However, there are also a significant amount of characters that are not as fortunate, and simply don’t live up to the hopes of players for one reason or another.
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So today, we’re going to dive into the weakest and least impressive characters that we’ve seen across Fire Emblem’s storied history.
10 Marty (Thracia 776)
The worth and value of Fire Emblem characters is often based upon base stats, or the stats a character starts with, and growth rates, the likelihood of specific stats raising upon a character’s level up. Combinations of good bases and growths are highly sought after, and ensure a unit will be useful for the duration of a game.
Marty of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 is a character with some of the most abysmal bases and growths that the series has ever seen, specifically in the speed department. When Marty joins a player’s army, he has zero speed. This means that he’ll be incapable of hitting enemies twice in combat, and will more often than not be hit twice himself. The only thing that could possibly save such a terrible stat would be a high growth in that area, but Marty’s speed growth is a pitiful fifteen percent.
9 Rolf (Path of Radiance)
One of the most frequently recurring character archetypes in the Fire Emblem series are Ests. Named after the pegasus knight, Est from the first entry in the series, Ests characteristically join a player’s army significantly under-leveled when compared to their join time, but tend to have high growth rates.
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Unfortunately, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance’s Rolf is a character whose low starting level is furthered hindered by mediocre growth rates and one of the worst classes in the game.
8 Amelia (The Sacred Stones)
Like Rolf, Amelia is a character who falls within the Est archetype, starting as a level one recruit with some of the lowest base stats in Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones. She’s recruited well into the game at chapter nine or thirteen depending on which route a player selected. In the instance that a player wants to train Amelia up and get the most out of her, she’ll grind a playthrough to a screeching halt and destroy a player’s momentum.
Furthermore, Amelia’s growth rates are not nearly worth the investment required to making her useful, as she’ll more often than not pale in comparison to contemporary cavalry and knights, even if she somehow catches up to their level.
7 Gunter (Fates: Conquest)
A member of the Jagen archetype of characters, Gunter is a character who starts off powerful but possesses low growth rates, incapable of catching up to other units as they level up. Normally, Jagens are useful within the early game, but are eventually benched when a player’s units surpass them.
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Gunter on the other hand, is written out of the plot very early within Fire Emblem: Conquest, not rejoining the player’s army until chapter fifteen. By this point in the game, nearly all of the units a player had been using would’ve already surpassed Gunter, making his role more or less defunct.
6 Arden (Genealogy of the Holy War)
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War is a game that is often characterized by the enormous scale of its maps. The game possesses the largest maps in the entire series, with many chapters containing a plethora of objectives that can be tackled simultaneously by a player’s units. This highly incentivizes the use of characters with high mobility, such as those on horseback.
Arden is a character who is the exact opposite of an ideal unit in Genealogy of the Holy War. An armored knight with some of the lowest mobility in the game, it is impossible for Arden to keep up with other units, making the usual strategy for the poor knight to simply wait in a player’s castle, twiddling his thumbs.
5 Karla (The Blazing Blade)
Karla is perhaps one of the hardest characters to recruit in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, and is far from with the effort. Only recruitable in Hector’s story, Karla can only be used if a player has used and promoted Bartre, who is a less than stellar unit in his own right, inflicting a hindrance on the player’s entire playthrough if they want to recruit her.
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Appearing at the tail end of the game in chapter thirty-one-x, not only will a player not have access to Karla for many chapters, she’ll underperform in said chapters. Starting as a level five Swordmaster, her stats are lower than contemporaries such as Guy and Karel, and her growth rates are subpar as well.
4 The Knight Trio (The Binding Blade)
This entry is a three-way tie between the knight trio of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Bors, Gwendolyn, and Barthe. Armored knights have a spotty history in Fire Emblem, varying in quality from game to game. However, there is no game in which the use of armor knights is as detrimental to a player as The Binding Blade.
Incredibly slow and only capable of wielding lances, these knights suffer heavily from the map design of the game they’re in. The Binding Blade is home to numerous large maps that these characters will have difficulty navigating. Additionally, enemy axe users are the game’s bread and butter, meaning that the trio will frequently find themselves at a disadvantage in combat, unable to land hits on the lowliest brigands.
3 Sophia (The Binding Blade)
Sophia is a character that exemplifies numerous problems possessed by other entries on this list. Joining a player’s army late into the game, and severely under-leveled, Sophia is incapable of making any kind of meaningful contributions to a team. While a character like Amelia at least has the flexibility of potentially filling different roles as she can promote into numerous classes, Sophia’s usefulness is less than limited.
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In a game that features numerous strictly better alternatives to Sophia such as Raigh who is recruited earlier in the game and with higher stats, there is no excuse for players to use Sophia.
2 Sothe (Path of Radiance)
While thieves are not traditionally known for their combat and stat capabilities, serving as utility units that can pick locks and see in fog, Sothe is a character who is horribly outclassed by a player’s other options.
The first thief players can recruit in Path of Radiance is Volke. Volke starts at level eight, possesses high strength, and is capable of promoting into an assassin. The only real downside of Volke is that he charges players fifty gold whenever he is used to unlock anything. Sothe, on the other hand, comes with abysmal base stats, and while doesn’t charge players to open locks, is completely incapable of promoting, making his long term prospects pretty much nonexistent.
1 Meg (Radiant Dawn)
All things considered, Meg is the epitome of a bad unit in Fire Emblem. An armor knight with horrendous mobility, Meg’s stats are not what one would expect from a traditional armor knight, prioritizing luck, speed, and resistance, rather than stats like defense and HP. Even with her strengths lying in speed luck, Meg will struggle to consistently double enemy units.
Furthermore, while Meg’s highest stat will often be luck due to her high growth rate in that area, it is made completely redundant by her personal ability, Fortune. Fortune prevents enemy units from dealing a critical hit against Meg, meaning that her high luck will have little to no use.
NEXT: Fire Emblem: The 5 Best (And Worst) Romances
