Fire Emblem Sacred Stones Dying on Easy

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YMMV / Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

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• Alternate Character Interpretation: Ephriam's route's portrayal of Lyon. He claims he's fully in control and has suppressed the Demon King's influence, but is that true? It's possible, and somewhat implied by the Demon King's speech before the final boss, that he was still influencing Lyon all along, just more subtly than on Eirika's route. Is the Demon King just letting him think he's in control?
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The final boss, Fomortiis the Demon King, can easily be defeated in a single turn by simply Zerg Rushing him with the numerous sacred weapons that are given to you for free as you progress through the story.
  • Valter goes down way too easily and without much ado for someone who's been a major threat for about three quarters of the game. Although he has a Fili Shield to protect himself from arrows, there's nothing stopping you from just stealing it from him. Also, you can get a Dragon Axe on the same level, which is tailor-made for taking down Wyvern Knights.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Eirika. Some people think she's fine for being a Naïve Newcomer and goes through realistic Character Development to become a strong Lady of War by the end, given that her upbringing was solely focused on diplomacy and she made a personal effort to learn swordplay before the game even started. Others think that the game script is sexist for handing her the Distress Ball a few too many times while her brother gets Cutscene Power to the Max. And whether or not handing Lyon the Sacred Stone was stupid, or understandable given their long friendship and the Demon King's silver tongue.
  • Gheb in the fandom's circles and fanhacks: Funny one-off joke character or an annoying and outdated joke character in the fandom.
  • General Selena is either a heartbreakingly tragic Anti-Villain or a hypocritical honor-obsessed idiot who insists on following her country's orders to the letter despite being repeatedly smacked upside the head with indications that something very, very bad is happening there.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Chapter 19. Defense and Survival maps in general are well liked, but this one in particular gives you 17 units available to use with plenty of treasure to pick up. Unlike most missions, this one feels very much like the player wasn't caught with their pants down.
  • Chapter 20 as well, for the atmosphere. Sure, the enemies are easily-defeated monsters, but there are a lot of them. A lot—if the player dawdles too long? You will get overwhelmed. It manages to convey a feeling that you're really charging into the belly of the beast, and that you really should keep moving otherwise you'll be overwhelmed.
• Broken Base: The Tower of Valni, an optional side area that unlocks in Chapter 10 (and also the Lagdou Ruins, though they don't unlock until the final chapter). Critics claim that it trivializes the game, as the ability to visit it as many times as you like makes gaining experience easy, while defenders point out that, being optional, one doesn't have to use it, so if it's a Game-Breaker, it's entirely your own fault for visiting it in the first place, and it's a good place for beginners to the series and casual players. (Specifically the Tower of Valni—the Lagdou Ruins are a Brutal Bonus Level.)
• Cliché Storm: Practically a Mad Libs for Fire Emblem games. Evil empire invades the peaceful kingdom next door, emperor turns out to be a Disc-One Final Boss controlled by an ancient evil, good friend of the main character is fated to be evil, and all the MacGuffins sealing away said evil end up being destroyed, forcing an ultimate showdown for the fate of the world. Oh, and you're helped along the way by a dragon-in-the-form-of-a-little-girl who's Really 700 Years Old. As always, though, this all isn't necessarily a bad thing.
• "Common Knowledge": No, Eirika and Ephraim do not get married in their Japanese paired ending. The ending is identical to the English version, any accusations of censorship never happened. There's definite Incest Subtext there, but it never goes beyond that.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Seth, Vanessa, and Franz are the most useful units, as they have strong base stats and growth rates, are mounted combatants with great mobility, and are acquired within the first three stages. As such, most players who opt not to use them only do so out of the desire of making the game harder.
  • While Thieves gain better combat abilities like the access to Assassin and Rogue class, most people would rather make them stay out of combat and use them to steal items/open locks and chests, because the game isn't as generous with their axe fighters compared to Binding Blade, on top of the game being more rampant with Cavaliers, Wyvern Riders, and Gargoyles/Deathgoyles, greatly limiting their utility as a dodge tank they supposed to do.
