about the series is how it handles the deaths of playable characters: if somebody in the player's army dies, they usually stay dead. If a game does have a method to undo death, it is usually hard to come by and has limited uses. Later games downplay this aspect with an optional Casual Mode, which revives any downed characters at the end of each chapter at no cost.

While Fire Emblem games can range in difficultly depending on the title, they are generally on the harder side relative to Nintendo's standard fare. New Mystery of the Emblem introduced a number of now standard beginner-friendly features (like the aforementioned Casual Mode) to be more inclusive, though they are still capable of giving you a run for your money with the higher difficulties.

In terms of narrative, the series is semi-linear. While each game takes place in a Medieval European Fantasy setting with similar motifs shared between them, there are multiple verses with their own canons. Games sharing a verse might not even be directly connected by the story; for instance, Awakening takes place thousands of years after Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light but doesn't build off of the latter's plot beyond a single shared character.

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    Main Games 
  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light (Famicom, 1990): The very first game, starring Prince Marth and taking place on the continent of Archanea. Due to being the first game, Early-Installment Weirdness abounds. It would finally see localization 30 years later in 2020 on the Nintendo Switch.
  • Fire Emblem Gaiden (Famicom, 1992): The second game of the series, following protagonists Alm and Celica. While it takes place in the same universe as its predecessor, the plot is unrelated and focuses on the continent of Valentia. Notable for having more traditional RPG elements like towns and explorable dungeons, and being one of the only entries to not have Breakable Weapons.
  • Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (Super Famicom, 1993): The third game of the series, once again starring Marth. Unlike Gaiden it is a direct sequel to Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, and even includes an abridged remake of that game's story.
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (Super Famicom, 1996): The fourth game, set on the continent of Jugdral, which is in the same world as the previous titles but also takes place hundreds or thousands of years prior, according to Word of God. The Hero is Sigurd, but after a Time Skip his son Seliph becomes the protagonist. Notable for having the darkest storyline of the entire franchise, introducing the Weapon Triangle, and being the first Fire Emblem to utilize Relationship Values.
  • BS Fire Emblem: Archanea War Chronicles (Super Famicom / Satellaview, 1997): A collection of four Satellaview broadcast maps based on the Mystery of the Emblem engine, telling a number of side-stories set before the beginning of Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. The nature of these games' distribution system makes them difficult to emulate at all, never mind with accuracy, so they generally go overlooked. These four maps are generally considered to comprise a single game and are for the most part not counted in the numbering scheme of the Fire Emblem series, though Guinness World Records does count them.
  • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (Super Famicom, 1999): The fifth game in the franchise, and the last one handled by series creator Shouzou Kaga. An interquel to Genealogy of the Holy War that takes place during its Time Skip. Stars Leif, Sigurd's nephew and Seliph's cousin, as he tries to liberate his country. Introduces Fog of War to the series and has the unique fatigue mechanic, which potentially makes units unusable for a chapter if they become too tired.
  • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (Game Boy Advance, 2002): The sixth game, starring Roy on the continent of Elibe in the first brand new continuity. Introduces the Supports system, a revamp of the Relationship Values used in Genealogy of the Holy War that would go on to be used by most later games. Also the first game to have multiplayer in the form of Player Versus Player battles, which became a semi-recurring feature strictly for the handheld titles.
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (Game Boy Advance, 2003): The seventh game, a prequel to The Binding Blade, and the first game to release outside Japan. It stars Eliwood, Roy's father, as he teams up with his friends Lyn and Hector to fight the group known as the Black Fang. It's the first game in the series to utilize alternate story paths with the unlockable Hector's Tale. Also the first Fire Emblem game with a defined and customizable Player Character (known as the Tactician), though they are a noncombatant. In the West, it was initially released with the simplified title Fire Emblem; the "Blazing Blade" subtitle was retroactively applied in 2017 to reduce ambiguity coinciding with its content appearing in Fire Emblem Heroes.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (Game Boy Advance, 2004): The eighth game in the series, taking place in the new world of Magvel. It stars the twins Eirika and Ephraim of Renais as they deal with the sudden antagonism of their southern neighbor Grado and try to stop the resurrection of the Demon King. It serves as something of a Spiritual Successor to Gaiden, bringing back some of said game's exclusive mechanics such as a traversable world map and random monster encounters on said map, as well as implementing its own ideas like branching class promotion. It was re-released on the Nintendo 3DS as one of the ten GBA games distributed for free as part of the Ambassador Program.
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (Nintendo GameCube, 2005): The ninth game in the series, taking place on the continent of Tellius, which is home to two races, the Beorc and the Laguz. It stars Ike, the first protagonist to not be royalty or nobility, as he finds himself inheriting his father's mercenary company after the latter's death, and serving the head of a liberation army for Princess Elincia, whose homeland of Crimea had been conquered by Daein's Mad King Ashnard. It is also the first console Fire Emblem installment to be released internationally and the first to make the Video Game 3D Leap.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii, 2007): The tenth game and a sequel to Path of Radiance, centered around a new protagonist, Micaiah, alongside returning protagonists Ike and Elincia as they are caught up in the conflict between the two races of Tellius. Introduces a mechanic where discrepancies in terrain height would affect combat (though this was never used again) and reimplements 3rd-tier Character Class promotions from Gaiden.
  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Nintendo DS, 2008): The eleventh game in the franchise, a remake of the first game Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. Changes the gameplay of the original to be more in line with the modern titles and introduces the ability to reclass characters.
  • Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow (Nintendo DS, 2010): The twelfth game, a remake of the third game Mystery of the Emblem that was only released in Japan, and includes remade versions of the four maps from BS Fire Emblem as extra content. The Avatar/My Unit, first seen in The Blazing Blade as a Non-Action Guy, returns in this game as a fully-playable character with more customization options (default name Kris). Also introduces Casual Mode, a difficulty option that turns off the Permadeath mechanic and would become a mainstay in all future titles.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening (Nintendo 3DS, 2012): The thirteenth game in the series. Stars yet another royal blue haired swordsman named Chrom alongside another playable Avatar/My Unit (default name Robin), set in the same universe as the first five games but thousands of years in the future. The game brings back the world map system of Gaiden and The Sacred Stones, reintroduces the skill system along with a graphical style reminiscent of the Tellius games with CGI models for cutscenes and a Seinen art style for character portraits, with a 2.5D map and 3D fights. A new feature introduced allows units to join in on allies' attacks or block enemy attacks for one another. It would be the first game released by Nintendo to support paid Downloadable Content, allowing players to purchase new maps to challenge themselves and recruit alternate versions of characters from previous Fire Emblem installments.
  • Fire Emblem Fates (Nintendo 3DS, 2015): The fourteenth game, also known in Japan as Fire Emblem if, developed by the same team behind Awakening with the story written by noted manga writer Shin Kibayashi. The game takes place in a whole new universe(!), centering on conflict between the glory-seeking Nohr and the peace-loving Hoshido, notably the first nation in the series to be based on feudal Japan. This time around, the Avatar/My Unit (default name Corrin) is the main character, born to the Hoshidan royal family but raised by the Nohrian royal family. In conjunction with this background, the game has for the first time three distinct storylines (which also have different gameplay styles) depending on whether the player chooses to ally with Hoshido, Nohr, or neither nation. Also featured in this installment is the first new major weapon type since the original game, shurikens and daggers designed for debuffing targets, and a return to Gaiden's unbreakable weapon system.
  • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Nintendo 3DS, 2017): The fifteenth game in the series, and a remake of the second game, Gaiden. Sticks to the original's mechanics while also implementing modern offerings like Supports and Casual Mode. Also introduces Mila's Turnwheel, an item that can undo actions or even restart battles a set number of times, and adds a fatigue mechanic that inflicts stat penalties on units that are used too much. The setting is also expanded upon with a more in-depth story and new post-game content that ties into Awakening's backstory.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Nintendo Switch, 2019): The sixteenth game in the series, and the series' return to consoles since 2007's Radiant Dawn. The game's setting is the continent of Fódlan, which is divided into three powerful nations. The player controlled protagonist (default name Byleth) is a newly-recruited professor of the Officer's Academy, a Military Academy located in the center of the continent and overseen by the Church of Seiros. The students attending the academy are from all three nations, and as such the students are grouped into houses for each nation, with each house being currently led by an heir to their respective nation. Amongst the new mechanics introduced in Three Houses is that individual units can now be accompanied by a squadron of troops. Three Houses is also the first game to have another developer working on the game alongside Intelligent Systems, namely Koei Tecmo Games, who previously collaborated on the franchise with Fire Emblem Warriors.
  • Fire Emblem Engage (Nintendo Switch, 2023): The seventeenth game in the series. Set on the continent of Elyos, home to four kingdoms who sealed away a Fell Dragon a thousand years prior to the game's story. Much like Awakening, the game includes the ability to summon previous characters from previous Fire Emblem titles, but this time, the ability to call heroes from other worlds is a key part of the plot.

    Spin-Off Material 

You can vote on the best game in the series HERE.

As previously mentioned, Fire Emblem is one of the franchises featured in Super Smash Bros., Nintendo's Massive Multiplayer Crossover series, debuting in Super Smash Bros. Melee due to popular demand from the Japanese fanbase. Melee features Marth and Roy as unlockable playable characters; Brawl keeps Marth but drops Roy in favor of Ike, adds Lyndis as an Assist Trophy, and features the Castle Siege stage, a nonspecific amalgamation of typical location themes and tropes present throughout the series as a whole with a stylistic focus on the Tellius games. The fourth entry has Marth, Ike, and Lyndis reprising their respective roles, and introduces content from Awakening, namely Lucina and Robin (taking on their default name and appearance, while retaining the choice of both male and female variations) as playable fighters, Chrom making a cameo appearance to assist in Robin's Final Smash, and Regna Ferox's arena as a stage for the 3DS version. The Wii U version features a nonspecific Coliseum stage instead. Later DLC brought back Roy as a playable fighter and also introduced Corrin from Fates (available in both male and female variants). Ultimate brings back all Fire Emblem representatives along with adding Chrom as an Echo Fighter of Roy (though Robin's Final Smash remains unchanged) and adding Tiki and the Black Knight as Assist Trophies. Byleth was added later as part of the first Fighters Pass for Ultimate, and comes with a new stage, Garreg Mach Monastery, which features various characters from Three Houses in the background.

See also: TearRing Saga and its sequel Berwick Saga for the PlayStation, and Vestaria Saga for the PC. These are all Creator-Driven Successor titles made by Fire Emblem creator Shouzou Kaga after he left Intelligent Systems and the franchise.

This series as a whole provides examples of:

    A-B 
  • Absurdly High Cap:
    • Fire Emblem Gaiden: Unlike its predecessor, the general stat cap besides HP is 40, instead of 20. However, because growth rates are relatively low and the level cap at 20 for all three tiers of classes, you will never witness a character reach the cap. It will require a lot of Level Grinding and only if the character is in the Mercenary class line, because for some reason, Dread Fighters can class down to Villager and repeat the promotion over and over again.
    • Downplayed in games, like Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Fire Emblem Fates, and Fire Emblem Engage, where the stat cap is higher than 30. While they are high compared to other games, due to characters having high stat growths in their specialized stat and the way the game is set up, it is possible for you to reach the cap.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening has stat caps that can go as high as 50, with character's personal stat cap increases them up to a certain amount. While the cap stats are overkill in the main story, it becomes much more realistic to achieve during the postgame, borderline mandatory in Apotheosis.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses takes it to the extreme with its stat caps. Unlike other games, stat caps is determined by character, not the class, and their caps can go so high that it is actually impossible to cap a stat, when the endgame tends to be around Level 40 and the game allows you to grind up to Level 99. For example, Dimitri's strength cap is 87, so unless you give him a lot of strength-increasing stat boosters, you will never see the number in green text.
  • Action Girl:
    • Tons of them. Once you start playing a game, expect your army to be joined by plenty of enormous badasses both male and female, including some beautiful girls who kick tons of ass. Armies and mercenary groups in Fire Emblem are very equal-opportunity as far as gender is concerned, which is quite surprising considering the medieval-fantasy setting the series takes place in.
    • Cranked up a notch in Awakening, where females have mostly exclusive access to the crazy-useful "Galeforce" ability, which lets them have another full turn if they defeat an enemy. Watch your Amazon Brigade smash their way through the map!
    • Engage also cranks it up a notch, in that every single female character who joins is an Action Girl from the get-go and most of them can clean house.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness:
    • The remakes of the Archanea games feature characters that are much nicer looking compared to the original ones, where the amount of detail on characters is restricted by hardware limitations and the lack of an actual artist on character design.
    • Similarly, Shadows of Valentia gave this treatment to the cast of Gaiden, as well as rectifying the previously very inconsistent designs of the cast.
  • Aerith and Bob: There are normal names like Guy, Joshua, Mia, and Edward, names that are rarely used modernly like Kieran, mythological references like Ogma and Roland, and Biblical names like Nabal.
  • Aggressive Play Incentive: The series has employed many of these over the years, such as treasures that must be recovered before thieves can escape with them, villages that must be visited before bandits destroy them, and neutral units on the field that that will be killed by enemies if not rescued quickly enough.
  • All-Accessible Magic: Downplayed. Magic is generally treated as a discipline to be learned rather than as an innate ability, with the series' elemental mages being of a generally scholarly bent in contrast to the divinely-powered priests and clerics. The reclassing mechanic seen in later games (from Shadow Dragon onward) allows most, if not all, of the playable characters to access magical powers in battle.
  • All Swords Are the Same:
    • Non-magical weapons are broken down into four categories: swords, lances, axes, and bows. Not accounting for all of the different styles and variations of weapons that different classes can wield, any character that can use a weapon type can use every weapon of that type. It's absurd enough in the GBA games when any sword used by a Hero becomes a claymore while it becomes a katana when wielded by a Swordmaster, but when it gets to where equipping it to an Assassin turns it into a pair of knives, it starts to get just a tad silly.
    • Averted in the Jugdral games and 3D games in general: a weapon has the same appearance regardless of who equips it.
    • Also subverted in some games, as there are weapons that are class exclusive, like the Myrmidons, who are usually depicted as katana wielders, wielding the more Japanese-styled swords in the series such as the Shamshir or the Wo Dao that the other sword-wielding class, Mercenaries, can't use.
    • Awakening averts this, as well, by giving each weapon its own unique model. Thieves and Assassins even use the full-size sword in a Reverse Grip style instead of using daggers like in past installments. Killing Edges are still represented as katanas, though.
    • Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Fates and Heroes puts daggers into their own weapon class, separate from swords.
  • All There in the Manual: A crapload of info about Genealogy's universe and background story is only revealed and / or told with more details in author's notes and guidebooks, such as the Treasure book and the now-closed blog of Shouzou Kaga (the creator of the series). The same applies to the Archanea games, with notably the Fire Emblem: The Complete book, and Drama CDs. In addition, Gaiden gets some additional backstory with the Valentian Accordion book.
  • Always Female: The Pegasus Knight and Troubadour classes are traditionally composed of nothing but women (though unplayable Pegasus Knight mooks showed up in Mystery). Fates is the only major exception, introducing Subaki and Shigure the Sky Knights and Forrest and Dwyer the Troubadours; it's noted in Subaki's support with Selena that Hoshidan pegasi and Nohrian falicorns are unique breeds that do accept male riders.
  • Always Male: The Fighter class was male-only until Fates introduced Charlotte, and Three Houses was the first to allow female party members to become Brigands. Pirates and Barbarians remain exclusive to males for now, however.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: Characters with asymmetrical features simply have these features flipped in spritework. The only exceptions are Nergal in The Blazing Blade and Chrom in Awakening, who do have proper unique sprites for facing both directions.
  • Ambition Is Evil: A recurring theme in the series, there will typically be at least one villain who is so ambitious that they often commit terrible crimes, such as Michalis, Caellach, or Ludveck.
  • Anachronism Stew: Happens a lot where fashion is involved in the pseudo-European worlds of Fire Emblem. The biggest offender is Vika, whose outfit looks like it came hot off the runway in modern Milan.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: Done in some of the games:
    • In The Blazing Blade, you play as Lyn for the first 10 chapters, then switch to Eliwood for the rest of the game.
    • In The Sacred Stones you play as Eirika for the first 5 chapters, switch to Ephraim for one "sidequest," then back to Eirika for three more chapters, and then you choose which character to follow for the rest of the game. (Whichever one you choose, you won't see the other for six more chapters.)
    • Radiant Dawn is split into four parts, and each part follows a different group. Although part two has a single plot, each chapter follows a different group within that plot; part 4 does something similar, with everyone split up into three groups.
  • Anime Hair: Surprisingly, for an anime-styled game series, despite the fact that a huge chunk of characters have technicolor hair for a medieval fantasy setting, the use of this trope in the franchise is mostly tame, as a lot of them have hair styles that could at least be considered "practical" regardless. However, this doesn't stop the fact that some like Heath and Elise have played it straight.
  • Animorphism: Various titles in the series feature characters that can shapeshift into dragons, called "Manaketes". Path of Radiance adds different species of felines and birds, and Radiant Dawn adds wolves, all of which are called "Laguz". Awakening adds rabbits, called "Taguel", though the one you get (who is called the last of her kind) says that there are Taguel in faraway lands that can turn into other animals, suggesting they're just different words for the same thing. Fates introduces Wolfskin, werewolf-like shapeshifters, and Kitsune, which are fox shapeshifters.
  • Anti-Air: Bows and wind magic are often effective against flying units such as wyverns and pegasi.
  • Anti-Armor: Armorslayers, Heavy Spears, Hammers and Rapiers are effective against armored foes, as are most Lord-exclusive weapons. Magic is a less extreme version of this, receiving no damage bonus but using the target's Resistance stat (which, for armored units, is generally quite low) instead of their Defense.
  • Anti-Cavalry: Long Swords, Zanbatos, Halberds, and Horseslayers are effective against mounted units, as are most of the unique weapons your Lord units start with or receive early on.
  • Anti Poop-Socking: In Awakening, if you've been playing for a long time, Anna will pop up on the bottom screen to remind you to take a break every so often, just like most 3DS games.
  • Anyone Can Die:
    • With how they treat death, the game was apparently designed with that thought in mind. The player can avert this, but it becomes irritatingly difficult. From New Mystery onwards, the games offer a Casual Mode that stops all non-story related deaths. However, if any of the main characters or protected die, it's a legit Game Over.
    • Completely averted in Fire Emblem Fates with the "Phoenix Mode" option, which is only available on the easiest difficulty setting. Even if your Lord character dies, they'll revive on the next turn and you won't get a Game Over.
    • Played with in the case of Heroes, in which sections like the "Grand Hero Battle" require for your whole team to survive the battle and a single death yields a Game Over. Other sections like the "Story Maps" allow you to spend Orbs (the in-game currency) or "Light's Blessing" to both recover your dead units and poise them with their Special immediately. If you're out of Orbs, better ready your wallet or otherwise hit the roof.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Yes, the games do expect you to fight armies of fifty to over a hundred enemies with only twelve to fifteen people. When you usually have about thirty to forty characters to choose from at that point. Averted in the fourth game, but you only get up to twenty-four units at a time anyway.
  • Arbitrary Weapon Range: The Ballistas have minimum ranges as do regular bows-and-arrows. If you surround an archer with four units, they can't move and can't attack.
  • Arc Number: The Number 777, which is considered good luck, has appeared in some games.
    • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light — The legendary Hero, Anri, defeats the shadow dragon, Medeus, on the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year.
    • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War — The continent of Jugdral is liberated and peace is restored in the year 777.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: Inverted. Nearly all of the heroes are of royal or at least noble lineage and except for the occasional Big Bad, nearly all other characters of blue blood, especially rulers, are usually shown to be open-minded, kind, helpful, and actually caring for their people. It's simultaneously played straight since many enemies are also nobles, with a tendency for minor enemy nobles to be of the simply jerkish, power-abusive type, whereas enemy kings tend to have greater, world-changing, but malevolent plans and intend to pull them off at all costs.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: The spell, Luna, as well as the skill of the same name in games that have skills, ignores Defense and Resistance. The second half of Aether (Ike and later Chrom and his family's signature skills) is also Luna. The mage/sage/archmage mastery skill Flare negates enemy Resistance before attacking.
  • Art Evolution:
    • The series used semi-realistic sprites for battle until the GBA era, where it switched to a more cartoony, expressive style. As of Path of Radiance, they've switched back to realistic models, although Radiant Dawn uses more vibrant colors to make the models stand out.
    • The Sacred Stones had also been experimenting with pre-rendered 3D graphics for some of the new units and spells. The next handheld game, Shadow Dragon, then primarily used a semi-3D style.
    • Part of the reason for the Game Boy Advance titles' Art Evolution was that they were on the Game Boy Advance, at a time when the standard model was still out there. When Sacred Stones came out, the frontlit SP was around for awhile, and thus they used a slightly darker palette (especially evident in the menus, which are a lot darker brown.)
    • Also, you can really see the Art Evolution when you look through the series. They couldn't afford a dedicated artist until around the Jugdral series.
  • The Artifact: Some translated terms were kept over subsequent games, even when it no longer fits. The Life Drain spell Resire (with no clear etymology) was considered holy magic due to its association with Clerics since its inception in Gaiden, but was given the scary name of "Nosferatu" by the English translation due to being turned into dark magic in the GBA series. As more games kept associating the tome with light magic (aside from Awakening and Fates), the name Nosferatu sticks out like a sore thumb.
  • Artifact Title: Averted. With the exception of Jugdral (where it gets a brief mention in 4's ending and calls it "seal of fire" instead of Gratuitous English), every continent is given its own "Fire Emblem".
  • Artistic License – Statistics:
    • In early FE games, hits were checked by rolling a number between 1 and 100. For FE6 onward, it instead rolls twice and takes the average. For a 50% hit chance, the result is the same, but the further you get in one direction, the more skewed the probability becomes. In this way, the outcome of a fight will usually adhere to human misunderstandings about RNG; a 90% hit is nigh guaranteed and a 10% hit is extremely unlikely.
    • This is averted in critical percentage and is the reason with the rage against critical hits. Unlike the "roll twice, take average" of hits, the numbers shown for critical activation are actually those numbers as percentages. Thus a 10% critical rate activates more often than a "10%" hit rate, which is actually more like 1-2%.
  • Art-Shifted Sequel:
    • Binding Blade marked a shift in art style with the turn of the millennium. Character illustrations began to be done digitally and the designs slowly drifts away from the 90s fantasy flair of the Jugdral games.
    • Awakening was designed by a different artist than the previous titles, looking more Seinen.
  • Attack Failure Chance: Devil weapons, like the Devil Axe and Devil Sword, have a chance of Self-Damaging Attack Backfire. In Fire Emblem Gaiden, there is only the Shadow Sword, since axes don't exist in the player's hand, which has a similar effect to the Devil Axe, but Dread Fighters are immune to it. In most games, the backfire rate is decreased by the unit's Luck stat, but, in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, it is decreased by the unit's displayed Level instead. Regardless of the reduction, Devil weapons will always have at least 1% to backfire. Hope you don't get a critical hit when the Devil Axe backfires. Since Fire Emblem Fates, Devil weapons decrease your HP when you attack with it.
  • Autosave: The Game Boy Advance titles all have a continuous autosave in case of battery death. If the game is turned off, you can choose to continue from the start of your most recent turn when you play again.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • Triangle Attacks give an automatic critical, but require three specific units of the same type (usually pegasi) to surround an enemy, and many enemies you'd like to Triangle have at least 2 sides blocked, preventing its use. For flier trios, the third member usually suffers from limited availability (either latejoiners like Est, route-exclusives like Farina, or both in case of Juno), limiting the opportunity to use it. Shadows of Valentia also nerfed the Triangle Attack to no longer guarantee a critical hit and costs a huge sum of hitpoints to cast.
    • If you're playing one of the games where the units who can Triangle Attack are fliers, and the game has Movement conservation after attacks for mounted and flying, you can execute up to three Triangle Attacks in a turn (four in Radiant Dawn). It's still a lot of hassle, though.
    • Mages in Path of Radiance, upon promotion, can learn to use knives instead of staves, if they want. While it sounds theoretically awesome to have a unit that can both use weapons and magic, in practice, it's really useless, because: 1) Physical Strength and Magic are separate stats. Guess which one knives use, and which one mages barely have anything of! 2) Mages are really squishy, so they're better off attacking from range anyway. 3) The most practical use for knives, therefore, would be to defeat an enemy with a high Magic Resistance. In that case, you'd be better off using a physical fighter to begin with. 4) Healing staves in Fire Emblem are Boring, but Practical to the max and even grant a mage extra EXP when in use. Trading them off for knives is a very bad deal.
  • Back from the Dead: The games occasionally allow you to skirt the Permadeath mechanic, but there's always some sort of drawback that makes it Awesome, but Impractical.
    • The Archanea games have the Aum Staff (with the exception of Book 2 of Mystery, which has five total uses). It can resurrect one unit, but it is always found in the second-to-last chapter (or again, in Book 2, the second-to-last part of the final chapter), it requires an A-rank in staves to use in the DS remakes, and it is locked to Elice and Yuliya (in all appearances) and Caeda, Maria, Minerva, Sheena, and Nyna (in the remakes).
    • Gaiden and its remake Shadows of Valentia are the kindest about this: it has the Lion Head Statues. There are two on Alm's route and one on Celica's route; the Fear Mountain Shrine, the Dragon Shrine, and the Shadows of Valentia incarnation of the Secret Shrine can revive up to three units each, while the Gaiden incarnation of the Secret Shrine can revive 5 (but shares its uses with a Defense statue). This totals 11 resurrections in Gaiden and 9 in Shadows of Valentia.
    • Genealogy of the Holy War has the Valkyrie Staff. It comes surprisingly early for a resurrection staff (Chapter 3 in the first generation and Chapter 8 or 9 in the second) and can revive one unit before needing to be repaired, but this is astoundingly expensive, costing 30,000G a pop. It is also locked to Claud and his staff-wielding son, if he has one.
    • Fates gives us Bifröst. It has the loosest usage requirements among the resurrection staves; you only need to have an S-rank in staves. However, it is found in the second-to-last chapter before the two-part endgame in Conquest and Revelation, it is totally unavailable in Birthright, it can only bring back the last unit who died on the map it is used on, and the required S-rank is only available for the Maid/Butler class, meaning Strategists and all of the other staff-wielding classes are out in the cold.
    • Warriors lets you restore defeated units as many times as you need, but each time costs 300,000G and ten valuable gold materials that would be better spent upgrading your units.
  • Badass Army: It is entirely possible for the player's army to slaughter their enemies to the man while sustaining no casualties while up against armies between twice and five times their size.
  • Badass Family: Genealogy of the Holy War and Awakening are pretty much defined by this, as both involve children characters whose parents depend upon your support decisions.
  • Badass Longcoat:
    • Raven's and Linus' Hero outfit, Lloyd the Swordmaster, Soren and Sothe's 3rd tier outfits, etc.
    • The art design for Genealogy of the Holy War (going by the pictures for the Trading Card Game) uses this for about half the characters…
  • Badass Normal: Any character who only uses physical weapons has the potential to become just as strong as any of the magic users.
  • Bag of Spilling: Zigzagged in all of the sequels in the series.
    • Fire Emblem Gaiden: Played straight by Palla and Catria. Justified by Est since she has retired from active military service. Averted by Camus/Zeke.
    • Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem: Generally played straight. Some people avert it (like Hardin and the Wolfguard), while Est's above-mentioned excuse still holds water and Arran has contracted a deadly illness during the timeskip.
    • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: Due to the latter's status as a midquel, any second generation character who appears in Thracia retroactively plays it straight in Genealogy. Finn, a surviving first generation character, also plays it straight in Thracia.
    • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade: Generally justified. 20 years have passed since the prequel, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, and anyone who appears in both games are way past their prime in the former (with the exception of Karel).
    • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Generally averted. With the exceptions of Ilyana and Jill, all of the returning characters start as mid-level second tier units or better.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening: Averted by Tiki. She starts out as a level 20 manakete who will usually be statistically superior to Nowi at the same level.
    • Fire Emblem Fates: Played straight by Owain/Odin, Inigo/Laslow, and Severa/Selena, who all start as mid-level first tier units.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: The attractive characters are usually good while the ugly ones are usually evil. If someone on the enemy side is unusually attractive (and they aren’t the boss of that chapter), best to spare them because they might switch sides and join you if the right character talks to them.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • At the end of Act 2 of Radiant Dawn, Lucia is about to be executed by rebel Crimean forces with Queen Elincia looking on helplessly. Just as Lucia is about to be hung, the Greil Mercenaries show up out of nowhere to rescue her in a heroic fashion.
    • Also, in Chapter 1 of Genealogy of the Holy War, Eldigan and the Cross Knights massacre Elliot's soldiers when they attempt to capture Evans.
  • Big Fun: Brom and his daughter Meg of Tellius are pretty much our heaviest characters of their gender. However, they both remain rather upbeat and cheerful, if not slightly oblivious.
  • Black Knight: Camus from Shadow Dragon, Ares from Genealogy of the Holy War, and the Black Knight of Tellius are all knights with black armor.
  • Black Mage: The recurring Mage class can typically use all three types of elemental magic. Certain installments will have various other flavors of this, as well.
  • Black Magic: Dark magic, which is often used by series villains and is said to have a corrupting influence that the weaker-willed normally succumb to. Gaiden has a set of magic literally called "Black Magic," but it's the Elemental Magic seen in other games, only Cast from Hit Points instead.
  • Black Screen of Death: If you get a game over, the screen will fade to black followed by a giant GAME OVER sign as sad music plays in the background.
  • Blade on a Rope: The General Class in the GBA games have chains connected to their axes and lances, but it is used to retract the weapon back during direct combat.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Spanish translation of The Blazing Blade has an amount of typos that counts by dozens, and Fae was turned into a boy for no reason. Later games avert this, except Amelia from The Sacred Stones, who also refers to herself as male when promoting.
  • Blow You Away: Wind tomes, which conjure everything from slicing blades of wind to tornadoes and even ice.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Most of your primary Axe-users are loudmouthed musclemen, and it seems to be a personality requirement for Berserkers.
  • Bodyguard Crush: Its common for a bodyguard to care for their liege in more then a platonic fashion.
  • Bootstrapped Theme:
    • "Together We Ride" (the character recruitment theme from the original game) is commonly associated with the series thanks to its prominent usage in the Smash Bros. series, as well as its reuse in FE7.note 
    • The general theme for divine dragons, Legend of the Divine Dragon - A, is usually associated with Tiki after she was given a slightly remixed version of this music in Shadow Dragon and later, in Awakening.
    • The music used for bittersweet victories, called After the Battle in the remake of Dark Dragon, was later used as a recruitment theme for knightly characters in Blazing Blade and as a theme for Elincia's knights in Path of Radiance, forever associating it with the idea of loyalty and knights rather than its original use as a bittersweet victory theme.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Cavaliers are probably the least "exotic" of all unit types, yet their mobility, ability to use two weapon types before promotion (with exceptions in the Jugdral and Tellius sagas), all-around good physical stats, and powerful promotions (which in earlier games were among the only physical units that would have any Resistance to speak of) make them the default go-to combatants.
    • Iron weapons are the weakest weapons in many games (compared to Steel or Silver) but cost the least, have the most uses, and are among the lightest, meaning that they are perfect for when low-leveled units can't effectively use Steel ones. Their cost-effectiveness also means that they're still usable as cheap secondary weapons to use on weaker enemies.
    • Heal staves are both the weakest and the most cost-effective staves in the game, and a good source of experience besides, especially in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, where promoted characters get as much experience from using them as non-promoted characters.
  • Bow and Sword in Accord:
    • Alm, after his promotion, Lyn, after her promotion, and the Nomad/Ranger/Horseman classes. Warriors can use both bows and axes, although they're limited to crossbows in Radiant Dawn. Certain generals and paladins can opt to use both lances and bows, too.
    • Assassins get this in Awakening, and the possibility of close and far ranged attack coupled with the ability to land an instant kill and pass through enemy spaces makes them the deadliest incarnation of the class yet.
  • Bowdlerise: In many of the games, mentions of drinking and swearing found in the original Japanese script get omitted by the localizations.
  • Breakable Weapons:
    • Almost all of the weapons, including tomes, have a finite amount of uses. The only two games that don't have them are Gaiden and Fates. In Gaiden, characters had "iron" weapons equipped by default and could equip weapons found in the field for additional power at the possible expense of certain stat penalties, while magic was learned by leveling up and was Cast from Hit Points. Fates has all the offensive equipment unbreakable, with each weapon quality tier providing certain stat bonuses and penalties, while healing staffs/rods still have limited uses.
    • Genealogy and Three Houses permit the player to spend money for weapon repairs at the forge. Three Houses also has Combats Arts, where their uses costs more weapon durability.
  • Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: Axes, one of the three main weapon groups, emphasize high power but low accuracy and are often wielded by large and brutish men. Women never use axes in early games, but more modern games give them axes to signify their dominance and strength.

