Fire Emblem Elibe

Hey look, it actually IS Roy.

Once, dragons and men coexisted. They shared a peace forged in wisdom, a peace that lasted many generations. All that was lost when mankind disrupted this balance in a sudden onslaught.
 Man fought dragon in a savage war that shook the foundations of their world. This war was called The Scouring.
Defeated and humbled, dragons vanished from the realm. In time, man rebuilt and spread his dominion across the land and on to the islands beyond.

A thousand years have passed since those dark days ended.
—Opening of Blazing Sword

The sixth and seventh games in the Fire Emblem series, comprising its third canon and timeline, and being the first to be completely separate from its predecessors. It was this canon which was both responsible for sparking interest among western gamers, then actually following through by being the franchise's international debut. It was also the first set of games to come following the departure of series creator Shouzou Kaga.

  • Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals[1] (Game Boy Advance, 2002) stars Roy, Fire Emblem's other representative in Super Smash Bros. Melee, as he attempts to repel the invading forces of Bern. The game received a mixed reception among fans, as it was forced to drop (due to technological constraints) many of the complexities the series had picked up on consoles, and the characters lacked depth in the opinion of some players (The objective for every level is to move Roy to the enemy boss's space). The unit balance is also highly questionable, with wild imbalance between units and even good characters have growth rates low enough the Random Number God can make or break a unit. It did, however, introduce the super-popular "Support" feature, which allows characters to build their relationships by spending a lot of time together in battle and remains a big draw for the series.
  • Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword[2] (Game Boy Advance, 2003) was the franchise's international debut and the beginning of it finally averting No Export for You. A Prequel to Sword of Seals, it stars Roy's father, Eliwood, as he investigates the disappearance of his own father with his friends Hector and Lyn, leading them to clash with a brotherhood of assassins called the Black Fang. This game remains a favorite of many western fans because it features lots of level variety, balanced units, one of the longer quests of the Western released games, continuing the support system but with stronger characterization, and a large amount of replay value.

Rounding out the Elibe canon was a 12-volumes manga adaptation, Fire Emblem: Champion's Sword[3]. It revisits and slightly modifies the plot of Sword of Seals through the point of view of four original characters exclusive to this manga, Al, Tiena, Gant and Kilmar. They help Roy and his troops in the war against Bern, while on their own quest: searching for the Fire Emblem.

Tropes used in Fire Emblem Elibe include:

Sword of Seals provides examples of:

  • Authority Equals Asskicking: King Zephiel, to a lesser extent Murdock.
  • Badass Adorable: Fa, also known as Fazilla. Her dragon form is ridiculously cute, and she attacks by sneezing flame breath on her enemies. So cute!
  • BFS: Exaccus, which somehow turns into a trident when not in use.
  • Black Magician Boy: Lugh is a walking firestorm with a juvenile smile.
  • Chivalrous Pervert: Saul.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: The first thing Zephiel does when he reaches Lycia is lead a direct assault on Lycia's main army, going personally with two of his best generals to make sure Hector doesn't make it out alive. The result being that Lycia is very nearly defeated by Bern days after the two go to war.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Rei and Sophia.
  • Different As Night and Day: Rei and Lugh, respectively. The former sports a snarky grin and has a reputation for being cold and heartless, whereas the latter is kind and cheery. Both are potent magic users though.
  • Expy: This is a rather good example, as is this.
  • Faking the Dead: It is revealed that Zephiel did this after a failed assassination attempt in order to turn the tables on his would-be murderer, King Desmond. This event is alluded to in the epilogue of Blazing Sword. Prince Mildain of Etruria did likewise.
  • The Grotesque: Years of mistreatment had led Gonzales to genuinely think he's a monster, as he'd been rejected by villagers and used by his lord as a mindless pile of muscles only good for spreading havoc, until Lilina saw through his scary exterior. A rare subversion of Beauty Equals Goodness in the series.
  • Karma Houdini: Subverted with Erik. After helping his father's attempt to start a war in Lycia and kill Eliwood and Hector in Blazing Sword, he apparently "reforms" and becomes the Marquess of Laus after his father's death. Years later he betrays Lycia again, but this only leads to him getting killed by Roy.
  • Last of His Kind: Yahn claims to be the last dragon, even his battle theme is named after that fact. Technically, there are other dragons around, but Idoun is not a "true" dragon since she became a Dark Dragon and the war dragons she created are not real dragons, either. There are other dragons on the other side of the dragon's gate, though. Plus a few in Arcadia.
  • Lighter and Softer: The art style, sprites and battle animations when compared to all of the previous games in the series, especially the Jugdral Series.
    • However, colourwise, this was actually justified because by the time these two games came out, the original Game Boy Advance (The one without backlit screens) was still commonplace - it made it easier to see. You can spot a change in Sacred Stones gaining a more brown tone compared to these games, while still retaining the artstyle though.
  • The Load: Roy receives his promotion via story event very late in the game. It's not hard for him to ram level 20 long before this, so he can't fight or else the rest of the party loses experience.
  • The Unpronounceable: In Fa's B support with Elphin:

