The Most Busted Mechanic in Fire Emblem: Infinite Range Warp

 

Out of curiosity, is anyone surprised that warp is # 1 on this list? Yeah, me neither. If you've been reading this list, you'll notice that one theme of busted mechanics boils down to: "This mechanic makes it easier to get from Point A to Point B". In that regard, nothing makes it easier to get from Point A to Point B than the Warp Staff. 

Any run that uses the warp staff is usually called a "warp skip" run. That tells you everything you need to know about how stupidly powerful the warp staff is: It lets you skip entire chapters because you can bring someone straight to the boss, or the throne. All those enemies on the map between the player and the boss / throne are pointless since warp lets the player effortlessly beat the map without needing to deal with them.

Like Awakening's Pair Up, the warp staff instantly dominates the game's design. Any character who can use warp is high tier at least, and the best unit in the game under other circumstance. In order to make warp not broken, the game has to be designed in such a way that getting from Point A to Point B isn't the main objective. Most of the time, a given map objective in Fire Emblem will require that, which means that warp will break it in half. 

 I'll finish this post with something that a Fire Emblem reddit user said 6 years ago:

"The only way warp can "work" is if you deliberately design maps that force the player to use warp in certain spots and take the warp staff out of the player's hands in other areas that would otherwise break the game. 

Can warp be designed well? Yes, but it requires a shitton of playtesting and being aware that any oversight whatsoever can break your game in half. Or, you nerf warp to the ground to the point where it's a stupid gimmick. And what benefit does it bring you? Warp in its inherent nature basically lets you skip vast swathes of a given chapter, which basically goes against the entire point of designing chapters, terrain, enemy layouts, etc. to begin with."

(Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/9c099v/comment/e57lqbm/) 

Top 10 Most Busted Mechanics in Fire Emblem # 2: Ferrying Mechanics (Awakening Pair-Up & The Rescue Mechanic)

 

Awakening Pair-Up

      If there's one mechanic that's absurdly overpowered, it's Pair Up from Awakening. Pair Up's power comes from how massive and gargantuan the stat boosts are. If that wasn't enough, Pair-Up also provides two additional bonuses that are both really powerful: The first is Dual Strike wherein the backup character can also attack, making it significantly easier to kill enemies. The second is Dual Guard, where the backup unit has the ability to completely block an attack, thereby negating enemy damage.

      So why is Awakening's Pair Up mechanic this high on the list? Well....

It makes juggernauting extremely easy: Pair-Up grants massive stat bonuses to the point where a character can become powerful enough to steamroll the game by themselves. This is what leads to the Robin solos. 

In addition to that, being able to attack again or potentially block all damage from an enemy attack makes Pair-Up that much more powerful as a mechanic. It can help your lead unit kill faster, and it can keep them alive longer. It can do pretty much everything.

It Dominates the Game's Design

Pair Up is so powerful that the entire game has to be designed around it. If the game isn't, then there's no challenge. However, by designing the entire game around it, the player is essentially forced to use it. Though to be fair, Pair Up is so beneficial that there's no reason not to use it so the game designers might as well assume that it will be used. After all, there's no drawback to using Pair Up, which reinforces just how dominant the mechanic is.

But what about Fates? 

That game did Pair Up right, didn't it? Not really. Even if the Fates version of Pair Up is more balanced and better designed than Awakening's, it's still way too powerful. Dual Guard still makes juggernauting relatively easy since the stat boosts that can come from that can still be huge. Slow characters can become fast, characters that deal low damage can kill things, and thanks to the shields becoming consistent, a character with Dual Guard has better survivability. 

Recap: Even when it's better balanced, Pair Up makes juggernauting far too easy. It's a mechanic that's so powerful that it always dominates the game's design. There's no drawback to using it, and because the game designs itself with the use of this mechanic in mind, not using it can put the player at a disadvantage.

The Rescue Mechanic

And here we have the more balanced, but still broken, older sibling of Pair Up: Rescue. The rescue mechanic could be best defined as: 

"Rescuing allows playable units to pick up allied units – using the Rescue command – who are smaller than them, in order to protect them from harm or to carry them around the battlefield."

