Top 10 Most Difficult Fire Emblem Characters to Recruit (# 5 - 1)

# 5 - Karla (Blazing Sword)



Recruit Requirement: Bartre must participate in Ch 31x. If he is a Level 5 Warrior or higher, Karla will appear above the arena. Make Bartre talk to her and if both survive a round of combat she will join. (Hector’s story only)
Oh joy! You have to use one of the worst units in the game. I don’t just mean use him, I mean he has to be promoted and at least at Level 5. Then they have to survive a round of combat against each other. What could possibly go wrong?





# 4 - Nasir (Path of Radiance)




Recruit Requirement: Defeat the Black Knight

Oh yeah! I’ll totally defeat the Black Knight. What a piece of cake. Right? Right? Yeah no. Fighting the Black Knight in Path of Radiance is a total RNG fest. I mean sure it’s optional, but if you’re trying to recruit Nasir you basically have to beat him. The only way to defeat the Black Knight that I’m aware of is to level up Ike, give him Aether, and then pray that it activates at least one time. At best Ike will have a 27 % chance of activating Aether and that’s assuming that his Skill stat reached its cap. There’s also a time limit to beating the Black Knight too so you have to activate Aether at least one time in the span of about 5 turns. Have fun with that.


# 3 - Klein / Tate (Binding Blade)





Klein’s Recruit Requirement: Appears as an enemy from Turn 5 (A) / Turn 8 (B), talk with Roy or Clarine

Tate’s Recruit Requirement: Appears as an enemy from Turn 7 (A) / Turn 10 (B), talk with Klein (or talk with Thany before and after Klein has been recruited (note that if you only talk with Thany after recruiting Klein, Tate will just become an NPC))

These two in particular can be pretty frustrating to recruit. They’re surrounded by their own personal armies who will try to kill you. The thing is that being surrounded by said armies wouldn’t be so bad if you wanted to just cut through the schmucks to get to these guys.




But Binding Blade dangles a carrot in front of the player’s nose in the cruelest way possible: If Klein and Tate are recruited and ALL of their soldiers survive by the end of the chapter you get an Orion’s Bolt and an Elysian Whip. Even if you don’t plan on using them to promote anybody that’s still a hefty chunk of change. These items take what would already be a somewhat annoying recruitment into a frustrating nightmare. As you can tell I replayed Binding Blade recently and this one hits pretty close to home.
# 2 - Sephiran / Lehran (Radiant Dawn)






Recruit Requirement: 2nd playthrough onwards *1, automatically if you viewed Ike’s memory scene in Part 4 Final-2, which is triggered by: 1. Deploying the Black Knight in Part 1 Final and 2. Making Ike fight the Black Knight in Part 3 Chapter 7 (and the Black Knight survives)

Oh look. Another Tellius recruitment based off of fighting the Black Knight. Except this time you have to do it earlier in the game. And you have to have already beaten the game once before you even get the chance to pull it off. Yay. 




# 1 - Xavier (Thracia 776)



It’s the completely obvious choice that everybody saw coming a mile away. Yes, sadly Xavier deserves the reputation he’s gotten for having the most ridiculous recruitment requirement in the entire series. So how do you get this guy again? “Let the civilians talk to all 8 Lenster Armors near Xavier. Then talk with Leaf”. Did I mention that the civilians are NPC’s? That means that they’ll walk straight toward enemy units that are trying to kill them. Guess who are among these enemies? The Armor Knights that are supposed to be talking to said NPCs.



So you have to find a way of keeping them from suiciding onto your troops. Oh does that sound too easy for you? Ok then. If you start recruiting any of these Armor Knights then the ones you haven’t recruited yet will turn on their former allies. Guess what these guys usually wield? Killer Lances and Hammers! Which means that the likelihood of slaughtering their former allies is really high.


If that wasn’t bad enough there’s another ridiculous element to it all: You have to get specific NPCs to talk to specific Armor Knights. I repeat: “You have to get specific NPCs to talk to specific Armor Knights.” Does the game ever tell you which NPCs go with which Armor Knights? No! Of course not.