Elphin: Fa...the name has a unique feel to it. Is it your real name?
Fa: No, Fa's real name is verrry long. But they say that it's a sound that humans can't hear. Fa's the only part that you can.

  • Luck-Based Mission: Hard Mode. The early chapters can be terminated easily, if you don't like having your characters dead.
  • The Ojou: Clarine, the daughter of an Etrurian noble, is haughty and pretty loud about her sense of refined beauty and how none of those uncouth plebeians could hope to compete with her marvelous brother.
  • Roar Before Beating: A Brigand class character will let out a deafening roar before landing a critical blow. As they usually tend to be monstrous powerhouses only kept in check by their notorious inaccuracy, you know this is not going to be pretty.
  • Royal Rapier: Roy's rapier.

Blazing Sword provides examples of:

  • An Axe to Grind: Hector's collection of awesome axes.
  • Another Side, Another Story: Hector Mode
  • Artificial Stupidity: An example where it's actually exploitable by the player. The enemies are programmed to pick on weaker foes - so during the chapters where you have a set of third-party allies on the map who're always weaker than your characters (and usually unable to do more than simply cherry tap the enemies at best) the AI will prioritize them.
  • Badass:
    • Hector, with a side of Boisterous Bruiser. Word of God says he was the basis for Ike in the Tellius series.
    • Pent, who can completely destroy the enemy forces in "The Living Legend" and entirely by himself if left alone.
  • Awesome but Impractical: The S-rank weapons in the final chapter are too heavy to use compared to their effect. Athos using Luna will outdamage him using his legendary tome.
    • Plus, you get them in the final chapter with almost no enemies worth using them on.
  • Badass Bookworm: Canas in particular, although most mages qualify.
  • Badass Longcoat: Raven and Linus (Heroes), and Lloyd (Swordmaster). Both are custom sprites, by the way. Because they're that awesome.
  • Badass Preacher: His poor stats aside, Renault used to be a highly skilled fighter, and is implied to have gathered many bodies for Nergal's morph experiments. He became a bishop in an attempt to atone for his past actions.
    • Fridge Brilliance: His poor magic stat stems from the fact that he spent most of his life as a weapon-user. Units with both a "Strength" stat and a "Magic" stat don't exist in the GBA games, but if they did, his Strength would probably be abnormally high for his class. This also explains why his Defense is almost as high as his Resistance.
  • BFS: Durandal is about the same length as Eliwood's horse. And he holds it with one hand.
  • Bi the Way: Legault...probably.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Reading the epilogue about all the characters after the final level really feels this way if you let a lot of them die...
    • Even without any casualties, Fire Emblem 7 still has a bittersweet ending. Sure, the Dragon Gate is closed, Nergal's mad schemes have been put to rest for good, and Eliwood and Hector went on to rule Pherae and Ostia for fifteen or twenty years... but Bern's royal family is still royally screwed up, Athos and Bramimond are dead (not that anyone missed Bramimond, but still...), all of those Robin Hood types from the Black Fang have been killed or scattered to the winds, and fifteen short years later, a new tyrant sits on Bern's throne...
      • Not to mention that Ninian either has to say goodbye forever to the man she loves, or to her brother; and either way in turn, Nils won't ever see any of the new friends the two of them made ever again.
      • What about Canas? His ending is "Canas returned to his family in Ilia. Some years later, he and his wife died trying to stop a snowstorm. His child was raised by his old mother. " That sure is uplifting!
  • Boss Rush: Nergal resurrects and super charges 8 Bosses, releasing them one per round. You must defeat them all before you can challenge Nergal. Their death quotes imply you are putting them out of their misery.
    • Dual Boss: Lloyd and Linus are super pumped during the Boss Rush and challenge you simultaneously. Also That One Boss due to their insane equipment and their A-level support with one another. Ursula and Jerme are also Dual Bosses, albeit not nearly as frustrating since Jerme doesn't come at you wielding anything unusual.