• Complete Monster: The Demon King Fomortiis, especially on Eirika's route, shows himself to be a particularly depraved and sadistic monster. After possessing the Prince of the Grado Empire, Lyon, Fomortiis resurrects Lyon's father into a soulless puppet and uses him to initiate a series of brutal invasions to destroy the Sacred Stones of the other countries that have sealed the rest of him away. With a huge war and massive amounts of death, Fomortiis eventually reveals himself while also reviving monsters and undead creatures to run rampant throughout the land and kill those in their path. In Eirika's route, where Fomortiis possesses the prince completely, Fomortiis explicitly leaves a part of his mind intact to torment him as Fomortiis destroys everything around him, and also kills the heroic dragon king Morva before reviving him as an undead abomination while seeking to corrupt and dominate the world itself.
• Contested Sequel: Among the Fire Emblem fandom; detractors say it was too easy and short compared to other games, fans love it for its worldbuilding and the return of various mechanics from Gaiden. Similarly, there is debate as to whether the complex and interesting characterization of the main antagonist makes up for the generally-cliche nature of the plot.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • A literal example with Baels. They have high HP and Strength along with their claws having high might.
  • Cavaliers and Wyvern Riders is one of the more dangerous generic units you'll have to face, especially against sword-locked units like Eirika and the Myrmidons. The ability to singlehandedly ran across the map and deal hefty damage, on top of always going in a squad of three makes fighting them much harder than it should be.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gheb was just some random gonk that takes little to no effort to kill, but can often be found in mods of the game, typically with a bigger role.
  • Lute is also definitely one of the more popular mages in the fandom, thanks to her odd habits, her endearing braggadocio, and the related fact that she can back that boasting up with results. (Her married endings being adorable are also a plus.) For someone who's not even related to the main houses and nobility of Magvel (she's just a particularly odd citizen of Renais), that's an achievement. Her popularity rose further thanks to a parody video showcasing her awesomeness in a memetic way going super viral that she ranked REALLY high in Fire Emblem Heroes' Choose Your Legends event and then earned her a spot in the game's roster as of November 2017, and yes, she's still having her endearingly odd habits and braggadocio on full force.
  • L'Arachel is one of the most popular characters in all of The Sacred Stones, thanks to her hilarious delusions of grandeur, devoted belief in justice, wacky personality, and pretty design.
  • Artur has a small, but devoted following due to being one of the best units in the game, as well as being just plain adorable and sweet. On top of that, Light magic is actually very useful in this game.
  • Myrrh has had a small, quiet but very devoted fandom for a long time, partially because while she is another "little girl dragon", she pointedly avoids a lot of the "acts like a child" tropes that tend to skeeve out people in regards to Awakening's Nowi and the general perception of Marth-era Tiki. Myrrh's only real childish aspect is her difficulty understanding that she's feeling (romantic) love, and given her previous lifestyle, that's still a perfectly logical situation in-universe. Her release in Heroes brought these fans to the fore a bit.
• Fan Nickname: Moulder the Boulder and Gilliam Bojangles. Moulder's comes from his unusually high HP, Defense and Constitution stats making him much buffer and tankier than your average cleric, while Gilliam's comes from a sprite comic.
• Fanon: Some fan depictions of Amelia as a General is that she is actually piloting a bulky mech suit due to how small she is in comparison to the suit of armor.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • It's not uncommon among fans of to note that Eirika/L'Arachel's supports have a stronger romantic arc than the canonically possible Ephiram/L'Arachel. Unsurprisingly, it's one of her most popular options, if not her most.
  • Ephraim can end up with three women and have ambiguous ending with some male characters, but for the most part, the fandom seems to have fallen behind shipping him with the tragically doomed Lyon who canonically is in love with Eirika.
• Fridge Horror: The Za'ha map, which contains Lute and Artur's home village, can be revisited as a training map. When you do, you find that both villages there have been destroyed.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The S-class weapons deal ridiculous damage to monsters. The game compensates for this by throwing a heck ton of monsters at you in the final levels.
