I just started playing this on hard classic as per the suggestions above, this is also my first fire emblem game. Has anyone got any beginner’s tips on team composition and training focus? I chose the yellow house. Also, should I be overly worried if I lose a few troops or are they quite easily replaceable?
Hrm, if you loose guys really early in the game, I think that is going to be trouble. You need to try and get above 12 people that are at the right levels I think in order to be effective. But this is my first FE game, so someone else may have a more knowledgeable opinion.
I just finished a first run through the game, doing the Edelgard/Black Eagle path. I enjoyed the story, although probably played a few too many of the optional side battles, as my team wound up being relatively high level, making most of the enemies a cakewalk. The only chance for losing people was if I misplaced my magic folks or armored folks and they got hit with physical or magical attacks, respectively.
Highlight of the run was Raphael, the big muscle guy I recruited from the Golden Deer. The brawler classes are really strong. In the final mission, Raphael punched the boss to death, and would have done over 140 total damage had all of his attacks hit. It was a fitting end, given how strong he had been over the course of the game.
Now on to New Game+, or Planetfall.
I started the game on classic mode, normal difficulty. I’m now over 20 hours in and the thing that’s killing it for me is how ridiculously easy it is. I can win most fights with just the MC, most attacks don’t even hit them.
So, should I restart the game on hard?
Also, is classic mode kind of a waste of time? If a character dies I’m just rewinding time or reloading the battle to get them back. Not that there’s ever been any chance of anyone dying.
I don’t think you’re supposed to let them die. There’s only so many people you can recruit to replace them.
I feel like it is, yeah. People like the “thrill” of permadeath but what they are really doing is rewinding time or even re-loading the pre-combat save and redoing it. Seems like it’s just a huge waste of time to me, so I went Casual and never looked back. I rewind very rarely, if I fuck up and someone has to retreat, so be it.
But the game is VERY easy on Normal, everyone agreed in all the reviews even that Hard isn’t even super tough for many folks not new to the genre/franchise, so you may want to start over on Hard because as you level up and make good choices on growing your students into unstoppable gods of war, it just gets worse. I think Hard, from what I saw in streams/videos and read about, sounds about like my scale - challenging but not frustrating. I wish I’d picked it earlier, it might have made me engage with the combat more than I am. As it is I’m just enjoying the characters, story (and character backgrounds), and the world building enough to carry me to end credits. My next play through, when I get to it, will certainly be on Hard (but still Casual).
Classic adds difficulty, because even if you reload, the fail condition goes from “main character dies” to “anybody dies”. The games are balanced for that subjective loss condition.
Normal casual must be reaaaaaally easy. Even in hard I can picture very few battles were I would have had to use rewind if anybody could die.
Actually I have fought some battles in my Hard/Classic BE route that would have been infuriatingly hard without the rewind. With 8 rewinds, if you use them all that’s probably like 2-3 saved reloads at least. Rewinding like this does alter perception of difficulty, specially it being this generous. Tactics Ogre LUCT got away with it because it was masochistically hard, and even free 2-turn back rewinding did not save you most of the time.
I have to disagree - that’s not adding difficulty, that’s adding frustration. At least for me. The idea that if I played a battle for 15 minutes and got close to wrapping it up after using up all my rewinds and then someone died and I had to play the entire thing over again? I’m sorry, but my time is worth more to me than that. :)
It would be different if this was a game like XCOM where the characters/stats were generated randomly and you had a pool to draw from that refreshed with new recruits periodically. But these characters are all fleshed out and seem very important to seeing the story vignettes unfold, so losing them isn’t acceptable.
Well god damn it. Guess I’m starting over. Even that klutz Bernadette one shots all regular enemies.
And that’s fine. Something too difficult can be frustrating, I understand that. But Classic does move the difficulty by moving the fail condition.
It adds difficulty, and that’s its main purpose (I believe). It might do so through frustrating part of the player base (and that’s probably why casual was introduced, to have a different way to offer difficulty levels, by changing the dynamics of the meta that many found frustrating).
But Casual/Classic is the main difficulty setting for the game, while Normal/Hard makes less of an impact in how you play it.
Something like Lunatic/Casual or something could perhaps be a nice choice. Stupidly hard but no permadeath and rewinds.
I decided to stick with Normal/Classic for my first play-through. Agreed that it’s too easy, especially with the rewinds. I know that they are planning to add the Lunatic difficulty as part of a later patch, so some additional options should open up for future playthroughs.
My understanding is that you cannot increase the difficulty in NG+. Which is annoying.
I feel like my current game is a sunk cost. A mistake I need to rewrite.
My understanding is that you can, but I’m not there yet.
The walkthrough sites states that you can change difficulty and/or sex of the main character as part of NG+, so should be good there.
The problem is if you are about 20 hours in, you have around 30-40 more hours to go before you unlock NG+ and it isn’t going to really get more challenging. Some of the paralogue missions can be interesting and require a little extra effort, but only one gave me any actual problems, and that was a bunch of bullshit I had to “game” to get through, not actual difficulty (starting a weak/frail character very close to enemies that were faster than her, and then saying if she dies you have to redo the fight, kind of thing).
20 hours is a lot, but starting over now will save you time in the end. Plus, with a better understanding of the game, you can make different/better choices or even go with an entirely different house to mix it up and make those replayed 20 hours feel different.
I hear you. I think I have to do it. I guess this is one point for the @tomchick difficulty level hypothesis.
Maybe that’s true on Hard but I’m on chapter 16 for the Black Eagles (I guess I should say Adlerklasse since that’s what they use in the Japanese version I’m playing) at 24 hours in Normal/Classic so I think I’ll get my first playthrough done in under 30.
My son beat his Black Eagles campaign in 33 hours, so it’s very possible. But I’m at 38 hours in my Blue Lion play though and I feel like we are doing a side objective before we assault the big bad, which could mean another month in class and that’s after the battle I’m saved at (the commander of which is a named, big bad, but not THE big bad yet). So maybe Black Eagles is just a shorter campaign?
I think you’re right - just eyeballing the walkthrough wiki it looks like the Black Eagles route has 3 fewer chapters compared to the other routes.
Or 4, depends on the route.
Man, I just looked up the chapter I’m on (18) and it turns out I still have this fight and then chapters 19-22 left. I thought I was getting close… yikes.