kel

I've settled on an Ice affinity only run. Even though it lacks my precious Lute, I still like the team composition (the chapters before kyle will be interesting :P) My team will be: Innes Natasha (bishop) Kyle (great knight) Artur (sage) Marisa (swordsman) I will not be using either lord, and colm/rennac only for unlocking. I'll probably blast through the first few chapters with Seth so I can get right to where Artur joins. Thanks for all the suggestions, Lute solo might come next :D

I completed a pre promote only run (Eph HM) a while back and really had a blast with it. I'm looking for something fun to do on my next playthrough, to provide a challenge but nothing too hard (no solo runs please :D). Note: I really like Lute... :)

I'm using Seth sparingly now that he's x/20. Trying to beef up Duessel and Dozla. I finished the chapter this morning, and it went pretty smoothly. Syrene got herself killed, but I decided to press on anyway since she's so incredibly useless.

I'm just finishing up a prepromote run, and Syrene is easily the worst of them. Without question. Even after I leveled her up in the gorgon egg chapter, she's still a liability.

If you want a more challenging and authentic FE experience, start on hard mode and don't abuse the tower or map encounters. Eirika's route is a bit easier than the Ephraim's. But, Ephraim is a hell of a lot stronger. You really can't go wrong with either route. Ghost ship is kind of a tricky level because there are a lot of flying magic users that swarm in at the end, and the enemy boss that spawns right behind the starting point. Father and Son I honestly don't remember being that hard...just bring a staff user for Restore. Going into the game, all you need to know is that pretty much any unit that you want to use, you can. They're all decent enough to warrant taking into the final battle. The trainees are interesting but I find them to be pretty annoying, although Ross does make one mean zerker. The prepromotes are all pretty good too, except for Syrene. She's probably the worst unit in the game, honestly. Get a bishop in your party, you'll be glad you did in the end game.

In chapter 20, do the enemy reinforcements ever stop coming? I'm doing a prepromote run and this chapter has got me at a bit of a standstill. I started out wanting to play cautious but now I'm not sure if that's going to work.

No, you are never forced into the tower or any of the other optional creature areas. Amelia is really weak at first and hard to train without tower abuse, but she ends up with really high speed and luck, and other decent stats all around.

Title. Especially when it gets compared to Blazing Sword. I've never really gotten why the FE community seems to generally consider FE 8 so inferior. One of the main things seems to be the lack of difficulty, because of the abundance of strong characters, and because of the potential for abuse inherit in the tower, and later, the ruins. As far as the tower issue goes, it's completely optional, so I can't really understand the flack it's caused. I actually like that most of the characters (really all of them) are strong enough to consider using because it gives me more freedom to pick characters that are my favorites as opposed to having to pick a character based on his stats. Another argument I see sometimes is the weak story, but I find that the dialogue is much more enjoyable in SS than BS and that the story arc, although relatively straightforward, is also more engaging. And I happen to like the lords in this game a lot more than Eliwood and Lyn. I won't talk about Hector though :) Haha. As a little background, I've played FE 1 (DS remake), and FE 7, 8, and 9. This is also my first post. Cheers, Kel