    C-E 
  • Can't Drop the Hero: When the pre-battle preparation screen lets you choose which units to deploy, the main Lord is normally forced to participate. This sometimes extends to other characters relevant to the plot of the chapter or the game as a whole.
  • Cap:
    • Typically, characters can level up to level 20 in a base class before changing to a higher class and again going to level 20, making a combined cap of 40.
    • In Genealogy of the Holy War, promotion occurred at level 20 and the character then went on to cap at level 30.
    • In Radiant Dawn, laguz go up to 40, while beorc classes go up to 60 (20 for first tier class, 20 for second tier class, 20 for third tier class).
    • In the Shadow Dragon remake, Marth, ballista users, manaketes, and thieves can go up to level 30 to make up for not promoting.
    • Awakening works the same way as Shadow Dragon, where Dancers, Villagers, Manaketes, Taguel, and Conquerors can reach level 30 to make up for not promoting. Reclassing resets a character's level to 1, meaning you can effectively level them beyond their cap many times over, although an unseen internal tracker will severely slow down the experience gain.
    • Fates keeps the 20/20 level cap, but there's nine classes and two characters that can't promote at all, but have a level cap of 40, rather than the 30 from Shadow Dragon and Awakening. To balance it out, the Songstress, Dread Fighter, Dark Falcon, Ballistician, Witch, Lodestar, Vanguard, Grandmaster, and Great Lord classes have incredibly low stat growths. Felicia and Jakob, while they start as pre-promotes, have the stat growths of an unpromoted unit rather than a pre-promoted one. There's also an item which has been added called the Eternal Seal, which lets the character who uses it increase their max level cap by 5 each time they use one. However, there are three limitations to it: they can only use it as a promoted class, they can only use it when they're at max level, and each Seal is very expensive.
  • Cap Raiser:
    • In most games, an unpromoted unit's stats, except for HP and Luck, cap at 20. From Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade onward, promoting a unit will raise these caps. The cap of each stat can differ from class to class, but they can be as high as 30.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening has the Limit Breaker skill which raises the equipped unit's stat caps by 10.
    • Fire Emblem Fates has the Eternal Seal, which raises a character’s level cap by 5. This is important as, unlike in ‘’Awakening,'' there’s no way to reset a unit’s level. (It carries over between classes)
  • Carnival of Killers: A trope this franchise loves. Typically, it's a set of notable enemy commanders. Usually, when you start fighting them, it's a good sign that you're approaching the game's finale, due to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil kicking in and the enemy finally sending his elites after you. Sometimes, one of them can join your army instead. Usually overlaps with the Elite Four, though other numbers were observed as well. Sometimes each member comes with their own titles. Examples include:
    • Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light: The country/military leaders of Medeus' Dolhr Alliance — General Camus of Grust, King Michalis of Macedon, King Jiol of Gra, and the Evil Sorcerer Gharnef.
    • Mystery of the Emblem: Archanea’s regalia wielders — Emperor Hardin, Jeorge, and Astram, with the former leading them. Late in the game, the Wolfguard enter the story to voluntarily aid Hardin when the other regalia wielders defected and join Marth. They are Wolf, Sedgar, Vyland, and Roshea, Hardin's old subordinates back when he was the prince of Aurelis.
    • Genealogy of the Holy War: Each antagonistic kingdom you face has a set of their own generals. Grannvale in particular is so large that some of its dukedoms has their own sub-set of commanding generals.
    • The Binding Blade: Bern has the three Wyvern Generals — Murdock, Brunnya and Narcian. With Narcian's death, he was then replaced by Galle. Etruria has their own set of three generals — Douglas, Perceval, and Cecilia. The country temporarily betrays the Lycia Alliance, though they eventually rejoin the Alliance one by one.
    • The Blazing Blade: The Four Fangs, the best assassins in Black Fang. They each came with their own Red Baron titles — Ursula "the Blue Crow", Lloyd Reed "the White Wolf", Linus Reed "the Mad Dog", and Jaffar "the Angel of Death", all of whom report to Brendan Reed, the boss of the Black Fang. The game shows that membership in the Four Fangs is not static, as former Four Fangs members Jerme "the Death Kite" (demoted due to Jaffar being a better assassin) and Pascal Grentzer "the Crazed Beast" (ousted due to being too ruthless) make appearances, as well.
    • The Sacred Stones: Grado starts off with three generals — Duessel, Selena, and Glen. They are relatively benevolent Noble Top Enforcers, but later were joined by three shadier members taking advantage of the Grado Emperor’s sudden Face–Heel Turn. The new generals are the ambitious mercenary Caellach, Blood Knight Valter, and demon-worshipping Bishop Riev. Like the Black Fang, they also have titles: this time based on gemstones.
    • Path of Radiance: Daein's Four Riders — Petrine, Bertram, the Black Knight, and Bryce, all of whom report to the Ashnard "the Mad King". They are the successors to the Great Riders of Daein, who were themselves another Elite Four, and consisted of Gawain, Tauroneo, Lanvega, and the very same Bryce.
    • Radiant Dawn: The Begnion Senate.
    • New Mystery of the Emblem: The orphan assassins Katarina, Clarisse, and Legion. They were led by their caretaker Eremiya, who is brainwashed by Gharnef to raise his personal assassin squad.
    • Awakening: Walhart's four generals; Excellus, Cervantes, Pheros, and Yen’fay.
    • Fates: The royal siblings from the route you didn't choose serves as these. There is also King Garon and his personal commanders Hans, Iago, and Zola who antagonize you in all routes. In Revelation, Anankos revives three of the main characters' parents and used Gunter to serve as his commanders.
    • Three Houses: The Black Eagles serve this role if they were unrecruited back in Part 1 on the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind routes. Conversely, the Blue Lions and Knights of Seiros assume this role on the Crimson Flower route instead.
    • Engage: The Four Hounds serve as this, alongside elements of Elite Four. They act as the top enforcers under the order of Sombron and Veyle. They consist of Zephia, Griss, Marni, and Mauvier.
  • Career-Ending Injury: In some games, if a non-protagonist falls in battle but is too critical to the plot to die, they instead suffer this; still being alive but too crippled to fight anymore.
  • Casanova Wannabe: A fairly common character type in the series is the flirtatious male character, whose goals include impressing as many women as possible: Homer of Thracia 776, Saul of Binding Blade, Sain of Blazing Blade, and Gatrie of the Tellius series, to name a few.
  • Cast from Hit Points: All the magic in Gaiden is cast using a unit's HP, as is Micaiah's "Sacrifice" healing ability in Radiant Dawn.
  • Cast of Expies: A very strong example of the trope, and often a positive one at that. The series is filled with "Archetypes" which lays down a Recurring Element and what role they play such as a Jeigan, Medeus, or Camus. It allows for a great deal of diversity while still keeping a solid base to compare and contrast such things as stats or personality. Even outside of the archetypes there will be one or two characters who take up the idea of a unique character from a previous game and reinterpret it.
  • Casting a Shadow: Dark tomes, which conjure shadowy tendrils to attack enemies.
  • Cel Shading: Starting with Path of Radiance, any game with animated cutscenes utilize cel shading that sometimes pass off as looking hand-drawn. Almost all Nintendo Switch games also utilize this in-game, mostly for the character models.
  • Chained by Fashion: The Fighter class in Awakening sports fashionable chains hanging from their collar guard.
  • Chain Lethality Enabler: Galeforce, introduced in Awakening, allows a unit to move again that turn if it gets a kill after initiating an attack. Fates reintroduced the ability, but it was nerfed such that the kill has to be made by an attack unsupported by an ally.
  • Character Development: One of the reasons why the series is such a hit. It was rather sparse in the original three games, but four and five started to get better with it. It didn't really become notable until The Binding Blade, which added supports that also allowed the player to affect the ending, with certain characters having paired endings.
  • Character Level: Every character has one, even the healers.
  • Cherry Tapping: It's a good idea to use your weakest unit to finish off an enemy so they gain experience with little danger of death.
  • A Child Shall Lead Them: Sanaki, the empress of Begnion, is 10 years old in Path of Radiance and 13 in Radiant Dawn.
  • Child Soldiers: Many recruitable units are young children. The darker implications of this trope are occasionally discussed.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder:
    • Can happen due to the Point of View-change mechanics in Radiant Dawn. Of all characters, Jill probably holds the record for the total amount of times in a Verse where a character can be persuaded into switching sides note 
    • Naesala's no slouch in this department, though.
      Tibarn: King Kilvas has betrayed us? Again?!
  • Church Militant:
    • Several character classes such as the Monk, Bishop, and Valkyrie who can use magic to attack. There are also Priest and Cleric classes, which, while unable to do damage, can heal units and put enemies to sleep/berserk/silence with the right equipment.
    • Awakening does away with Light Magic. There goes the Monk class. Valkyries use the same magic as everyone else, but having a Cleric/Priest promote to a Staff/Magic class makes them indistinguishable from sages, so instead they promote to War Clerics/Monks, which is this trope as far as the series goes, using staves to heal but always keep an Axe on hand to deal heavy physical damage. Libra is the only natural War Monk you get, and personality-wise seems like a god-fearing pacifist through and through, but he appears as an NPC unit that you have to hurry to recruit quickly — not because he'll die, but because left alone he'll kill too much of the enemy, including another recruitable unit, with his Killer Axe and lines such as "Repent, Sinner!" and "Gods, forgive me" right before each slaying.
    • Three Houses has the Church of Seiros, a neutral power based in the middle of Fódlan. It has its own private army which answers directly to the church's Archbishop, and is employed usually against bandits or when other territories require its assistance.
  • Class Change Level Reset: In most games, after a character reaches a high enough level in their base class and uses a special class-changing item (in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, one only needs to gain a level after reaching the level 20 cap), that character's level reverts to 1. However, their stats, stat caps, and abilities sharply increase in the process. The exception being Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, where you don't reset to level 1 and have a 30 level cap instead of the traditional 20. Fates did away with the mechanic for characters reclassing via a Heart, Partner, or Friendship Seal. Reclassing keeps the character's current level, no matter which class they switch to, although the classes that can't promote will change their level to the combined equivalent if the character in question is promoted.
  • Clever Crows: One of the bird laguz tribes in this series is the raven tribe. They fit most of the archetypes — often ending up being fought as enemies early in the game, but ultimately having had a perfectly good reason for their actions — and their leader's Leitmotif is called "Wheeling Corby".
  • Climax Boss: The series tend to have one of these in the early-game, usually of the General class. A decent number of them tend to be a Disc-One Final Boss as well.
  • Color-Coded Armies: A Type I in the sprite-based games, moving to a Type IV with the move to 3D models.
  • Color-Coded Elements: Five recurring elemental powers in the series are designated into colors: Fire (Red), Wind (Green), Thunder (Yellow, sometimes Blue), Light (Yellow), Dark (Purple).
  • Combat Medic: There are a number of Character Classes that can both heal allies and fight, such as the Sage and Strategist. They are usually not available as basic classes, only becoming available via Class Changing midgame or lategame.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
    • Enemy units are completely unaffected by Fog of War.
    • In some games, the enemy units may receive reinforcements — at the start of the enemy phase. This basically means that, short of prescience on your part, an enemy can appear out of a fort or the edge of the map that you thought was safe and beat down your helpless healers and archers before you can react.
    • In Genealogy of the Holy War, when enemies have, say, an Iron Axe (close range) and a Hand Axe (can be thrown, but weaker), they will switch between these weapons depending on what range you are attacking them from. Naturally, you cannot do the same thing. Also, in this game, enemy weapons have unlimited uses, which is especially annoying when the enemies have powerful healing or status-inflicting staves (which usually have less than 10 uses when you are the one using them).
    • Later games are fond of giving enemy units unique skills or illegal skill combinations the player can't access to.
  • Convenient Color Change: When units switch alliances.
  • Crippling Overspecialization:
    • Archers are helpless in a melee unless they're the kind who have swords and horses too, and some classes, like Clerics and Priests, have no combat skills whatsoever.
    • Radiant Dawn attempted to balance this more by giving Crossbows to Archers and allowing staves to be used as weapons should a staff-user be attacked (though "No damage!" is a common reaction to getting hit with a staff). That being said, Healers should still never be attacked, though through a combination of several factors that does not include said Crossbow, Shinon is almost a Game-Breaker. Also, as long as a healer has a staff equipped, they treat themselves at the beginning of each turn with it (if the staff inflicts a status effect, it cures it) with no cost. This brought about a new way of Level Grinding.
  • Critical Hit: A series staple. The chance for a critical to trigger is displayed alongside damage and hit chance. Should one connect, it'll deal three times the damage the attack would do otherwise. In most cases, this is a death sentence, or is very close to one.
  • Critical Hit Class: The Swordmaster is the traditional critical-reliant class, but later games added Myrmidons and Trueblades (part of the same promotion chain), Berserkers, Assassins, Snipers, and Halberdiers into the mix. All of them have a boosted critical hit chance.
  • Crutch Character:
    • Examples in every title, being something of an ever-present. The first of the archetype, Jagen, is famous in this role in the FE community, and they are, in fact, called "Jagens" within the fandom. In fact, he used to be the Trope Namer. The idea behind "Jagens" are that they tend to be extremely high-level (usually promoted) troops who have stats that would be terrible for that level, but are very strong compared to what you have when you get them.
    • ...which, in the harder games, makes them handy to keep around for a while either as a meat shield by unequipping their weapons (so that enemies attack them, do no/little damage because of their stats, then can't counterattack) or a nuclear option to kill off a dangerous enemy that would be able to kill one of your other characters if left alone.
    • That said, many of them have terrible stat growths, meaning that they don't get much stronger even if you bother to level them up. Others, however, have growths that range from decent to genuinely good, with a few actually being pretty damn amazing (but you still don't want them taking too many kills in the early game).
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: The churches in most of the games are vaguely Roman Catholic in organization, but they usually worship "saints" — i.e., legendary heroes. A few of them, most notable in Awakening, worship Naga, though, a rather literal dragon Jesus, though not made of crystal. In Three Houses, the Church of Seiros shares a lot of similarities with the Catholic Church, with promoting the workship of an omniscient goddess said to have created the continent and even using similar terminologies for their important figures.
  • Cute Bruiser: The entire series is rife with presumably adorable characters, usually quite young, who can kick untold amounts of ass.
  • Dark Is Evil: Many times dark mages/sorcerers serve as the villains of the series; especially in Genealogy, where there's an entire Cult of dark mages bent on resurrecting their dark god in order to bring an era of suffering upon Jugdral.
  • Dark Is Not Evil:
    • Well, in some games, the player can recruit users of Dark Magic for his party, who usually are pretty decent people. They often prefer to call it "ancient" magic rather than "dark" magic, though.
    • However, while Dark isn't evil, it's still not a toy; just look at Bramimond, likely the most powerful heroic darkness user in Fire Emblem history. It practically cost him his soul to master the darkness. Or get some of Canas's supports, in which he explains that his three brothers, also Shamans, fell victim to exactly the same fate.
  • Darker and Edgier: Zigzagged throughout the series. Some installments can be darker than others, but these games notably standout.
    • Of all installments, Genealogy of the Holy War is notoriously considered by many to be the darkest installment in the series, with its complex plot, Crapsack World, infamous timeskip, and Rape, Pillage, and Burn at play, as well as heavily deconstructing various long standing elements of the series.
    • Though it never reaches the level of Genealogy, the Tellius duology, Radiant Dawn in particular, is considered one of the darkest, or at least more mature, of the Fire Emblem games thanks in part due to Cerebus Syndrome.
      • Path Of Radiance comes off like a coming-of-age story centered around Ike gradually going from untrained ranger, to dealing with his father's death, to finally growing into his new position of command and becoming The Hero, saving the world from the Evil Overlord's war-mongering as well as the Dark God. Happily Ever After, right? Wrong...
      • During the opening of Radiant Dawn, we learn that Daein, formerly viewed as a completely one-dimensional empire, is now under the thumb of Begnion, who isn't being so nice to the war-torn country. Though understandable, seeing how nasty Daein had been, some of the Begnion soldiers are shown to maybe enjoy their dominance over their former enemy a bit... too much. The game unfolds from there with increasingly complicated and intricate plots, characters who were once one-dimensional getting more developed, becoming more sympathetic and believable, and country-to-country relations being realistically portrayed, with the past war actually weighing heavily, namely how Begnion practically bailed Crimea out in the first game becoming a serious point of contention. Where the first game definitely ran on Rule of Drama and even a bit of Rule of Funny, the sequel takes everything from the first and makes it much more... hard-hitting.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses takes pages from Genealogy, and it shows. Various High Fantasy elements that have long defined the series are downplayed in favor of a disturbingly grounded approach deeply rooted in Grey-and-Gray Morality and real world subtext. Unlike past games, where the conflict is instigated by a Hate Sink group and/or a evil dragon or deity, the entire conflict of Three Houses is entirely man-made. Like Genealogy, Three Houses deconstructs long-standing character archetypes to great effect. The various story routes deal with themes including human-on-human racism, religion, classism, and political extremism. The story-telling approach of Three Houses also allows for strongly developed characters, several of whom have dark backstories, and we also see the deep impact that the war has on them in a way that past installments could not present as well. The end result is a game that is considered the darkest modern Fire Emblem game and the darkest installment in the whole series since Genealogy, if not THE darkest.
    • In fact, the whole series is darker and edgier than most other Nintendo series. Still not as dark as Metroid, though.
  • Defector from Decadence: A defecting Dragon Rider is a recurring character archetype ("the Minerva"), and beyond that each game will usually have a few additional characters defect to the player's side as well.
  • Desert Skull: These can be found in the desert levels of the Game Boy Advance games. Rare items can be dug up in the nearby sands.
  • Devious Daggers: Thief/Assassin/Rogue characters. In the early games, these are just swords animated as knives (particularly cool for the assassins). In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, knives became their own weapon type, which thieving characters use exclusively and Sages can also use (though they have to forgo staves to do so), although this latter feature is no longer in effect in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Knives return in Fire Emblem Fates as the weapon of choice of Ninjas, their promotions (Master Ninja and Mechanist), Dread Fighters, and oddly enough, Maids and Butlers.
  • Difficulty by Region: The bosses had their stats lowered slightly in the US/PAL version of Fire Emblem. On the other hand, several player characters in The Sacred Stones had their stats raised.
  • Disciplines of Magic: The following magic types are featured:
    • Anima or elemental magic is the most common form of offensive magic in the game. As its name implies, it harnesses Elemental Powers to attack.