    • Interestingly, two of the bosses you fight during this Boss Rush (Jerme and Kenneth) are mutually exclusive, so for the first playthrough, you'll most likely think "Wait... who's that guy?"
  • Brother-Sister Incest: Less blatant than the 4th game, but present.
  • Broken Record: Denning is a Morph made to repeat the message "This is a message from Lord Nergal. "I await you on the Dread Isle"". This makes him one of the more popular characters for some reason.)
  • Call Forward: Plenty of them exist in Blazing Sword, they tend not to make sense to overseas players, as Sword of Seals never got released outside of Japan.
    • If you have Lyn attack Uhai, he mentions Nergal sending "That woman". He means Sonia.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: The basis of Florina's support conversations with Hector.
  • Chivalrous Pervert: Sain.
  • Crash Into Hello: Hector meets Florina, one of his possible love interests, when she plummets out of the sky and he winds up breaking her fall... and that of her pegasus.
  • Crouching Scholar Hidden Badass: Don't let the monocle fool you, Canas will be nearly unstoppable once he reaches Druid form.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Artificial Stupidity aside, the AI of these games became highly pronounced as simply not caring about whether or not they won...so much as they kill one of your units and make you Rage Quit and restart the chapter.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Canas will remind people that Shamans study ancient magic, not dark magic, but he also knows firsthand that the forces he's handling are extremely dangerous and must be treated with caution. His three brothers succumbed to it, and ended up as Empty Shells.
  • Dual-Wielding: Assassins and their daggers. However; they weild swords instead.
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Lucius actually confused Serra and Sain.
  • Disc One Final Dungeon: Chapter 19 of Blazing Sword. The whole first half of the game leads up to a showdown with Ephidel, who then gets unceremoniously slaughtered by a dragon when the real Big Bad makes his intentions and ability known.
  • Doomed by Canon: Nino, Jaffar, and possibly Erk are killed by bounty hunters or are in hiding. Roy's mother is implied to have died giving birth to Roy, meaning this can either be Fiora, Ninian, or Lyndis. Karla dies of illness some time after giving birth to Fir. Canas dies trying to stop a blizzard, and his son is raised by his grandmother - both appear in Fire Emblem 6. Not to mention, the Black Fang. Hector dies onscreen in Fire Emblem 6, and he's actually told that he'll die a violent death for taking Armands. Athos and Bramminond don't make it to 6. This has a lesser impact on western players who never got Fire Emblem 6.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Hector makes a short, plot-unrelated appearance in Lyndis' story.
    • Ursula also makes a short appearance in Lyndis' story, as does Renault towards the middle of the main story. (You don't recruit Renault until very late in the game.)
    • Isadora also has a very brief appearance in the first chapter of Eliwood's story, before he sets out.
  • Egocentric Team Naming: Lyndis' Legion. Granted, it was Wil who came up with the name.
  • Elopement: Lyndis's parents did this in the backstory to Blazing Sword. Her mother, Lady Madelyn, was the daughter of the Marquis of Caelin. Her father, Hassar, was the leader of the Lorca Tribe, one of the three tribes of Sacae, a group of nomadic people. In order to stay together, Madelyn left Caelin to live with her lover on the Sacaen plains.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Uhai holds Lyn hostage, but only to deliver a message to the enemy so they won't shoot him, and to make himself look like a more vicious opponent. Even though he could have easily killed her, he lets her go because he says it is shameful to hold hostages during battle. When he dies, he tells the party the way to Dragon's Gate.
    • The Ganelon Bandits are disgusted by the way the Taliver bandits work. And they are even offended when you ask if they belong to them.
  • Everything's Better with Spinning: Almost every critical animation does this.
  • Face Palm: Kent when Sain introduces himself to Florina, as shown here.
  • Five-Bad Band:

