Fire Emblem Catch All

Also, thanks for the post, Sundown. Helps me to understand the story more.

DSGamer wrote:
Sundown wrote:
Spoiler:

Did anyone expect a hard swerve into dubstep during the City Without Light? Cause I sure didn’t. What even happened there?

Spoiler:

I didn't expect it and I still don't know what it meant. The only thing I could take from it (aside from developers influenced by their previous collaboration with the Persona team) is that the previous civilization was highly advanced. Not only do they have dubstep, robots, neon, etc., but they also have nuclear weapons.

Spoiler:

So Rhea actually lived to tell us things about the world after promising she would after the battle. That’s one up on Jeralt. Sothis’ heart being on Byleth’s heart and disappearing at the end of the BE run now makes quite a bit more sense now. And finally we understand why exactly Sothis was in Byleth’s head, although I suppose that doesn’t answer why she waited until the game started to wake up. Probably doesn’t matter.

Spoiler:

Oh, so they don't explain this in the BE route? Wild. I haven't finished the BE route yet, so that's a bit of a surprise.

Replying to the last spoiler.

Spoiler:

Not at all. Jeralt obviously dies before he can tell you anything, and Rhea isn't exactly interested in telling you what you in BE. All we got was a brief scene with the Sothis' crest stone, with no explanation for what it is or why it is important, and it was only upon playing GD that it made sense.

Sundown wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
Sundown wrote:
Spoiler:

Did anyone expect a hard swerve into dubstep during the City Without Light? Cause I sure didn’t. What even happened there?

Spoiler:

I didn't expect it and I still don't know what it meant. The only thing I could take from it (aside from developers influenced by their previous collaboration with the Persona team) is that the previous civilization was highly advanced. Not only do they have dubstep, robots, neon, etc., but they also have nuclear weapons.

Spoiler:

So Rhea actually lived to tell us things about the world after promising she would after the battle. That’s one up on Jeralt. Sothis’ heart being on Byleth’s heart and disappearing at the end of the BE run now makes quite a bit more sense now. And finally we understand why exactly Sothis was in Byleth’s head, although I suppose that doesn’t answer why she waited until the game started to wake up. Probably doesn’t matter.

Spoiler:

Oh, so they don't explain this in the BE route? Wild. I haven't finished the BE route yet, so that's a bit of a surprise.

Replying to the last spoiler.

Spoiler:

Not at all. Jeralt obviously dies before he can tell you anything, and Rhea isn't exactly interested in telling you what you in BE. All we got was a brief scene with the Sothis' crest stone, with no explanation for what it is or why it is important, and it was only upon playing GD that it made sense.

Spoiler:

That's wild. I assume you got roughly the same story, but told via side characters. I imagined that at some point you'd get an info dump from Seteth or something.

I feel like doing some reckless speculation on the Slithers, based on what I've seen from the BE and GD routes. If anyone else has more info from the other routes, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Spoiler:

So one of their big reveals in GD is in Shambala, where they have all sorts of technology and robots and dubstep. Which is wildly out of step with the rest of the high fantasy setting.

They had been underground for 1000 years. I wonder if they were able to advance technologically over that time due to the lack of influence that the church had over the structures, which had kept the above world locked in a sort of medieval stasis. They were also preparing to oppose Rhea as well, so they were motivated to advance technologically. However, they could not attack the church directly due to the protection on Garreg Mach, and they were too small to oppose the church militarily on the whole. They did not have specific sci-fi units either, outside of the robots. So they primarily focused their efforts into opposing Rhea from the shadows, and trying to topple the system from within.

I do remember Tomas telling Monica something about not being captured so the church couldn't study their bodies, but I haven't seen anything else on their bodies being different. Unless he was just referring to someone noticing their disguises.

Started my very first TH game last night. Having read about the difficulty issues, and having played a lot of tactics games before, I set the difficulty to Maddening.

I got stomped. Repeatedly.

I can sort of see a way to victory in the first real battle, but it looks more like a giant pain in the ass than an entertaining diversion for now. Especially since all of the Fire Emblem tricks I could usually deploy don't work at the moment (or won't ever? No more sword->axe->spear->sword, apparently). Maybe I'll try this again on another playthrough.

