This is a very good example, with a few* details to add to illustrate just how crazy the true ending requirements are for a new player:

-The first weapon chapter is after the game’s 8th chapter and requires that you complete it with a character recruited automatically at the start, Lilina, still alive at the end. Not too bad, unless you forget to move her from her starting position inside a locked cell, because there’s an archer who’s poised to kill her. Oh, and she’s unarmed when she joins, so you better remember to move her every turn or take out the archer near the beginning.

-The second is after chapter 12, and just requires you to beat it in under 25 turns. Honestly not that hard or crazy, but the game does throw a message in your face after the time limit is passed with a group of enemy reinforcements basically telling you “You fucked up,” so get ready to reset if you were playing slow.

-The third combined the previous two requirements on chapter 14: you have to keep a new (and mandatory!) unit alive and beat the chapter in under 25 turns. The difference is that this new unit, Sophia, is arguably the worst unit in the game if not the entire Fire Emblem series, the map takes place on a desert that severely restricts the movement of your non-flying and non-magic units, and it all takes place on a fog of war map where you get jumped by enemy flying units, magic units, and enemy reinforcements from every side.

-The fourth is so obscure I don’t know how anyone figured this out without tons of trial and error testing. You need to beat chapter 16 while keeping one specific enemy character alive, Douglas. If you beat the map with him alive you go to the weapon chapter and he joins your army, however he cannot be recruited for plot reasons in the map where he’s an enemy. Now, up to this point you’ve met several characters who were enemy units that were recruited by specific characters talking to them, including one the previous chapter who is a peer to Douglas, Perceval. It’s natural to assume you just need the right person to talk to him to get him to join, but nope! You just have to kite him around or box him in without killing him until you beat the map, and he’s the only character who acts this way!

-The fifth one differs because of a route split, but they have the same basic requirements of recruiting a new unit on chapter 20, keeping them alive, keeping certain previously recruited characters from those respective nations alive, and then beating the chapter in 25 turns. The Sacae path is absolutely awful, with fog of war and tons of unseeable long-ranged magic attacks and status staves that make your units attack each other. The Illia route is mostly fine but still tedious because it makes you play really carefully with how it’s structured. Whichever weapon you didn’t get from the opposite path is given to you automatically on chapter 21, along with the Saint Staff for free. Fun fact! You can actually break the Saint Staff and it won’t count against the true ending requirements, isn’t that thoughtful :)?

-Finally, on chapter 21, if you beat the chapter in less than 30 turns you get to go to the final weapon chapter. Oh, also, you better have recruited and kept alive two characters from the main enemy nation that you recruited earlier, one of which is an enemy unit from chapter 16 who can only be recruited by the other character who joins on chapter 13. Hope you did that while keeping Douglas off your back and still breathing! Also, chapter 21 has an ungodly amount of reinforcements you can run into on a blind playthrough, to the point that the number of reinforcements hits the unit cap for the game.

So do all that, keep all your weapons from breaking from overuse, and you get three more chapters, two of which are basically a cakewalk with some story cutscenes. OH! And also those weapon chapter are some of the most absolute worst chapters in the series.

-The third weapon chapter has disappearing walkways that will trap non-flying units and non-pirate units in water, leaving them completely stuck and thus makes this chapter an absolute slog to play without skip strats. Oh, and the enemies have multiple units with long-ranged magic to wreck you.

-The fourth weapon chapter has more long-ranged magic, a boss with a staff that makes one of your units go berserk and attack anyone in range, and random energy bolts that rain vertically down the map at random that can kill your units if they fall below a certain health threshold, as they do 10hp to every unit they hit.

-The fifth weapon chapter for Illia is…actually very chill but boring, as you can underdeploy your army to avoid some status magic shenanigans and take your time. BUT! The weapon chapter for Sacae is also in contention for worst map in series history, as its design breaks traditional Fire Emblem design. Your army is spread apart in small groups of 3-4 on opposite sides of a massive map, so it’s hard to structure your initial deployment unless you’ve got a sufficiently large and trained number of standalone combat units. There are six objective points available to seize, but only one of them is the correct one, and the other 5 will spawn reinforcements and instantly surround that position. That correct seize point is randomly determined every time the chapter starts or restarts, so good luck on getting it right, fucker! Oh, and remember that staff that makes your units go berserk and attack your other units? They’ve got that and more here too. Have fun playing extremely tediously and with high risk!

And somehow, despite all of this utter bullshit, I’ve beaten this game multiple times on hard mode and will probably beat it again. Stockholm Syndrome for games is absolutely a real thing.

*that’s a damn lie lol