    • Dark magic is another type of magic, which has been variously characterized as ancient magic (like in the Elibe games), or a form of Magitek as seen in Three Houses. In games with a magic triangle, it typically wins over anima magic but loses to light magic.
    • Light magic is invariably portrayed as a divine form of magic, wielded by clerics and priests rather than mages. In games with a magic triangle, it loses to anima magic and wins over dark magic.
    • Magic staves and utility magic tend to fall under another umbrella, providing both healing and spells like Warp and Rescue. In most games, they tend to be wielded by light magic users (and many light magic users tend to use staves as well), while in Path of Radiance and Three Houses they are even governed by the same skill.
  • Discount Card: The Silver Card halves all shop item prices when held by the buyer.
  • Divergent Character Evolution:
    • Dragon Riders and Pegasus Knights were essentially the same class in most games, using the same weapons and having the same vulnerability to Bows and (where applicable) Wind Magic. The former had more Strength and Defense, and the latter had more Speed and Resistance. Radiant Dawn switched the Dragon Knights' Lances for Axes, and switched their Bow/Wind vulnerability for a vulnerability to Thunder magic.
    • They even had a common second tier class (Wyvern Knight) in Sacred Stones, but they diverged more in Awakening which enforces that Pegasi are female only and Wyvern Riders are both genders; in addition, they lost the common promotion. Now Wyvern Riders can promote to Wyvern Lords and Griffon Knights, which use axes/lances and all axes respectively, and have high physical stats; and Pegasus Knights become either Falcon Knights, which can heal with staves as well as attack with lances, or Dark Fliers, which can attack with lances and tomes. On the other hand, they share the common weaknesses of bows and wind magic again, though bows hurt the less physical pegasi more whereas wind hurts the low Resistance wyverns a lot more. Fates continues this divergence by making the wyvern and pegasus lines belong to two different kingdoms, with Wyvern Riders promoting to Wyvern Lords (as in Awakening) or Malig Knights (using axes and tomes), and Sky Knights promoting to Kinshi Knights (lance/bow wielding air superiority unit) or Falcon Knights (as in Awakening). Notably, though, Sky Knights are a unisex class.
  • Double-Edged Buff: Some entries in the franchise have the skill Gamble, which reduces a character's hit rate in exchange for more Critical Hits.
  • Doomed Hometown: Most of the games begin with the heroes' entire country being invaded.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect:
    • All but the last of Shadow Dragon's Gaiden Chapters require that you keep your army at 15 or fewer units to unlock them — and the last one exists to give you another chance if you're missing both Tiki and Falchion, your best bets at beating the final boss. Of course, there are ways of getting both....
    • This can apply to the overall game mechanics. If you have a character who's killing everything that comes but is also getting hit on every turn, you'd better hope you get lucky on those last few blows, otherwise that character is in serious trouble.
  • The Dragon: One per game, the most notable being the Black Knight from the Tellius games, who acts as The Dragon for Ashnard and later, Micaiah and Sephiran.
  • Dragons Are Divine: In many of the games the most powerful members of the dragon races are typically treated as gods by the human populations.
  • Dragon Rider: A group of character classes; initially renamed "Wyvern Riders" when the games started being translated, probably to prevent confusion regarding how the main point of The Blazing Blade was to prevent dragons from returning to the world (and in some games including that one, treat allied dragons as endangered species that must be protected), yet the dragons domesticated as flying mounts are treated as expendable as pegasi and horses. In Radiant Dawn and the Archanea remakes, the dragon mounts reverted to being called dragons. This was jusitifed in the Archanea games and Awakening, as wyverns are a dragon subspecies that went feral and eventually tamed by humans. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is thus far the only game in which both types of Dragon mounts appear together (as separate but related classes).
  • Dramatic Red Samurai Background: Sometimes an added effect for the One-Hit Kill, Lethality assassin skill. Played straight particularly in Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates. The screen turns stark red and all the characters become silhouettes. On impact there's a blood splatter effect before the scen returns to normal.
  • Dressed to Plunder: The field and battle sprites for the Pirate class have bandannas. Most recruitable pirates have them too. Exceptions are Geese from The Binding Blade (who has a Badass Longcoat) and Briggid from Genealogy of the Holy War, who was a pirate captain by profession but a Sniper by class.
  • Dual Wielding:
    • Assassins and Pirates in the GBA games, though this is purely aesthetic and happens even if they just have one sword/axe. Gameplay-wise, this simply isn't possible. Also, in the backstory of the Tellius games, the ancient hero Altina dual-wielded a pair of legendary [[BFS two-handed swords]].
    • The Swordmaster class in Awakening appears to dual wield on the map tiles and has two scabbards that have swords inside them. Just for show, though, as they apparently sheath those swords and stick to using a single two-handed sword that they are equipped with.
  • Dub Name Change: Used often, with everything from corrections like "Reyvan" to "Raven," to something completely different like "Kilroy" to "Rhys." A few weapons were even given this treatment; Ike and the Black Knight's swords, Ragnell and Alondite, swapped names in the English versions of the Tellius games.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Lucius of Blazing Blade started the trend of male characters with extremely feminine features, and he's been succeeded by the likes of Libra of Awakening, and Forrest of Fates, among others.
  • Dump Stat: Varies depending on the classes, but there is always that one stat that is relatively irrelevant:
    • Skill. Typically, you already have enough accuracy as it is that you don't need it. It says something when the Low-Tier Letdown of all classes typically focuses on Skill, and the Secret Book and Goddess Icon are basically considered to be an "always sell" kind of item.
    • Subverted in Awakening, where in the post-game its Defense, Resistance, and Luck that are considered to be the dump stats, and Skill is actually quite valuable for every unit since it increases the rate of skill activation and dual strikes. Played straight on higher-difficulties in-game, where Skill is considered the least important.
    • Also averted, or at least downplayed, in Binding Blade, where accuracy is actually an ongoing issue due to a number of factors.note  You would need every bit of help you can get to raise your own unit's accuracy, and this includes raising your Skillnote . This is the reason why Warriors, promoted Generals, and Bandits/Pirates/Berserkers note  are ignored as axe-users, with the preference given to Paladins and Heroes. Luck also becomes somewhat important both for the above reason note , and also to reduce the critical hit rate of Swordmasters and especially Berserkers, which get a massive 30% boost.
    • Luck is another for being a relatively irrelevant stat, as most characters could reach enough Luck threshold to avoid critical hits, with the exception of characters like Arthur from Fates due to his personal skill. Some games try to make Luck more relevant by depending on the stat for skill activation, though they must have a very high amount of Luck to activate it consistently.
    • Strength for magic users (except in the Tellius games, where it determines their ability to effectively wield heavy tomes).
    • Magic for non-magic users (except in Thracia 776, where it doubles as their magic defense).
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:Has its own page
  • Easy-Mode Mockery:
    • In Shadow Dragon, if you enter a chapter with fewer surviving units than the maximum allowed for the map, you be given generic replacement units. The names of the replacement units at first follows numerical theme naming (Unil, Dua, Quattro, etc). However, if you still keep suffering casualties, the new unit names will be Auffle, Wymp, Lucer, Owend, Rejek, Wieklin, Laim, etc.
    • An unintentional version exists in early NTSC copies of Radiant Dawn, where just having Easy Mode Path of Radiance save data on your GameCube memory card when attempting to initiate an Old Save Bonus from said game will cause Radiant Dawn to crash. This was rectified in the PAL version and in later prints of the NTSC version, or by sending the disc to Nintendo for repairs.
  • Elemental Crafting:
    • Typical order is Iron < Steel < Silver in terms of damage output and the reverse for durability, so weapon selection is not as straightforward as in some other games. Legendary or unique weapons typically have high damage and decent durability. In Genealogy of the Holy War, all weapons had a flat 50 uses, so there was no reason not to switch to silver weapons when available except maybe the cost of keeping them in good repair.
    • Weight is a strange issue — Steel is often heavier than Silver, and thus carries a higher penalty to Attack Speed, but by the time you get Silver weapons, your units will likely be too strong to care.
    • Still an issue in some of the games, as a few installments base Speed penalties on the character's Constitution, a stat that does not increase on level-up, only slightly on promotion and due to magic items. Having Fiona use a silver lance is still a tradeoff with her Constitution of four. It's even worse with some mages, who can have tomes with weights up to 20 and only boast Constitution scores under 5.
  • Elemental Personalities: Characters with Ice affinities are generally standoffish and aloof (such as Marisa and Innes) while Dark implies more of a Dark and Troubled Past than actually being affiliated with Dark magic. Micaiah, for example, is a Light magic-user with a Dark affinity.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The magic of the series works this way, with the magic type that has the advantage dealing more damage to and taking less damage from the user of the disadvantaged magic. Fire magic has an advantage over wind magic, wind magic has an advantage over thunder magic, and thunder magic has an advantage over fire magic. Light magic normally has the advantage over dark magic, anima magic (the elemental magic) has the advantage over light magic, and dark magic has the advantage over anima magic.
  • 11th-Hour Ranger:
    • Usually at least one character in several titles, who joins at nearly maxed-out level. The very first was the Bishop Gotoh from the first Archanea game, and the archetype related to this trope is named after him.
    • There's no real ranger in Genealogy, though since Julia can use the one tome that can effectively damage Julius, she's the closest Genealogy gets to one, despite joining the group in Chapter 6.
    • Thracia 776, meanwhile, gives us Galzus, a Hero toting two amazing swords, and Ced, who can use Forseti. Sara is a case of Magikarp Power, but she's the only character who can use the Kia Staff.
    • For The Binding Blade, there's Karel, although you can only get him if you managed to get all the requirements for the true ending; for The Blazing Blade, there's Athos.
    • In Path of Radiance, there's the Laguz Giffca, Tibarn, and Naesala — you can only choose one for the Final Boss, but they are all powerful in their own right. In Radiant Dawn, we have Gareth, Nasir, Caineghis, Giffca again, and Renning, and during your second runthrough of the game, you can also use Sephiran/Lehran.
    • Awakening has Basilio and Flavia join you during Chapter 23, but if you've been diligently training all of your units, then they will greatly outclass them by the time they join. Straighter examples are all of the Spot Pass characters — all of them excel in one or two stats, and Walhart and Aversa each have their own exclusive skills that can be potentially passed down to Morgan, as the Avatar can marry them.
  • 11th-Hour Superpower:
    • There will always be at least one weapon that can effectively damage the Final Boss. Depending on the game, it may be the only weapon. The most nefarious example is Genealogy of the Holy War's Naga Tome, which can only be wielded by Julia, is found near the very end of the final chapter, and is the only weapon capable of canceling out the defensive effects of Julius' Loptous Tome. Whereas most of the other characters, Seliph included, can have a hard time damaging Julius, Julia can nail him with four attacks in one turn. Other examples include:
    • Falchion in all of the Archanea games. Gaiden also has several other weapons (the Astra and Sol lances) that have additional effects, but you can only get them from some monsters every so often. Awakening gives us a variant with the Exalted Falchion, which is the Falchion blessed with Naga's power. It is the only thing capable of heavily damaging Grima, which becomes more evident on harder difficulties because Grima has more defensive skills available. Though Lucina's Parallel Falchion certainly works just as well.
    • Any one of the Holy Weapons in Genealogy of the Holy War, although the above example (the Naga Tome) is the most outstanding case.
    • The Holy Weapons in all of the GBA games; you get all of them in The Binding Blade, but only four, plus a unique sword for Lyn, are available in The Blazing Blade. Finally, in The Sacred Stones, there is one Holy tome for each school of magic, two swords, two lances, an axe, a bow, and an all-healing staff on top of that. The Elibe weapons can fight off dragons (and are the only things aside from Luna capable of significantly damaging the Fire Dragon in The Blazing Blade), while The Sacred Stones weapons can kill monsters, the undead, and the Final Boss in one to two hits.
    • Ragnell is treated this way in the Tellius games, as it can nullify enemy criticals.
    • Done slightly differently in Radiant Dawn. At the start of Part 3 of the Final Endgame, Yune blesses each of your character's equipped weapons (and the claws/talons/breath of each of your laguz members). This doesn't make them any stronger, but it does make them unbreakable and they will be the only weapons that can damage the final bosses.
    • Yato in Fates has seven forms: the base form, Noble and Blazing in Birthright, Grim and Shadow in Conquest, and Alpha and Omega in Revelation. The Omega version is the Fates version of the Fire Emblem.
  • Elite Tweak: Fire Emblem in general highly encourages this trope in both a tactical and RPG sense, especially in the more recent games as of late. Unlike many RPGs in general (which often have some characters simply unable to do another's job any better than it's party members), any unit - with some proper speccing and a little luck from the Random Number God - can turn into a powerhouse monstrosity, which is deliberately designed on the basis of encouraging the player to use their favorite characters to play the game as well as outright encouraging min-maxing with Support bonuses and general tactical synergy. Given how tough some of the games can get, the game strikes a rather impressive middle-ground between tactical efficiency and RPG growth, to the point that the tier list generally agreed on by the fandom had to measure by how fast they can get to a point to be "good" and at what cost, not if they can be good, given that's a given even for the most seemingly-useless of units with enough stubborness.
    • Those characters from Fire Emblem are commonly referred as 'The Est', a character with obnoxiously high stat development, but joins late game at a very low level relative to the game's progress curve. Est is well-known for not only being the first character with these characteristics, but also because this is true of her in all five games she appears in (including the two remakes of the original game). Ests are loved by elite tweakers for the fact that they are one of the few characters in the games that can reasonably Cap (or nearly Cap) most of their stats without the need of Stat-Up items before reaching the max level promoted.
    • Fire Emblem Gaiden and Sacred Stones, both regarded as being black sheeps by many of the series' fans, are loved by elite tweakers because of the ability to elite tweak any unit with enough patience due to being able to reenter specific levels, allowing players to level grind freely; something extremely situational, difficult, and risky(And often pointless) to do in any other Fire Emblem title. Sacred Stones also allows you to buy as many Stat-Up items as you can with the money you'll be getting from the levels or the drops.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening not only keeps the freely traversable world map of Sacred Stones and Gaiden, but it also reintroduces the Skill system of a few other past titles, wherein characters can learn abilities by reaching certain levels in a given class. It also features a special item, the Second Seal, which allows a unit to revert to level 1 in a different class. As skills are set to characters, leveling one over and over in different jobs can give them access to some powerful combinations. The Avatar and DLC/SpotPass units stand out in this regard by being able to switch to any class not specific to either a certain character or the opposite gender, giving them massive potential in the hands of someone not averse to mucho Level Grinding.
    • In the Mobile Game Fire Emblem Heroes, the Skill inheritance system was introduced where a player could use one unit to give another unit up to 3 of their skills (now 4 thanks to an update), at the cost of the inherited skills costing 1.5x the SP the skill would normally cost.
    • Likewise, in Awakening, Fates, and Genealogy of the Holy War, players can unlock later game child units based on who they choose to pair up out of their original cast of characters. These units have a base form tied to one gender of parent, but can inherit stats and some other things (skills and classes in the former two, and weapons/accessories in the latter) from their other parent. Min-maxing this process isn't necessary to complete the game as the easy pairings still usually work out fine and you should have enough unit options to get by. But players who do plan out inheritance ahead of time will see their efforts rewarded with some astonishingly powerful units that can blow their parents straight out of the water.
  • End-Game Results Screen: From Genealogy till The Sacred Stones.
  • Epic Fail: In some games, such as 7 and 8, it is possible for a unit to kill themselves by attacking a wall or snag with the Devil Axe. Here is an infamous example.
  • Escort Mission: Sort of; some missions have you defending NPCs, but the NPCs in question are either irrelevant to your success, powerful fighters in their own right, or very easy to defend, so it's not really all that frustrating. In some cases, you can have one of your tankier units Rescue the NPC and turn the map into a simple survival scenario.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Every Fire Emblem has at least one scene where one of the villains — and not a sympathetic one — comments on how even more evil one of his comrades is, and how that's terrible. A good example is how Caellach and Riev view Valter in The Sacred Stones, due to the way he is implied to victimize women. Caellach is a sociopathic Professional Killer who killed Queen Ismaire and Riev is a fallen priest who worships and seeks to resurrect the god of evil.
    Caellach (to Carlyle): I'm not like that freak Valter. I'm kind to women.
    Riev: Ah, Valter... You're a beast. You're bound to no country. You care nothing for friend or foe. Kill a man, claim a woman... You live for nothing more, you wretched beast.
  • Everyone Is Related: Especially in Genealogy of the Holy War, where it's a game mechanic. Additionally, the degree to which the main characters and antagonists are all related in that game is nothing short of boggling.
  • Evil Overlooker: Many game covers or promotional artwork depict the villain overlooking the player's army.
  • Evil Old Folks: The villains always have a couple of old men on their side. They'll usually be a Sinister Minister or Mighty Glacier.
  • Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Lots of 'em. You can tell whether or not you can obtain an item from an enemy if the name is flashing in its menu. Lightened up in Ike's games, where you could finally use Thieves to steal enemy equipment, provided the enemy didn't currently have it equipped and its theft wasn't specifically prohibited.
    • Thracia 776 did this in a rather odd fashion. Since it was possible to capture enemies and raid their inventories, any equipment that was meant to be enemy-exclusive (e.g. most of the Dark magic tomes) would actually turn into something else if moved into a player character's inventory.
  • Expressive Health Bar: In some games, the health bar will visibly shake when a character is hit with a critical strike
  • Expy:
    • The Archetypes, in which characters later in the series are modeled after earlier characters in stats, growths, and possibly looks and personality.
    • In New Mystery of the Emblem, the female default "My Unit"◊ can easily be mistaken for Mia while the male◊ "My Unit"◊ looks more than a little like Ike (it gets even closer when you add a headband through an info conversation). They both even share a default class note .
    • Used often in Fates, with characters from Awakening. On the Hoshido side, Asugi is a carbon-copy of Gaius, Rhajat is one of Tharja, and Caeldori is one for Cordelia (note the Expy's name is an anagram for the original's). On the Nohr side, Laslow, Odin and Selena are similar to Inigo, Owain, and Severa, or, rather, they actually are them.
  • Extra Turn: The Dancers (Mystery of the Emblem onward), Bards (Binding Blade and The Blazing Blade), and Heron Laguz (Tellius games) can give Extra Turns to their allies. There is also Azura the Songstress, who can sing in Fates, and Faye in Shadows of Valentia, IF she went the Cleric/Saint route.
  • Eyepatch of Power:

