LoneRecon400

It's OK. The stroy can be a little contrived and didn't engage in as much world building as I would have preferred, but the characters are fun enough enough that I could overlook it. It has some real shoutout characters like Viron and Gregor, who are still some of my favorite characters in the series. The gameplay side of things are a lot less positive though. The unbalanced difficulties, poor map design, and annoying little things like risen blocking ships really make it unfun to go back and play through it again. Overall the game is mixed bag, with replays if it again are pretty unlikely. But I do consider reading some of the support list and dlcs like Future Past from time to time.

I hated it on release and still think it terrible. I didn't like the story, the characters didn't get as many supports as I would've liked, and the gameplay is just abysmal. Even putting aside the map design, the dungeons were an absolute chore, the point and click sections don't really add anything of value, and it took out a lot of the neat stuff in Gaiden like cross route revival or the original speed ring. I find Echoes to be by far the weakest entry in the series barring the original NES FE1. The game should have fixed the issues that Gaiden had, not embrace them and act that they were fine to release them in a game made 25 years later.

How were any of those characters that were listed justified in their actions? They were all confirmed to be manipulated by the Agarthans for their own uses, and they all decided that the best course of action was to put Rhea's head on a pike / steal crest stones for the power to do that. That is not a justifiable position. The church may cause problems, but none of the actions any of those characters took would have fixed any of the problems in Fodlan. What Diplomacy could Rhea even engage in with Lonato to make him stop his rebellion? The man isn't even fighting for a cause, he's just lashing out in vengeance for Christophe. What exactly do you think she could've have said to stop a man driven and blinded by his own grief?

I mean, if anything that proves Jotari's point. I don't see how Rhea is the unreasonable one when Christophe tried to murder her, Lonato raised an army to murder her, and the Westren Church threatened to muder her (even if it was just as a feint.) None of these people attempt to seek any alternatives to their courses of action and instead all insisted on coming out swinging as their first course of action. It would be one thing if Rhea actively antagonisized them or acted against their interests, but nothing like that happens. Like Jotari says, there's not a case of Rhea actually having to negotiate with anyone and her acting unreasonable about it. Every singe case choses violence before she has even a chance to address their concerns. We're talking about a development team that took out Fistbreaker because they didn't want to code monster weapons as their own category of weapons. It would not being surprising in the slightest if they just couldn't be bothered making a burning balista tile. Not that it matters much. Edelgard does whatever she feels like she has to make her ideals reality. I don't get how Bernadetta really counts against her comparative to everything else she does. Not evacuating Enbar in VW is a more apt comparison, but that's a blink and you'll miss it moment.

Even in SS, Cyril is still a pretty good unit. Getting him to Vengance will allow him to one shot even endgame units even without any class masteries. That's not bad for a Filler Unit.

It's applied according to Marcia and Rolf's support in FE9. Rolf wounds his hand training and actively yells out in pain when Marcia uses a vulnerary on him.

To nitpick: Impregnable Wall is actually a pretty good way of making enemies not using their gambits. If enemies double a unit with the gambit in effect, they'll always attack normally rather than use a gambit. Seal skills that occur on enemy phase also are not applied on the next player phase. (not that many enemies have seal skills) To rebuttal: Impregnable Wall is worth using even on routes where it's attached to medicore battalions because of how it help solve some really annoying elements of maps. It can really help with luring same turn reinforcements, avoid taking damage from seige weapons (especially potent for vengence users), and makes it so that any unit can be left in the range of any enemy without having to be worried about being one rounded. And if you go out of your way to avoid quest and aux battles, the gambit becomes instrumental being able to master classes in a timely fashion. Overall it just a great way of dealing with enemies when they pretty cleanly start to 1-2 round your units.

Garon actually doesn't attack on Enemy Phase even if he can kill someone, he just always spams the dragon viens next to him. The fact that no one really knows about this really says a lot of how difficult he is to take down.

It's FE9. Enemies are absolutely chumps in that game. And that's no exception here, as a base Rolf would be able to tank a seige tome with a Pure Water.

It takes Byleth 3560 Brawling exp to go from E+ -> S+ brawling. In a Commoner class they gain +3 Brawling Skill for each round of combat. 3 times 5 rounds of combat per is 15 skill exp a turn. 3560 skill exp / 15 per turn equals 238 turns. So you'd only need 3 aux battles to pull it off. You can tell that this was grinded rather than NG+ as: 1. Byleth has an odd amount Authority since there's no reason to go to S Rank Authority. 2. There's no adavanced battalions like ones from paralogues. 3. No one else has abnormal ranks except for Byleth, Lysithea, Balthus, and Constance. 4. They did the same broken weapon trick with Balthus to get Lysithea and Constance up. You can get Adjutants as early as Chapter 3 if you rig for 5 star greenhouse seeds for Proffessor Ranking. Getting Lysithea up to Warp ain't hard since she has Mastermind. That gives +6 Skill Exp a battle, so she can get S+ Faith from almost a single Aux battle. Edit: Here's an actual example of this in action.