The Big Bad: Nergal
Co-Dragons: Limstella & Jaffar
The Evil Genius: Sonia
The Corrupter: Ephidel
The Dark Chick: Kishuna
The Brute: Denning
Sixth Ranger Traitor: Jaffar

% Lyn's Story ("Lyndis' Legion") -

The Heroine: Lyn
The Lancer: Kent
The Big Guy: Sain
The Smart Guy: Wil
The Chick: Florina and Serra
The Sixth Ranger: Matthew
The Tagalong Kids: Nils & Ninian

% Eliwood's Story -

The Hero: Eliwood
The Lancer: Hector
The Smart Girl: Lyn
The Big Guy: Marcus
The Chick: Ninian
Tagalong Kid: Nils
The Sixth Ranger: Athos

% Hector's Story -

The Hero: Hector
The Lancer:
The Heart: Eliwood
The Big Guy: Oswin
The Smart Girl: Lyn
The Chick: Ninian
Tagalong Kid: Nils
The Sixth Ranger: Athos

  • Foe-Tossing Charge: A few turns after your arrival to the Dread Isle you'll meet up with the Pegasus Knight Fiora, who in her pain after having lost her wingmates, tries to perform one of these. If you don't send out her sister Florina to convince her to stop and join the crew, she'll fight your enemies until either she dies or the stage is done.
  • Forced Tutorial: Blazing Sword, the first game in the series released outside Japan, contained "Lyn's Tale", an unskippable ten-chapter prologue to the main quest that explained the game's mechanics in excruciating detail, complete with forced moves and luck manipulation. Japanese veterans of the series were none too pleased with it (though linking the game to Sword of Seals allowed you to skip the tutorials), and western players who had read the manual routinely curse it as well. Later games made the tutorials optional, and replaying Lyn's quest in "Hard Mode" allows the player to ignore the tutorials (though you lose Sain's dialog to a female tactician), with the option to skip Lyn's mode entirely (not recommended, but possible).
  • Foregone Conclusion: Many characters are the parents of people who appear in Sword of Seals, yet were never mentioned by their kids. To handle this, the Where Are They Now epilogue mentions several characters were killed offscreen in between games. Doomed by Canon indeed.
    • Canas was killed by continuity errors!
    • Hector swears to protect his children until the day he dies. Early on in Sword of Seals, Roy meets a dying Hector.
    • We learn the Bern royal family is having...trouble, but after Eliwood saves their life, they promise to try to make amends. Yeah, that didn't turn out well.
      • To make things clear, the dad tries to kill the prince many times and almost succeeds, the embittered prince kills his dad, locks up his little sister, sets out to take over the world. and nobody knows what happened to his mom.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Normally, the series has the characters' bust shots talking to each other, but in Fire Emblem 7, this actually makes the most sense. Most of the time... it's actually as if you're viewing it from a character who's standing right there... and you are. You're viewing it from the Tactician's point of view. This explains why they sometimes look towards the screen and address you.
    • Also, Marcus. In Fire Emblem 7, he's actually not a bad fighter and is a Crutch Character who fits the Oifey stereotype better (a pre-promoted unit who actually maintains usefulness throughout the game.) In Fire Emblem 6, he's practically Jagen incarnate. Fridge Brilliance? In Sword of Seals, he's much older. In 7 he's as much in his 40's, which would make him at least 60 in 7... and considering the stress of being a high-ranked member of the military, he may be even older than the average male in these days.
  • Game Mod: The 7th game is wildly popular for ROM Hacks, receiving several entirely original campaigns while the rest of the series (bar Sacred Stones) rarely gets more than translations and balance tweaks.
  • Gay Option: Some people see quite a few of these, such as Legault for Heath, Kent for Sain, Florina for Lyn, etc. Interestingly, despite the common pairing of Raven/Lucius, Lucius possesses a rather cute het option with Serra as well (though no common ending). The same could be said for all the other pairings listed getting straight options. Regardless, the game, even outside of supports, strongly has hints of Raven/Lucius and Lyn/Florina, which is why those two pairings are the two most popular pairings regarded by the fans.
  • Genki Girl: Subverted with Serra, who acts genki but is more of a Stepford Smiler. Rebecca is more of the real deal.