    F-H 
  • Faceless Goons: You can easily tell whether a character is a nameless mook or a main character by whether their eyes are visible. Soldiers will always be shown with their helmets obscuring their eyes; in the Tellius games, Laguz soldiers' eyes are (mostly) obscured by their hair.
  • Fake Difficulty: Radiant Dawn, where Hard Mode disables the ability to check the enemy's Movement and Attack Range. You have to count them yourself.
  • Fantastic Racism:
    • The various shapeshifting Laguz tribes are called "sub-humans" by many beorc/humans. This is not limited to your enemies; some between chapter dialogue has your own characters referencing your own laguz characters as sub-humans. And it goes both ways, too... a laguz calling a beorc 'human' is the same as a beorc calling a laguz 'sub-human', and it happens more than once.
    • Most characters get better, though — except Shinon, who is a Jerkass and remains unrepentant even throughout Radiant Dawn.
    • While Lethe learns to treat beorc better, she still makes sweeping generalizations about them, implies they are inferior in their customs, and the word "human" escapes her lips sometimes.
    • There's also the Sacaens in The Blazing Blade, which are referred to as "nomadic mongrels" and such by the villains.
    • Radiant Dawn takes this to a new level with the Branded, who are despised as mongrels with no place on Tellius by both beorc and laguz alike. It doesn't help that laguz have a sort of acquired sense for sensing them which manifests as uneasiness if not outright hostility, they can be mistaken with people who have made pacts with a spirit by beorc, and lies have been spread about them being "unnatural" creatures resulting from the "forbidden" union of beorc and laguz (who are "punished by Ashera") as a way to prevent anything like what happened to Lehran with Altina.
    • Even earlier than in the Tellius games, the games set in Archanea have the Earth Dragons degenerating and attacking humanity, which leads to them being sealed away. Later on, several dragons became the manaketes, who were apparently mistreated by humans. This led to Medeus and other dragons making a new empire that would attack humanity, with Naga helping the humans through Falchion. Xane and Gotoh both didn't rate humans that highly as well, although Gotoh eventually regained his faith in humanity while Xane gets along with Marth.
  • Faux Action Girl: Stats notwithstanding, there are a few of these. See the character page for more details.
  • Females Are More Innocent: Female villains were never particularly common in the first place, but after Radiant Dawn, genuinely evil female villains have practically become a rarity, with most seemingly evil female antagonists having a tragic backstory of how a man made them evil.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: The trio of anima (elemental) magic, with "ice" being substituted for wind instead (although a few wind tomes, like Blizzard, conjure ice as well).
  • Fishing for Mooks: There are enemies that only move when you're in their line of sight. Thus the best way to defeat them is putting a strong unit just on the edge of their Movement range to kill them one for one, or lure them out with an unarmed Crutch Character and then rush them (or recruit them) with your other characters.
  • Fog of War: Some stages are covered in fog, darkness, sandstorm, blizzard, or anything else that would hinder your vision. Be sure to bring Torches, a Staff Chick with a Torch staff, and/or Thief-type classes.
  • Formerly Sapient Species: In the Archanea games, dragons are highly intelligent beings who in ancient times had built a great civilization that used to rule the world. Their age was brought to an end by a physical and mental degeneration that struck their age and seemed to have no cure; to avoid it, most dragons became Manaketes, humans capable of taking dragon form, as remaining in human shape for most of their lives allowed them to escape this disease. Some dragons wouldn't or couldn't do this, however, and over time degenerated into mindless beasts. The earth dragon tribe, in particular, flatly refused to become Manaketes and fully transformed into bestial monsters; the wyverns are also implied to have originated in this manner.
  • Fragile Flyer: Played with among the flying units:
    • All of them share a weakness to bows and, depending on the game, certain types of Wind magic. These deal effective damage that can reasonably One-Hit Kill flying units.
    • Pegasus Knights are Fragile Speedsters with high Resistance stats, making them Mage Killers, but low Defense, which causes them to keel over to bow attacks pretty easily.
    • Wyvern Riders, the other archetype of flying units, have good Defense stats and are either Mighty Glaciers or Lightning Bruisers, but are also really Weak to Magic.
  • Fragile Speedster: Myrmidons, Pegasus Knights, and Thieves usually have low Defense, but extremely high Speed.
  • Gaiden Game: Fire Emblem Gaiden (set on a continent distant to Archanea) and Thracia 776 (set between the first and second generations of Genealogy of the Holy War); the former actually has the word "Gaiden" in its title.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Subverted with the Crutch Character you get at the beginning of the game, who have a justified in-story reason for not being able to grow well (e.g. old age, sickness). Also, the defining characteristic of the two different types of fans of the games.
  • Geo Effects: If a unit stands in certain terrain tiles, such as a forest, they can get an Avoid bonus during combat. Forest, mountain, and desert tiles also reduce Movement by varying amounts or potentially block passage through them. Flying units ignore the potential Movement penalties and are able to move over tiles that other units are unable to cross, but they also cannot receive any terrain-based Avoid bonuses.
  • Gladiator Subquest: The arenas/coliseums, which appear in all the games in the series except for Gaiden, the Tellius duology, and Awakening. They're generally used to grind for experience and/or money, except for Fates, where they're used to gain more resources and experience can only be gained in the Hoshido version of the Arena.
  • Glass Cannon: Many mages fall into this. Magic attacks tends to be some of the strongest across the series, but in turn, their Defense growths will often be the lowest growth they have.
  • Glass Weapon: Glass is a semi-recurring weapon type. Glass weapons are just as strong as Silver weapons (usually the second-strongest type) and don't require a high weapon rank to wield, but because they're literally made out of glass they can only be used three times before they break.
  • Global Currency: Some nations are implied to use different coinage, but the merchants there take your money just the same.
  • Gonk: Many bosses will be this. There will always be at least one on the side of the good.
  • Good Colors, Evil Colors: Blue is for good guys, red is for bad guys. Green is for allied units who are not under your control, while yellow is situational: in Genealogy of the Holy War, it represents neutral units who are not allied with your nor the enemy; in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, it represents partner units that you can give indirect orders to but not directly control; and in Warriors, Three Houses, Warriors: Three Hopes, and Engage it represents an alternate hostile faction during a Mêlée à Trois.
  • Good Costume Switch: Recruited enemies change sprites from red to blue. Generally averted with the 3D games.
  • Good Hurts Evil:
    • Played with: Light spells in the GBA games are more effective against people wielding Dark magic, and Bishops in Sacred Stones do massive damage to the Demon King's monster servants. But then, in every game, you'll infallibly face an evil holy man as a climax boss, who is subject to the same rules as yourself. On top of that, by the end of each game, you'll typically get ahold of some divine weaponry designed specifically for dealing with the final boss and/or its ilk.
    • Genealogy of the Holy War also zigzags this. On one hand, Light and Dark magic are neutral against each other (and everything else for that matter). On the other hand, the only way to do anything beyond scratch damage to the final boss — a dark god possessing prince Julius — is by using the strongest light spell, usable only by one particular unit.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Many recruitable units are scarred, normally due to some dark or dramatic incident in their past.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Variation; characters use archaic slurs like "Craven cur!", "Blackheart!", and "dastard!" (the root of dastardly).
  • Gratuitous Princess: A good chunk of the playable females in the series are princesses or at least of royal blood. Special mention to Celica and Eirika for being The Hero in their respective games.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: A common scenario for the final battle is that, following the climactic battle against the Big Bad, the Eldritch Abomination/Dragon that the Big Bad was trying to summon to destroy the world will appear to be the true final battle. These greater scope villains have varying influences on the plot and the Big Bad's motivations, but the general feeling for these battles is usually one of simply cleaning up the mess caused by the real Big Bad. In all, we have:
    • Medeus from Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem to Gharnef.
    • Duma from Gaiden to King Rudolf.
    • Loptous from Genealogy of the Holy War to his current incarnation Julius and servant Manfroy.
    • Inverted in Binding Blade, where you defeat Big Bad Zephiel first and then take the fight to Idunn, his Dragon in both senses of the word.
    • Sephiran in Path of Radiance (though we don't learn this until the sequel) to Ashnard.
    • Anankos in Fates to King Garon. In a twist, Anankos is completely absent unless you're playing Revelation (he gets mentioned a few times in Conquest, but the Avatar thinks he's a part of Garon's delusions). What's more, the Garon seen in the game is actually Anankos speaking through him; the real king's been dead for a long time. He does something similar to Takumi in Conquest.
  • Guest-Star Party Member: Happens pretty often in Fire Emblem, and many of them fall under the Eyvel archetype:
    • Eyvel in Thracia 776 is your Crutch Character for the first five chapters or so, but then is turned to stone by the enemy; you need a specific character, wielding a specific staff, to cure her, and you can only do that in a sidequest very near the end of the game. As noted above, she named one of the character archetypes.
    • Wallace is the Eyvel in Blazing Blade: the Crutch Character and 11th-Hour Ranger of Lyn's tale who shows up much later in Eliwood's and Hector's tale, fighting much more powerful enemies than you fought in Lyn's tale. And that's assuming that he shows up at all in the main story; if you leveled up your Lords quickly enough in the midgame, he won't.
    • Orson in Sacred Stones is the Crutch Character in Chapter 5x, and the next time you see him after that, he turns against you (and takes all of the equipment he had at the end of Chapter 5x). He is not considered an Eyvel.
    • Shinon and Gatrie in Path of Radiance are only playable for about four chapters at the beginning of the game before quitting your party to find other work (although they will leave behind whatever they happened to be carrying). You recruit them both again later in the game, although figuring out how to re-recruit Shinon is a Moon Logic Puzzle at best or a Guide Dang It! puzzle at worst. Both leave at the end of Chapter 7; Gatrie is available to be re-recruited in Chapter 13, and Shinon in Chapter 18, making Gatrie's status as an Eyvel a bit more debatable than Shinon's.
    • Radiant Dawn has several.
      • The Black Knight, similar to Orson, is only playable for a few chapters and ultimately must be fought as an enemy boss. Also like Orson, he is not considered an Eyvel.
      • Tormod, Muarim, Vika, Elincia, Lucia, and Geoffrey are Eyvels: Crutch Characters for a few chapters in the early to mid game, unavailable afterwards until very late in the game, and underleveled relative to the enemy forces when they do rejoin you (although, unlike Eyvel and Wallace, they're at least guaranteed to show up again). Furthermore, if you treat them like the Crutch Characters they are early on, Tormod will probably be completely unable to fight except from ultra-long distance unless you bring an extra tome for him—his starting rank in Fire Magic is A, but when he rejoins, his only non-siege tome is the S-ranked Bolganone.
    • A few notable examples in Three Houses.
      • At the beginning of the game, all three of the game's lords are playable as they work together to take down a group of bandits. Once a house is chosen in the following chapter however, the leaders of the other two houses automatically (and permanently) leave your party. Ultimately, at least one of them will later be fought as an enemy boss, like Orson.
      • Depending on your route, your party before the Time Skip could have some of these. Lorenz in the Black Eagles or Blue Lions routes is probably the most notable example, as it takes some time and effort to recruit him in part one, and the manner in which you re-recruit him in part two is reminiscent of Shinon.
      • Dedue in the Blue Lions route will only rejoin you in the second part if you did his sidequest in the first. Otherwise, he is an example of this trope, rather like Wallace.
  • Guilt-Based Gaming: Let a character die? They'll give some final words meant to elicit an emotional response out of you for letting that happen. Continue on and finish the game after they die instead of Save Scumming? The various epilogues explaining what happened to the characters after the story ends will bring up the people that died and remind you of your failure. "W fell in battle in Chapter 2 and vanished from the pages of history." "X fell in battle in Chapter 14 and vanished from the pages of history." "Y started up a flower shop after the war, and is known to grow the best specimens in the land." "D fell in battle in Chapter 9 and vanished from the pages of history." etc.
  • Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Several of the series' blond characters are extremely kind and compassionate, including Elffin of Binding Blade, Lucius and Louise of Blazing Blade, Leanne of Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, and Elise of Fates.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Hybrids of humans and other species appear in many games; in The Binding Blade and The Blazing Blade, Nils, Ninian and Sophia are half-dragon, while [[Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn have the Branded, who have both beorc (human) and laguz ancestry. Nah and Yarne of Awakening are always half-dragon and half-taguel, respectively. Corrin of Fates is the half-human, half-dragon child of Queen Mikoto of Hoshido and Greater-Scope Villain Anankos.
  • Healer Signs On Early: Clerics and other healers are normally among the first few units that join your party.
  • Healing Boss: While bosses tend not to be able to heal themselves, many have one or more allied healers, allowing health restoration if the player doesn't do anything to stop it. However, bosses tend to stand on tiles called thrones that grant healing and sometimes other boni to them every turn, and some legendary weapons wieldee by bosses have an active healing or Life Drain effect.
  • Healing Factor: Many units can get skills that heals a portion of their HP at the beginning of each turn, Imbue being one example.
  • Heel–Face Turn:
    • If one of your enemies has a name and a face, either they are a boss or they will join your party if you fulfill certain conditions (usually just talking to them with a certain character in your party). Occasionally both.
    • Another easy way to tell if a unit is recruitable is to check its stats — if their Luck Stat is reasonably high for his level, then it is usually safe to conclude that it can be recruited. Mooks and Bosses in many of the games either have really low Luck or none at all, as a balancing measure to having superior numbers and equipment than your own units (among other things, it affects the likelihood of getting a Critical Hit, as well as decreasing the chances of falling victim to one).
    • Subverted by Gale in The Binding Blade. Highly prominent non-boss enemy, with strong ties to two recruitable characters (his girlfriend Miledy and her younger brother Zeiss)... yet he cannot be recruited himself.
  • Heinousness Retcon:
  • Heir Club for Men: Played mostly straight in the Archanea and Jugdral games; typically averted from the Elibe games onward:
    • In the Archanea games, Marth is the heir to Altea's throne, despite having Elice as an older sister; the same applies to Jubelo of Grust, as he has Yuliya as an older sister. Despite Nyna being Archanea's sole heiress, she has to marry a foreign prince of an allied kingdom after the War of Shadows. Since Marth is engaged with Caeda, she chose Hardin, who is clearly established as Archanea's regent by Mystery of the Emblem.
    • Gaiden seemingly averts this with Alm and Celica both being the respective heir and heiress of Rigel and Zofia, but they marry at the end of the game, and both kingdoms are united under Alm's rule. Shadows of Valentia outright averts this by revealing Celica has an elder half-brother through the king, but she is still considered the rightful heir to Zofia.
    • The biggest players across Jugdral are men, and they are usually presented as heir apparent to whatever castle, territory, or land that they were born to. This is also enforced with many of these rulers inheriting the Major Holy Blood needed to wield one of thirteen almighty weapons that were made in ancient times. The very few women who have inherited Major Blood are either living away from their homes (Deirdre, who has Major Naga blood, lived in the Spirit Forest albeit this was because of her Minor Loptous Blood, which is considered to be a "cursed" bloodline, and Briggid, Major Ulir, was kidnapped by pirates during her infancy), or are encouraged to marry for power (the second generation's Ishtar, who has Major Thrud, is engaged to Julius). A notable case is Altena, possessor of Major Noba blood for the second generation; while she was kidnapped by Trabant of Thracia during her infancy and was raised as Thracia's princess, she is Leif's older sister. She does find this out, and what she does after the war is left ambiguous, as Thracia 776 makes it clear that Leif will become Leonster's king. At the end of the second half of the game, any female characters who have rights to rule on her own, or even some form of Major Holy Blood (this can be done with at least two female characters) will live with their spouse if they marry instead, with some exceptions like Tine. In Thracia 776, it is mentioned in passing that Leif is the only male heir across the Manster District, and Princess Miranda of Alster was up for an Arranged Marriage with him.
    • This is thoroughly averted starting from the Elibe games onward. Lyndis is the clearly established heiress of Caelin, as is Hector's daughter Lilina for Ostia. Guinevere is an interesting case — she's an illegitimate child sired by King Desmond, and she has an older (and legitimate) brother (the Big Bad of The Binding Blade, Zephiel, in fact), but once said brother kicks it, she's able to become Queen Regent of Bern. All male heirs apparent in The Sacred Stones are established as only children (Lyon and Joshua), older brothers (Innes), or at least the same age (Ephraim), and L'Arachel becomes the Queen of Rausten at the end of the game regardless of who she does or doesn't marry. It's even gender-reversed with Begnion's offices of Apostle and Empress in the Tellius games.
    • In Awakening, Emmeryn is the oldest of Ylisse's royal family, and Chrom only becomes Exalt after her execution. Plegia seemingly has an elective monarchy, as shown in Gangrel's backstory, and Regna Ferox has two non-dynastic lines ruling the east and the West, with the victors of a tournament held every so often to decide who rules and who gets the lion's share of power. In-game, the two khans shown are a man and a woman.
    • Fates both plays it straight and averts it; in Hoshido, Hinoka mentions that Takumi is second in line for the throne if Ryoma kicks the bucket and only becomes queen at the end of Conquest because both men die during the war; in Nohr, Camilla is second in line for the throne if something happens to Xander, but she abdicates to Leo at the end of Birthright because she feels he is better suited for the position.
    • Played with a bit in Three Houses: Edelgard is mentioned to be the heir to the throne of Emperor of the Adrestian Empire and one of her supports mentions previous Adrestian Emperors have been women. In her specific case however, another support conversation reveals she's set to ascend the throne because she's the only member of the royal family who is still alive.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The Blazing Blade allows you to name the army tactician. New Mystery, Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses allow you to name the Avatar in their respective games.
  • Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Varies; in the old games, all knights, paladins, and generals wear helmets, while cavaliers don't. In Path of Radiance, Titania and Mist (upon promotion) are the only mounted units not wearing helmets. In Radiant Dawn, the only characters who have helmets are Aran, Nephenee, and Haar; Jill is back to being helmetless, and Kieran loses his helmet upon promotion.
  • He Knows Too Much: In Genealogy of the Holy War, this is certainly Arvis's excuse for killing Sigurd at the end of Chapter 5.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: The vast majority of main character lords in the series have been sword-wielders (with a few able to use another weapon as a secondary). The only exceptions are Hector (axes, but he gets swords upon promotion), Ephraim (lances) and Micaiah (light magic). The three lords in Three Houses downplay this: While they (like everyone) are capable of using swords, they all prefer a different weapon: Edelgard prefers axes, Dimitri lances, and Claude bows.
  • Heroic Bastard:
    • Soren in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn is the illegitimate son of King Ashnard, but he helps bring down the Big Bad Ashnard and stop the Mad King's War, and save the world from destruction at Ashera's hands.
    • Guinivere in Binding Blade is the illegitimate daughter of King Desmond and his mistress, serves as a major ally to Roy during the Disturbance of Bern, and even becomes queen at the end.
    • The Nohrian royals Camilla, Leo, and Elise of Fates are the illegitimate children of King Garon, but they help kill Anankos and stop conflict between Nohr and Hoshido in the Revelation path.
  • Heroic Lineage:
    • Genealogy of Holy War has this as a game mechanic; while some of your male units in the first generation lack Holy Blood, your second generation party will be comprised almost entirely of units who have inherited the blood of the legendary heroes (only Hannibal, and possibly Ced and Fee if they didn't inherit any from their father, will be completely devoid of Holy Blood if you don't get any replacement units—and Thracia 776 says that canonically, Ced and Fee do.
    • The Archanea/Ylisse timeline also uses this, with only descendants of Anri being able to wield Falchion, and Fates likewise gives the royals a special power related to their lineage. Blazing Blade vaguely suggests that the Elibe saga utilizes this as well, but the Holy Weapons can be utilized by any unit with an S rank in Binding Blade, so it's not really a big deal.
  • Hero Must Survive: Ever since the very first game in the series, the one and only failure condition present in every single chapter of every single installment is that, if one of the main characters falls in battle, it's Game Over. Luckily, protagonist characters are generally at least decent in combat and capable of holding their own and pulling their weight, so things thankfully keep their distance from Escort Mission levels of frustration... most of the time.
  • Hero of Another Story: Genealogy of the Holy War is particularly susceptible to this, given the epic nature of the storyline and cast. Examples include Eltshan and Leif (who actually gets to BE the hero of his "other story" in Thracia 776.)
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: For a certain value of "heterosexual" in some cases, but there are a surprisingly large number of occurrences this trope across the series. Lucius and Raven are the obvious example, but the red and green knights are almost always Heterosexual Life-Partners, as are the best friends of any lord. Three Houses even dedicates a large number of paired endings to relationships presumably of this manner.
  • Hidden Depths: Support conversations often reveal character traits that are not immediately evident, like someone being a Stepford Smiler or having a Dark and Troubled Past.
  • Hidden Elf Village: Arcadia, a desert village in Elibe where humans and dragons live in harmony. Sages use magic and the natural barriers to keep unwanted guests out.
  • Hide Your Lesbians:
    • Strangely enough, Heather has a line about "joining because of all the pretty girls" removed in the localizations, but her homosexuality is still kept obvious.
    • Also, Florina's horrific androphobia, in addition to the way that she flat-out says "I love you!" to Lyn at the end of Lyn's Mode...
  • Hit Points: Every unit has them to measure how close they are to Permadeath. In later games, units tend to look tired at low HP, and some skills have a higher chance of activation at lower HP.
  • Holy Hand Grenade: All of the Fire Emblem games except Awakening feature offensive Light-based magic, and even Awakening features, among the legendary weapons from previous games in the series, the Book of Naga from Jugdral.
  • Holy Water: Pure Water, which is called "Holy Water" in Japan, is an item that will give the user increased Resistance when consumed.
  • Horns of Barbarism: Zigzagged; the base Barbarian class does not usually have horns on their helmets, but its advanced class the Berserker almost always sports them in every game it's in; it's practically their trademark headwear within the series.
  • HP to One: A fairly common high-tier attacking spell present in just under half the installments in the series, albeit enemy-exclusive in the majority of its appearances. The spell's name is entirely inconsistent, too; it's called Medusa in FE2 and FE15, Dulam in FE3, Hel in FE4 and FE5, Eclipse in FE6 (which would go on to become a Percent Damage Attack instead in FE7 and FE8), and Bohr Χ in FE16.
  • Humans Are Bastards: A recurring theme in the series. Most of the time, even in plots where supernatural beings have a strong presence, it's ultimately humans themselves who've dug their own graves, and the (also human) heroes who have to dig them back out again. The series certainly puts up no pretenses of humans being saints, but nor does it put up any of the inverse sentiment, either.
  • Humans by Any Other Name: In Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, normal humans are referred to as "beorc," though beorc usually refer to themselves as humans, while laguz (the game world's other humanoid race), who dislike beorc, use the word "human" as an insult.
  • Humongous-Headed Hammer:
    • Hammers are a recurring weapon in the series (classified as axes in the games' Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors). They have a large head strong enough to break armored units, but its high weight makes it cumbersome against anything else.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses: The Hero's Relic Crusher is a warhammer that like the Hammer is considered an axe for game mechanics purposes. Its gigantic head is implied to be made out of Nabatean body parts.
  • Hypocritical Heartwarming: Colm of The Sacred Stones repeatedly tells his childhood friend that she's useless and getting in the way on the battlefield, causing her to cry — which is something nobody else is allowed to do, only he is allowed to make her cry.

