pekingduck

I am curious about which of the Three Houses paralogues have stood the test of time (or a couple of months) for you guys. For me, in first place is Lysithea and Ferdinand's paralogue, "Retribution." This paralogue works for me on multiple levels. For one, I just really enjoyed that this paralogue got into the some Fodlan history for some good world-building and lore-filling. Ferdinand and Lysithea's family backstories were both worked in pretty well into the story. Secondly, for me, it did a great job making Lord Arundel a slightly more nasty antagonist, nasty in the bureaucratic, efficient way that I love to hate, rather than cartoonishly evil. As Ferdinand is one of my favorite characters in the game, I wanted to punch Arundel in the face for Ferdinand after that. Thirdly, the level is pretty tragically engaging at a personal level, of course; the Japanese VA for Ferdinand does a wonderful scream when he I also found the level pretty fun and low-stress. I actually did not mind the re-used map in this one. It wasn't hard, but I had some fun playing around with unit movements to save the commoners and bottleneck the large amount of enemy units. My second favorite paralogue is probably Edelgard's version of the Fodlan's Locket paralogue, "Insurmountable." I just really enjoyed battling Nader as the Black Eagles. Third favorites are the Saint-related paralogues, "The Sleeping Sand Legend" and "Legend of The Lake" because of the neat boss conversations that happen if Seteth and Flayn were brought to the battle.

On the note of repetition, I really wish there was a "Chapter/Paralogue select" option to replay chapters and paralogues a player has already beaten without needing to re-do the whole path. For some battles, I just want to check out some more of the special boss conversations and really don't want to play through the same route again.

Flayn and Seteth also have some cool dialogue with "The Wind Caller" in the Golden Deer Paralogue, The Four Saints.

Full agreement here. It looks apparent to me though that less time was spent developing the post-timeskip of the game (I struggle to call it a full second half, because it feels like post time-skip is around 2/5 of the rest of the game for most of the routes, and just 1/4 left for Crimson Flower). Perhaps there was both a time and budget crunch (budget, as indicated by the drop in cutscenes and art quality in the post-timeskip section of the game). At a certain point, of course, a game just has to be pushed out. I personally think FE:3H had a pretty fast turn-around after Echoes: SoV, and I actually would not have minded if 3H came out 6 months to a year later (I have so much in my gaming backlog, as is) to give the writers and programmers more time to flesh out the post-timeskip chunks. In every route I've played, I admit I had some sort of expectations for an epic jump in the timeskip, and by the time I got through the third route, I knew full well that no "epic shakeup!" feeling was going to be coming. Invariably, in all of the routes, I've felt some disappointment regarding the story (especially with how Dimitri gets treated in the non-BL routes). From a bird's eye view, this game is actually pretty messy, and I still enjoy the game more than the some of its parts because the character dialog ends up holding everything together. This is still in my top 30 of games I've enjoyed. I'll still cherish the really special feeling I got going through the pre-timeskip portion of the game for the first time playing Crimson Flower. Massive admiration for the team behind 3H no matter what, and this was a wonderful effort. Some things just don't work out perfectly because of the number of variables at play, which is fine. I realize that I myself just allowed my mind to run too wild with hyperbole my first playthrough before getting to the post time-skip, which also set myself up for disappointment.

I can understand where you are coming from, especially as I now am merely grinding out the remaining supports I haven't finished. In my case, I really initially wanted a challenge, and got somewhat of a challenge on my first Crimson Flower run when my guys were under-leveled and mis-classed. And as a result, I think it's still the most fun playthrough I've had in terms of needing to think a little bit more about placement and working through suboptimal situations where I couldn't ORKO an enemy. To be honest, I was hoping for some somewhat-challenging playthroughs (challenging in terms of thinking out strategies, rather than the more tedious difficulty associated with Maddening) through all of the routes. In fact, the only NG+ I took advantage of for my second playthrough (Verdant Rain) was the set of statue bonuses. However, especially by my third route (Azure Moon), I had found the maps and gameplay repetitive and mindless enough that by this point, I was just hoping to get things out of the way. Honestly, I was just trying to make conversation with this thread, and wasn't too bothered by the additional gambits. I just found that they made things even easier on Hard -- my units whom I advanced into those spots tended to be my main gambit users and be able to resist attacks anyways, so I found myself having an even easier time spamming gambits. For support grinding, I will say the gambits help. Definitely not implying that you suck! Masochistically playing and wasting time on Lunatic runs in the other FE games just resulted in me having some heuristics in the back of my mind that I carried over which really allowed me to have an easy time on Hard. There wasn't any deep-meaning intention behind this post, and I was just making a casual note that the gambit restores allowed me to be even more mindless. I suppose that perhaps this post was too trivial to really merit creation, but what's done is done.