  • Bishops have a class skill that makes them deal triple damage to monsters. The majority of the enemies you face are monsters, so Bishops are very powerful indeed. Plus, they're your party's main healers, so their utility extends beyond monster-smiting.
  • Seth, the game's Crutch Character, actually has really good growths, meaning he both starts off and ends up good. In fact, he averages equal to or better stats that the game's non-Crutch Character Paladins. Seth is regarded as so good that a Solo-Character Run with him is considered easier than playing the game normally. The most common Self-Imposed Challenge for the game is simply to ban using him.
  • Vanessa ranks just below Seth as one of the most useful characters in the game. She is acquired very early on and has incredible mobility due to being a flying unit. Not only does she have good growths overall, but she can be promoted to Wyvern Knight as early as chapter 8. The combination of the Pierce ability and her naturally high speed and skill stats lets her plow through enemies like it's nothing.
  • The Tower of Valni, a revisitable dungeon that you can retreat from at any time, in short, an infinite source of experience. It's optional, but if you really want to put the screws to the game this is the place to do it. There's also the Lagdou Ruins, which features stronger enemies (thus more experience) but it's not available until extremely late in the game, where the Tower is available right after the story branch.
• Genius Bonus: So by referring to the zombies as "Revenants", they're just Not Using the "Z" Word huh? Actually, "Revenant" is another name for "Zombie"—it even predates the word "zombie" to describe animated corpses. In addition, revenants are slightly different than zombies. They are undead creatures that were revived due to harboring a deep seated grudge that kept them from resting in peace. In essence, they fit well with the antagonist's demonic theme.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Whilst L'Arachel is popular with most everyone (whether due to her spectacular growths and power or her hilarious supports), Western fans seems particularly enamored with her.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Gargoyles. They're flying units, and as such they can move around the map with ease. They have well-rounded bulk as well, so unless you have an effective weapon such as a bow, they're not gonna take too much damage regardless of what type of weapon you use. Finally, they're rather fast, so you'll often have trouble doubling them.
  • The Mauthe Doog and Gwyllgi definitely count due to their VERY high speed and movement. Imagine a Swordmaster substituting their critical boost for more movement and competent attack.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The enemy control glitch from Blazing Blade returns, and is now even easier to trigger, as the range of tiles that cause it is much wider, and there's now a tiny window to trigger it even on ordinary tiles.
  • The Gorgons' Stone spell is treated as a regular Dark Magic spell rather than a monster-exclusive attack, but it lacks a proper weapon level, so if acquired via hacking or the enemy control glitch, it can be used by any of your units except Myrrh. As there are no E-ranked Dark Magic tomes in this game, it takes 8 uses of the Stone spell to permanently teach a unit Dark Magic. This is primarily used to give Tethys attacking capabilities and allow Sages access to all four types of magic. And it also has another unintended effect. The Sacred Twin weapons' effect of doubling in might against monster enemies overrides the Bishop class's Slayer ability, which triples the might of a tome used against monsters, such that the class actually deals more damage to monsters with the A-ranked Aura than the S-ranked Ivaldi. Except Gleipnir, the Dark Magic Sacred Twin, is the only one that lacks this doubling effect—and as such, a Bishop that has been taught Dark Magic will have Slayer activate with Gleipnir, the most powerful tome in the game.
  • The enemy control glitch also lets you repair Myrrh's Dragonstone, which otherwise isn't possible. She can also use monster weapons like claws or fangs.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ephraim states he would rather be "traveling the land as a mercenary", and Eirika chides him for it. During the game, Eirika is pretending to be a mercenary leader.
  • At the end of Scorched Sand, Ephriam brings Eirika Glepnir and Garm, the Sacred Twin weapons of Grado, and tells her "I doubt either of us can use them, but…" Come Fire Emblem Heroes, and Eirika and Ephraim got alternate versions (Anamnesis Lady Eirika and Brave Ephraim) who use... Glepnir and Garm, respectively.
  • In their localized C support, Ephraim attempts to comfort Eirika by stroking her face. ^note The original Japanese version had this as a head pat instead. Years down the line, Fates would feature an infamous relationship-building minigame centered on stroking various units' faces which was exclusive to Japan.