(Source: https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Rescue_%28command%29)

Why is the mechanic this high up the list? In the hands of the right player, the rescue mechanic can do a lot! It allows players to move longer distances in shorter periods of time. Remember the # 5 spot on this list?  The spot about fliers and mounted units? This mechanic gives them an even bigger advantage over infantry units because this is valuable utility they can use, and take advantage of, that infantry units can't. Fliers can even rescue infantry units across terrain like water tiles and mountains, making fliers even better than before.

Scylla did a great job pointing out another reason why rescue is busted: "Rescue also allows you to be far more aggressive with your positioning because you can just pull a unit out of a bad spot;"

What makes the mechanic even more powerful is when players start implementing rescue chains, where multiple mounted and flying units take a rescued character and ferry them across the map. It's pretty common among faster playthroughs, and this ultimately results in the player being able to beat entire maps in quicker periods of time. It also results in the player being incentivized to use mostly mounted and flying units, which is bad for the purpose of balancing.

Quick Recap: Rescuing is busted because it allows the player to move from A to B in far faster periods of time, erases the negatives of bad positioning, and makes mounted and flying units even better by giving them additional, powerful utility. 

Moral of the Story: Ferrying mechanics are super busted, and Fire Emblem as a franchise would do well to remove them from future titles.

Top 10 Most Busted Mechanics: Movement Refreshing Shenanigans (# 3)

 

# 3 - Movement Refreshing Shenanigans

Want to make your game easier to beat? Create a way for the player to make one or more units be able to move again. Dancers first debuted in Fire Emblem 3 Book 2, and ever since then they've made a huge impact on their respective games. If you want to beat the game quickly, you're going to make effective use of them. 

Then Holy War came around and gave dancers the ability to refresh the movement of up to four different units at once. The amount of strategies that opens up is insane! 

That being said, dancers aren't really enough to make it this high up the list. That's why this entry is titled "Movement Refreshing Shenanigans". This entry encompasses all the other additional ways in which one or more units can move again. This includes stuff like:

Galeforce - A skill where a Dark Flier in Awakening will be able to move again after killing an enemy. Keep in mind, Dark Fliers are an eight movement flier class that have access to tomes. They can easily kill enemies, which means that they can move a very long distance and kill two enemies per turn. Keep in mind that this skill exists in a game where dancers also exist. 

Dance of the Goddess / Goddess Dance: A gambit / emblem where you can refresh 4 adjacent units. Keep in mind that this exists in a game where there's also a dancer. Scylla pointed out that one unit can "move 4 times in one turn". Super busted.

Raging Storm (Three Houses): "Effective against Dragon foes; If attack lands, user can move again." 

Unlike Galeforce, Edelgard doesn't even have to land a kill and she'll still get to move again. Make Edelgard a Wyvern and she'll be able to break the game efficiently. It's also possible to use this up to 5 times. It's true that this reduces the use out of Amyr, but weapons can be repaired in Three Houses, so the reduction in uses doesn't really hold Edelgard back.

The Anew Staff (Fire Emblem 3 Book 2): This version of the Anew staff refreshes the movement of all allies on the battlefield. You read that right: ALL ALLIES ON THE MAP! Sure, it has 3 uses and can't be repaired by the Hammerene, but.....there's still a lot of crazy stuff you can do when you're capable of refreshing everybody on the map, including the dancer. That's more units getting refreshed than all the other options!  There's a reason why FE 12 and Echoes had to nerf this. 

In conclusion, there are a lot of broken tools and abilities to refresh movement in this series! In the hands of the right player, they can utterly trivialize entire chapters.

Top 10 Most Busted Mechanics in Fire Emblem # 4 - Time Rewind Mechanics

 

# 4 - Time Rewind Mechanics

The next major busted mechanic on this list are "time rewind mechanics". Like bonus experience in Path of Radiance, time rewind mechanics like Mila's Turnwheel are supposed to be there to act as a safety net for the player. We've all had stories where the enemy had a super low chance to land a critical hit, or a super low chance to hit our character, and for some reason the RNG gives us a middle finger and the next thing we know, our character dies. Insert Mila's Turnwheel, a convenient way for the player to go back in time and redo the level without having to completely start from the beginning.

