Boomhauer007

I did this in SS, it was moderately challenging combined with zero grind. Trainees / Marisa / Eirika / etc hoo boy. Did allow myself Natasha as a healer, lol 1 base MAG though

Sacred Stones, 20 chapters is a game changer when I’m just trying to chill out

Since I never said mine: I think Echoes is mine, because it's the only final map in the series that actually feels like a test of everything you've dealt with over the main campaign. Terrors, cantors, witches, swamp tiles, earthquake, duma's gift, it's all there. The voiced special opening lines feel really good, and Twilight of the Gods stands out even among final map themes. By far the worst part is Falchion having to deal the final blow, combined with his regen. More than 1 time I've ended up resetting because I'd end up at awkward HP thresholds where Falchion couldn't kill Duma but his ability where no one else could hurt him would kick in. Conquest could be really good but it's honestly too ridiculous on lunatic. Inevitable End + Staff Savant + Enfeeble is a bit too much, not to speak of the hex rod maids.

Is it the final boss themselves? The map having an interesting twist? Difficulty? Story impact? Not having to use specific characters to deal the final blow? The map forcing to engage with it? (Like not warp skipping or straight up ignoring whole segments) Obviously the answer is some combination of things, but what is it for you that makes it good or memorable? I intentionally left out music since pretty much every endgame map has great music (and then there's Thracia) Almost forgot, this is a topic about final maps and thus spoilers will be everywhere.

I agree with this but also think it's an inherent problem with the start, specifically having a small of units that are unequal in talent. I'm not really sure what you can do about that without fundamentally changing the game or just nerfing early game enemies. I actually think this is increasingly impossible as newer entries give the player an over abundance of tools. First skills, then combat arts, then battalions; the players have such ridiculous stuff at their disposal that it would be extremely difficult at this point to make difficulty that isn't just pumping stats. I think CQ lunatic was on the right path with capped enemies / enemy exclusive skills / tight formations, but clearly the went away from that in 3 houses.

Besides Aether it may as well be a sol scroll. That said, sol is actually pretty useful in this game because of the sheer amount of enemy phasing paladins do, and I always slap that first scroll on Titania immediately since Ike is length far from promoting.

I'm pretty confident that somebody (possibly Mordecai) says at some point that the beast tribe communicate with each other through what is essentially grunts and roars. I'll even give Skimir a pass here since they probably made him learn it since they're training him as the future king. He's shown to be stubborn, but not with Caenighis (sp) around.

I would say that they have the capacity for intelligence, but the tribes' culture as a whole is not set up for intelligence to succeed. Lions and hawks pick their leaders solely off strength. Tibarn is like a best case scenario, and the lions are about to be stuck with Skimir. The ravens have plenty of cunning, but actively choose to use it for things like piracy. The dragons and herons are clearly capable of advancement, but choose seclusion and a simplistic lifestyle instead. I think their representation between the games doesn't help. I would argue PoR shows them as nomadic; perfectly capable of advancement but choosing to live simply with the land. But man in RD, they're portrayed like morons....again... and again. All of the interactions during the war, the blood pact nonsense, everything Dheginsea does / says, it's like they for some reason wanted them to look dumb.

You're right, that is what happens in fixed mode. This is why posting close to midnight is never a good idea.

Oh man blossom might not be the worst skill in the game if it did that. I don't remember exactly how it works in fixed mode, but in normal mode it just lowers the RN check to 90 instead of 100 for a level up. This isn't quite a perfect extrapolation, but I believe it works out to about a 1.1 average increase per stat every 10 levels, at the steep cost of only gaining 2/3rd experience.

I was thinking about that too. I think it's the result of about half the categories being non gameplay related, but desire to replay something being almost all gameplay related. Genealogy can score high in all the story / writing etc, but only gets penalized once in rankings in pacing for being a huge slog. Story is very important for a first playthrough, but I can't remember the last time I replayed an FE game without the start button. Thracia has some categories where it is inarguably terrible in like ironman and usability, which is almost 40% of its point total. Something like SS that plays it safe manages to avoid the bottom of most rankings, and then makes up points in presentation and usability. Those are really heavily skewed toward newer games, I think I question those categories a bit more as this goes since it's expected that those always get better. Like PoR I think has unquestionably better presentation than anything so far and can automatically be slotted into the #1 spot before it starts, and I fully expect it'll score high on usability as well.

Don't you worry, Revelation is still on the list. Random question: How small do the maps of SS feel in comparison to the other games. Off a gut feeling they always feel tiny, with physically bigger ones like 19 and 20 not really doing anything with it or being easily skipped, but I'm not sure if they're any less big or small than previous entries. Feels like the anti genealogy in terms of being able to cross every map in just a few turns.