  • Grey and Grey Morality: This almost borders to White and Grey Morality in a couple occasions. Several Black Fang bosses are indeed bad people, especially Jerme and Kenneth. However, Uhai is above taking hostages, especially a Sacean woman. Lloyd, Linus, and Ursula likewise are not bad people, and Jaffar certainly looks this way at first.
  • Guide Dang It: Many of the gaiden chapters require you to complete a chapter in a set amount of turns or to visit a certain village, but Chapter 19xx is notorious for having very strange ones: Leveling your Spoony Bard to level 7 (which means Level Grinding and lots of it) on your second playthrough of Lyn's tale (see Forced Tutorial above) and killing the Bonus Boss in Chapter 19x (itself a Sidequest).
    • There's also a gaiden chapter unlocked by making sure your party gets a certain amount of experience while the enemy throws itself at a One-Man Army NPC, and the boss for one chapter is determined by the total EXP of your Fighters versus your Clerics and Mages.
      • On a similar note, while you will inevitably fight and kill both of the Reed brothers, the game uses a somewhat obscure method to determine which one you fight first: The combined levels of your three Lords.
  • Hello, Insert Name Here: The tactician.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: Lyn and Florina, Hector and Eliwood, Raven and Lucius, Sain and Kent... there's a long list. See Ho Yay for how fans have taken it...
  • Honor Before Reason: Sacaens supposedly never lie or break a promise, ever.
  • Informed Attractiveness: Lyn is repeatedly stated by numerous characters to be extremely beautiful, despite that, this being Fire Emblem, there are many other female characters who are far above average in the looks department.
    • Eliwood mentions Lyn's Sacaen heritage, that she's "striking" -- so perhaps it's something in her movement or her complexion. Her battle animations are decidedly elegant.
  • Informed Attribute: General Bauker of Laus is allegedly not such a bad guy, according to the NPCs, but he never displays any sympathetic traits or a hint of regret for the sack of Caelin. Made particularly jarring since his commanding officer Bernard, the boss of the very next level, accepts his own death as justice for Laus's brutality.
  • Jack of All Stats: Kent, Sain, and Lowen, the cavaliers of the game, all fall into this category, with certain specialties emerging from otherwise-balanced stats; Kent has the best skill and speed, Sain has the best strength, and Lowen has the best defenses. Eliwood serves as this role among the three lords, although care must be taken to avoid letting him end up a Master of None.
  • Leitmotif: Lyn, Eliwood, and Hector each have one, although technically they're variations of the same theme, of which you will hear plenty in this game.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Don't let Hector's armor fool you, he's quite fast in addition to being strong and and well-armored. Lyn also tends towards this as a hard-hitting speedster, although her lack of armor means she could also be a Glass Cannon depending on how the Random Number God smiles on you.
  • The Load: Whoever your main lord is before they get the item that promotes them. It's possible for them to hit 20 and can't gain any experience, so you have good reason to not let them fight.
  • Lord British Postulate: Fargus.
  • Love At First Punch: Bartre met his future wife Karla when she beat the crap out of him in an arena, gradually falling for her when they meet again much later.
    • Also, Lyndis almost was hit by Hector swinging his axe around and then she told him so. That was the start of their Slap Slap Kiss.
  • Luck-Based Mission: In Battle Before Dawn, there's no physical way to reach Jaffar in time to guarantee that he will live on Hector's Hard Mode. If he dies, you don't get a side chapter (and you can't recruit him). In fact, Zephiel, who you need to protect, can be killed before you can get to the area.
    • In Blazing Sword, attempting to defeat Kishuna in "Prisoner of Magic" can be tough. He has an incredible health, good defense, enough Evasion to ensure that nobody at this point in the game except Lyn, Eliwood, and Guy will have more than a 50% chance to hit him at all, and is a living Anti-Magic field. He won't fight back, but you have to take out every last hitpoint in a single turn or he'll disappear. While you aren't required to kill him to proceed with the game, you do have to kill him to reach Chapter 19xx.