Yeah, you don't need to go that deep into aux battles. The challange is plenty beatable without doing so. I was just explaining how you could feasibly gain such skill ranks in such a short amount of time. I will say that on casual playthroughs though, it's much faster at rasing skill ranks than actually utilizing the monestary. I'd would've gotten burnt out on this game completely had I not used this trick to avoid the monestary.

You could just give the grinded unit a proper weapon in their inventory. Or you could deploy a flier or a unit with stealth, but that doesn't fly on a Commoner only run. DLC Aux Battles gives a random stat booster for every battle you fight. If you battle twice for straight 50 weeks, you're bound to get a lot of stats boosters. Admittedly, that doesn't answer the question of 84 Magic Lysithea. That's literally two point away from her magic cap. My guess is they utilized the month reset glitch for that one.

Its actually pretty easy to get those skills ranks. In fact, it's what some speedruns of the game on Maddening actually use. Enemies in Aux battles don't get a bunch of bonus levels like they do in main chapter maps, so they're a lot weaker. With enough defense stacking (Battalions, Shields, Def +2, Terrain, Armor Knight Cert) you can take zero damage from enemies. If you then equip a broken weapon, you can then lure enemies to areas where your units aren't able to hit them while they hit your units for zero. Here's a decent example of this. From there it's just a matter of mashing attack. That Bernadetta gains +3 Lance exp per battle and could have +5 if she were a Cavalier. It takes 3300 wexp to go from C Lances to S+ Lances. 5 rounds of combat per turn times 5 skill exp per round is 25 skill exp, which means it only takes 132 turns to get S+ Rank. So you'd need to do this on 2 maps thanks to 99 turn cap, but it's perfectly doable. It's actually much faster to raise units this way rather than traditionally using the monestary, which is why the speedrun used it to get A Rank Authority on Dimtri by Chapter 2. Also, that Commoner only run did finish. It's just not in the playlist. Here's a look of what endless stream of DLC aux battles does to an endgame.

Recruiting is always on the table. A combination of Shamir, Catherine, and Seteth would be enough to get through most of game. They'd just get walled at the endgame without class masteries though.

It's taking into consideration cooking and class masteries. The cooking can be cut, but losing out on Class Masteries would make three houses just flat out impossible. You'd just have no way to beat the end game bosses without them.

Depends on the the game. A lot of 0% Growths runs in the later part of the series rely heavily on stat boosters to make up the stat difference, especially temporary ones like rallies and tonics. But a lot of the earlier ones have some pretty deflated stats like FE3, so it's pretty doable. If you want an idea of what a run would look like, here's an example of a 0% Growths byleth soloing VW without statboosters. They used Wyvern class bases on Byleth, but Seteth could just be used instead with how high his bases are.

The Gold is easily more valuable than +2 Speed. Weapons always matter a lot more than stats in Echoes. Clive is a good example this. The +2 Speed would allow him to be double Cavaliers with his borderline Speed, but he'd still be unable double Cavaliers with a Steel Lance and prevent him from one rounding. If you instead opted to make a Forged Ridersbane, he can straight up one shot all the Cavaliers in Act 3 even at base level. That's pretty much the power of forges in a nutshell. The Killer Bow, Silver Sword, and Steel Lance make an incredible difference that the stat boost isnt really useful, especially with how most enemies are pretty slow.

Enemies generally like avoiding damage, but being able to counterattack at three range makes them prioritize hit in my experience. I mean, we're including DLC in this discussion. Sauna makes speeds up the acquisition of S Rank quite significantly. I was able to S Rank on a Dark Flier Dorothea by Chapter 14 on SS. +2 Magic is pretty vital for Sylvain since he's pretty borderline on a lot of one shots. It can make the difference between having to switch from a +1 range staff to a Magic Staff for a ome shot in the midgame. Even the late game it can make difference with how bulky some enemies get chip damage can on occansion not be emough. It's never worth unequpping I find. And there's really no reason not to go Archer. Mocking bird only provide +10 Hit, which really isn't enough when magic Sylvain has no practical way or increasing hit by himself due to not really being able to equip the accuracy ring. Here's a question: On what chapter do you think this Bow Breaker setup is most useful on?