    I-M 
  • I Let You Win:
    • The Black Knight in Path of Radiance, according to a Woolseyism. Greil also in Path of Radiance.
    • It is also implied that Joshua rigged the coin toss he makes with Natasha, allowing her to win so he can join their side. And also so he won't have to kill her.
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: This is a common death line.
  • Implied Love Interest: Courtesy of the Support system that was introduced starting in Genealogy. You can create a hodgepodge of couples, but some are favored more than others. This is also what was done for the Lords after the Kaga-led games; none of the Lords after Thracia 776 are part of a cemented Official Couple. That being said...
    • Elibe: In The Binding Blade, Roy has six potential wives, but childhood bestie Lilina get the biggest nudge. They get a unique bit of dialogue during the ending if you pair them up, and Lilina's feelings for Roy are also touched on in her support chain with Marcus. The same goes for Eliwood and Ninian in The Blazing Blade: not only is their A Support one of only two (the other being Nino and Jaffar's) where the words "I love you" are stated, but the dynamic of a dramatic scene — where he accidentally kills her while she's in dragon form - changes drastically if they're paired up. To a lesser extent, there's the other two Lords, Hector and Lyn, who banter with one another throughout the story and get some extra scenes together on Hector's Route.
    • Tellius: Unlike the other Lords in the franchise, Ike borders on being completely asexual, although there's...something to be said about his bond with Soren. As for Micaiah, she is another exception, in that the player has to completely go out of their way to not pair her up with Sothe.
    • Awakening: In a game where most of the cast can marry one another, Chrom stands out by having only five choices (four if your Avatar is male). Mechanically and in-story, the game leans toward Sumia: they are paired together in the opening cinematic, his Support growth with her is the fastest among his choices, she gets top priority to marry him due to in-story reasons, and Sumia herself has a very small pool of love interests to boot. While it's not as prominent as Sumia, you can change a few story scenes if you marry Chrom to a Female Avatar instead, namely the scene where Lucina tries and fails to kill her, due to being Grima's vessel.
    • Fates: There's no instance of this for a Female Avatar, but a Male Avatar has the Deuteragonist Azura. Her love confession is the only one in the game that changes depending on the route the player picks; everyone else has one. The two get a steady amount of ship tease, and have one of the fastest support growth rates in the game. Also if Azura is married to the Avatar in Revelation she will fulfill her birthright by becoming the rightful Queen of Valla at the end of the route.
    • Three Houses: Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude, during Part II of their respective routes are pushed up as a potential love interest for Byleth, even if they can't S-Rank them at the end of the game in the case of the latter two. Rhea is also pushed as Byleth’s love interest in the Silver Snow route, with her survival depending on Byleth to have an A rank of higher with her.
  • Inconsistent Dub: In the Spanish translations, it's almost impossible to find a class that has the same name more than twice in a row. Particularly bad for The Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance, as they were published on the same day in Europe yet have wildly different translations for several classes.
  • Instant-Win Condition: Some maps require seizing a specific tile as the objective, and doing so is an automatic victory regardless of other factors. You could be surrounded by enemies you can't beat and only have one character left, but it doesn't matter since you completed your objective.
  • Insufferable Genius: The mage Lute from The Sacred Stones comes off like this, as well as Hayato the Child Prodigy and very arrogant diviner of Fates.
  • Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Any given chest key will work on any chest you come across. Ditto for door keys.
  • Involuntary Group Split: When Eliwood/Hector's party walks into Kishuna's trap in the Nabata Desert. Kishuna summons a wall in the middle of the group, forcing them to cut their way through a dungeon full of promoted Faceless Goons to reunite.
  • Item Crafting: The forging system was first introduced in Path of Radiance. It allows the optimization of basic weapons like Iron, Steel, and Silver weapons and give boost to a certain stat at the cost of gold. Shadow Dragon allows the forging of any weapons as long as it is optimal, and Awakening changes it where you could only optimize 8 times and the cap of 5 for might, hit rate, and critical rate. Expect the enemy to use the forged weapons with better bonuses than yours. Come Fates, you essentially combine two of the same weapon to make a stronger version of that weapon, which can be done all the way up to a +7 weapon if you're tenacious enough...but note that you have to combine two weapons of the same level, so a single +7 weapon requires 128 (2 to the power of 7) base-level weapons. Shadows of Valentia introduces weapon evolution, allowing you to upgrade a previously upgraded weapon into a different weapon altogether at the cost of gold marks.
  • Jack of All Stats: The Cavalier and Mercenary classes tend to have well-balanced growth rates.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The Jugdral and Tellius games play this trope at its best. Both have rather rich worlds, developed characters, and complex story lines with mysteries that are delivered little by little.
  • Justified Tutorial:
    • The Binding Blade's tutorial mode centers around Roy studying the basics of tactics and combat strategy from his teacher Cecilia.
    • Ike is still a rookie in Path of Radiance's prologue, and the tutorial is his father's way of making sure he's up to task.
    • Shadows of Valentia adds a prologue chapter that was not in the original Gaiden. The tutorial is the experienced Mycen teaching the young Alm, Celica, Gray, Tobin, Kliff and Faye the ins and outs of combat during a sudden attack on their village.
  • Just Think of the Potential!: Lyon uses the Sacred Stone of Grado to try to revive the dead. It works, to an extent, but also results in his possession.
  • King Incognito: Two of note, both of whom happen to have Strong Family Resemblance to their respective mothers: Joshua in The Sacred Stones and Soren in the Tellius saga, both of which are based off of Lewyn, Prince of Silesse traveling as a bard. Though the latter legitimately didn't know of his parentage.
  • Kissing Cousins: Ever since Genealogy of the Holy War this trope has become a staple the franchise. Justified in that Fire Emblem is a medieval inspired setting, and in medieval times cousin marriages was a very common practice. Various examples include :
    • Genealogy of the Holy War by selective pairing of characters in the first generation it is possible to make a vast number of such pairings in the 2nd generation. Two particularly note worthy examples in the second generation are the predestined couples of Lana/Faval and Lester/Patty, because their mothers Edain and Briggid were identical twins.
    • In far more meta example, it is possible to make Roy and Lilina from The Binding Blade cousins. Pairing Eliwood with the Pegasus Knight Fiora and Hector with either of Fiora's youngest sisters Florina or Farina in prequel The Blazing Blade. Since The Blazing Blade was not released yet at the time of The Binding Blade's own release (and the pairings involved exist among other possible pairings), the latter never makes any mention of this possibility.
    • Awakening uses a love system very similar to that of Genealogy of the Holy War. Either Lucina or a Chrom-fathered Cynthia or Kjelle can potentially marry their paternal cross-cousin Owain while other cousin pairings can be set up with certain combinations of parents. The international release has the status screens of such a pairing Bowdlerized to read "Companion" instead of husband/wife, though. A female Morgan mothered by Lissa or Emmeryn can also marry her cousin Inigo or Brady.
    • Fire Emblem Fates allows the players to do something similar to Awakening, if they have the children of siblings marry. There are also two "set" pairs of cousins in the game, one of which can avert this or not, one of which plays it straight. Asugi, the son of the ninja Saizo, and Midori, the daughter of Saizo's younger brother Kaze. However, while they can reach an S-support, in the localization it ends with them as Just Friends, making them either an aversion or a straight example depending on the version itself. The Male Avatar and his Implied Love Interest Azura—their mothers Mikoto and Arete were sisters. The twist is they don't know they're cousins, and they don't find out until quite late in the Golden Path (and note, only the Golden Path, meaning in the other two they never find out). Even after they learn the truth, though, their S-support is explicitly romantic, making them the straight example. Given the medieval setting, and Azura being raised in the Japanese inspired Hoshido, being cousins doesn't stop them. Of course, if they don't marry each other, it's possible for their respective children, who would be second cousins, to marry each other. And if the Avatar marries any of Azura's children, the former will end up marrying their first cousin once removed. It's also possible to pull off other couples like this depending on how the player pairs up the royal sisters. If Hinoka, Sakura, Camilla, or Elise marry any of the men who have daughters, the player can then hook these second-gen girls up with Shiro or Kiragi (for Hinoka and Sakura), or Siegbert or Forrest (for Camilla and Elise). For example, a Caeldori mothered by Hinoka is still perfectly capable of marrying her cousin Shiro.
  • Large Ham:
    • Sain, the Casanova Wannabe extraordinaire from Blazing Blade, who spends most of his time flattering any pretty woman he sees with increasingly sappy and loud compliments.
    • Kieran from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn is loud, excitable, and is constantly boasting about his strange fights with giant scorpions and snakes, and the like. Calling him Hot-Blooded would be an understatement.
    • Oliver from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn in a more literal sense on top of the actual trope's meaning; he's not only portly, but quite obsessed with physically beautiful things...and himself.
    • Sain pales in his hamminess and bravado in the face of Wallace, who is never shy to remind everyone and everything that "A GIANT WALKS AMONG YOU!"
    • Virion, Owain, and Inigo from Awakening. Special mention to Owain going on about his "uncontrollable sword hand," naming his moves after previous games in the series. RADIANT..... DAAAAAAAWWWN!
  • Late Character Syndrome: The pre-promoted characters that join later in each game tend to see little use by most players, since they either have worse stats than your trained-up characters, are redundant in role/use, or simply aren't as liked as characters that joined earlier. It is worth noting that their main purpose, especially earlier in the series, is to replace losses you may have incurred (if you're not resetting) and that given how intrinsically useful more mount/flying/staff utility is, some are useful enough to deploy anyways.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness:
    • The Game Boy Advance trilogy has unusual differences in contrast to the Super Famicom trilogy:
      • The Elibe games have the oddity of completely dropping the skill system after being present in the Jugdral games. The only "skills" that are retained in these games are the non-combative Canto (which has been nerfed to not activate after attacking), Steal and Dance (including its Spear Counterpart Play), as well as Silencer (Now Lethality), which debuted in The Blazing Blade. The Sacred Stones would eventually bring the system back in a reduced form before it returns in full force in the Tellius games onward, only skipping the DS Archanea remakes.
      • Dancers lost the ability to attack, while in the Super Famicom titles they can use swords even if their stats and growths aren't made for it.
      • Unlike the Jugdral games and most later games, the Game Boy Advance games have no classes that has access to both physical and magical weapons. As a result, the Mage Knight class, a Jugdral class returning in The Sacred Stones, is restricted to using Anima and Staves.
    • The Japanese version of Radiant Dawn has unit promotions restricted to the usage of very rare items (with one character even getting a personalized version of said item), harkening back to early games in the series. The international release put promotion in line with Path of Radiance where leveling up to Level 21 meant automatically becoming Level 1 in your promoted class, leaving these items as merely a way to promote early (and potentially turning the personalized one into a completely useless item that can't even be sold.)
    • Fates actually returns four old mechanics that were otherwise only used once: in both it and Gaiden, the iconic breakable weapon mechanic was absent, meaning weapons could be used infinitely, albeit with particular stat buffs and debuffs. Units could equip stat-boosting items, which was given a spiritual successor with the Accessory mechanic in Fates, although said stat boosts only matter during the online My Castle battles. Capturing from Thracia 776 also makes a return in Fates, albeit heavily modified (not all units can be captured, and you can have the captured enemy join your side instead of stealing items from them). Finally, magic is now part of the main weapon triangle, and all spells (sans Nosferatu) are all lumped under one category; the latter fact holds true in the Archanea games.
    • Echoes brought back many mechanics that originated from Gaiden, including magic casted from HP.
    • Engage reverts back to only letting the lord character have paired endings, which, until this point, has only ever occured in The Binding Blade.
  • Lava Magic Is Fire: Most A and S rank tomes have lava involved in their animations. Earth magic is rare and usually a specialty tome so the overlap isn't noticeable.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Ever since Fire Emblem: Awakening, party members have had short lines of dialogue for when they gain a level, depending upon how many stats were increased, and how many were already capped. Most of these are fairly normal lines of dialogue, but there are some that don't make much sense unless the character knows they're a Fire Emblem unit who just leveled up.
  • Legendary Weapon: The Lord character often acquires a powerful weapon of legend, which may or may not be a MacGuffin or Sword of Plot Advancement.
  • Level Grinding: Despite the series often making an active effort to prevent it, loads of ways to level grind have slipped through the cracks in various games:
    • Arena Abusing, though Sacred Stones also had the Tower of Valni and various Revenant skirmishes to use between chapters.
    • If you have a healer and attacker with several spare staves and weapons, you can trade hits with a (not overpowering) boss and gain experience for participating in combat and healing your attacker. Lots of conditions, though.
    • In Thracia 776, giving items with the steal command counts as stealing. The ways that you can abuse this feature are basically uncountable.
  • Life Drain: The recurring Nosferatu spell, and the Sol skill, among others.
  • Light 'em Up: Light magic tomes conjure offensive beams and bursts of light to attack enemies.
  • Light Is Good: Used often, with the light tome, the Book of Naga, in Genealogy being especially effective against the Big Bad, dark mage Julius, as well as light magic being extra effective against monsters in The Sacred Stones.
  • Light Is Not Good: Generally-speaking, healers and light magic-users are just as present in the enemy armies you face as they are in your own.
    • In Radiant Dawn; the Big Bad Ashera, the Goddess of Order uses primarily light-based attacks, and to a lesser extent Binding Blade.
    • Kenneth, who says that he delights in the suffering of man, then proceeds to pull out some holy spells on you. He's a fallen bishop who denounces the possibility of the gods, then claims Nergal is a god.
    • Riev, a very clearly evil bishop of Grado. However, he is noted to have been dubbed a heretic, and kicked out of Rausten for said heresy. Presumably, he receives power by worshipping the Demon King.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Ike of the Tellius games, and Sigurd and Seliph of the Jugdral games normally turn out like this, while many other units are capable of becoming this with some luck and a blessing from the Random Number God.
  • Limited-Use Magical Device: In most installments of the Fire Emblem series prior to Fire Emblem Fates, most spellbooks can only be used for a set amount of times before breaking.
  • Little Bit Beastly: The various nonhuman species of the games have minor animal features in their humanoid forms; Manaketes sometimes have claws, wings, and fangs; laguz, depending on the tribe, have animal ears and tails or wings; the Taguel, Wolfskin, and Kitsune have the animal ears and tails as well.
  • Living Crashpad: Hector finds himself in the "something soft" position to both Florina AND her Pegasus! Which is ironic in that he wears so much armor, you'd hardly expect a soft landing.
  • Lost in Translation:
    • Bandits and Pirates are literally "Mountain Thieves" and "Marine Thieves" in Japanese, hence why they can cross those tile types.
    • When "Social Knight" is translated to Cavalier and "Armor Knight" is shortened to Knight, it causes a few problems since the word "Knight" (usually in skills, weapons and class names) is generally used to refer to horseback units, unless the "Armor" and "flying mount" prefix is added.
  • Love Ruins the Realm: Duke Victor of Velthomer, King Desmond of Bern, and King Ashnard of Daein had their realms ruined by their affairs.
  • Low Fantasy: Despite not really being a hallmark Low Fantasy setting like other examples, Fire Emblem consistently enjoys toying with the common trappings. There are other races than humans, but humans constantly act as the dominant force in the world. There's no real epic quest in most of the games (or, at least, it's almost never framed as such) instead focusing on the outbreak of war between human nations and heapings upon heapings of political intrigue. There were ancient heroes with legendary weapons who helped seal away an evil dragon/god, but those legends have long faded into myth, and many of the different settings' individuals at large forgot the existence of said legendary weapons. Monsters can exist, but not only is it very case-by-case depending on the setting, but it's very often they're regarded as mythic like the legendary weapons, and are regarded in-universe as unexpected developments of the war whenever introduced. Magic is common, but it's not seen as a occult happenstance so much as a science, with Radiant Dawn mentioning scientists developing the Rewarp stave of that game, Anima and Dark magic being regarded as "Reason" in Three Houses. This is all alongside the fact that much of the world, especially in later games, shows much more advanced technology from automata to elevators to magical ICBMs. You kinda get the gist by now.
  • Luck-Based Mission:
    • Battle Before Dawn in The Blazing Blade gives no guarantee that you'll reach Jaffar in time to keep him alive in Hector's Hard Mode. If he dies, you don't get a side chapter.
    • Also Ike's fight with the Black Knight in Path of Radiance. Ike at capped Strength does 9 damage, you have 10 blows (if you raised Mist and Ike doesn't have to waste a turn on an elixir), the Black Knight has 60 HP and recovers 6 HP every turn for 5 turns. It involves no skill whatsoever and hinges entirely on whether he activates his Aether skill at least once (or whether he hits the Black Knight on every single attack). If he does, you win. If he doesn't, you don't. Simple as that. The odds are a bit better (but still random) if you use the Wrath/Adept combo instead of Aether, but the opinions for giving that to Ike are mixed.
    • If you want to unlock Lehran in the sequel, you need Ike to have at least 27 Speed if you want to survive an encounter with him again. This is easy enough if you're using a PoR save file, but if not, your Ike will have only 23 Speed initially, meaning you need to Save Scum in order to make sure he gains Speed at least four times in, at most, nine level-ups. (It's still fairly likely you'll get it, especially if you gave him the Blossom skill, which improves growth rates at the expense of halving EXP growth — which isn't a huge problem because you don't even have to average 1 level-up per chapter to get him to the second-tier level cap before his plot-induced promotion to third tier.)
  • Luck Stat: Luck is a recurring stat in the series. Its full range of effects can vary by game, but it has two constants — lowering the chance of getting struck by Critical Hit and giving a small boost to Hit and Avoid.
  • MacGuffin Title: The titular Fire Emblem is an item found in almost every game of the series. Its exact form, function, and importance varies wildly between titles, including:
  • Mage Killer: Pegasus Knights and Paladins, with their high Resistance and access to physical weapons, are good at taking out enemy mages. In later games, any units with the Tomebreaker skill have a good shot at evading magic attacks entirely as they rush into defeating magic casters.
  • Magic Is Feminine: Some of the magic-using classes, most notably Valkyrie are restricted to female classes. Specific examples include:
    • Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake Shadows of Valentia: Celica starting in the Priestess class, which can also be accessed by other female units after promoting from Mage, and essentially is a Distaff Counterpart towards the Sage class aside from wielding swords as well. Celica can later access the Princess class after a certain event, which is a Lord version of the Priestess class. Additionally, because Monks were not in either game, Clerics have access to White Magic much earlier than male Mages. The remake also adds Overclasses for these, with Rigain being exclusive to Celica and giving her access to Aura, and Harriers allows promoted Falcon Knights to use magic, and Exemplar and Enchantress being exclusive to females as well.
    • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: Aside from featuring the debut of the Troubadour class line, the game's Queen class, which is basically a boss variant of the Sage, is exclusive to Hilda and Indra. The Light Priestess class is exclusive to Deirdre and Julia, and Julia in the final chapter can have access to the Naga tome, which is essential for surviving against the final boss.
    • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Micaiah starts out in the Light Mage class and has access to Thani, which is a Light Magic version of Lords' rapiers. Later, she can promote into the Light Priestess class. Sanaki also has access to the Empress class and has exclusive access to the Cymbeline fire tome.
    • Fire Emblem Heroes: Many female characters have alternate versions where they use magic even if they were purely physical units in their original games. However, there are very few male magic-using alts.
    • Fire Emblem: Three Houses: The Gremory, the most powerful of the purely magical classes, is female-exclusive.
  • Magikarp Power:
    • The Est Archetype, in which a young and inexperienced unit starts off at a much lower level than the majority of other units, with similarly low stats. But if trained patiently, they tend to become Lightning Bruisers in their own right.
    • There are also trainees who start with low stats in a weak trainee class (usually Villager), but generally have better availability and can come out just as strong with their high growth rates.
  • Master of Unlocking: The Thief, Assassin, and Rogue classes can open chests and doors without needing the proper keys, though they usually need a lockpick to do so.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Roy has origins in words meaning both red (hair) and king. Ayra/Ira, while not the name's real life origin (where it is short for Irene), is wrath in Latin. These may be coincidental, though.
    • Marth is a weird example; early translations gave his name as Mars (the Roman god of war), but now Marth seems to be the primary translation.
    • Most of the common names have meaning, too. Hector was named for Hector of Troy, Leila was named for a harem girl in a poem, Raven was named for the titular raven from Edgar Allen Poe's poem, etc.
      • Hector has a double-meaning; since he has a brother named Uther (the biological father of King Arthur), he might also be named after Ector, Arthur's foster father.
    • And most characters in Genealogy of the Holy War are named for someone suitably obscure in Celtic mythology. You'll never read The Fate Of The Sons Of Usnach quite the same way again...
    • Soren (Senerio in Japanese) is an interesting case of having two different names, and both of them being meaningful. In Japanese, it's a play on the word "scenario" (Soren being the Tactician), but his English name, Soren, comes from the Italian name Severino, which means a short, grouchy guy.
    • Nearly every place-name in the series is either cribbed from or suspiciously similar to the old name for European territories; Crimea, Gallia, Ostia... there's also the world of the Ike games, Tellius, based on Tellus, the Roman name for the mother earth goddess. It's best not to think too hard about these names, as most of them seem to be totally random.
      • Macedon and Lycia are also real places, Lycia being a region of Turkey and Macedon being the famous home of Alexander the Great.
    • "Elphin" is a pretty good description of his appearance.
    • See the shout-out page for names of characters that have meaning.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: The Dancer class. Dancing allows another character to make a second action that turn.
  • Medieval European Fantasy: The primary setting of the series since the first game. It makes Fire Emblem Fates stand out due to the fact it isn't purely European, but also features a Japanese-style nation as well.
  • Medieval Stasis: Hundreds of thousands of years' worth in Archanea. Perhaps justified in part in that the widespread use of magic means there is less motivation for various technological advances, but it's still surprising how little technology changes over the ages in the Fire Emblem worlds.
  • Mercy Rewarded:
    • In particular, the Capture feature of Thracia 776, in which units captured will join your team as fighters.
    • In Path of Radiance, sparing the Laguz bandits in Chapter 15 and the priests in Chapter 22 also rewards you with bonus experience and one of the best staffs in the game, respectively.
  • Merging the Branches: In Shadow Dragon, several characters were only recruitable in Gaiden chapters that required several playable characters to die to access them. In New Mystery of Emblem, however, all returning Gaiden characters except Nagi are treated as if they joined Marth's army despite the fact that every playable character from the previous game survived to see the sequel.
  • Meteor-Summoning Attack: Meteor is a recurring spell present in several games; it's usually the most powerful type of fire magic available, and has considerable range as well. This power is offset by the scrolls used to cast it being rarer than other spells' and having less durability as well, limiting how much you can actually use it. In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, the Battle of Belhalla finishes with a "fire rain" created via multiple simultaneous uses of the Meteor spell by the court magicians under the orders of the antagonist, resulting in Sigurd's death and the near-total annihilation of his army. In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it's tweaked so that in addition to dealing heavy damage to the target it also deals moderate damage to everyone adjacent to them.
  • Mighty Glacier: (Armor) Knights. Clad in full plate armor, wielding heavy spears. Very hard to kill without magic, powerful enough to one shot many other classes, but slow as molasses and have the lowest Movement.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: Zephiel in Binding Blade seeks to exterminate the human race and allow dragons to reclaim the world. It stems from an attempt on his life by his own father as a child.
  • Monochromatic Impact Shot: Lethality is a skill available to the assassin class (or equivalent). Occurring less often than a standard Critical Hit, this skill invokes a One-Hit Kill, complete with the screen going red and black.
  • Monster Arena: Several maps may have an arena where you can bet gold on whichever unit you enter into it for single combat. Since it's an arena, there's no taking turns or moving around. Both units just keep attacking one after another until someone's HP drops to zero.
  • Mook Chivalry: Zig-zagged. Depending on the game and chapter, enemies will either sit around and wait for you to enter their Movement/Attack Range, start to move toward you once you enter a certain zone, or just outright swarm you. As a general rule, whenever the party is attacking a location, enemies will attack when you go near them. If your party is holding the line or trying to rescue someone, prepare to be swarmed.
  • Mounted Mook: Cavaliers are the main mounted adversaries of the series; soldiers riding on horses that give them great mobility range and even being able to move a little even after making an attack. They would normally carry spears and, being an intermediate class, possess decent attack and Speed stats. Wyvern Knights and Pegasus Knights also serve play similarly, only with their flight ability giving them immunity to ground-based status effects and a heightened weakness to arrows and ballistae, though the much higher Wyvern Lord and Falcon Knight classes mitigate these weaknesses and could turn out to be more dangerous than expected for players.
  • Mr. Fanservice: You've got the Bishonens, manly muscular men, children, and Silver Foxes.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Most games have at least one. Tharja from Awakening and Camilla from the Fates duology are standout examples.
  • Multiple Endings: Usually determined by specific character supports. Mystery of the Emblem and The Binding Blade both end early if you didn't get all of the items you need.
  • The Multiverse: General dividers between different sub-series depends on the continent the story is set on, most of which also takes place in a different universe. Archanea, Valentia, Jugdral, Ylisse and Valm are notable as all of them are within the same physical universe, with Ylisse and Valm being Archanea and Valentia thousands of years in the future, while the stories set on Jugdral are hundreds of years in the past. Some works also delve into exploring the multiverse to provide some Canon Welding between different works.
    • Archanea: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Mystery of the Emblem and their remakes
    • Valentia: Gaiden and its remake
    • Jugdral: Genealogy of the Holy war, Thracia 776
    • Elibe: The Binding Blade, The Blazing Blade
    • Tellius: Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn
    • Magvel: The Sacred Stones
    • Ylisse: Awakening (also involves Valm)
    • Unnamed continent composed of Hoshido & Nohrnote : Fates
    • Fódlan: Three Houses
  • Musical Nod: Traditionally, the Arena and Trial Map themes reuse musical tracks from prior games:
    • Genealogy: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the player map theme from FE1, and the arena battle theme remixes the player battle them from the same game.
    • Thracia 776: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the first player map theme from FE3 Book 2.
    • Binding Blade: Arena battle theme is a remix of the player battle theme from FE4, and the Trial Map player and enemy map themes are based on their equivalents from FE2.
    • The Blazing Blade: Arena battle theme is a remix of the player battle theme from FE5.
    • Sacred Stones: Arena entrance theme is a remix of the FE4's Prologue player map theme, and the arena battle theme is a remix of the FE2 player battle theme.
    • Path of Radiance: The Trial Map map theme is a remix of FE4's Chapter 10 player map theme.
    • Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem: Arena entrance theme is a remix of Ephraim's first map theme from FE8, and the arena battle theme is a remix of the FE9 player battle theme.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: Pretty much every single game features multiple bosses that fight you only for this reason. Some of the potential recruits also follow this until you recruit them.