It's easy to see the appeal of a mechanic like this: It makes restarting less painful and time-consuming. If you're like me, you probably use this mechanic for this purpose. However, like bonus experience in Path of Radiance, there is a way for a more experienced player to use this in a way that completely breaks the game. 

Scylla pointed out the problem with time rewind mechanics like these: "this is also ridiculous for a similar reason to Rescue; you can take crazy risks and get away with it, because you can just undo undesirable outcomes. The three games that have had this mechanic have been undeniably shaped by them, not as a tool to provide a safety to beginners but instead a 'probability enhancer' to the more experienced." 

So yeah. This game essentially lets you fish for critical hits, and makes it easy to accomplish. Another issue is that Maddening mode of Three Houses seemed explicitly designed with this mechanic in mind. This led to the game implementing same turn ambush spawns, which is bad design. The next point about time rewinding is that it makes games easier, since resetting is less punitive and that so far the games where it's implemented have been really generous with how many charges the player gets. The obvious solution would be to give the player fewer rewinds on higher difficulties, but so far that hasn't happened.

Just to recap, the problems with this mechanic are:

a) Players can rush forward without any consequences.

b) This mechanic works as a way to force the probability to do what the player wants it to do.  

c) It can be used to justify bad map design. 

This is a mechanic so powerful that it will inevitably shape how the game plays, which is why it deserves to be so high up on this list.

Top 10 Most Busted Mechanics in Fire Emblem # 5: Mounted Units, Jagens / Oifayes, Fliers, & Canto

# 5: Mounted Units, Jagens, Oifayes, Fliers, & Canto

So let's start with a simple question: How many Fire Emblem games can you name that do not have a single mounted or flying unit in either the top tier or high tier? 

Go on. I'll wait. 

Yeah, me neither. I can't think of a single game. Literally every single game has a unit on horseback, or a flier, that's at least really good. And when a high movement unit isn't balanced, they tend to break the game. 

Starting off the list are mounted units, aka units that are on horseback. Why are they on the list? Simple. Movement is the best stat in Fire Emblem, and cavaliers / paladins tend to have high movement. So right off the bat they can move from Point A to Point B faster. In addition to that, these classes often have good enough stats to obliterate enemies with ease. In the most unbalanced games they make infantry classes obsolete. 

In addition to that, they usually have partial or total weapon triangle control, rescue utility in some games (we'll get to that at a later post), and powerful skills. It takes a really powerful drawback for these guys to not get used at all. Most Fire Emblem games don't have that. So as a result, pretty much every Fire Emblem game will have at least a few mounted units seeing use destroying enemy units. 

Jagens / Oifayes

One of the most notoriously powerful types of cavaliers are Jagens. They're basically the pre-promoted character that joins the player at the beginning of the game. They're typically the best character in the early game. Their stats are better than everyone else's and they have better weapon ranks, which usually translates into more damage dealing since they almost always start the game pre-equipped with Silver Weapons. 

In short, these are efficient high movement killing machines. The old school wisdom used to be that your growth units will eventually surpass these guys by the end of the game. The problem here is that this growth takes a long time, and by the time the growth units catch up, the Jagen will have already carried your team for a substantial portion of the game. Base stats are more important than growths when ranking units, and Jagens pretty much always have better bases. Also, what happens when the Jagens growths are good enough to sustain them? That's when you get these guys...

Seth and Titania, two gamebreaking characters that are notorious for starting powerful and staying powerful. The real question is this: Why do Fire Emblem games continue to hand Jagens out to the player? At this point, it seems like tradition for tradition's sake. If a Fire Emblem game wanted to be truly innovative, they'd get rid of the Jagens.

