Fire Emblem

x3 Nah, it's easy enough to get her. She comes down to the team, so there's no need to rush. Just make sure all the dudes in front of her get cleared out so that Ike can pop over and grab her after the cavalry is all dead (it really shouldn't take more than 2-3 turns to kill them and leave the south clear so that he's free to do whatever).

Also, I don't think Ilyana attacks you so she should be relatively safe to recruit.

Genealogy's pegasus on pegasus violence is proof of its exceptional cruelty!

I ended up using Oscar as starting defense for the right path, had Titania soften up a bunch of enemies on the left, and had her go back to the right while Boyd and Soren pick off what they can. Oh, and Mia was there, I guess.

Regarding supports, do two characters supporting cover both of their five-max limit at the same time? Say, Soren and Ike support, does it matter which one initiated it? Or is it just not worth doing any of them, and doing a save scum marathon at the end?

Supports concern both characters, yes. A support level between Ike and Soren counts as a support limit for the both of them.

You'll want to get the supports organically if you can, since the bonuses they grant are a pretty big deal in combat. And while you can do a save scum marathon to grind out every single support, you're gonna be replaying something like the last 8-9 maps of the game for every new set. I recommend just beating the game normally, and checking one of the wikis for the other supports after that.

I'm still sad I've never gotten to experience Genealogy, even if people say its lore is on level of "Here is the noble house whose specialty is mining, for war!" type of thing where every single noble house has a single specialty that usually somehow loops back to war

Edited by SpookyMask on May 6th 2024 at 4:25:35 AM

At least those specializations weren't a case of Informed Attribute; House Friege's troops really do arm themselves with Thunder magic almost to a fault for example.

Anyway, anyone else missing mid-battle recruitments? What about hard mode bonus base stats?

Compared to what? Engage has mid-battle recruitment that isn't really done the best, but really close to 90% of what the other games have done. Lots of turn-1 recruitment that's pretty frustrating because I can't change their class/ring/inventory loadout or map position. Or green Jade/Saphir starting completely trash positions that can easily get them killed. Or Lindon liking to hug the other dudes so it's very possible he gets himself killed on EP.

Hard mode bonuses the way GBA did them are pretty whatever. The way Awakening does them is much better, since the units they're applied to tunes them to meet benchmarks against current enemies.

What about recruiting red/enemy units like in the older games?

In fairness to Awakening the stat caps are much higher and I didn't really notice the HM bonuses because as you said the units are tuned better for the higher difficulties.

Well, Engage has red Lindon, who is recruitable that way. I find it pretty meh and feel like older games overused it. It's especially annoying in stuff like New Mystery where there are a bunch of recruitable reds who will actually sit still and ignore the player, but the game shows them as having movement and attack threat range.

I think Hard Mode Perks should be some interesting items (i.e. boots, canto item, Rescue staff) instead of a plain ol' stat boost

Edited by RAlexa21th on May 6th 2024 at 4:56:54 AM

Yeah, agreed. FE should in theory move away from numerical difficulty, but I guess designing "smart AI" that isn't too smart for players to beat as well as designing maps around changing difficulty levels might be a bit too much.

You see the unit rearranging with FE7, which I don't think really gets appreciated for that (probably because HHM also completely destroys any semblance of deployment slots); significant parts of New Mystery (which isn't particularly great, because it just makes a puzzle game even more puzzle); and some parts of Awakening (making it so the the obvious Forts or chokes are actually traps that trick the player into overextending).

Then Conquest and Engage have the AI that won't attack 0 damage or 0% Hit, but effectively punishes the player for super minmaxing.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on May 6th 2024 at 6:11:55 AM

The vast majority of FE enemies don't actually move unless you go into their threat range so the most obvious way to make enemies more challenging is to simply make them actually aggressive.

Doesn't Conquest Lunatic not increase enemy stats from hard, just rearrange formations and add skills? Plus the AI change to make sure they don't attack pointlessly.

Awakening did that and all people did was complain about it.

Sorta, yeah. Stats generally don't change much from Hard to Lunatic, and units are usually added to make it harder to make/survive the obvious pull points. The starkest differences are probably in the C25 Lunge traps, where Lunatic lets you get pulled all the way up to Saizo; and Endgame, where there are basically twice as many debuffers.

It's weird that Conquest gets praised for its gameplay only for most of its innovations to be largely abandoned for the next few games. At least Engage kinda swung the pendulum back in the "fairly challenging" direction.

I have to wonder if part of why Three Houses was a smash hit was that people who would otherwise Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game didn't find it too daunting to play.

I dunno, I think the lowest difficulty on most of the games (at least as far as what was released internationally) is usually pretty conducive to that. Awakening and Fates Normal, if you use Pair Up at all, you just win. Shadows of Valentia is just inherently very forgiving (especially with Turnwheel being a complete get out of jail free card). Engage Normal gives players infinite rewind, plus gives all enemies a secret -20 Hit and Avo penalty.

With Tellius, it has an Easy Mode that Ike can solo PoR with very little thought. Radiant Dawn has an Easy Mode where the blessed weapons give extra stats, plus the game is constantly throwing super pre-promotes at the player (even in Part 1, where Tauro, Nailah and BK all come in with like three times the stats of most enemies).

The GBA games are still throwing trash unpromoted enemies at the player up until basically the end of the game.

That's ironic considering Engage is supposedly the best gameplay in the series yet it has not outgrossed Awakening sales as of this post.

Sigurd, pack the 'tater salad! We're off to Arvis's BBQ!

If Echos didn't let you grind dungeons, and didn't just save state maps so you can come back with less enemies, it'd be a lot harder than it is. I know the game's map design isn't the greatest, but I really like Desaix's castle, for having choke points you have to work through, areas where you have to balance the nobles with stronger units to keep them from being swarmed, bosses that'll move around pretty freely, and Desaix being a purely optional challenge.

I thought Echoes had a decent Difficulty Spike when I played it but it turns out I just let a "Wandering mob" type enemy converge with a plot-relevant appearance by Berkut and took them both on in the same map.

Kudos for the game for letting that happen I guess...

Shadows of Valentia spams enough unavoidable overworld spawns that, even if you actively avoid grinding dungeons, you're still very likely to massively out-stat the enemies.

i will say, though, even if it isn't hard its extremely obnoxious. especially if you need to travel from the north side of the continent to the south side and back again.