      • Even more so trying to kill him in "Genesis", where he retreats as soon as you attack him or open the door to his chamber. (And his position makes him impossible to hit with anything other than a Longbow, though in Hector's Story he at least moves around enough to be within range of a regular ranged weapon.) Thankfully, there's nothing lost if he retreats rather than being defeated.
  • Magikarp Power: Nino is infamous for this: she comes at a low level very late in the game, but train her up and she'll be able to blow away anything that comes her way. Also a case of Lamarck Was Right: one character mentions that Nino's family is filled with extremely skilled magic users, including Nino's own sons Lugh and Ray.
    • If you give her the Afa's Drops item, she'll level even faster.
  • Master of None: Eliwood. While by no means a terrible character, his "balanced" stat growths are pretty lackluster compared to Lyn and Hector's unbalanced ones.
  • Eucatastrophe: It won't be apparent on your first playthrough, but Lyn's group stumbles by sheer chance upon Nils about halfway through her story, rescuing Ninian from the Black Fang in the process, holding up Nergal's plans for a year.
    • Another one that won't be apparent on your first playthrough: the brigands that Ephidel sent to "scare" Eliwood away from Santaruz outnumbered Eliwood and his company; if it weren't for Hector's timely arrival, Eliwood might never have reached Santaruz or learned anything about the rebellion plot until it was too late. And if he and Hector hadn't quelled the rebellion, they never would have been in a position to interfere in Nergal's dragon-summoning ritual. As Nergal said, Hector's presence was his "greatest miscalculation."
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Blazing Sword, if you get the best Tactician rating, the game says (and I quote) that you "changed the course of history" and that "Bern and Etruria (the countries fighting in Sword of Seals) so desired this skilled mind that they went to war." Granted, they still go to war if you do poorly, but...
    • Etruria and Bern go to war if you do poorly, but for completely different reasons that have nothing to do with the Tactician. In light of Desmond's tyranny and paranoia and the Tactician's many attacks on Bern troops throughout the game (which had to be done very efficiently for an A or S Rank), and the fact that the Tactician revealed the location of the Shrine of Seals (thitherto a closely guarded national secret of Bern) to the Mage General of Etruria, it's likely that the war mentioned in the "best" ending was started by Desmond rather than Zephiel.
  • Nintendo Hard: Hector Hard Mode.
  • Non-Entity General: Blazing Sword is the series's only aversion.
  • Non-Indicative Name: With a moniker like "The Blazing Blade," you would expect Durandal to be a Flaming Sword; it isn't.
  • Nostalgia Level: Several chapters in Blazing Blade take place at the same location as a chapter in Sword of Seals. To wit:
  • Our Dragons Are Different
  • Plot Armor: Important non-lord characters will retreat when defeated rather than die, though they remain unusable for the rest of the game. In Blazing Sword, this also applies to Bartre and Karel, since they're still around in Sword of Seals.
    • Also, allowing Zephiel to die would create a TIME PARADOX, as he's the villain of Sword of Seals.
    • It also applies to Karla, since she marries Bartre between the two games and has Fir, a character in Sword of Seals. It's a little unclear if it applies to Rath or not due to the way his "death" scene is written.
    • One strange omission of plot armour, possibly an oversight, is Rebecca, who is heavily implied to die when she is defeated despite being the mother of Wolt from Sword of Seals.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Queen Hellene seems rather unconcerned that an attempt was made on her son's life, and is clearly confused when Eliwood accuses her of putting Zephiel's life at risk for her ambition. In reality, this is because she didn't know an assassination attempt was made on Zephiel the night before. This very nearly leads to the party losing her support to reach the Shrine of Seals, but Murdock fortunately explains the situation to her.