  • Garcia and Dozla's supports (in the English version) have them trying to use magic and staves and failing in spectacular ways. Later Fire Emblem games introduced reclassing, which lets characters actually do this in gameplay. And it's very likely that with their stat builds, these two really would be that terrible in tome or staff classes. Taken even further, Awakening had the War Monk class, which uses axes and staves, while Fates had the Oni Chieftain and Malig Knight classes, which use axes and magic. The fact that two axe men tried out staves and magic seems oddly prophetic with that in mind.
  • The Japanese commercial for Sacred Stones features a young girl playing the game on her Game Boy Advance in the middle of Shibuya Crossing, before she gets transported into a medieval fantasy world. Then 11 years later, Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE includes Shibuya Crossing as an in-game location.
  • A character who happens to be a necromancer, gets possessed by a demonic lord, causes the main events of a game without meaning to, and get fought at the very last chapter? Who are we talking about? Lyon or Mortanius?
  • One cutscene has Ephraim tell Eirika "What say you to dressing like me and becoming king in my stead?" Not quite funny at first, but fast forward to Eirika's induction in Choose Your Legends in 2021 and we have Eirika wearing garb similar to her brother's and carrying Reginleif.
• Ho Yay:
  • There's a mixture of admiration and rivalry between Ephraim and Lyon.
  • Kyle and Forde's relationship seems to be incredibly close. They are two of the only male characters whose endings change when they have an A Support with each other. While the ending doesn't imply anything romantic, their A support is slightly suggestive of two people not realizing they may have a crush on the other person. That being said, they can both get married to women, so if there is anything there, they are, at most, bisexual.
  • It's possible that Knoll had feelings for Lyon. It's hard to tell as all of Grado's top officers worship the ground that Vigarde and Lyon walk on. It may explain though why Knoll is taking all of this much harder than Duessel and Cormag (though, to be fair, they don't do much better and they hadn't seen Vigarde killed and resurrected and hadn't seen Grado's future like Knoll has).
• Incest Yay Shipping: The Ephraim/Eirika pairing gets a lot of thanks to their interactions in and out of support conversations. It even got acknowledged and mocked in Fire Emblem Heroes.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Since The Sacred Stones is a relatively easy game in an otherwise Nintendo Hard series, Fire Emblem fans who've played other titles first often don't find it to be very fun.
• It Was His Sled: Lyon being the primary antagonist is supposed to be a twist - the early game has both the omniscient narrator and characters referring only to Vigarde being behind the attack, and Eirika and Ephraim spend some time wondering what Lyon's attitude to the war is - but given that many fans consider Lyon to be one of the best villains in the franchise, it's hard to enter the game without knowing this twist.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Eirika seems to fall under this as she's been shipped with Seth, Innes, Ephraim, Lyon, Tana, L'Arachel, Valter, and many more. It helps that more people nowadays argue more about Eirika's canonical pairing than Ephraim's.
• Love to Hate: Valter and Riev are just too hilariously and unrepentantly evil.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Prince Lyon in Ephraim's route is initially a noble, well-intentioned prince out to prevent his kingdom of Grado and his people from dying a foreseen earthquake. Awakening the Demon King Fomortiis to use its power to save his homeland, Lyon resurrects his dead father Vigarde as a proxy and uses his nation of Grado to invade others so he may steal and destroy their Sacred Stones. Bringing the other nations to their knees, Lyon manipulates his old friends Ephraim and Eirika to constantly stay one step ahead of them. Even at the end, Lyon is driven only by a wish to save his Grado, no matter how far he has to go. While always haunted by Fomortiis, when summoned to the Order of Heroes, Lyon calmly cows the Demon King into submission and servitude using his newfound leverage, performing the one deed he never could completely do before: control the devil.