Fliers

So let's take everything that I said about cavaliers and now give them the power of flight. Meet the flying units. They can do everything a mounted cavalier can do, but better. Fliers get the additional bonus of ignoring terrain that could otherwise potentially slow down a mounted knight, or an infantry unit. If a mounted knight isn't at the top of a tier list, chances are it's because the flier beat them. Pegasus Knights and Wyvern Knights also tend to dominate the games that they're in. 

"But bows and magic can deal effective damage against fliers. They already have a drawback."

That might sound like a legitimate drawback on paper, but in practice: 

• There usually aren't enough of these enemies to make a difference.

• When they do show up, they're easy to play around.

• Some games provide items that nullify effective damage. Sometimes a flying unit can simply dismount to avoid the effective damage drawback too.

• Wyverns are typically bulky enough to survive an attack from effective damage.

So enemy archers and mages are not sufficient to hold flying units in check. Sadly, fliers have only gotten stronger with more recent titles. In Awakening, the Dark Flier has Galeforce and great stats, Wyverns and Malig Knights are really powerful in Fates, Palla's really powerful in Echoes, Three Houses is Wyvern Central, and I've heard that Engage also has a flier problem (can someone confirm or deny this?). 

In addition to all of this, mounted and flying units also have an additional skill that really makes them busted:

Canto

Say hello to Canto, the "skill that grants mounted units the ability to move again after performing certain actions, assuming the unit has not already moved their maximum allotted spaces in that turn." (Source: https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Canto)

Why is this skill busted? It's busted because a mounted unit can attack, and then can continue to move forward even after attacking. In other words, you can maintain a powerful offensive momentum throughout the entire game. This is a skill that mounted and flying units had that infantry units didn't. As a result, it gave additional utility to two types of classes that didn't need any more.

Canto could also be used after rescuing a village, rescuing an allied unit, or using an item. It just gave additional movement strategies to the classes with high movement. This made mounted and flying units even better since it meant that there were more strategies one could employ with them.  

I should point out that moving after attacking was limited to the Jugdral and Tellius games. In the GBA games, it was slightly nerfed since high movement units couldn't use it after attacking, but it was still good. 

So, to summarize everything

• Mounted and flying units have better movement, better stats, partial to full weapon triangle control, rescue utility and canto. They're classes that dominate their respective games because they can do everything that infantry combat units can do, but better. 

• If Intelligent Systems wants to improve the gameplay of future Fire Emblem titles, it should figure out a way to truly balance these classes so that infantry units are more worth using. 

The Top 10 Most Busted Mechanics in Fire Emblem: # 8, # 7, & # 6

 # 8 - Bonus Experience (Path of Radiance)

The next entry on the list of busted mechanics is bonus experience from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Some of you might have read that statement and might be thinking "but bonus experience is in other games besides Path of Radiance. Why is this game being singled out?" We'll get to that.

Bonus Experience is one of those mechanics that sounds like a good safety net idea. Is there a unit who's falling behind? Give them some free experience so that they can catch up with your strongest units. It's a great idea in theory, but there's a problem: That experience can be freely given to anyone, including your best units. 

And this is why the mechanic is on this list: Your best units can be given even MORE experience so that the gap between your strongest and weakest units furthers even more. Here's one tip that the Fire Emblem wiki page for Bonus Experience mentions:

"You can first use Bonus EXP once you reach Chapter 8. You can use a little on Ike and Oscar, Kieran, or even Boyd at that time, but your best bet is to save it for two chapters and immediately pour as much as possible into Marcia. As a flier, she can make good use of it to instantly become a stronger, more mobile version of Titania."

Source: https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Bonus_Experience

I actually did this during my last playthrough of Path of Radiance. I dumped all my Bonus Experience onto Marcia as soon as I got her, and she mercilessly annihilated the game. This is why Marcia's considered the best unit in the game: She's the best candidate for a bonus experience dump, which is all she needs to destroy the game. 

