The problem with Casual is that it allows blatantly poor play to be bailed out by human wave tactics.
Like the Death Knight bonus objectives. On casual you can basically clear the map and then swarm him to death without engaging with mechanics like you would need to on permadeath.
Yeah honestly I love Three Houses, but it’s how i imagine a Visual novel plays out. I don’t own any, but I see them on Steam all the time, and I figure it’s more about the story and character interactions that the game play and combat. That’s how this game feels to me anyhow.
I just checked, and can confirm that this is accurate. My hard play through as lady Byleth will have to wait for a bit though.
The question mark should really be taken out of the topic’s title
You absolutely can set the difficulty higher at the start of NG+.
Or leave the question mark and take out the word “Contender”!
I’m going away on vacation next week so I think I’ll finally give this game a purchase. That way I’ll have something to look forward to in between all the beach trips and barbecues.
And my time is worth more to me than to play like you do :)
I play these games to master the combat mechanics and carefully apply them to pick apart a superior force with scalpel precision, while trying to bring everyone home at the end. So maybe that same mission takes me 30-45 minutes, but each one of those minutes is fully brain-occupying with looking at stats, checking movement ranges, figuring out who can be left exposed to take an attack and from which enemies, weighing limited-use resources like gambits and combat arts, and looking out for long-term skill and support growth opportunities when possible. I’d never trade that for a 15-minute victory march to the next story sequence where I just shrugged off any losses.
And in the (possible but so far unrealized) event of running out of rewinds and deciding to restart a mission, that’s STILL an enjoyable use of time. I’d certainly wind up bringing different characters or employing a different strategy, such that it would be producing novel tactical situations to consider. That’s not adding frustration or tedium – it’s the point of the game.
The Divine Pulse system is exactly what I’ve been wishing for for years – a middle ground to give a bit of a safety net to recover from a couple mistakes or strokes of bad luck while still demanding some care and attention to tactics.
Agreed. It’s something that would have fit well thematically (and mechanically) in with the XCOM reboot.
Somebody was mentionning the creepyness of tea sequences. I mistook this for the lunch sequences, which were awkward in their own right. Then I got my first tea sequence. Dear Lord. Japan.
Not doing that ever again.
I also notice people are doing a lot of battles outside of the story, according to the stats. I avoid them, thought maybe it will bite me later when all my guys will be outleveled. I will see!
When I got the ‘perfect’ tea party outcome it was with a female student (Dorothea I think, probably the worst one to have this experience with). A female human enters the room while I’m playing and says “observe?” noticing the menu option. So, I clicked it which took me to the creepy bit where the camera zooms in on their breasts and they coo as you move the camera around. “What kind of game are you playing?” they ask, rightly incredulous. “I don’t know,” I stammer. “It’s very good otherwise.” “Uh huh,” they say exiting down the hall, “I guess I should announce my presence next time you’re in here playing a Switch game. To think we used to play Mario Kart on it!”
Not a great look!
That’s sad. I was really hoping that it would be a non pervy game to add to my backlog for when the switch lite comes out.
But deep down I knew it would be…
Just ignore the button that goes into “perv mode”?
Yeah, you can completely avoid the ‘perv mode’ camera thing and even tea parties all together. I have ever since, as they don’t really help that much. They give more relationship points* than giving flowers for birthdays and increase your person’s charisma stat, which I believe is meaningless unless you use battalions. So, you can easily skip them and miss nothing aside from the dirty/judgy looks and comments you would get from SOs and/or anyone else around you at the time.
*This is important for recruiting other students, but I think you end up recruiting too many party members to adequately manage and improve through returning lost items and other things anyway.
It is very easy to ignore, but the first time the jump creep always gets you!
Is everyone using the new game plus feature when starting a new campaign or starting from scratch.
My current plan is to wait for the free update with Lunatic difficulty, then do NG+. It seems like it adds some fun bonuses and timesavers to play around with, but the game is already easy enough on Hard that I wouldn’t want to give myself any further bonuses for it.
I finally beat my first play through - just around the 28 hour mark. The last 2 missions are fairly challenging even under normal, although the rewinds still make it possible to get out w/o too much trouble. I did end up losing up losing 2 units near the end though.
I’m so slow at this game, I’m somewhere near 2/3 through and have passed the 50 hours mark.
Still can’t decide how much I like this game.
Wow. I’m nearly 80 hours in and am only just starting chapter 19. I would say that there might be too much game here, but I think I can ignore most of the extraneous stuff on subsequent playthroughs and finish it much more quickly.
Edit: Welp, after 90 hours I finally finished my Golden Deer playthrough. It had some serious pacing problems toward the end (here’s this army marching toward us/crucial objective to take, but you totally have time to faff about a monastery for the next four weeks; this happened for basically four straight months), the final battle was merely processional (all my characters were equal to the recommended difficulty level, except the PC and Claude who were a few above) and the ending was a bit underwhelming and felt kind of rushed narratively, but it was still a great experience overall. I’m going to probably wait until the winter holidays to dive back in. Hopefully by then lunatic mode is out. Otherwise, I’ll try to handicap myself some other ways. Maybe limiting myself to only doing main story battles and paralogues, or maybe trying to force characters into classes they’re not suited for (hello Fortress Knight Byleth).