  • Caellach the Tiger Eye is a former Jehanna mercenary who has ambitions to become a king. Wanting to escape the confines of the desert, Caellach grew a reputation in his mercenary days as a boisterous yet reliable warrior for better opportunities, ending up scouted by Grado to become one of their new generals. In charge of dealing with his former home in the war efforts, Caellach's cunning and charisma was able to conquer Jehanna, taking the palace and destroying its Sacred Stone after using Carlyle, while setting in-roads with Carcino for his future reigns. Establishing his connections and cutting off his attachments to his old life, Caellach joined Valter's army in a massive battle against the Magvel army, equipping himself against any potential weaknesses, ultimately losing only inches away from ascending to his beloved throne.
  • Aias is the former comrade Caellach of, and a famed tactician that has never been cut in battle. Joining Caellach with Grado, Aias was assigned to help conquer Jehanna, defending the borders from Erika's encroaching army. With the formation he set-up, Aias stood mightly against her army, sending waves of countless cavalry and infantry to batter them as he keeps himself well defended in a wall of knights and cavalry, while remaining formidable himself if directly fought. Standing near untouchable, it's only through the impending support of the Rausten army Aias was finally defeated, either dying in battle praising his killers' tactical prowess over him, or being killed by Caellach after defiantly facing him.
  • Tirado is Valter's subordinate who contrasting him uses wit and strategic betrayal. Tasked with capturing the heirs of Renais, Tirado place the traitor Orson in Ephraim's fold and get him to try reclaiming Renais Castle, using mercenaries to weaken the prince's army before ambushing him. When Ephraim manages to escape, Tirado adapted and spread gossip of Ephraim's capture to lure Eirika, tricking his adjutant Murray and a ballista squad as bait to weaken her, and then sending Orson to trick Eirika, before destroying her escape route when it fails, nearly capturing her had it not been for Ephraim's arrival leading to him engaging them in a final battle, where in defeat praises the two's skills and warns the future dangers of Grado.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Due to his name and his surprising bulk and usability, Moulder is often revered as a great badass known as "Moulder the Boulder", when he's usually being a friendly middle-aged priest.
  • Thanks to her prominent magic growths that justify her proclamations of genius, Lute certainly earns respect from the fanbase, to the point where many fans like to portray her as the most elite magic wielder in the series, easily capable of soloing the entire game.
  • Seth, for being one of the strongest Oifey archetypes in the franchise. After all, the name Seth rhymes with "Death".
• Memetic Molester: Valter. Admittedly, it's not that much of a stretch, as he's far too happy to track the twins down. Also, Gheb, who isn't exactly a stretch either, given his dialogue with Tana.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Gheb has an entire ROM hack dedicated to him! It's very mid-aughts internet meme culture, and your mileage will extremely vary as to whether it's hilarious or disgusting.
  • There's a hack where the game is translated through several layers of Google Translate, to the point where the females are often called men, Eirika being called a Russian/English princess, Garcia being a doctor, and Ephraim and his men being called musicians.
  • "Amelia is bad in General/Amelia is good in General." ^note A gag associated with Amelia, which arose from a video by Youtuber Mekkah that claimed Amelia was generally not worth using, but if she was to be used, then it would be best to go into Paladin, since General's slight stat edge, axe use, and Great Shield skill doesn't compare to Paladin's extra 3 Movement, canto, and rescuing capability. This led to a curious backlash due to General Amelia having long been perceived by casual fans as a Memetic Badass Lightning Bruiser, and resulted in followup videos that more or less solidified the joke, and since then, "bad in General/good in General" has been widely associated with her among hardcore players.
• Moe: Amelia and Myrrh (less in the "super cutesy and adorable moeblob" sense and more in the "sweet child who goes through lots of shit" one).
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Novala from Chapter 6 gleefully traps several Renais citizens in the mountains to be killed by giant spiders during the fight after they fail to work as hostages for Eirika's surrender. When Eirika is horrified by this display of pointless cruelty, Novala just laughs and says that this is war; any atrocity is fair game as long as you win.
  • Valter's cold-blooded murder of Glen and subsequent lying to Cormag about who killed Glen in order to send him on a misguided Roaring Rampage of Revenge that could possibly get him killed as well. Riev's approval of Valter's savagery puts him over the line too.
