# 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.
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