Board 8 > Fire Emblem Topic 3: Sigurd for Smash

(+) Yeah! (+)

I hope you kept up her support with Mist or Lethe!

She has two for Mist and one for Lethe. Haven't been able to get B rank Lethe yet.

Yeah I'd actually non-trolly recommend you bring her then, and talk with the boss. You get some good Jill character development for doing so. Just make sure to bring Mist along too.

Oh no you misunderstand.

I finished that last night lol.

Okay, good. Because it's one of the rare Fire Emblem occasions where YOUR units are recruited, and you don't get her back without supports from Mist/Lethe, if so.

OK that is pretty radical.

Daein Castle taken down.

Looked real foreboding last night, but it was cake.

Taureno is...quite the sharp contrast to the late game high level general recruitments I'm used to.

Time to start making this calls about whether a potentially better unit is going to outweigh a leveled prepromote with better weapon ranks...because I'm having a touch time keeping Gatrie over Taureno here!

Also seems like the appropriate time to start using Stefan.

GET

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/5/0/AAeolZAAD5_O.jpg

Was a lot of fun puzzling around the Priest situation. Efficiency where every unit got a chance to shine. Only regret is I left 3 unkilled enemies before beating the boss.

As a side note, I heavily recommend that you make a save state before fighting the Black Knight.

Spoilered just in case, but yeah.

Don't worry, that entire situation is literally the only other thing I rememeber about what's left in this game, as well as picking a super character to take with you into the final battle.

I haven't used a single stat boosting item I've gotten the entire game besides the boots, in preparation of getting Ike to cap with Bexp for that fight and touching up any relevant stats he hasn't capped.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/5/9/AAeolZAAD5_X.jpg

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Potholes

POTHOLES

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/0/7/AAeolZAAD6AH.jpg

This is my favorite design in the game.

Shame she doesn't seem all that great.

Lol Knife Sage.

https://twitter.com/FireEmblemJP/status/1594602262365552640?s=19

https://youtu.be/mwCZjGO6HIA

Serenes Forest stuff for it now.

Diamant

https://twitter.com/SerenesForest/status/1594634753986252801?s=19

https://twitter.com/SerenesForest/status/1594634087511523330?s=19

https://twitter.com/SerenesForest/status/1594634939227586560?s=19

Alcryst AKA Dude Bernie

https://twitter.com/SerenesForest/status/1594637526836588545?s=19

https://twitter.com/SerenesForest/status/1594637583489052672?s=19

How are the male character designs for this game so decent-to-good and the female character designs so... not...

moeblob anime really has done irreparable damage huh

Moe moe kyun

UshiromiyaEva posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/0/7/AAeolZAAD6AH.jpg

This is my favorite design in the game.

Shame she doesn't seem all that great.

Lol Knife Sage.

It's appropriate that Lucia and Bastian join together, because they both have the problem of being worse than another character in the same class who joined chapters ago.

They both also have the problem of being bad independently of the existence of anybody else!

Eh, Bastian would probably be decent if Calill didn't exist since he'd have the niche of being able to use every siege tome. But I agree about Lucia, and Stefan's existence just makes it even more apparent how bad Lucia is.

To parrot what I imagine Mekkah will say in the unit review videos I always watch after beating the games...

0% Growth Run unit

Mewtwo59 posted...

Eh, Bastian would probably be decent if Calill didn't exist since he'd have the niche of being able to use every siege tome. But I agree about Lucia, and Stefan's existence just makes it even more apparent how bad Lucia is.

To be fair, if it weren't for the internet age Stefan would be a unit almost nobody ever got. Lex' Brave Axe was supposed to be an extremely rare get!

Also, Iron Mans.

Lucia is baaaarely useable on hard mode if for some reason you want to but there's really no reason to over any of the other three Swordmasters in the game. All of them outperform her, and she doesn't even have enough levels remaining to potentially fix her bad bases since she comes in at level 12.

In maniac mode she's downright useless and almost a detriment on her one forced deployment chapter because by that point in the game every enemy is a 50-ish HP beast she does like 8 damage a swing to and can't really dodge or double.

Even Bastian can contribute some on maniac due to siege tome useage, but she might just be the worst unit on maniac if you consider Sothe can still steal from most enemies if for some reason you can't or don't want to use Volke.

I seem to recall Bastian has some small positive value on Maniac solely because the map they join on is a tedious clusterfuck (tedium in Maniac mode? No way!) that floods the screen with wyvern lords and his chip damage on them with wind magic is actually useful for letting your non-god units get kills.

Imagine playing FE9 on maniac. Couldn't be me!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/5/3/AAeolZAAD6Ip.jpg

Do what now

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/5/6/AAeolZAAD6Is.jpg

The fuck kind of map is this?

I'm reminded of that awful Manuella/Hanneman paralogue map.

A level 11 Paladin with Paragon, wacky. A shame because he's also my aesthetic choice out of all the paladins, but he seems mediocre as well.

Largo as well seems awful. Funny that he's the only Berserker, but all his stats save for HP are lower than Boyd who's 2 levels under him.

Geoffrey's fine, since it's hard to go wrong with a mounted unit in PoR. His stats are good enough for what you're up against, and Paragon with solid growth rates means he'll improve a bit more than your average prepromote.

Thank God I got that Ashera Staff. What a wacky map.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/8/4/AAeolZAAD6JI.jpg

Yeah Geoffrey is the best of the 3 Crimean retainers. He's not amazing but he's also not THAT far behind the other mounted units.

After that last one I am all about this Fire Emblem Echoes ass map.

Gonna send Ike out to just eat the EXP UP.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

After that last one I am all about this Fire Emblem Echoes ass map.

Gonna send Ike out to just eat the EXP UP.