• Narm: The scene where Fomortiis began to corrupt Lyon and change his character was meant to be really dramatic, but all that tension was taken away by the fact that the scene which just came right after it has the now-possessed Lyon greet Eirika and Ephraim with a really generic "Hi". It just comes off as way too funny to take seriously.
• No Yay: Valter's Villainous Crush towards Eirika can become Squicky very quickly since it's heavily implied that he wants to rape her.
• One-Scene Wonder: Morva makes a badass entrance at the beginning of his chapter and looks like he may be the 11th-Hour Ranger. Instead, he gets killed and subsequently turned into a dracozombie.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Light Magic—in past games, it's wielded mostly by Weak, but Skilled mages who're best at doubling, and often not available until about half-way through the game which meant it was Overshadowed by Awesome. Here, not only is Light magic available from the 4th chapter but it gets a weapon triangle advantage against Dark-using monsters. Further clinching it is the Bishop's passive skill, which gives them triple damage against monsters no matter what is being used. Sages also gain access to Light tomes in this game, allowing many more characters to use it.
• Scrappy Weapon: Dark magic in this game. It's not bad per se—just overshadowed by Anima and Light magic. Sure, it does attack enemy resistance meaning it's still useful against monsters. But on the other hand, their legendary weapon is the only one that does not get a damage multiplier against the Final Boss or Elite Mooks at the end of the game and you only have two potential users—Knoll and Ewan. Both of which join when the game is more than past its halfway point, and Ewan requires you to really baby him to get him ready to go. Oh and Luna was nerfed—severely hampering its usefulness. It's saying something when the best weapon for the category overall is Flux, the low level but still respectably powerful base Dark tome, thanks to its high might compared to Fire and Lightning.
• Spiritual Successor: Prior to later games also revisiting those mechanics and the Shadows of Valentia remake, Sacred Stones took the most inspiration from Fire Emblem Gaiden, including the branching story, branching class system, the usage of monster enemies, and the revisitable overworld map with dungeons.
• Squick: Tethys's support with Artur is one of the most infamous in the entire series due to the former's uncharacteristically pushy behavior toward the younger Artur, ostensibly to get him to consider a dancing career but coming across more like she's sexually harassing him, only made worse by her comparing his appearance to that of a ten-year-old child.
• That One Boss:
  • Caellach can be notoriously hard to defeat, since he has a close-combat axe AND a hand-axe and hits like a truck with either one of them.
  • Carlyle on Eirika's route is a Swordmaster with high speed, hit, and avoid. Avoid is boosted even further by the throne he's on.
• That One Level:
  • The Ghost Ship on Hard Mode is one giant onslaught of enemies, including Gargoyles, which come at you from all directions, are able to bypass your defensive units and hit like trucks. It gets worse after a few turns, when two recruitable NPCs; L'Arachel (a defenseless healer) and Dozla (who lacks a ranged weapon) show up on the other side of the map where Mogalls can chip away at their health. Dozla's determination to ignore the most dangerous units doesn't help matters, so unless you've been grinding like a madman, they'll likely die before you can reach them.
  • Chapter Fourteen, the siege of Grado Castle, includes an enormous map and enemy units armed with Berserk staves, which force the target(s) to turn on their allies. Although one of the enemies is recruitable, doing so requires the player to either fork up 10,000 gold or have L'Arachel (a very weak unit) talk to him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Morva, the Manakete hero who defeated the Demon King during his first reign of terror, is introduced, killed off, and revived as a zombie slave of the selfsame Demon King within the space of the opening scene of one chapter.
  • Duessel. He's set up as an interesting character, being Ephraim's lance instructor and having conflicting loyalties despite being a general of Grado. He provides some plot-crucial info in the chapter where he finally does a Heel–Face Turn... and then he promptly poofs out of the plot, having no more required dialogue after that.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy:
  • Seth absolutely broke the game with his high base stats, growth rates, availability, and being a mounted unit with respectable weapon skill allows him to immediately run down and trivialize the game's already forgiving difficulty even without the benefit of grinding from skirmish and the tower raids. Many players would either kill him off in his introduction chapter to ramp up the challenge or simply not using him at all just because of how broken he is.