Yeah, I don't think Maddening is intended to be a first-time through mode. I think most people playing on Hard aren't playing it first time, and on New Game Plus I believe you obtain bonuses through your Professor level that's retained and the Statues you've invested in.

Yeah, Maddening seems like something for when you have been through the game once and have familiarity with the systems. I played hard on my first run since others were saying normal was too easy, and hard mode felt more like what normal difficulty is on other games.

LastSurprise wrote:

I know this is the conversation here has mostly been about Three Houses, but I just bought and fired up Shadows of Valencia this past week, and am having an absolute blast with it. It's quickly making a play for one of my favorite Fire Emblem games.

Sundown wrote:

I played SoV earlier this year and loved it. The production values were probably the best in any fire emblem game, and my only complaint was about the simplicity of the maps, which got better as the game went along.

I’m really hoping/thinking that Echoes is the banner than a bunch more remakes of earlier games are done under, and that Genealogy of the Holy War will come out in the next few years.

Going to jump in here for some Valentia love. I was so glad that they brought back the time mechanic from that game, though there's a bit of irony in that the primitive map and encounter designs from the NES era made the rewind feature a necessity. I wonder what sort of play tests had been done with Three Houses, or perhaps they were expecting players to be more inefficient with their time first run. It's taken me to a Chapter 14 Paralogue involving Annette and Gilbert to finally be using the time-jump, only it's primarily due to a certain conditional than the enemies themselves being challenging.

I'm eager to give the game a whirl on Hard NG+, in time. Don't know if I could manage Maddening.

Regardless, one of the things that gets me the most is the music treatment. I kind of wish I had played the original Fire Emblem Gaiden beforehand, because the reinterpretations of some of the tracks are sort of fascinating. As a favorite, Land of Sorrow sounds more like a military march on the original NES version. It gives a sort of sense of soldiers marching to war. The Echoes version, however, has a very different and softer tone, despite keeping that air of threat and sorrow. Brings a bloodied battlefield after the fighting is over to my mind.


Not really of major contribution to any current discussion, but as I was playing I began to notice a few things. The first was that Catherine has character model animations that are typically attached to male students. I haven't seen any other woman with the same model animations. Maybe Shamir at certain points, but I don't think so? I think this is a nice touch in conveying her personality without sacrificing the femininity that's still found within her character in appearance, voicework, and other traits.

Which lead me to realize how many of the character animations are shared, and that I'm effectively playing scenes that are similarly modeled to BioWare games, which in some ways felt stiff due to the repetition of animations. Yet I don't feel like Three Houses is stiff or cheap, even if the different support conversations aren't wholly uniquely crafted, but rely on a lot of repeat model animations spread across a variety of characters. Maybe others feel differently and the cheapness stands out compared to other modern games, but I was wondering why I felt like BioWare games got a bit dull and tiresome and Three Houses had not.

I think it's a combination of two things. The first is that category of character model animations. Catherine's animations are shared by characters like Sylvan and Felix, but not by Dedue. Mercedes, Hilda, Annette, and Dorothea all have similar animations, but I don't think Lysithea has those based on what little I got to see of her support, nor does Shamir. So, different characters have different categories of animations based on personality type to better fit their mannerisms. On top of that, the camera is not static during any of these conversations. It's not like it's doing anything impressive, but it'll pull back and gently pan, do a slight zoom in, do a mild zoom out, and when combined with the changing facial expressions and animations, it makes the scene feel a bit more lively.

That the art style is anime, and thus there's greater room for suspension of disbelief than the more realism-focused graphics of Dragon Age or Mass Effect, also helps, I think. Still, if I were to try and make a BioWare style game in the future, I'd try and take some inspiration from what Three Houses did in its Support conversations and other minor cut-scenes. I think Three Houses was able to disguise its budget and limitations better, whereas BioWare's money clearly went to the campaign cut-scenes and less to the side and support discussions.

If that makes sense.

As for me, hoping to finish off Chapter 14 today.

Sundown wrote:

I played hard on my first run since others were saying normal was too easy, and hard mode felt more like what normal difficulty is on other games.