    N-P 
  • Near Victory Fanfare: Most Fire Emblem games have a tune that plays when there's only one enemy left on the map (often the Boss, but not always), which can get annoying if you grind for Supports.
  • Nice Guy: Enough to have its own page.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • In The Blazing Blade, if you get the best Tactician rating, the game says that you "changed the course of history" and that "Bern and Etruria (the countries fighting in Binding Blade) so desired this skilled mind that they went to war". Granted, they still go to war if you do poorly, but...
    • Pretty much sums up the first generation of Genealogy. Although as the side story Fall of Lenster revealed, Quan is the grand champion of this trope.
  • No Hero Discount: Played straight in every game, but taken to ridiculous extremes in Radiant Dawn when the last three merchants IN THE WORLD still charge you full price for supplies, as they accompany you on your quest to slay GOD. If you fail, they will turn to stone, but apparently they're not even willing to hand over another silver card. Even worse because there are certain cutscenes in which they give you free items, explicitly because you're their only hope of survival.
  • Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: In the franchise, negative status effects are typically inflicted only by staff units, using staff weapons that cannot deal direct damage to foes. Examples include the Sleep, Silence, and Berserk staves, as well as the monstrous Stone magic, which inflict those respective conditions. The most common exception is poison, which is virtually always applied by damaging weapons or magic.
  • Noodle People: A lot of official artwork from the older 2D games are hit hard by this trope. This is even more noticeable in Thracia 776 and the Elibe games, where most of these games' characters were given longer and lankier limbs than usual.
  • Nonchalant Dodge: In the GBA titles, several classes, especially promoted ones, make very little Movement in the dodge animations, such as Swordmasters barely tilting their body or post-promotion Eliwood barely tilting himself and his mount a few degrees.
  • Non-Indicative Name:
    • The various swords named Falchion have never been actual falchions, instead being longswords.
    • Despite their name, the Short Axe and Short Spear that appears in some games of the series are not indicative of the actual size/length of the weapon itself. Subverted in Three Houses, where the size of the Short Axe/Spear matches with the name of the weapons.
  • Non-Linear Sequel: There are several different universes. However, it's been confirmed that Archanea and Jugdral take place in the same world, and so does Awakening.
  • No One Could Survive That!: The Black Knight is buried under Nados Castle when it collapses. He survives.
  • The Notable Numeral: This series positively loves this trope. The Twelve Crusaders, the Eight Generals, the Four Fangs...
  • Nostalgia Level: If a game is made in the same continuity as a previous one, expect to see a couple.
    • Chapter 8 of Mystery of the Emblem and its remake takes place on the same bridge where the Sable Knights were fought, the very next chapter has you fighting through the desert of Khadein again, Chapters 15 and 16 is retaking Altea yet again, Chapter 17 is another battle at Gra keep, and finally Chapters 19 and 20 take place in Archanea like the previous time.
    • Thracia 776 has a few of its own, like Chapter 19 taking place at the very same path where Leif was stranded in during Chapter 7 of Genealogy.
    • Chapter 14 (with 1-10 being a tutorial) of Blazing Blade is in the same place and identical to Chapter 4 of Binding Blade, with the same character as the boss. Hector Chapter 25 of Blazing Blade has an objective to capture every castle, mirroring the objective of every chapter from the 4th game.
    • If you look closely in Chapter 29 (31 in Hector's story) of the same game, you'll find the starting area is the exact same place as the boss' area in Chapter 8 of Binding Blade.
    • There are a lot of these parallels in areas between Blazing Blade and Binding Blade, especially near the end.
      • Chapter 27E/29H has the same boss area as Chapter 21 of Binding Blade, but approached from the other direction such that it's in the northwest corner of the map rather than the southeast corner.
      • Chapter 28E takes place in the same cave as Chapter 8x of Binding Blade, while its Hector's Story counterpart, Chapter 30, matches up with Chapter 12x.
      • Chapter 29xE/31xH takes place in the same town as Chapter 7 of Binding Blade.
    • Ostia Castle in Binding Blade's Chapters 7 and 8 is almost identical to Manster in Thracia 776's prison break Chapters 6 and 5 respectively, except with slightly changed positions. Roy in Chapter 7 is outside Ostia and wants to enter, while Leif in Chapter 6 wants to escape from the castle and ends where Roy starts. Both Leif and Roy start in the same position in Chapters 5 and 8, but Leif is trying to escape and Roy is trying to enter.
    • Many of the DLC maps in Awakening are based on maps from previous games in the series.
  • Official Couple: Interestingly, all of the Shouzou Kaga-led (Archanea/Valentia, save for Awakening, and Jugdral) games give the Lords official love interests, whereas all of the ones that came after Thracia 776 do not; the later games go for the Implied Love Interest route instead due to the introduction of the support system, with remakes of the Kaga games being obvious exceptions.
    • Archanea: Marth and Caeda are engaged by the end of Shadow Dragon, and only hold off their wedding due to the War of Heroes come Mystery of the Emblem. They tie the knot for real when the game ends.
    • Valentia: Celica and Alm, who are both the Lords of Gaiden, are an example of a Childhood Friend Romance. While they initially clash in how to deal with the incoming war with Rigel, they still look out for one another. After they join forces against Duma, they marry, unite both of Valentia's two kingdoms and combine the faiths of Mila and Duma into one super-faith.
    • Jugdral (Genealogy): Sigurd and Deirdre marry after the first chapter of Genealogy, and by the time Chapter 3 comes around, she's already given birth to Seliph. Seliph, curiously, is an exception to this rule, and though he insists that he's uninterested, his half-sister Julia appears to be very much in love with him, to the point where she stays with him at the end even if he has a wife.
    • Jugdral (Thracia 776): Since he was a regular second-generation unit in Genealogy, Leif can be paired up with any of the other female members of Seliph's army. In the game where he's the main Lord, however, should Nanna survive, he proposes to her, and her ending states that they marry after Seliph finishes liberating Jugdral.
  • One-Man Army:
    • Most units in any game become this if leveled up high enough — come endgame in pretty much any FE incarnation, it's not uncommon for a high level character to be able to solo the final chapters by themself.
    • Jagens are also this early game if you choose to use them.
  • One Stat to Rule Them All: Speed, due to affecting evasion and the ability to double attack. Also, (Physical) Defense in some of the games.
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • A few exceptions exist, like Aran from Radiant Dawn and Arran from Shadow Dragon, but the first was named Brad in the Japanese version. A legitimate exception is Lynn from Genealogy of Holy War (canonized as Lene in Heroes) and Lyn(dis) from The Blazing Blade as well as Linde/Linda from Archanea and Linda from Genealogy of the Holy War (recurring NPC Jake will comment on how Jugdral!Linda's name is familiar).
    • Radiant Dawn has Amy and Aimee in the same game. This is another example of a name change clash, the 2nd originally (she keeps this original name in Shadow Dragon) being Larabel.
    • Sacred Stones had Marisa, whose original name was Marica, which makes Marica and Marcia. On a similar note, Tellius’ Titania and Valentia’s Tatiana.
    • And then you have Arthur from Genealogy of the Holy War, *another* Arthur from Fates (though justified in that he's named Harold in Japan), and also Artur from Sacred Stones.
    • There's also Selena from Sacred Stones and "Selena" from Fates, although the latter is using a pseudonym.
    • There are cases that the name are the same but are of different versions of them like Alex (Alec (Scottish) and Lex in Genealogy of the Holy War and Xander in Fates) and Elizabeth (Liza in Shadow Dragon and Genealogy of the Holy War, Lissa in Awakening, Elise in Fates). The name Sophia even gets a full spectrum of variance spellings with Sonya (Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia), Sophia (Binding Blade), Sonia (Blazing Blade), and Sophie (Fates).
    • Shadows of Valentia and Gaiden are a strange (and funny) case. In the Japanese versions, the character renamed Leon in the English version is called Leo; the Nohrian Prince from Fates is Leon in the Japanese version, and Leo in the English version. Additionally, the mercenary Kamui (named such in both languages) has the same name as the half-dragon Avatar Kamui in the Japanese version of Fates (renamed Corrin in the English version).
  • Only One Name: Most characters are only known by one name, making the exceptions somewhat notable (Albein Alm Rudolf, Seliph Baldos Chalphy, Leif Faris Claus, Brendan, Lloyd, and Linus Reed, Pascal Gretzner, Elincia Ridell Crimea, Jill and Shihiram Fizzart, Sanaki Kirsch Altina, and pretty much everyone from Fire Emblem: Three Houses).
  • Optional Party Member: If you didn't steal soldiers from the opposing side, you'd almost never make it through the game.
  • Orcus on His Throne: Virtually every boss guarding a seize square. Because they are typically bulky Knights/Generals, they will just sit there while you whittle down his health at a range and not getting a single hit on your party, except for the rare one that wields weak throwable javelins over high-end spears. However, certain bosses (sometimes depending on the difficulty) do avert this, which is usually troublesome, especially if this behaviour isn't known in advance. In the later games such as Awakening, the range markers will helpfully indicate when the boss won't be moving.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: And not even consistent across the various games due to differing designs, and inconsistent size:
    • More specifically, there are two different kinds of humanoid dragons, Manaketes and Dragon Laguz, that transform into dragons using separate methods. Then we have Wyvern Riders who ride non-humanoid dragons, usually called Wyverns, akin to the Pegasus Knights. Two games had Draco Zombies, and a few other varying examples exist throughout the rest of the series.
    • Furthermore, the Dragon tribes in several Fire Emblem universes started going insane without warning, in addition to going sterile, the only known solution was sealing their dragon essence/form into a common stone, creating something known as a Dragonstone.
    • Finally, the Fire Emblem multiverse has multiple types of Dragons (Manaketes or Laguz) that represent their element. Oftentimes, the element they represent leads to a power dichotomy, where the weakest tends to be fire and the strongest tends to be ice or water, with a whole spectrum in-between. They can also wildly vary in appearance based on the element they make use of; Silent Dragons that command waves are the furthest from the image of a traditional Western Dragon, lacking eyes, having antlers, and making use of bubbles and water plumes in combat. Fire dragons, in contrast, almost perfectly mimic the Western interpretations of Dragons, breathing fire, being capable of bipedal movement (though they prefer flight and going on all fours), and having wings.
  • Our Wights Are Different: One of the enemy units in The Sacred Stones. It's an armed-and-armored skeleton.
  • Our Wyverns Are Different: Both two-legged and four-legged wyvern varieties have been depicted in the series — usually the four-legged kind is tame and can be used as a mount, while the two-legged kind is wilder and has the ability to breathe fire (though this isn't always depicted). The Japanese term hiryuunote  is sometimes translated as "wyverns" and sometimes as "dragons", though they are clearly distinct from the sapient dragons that tend to play a major role in Fire Emblem plots. Wyvern is sometimes used as a formal name for this dragon type in Japan as well.
    • Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, features feral wyverns as enemies, which have both a high Speed stat and the highest Movement of any unit in the series (12 squares where the normal maximum is 10). It's also revealed that these wyverns once were sapient dragons, being one of the tribes who failed to escape degeneration; there's even a hidden shop which sells a wyvern Dragonstone, allowing a playable manakete to transform into a wyvern.
    • The usual promotion path for mounted characters (Japanese names first, English in brackets if available) is Dragon Rider -> Dragon Knight (Wyvern Rider) -> Dragon Master (Wyvern Lord). Sometimes the Dragon Knight is also available as a promotion for the Pegasus Knight class.
    • The Sacred Stones notably allows a Dragon Knight to promote into either Dragon Master or "Wyvern Knight". The latter has that name in both English and Japanese, and is the only class in that game to ride a two-legged mount rather than a four-legged one. Conversely the Dragon Rider class, which appears in only two games, starts with a two-legged mount and switches it for a four-legged one on promotion.
  • Overly Long Fighting Animation:
    • Some of the stronger spells in each game. Luckily, you can turn off battle animations.
    • Armored units in Genealogy of the Holy War also have fairly long animations, especially if they have to cover a lot of distance to get to the opposing unit (certain units have their attack animations back them up).
    • Averted in Fire Emblem: Awakening, which allows you to fast-forward or just skip individual fights at will without turning them off entirely.
  • Patricide:
    • A rather common event — sometimes it's in the backstory, or it's actually done in gameplay. Whether or not the player ends up making characters off their own parents is usually up to the player.
    • Averted in Radiant Dawn. One map has Brom and Meg on opposite sites. Sure enough, they will not attack each other.
  • Pegasus: The mounts of the Pegasus Rider/Pegasus Knight class are these.
    • Winged Unicorn: They either grow horns or wear armor with them when their riders promote to Falcon Knights.
  • Permadeath:
    • Everyone, if you're careless enough to lose them. The series is notable for this, and keeping all units alive is the main source and major contributor to its difficulty.
    • Though important non-Lord characters just get a major injury so they can still participate in the plot.
    • Or because it's the Prequel and they're confirmed to live. If you're not confirmed to live, good luck with that.
    • Marth's games and Genealogy of the Holy War have the Aum and Valkyrie staves, respectively. Each can revive an ally that's died in battle, though they only have a single use and can only be used by certain people, and while the Valkyrie staff can be repaired, it's incredibly expensive to do so.
    • New Mystery of the Emblem introduced Casual Mode, which allows you to turn this off, but you still lose any units that "die" for the rest of that particular fight.
    • Downloadable units in Awakening can be re-recruited after death, either at their initial levels or (if you remembered to update them in the Avatar Logbook and have a lot of gold to spare) closer to where they were when they died.
    • Fates not only kept Casual Mode, but introduced Phoenix Mode, which brings back any defeated units on the next turn. However, Phoenix Mode is limited to just Normal difficulty, since Normal difficulty is explicitly said to be for beginners to the series.
    • The Blazing Blade didn't enforce permadeath during Lyn's Story — defeated units retreated and were unusable for the rest of the story, but they still could be recruited in the main campaign. This was repeated in Fates for chapters before the route split.
  • Personality Blood Types: The Japanese version of The Blazing Blade allows you to choose' the blood type of Mark, the player character. This and the birth month you select define your affinity with certain characters, giving them bonuses in battle.
  • Powerful, but Inaccurate:
    • Axes do quite a bit of damage, but they also have lower accuracy than swords and lances.
    • Dark magic has the most raw power of the magic types, but it's also the most inaccurate.
  • Player Death Is Dramatic: Every game in the series does this when a Lord class character dies. They will give their Last Words and vanish as an ally screams or apologizes for failing to protect them.
  • The Player Is the Most Important Resource: In 7, the characters of your party will be stunned at your great abilities upon victory, and especially grateful at the end of the game. However, this is optional — you don't need to "create a tactician" for the main characters to address.
  • Playing with Fire: The many fire tomes, which do things like calling down flaming meteors to shooting fireballs at the enemy.
  • Plot Armor: While most of the time when a unit's HP reaches zero, they suffer Permadeath, when a unit is crucial to the game's plot, they'll retreat and never be deployable again instead, explained in-universe as a Career-Ending Injury.
  • Plotline Death:
    • Lorenz in Mystery of The Emblem's Book 2, Sigurd and (seemingly) almost all of his army halfway through Genealogy of Holy War; Hector near the end of the beginning of Binding Blade, Leila roughly halfway through The Blazing Blade and Ninian towards the end; Greil and Rajaion in Path of Radiance; Pelleas in Radiant Dawn under most circumstances; your decoy in Shadow Dragon; and Jeralt in Three Houses.
    • Except not really on the second-to last one, according to New Mystery of the Emblem - Hero of Light and Shadow.
  • Power Glows: From Mystery onward, the series has been quite a big fan of it — whenever a unit attacks with a legendary weapon, the weapon lets off a split-second Audible Gleam which covers the entire screen. This often applies when enemy units have them.
  • Power Creep:
    • There is a broad trend in the series towards higher stats as the series goes on. Doing double-digit damage in early titles was pretty solid, and the final boss might have 60 to 80 hitpoints, but by the GBA titles, such damage is more of a baseline, units can achieve critical hit rates over 50% and the final boss has 120 hitpoints. And since then, stat growths and caps have only risen further, with Radiant Dawn having caps up to 50 and Three Houses breaking 80. It's mostly not a huge issue in any single game as the enemies creep in similar measure to the playable units, but it makes cross-game comparisons difficult at best.
    • Heroes in particular has major power creep within itself, with newer units having better base stat totals, better and more complex skills, and better weapons.
  • Power Up Let Down:
    • Kieran's Gamble. Not so much if you take it off of him and give it to someone with a high accuracy.
    • Snipers in The Sacred Stones have a skill that randomly activates, ensuring a hit... but Snipers typically have a very high Skill stat, so they almost always have 100% accuracy anyway.
      • In the Radiance games, Snipers are given "Deadeye" instead, a skill which puts enemies to sleep. Would be useful if Rolf and Shinon were even halfway capable of not one-shotting anything they touch.
      • In Path of Radiance, Deadeye also had the passive effect of increasing accuracy by 100% — so any attack that would have had even the slightest chance to hit normally will never miss, and even attacks that would've been guaranteed misses are likely to hit. Most likely nerfed in Radiant Dawn because the change in skill capacity would've made it possible to combine Deadeye and Gamble.
      • Most Beorc Mastery Skills in Radiant Dawn triple the attack's damage on top of their effect (the Sentinels' Impale quadruples damage, but has no other effect; Sages' Flare and Saints' Corona negate Resistance instead; and the Black Knight's Eclipse is Luna with quintuple damage rather than triple, because he cheats). Needless to say, few enemies survive long enough to suffer those effects and the ones that could have abilities that prevent them from activating in the first place; strictly speaking, it is literally impossible for anything in the game to survive a hit of Eclipse, including Ashera.
  • Precision F-Strike: In the North American localizations, the word "damn" is reserved for the worst moments (e.g. main character dying).
  • Prejudice Aesop: This is largely the overarching aesop of the Tellius duology. There is a deep divide between Beorc (traditional human characters) and Laguz (animalistic humanoid shapeshifters) due to past tensions and racial prejudice. Ike, the protagonist, grew up without knowledge of such racial divides, and his journey throughout the games basically beats the player over the head that "racism is bad."
  • Prestige Class: Most Character Classes can be upgraded into stronger ones via a process called Class Change, which can only be done once specific circumstances are met (usually hitting a designated level and using a certain item). These stronger classes provided a boost to stats, typically grant access to more weapons types and/or the use of higher quality weapons, and sometimes give class-specific combat skills.
  • Pun: Mages promote into Sages.