If any civilian dies before they talk to their specific Armor Knight you can’t get Xavier, but if they die after recruiting their specific Armor Knight then that’s okay. If any of these specific Armor Knights die before talking to their respective NPC then you also can’t recruit Xavier.

Top 10 Most Difficult Fire Emblem Characters to Recruit (# 10 - 6)

Welcome to the “Top 10 Toughest Fire Emblem Characters To Recruit” list. Before I begin I wanted to talk about the criteria I used for this list: How hard are they to recruit even when you know what the requirements are? I figured that a character that’s still hard to recruit even when you’re aware of how to do it is more challenging than being vague. For that reason alone, you won’t see Stefan on this list. Stefan’s recruitment is actually easy once you know how to do it. There were also some other characters I thought about putting on here, but chose not to because there’s an easy strategy to recruiting them (Ayra & Douglas). So with that out of the way let’s begin…


# 10 - Shinon’s Re-Recruitment (Path of Radiance)



Recruitment Requirement: “Talk with Rolf during Ch 18 and defeat with Ike”.

The first problem here is that in order to re-recruit Shinon you have to use Rolf. This can mean one of two things: Either you baby Rolf so that this part isn’t all that challenging OR you find a way to keep Rolf out of harm’s way so that he doesn’t get slaughtered before you have him meet up with Shinon. Both of these options come with their own set of challenges that can make your life difficult. Then you have to “kill” him with Ike. It’s pretty cryptic since dropping a character’s HP to 0 normally means killing them for real. I was fortunate enough to recruit Shinon on accident during my first playthrough of the game, but that still doesn’t change the fact that it’s a total curve ball that would catch someone off-guard.

# 9 - Hannibal (Genealogy of the Holy War)



Recruit Requirement: Talk with Sharlow / Corpul

So in order to recruit Hannibal you basically have to wipe out his army without killing him, maneuver out of your way to the next castle, kill everyone there, recruit Sharlow / Corple and get them to talk to him. It’s extremely tedious and it should go without saying that he’s not worth all that effort.


# 8 - Michalis (Fire Emblem 12)



Recruit Requirement: “From battle preparations (in Chapter 21, make Minerva wait on the village before the end of Turn 15, and then visit the village with Marth)”

So here’s a map of Chapter 21:



The village mentioned in the recruitment requirement has a “1” over it. It is on the opposite side of the map. There are thieves with a significant head start over you who will try to destroy it. 12 move dragons are also in the way. They hit like trucks. And there are mages with ballistic siege tomes that will ruin your life. Oh, and you have to get Minerva there by Chapter 15. She has to “wait” on that village and then Marth has to show up. It’s a tricky feat to pull off.




# 7 - Matthis (Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 / Fire Emblem 12)




Recruit Requirement: Talk to him with Julian

I think this post on reddit says it all: “In Book 2, Matthis is one of the main reasons why chapter 3 goes down in Fire Emblem history as one of the worst chapters. If you wish to be a completionist and get all the recruitable characters, you're required to take the long and uneventful road around the chapter's terrain to get to a village to recruit Julian, the guy who recruits Matthis. If you try to take the shortcut, Matthis will charge and most likely end up being killed.

Among the community, Matthis is infamous for being the namer of the 'Matthis Syndrome', an unfortunate consequence of enemy AI being all too eager to attack. The Matthis Syndrome describes characters that start as enemies but charge towards you and have zero hesitations about attacking their own family members, in this case, Lena. What makes this even funnier is that Matthis will call out her name when attacking anyone and is searching for her, even if he's attacking Lena herself.

So yeah, Matthis. Mediocrity personified?”


(P.S. Shout-out to Matthew Villegas and Alexjon Cutter Martinelli for being the only two people to call this one. I’m really surprised that nobody else mentioned Matthis)


# 6 - Misha (Thracia 776)



Recruit Requirement: Talk with Karin and then capture her (send her to sleep to dismount her). Karin must also be alive during the chapter’s end

Fun fact: A mounted unit cannot be captured in Thracia 776. They have to be dismounted in order for you to capture them. How do you make a mounted unit unmounted in an outdoor map in Thracia 776? You put them to sleep. So Misha is literally unrecruitable unless you either have a Sleep Staff or a weapon that inflicts the Sleep status.