  • While loved as a plot character, Knoll was disliked for a long time due to a terrible statline that made it nigh-impossible to turn him into a good combat character. This has changed somewhat due to the considerably better modern appraisal of Summoner, since he is the character who can most easily access it.
  • Ewan is this to those who don't find him to be this game's Est character. Unlike the previous two trainees who join early enough to not be too far behind everyone else, Ewan is far behind others. While the game's system lets you stop to catch him up to speed, he still has to be babied before he can be caught up to where everyone else is. Even in his join map, he'll rarely see any use because of how most enemies can take him out in one round.
  • Amelia is almost completely useless when she's recruited and is totally vulnerable unless you blow the stat-boosting items on her that you get in her opening level. Later down the line, she gets really good, but then you either used the stat-boosters on her, which other characters may have needed, or spent a great deal of time in the Tower of Valni level grinding her.
  • Much like in Blazing Blade, sword-locked units will have a hard time keeping up with their lancer and axefighter brethren due to the scarcity of axe-wielding enemies and abundance of Cavaliers and Wyvern Riders, as well as the lack of a sword counterpart to the hand axe and javelin meaning that sword-locked units only ever get 1 range outside of rare, fragile, and incapable-of-critting magic swords, while axe and lance users have easy and cheap access to 1-2 range.
    • Eirika is probably the worst of them, as she is overshadowed by her lance-locked brother, who also has a better stat spread. Her only saving grace is that, upon being promoted into a Great Lord, she gains a horse that improves her movement.
    • Colm and Rennac have a niche as Thieves, being able to pick locks and steal any items that aren't weapons, but are really weak in combat.
    • The two Myrmidons, Joshua and Marisa, have mediocre growths except when it comes to Speed and Skill. The latter is regarded as the worst of the two, since she is recruited much later and at a point when axe-wielding enemies are no longer a common threat.
  • Among the vast amount of Cavaliers (and horse-riding units in general), Forde tends to fall off to the lower spectrum of the tier list. Mediocre starting stats aside for Speed, not-so-stalwart growth rates, and facing even harder competition with other Cavaliers that are just better in every aspect ^* Seth dwarfs every other horseback unit thanks to his availability and power that makes him effective in every stage of the game, Franz starts off weaker but still very effective unit earlier on and can grow up to become ever more potent than Seth, Kyle might have slow start but still has respectable speed and skill growth to catch up, and Duessel might start off rather weak at his level and has even lesser availability than Forde but is perfectly usable from the get-go, and this isn't even counting other potential horseback units you can get ^* Ranger Neimi is a powerful late-game Glass Cannon when trained properly, while Ranger Gerik dwarfs everyone that's not Seth if you made him a Ranger thanks to his already strong base stats on top of pretty good growth rates to boot, making him easy to use despite his low availability. The real saving grace for him is that his promotion gains as Great Knight can cover up his shortcomings earlier on and is strictly superior to aforementioned Amelia, thanks for his superior movement and weapon level and Cavalier being a very good class overall.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Selena was intended to be a Tragic Villain who stays loyal to Grado out of a sense of My Country, Right or Wrong, even as she disagrees with her king and those he employees in his army. Although the game attempts to paint her a reasonable and overall decent person, she refuses to turn against Grado despite various characters calling her out for her blind loyalty, and unlike Cormag and Dussel, she turns a blind eye to it simply because of her adoration of Emperor Vigarde. She is given several chances to stop fighting, and yet she goes down fighting despite being against what she is ordered to do. In the end, its hard to find her sympathetic despite the game telling you she is supposed to be. In fact, Myrrh flat out tells her that Vigarde is a zombie and Came Back Wrong, and Selena refuses to believe it simply because she can't bring herself to accept that her beloved emperor is dead. That she still remains loyal to Grado in the face of numerous signs of its corruption makes it hard to see her as anything more than a hopelessly delusional fool and/or a hypocrite.