    Q-S 
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking:
    • The boss of any given chapter is invariably stronger than the generic enemies serving under them. Goes all the way up through an army, too: generals are stronger than squad commanders, and kings like Zephiel and Ashnard usually are stronger than their generals.
    • Elincia experiences an interesting variation. She's a princess in Path of Radiance and a queen in Radiant Dawn. In the latter, her stats have become better and her personal sword sharper.
  • Quickly-Demoted Leader: Titania in Path of Radiance. While never actually demoted, her subordinate and student Ike gets promoted to leadership. Unlike most examples, this was actually a source of conflict and everyone there had to choose whether to follow him or not. Some of them don't. Titania does.
  • The Quisling: Many minor villains start off as allies of sorts to the heroes but defected and screwed the heroes's home country over when the main villain faction starts to impose their dominant force into the continent. They usually get killed by the heroes for this act.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits:
    • The player usually starts with a small core of professionals that know each other, but by the end will have recruited and used a whole bunch of miscellaneous weirdos.
    • In The Blazing Blade, the player is given both the magic general of all of Etruria (the most magically proficient country in the world) and an illiterate fourteen-year-old girl you recruit from the bad guys. The girl has the potential to be one of the best magic users in the game (it is debatable if she has enough time to realize that potential, though).
    • Lampshaded in this support conversation from Path of Radiance:
      Largo: That's strange...
      Tauroneo: ...
      Largo: Hey, Tauroneo!
      Tauroneo: Hmm?
      Largo: Don't you think this army is a little odd? I mean, heck! It's not every day that you see soldiers from this many countries all mixed into one army. I've traveled and fought in a lot of strange places, but this is the first time I've seen anything quite like this.
      Tauroneo: You're right. There are even former Daein soldiers in this army. There is no shortage of nationalities, to be sure.
    • Also Lampshaded by Raven in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade when he wonders how Rebecca doesn't know his face or name despite their being a small ragtag group.
    • Don't let the title of "army" fool you. In most games, your units are just a unusually large bunch of skilled individuals, not bothering with normal army stuff like uniforms or anything resembling ordered formations.
      • In the GBA installments, however, you can disable the character-specific color display, resulting in them all adopting blue clothing the way they would wear a uniform. Formations are entirely up to you; you can let them loose on the enemy lines if you're confident or go for actual tactics.
    • Leif's army in Thracia 776 has a combination of a band of village mercenaries, a former bandit leader, (multiple) princes and princesses, the leader of a thief guild, a fallen prince and his daughter, and the commander of a squad of Pegasus Knights that joined after being kidnapped by your army.
    • Downplayed in Fates, in which a large fraction of the playable characters are either princes or princesses of Hoshido or Nohr, or retainers formally sworn to the service of those royals.
    • Also downplayed in Alm's route in Gaiden, where the vast majority of the playable characters are professional or volunteer soldiers. The only ragtag guys Alm picks up are two clergywomen and two mage siblings.
    • Interestingly played straight in Three Houses with the Black Eagles and Golden Deer. Their members don't share much in common with each other beyond having grown in the same territory, yet they still manage to form a cohesive group of sorts by the end of their journeys.
  • Random Number God:
    • In addition to the usual complaints about misses and critical hits, the leveling/stats system used in many of the games can, at the whim of the RNG, turn a character into an unstoppable monster or a useless waste of space. Characters with 'average' stat growths (around 30%) are particularly prone to this.
    • Despite RNGs being present in many games, this series somehow has a reputation as the cheapest when it comes to unlikely random events, usually involving the phrase "1% chance". Any unit with an even mildly decent Luck Stat will usually only get a critical hit against them if the enemy has some sort of bonus to criticals, but early-game myrmidons/mercenaries, wielders of light (GBA games) or thunder magic, and any enemy attacking Knoll can get a tiny chance of a critical. (Swordmasters, Berserkers, and wielders of Killer weapons and higher-level Light/Thunder magic (or Luna in FE7) usually have a better chance and are legitimately dangerous.) These enemies really don't get criticals that often, but you know how it is when they do.
    • A level that really accentuates this is the church chapter in Path of Radiance. The map is very small, so it's all closed quarters, but there are tons of bishops that are blocking your way, but not the enemy's. It takes time to shove the bishops out of the way (or kill them, which is discouraged). The bottom line is that the bad guys are definitely going to get a few hits in, which wouldn't be so bad if they weren't all axe-men with decent critical chance. The boss exaggerates everything above, carrying both a Killer Axe and Killer Bow (high critical chance), high Strength (better chance that the critical will kill you), and seems to know exactly when he should pop out to kill someone and when he should hide in the back behind a whole stack of bishops. In other words, unless you really take your time in this chapter, the boss will get some hits in; just hope he doesn't get a critical at the wrong time. Although, if you can get a Thief in position next to the boss, you can steal whichever weapon he hasn't got equipped at that moment, and then exploit his blind spot in the spaces he can't target.
  • Razor Wind: The recurring spell Excalibur is commonly depicted as sharp slashes made of wind magic.
  • Recurring Element: Archetypes. The franchise has certain elements that tend to happen in each games as portrayed with different characters. From an early veteran that takes less experience and have low growth to an upcoming newcomer that takes more experience with good growth to the enemy swordsman that you need to convince to join your team, and so on...
  • Recurring Riff: Genealogy of the Holy War's soundtrack includes bits of "Birth of Holy Knight" to a few of its other tracks, effectively making it the main theme of that game. Mainline games since Awakening follow suit by having one main theme and include a few notes from it into other tracks.
  • Red Baron:
    • Nearly everyone has a nickname, from Karel "The Sword Demon" to most of the bosses you face; in particular, in The Blazing Blade, any Black Fang worth their salt has a nickname, from Jaffar, "Angel of Death" to Lloyd the "White Wolf". Even the weaker members get their own nicknames, like Teodor the Shrike Shadow Hawk, that they prefer to go by rather than their real names.
    • In character endings, each is given a nickname.
    • Grado's generals in Sacred Stones are each given a gemstone nickname by the emperor when they are promoted to that rank (Moonstone, Blood Beryl, Fluorspar, etc).
  • Red/Green Contrast: One of the character archetypes. Two paired characters share the same class (usually cavaliers) and are sometimes blood relatives (usually brothers). One will have a predominantly red colour scheme and is usually the stern, serious type, while the other will have a predominantly green colour scheme and will be more casual and laid-back. The red character of the two typically has better offensive stats, while the green character typically is more geared towards defence, although these roles are sometimes switched. Red/green pair characters include:
  • Red Mage: Promoted magic users normally become Combat Medics, with those who started with staves gaining offensive magic and those that started with offensive magic gaining staves. Awakening lets Sorcerers/Dark Mages wield Anima magic as well as dark magic.
  • Redemption Earns Life: A fairly common staple in the series. If you meet a villain early in the game who doesn't look particularly Gonk-ish, there's an excellent chance they will have the chance for a Heel–Face Turn midway through the campaign and will wind up in your army, if you don't take the opportunity to kill them instead.
  • Reincarnation Romance: Julius and Ishtar is essentially Azel and Tiltyu's romance reincarnated, one born from a bastard child and the other forced to continue the bitter legacy.
  • Relationship Values: If characters fight near or alongside each other, they will build up points that can unlock special conversations called Supports. Supports give characters Status Buffs when they are near each other and, in some games, may potentially lead to marriage if enough Supports are unlocked.
  • Religion Is Magic: Light magic and healing magic are the result of bishops and light mages worshipping gods.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Wyvern Riders are traditionally the feature class of the enemy country in each game, in contrast to the more "graceful" and protagonist-friendly Pegasus Knights. Oftentimes, you face more of them as enemies than Pegasus Knights, and those which are recruitable are almost always from the enemy side.
  • Restored My Faith in Humanity:
    • Gotoh's lost his belief in humans because they used the magic he gave them for fighting wars. Marth restores his faith by... fighting a war (for a virtuous cause, sure, but still...).
    • Ike can also restore Lehran's faith in humanity in Radiant Dawn, albeit only on the second playthrough, and after fulfilling an insane amount of requirements besides.
  • Reward from Nowhere: Certain items are collected from foes upon defeat, even if the foe was on the other side of a wall, or on the other side of the whole battlefield.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: The most important characters and many protagonists are frequently royalty who fight on the front lines and end up trying to save the world.
  • The Sacred Darkness: There occasionally is a dark tome among a series' set of Holy Weapons, such as Gleipnir and Apocalypse, though Gleipnir is the one Sacred Twin that doesn't get bonus damage against monsters. Fates also introduced Xander's magical blade Siegfried, which is said to be sacred despite pulsing with dark magic.
  • Saving the World: In many games, when a Greater-Scope Villain is revealed, the plot switches from a local conflict to the characters attempting to stave off the destruction of their world.
  • Say My Name:
    • In Radiant Dawn, Tormod yells "SOOOOOOOOOTHE" when first announcing his presence to the rogue.
    • Also, in The Blazing Blade, a good half of the dialogue between Eliwood and Ninian consists of them saying each other's name.
  • Scaled Up: The Mamkutes/Manaketes are an entire race that can do this. Many final bosses either become possessed by, summon or otherwise become dragons.
  • Scissors Cuts Rock: The "X"-reaver weapons reverse the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors system. For example, Swordreaver axes are good against swords instead of being weak to them, but they are also weak to lances instead of being strong against them.
  • Secret Level: Starting with Thracia 776, hidden bonus levels have become a series staple. While they're always referred to as Gaiden in the Japanese versions, there are fundamentally two versions that can be fairly cleanly separated by a change in the English-localization for them, though both tend to reward units and/or items.
    • From Thracia 776 until New Mystery of the Emblem (including the English titles Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, and Shadow Dragon), they're called Sidequests and more colloquially Bonus Chapters, Gaiden Chapters, or X Chapters (because in they're numbered as the preceding chapter with an "x" at the end, so the Sidequest to Chapter 19 would be Chapter 19x). Blazing Blade is also noteworthy for having a Sidequest to another Sidequest, resulting in Chapter 19xx. Sidequests must be taken immediately when they open up or there will never be another chance to do them in that playthrough and have requirements ranging from being unconditional to downright Guide Dang It!.
    • Starting in Awakening, the localization changed to Paralogue, and at the same time the nature of the secret levels changed. Instead of only being available at one specific time, Paralogues can be done at any time, or at least any time within a certain window and are less prone to Guide Dang It! unlock conditions. Additionally, in Awakening and Fates, they're numbered entirely independently of main story chapters, and Three Houses eschews even that sort of numbering.
  • Secret Shop:
    • You'll need a card to get in, and the secret shops are usually an out-of-the-way panel that just looks slightly different from the rest.
    • Became an Artifact Title of sorts when Anna is referred to as "The Secret Seller" in Awakening, even though she pops up all over the place in clear sight, but still with rare and valuable items.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Many games have this either as part of the story or the backstory. Some games, however, let the player decide to have the characters do it - especially the three on the 3DS which all feature patricide.
  • Shoot the Medic First:
    • This would be a straighter example if the enemy actually had more (and more effective) healers on their side; alas, they don't. Rest assured, put your own Clerics in harm's way, and the enemy will go right after them.
    • The AI priority in the first game is basically Cleric and Archers > Marth > the rest. And your cleric gets exp by being attacked.
    • One very poignant example, however, is during Ike's first duel with the Black Knight. On the third turn, some reinforcements will appear, including a Bishop with a Physic Staff. If he manages to heal the Black Knight, you won't win.
  • Shock and Awe: The thunder tomes, which zap enemies with conjured lightning.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss:
    • Lyn and Hector, Farina and Dart, Serra and Erk or Matthew, L'Arachel and Innes/Rennac/Ephraim, Clarine and Rutger...
    • During Rebecca and Wil's B Support Conversation, she kicks him in the stomach.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism:
    • Titania and Soren, respectively, serve as mouthpieces to each side of the scale. Path of Radiance itself tends towards realism and cynicism for the most part.
    • Also, this sums up the major personality differences between Eirika and Ephraim.
  • Snow Means Love:
    • The fourth chapter of Genealogy of the Holy War takes place in snowy Silesia and gives us three possible relationship-boosting talks between Azel and Tailto, Lewyn and Ferry, and Claude and Sylvia. In the second case, this will automatically trigger their Relationship Upgrade.
    • The player can make the trope happen if their preferred romantic couples reach the highest level of support in stages that are covered in snow.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Played straight in Genealogy, Thracia 776, Gaiden, and to a lesser extent, any of the games with no weight stat. Otherwise, stronger weapons are mostly kept in check by their heavy weight and low number of uses.
  • Sound of No Damage: In the Game Boy Advance games, any attack that does no damage will make a high-pitched "ping" sound.
  • Spanner in the Works: Kishuna in the first chapter where he appears in The Blazing Blade. The boss of that chapter (who, incidentally, comes off as a chessmaster-type character, what with remarks like "battle is an equation") has long-range magic that will do some nasty damage to your non-magic party members... had the aforementioned Magic Seal not made his conveniently-timed unexpected appearance, putting the boss smack-dab in the radius of an Anti-Magic aura.
  • Spell Levels: The series does this with both spells and weapons, by dividing them up into Weapon Levels dictating when a character is skilled enough to use stronger weapons. Usually the ranks range from E-S, although games prior to Binding Blade stopped at A (Awakening does this as well, and Genealogy also didn't have anything lower than C) and Radiant Dawn added SS as an extra level above S. The typical progression for weapons is Iron, Steel, Silver. Magic was further standardized in Radiant Dawn, giving basic magic, 'El' magic, 'Arc' magic, a named long range attack, named high level, and then 'Rex' for the ultimate (e.g. Wind, Elwind, Arcwind, Blizzard, Tornado, Rexcalibur).
  • Spell My Name With An S:
    • None of the titles before The Blazing Blade have official English releases, the inevitable result (combined with the rather scattered nature of the fanbase) being that different sources have different names for pretty much everyone and everything. Due to the vagaries of Japanese transliteration of foreign names (usually of legendary weapons), the Gae Bolg has been referred to as the "Gay Borg" in more than one FAQ for Genealogy of the Holy War. For that matter, Nintendo themselves seem to have trouble, turning Turpin into Durban and Almace into Armads. Admittedly, once Archbishop Turpin from The Song of Roland became an axewielding berserker, all bets were off.
    • Nabal/Nabarl/Nabaaru/Navahl/Navarre/The guy with the killing edge in Chapter 3 of the original game that you can recruit takes the cake. He doesn't even have the same translation in the American and European releases of Shadow Dragon. Neither does Shiida/Caeda.
    • Eideen/Edin/Aideen/Edain/Adean isn't too far behind the above.
    • The European version of The Blazing Blade can't seem to decide whether it's Ostia or Ositia; Laus or Lahus; Bern or Biran. The world map tends to use the former name, while the rest of the dialogue uses the latter.
    • A strange case is Seliph, the second protagonist of Genealogy Of the Holy War. He's near-universally referred to as "Celice" by the fandom, but in their summary of the history of the franchise on their The Blazing Blade website, Nintendo of America calls him "Serlis". It's possible this was done to differentiate him from Celica, protagonist of Gaiden who was mentioned several paragraphs before, but...
    • Awakening's release rectified several names from Genealogy, including Celice being localized as Seliph. Heroes rectified many names from Binding Blade and before, as well.
    • The title of the series itself is subject to this in its native Japanese. The katakana spelling of "Fire Emblem" is highly unusual, being written as ファイアーエムブレム ("faiā emuburemu") when normally it would be ファイアー/ファイヤーエンブレム ("faiā/faiyā enburemu")note . Japanese gaming magazines would sometimes end up instinctively "correcting" the spelling to the latter form even though the "incorrect" one is set in stone.
  • Spiritual Successor: TearRing Saga for the PlayStation, which was designed by Shouzou Kaga. Kaga would go one to develop more games in the series, namely Berwick Saga and Vestaria Saga that differentiated themselves more from Fire Emblem than Tear Ring Saga did.
  • Spiteful A.I.:
    • In many of the games, the enemy will attempt to kill your Lord and trigger a Game Over via We Cannot Go On Without You, tactics or well-being of its own units be damned.
    • If neither the Lord nor your cleric are in range, the AI will attempt to gang up attackers on one of your units in an attempt to kill it in one turn before it can heal and/or retreat.
    • The AI also loves to attack even when it would not do any damage at all; it values more wasting charges of your Infinity -1 Sword than the wellbeing of his troops. Alternatively, it'll do exactly that to deny you an Optional Party Member, which is even more frustrating. Though mercifully rarer.
  • Squishy Wizard: Most magic users have terrible Defense. Some try to compensate with crazy dodging skills.
  • Staff Chick: The clerics featured in the earlier games were almost exclusively kind women in white, while later games changed it up.
  • Stationary Enemy: Some enemy units, usually Mighty Glaciers like Generals or their equivalents, don't move on the map, usually to defend a chokepoint or other location of importance.
  • Still Wearing the Old Colors: Enemy units that join you typically keep their original armor color.
  • Straight for the Commander: Zig-Zagged. Sometimes missions can be won instantly by killing the enemy commander as soon as possible, other times you have to kill every enemy soldier regardless.
  • The Strategist:
    • The player character in The Blazing Blade.
    • Soren in Path of Radiance and Malledus in Shadow Dragon.
    • August and Dorias in Thracia 776 and Elphin and Merlinus in Binding Blade as well.
    • Ephraim in The Sacred Stones.
    • The player character again in Awakening. Being an amnesiac with only recollection of how to use strategy in battle, this becomes their entire personality, especially with such battle lines as "Checkmate!" and "Now that's strategy."
  • Subtext: Florina and Lyn from Fire Emblem certainly seem to share a Xena/Gabrielle dynamic early on in the game. Well, mostly Florina, a Shrinking Violet who admits to being afraid of men. She eventually matures and recovers from it, but the subtext is still clearly there, so much that she and Lyn have an ending. Heather from Radiant Dawn joins because "of all the pretty girls" and refers to every female she has a conversation with (and one she doesn't) as cute or lovely. For dudes, look no further than Raven and Lucius, or Legault mock-flirting with Heath. Also, fans have theorized potential for Joshua and Gerik, especially as their paired ending (that alone is suggestive) describes Gerik as never again leaving Joshua's side.
  • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Inverted for the Elibe saga; many of the characters from 7, a prequel, are explained as not appearing in 6 by dying. Canas is killed by continuity errors... ahem... dies in a blizzard in his ending. Shin's recruitment has Sue express concern about her grandfather, but not her father (her mother can be explained as being sent away with the women and children like she was). Nino vanishes so her children can be left orphans. Hector started as a character whose main purpose was to die. Eliwood is ill and close to death.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence: Whenever you elect to attack, the game shows your expected damage and chance to hit. Enemy units other than bosses tend to have poorer stats than your average player character, and will regularly try to hit when the expected damage or chance to hit (or both) are listed at zero and the PC has a 100% chance to kill said unit in a counterattack. Apparently, using up charges on your weapons are worth more to these idiots than their own lives.
  • Suspiciously Small Army:
    • The Arbitrary Headcount Limit is, on a huge map, around 20 people. 4 has no headcap limit (though single characters are taking entire cities), 7 avoids having an "army" under the player's control or fighting against one, 9 and 10 state the player controls a vanguard during the parts the story says is army vs army. This doesn't explain every other game though.
    • The Shepherds in Awakening start off as basically law enforcement, but led by a royal with a couple of actual knights. Then the pegasus knights that were implied to be Ylisse's main military force all die out along with the country's ruler and the leader of the mercenaries is promoted to king. Two years later, they fight another war and the Shepherds are the entirety of Ylisse's military force. No small wonder they need Regna Ferox's help all the time.
      • Perhaps justified by the fact that a generation before the events of Awakening, Ylisse was a war-mongering nation that terrorized its neighbor Plegia. Perhaps as part of the reparations following that war, Ylisse's armies were disbanded, leaving the diminished forces seen in the game.
    • In Jugdral, a group of +10 Units is an 'Army'. This is, however, justified by most of them being a One-Man Army due to being descended from a demigod and the fact that they're fugitives in the eyes of The Empire a quarter of the way through the game and, therefore, don't get an unplayable Mook legion like most other Emblem protagonists.
    • If the Vitality Bar was reinterpreted as "number of soldiers" instead of "life", then this trope is averted.
  • Support Party Member:
    • The basic White Mage classes such as Cleric usually don't have any way to defend themselves, only being able to heal allies.
    • Dancers and their variants either cannot attack enemies or have limited combat ability, but can refresh player units and enable them to act twice in one player phase.
  • Sword of Plot Advancement: Most games in the series give you a super sexy super-weapon at the end of the game that is exclusive to the main character and does bonus damage against the Final Boss. In Archanea, Tellius, and Awakening, they have the unique property of being unbreakable.
    • The Archanea games, Gaiden, and Shadows of Valentia have the Falchion (missable in the Archanea games and Gaiden).
    • Genealogy of the Holy War has Tyrfing and the Naga tome (missable and deal no bonus damage, although Naga nullifies the Final Boss' damage-halving effect).
    • Thracia 776 has the Bragi Sword (missable and deals bonus damage to the Big Bad Wannabe, not the Final Boss).
    • The Binding Blade has... well... the Binding Blade. Notably, this sword is so good that it turns Roy from a fairly mediocre sword-locked unit into a One-Man Army who can tear through entire armies of dragons.
    • The Blazing Blade has Durandal, Armads, and Sol Katti.
    • The Sacred Stones has Sieglinde and Siegmund.
    • The Tellius games have Ragnell (deals no bonus damage, but does protect the wielder from critical hits).
    • Awakening has the Exalted Falchion.
    • Fates has the Blazing Yato in the Birthright route, the Shadow Yato in Conquest, and the Omega Yato in Revelation (none of them deal bonus damage, although they all reduce the effect of the last two bosses' Dragonskin, the Blazing and Shadow Yato get weapon triangle advantage against the second-to-last boss, who wields an axe, and the Shadow Yato gets weapon triangle advantage against the Final Boss, who wields a yumi).
    • Three Houses has the Sublime Creator Sword (only deals bonus damage to the Final Boss of two of the four routes), Aymr, Areadbhar, and Failnaught (doesn't deal bonus damage to either Final Boss it's available for).
    • Warriors has the Enliron and Facinna (don't deal bonus damage to the Final Boss, but do hit his monster minions).