Persona 4 golden was a day 1 buy, been waiting for years for it to get off vita

Eirika Hard finished 201 turns later: https://imgur.com/a/JvVA4nT Characters after competition: https://imgur.com/a/vUrt0MX Not pictured: Vanessa, who died against final Lyon. She finished at 11/20, capped strength / skill / speed with solid defense and res. Saleh and Vanessa got all the stat boosters. Remaining chapter summaries: Chapter 15: 15 turns. Stalled a couple turns for the silver card, wasn't even needed in the end. Made use of Colm with Audhulma and Excalibur to quickly snipe bosses. In a surprise to no one, Vanessa was immediately given the boots for 10 move shenangins. Chapter 16: 9 turns. Now we start warping... except Natasha still had 8 magic lol. Luckily the minimum distance is 5. Warped Vanessa up to clear the room, warped Eirika to cap. Chapter 17: 6 turns. I wanted to steal the dragon shield, and then Colm critted the berserker and killed him (with an iron sword). This could have been 3 or 4 turns if my plan hadn't involved the shield. All the villagers and syrene died lol. Chapter 18: 9 turns. Actually kinda tricky with only 8 units. Managed to kill all the eggs before they hatched. Chapter 19: 4 turns. I pity the foos without warp here. Warp Marissa into the speedwing room, warp Ephraim to the boss, easy KO. One more turn and king whatever his name is would have gotten obliterated lol. Chapter 20: 5 turns. Blitz Vanessa to the boss area, clear all the adds. Warp Ephraim for the boss kill, warp Eirika for the cap. Could have been so much efficient with a warp bigger than 5 tiles lol. Endgame: 6 turns (4/2). In her final act of heroism, Vanessa flew straight into the boss area and cleared nearly the entire room, smacked Lyon with Vidofnir a couple times, and fell to the crimson eye spam after Lyon hit her. For style points, I killed Formotiis with Colm. Final thoughts: I could have subtracted quite a few turns with hindsight. Things like chests that I sacrificed turns for ended up being unnecessary, and I had a personal rule of not looking up spawns ahead of time. Chapters 8 and 9 were a fifth of my whole run. Unpromoted/fresh promoted Vanessa, Colm, and Eirika were my only combat units lol. Vanessa was an obvious MVP. Falcon knight having sword access was actually huge, she never had the bulk to go into a crowd of axes wielding a lance and coming out alive. The unlikely MVP was Colm, who had the 2nd highest strength on the team lol. He was a powerhouse with the S sword, and never got hit. Saleh and Ephraim are always good, Marisa is always bad, and Eirika did Eirika stuff and ended with 15 strength. Natasha with 12 magic at endgame was lol, but warp is warp. I had a good time, would definitely be up for something like this again.

I wouldn't say there's any overall community standard, although in general I think I've seen that games in general have a bell curve in difficulty where most people pick the middle and fan out from there. The second question can be a loaded question; it depends on what you're discussing, and then to me differs from game to game. Anyone can discuss the story, that's independent of difficulty. But once you start talking about good and bad units, it's guaranteed to come up. And of course strategies that work on easy are not necessarily going to work on hard, although that's true for any game. This may sound elitist, but generally speaking, not really in regards to going down. If someone is on easy and they go up, then yes, there's a lot to be gained. However, I don't think there's anything to be gained by playing on hard and then going down to easy. Ideally harder difficulties force better understanding of mechanics and strategies, and present new challenges to adapt to and overcome. Conversely, going down does the opposite.

Chapter 10: 13 turns. This could have easily been like 5, but Marisa. May have drafted Ewan had I considered how many turns this would cost me. Hardest part of the map was keeping Gerik from combat (hit by 2 range in that fort) as a blue unit. Chapter 11: 15 turns. I never realized just how terribly designed this map is. A fog of war rout chapter where enemies spawn in the corners of the map, and then for some reason a bunch of them went non aggressive at the end costing even more turns. The victory fanfare played 3 different times. L'Archel actually got sniped by the promoted gargoyle, good thing I didnt recruit her. Up next: Another rout map with terrain that makes routing extremely tedious...but at least now we have Saleh, who immediately got the angel robe I've been saving. Edit instead of back to back posts. Chapter 12: 11 turns. This is where having a level 5 falcon knight is paying huge dividends. Vanessa just flew all over the map erasing chunks of enemies while Saleh cleaned up all the spawns in the back. Chapter 13: 5? Turns. Forgot to count. Even in an LTC draft I could still beat the boss almost before Cormag shows up. I managed to steal Amelia's speedwing before she died, it went to Saleh right away. Chapter 14: 13? Turns. Also forgot to count. Grabbed the member card killing Rennac on turn 2, followed by lots of carrying Eirika to the throne. Vanessa killed Carlyle without being hit, and was fast enough to double him with an iron lance. Missed the 10k gold by 1 turn which kinda sucked, already burned 1 extra turn hitting the secret shop for killing edges and lances. Promoted level 10 Marisa and Natasha, Natasha has 8 magic as a bishop which is pretty lol. I drafted Colm for the sole purpose of not taking a turn penalty to deploy in 15, here we go.