Remember the # 10 entry, Paragon and Veteran? Two skills that let units rapidly accumulate experience? Bonus Experience takes the most broken aspects of those skills, and dials it up to 11. Characters like Marcia and Oscar can instantly promote and be used as a means to obliterate the game. What separates Path of Radiance from Radiant Dawn is that even on Hard Mode (can't speak for Maniac Mode) you're given a BUNCH of Bonus Experience, which allows for things like this to happen.

# 7 - Reclassing

I'm curious to see what everyone's reactions will be to this. Some people might agree while others disagree. The point of reclassing is that any character in the player's army can be whoever the player wants them to be. Ultimate customizability! Who could say no to that? 

The issue with reclassing is that it becomes very difficult to design the game because the game developers have no idea what the players will have access to at any given moment. How could they? There's a near infinite number of possibilities for any character to be at a given time!

 Another major problem is that reclassing can easily make a character really strong with virtually no effort. 

 Three Houses is probably the biggest offender here where everyone in the game can turn into a powerful Wyvern Lord, and gain the strongest Battalion abilities, gambits, and skills. As a result, it makes the game that much easier to break. 

 Wolf and Sedgar easily become really powerful when reclassed into Generals in Shadow Dragon, Jakob in Conquest can be reclassed into a Paladin, Elise can become a Wyvern, which in turn create new ways for the player to break the game. 

To recap, reclassing is a mechanic that makes balancing and designing the game that much more challenging AND it makes it too easy to make a powerful unit.

# 6 - Stride

Speaking of Three Houses and "broken", the Stride gambit makes its debut here at number 6. Stride is a gambit that gives up to 12 different units + 5 Movement. + 5 MOVEMENT?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? As plenty of people will tell you, movement is the best stat in Fire Emblem. Being able to get from Point A to Point B faster is always a good thing, and any tool that enables that will automatically be really valuable.

Increasing movement by one is already very good. + 2 Movement is really good. + 5 is stupid. It makes it super easy to get from Point A to Point B. To make matters worse, Stride is given at an E rank authority in Three Houses! E RANK! Anyone can have Stride from a super early point in the game, and then it'll be there for you the entire time. 

The fact that this can boost the movement of up to twelve different characters also allows for even crazier shenanigans to happen. Combine that with a game where anyone can be a flier, and you get a game that's bound to get broken by a savvy player.

There's no drawback toward using it, and Stride is a big reason why Three Houses chapters can be cleared so easily once you know how to use them. Whoever thought that being able to boost the Movement of multiple units by 5 was a good idea should not be designing Fire Emblem games.

Top 10 Most Busted Mechanics in Fire Emblem: # 10 & # 9

# 10: Paragon and Veteran

Kickstarting the list would be two skills that it make it easy for a unit to rapidly accumulate experience: Paragon and Veteran. The reason why they're on this list is this: Rapidly accumulating experience lets certain units gain level-ups, and by extension gain stats, in a quick period of time. Robin is considered so insanely powerful in Awakening because of this skill. Just Pair Up Robin with a powerful partner, and this skill will allow them to rapidly accumulate experience to the point where they break the game in half with it. If we're being technical, there are other reasons why but Veteran is typically a huge reason why Robin snowballs so fast, and why Awakening is considered an easy game to break.

Paragon's less notorious, but operates under a similar line of logic: Doubling experience means that a certain unit can snowball until their stats are so high that they can easily obliterate enemies. It's a great idea for characters that start under-leveled so that they can catch up, but outside of that these skills are a recipe for easy juggernaut creation.

# 9: "Powerful Weapons": Forging / Holy War Weapon Kill Crits / "The Nosferatu Effect"

When asking people's opinions about busted mechanics, I saw different opinions about mechanics that can ultimately be described as "really busted weapons". Since I think all three of these should be included, I decided to group them all together. This will not be the only entry on the list where multiple mechanics will be grouped together. Started off the "busted weapons" list is forging. 

Since there are multiple different varieties of the forging mechanic, I thought I'd specify as essentially two different kinds:

• DS Forging 
• Japanese Path of Radiance forging.