Congrats on completing your GD run! FWIW I'm in the same boat - I'm playing hard for my first run because of the warnings in the thread that normal was too easy. So far (chapter 7, BE) hard seems just right. The game still punishes me for carelessness but is otherwise manageable.

Interestingness point, ccesareno- I'd never noticed that different groups of characters have different animations. There were a few that stood out, like when Bernadette brandishes her arms and stamps up and down. I need to pay more attention - I'm usually reading the dialogue! I did notice that a lot of the things characters "do" during support conversations aren't animated (eg painting, cleaning armour), leaving it up to the dialogue and our imagination to picture the scene.

I’m closing in on the end of my first run with GD. I was in what I thought was the final battle

Spoiler:

Return to Gronder Field

And when Lorenz bit it right at the end of that battle due to a lucky crit, I was all like, nah, I won’t bother with a Divine Pulse, I’m all done.

Whoopsie. To be honest, being that I was on Normal, it’s such a cakewalk that I can afford it. Why you can’t adjust difficulty on the fly, I don’t know.

You can actually adjust it down, just not up.

So having done two routes in FE:TH and spent 150 hours in the game after the last couple of months, I think I’m ready to shelve it for a bit. I was actually about 40 hours into a Fallout 4 campaign before this 150 hour detour, and I want to try to finish that before Pokemon drops in a month. I'll be keeping an eye on WellAdjusted’s time in BL Maddening, since that would be the next thing I do in the game.

As a fun side note, I wanted to post what my best units have been so far. Not quite a full tier list since I haven’t used everyone and I don’t have time for that, but it’s clear to me there are some units were just better than the rest. And it’s a given that different units turn out well for different people, so I’m interested to see who was everyone’s MVPs. I’ll put it in spoilers for long, and since people starting out may not want to spoil themselves on who’s hot and who’s not. Or maybe they will? Who knows. Also note that these are all from playing two Hard Mode campaigns; the lists may vary for Normal or Maddening.

Spoiler:

Hall of Fame tier

Byleth plus the lords, obviously.

Ingrid – Everyone’s favorite aspiring knight and dodge tank. I used her in both campaigns, and she was routinely one of my best units, with the ability to take a lot of hits, dodge most hits, and double everyone. The only weakness she had was her ATK when she went from Pegasus Knight to Falcon Knight in my first run, but that was solved by making her a Wyvern Knight/Lord in the second run, which seemed to move 10 points from DEX to ATK. Never leave home without her.

Lysithea – Probably the best glass cannon spellcaster, and is glassier and cannonier than usual. She has the best mix of spells in the game, with the holy spells including Seraphim, plus she gets Dark Spikes and is probably your dedicated Death Knight Killer. When given the Gloucester relic, she can also attack from outside the range of everyone but a handful of boss characters, so she doesn’t fear being counterattacked. She just needs a couple of speedwings to be able to double.

Leonie - In my BE run, Bernie fell way behind so I started using Shamir as my sniper/bow knight. Then I recruited Leonie, who had better stats in every category than Shamir, except for DEX (which Shamir was 20 points ahead or something ridiculous). I didn’t want to make another change, but I took the point that Leonie was probably good. Then I used her in GD, and she was really good, going from Cavalier > Paladin > Bow Knight (with a detour through Brigand to get Death Blow). She hit as hard as anyone, she was as fast as anyone, and her DEF was the best of anyone that wasn’t Raphael in armor. Only needed some buffs to RES, and she could hit hard from range, and take all the hits. Clearly an inheritor to Jeralt’s legacy.

Cyril – Starts slow, but gets ridiculously well rounded and high stats. His attack and defense was a few ticks lower than Raphael, and his speed was a few ticks lower than Ingrid, but he did everything well, and was totally reliable for whatever I needed him for. He was my extra Wyvern Lord, and was good enough to replace Hilda when she fell behind.

Hall of Very Good tier

Hubert – Hits hard and gets the dark spells like Dark Spikes plus that spell that reduces defenses. Good stats too, but was lacking in speed. Speedwings sorted that out as well.

Shamir – Good stats and a clear line to Bow Knight, and has ridiculous DEX. But she’s not as good as Leonie, so down here she goes.

