Tactics

– Turns taken to complete chapters

Basically complete chapters in as least turns as possible.

Around 310 total turns (missing only Chapter 19xx) is good enough for 5 stars (for Hector Hard mode).

Survival

– Amount of characters alive

This decreases as recruited playable characters die. The life or death of non-recruited playable characters has no effect.

If no characters died, you will get 5 stars.

Funds

– The worth of all items + physical gold (appears as Assets in Battle History)

Do not sell any items unless you deem necessary. If you sell items, you will lose half of that item’s value (since you sell items for half their value). Also do not use or drop the S Rank weapons in the final chapter, because they are worth thousands of gold each (excluding Aureola, which you can use freely).

If you have the Silver Card buy as many items as possible, as you will get double your gold’s worth. It might sound counter-intuitive, but you’re buying items for half their value.

Estimated Assets for 5 stars:

Eliwood Normal mode: 922,000G
Hector Normal mode: 872,000G
Hector Hard mode: 847,000G

Exp

– Amount of experience gained

Only gained experience affects this.

Fighting with low level and non-promoted characters gives higher experience (although if the characters are weak it may reduce the Combat rank).

Combat

– Ratio of wins to battles

Try not to fight too many battles that won’t result with the enemy dying in one battle round. Also don’t let too many characters be attacked if they can’t counter (e.g. healers or archers).

Around 40% of all battles being wins is good enough for 5 stars.

Overall

– All five above categories combined.

If all have 5 stars, you will get a S Rank.