    T-Z 
  • Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The Weapon Triangle, introduced in Genealogy of the Holy War, dictates that Swords beat Axes, Axes beat Lances, and Lances beat Swords. Some games play with the system by including weapons that invert the triangle or add other weapon types to it, but the base idea is constantly used throughout the series. Three Houses shakes things up by having no natural advantages at first, but when a character gains greater weapon affinity, they can unlock a skill that restores that advantage for that weapon.note 
  • This Cannot Be!: Every boss has a death quote, so it's quite unsurprising that some of them say variations of this when they're defeated.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: Yes, this game loves this trope. This stock phrase is used on certain times when you choose to have certain characters attack certain enemy or boss characters, like Ashnard or Nergal, for instance.
  • Those Two Guys:
    • Most games has two cavaliers or two of the same units in a different class, one red and one green, who fit this trope. They usually come as a pair. Oscar and Kieran, Kyle and Forde, Sain and Kent, Sully and Stahl. Heck, in a support conversation, Sully and Stahl discuss the original pair, Cain and Abel...
    • Traditionally, they also have a Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic, with red being red and green being blue; furthermore, the red one usually has higher Strength and Defense while the green has higher Speed and Skill. The Blazing Blade inverts this fully, while Sacred Stones returns the personalities to their original colors but keeps the statistical inversion.
    • Twin brothers Kaze and Saizo fill the role in Fates, but rather than being cavaliers, they're ninja. While the green one has the higher Speed and Skill and the calmer personality, and Saizo has the higher Strength and Defense with the more hot-blooded personality, it gets played with in that, depending on the route choice, you might have both in your party, or you might only have Kaze. You might even have Kaze fight and/or kill Saizo.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works:
    • Ike's Aether, Mercenary and Hero critical hits invoke the attacking unit tossing their blade into the air, catching it, and striking.
    • Oddly enough, however, swords are the only weapon type that doesn't have a common throwable version. The rare sword types that do have a ranged option are usually magical and/or cast Sword Beams of some sort. Awakening finally adds a throwable sword in the form of Amatsu, Yen'Fay's signature weapon, dropped by him when defeated and useable by only Myrmidon classes, and in Fates the Kodachi, a throwable katana, is fairly readily available.
  • Timed Mission: In terms of turns, not actual passing time.
  • Tomato Surprise: Alm in Gaiden and Micaiah in Radiant Dawn learn of their respective royal heritages this way. Alm is the son of Rigel's king, and unlike his childhood friend Celica, he's been kept in the dark about it (Celica is aware of her own heritage — her real name is Anthiese, and she's the sole surviving member of Zofia's royal family). According to a boss that Alm defeats, the king's son has a cross-shaped birthmark on his arm that notes his lineage. Micaiah learns of her heritage in a similar manner, as she is Empress Sanaki's older sister, making her the true heiress to Begnion's throne.
  • Too Awesome to Use:
    • Legendary weapons, Hammerne and Rescue staves, Mines, and more. Rescue averts this in Awakening, where you can freely buy them in the Chapter 12 armory. There are no words to describe how ludicrously powerful this is.
    • Radiant Dawn averts this by giving a selected weapon for each character unlimited uses for the last 3 chapters.
    • Manaketes seem to fall under this category too (once the Dragonstone runs out, they're useless). However, give one an endgame chapter and no doubt they'll near their level cap by the end with several charges to spare. In Mystery of the Emblem and Awakening, there are stores that sell Dragonstones, so you can go ahead and use Manaketes with aplomb.
    • Awakening also gives the main lord two signature weapons: the rapier most lords in the series use for effectiveness against armor and cavalry, and the Falchion, an infinite-use Iron Sword that's effective against Wyverns. The latter gets a plot-critical upgrade late in the game.
    • Averted with a vengeance in Fates, in which weapons are no longer breakable, and in Three Houses, where everything can be repaired, and magic renews in durability after each battle.
  • Translation Style Choices: The various localizations offer different angles on characterization. It makes for a lot of Squee amongst fanfiction writers.
  • Trope Codifier: For the Strategy RPG genre, at least for the Japanese side of the genre's market. It certainly wasn't the first, but it was responsible for many of the defining features and themes now taken for granted in the genre.
  • True Final Boss:
    • In Mystery of the Emblem, if you assemble all five of the orbs and restore the Fire Emblem to its true form, you get to proceed to the last 4/5 chapters and fight the true villain, Medeus.
    • The Binding Blade: Defeating Zephiel with all legendary weapons intact unlocks a few extra chapters, including the real final boss fight.
  • Tsundere: Is quite often seen in the games:
    • Some notable ones are Lyndis, Hector, Lethe, and Severa.
    • In New Mystery of the Emblem, the My Unit system and the newly made Base Conversations expanded the characters' personality more. Some newly found tsunderes are Navarre (who has a tendency to blush when he is teased), Rickard (when he cooked food with My Unit, he says "I-I didn't make that for YOU anyways..."), Wolf (he says that the Altean Knights are weak and makes other rude remarks when he talks with My Unit, but with the female My Unit, he goes on his dere dere side by asking her to take her to his homeland), and Yumina (in one of the 'How's Everyone' convos that concerns about raising bond points, her line is typical Tsundere line "I-it's not like I care about him, or anything!")
  • Underrated and Overleveled: In fact, any Role-Playing Games (like Fire Emblem) that emphasize a massive cast of recruitable teammates tend to be particularly guilty of this. The huge hosts of characters guarantee at least a few will be mundane people with little or no combat training, and the inability to focus much plot on each character means that the developers don't have time to give in-story justification for everyone's combat capabilities.
  • Unexpected Successor: Ashnard in Path of Radiance. Potentially subverted in that he deliberately engineered this.
  • Uniqueness Rule: in Awakening, Fates, and Engage, the boots item cannot be used more than once* or twice* on the same character.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Marcia from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn swears with food items. "Oh, crackers, I don't have time for this!"
  • Utility Party Member: Thieves and dancers/bards' combat skills tend to be lacking (the latter sometimes cannot fight at all), and the main reason to have them is to steal items/pick locks and give your other party members extra turns, respectively.
  • Vanilla Unit: Most weapons in classic games (up to Awakening) have no special effects, which serves to make the ones that do have them feel more special. However, later games took the exact opposite approach by making all weapons have special effects (negative and positive) to balance out the absence of a Breakable Weapons system.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon:
    • It depends on the game, with some having a bigger scale than others. Genealogy of the Holy War averts this trope, with the last boss fight taking place outside of Barhara Castle, and is set up like the other maps in the game, only smaller in scale. The Crimean Royal Palace from Path of Radiance also averts this trope.
    • Shadow Dragon has Dolhr Keep, while Mystery of the Emblem has the Dragon's Table and the massive altar attached to it. The former is located in the heart of Dolhr, while the latter is sandwiched between Dolhr and Macedon's borders. Medeus resides in both of them.
    • Gaiden and its remake have Duma's Tower, located at the northernmost extreme of Rigel. It is tackled in two parts: the main part of the building is initially tackled by Celica with the intention of confronting Jedah, but she and her party are captured and trapped in its basement. The second half of the tower is its sprawling, cavernous, Terror-ridden basement, which Alm and his party have to traverse in order to obtain the Valentian Falchion and rescue Celica's party. Duma is situated in the deepest cavern below.
    • Thracia 776 has the Altar of Loptous, a castle under the Loptr Church's control that stands near Manster. Raydrik and Veld oversee it.
    • The Dragon Temple in Binding Blade, which is seven levels in height with Idoun waiting at the top.
    • The Dragon's Gate in The Blazing Blade.
    • The shrine in Darkling Woods in The Sacred Stones.
    • Ashera's Tower in Radiant Dawn.
    • Subverted in Awakening; while the last battle takes on Grima's back, the only thing standing in its way is a small army of Risen on a lone island with a volcano.
    • In Fates, the final map depends on the route you picked: you either fight in the throne room of whatever side you didn't pick (Castle Shirasagi's throne room in Conquest; Castle Krakenburg's throne room in Birthright), or you fight in the depths of the Kingdom of Vallanote  against Anankos in Revelation.
    • The only one of Three Houses' final maps that could be considered a "dungeon" is the Imperial Palace of Enbarr on the Azure Moon Route, and even then, it's not the final map on the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes. The remaining three maps all take place outside: Crimson Flower's final map is set in a burning Fhirdiad, Silver Snow's final map is set right outside of Garreg Mach, and Verdant Wind's final map is in a poison swamp located on the Caledonian Plateau, which is southeast of Garreg Mach.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Every character you control is named and has their own head-shot. Add to the mix a bit of Permadeath (minus restarting the game), specific endings for every character, and lots of character interaction, you wind up with having to/wanting to restart every level multiple times so that no one ever dies.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • In most every game, there is at least one instance of friend-versus-friend, lover-versus-lover, or family-verus-family thanks to family White Sheep or a subscriber to My Country or Master Right Or Wrong, and sometimes even Brainwashed and Crazy. So you can easily force a sister to kill her brother, a mother to kill her daughter, or a son to kill his father.
    • In Genealogy, you can...
    • In Thracia 776, you can free innocent civilian NPCs from their prison cells, then sit and watch as they are recaptured and taken off the map by enemy soldiers or brigands.
    • Averted in Radiant Dawn. Most characters with significant story relationships (for example, Brom and his daughter Meg or Sanaki and her trusted chancellor and distant ancestor Sephiran) are mechanically prevented from attacking each other.
    • Particularly rampant in Three Houses, mostly due to the branching paths meaning characters are caught on other sides of a war; in general, most of the cast are students who go to a school together, and will often talk about the tragedy of killing friends.
      • Annette and Felix can fight their fathers to the death in Crimson Flower.
      • Sylvain, Felix and Ingrid are a trio of childhood friends; any recruited offscreen will be able to kill those that remain.
  • War Is Hell: A major plot point of the Tellius saga was that a war engulfing all nations on Tellius would awaken the Goddesses and trigger the Apocalypse.
  • Weak to Magic:
  • Weapon of X-Slaying: The recurring Wyrmslayer sword does extra damage to dragon units, be they Manaketes or the dragon riding classes like Wyvern Riders.
  • We Cannot Go On Without You: Unless Casual Mode is on, the death of your Lord character means an automatic Game Over.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Many games give each character their own short epilogue explaining what happened to them after the story is over.
  • White Mage: Cleric and Troubador are classes that purely use healing magic. They can usually Class Change to a Red Mage and/or Combat Medic class of some kind.
  • White Magic: Light and healing magic, as well as any Status Buff staves, are explicitly faith-based, and Gaiden has a set of magic literally called "White Magic" that is Cast from Hit Points, but does many of the same things that other divine magic in the series does.
  • Why Won't You Die?: Nergal, to Elbert, who survived months of malnutrition, followed by having his entire life force stolen. Most people who suffer that fate live just long enough to gasp in surprise. Elbert lasts long enough to give a near-fatal stab wound to Nergal, and have a poignant, dying conversation with his son.
  • Wind Is Green: The wind blades and other effects conjured by wind magic are colored green.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: A recurring element in the games are the issues caused by the madness that comes from the power of dragons driving them caused by the world not being able to sustain their existence or living too long in the world of Fates, and what must be done to avoid this or Mercy Kill the victim dragon.
  • The Worf Effect: While Midia herself is an acomplished knight, it's pretty hard to show your competence when your opponent is Camus and Hardin, two of the most badass characters in the entire series, and the designated wielder of the Gradivus.
  • World of Technicolor Hair: Strange hair colors are very common. Main characters and their families, in particular, are very commonly blue-haired, while other colors such as green, white and pink crop up fairly commonly among the supporting cast.
  • Worthy Opponent: The Black Knight in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. The Death Knight to Byleth in Three Houses.
  • The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: Subverted in the tenth game. After spending the first chapter getting the "legitimate" heir on the throne, he turns out to be horribly incompetent, and easily manipulated for the purpose of creating a world war. But he isn't really the real heir in the end, and the "legitimate" heir never finds out. After Pelleas reveals that he's not the legitimate heir or is killed, depending on the path the player takes through the story, the country winds up being run by the person who was actually the legitimate heir of the neighboring country of Begnion; she did find out the truth, but her sister had been running the place pretty well, and she considered Daein her home more than Begnion.
  • You All Look Familiar:
    • All generic enemies look the same. Justified — sort of — that nine times out of ten, you're fighting an opposing army and your enemies are uniformed soldiers. However, if there's an enemy unit that both has a name and isn't a boss, there's a very good chance they can be convinced to defect.
    • In The Blazing Blade, some of the characters share mug sprites. For example, Puzon, who is the boss in the level where you meet Merlinus, was apparently killed by Rath in an earlier chapter. And Rebecca's father can be found in a variety of locales. And Marquess Araphen seems to have gotten a dye-job and joined the Black Fang in the intervening year.
    • The earlier games used shared mugs as well (FE4's "Harolds" are a popular example), but the Famicom games are ridiculous with this: each game has maybe 3 or 4 mugs that are reused for all the oneshot bosses, and even for some of the plot-important ones (like Jiol in the first game, and Desaix and Jedah in Gaiden.)
      • Not to mention a few of the playable characters having the same face. Shadow Dragon, the remake of the first game, lampshades this with Dolph and Macellan.
    • In Awakening, the bosses of certain side missions reuse portraits from the main story. In fact, the only enemy portraits that aren't used anywhere else are those of the Valmese generals.
    • Indeed, it is almost Color-Coded for Your Convenience, with the change that rather than being 'white' and 'black' it is 'dead sexy' and 'generic or hideous'.
    • Also, justified at one point in The Blazing Blade. You start fighting Morphs, mass-produced artificial humans.
  • You Killed My Father: Most games in the franchise have characters seeking revenge on the villains who killed their parents. In part 2 of Genealogy of the Holy War, it would be easier to list the characters you can recruit who haven't had their parents killed by the villains.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: Lots of heroes and villains alike kill the leaders of some country and take control afterwards. Michalis, Desaix, Almnote , Marth, Arvis, Seliph, Zephiel, Guinivere, Ashnard, Micaiah (possibly)note , Anankos, Conquest Xander, Revelation Corrin, Silver Snow and Verdant Wind's Byleth, Azure Moon Dimitri, and Crimson Flower Edelgard all inherit kingdoms through regicide, either by committing it themselves or assisting those who do.

 
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Camilla's Victory Pose

Camilla's victory screen in Fire Emblem Warriors has her physically tilting the camera up and away from her cleavage as she admonishes the player for looking.

Example of:
My Eyes Are Up Here

FE Heroes Book ...

Claude Crits

Ryohei Kimura i...

Laura Post in F...

Ike's Voices

Alcryst

Fire Emblem: Aw...

FE3H: The Sword...

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Camilla's Victory Pose

Camilla's victory screen in Fire Emblem Warriors has her physically tilting the camera up and away from her cleavage as she admonishes the player for looking.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (10 votes)

Example of:

Main / MyEyesAreUpHere

Media sources:

Report

Camilla's Victo...

FE Heroes Book ...

Claude Crits

Ryohei Kimura i...

Laura Post in F...

Ike's Voices

Alcryst

Fire Emblem: Aw...

FE3H: The Sword...