Clash is an absolute BASTARD of a chapter on Maniac mode. They do something like double the amount of enemies from Hard, nearly all of them have 1-2 range weapons. Then add on siege tomes, status staves, and reinforcements every 3-4 turns of *10* Paladins or Wyvern Lords per wave with no choke points of any kind?

It's ridiculous. Easily the hardest map in the entire game.

Well it certainly wasn't on normal! Cleaned up, always love when I can get at least one near endgame map that just raw fields and numbers.

I...really wish I had one more Arms Scroll to give Mist this Runeblade!

So it's the Black Knight map next, then 28, then the final chapter right? Do I still get to use BEXP after chapter 28? My Ike has capped Strength and Speed at 14 here, so I'm hoping to avoid having to pump him up yet if I don't have to, since I want to maximize my Bexp and stat boosting items as much as possible for data transfer.

Counting all the reinforcements Clash on Maniac has something like 130 enemies on it. And it's Maniac, where enemies are super bulky and even the best units don't really ORKO much. The time spent on watching the slow PoR animations alone is longer than the entire play time of a lot of late game maps in other games. You legit need to think about filling up the inventory of your healers and any laguz you deploy with extra weapons just to not run out of things to keep hitting dudes with.

The pain of a game without a warp staff.

Yeah running out of weapons is a legit concern on that map since PoR doesn't have an in-battle convoy.

Not to mention if you're not SUPER careful with Elincia she can easily get sniped by a siege tome or one of the Paladins or Wyvern Lords (she gets one rounded) which instantly loses you the map.

In some ways I kind of like how ridiculously unforgiving the map is on Maniac- it's to the point you can't even really turtle effectively because you get overwhelmed if you try it. You more or less have to make like a 3 pronged or so push against the enemies to make headway and then make a dash for the boss to seize at the first opening. It's certainly an experience.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/8/4/AAeolZAAD6JI.jpg

https://imgur.com/a/rVR4BBr

Is Maniac for PoR actually considered well balanced? I'm honestly a little flummoxed as to which FE games are actually supposed to have really well-tuned, fun top difficulties. A lot of them seem unreasonably masochistic or at minimum require you to play in such a specific, counterintuitive way that they're just unfun. Maybe I'm wrong, though?

Xiahou_Shake posted...

Is Maniac for PoR actually considered well balanced? I'm honestly a little flummoxed as to which FE games are actually supposed to have really well-tuned, fun top difficulties. A lot of them seem unreasonably masochistic or at minimum require you to play in such a specific, counterintuitive way that they're just unfun. Maybe I'm wrong, though?

Hmmm, sort of?
It's very, very hard but it's not really unfair in most maps or require you to really play in a counterintuitive way, it just requires you to know what units are good to train, when to use or conserve weapons, etc. Basic Fire Emblem stuff. You don't really need to super rig things in your favor like some modes like Lunatic+ in Awakening or Hard 5 in Shadow Dragon etc, both of those I think are totally unfun.

But it is absolutely one of the harder difficulty modes in FE, even still, and some things are VERY borderline unfair like the aforementioned "surprise, 10 Wyvern Lords!" reinforcements from Clash (they aren't ambush spawns, at least).

So I'd say it depends on your tolerance. I find it fun, played through it twice. I do wish there was something between Hard and Maniac though because Hard mode in PoR is sooooo easy.

I'm not sure any of the top difficulties are actually balanced. I'm not even sure they playtested FE6's with the double hard mode bonus bug, FE7 shows that it wasn't tuned very well with the issues in certain maps where NPCs have to not die, FE8 has a hard mode that feels more like a normal mode, FE9 had a top difficulty so bad that they cut it from the western release, FE10 takes away a bunch of QoL stuff for no reason, and from FE11 on they seem to make the top difficulty unreasonably masochistic just because they can.

Xiahou_Shake posted...

Is Maniac for PoR actually considered well balanced? I'm honestly a little flummoxed as to which FE games are actually supposed to have really well-tuned, fun top difficulties. A lot of them seem unreasonably masochistic or at minimum require you to play in such a specific, counterintuitive way that they're just unfun. Maybe I'm wrong, though?

Maniac is okay in theory, a bit overkill with how many bulky enemies it throws your way, but it meshes super poorly with Path of Radiance in general being a game with very slow animations, even the map animations are sluggish and there's no way to get rid of them.

I think the only game that really rewards a somewhat unintuitive approach is Awakening. In Three Houses Maddening is the only difficulty where you even have to think about the features of the game you're playing instead of just sleepwalking through things. And I'd say that if you want fairly well balanced difficulty that isn't too brutal, Conquest Hard and FE12 Maniac are both very good in different ways. Both are still challenging by series standards while still taking it noticeably easier on you than their incredibly punishing Lunatic modes.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/7/4/AAeolZAAD6MG.jpg

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RAAAAAAAAAAHFJNFIWNDJJF

FUCKING 30 SAVE STATE LOADS LATER

How

HOW IS SOMEONE EXPECTED TO DO THIS NATURALLY

UshiromiyaEva posted...

HOW IS SOMEONE EXPECTED TO DO THIS NATURALLY

It's optional if you beat him.

And it's RNG even with a capped Ike.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

HOW IS SOMEONE EXPECTED TO DO THIS NATURALLY

Basically pray that you hit Aether

The actual worst part of the BK fight is that it's timed, and the game doesn't tell you it's timed. Fuck off Nasir I was one turn away from winning!

Still a 10/10 experience for the atmosphere though, even if it exposes how impossible it is to do memorable 1 v 1 encounters in a strategy game setting.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/9/9/AAeolZAAD6Mf.jpg

Character design is my passion.

How am I supposed to know that guy is cartoonishly evil if he isn't ugly?