• Vindicated by History:
  • A lot of the more controversial elements that were criticized as making the game too easy ^note easy level grinding, being able to revisit old maps were adopted into Fire Emblem: Awakening, whose Newbie Boom will define Fire Emblem for the foreseeable future.
  • The game as a whole became a lot more popular after the release of Awakening and Fates, going from one of the biggest cases of Contested Sequel in the series to near Sacred Cow levels in some sectors of the fandom. While the plot is still considered mostly cliché, it's still seen as well-written with good characters (with the real primary antagonist, in particular, having a very believable motivation for doing what he did compared to many FE villains), and as Gaiden, the inspiration for the above-mentioned controversial mechanics, also experienced a Vindicated by History surge with the help of a remake, the gameplay became a lot more liked.
  • It was also criticised for its length. Part of this was because Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, the previous game in the series, had roughly thirty chapters (Not including Gaiden chapters!) including the Prolonged Prologue that was Lyn's tale. This game in contrast has only twenty one... and one Gaiden chapter. But people began to appreciate that while the game is short, it makes up for it in having visible branching paths (as opposed to the Guide Dang It! branches in Binding Blade and Blazing Blade) and the lack of gaiden chapters is made up for with more optional maps, including the postgame.
  • When it comes to Romhacking, for the first several years Sacred Stones tended to be ignored in favor of using Blazing Blade for most romhacking purposes, mostly because of the then-current hacking tools and resources being primarily made with the Blazing Blade ROM in mind. As the romhacking scene went further into the new decade, more people started moving into modifying Sacred Stones over Blazing Blade because of the less strict engine limitations of the former which allows them to import more impressive spriteworks and other quality-of-life changes that weren't possible in the Blazing Blade engine, and many other factors that make modding Sacred Stones better than Blazing Blade. As of the new decade, Sacred Stones has effectively replaced Blazing Blade as a staple for romhacking the GBA Fire Emblem games.
  • Eirika and Ephraim as well. While they're still base-breaking, both made a pretty good performance in the Voting Gauntlet in Fire Emblem Heroes, with Eirika curb-stomping Elise and Ephraim managing a very close victory over Chrom, the Lord of the most popular game in the series. Considering Eirika used to be among the most reviled Lords in the series and Ephraim had a lot of detractors, this says something.
  • The Summoner class was regarded as the worst in the game for a long time due to it being stuck with the game's worst magic type. Later on, though, fans started cracking open its A.I. Breaker capabilities, and it became much better-regarded, almost to Game-Breaker levels. This meant that Knoll, the character who can most easily enter Summoner, went from being derided as the game's worst character to being seen as low-mid-tier at worst.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: As with the Elibe games, the battle animations are considered one of the best aspects of the game.
• The Woobie:
  • Knoll, to the point that he actually expresses relief in his death quote. Amelia, who is also a Plucky Girl and refuses to let it get her down. Myrrh, who is already a Shrinking Violet.
  • The country Grado in general has its forces decimated, 85% of its high-ranking leaders killed off, the entire royal family killed, and then undergoes a massive earthquake after the epilogue.
• What Measure Is a Non-Badass?:
  • Eirika is often put under the microscope, nitpicked, and/or downright bashed for being a sensitive Nice Girl aside of a Messianic Archetype and the Action Girl, with some of her haters even openly denying that both she and Ephraim are co-protagonists of the game and saying Ephraim is the only lead. Sometimes using Japanese fanart as "evidence".
  • This has become worse ever since Fire Emblem: Awakening has her in the Bride class, despite still being a fighter on top of a staff user. Even more baseless because one can download a version of Eirika that is still 100% a Swordswoman (specifically a Myrmidon, which makes sense, since her Lord class is VERY similar to it), so the above "Bride Eirika" is an optional event that can be taken or not.
• Woolseyism:
  • Ismaire's original name was Ishmael. Since that's a male name, it got approximated to the more feminine sounding Ismaire.
  • Similarly, Eirika's original name in Japanese was Eirik, which is also a male name. Like Ismaire, she received a more feminine-sounding name in the localization.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/FireEmblemTheSacredStones

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