Of Morphs and Homunculi

Once upon a time in March of 2018 there was a Blazing Sword podcast. And in this Blazing Sword podcast there was an FMA / FE 7 Homunculus - Morph discussion going on. During this discussion I mentioned that I would make a blog post about this. Time passed and I never got around to doing it. Better late than never.

Morphs in FE 7 and the homunculi from FMA share some interesting similarities. For example:

• The reason for their creation: Morphs and the homunculi are both artificial humans created to act as tools to further their maker’s agenda. Father in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood created the homunculi in order to become “the perfect being”. All of them, except for Greed, serve Father and work to make his plan of sacrificing Amestris come true throughout the anime and manga. Likewise, the morphs in Fire Emblem 7 are made specifically to help Nergal carry out his plans. 

• Their method of creation is very similar: The homunculi in FMA are powered by Philosopher Stones, which are created by sacrificing human lives. In the 2003 version homunculi are created from failed human transmutations. In Fire Emblem 7 morphs are created with recycled quintessence. Quintessence is defined in the game as a person’s life force. In a way, both homunculi and morphs are created from the essence and life force of dead people. As Envy put it in 2003 FMA: “You gotta spend life to make life”. 

• Both of them have distinct physical features that give them away: The homunculi and morphs have black hair and distinct eye colors. The homunculi in 2003 FMA have lavender eye colors while in Brotherhood their eyes are purple. According to FMA Wiki, the homunculi usually have purple eyes in the manga, but sometimes they are depicted as red. In FE 7 Morphs all have golden eyes and blood red lips. 

        The homunculi in FMA all have Ouroboros tattoos that instantly give them away as homunculi. Both homunculi and morphs dissolve into dust when they die.

• Morphs and homunculi are similarly limited in their emotional capacities: Morphs are generally characterized as emotionless. When they do express emotions, it’s usually one emotion such as Sonia’s arrogant belief that she’s “perfect” or Limstella’s devotion to Nergal. Ephidel only fakes emotion and that’s when he needs to carry out his assignment in aiding Nergal’s plan. 

        The Homunculi in FMA are designed to literally embody a certain vice from their creator. In addition to that vice they generally see themselves as superior to regular humans. FMA Wiki points out that this may be a reference “to pride being labelled by Christians as "the father of all sins".


In addition to these similarities it should be pointed out that both Nergal and Father share some similarities too.

• Both of them either try or succeed in instigating armed conflict that furthers their goals: Nergal’s plan in Fire Emblem 7 is to stir up a civil war in Lycia. This was done in order for him to collect enough quintessence in order to call more dragons through the Gate. 

                  In FMA we learn that Father created Amestris specifically so that it could one day become a nationwide transmutation circle that would eventually let him open the Portal and swallow God. This plan is the main reason why Amestris got involved in so many bloody conflicts and why it’s an expansionist state. The Ishval Civil War is a prime example of this. 

        Both of their plans revolve around opening a Gate in order to consume huge amounts of power: Once Nergal had obtained enough quintessence he was going to call dragons through the Dragon Gate and harness their quintessence to become all-powerful. Father’s entire plan revolved around creating a giant transmutation circle around Amestris, sacrificing it, absorbing the souls of the entire country of Amestris and then absorbing the power of God once the Gate of Truth had been opened.



They’re both characterized by a lust for knowledge: Both Nergal and Father are characterized by being too hungry for knowledge. This leads them to learn the secrets of magic / power that are considered taboo or forbidden within their respective series. It’s also worth noting the cost they must pay in order to achieve their goals. Father sacrifices the entire country of Xerxes, and later tries to do it again with Amestris.

Nergal turned to dark magic so that he could open the gate and reclaim Ninian and Nils. Sadly Nergal forgot who he was in the process. Eventually all Nergal remembered was that he needed power and that the Gate had to be opened. It’s also implied that his wife, Aenir’s fate also played a significant role in his lust for power.