Hard Mode is a game mechanic and seen frequently in the Fire Emblem series .Beginning with Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, games offer a Hard Mode after the player has cleared the game once. In Hard Mode, there are usually more enemies, but they are more powerful, receiving a set number of hidden Level Ups. In Radiant Dawn, the player had to first clear the game on Normal Mode in order to be granted access to Hard Mode. In the Hard Mode of Radiant Dawn, the Battle Save feature was disabled, and the player was unable to see enemy attack ranges on the map. Additionally, the weapon triangle and map affinities no longer applied. In Shadow Dragon, there are five levels of Hard Mode, the highest called H5, or Merciless. In H5, all enemies have weapon ranks of A, and their stats are insanely high.

In some hard modes, like Binding Blade and Rekka no Ken, some characters receive stat boosts to make them even more useful in hard mode, like, for example, Klein or Legault.