Yeah, I'd also have to say Dark Knight Sylvain dodge tanking bows is not an effective niche. For one, it's just not consistent enough. 50 avoid may sound good on paper when you can add it, but it wont work well in pratice. Even if you included mocking bird thieves battalion and added in DK Sylvains average level 40 Speed of 26, that's only 86 Avoid against bow users. Chapter 14 snipers all ready have 126 Hit. A 40% Hit Rate isn't exactly nothing. And it grows worse as more enemy snipers will be able to consistently double Sylvain. While you could engage them at three range for a -30 Hit penalty, that'd require some really specific positioning that's not really convient. If you're dedicating 2 skill slots to dealing with only one specific type of enemy, you shouldn't have to rely on specific positioning to be consistent. Which also beings up the other issue: skill slots. Taking up 2 skill slots on something that's not effective on enemies is quite the ask. Even if you went pure mage Sylvain, between Magic +2, Fiendish Blow, Prowess, Range +1, and Hit +20, you really wouldn't want to drop any of those. Not to mention, these are snipers. They're not difficult enemies to one round on Player Phase so the chip damage on enemy phase isn't really that helpful. Dark Knight Sylvain might be better than Mir is giving it credit for, but Dodgetanking bow using enemies is certainly not an effective niche Dark Knight Sylvain has.

Cold take: Crit spells aren't good because there's no good way to stack crit like they are with regular weapons. There's no great magic crit battalions, no combat arts that increase crit, and no class bonuses or masteries that help with crit. And that's all on top of Fimbultvr having -10 crit compared to Killer weapons. Fimbultvr and Blizzard are just bad spells in this game tbh.

I'd say that was caused by Arthur using a Hand Axe on enemy phase rather than the Iron Axe that showed up in the calculations. Equipped items don't change unless you actually go through with attacking or equip them outside of the forecast. There's a 1 might difference between the two weapons and a base Arthur with a Spear Fighter pair up does not get doubled by Oboro. The only thing that could cause that is Arthur wielding a Hand Axe. Either way, there is no shame in switching to Casual mode. Experimenting strategies with battle saves is a lot better than just resorting to something like turtling and can help you become a better player as long as you don't go through each battle with units dying.

Pretty much. The 3 Bow Cavs are at the back of the squad Javarro comes out with. So you can put Leif in range of 5 Sword Cavs without being in range of them and then clear them out on player phase. Javarro will then get his reinforcmenets and you can repeat the process until Seliph's catches up.

Giving him the things i have mentioned, having Leif clear out the arena and bop some dark mages on the way, he should reach Darna at Level 9. That gives him ~41 HP, 17 Str, 13 Spd, and 13 Def. With the Chapter 6 Silver Sword he can cleanly one round the Sword Cavs and gets 6 Round KO'd by them. Here's the thing though: Those enemies are at level 13, which makes Leif gain 80-60 Exp a pop for everyone he offs. On an Enemy Phase facing off against 5 Sword Cavs, he can gain as many as 4 levels in a single Enemy Phase. Suddenly gaining ~+5 HP, +2 Str, +2 Spd, +3 Def is what allows him to take on the Reinforcements with the Light Brand pretty comfortably. Javarro does have a pretty high chance of killing if he targets Leif. But if everyone he comes out of the castle with is wiped out even on enemy phase, he will always resort running back into the castle for reinforcements. So you can manipulate him into not attacking all if you keep your distance and manage to off his squad before he can attack. Now admittedly, this whole strategy relies on blatant favoritism to have a unit snowball. If this were anyone but Lief, I would decry it for taking too many resources for not enough gain. But a mounted Rescue Staff is so inordinately useful that it makes it worth this investment worth it. Being able to rescue a dancer after refreshing, for example, allows them to keep up so much better with mounted units without having to rely on the Knight and Leg Ring and frees those up for other units to use. That Rescue utility is what makes putting up with Leif through all of this worth it.

By the time Ethlyn and Quan leave by the end of Chapter 3, the Bargain band as already seen most of it's use swapping around the Paragon Ring since most Gen 1 units have already promoted by then. Missing it out on Chapter 6 doesn't really matter since that chapter should be almost completely dedicated to raising Seliph, leaving minimal time for Paragon swapping shenanigans. Having Lief at Darna doesn't hurt the turn count if he goes while it's neutral. Even when promoted and with the leg ring, it still takes Seliph a couple turn to reach the castle, leaving Leif ample time to tear through the enemies there with the Light Brand. Main reason why I don't like Horseti is that Leywn Arthur takes too much away from other units in the earlygame of Gen 2. He requires a lot of Exp to promote at a time when other units also really need thee Exp, needs valuable rings to one round anything without Forseti, needs a lot of gold to fuel his Forseti usage, and pales lategame comparative to Ced. It's just a lot of hassle for a unit that substantial overkill when most units in Gen 2 are already super overkill.

You don't have to pass the Pursuit Ring to Leif for him to use in Chapter 7. You could just pass him down the Return Ring with some high value items like the Skill Ring and have him buy the Pursuit ring in Rivough. By adding the Bargain and Paragon Ring to the mix, you can have Leif promote by the end of chapter 7 pretty easily if you have him grind on the Darna Reinforcements while Seliph takes his time coming back from Melgen. As for Arthur, I always found Horesti to be pretty overrated myself. It's very overkill in the early gen 2 chapters and not as good at bosskilling in the later chapters compared to Ced. Adding on other annoying aspects such as having low resistance for status staves and really wanting the Bargin Ring, I never found it to be Horesti to particularly worthwhile.