Lorenz – This one surprised me, but he was maybe the best all around unit not named Byleth, and made a fine Dark Knight. Probably the best well rounded unit, who naturally had all his offensive and defensive stats in the 20s by the end of the game, and could stand, but not excel, against anyone.

Raphael – Best tank in the game. Best HP, best ATK, best DEF. But lacking in DEF and RES and SPD. Still, if you need someone to take a bunch of physical hits, he was usually the best one to use. I’ve run him through both the Armor/Fortress Knight routes, and then the Wyvern Knight/Lord routes. I think he’s best when flying, but getting some of the abilities from being in armor helps his livability.

Mercedes – Best healer since she helps herself, and also had the best MAG and defenses of any of my Gremories in the GD route; only thing she is lacking is good spells, since the fire spells don’t get any bonuses or utility like Dark Spikes or Seraphim does.

And although I haven’t used them, Catherine and Seteth seem to have both good base stats and very good growths, so they would probably be somewhere on this list as well.

So, how about the rest of you?

Character usability impressions (so far, on Ch17) from my Maddening (no NG+) Golden Deer run. I did minimal recruiting on purpose, only recruiting characters I actually intended to use.

Spoiler:

Byleth: Early on, boosted by the +4 STR/+4 SPD/+7 HP/+2 Mov items under her bed, she was the only reason anyone else could survive. Maddening's level gap, early on, causes pretty much ANY enemy to double ANY of your characters... except a Byleth boosted by the +4 SPD under the bed item. As time passed and the students came into her own, she remained a decent troubleshooter due to her high STR/SPD and what eventually became a total of 8 movement when she switched to Enlightened One. Enlightened One's -3 damage taken for adjacent allies passive ensures her continued role, as does Windsweep, a Sword Art (almost) unique to her that completely prevents enemy counters. The high SPD also makes her a good Steal user: stealing is harder on Maddening due to the enemies' higher SPD.

Lysithea: I suspect she will be on every list of this sort. As Sundown pointed out, she's a great Death Knight killer, which becomes all the more important in Maddening when he can move freely even in Chapter 4! It took some doing to get her Dark Spikes in time to deal with that, but her Mastermind passive made it possible. Beyond that important duty, it's pretty much as Sundown said: her massive attack range with the Gloucester relic, boosted further by Dark Magic Range +1 when she masters Reason (possible even in a NG0 run, again thanks to Mastermind) turns her into the ultimate troubleshooter: no matter what unit shows up in what position, I know she can kill it for me if needed. Bonus points for having Warp, one of the best utility spells in the game. I ended up feeding her a lot of RES and a cuple of LUCK items to make her into my "mage tank" as well: other characters have better RES, but her better SPD to prevent doubles and having Luna to punch through mage RES seemed to make her the happier choice.

Ignatz: For a long time, Ignatz was kind of the odd duck out. Plenty of accuracy, but not much STR, and no defenses of any usable kind. Finally in desperation, I decided to make him the Dancer, much to his horror. I had to feed him some +CHR items to get him to qualify (even with the +5 bonus from practicing!), but no arguing with the results: not only has he become a more than adequate Dodge tank (against everything but lances... stupid Maddening weapon triangle), but while he still can't hurt anything himself, he can give extra turns out to people who can. The +4 SPD from Special Dance has also become useful for ensuring successful steals, and as a nice surprise, he learns Physic if you level up Faith enough. Only problem is his weakness in Flying is making force marching him to Alert Stance difficult, but being a non-flier lets him add terrain defenses to his already crazy Avoid so it tends to work out.

Raphael: I took him down the War Master route rather than the tank route. This wasn't as reasoned a decision as it probably should have been in Maddening; it just felt like where he should go. When he became War Master, I realized just how crazy high his Crit could go with Wild Abandon and decided to focus on that, giving him a Critical Ring, a +7 Atk/+15 Hit/+15 Crit Batallion (something-or-other Valkyries I think), and feeding him a large supply of DEX and LUC items. The result is a monster who can basically crit on command when using a Killer Axe or Killer Knuckles, turning him into yet another troubleshooter, if a late-blooming one.