    • And even so, neither Murdock nor Eliwood told her that the attempt on Zephiel's life had been ordered by King Desmond; she might not have made her ill-fated decision to make it up to him if she had known about his involvement in the attack.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Sain as Red, Kent as Blue.
  • Royal Rapier: an effective Anti-Cavalry and armor piercing weapon used exclusively by Eliwood.
  • Sacrificial Lion: Leila.
  • Schmuck Bait: Dart lays it out in no uncertain terms that attacking Fargus would be a bad move, and just in case you do, you get hit with a double whammy; not only is Fargus practically a Hopeless Boss Fight (he can be beaten with some tweaking and Arena grinding, though), but if you try to fight him, you get a Nonstandard Game Over no matter what happens next.
  • Ship Tease: The game's endings are open-ended for supports, but the game drops a lot of hints for Eliwood/Ninian, including a different ending if they reach A support. Additionally, Hector's story has a ton of Hector/Lyn moments.
    • Considering that in the novel version, Eliwood does marry Ninian, it really isn't a surprise.
  • Slasher Smile: Zephiel in the epilogue... eek.
  • Slap Slap Kiss: Several pairings, most prominently Hector/Lyn, but also Rebecca/Sain, Rebecca/Wil, Serra/Erk, and Farina/Dart.
  • So Last Season: In Chapter 2, Sain refers to the Mani Katti as a "blade with no equal". That... really did not last at all. Even its alleged twin sword, the Sol Katti, is significantly more powerful than it.
  • Spanner in the Works: Kishuna in the first chapter he appears in Blazing Sword. The boss (who, incidentally, comes off as a chessmaster-type character, what with remarks like "battle is an equation") of that chapter 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.
    • Hector himself is acknowledged by Nergal as an unexpected variable that ruined everything by helping Eliwood.
  • Theme Naming: The ladies of Caelin all seem to have "lyn" somewhere in their name: Marquess Hausen's wife Lyndis and daughter Madelyn; his granddaughter was named Lyndis as well. And arguably, if Lyndis II is paired with Hector, she continues the tradition with her daughter Lilina.
  • Triumphant Reprise: Eliwood's main theme is pretty triumphant, but this minor-key rendition is even more so.
  • The Unfought: Turns out Ephidel is just a villainous Mauve Shirt. Sonia can also become this if you choose to skip her side-chapter, and Limstella will dispose of her instead.
    • Thank God.
    • Zig-Zagged with Brendan. It appears like you might have to fight him since, well, he looks evil and is the commander of the Black Fang alongside Sonia. However; he is killed off-screen....and you DO fight a morph in his liking in the final chapter.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Eliwood's supports with three characters (Lyndis, Ninian, or Fiora) can lead to him marrying them and having Roy. Ninian is the only one stated as actually loving him without having a support conversation. This means that you can literally have Eliwood fall in love with Fiora or Lyndis right in front of Ninian. Eeeeeeeep.
  • Weather of War
  • Wham! Line: "The ice dragon there... The beast slaughtered by your hand... That is Ninian. The girl you loved."
  • You Bastard / Take That, Audience!: If you play with a Tactician in Blazing Sword and get an E or D ranking overall, several characters on the Battle History screen will say something along the lines of either "What were you thinking?", "You need more practice", or just flat out say "You suck" (though some units, namely Karel and Jaffar, will say things like this even if you played decently and got a C or B rank). And the ending notes that future historians were baffled at how you led Eliwood and co. to victory with 'such incomprehensible' strategies.
  • You Have Failed Me...: The Black Fang has such a policy. Jaffar goes so far as to berate the girl who saved his life for failing to adhere to this policy and nursing him back to health. (And yet he pretty much decides to pull a Last Stand for her a few stages later.)
    • This was actually the reason why Legault left the Fang, since he had to kill an Action Girl from the group because she was crippled.
  1. ↑ also translated as The Binding Blade in Super Smash Bros Brawl
  2. ↑ released as just Fire Emblem in the west, but near-universally called by its Japanese name or by its number for the sake of differentiation
  3. ↑ commonly known just by its untranslated Japanese name, Hasha no Tsurugi
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