Three routes was enough for me. I'm taking a break. If it's what you're feeling, just wait it out. The thread about updated impressions helped encapsulate a lot of my thoughts. The dialog bonuses are really cool for replayability, but I really found that at a certain point, the gameplay and maps were just too redundant to merit the story structure of repeat playthroughs to tease out every morsel of story. None of the routes individually adds enough story to overcome burnout, IMO.

Just a comment. As I said, could be there, but noting that the frequency should have been toned down. No longer playing the game for the battles at this point, but just to support grind.

Have you tried Greenhouse farming? With the right seed combinations and sufficient amount of Explorations, I've been able to at least modestly bolster some stat-screwed units.

So, even though I've already gone through two and a half of the routes so far, I've only recently started exploring the Online Play mechanisms after finding out having Amazon Prime gives you free Nintendo Switch Online for a year. I definitely think the Local Specialties from the Traveling Merchants is a cool gimmick. The recon training is really dumb. I'm just surprised that gambit restorations happen at such frequency for the Departed Spirits squares. I stopped playing Maddening, because I just did not find it very fun, but I think the gambit restores would serve as a massive help on Maddening playthroughs. As is on Hard, things have become even easier, as I've now become even more liberal about spamming gambits for non-Monster situations. It would be a cool bonus to have at a lower frequency. As is, I feel that one out of every three times I step on a Departed Spirits square, I get a gambit restore. Especially with how OP gambits can get with the special post-timeskip attendant and house leader battalions and the B-level battalions, I think it's just too much. Not turning off Online Play for now, as I'm no longer playing for the fun of the gameplay, but to support grind, and I enjoy buying Local Specialty materials. The gambit restores should have just been rarer bonuses, IMO.

So, is it confirmed the beating Maddening with just NG grants a golden title screen? If you have it, what does it look like you don't mind sharing? Edit: Nvm, got it here:

I completely agree with this. Because the enemy movement and coded strategies did not change that much, I think Hard is the most fun sweet spot for FE:3H. There's a point in Maddening where even after you "figure out" the map, you still have a ton of grinding on the map left, which is a true bore.

Bernadetta has been a Falcon Knight frequently for me, too. It seems like it was a build people were trying out at the outset? Yeah, she saved the last chapter of Crimson Flower for me because of her crest. She critted three times in a row when I messed up on my placement against Rhea and had no more Divine Pulses. Doubled, plus one extra from her crest. Wish I could have digitally high-fived Bernadetta right there.

Lorenz is also AWOL, right? Did not see him during my run. Would have only made sense during the Bridge Assault, I only saw Leonie and Ignatz.

It's definitely good we have such a large number of people playing FE now so that we can get these weird individual samples. The stats RNG was just a great thing, because it can randomly give certain, traditionally not great units a fighting chance, and the snowballing effect is definitely for real. I don't notice my stats-deficient units as much, because they naturally fall by the wayside in terms of use. On my most recently completed run, a GD one, my recruited Petra did get somewhat speed screwed, ending up with 24 Spd by around Level 41 as a Wyvern Lord (previously, she had ended up with 37 Spd at Level 45 in a Crimson Flower run). My Raphael underperformed on Def. Hilda and Claude modestly underperformed on Spd. My Leonie and Ignatz became utter monsters. Ignatz became a real unexpected frontline unit, with a lucky combo Str, Def, Res, and Spd actually making him a great bait/chokepoint defender because of Close Counter. Had to settle for Hilda and Claude becoming hit-and-run units because of their lower speed and below average HP and Def growths.

Interesting. So, is this a case where there is no "invisible A+" for some characters, and that character pairs with A+'s have higher max support point thresholds than pairs who max out at A?