Flayn: Has perhaps the best overall White magic list in the game, including Fortify, Restore (or whichever one it is that removes status conditions), and Rescue, which is probably the best utility spell other than Warp. She gets a +Magic range relic (only +1 instead of Lysithea's +2, but still a huge help) as well, and her passive of adjacent allies taking -3 damage makes her a tank's best friend.

Cyril, Leonie, Sylvain, and Seteth: Listing all of these together because they're all on the list for the same reason: double hitting Combat Arts. Double hit Combat Arts do both of their hits *before* the enemy counterattack, making them absurdly powerful. Cyril and Leonie both get Point-Blank Volley (the bow double hitter), Sylvain and Seteth both get Swift Strikes (the lance double hitter.) All four became capable of safely dropping almost any non-Armored unit from the moment they receive these arts. Even better, all four have inclinations to some kind of mounted unit, giving them the mobility to put that damage wherever it needs to be (and Canto back out of danger afterwards as well.)

Claude: Don't get me wrong, he's very useful... any high-damage flier is. But, other than his post time skip Gambit (which could be given to anyone), he actually doesn't stand out in this crowd as much as you might expect a House Leader to. No double hit Combat Art puts him distinctly behind Seteth and Cyril in the flier category. I still use him, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't really have a critical role to play like most of the others: he's just a vanilla solid unit.

Lorenz: Frozen Lance keeps him from being completely unremarkable, but that's about it. Still, anyone who can become a reasonable Bow Knight will always have a place on my team in Maddening.

Hanneman: Thoron and Meteor keep him from being just another mage. Ward is nice too at times: not every enemy can be Silenced, and +RES helps quite a bit when that's the case. Trying to steer him to Dark Knight so he can have some movement, even if it means only one cast of Meteor.

Hilda: I chose Hilda for my heavy armor tank which turned out to be an error: her DEF didn't quite get there, and her STR stayed lower than I liked. Worst of all, her SPD simply refused to level anymore: she's Level 35 and only has 12! Well, life gave me lemons, so I made lemonade. I abandoned all pretense of Speed, giving her a Silver Shield, and feed her a bunch of STR and DEF items. Now she's a passable tank, but I'm disappointed I had to spend so many stat boosts just to get a tank to "passable" when I had hoped to use them to make an already passable tank to very good. This has forced me to lean much more on Ignatz's dodge tanking than I'd have originally imagined, but at least that's been working out pretty well. I considered giving her SPD items too, but ended up giving those to Ignatz: one very good tank is better than two okay tanks.

Marianne: Only really used for Silence or another healer since Flayn arrived. Silence is rarely needed, but when it is, almost nothing else will do, and she's the only character I have who knows it. Thoron gives her at least some Range 3 attack magic, and her remaining support list is acceptable, but I feel Flayn is definitely far-better at fulfilling a support caster role than Marianne, overall.

So I'm a liar about how I prioritize this game and I finished off a Black Eagles run and I have some thoughts.

Spoiler:

First off, after playing this and Golden Deer I feel like this is the most moral route. Edelgard actually has some good reforms in mind. The church is actually evil, even if they're fighting another evil. Edelgard is right to want to crush the church.

I only wish they had some hint of the story of Those Who Slither in the Dark so we knew how Edelgard approached this and if it slightly shaded her view of the church. I feel like that would have painted a more complete picture. Overall it's wild how much you can play 1 route in this game and get a much different story than the other routes.

That said, is there any benefit to going back to my save prior to the big decision on the Black Eagles route and choosing to side with the church? Or will that basically be the same as the Golden Deer run?

Also, sell me on why (later down the road) I'd want to ever play as Blue Lions. Is there some really distinct aspect of the story I'm not seeing by missing that route?

Non-spoiler talk. It has to be said that at 120 hours that's the equivalent of running through Binding Blade 4 times or something like that. This is a really long game. There are times where I'm positive it's not worth it compared to the GBA era games. But the story, VO work, soundtracks, etc. are all very exquisite.

I miss old Fire Emblem, but the balance in this game is much closer to a game I could see myself playing. I like it better than both Fates and Awakening by a long shot.

Blue lions, IIRC has more background for the kingdom and interactions between Dimitri(?) and Edalgard, but that’s it.

Still crawling through chapter 9 over here. Sothis’ paralogue was hard, in a good way - I had to restart and try different approaches, which was a nice change from being over-levelled for the story battles.