So jealous of those save states in those videos https://imgur.com/a/xlBDQ5t

Chapter 7: 9 turns. Could have been less, but I didn't draft colm to not steal that energy ring. Chapter 8: 20 turns. Brutal with just Vanessa / Eirika / Colm for combat still, and archers everywhere. Only Ephraim was usable on the left, and he was the only one capable of killing the boss. Getting him there took forever. That said, the elysian whip here is invaluable. Chapter 9: 23 turns. Ugh rout map. Vanessa promoted at the start to falcon knight, access to swords actually really helped here. Saved all the villages as Vanessa flew around. Colm hit level 18 and promoted to rogue with a usable 13 strength. It's a good thing my team is built around warping later because these 43 turns have to get made up somewhere.

I actually think it's a bit handy late game when chapter 17/19/endgame 1 all have magic bosses that don't move, that +5 can be the difference between surviving and not surviving the counter attack from final Lyon who hits like a truck.

Restarted, Vanessa can now now 2hko the chapter 6 boss, except I'm still smacking my head against the RNG trying to get to him while also kiting the healer away. But got some quicker clears: Prologue 1 turn Chapter 1, 3 turns Chapter 2, 4 turns Chapter 3, 6 turns Chapter 4, 5 turns Chapter 5, 5 turns (could be 4 but I want the guiding ring) Chapter 5x, 9 turns Chapter 6: 4 turns, thought this stupid chapter would never end. It was basically flying Vanessa straight to boss before the Cavs overwhelmed Eirika and Colm. Needed easily like 15 50/50 rolls to hit, and even the successful attempt involved an 80% dodge of the boss. Hardest part was having to increase the RNG needed in order to bait the cleric away from the boss, which required equipping the iron lance instead of the slim lance to drop a fighters HP low enough to trigger the heal AI.

Eh I got to chapter 6 in about an hour, restarting wouldn't be a huge deal. Probably give it a couple more cracks tonight and see what happens.

I legit might restart, I'm not sure I can do it with a Vanessa that's still on base strength and just one point of speed at level 5. She can't double the boss with an iron lance lol. Two hours of resets and RNG rerolls produced basically nothing. I'm actually playing on cart, so I don't have the power of save states to truck through one chapter either.

Chapter 4: 6? Turns. Actually forgot to look at the certain count before I cleared, woops. Chapter went perfectly after a couple deaths. No strength on Eirika or Vanessa yet is concerning. Chapter 5: 4 turns. Seth with more amazing levels, everyone else with terrible levels. Ch 6 is going to be brutal. Chapter 5x: 10 turns. Contender for worst map in the game. So slow, even more so when you only have 2 units. Currently slamming my head against chapter 6 which might not be possible with this group.

Hard mode. Side note, the speed of this game is so nice after slogging through 3 houses maddening again. Prologue: 1 turn. Both Eirika and Seth crit their first attacks, hopefully a sign of things to come. Chapter 1: 3 turns. Had a couple resets because Eirika doesn't like dodging 50/50s. Had to rescue Gilliam with Franz and move into the corner to avoid being attacked, lost a run to that. Chapter 2: 5 turns. Do Ross and Garcia have an invincibility flag? I didn't think they did, but Ross dodged a comical amount of deadly blows. It'd be nice if both Eirika and Vanessa weren't each at level 1 still, but I figure I can work that out later. Chapter 3: 8 turns. Would have reset in a more serious deal. Lost a couple turns due to 80%+ misses. Seth leveled every stat against the boss for lulz.

Me: Vanessa / Natasha / Saleh / Colm / Innes / Marisa Golden: Garcia / Joshua / L'Archel / Cormag / Knoll / Dolza Hello: Kyle / Moulder / Artur / Syrene / Rennac / Ameila Fraven: Ross / Tana / Tethys / Forde / Gilliam / Myrrh Benice: Franz / Gerik / Lute / Duessel / Neimi / Ewan You can just copy and paste this into the OP