DS Forging

Why is Caeda so powerful in Shadow Dragon? Easy: Her forged Wing Spear lets her kill a huge number of enemies in a single hit. How is that possible? Forging. What makes the DS Fire Emblem games version of forging so powerful is that you can take weapons that are already powerful, and make them even stronger. 

Weapons that deal effective damage and Brave Weapons can get a huge buff in damage and in critical hit rates which makes for some stupidly powerful weapons, and some silly results. Awakening took this to a whole new level when 

This isn't to say that there aren't other imbalanced versions of forging too. Case and point...

Japanese Path of Radiance forging.

The main reason why Japanese Path of Radiance forging is on here is for one simple reason: The Japanese version has an unusual error where, if a weapon with five base crit (Slim Sword, Slim Lance, or Thunder) is forged to have 0 crit, the value wraps around and gives the weapon 255 crit, effectively giving its user a perfect critical hit chance in battle. All localizations of Path of Radiance correct this error. 

(Source: https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Forge#Fire_Emblem:_Path_of_Radiance)

So while I doubt very many people have experienced this, I do think it's worth mentioning that a weapon that allows perfect critical hit rates in a game with notoriously weak enemies (although Path of Radiance Maniac Mode actually has enemies that are bulkier than usual) sounds like a recipe for hilariously busted shenanigans. 

Since I'm on the topic of forging, I would like to say something about other forging systems. As one poster in fire emblem reddit brought up: 
     "Fates' idea of requiring multiple copies of weapons is nice on paper but leads to cheaper items becoming a bit too dominant as they can be forged up to the same Mt as higher tier equivalents (up to a certain extent) while also having more hit, no penalties and, in the case of bronzes, a useful +10 dodge bonus. On top of that, the way forging materials are tied to the my castle stuff requires you to waste time on online features or just save edit 99 of them into the game and call it a day, which is what most people who invest a lot of time into Fates end up doing."

(Source: "Docaccino - https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/14vlcsh/comment/jrdmvkd/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) 

I would also like to argue that on principle, I don't like how Fates, Echoes, and Engage don't have weapon durability but still have forges. It makes forging that much better, and provides no downsides to using forges. So it turns into a game of "find your best weapon and spam it". It reinforces the idea that weapon durability is a great mechanic.

The only forging mechanic I can think of that's actually balanced comes from Berwick Saga:

But that's a different topic for a different day. Moral of the story: Forging is broken.

Holy War Weapon Kill Bonus

So in Fire Emblem 4 there's a mechanic where a weapon's kills are stored and counted by the game. Once a weapon gets over 50 kills, it gets the ability to land a critical hit. "For every kill that the weapon makes afterward, its chances of landing a critical hit improve. The bonus caps out on 100 kills or 50% bonus." (Source: https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Weapon_Kill_bonus) 

Scylla actually did a great job breaking down why this mechanic is super busted: 

        "There is no way to get crit avoid in FE4, and because of the way crits work in FE4 where the damage is doubled but enemy defense is only applied once, FE4 crits start to deal more damage than average crits when enemy defense gets high which is what you'll start encountering in gen 2. As a result Brave weapons with 100 kills have crit rates in about the ~77% area and will out damage Holy weapons while being far cheaper."

Keep in mind, Holy Weapons have 30 might and give stat boosts as outrageous as + 10 or + 20! The fact that those super busted weapons aren't considered the most powerful in the game goes to show how ludicrous the Weapon Kills mechanic is!

"The Nosferatu Effect"

Last, but not least, we have "the Nosferatu effect". This is basically  any weapon that allows you to recover HP based off of the damage that you deal. This makes enemy phase tanking pretty easy, since Nosferatu makes the ability to survive really easy.   

I can potentially see someone mentioning how the Nosferatu tome was weak in this or that Fire Emblem game, which is true, but I think there's a catch to discussing Nosferatu and how powerful it is:

1) Either the weapon has to be bad so that Nosferatu doesn't break the game 

OR 

2) Nosferatu becomes the best weapon in the game, or among the best weapons in the game.

The fact that this "viability binary" comes across so much proves that giving the player access to healing HP while dealing damage should be a cause for concern.