Party-wise I’m using:

Spoiler:

Melee - some combination of MC, Edelgard, Ferdie, Petra, and Caspar. Ferdinand stands out for his balance of mobility, durability, and punch when mounted. Petra stands out for her blinding speed and ability to also function as an archer.

Flying - currently just Ingrid, aka the woman who can tank anything up to and including the Death Knight. I’ve just unlocked Edelgard’s advanced classes and will move her over to Wyvern at the next weekend; I will do the same for Petra once she hits level 20.

Archery - Bernadetta has sadly fallen behind in strength, so for now my best archers are Petra and Shamir. I look forward to grabbing Leonie.

Offensive magic - Hubert and Dorothea are both excellent. I just recruited Lysithea and so far she suffers from not having a range 3 spell unlocked; I expect great things from her once she learns more spells.

Support magic - Either Linhardt or Mercedes for ranged healing, with Mercedes’ personality making her my preferred pick. Flayn suffers from a lack of ranged healing, but OTOH she has the unique rescue spell.

Unfortunately my MC’s skills are too low to immediately swap into an advanced class, even though he’s level 20! I foresee lots of faculty training in his immediate future.

Reached over 100 hour played on this game and haven't even finished my first playthrough and am starting to get weary. I do this every time I play a Fire Emblem game. Take way too long doing stuff in the first half that the second becomes a slog that I just want to get through to see the story. I am not sure which chapter number I am on or really how to check that, but I am hoping I am getting close to the end.

Malkroth wrote:

Reached over 100 hour played on this game and haven't even finished my first playthrough and am starting to get weary. I do this every time I play a Fire Emblem game. Take way too long doing stuff in the first half that the second becomes a slog that I just want to get through to see the story. I am not sure which chapter number I am on or really how to check that, but I am hoping I am getting close to the end.

Yup, I've started using Rest to get through the last couple months because I just can't be bothered and everyone's overpowered anyway with maxed out support levels.

Malkroth wrote:

I am not sure which chapter number I am on or really how to check that, but I am hoping I am getting close to the end.

Depending on route it is between 18 and 21 chapters long I think.

Check your save file when saving or loading and I think it lists the chapter.

So the patch and DLC drops today with the sauna and servant costumes. The real things to note are that you can now give gifts to the animals, and also they quintupled the number of save files. Probably not the thing that brings be back in for my third run just yet.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/8/20...

How are people's Maddening runs still going?

I bogged the hell down on my first (GD) run. I thought I was in the final battle in Chapter 18, now actually headed into the final battle 4 entire chapters later.

The game drags like hell on Normal. Everyone is stupidly overpowered, there's no challenge whatsoever, I just want to get done with it so I can get a NG+ going on Maddening, but god it's a slog.

Hooray for new stuff.

Sundown wrote:

How are people's Maddening runs still going?

I finished my GD Maddening run. The difficulty tended to very slowly creep downward for the most part throughout, but it never got anywhere near as easy as Normal, and there were always little "oh... hmm" moments to deal with even as it was getting easier. I had a really good time with it, I wish I'd had it available for my first two playthroughs.

I played on Hard the first time through (Golden Deer) and started with Hard again (Black Eagle). That was possibly a mistake. On the one hand I want to save time since I'm just here for the story, but on the other I'm so powered up with maxed battalions, faster training (because of all the Renown bonuses), and a step down from Classic to Casual.

Maybe I'll mix it up and do an all-Monk run or something.

Jonman wrote:

The game drags like hell on Normal. Everyone is stupidly overpowered, there's no challenge whatsoever, I just want to get done with it so I can get a NG+ going on Maddening, but god it's a slog.

Auto battle?

Stele wrote:
Jonman wrote:

The game drags like hell on Normal. Everyone is stupidly overpowered, there's no challenge whatsoever, I just want to get done with it so I can get a NG+ going on Maddening, but god it's a slog.

Auto battle?

Wait, what?

Jonman wrote:
Stele wrote:
Jonman wrote:

The game drags like hell on Normal. Everyone is stupidly overpowered, there's no challenge whatsoever, I just want to get done with it so I can get a NG+ going on Maddening, but god it's a slog.

Auto battle?

Wait, what?

Seconded. The inability to increase the difficulty off of normal has really killed my progress. I'm enjoying the story, but I just don't have interest in doing the battles because I'm so overpowered. If there's a way to just avoid that part of the game, I'd definitely finish to see the story through.

billt721 wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Stele wrote:
Jonman wrote:

The game drags like hell on Normal. Everyone is stupidly overpowered, there's no challenge whatsoever, I just want to get done with it so I can get a NG+ going on Maddening, but god it's a slog.

Auto battle?

Wait, what?

Seconded. The inability to increase the difficulty off of normal has really killed my progress. I'm enjoying the story, but I just don't have interest in doing the battles because I'm so overpowered. If there's a way to just avoid that part of the game, I'd definitely finish to see the story through.

The thing I struggle with is whether the reduced importance of combat is bad, to be honest.

The story in Three Houses is really good. If they gave me an option to play my Blue Lions run as a straight visual novel with no combat I'd probably take them up on it.

As it is, though, the combat feels completely broken. Even if you crank the difficulty up it feels like you really have to restrain yourself from doing any of the side stuff, otherwise you'll become so overleveled that you eventually romp through battles.

On the other hand the game is so long that at least for me I eventually welcomed that phase so I could rip through that part of the game.

I'm partly inclined to say they should either just give players the option to skip the combat or release an old school Advance Wars or Fire Emblem someday without all the side stuff.

Do you guys think the DLC is worth it?

Sundown wrote:

So the patch and DLC drops today with the sauna and servant costumes. The real things to note are that you can now give gifts to the animals, and also they quintupled the number of save files. Probably not the thing that brings be back in for my third run just yet.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/8/20...

How are people's Maddening runs still going?

Still chugging through my Hard run! Currently up to chapter 10, in the run-up to the ball. I've just promoted my first few characters into Advanced classes - Byleth is a Hero and Edelgard is a Wyvern Knight.

BTW, yikes, that link has a small spoiler in it.

DSGamer wrote:

The story in Three Houses is really good. If they gave me an option to play my Blue Lions run as a straight visual novel with no combat I'd probably take them up on it.

As it is, though, the combat feels completely broken. Even if you crank the difficulty up it feels like you really have to restrain yourself from doing any of the side stuff, otherwise you'll become so overleveled that you eventually romp through battles.

I'm somewhat overlevelled (doing paralogues, rare monster battles, and some quest battles) but still having a great time in battles. The missions are very well designed, and I like the variety & challenge from the optional objectives.

Regarding Maddening:

I'm on chapter 9 or so and the difficulty has leveled off a bit, but I'm definitely still encountering spikes on some of the paralogue missions. I had a rough time with Felix's paralogue due to how the units were placed--losing his dad is a loss condition, but because of how the game decided to deploy my units there was no way I could prevent him from dying on the first turn without sacrificing some of my guys.
I'm currently butting up against Manuela and Hahnneman's paralogue--Manuela starts off separated from the rest of my units and will get 1 hit KO'd by any melee unit, and I'm not sure if there's a way for me to make it to her before the enemy does, even with a flyer unit. I may need to come back to this one after I get a few more units classed into flyers.

Basically, the difficulty feels good most of the time, but some of the map conditions or scenarios where you are required to use a unit that's not part of your normal rotation are rough.

Regarding the patch:
Now why'd they have to go and add a new unit that's only available in the Crimson Flower route after I've already done that one ;(

Minor Gripe:
My Ashe has had some absolutely terrible stat gains. Roughly half of the times he's leveled up, he's only gotten one or two points. This was mitigated a little bit by some class changes (he got like 20 points when I classed him to Sniper), but he really feels weak compared to the rest of my team. I'm making him my dancer so he can be a little more useful, but geez.

Just after the break on my NG+ Hard Casual run, and I'm a little happier with the difficulty. I'm a few levels below the recommended level for story missions (no, I will not take on your side battle quest no matter how many times you ask. Paralogues only!).

The latest mission involved being ambushed, and I would have had to rewind almost to the first turn if I was playing on Classic and wanted to avoid losses. As it was, I had to stop and think and shamelessly spam my overpowered gambits.