Classic

Hmm... posting just a spoiler and nothing else basically ensures people will read what's in the spoiler, thus scarring them with something they can never unknow. Very clever.

Well dang, that's what I was gonna suggest, too, even if it's kind of a cop out. I'd say a lot of 'being good' comes down to game knowledge and experience and the easiest way to get those is to just play the game, so another playthrough on a higher difficulty seems like great idea! Maybe put yourself out of your comfort zone a little, as long as you're still having fun. I'm sure there are some characters/weapons/mechanics you haven't used before, but that seem cool or interesting to you, so try some of those (maybe not all at the same time, so you have something to fall back on) and get to know their quirks and limits. If you're playing on an emulator don't be afraid to use a few savestates. Radiant Dawn even has inbuilt ones. I don't suggest too much wiki diving (at least not yet), but if you do have specific gameplay questions Serenes Forest does have a very good resources for stats and mechanics. https://serenesforest.net/path-of-radiance/ https://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/ There is also a wiki https://fireemblemwiki.org/ And if you do get stuck, don't be afraid to ask for help on the forums. And finally for some real concrete gameplay advice: Don't rush to moves, even if they seem obvious. Asses all your options before you move a character. Check the different attacks and moves your characters have and where that would leave them. Is that where you want them or would you rather use someone else? Don't be afraid to think about your situation a lot. And if something doesn't work out, try to think about what you could have done differently. Treat the game a bit more like chess initially and things will become second nature in no time.

While BEXP does not carry over between armies it will eventually be pooled together, once your armies merge. Chapter 2-3 in particular can give a huge amount of BEXP for not killing enemies, which you might want to watch out for. You can use that to massively raise a unit, Haar is easily best for this, to make 2-F and some other later maps a cakewalk. I don't agree with this at all, at least on normal. Jill does need some investment, but the payoff is huge, she makes amazing use of the resources you put into her. Much better than anyone else in the DB and it's not even close.

So is this a thing you're planning on doing for all parts or just part 1? Don't think I've seen a lot of people rate units for each part individually (maybe I just don't know where to look though), but it seems like a nice idea for RD.

Try to stick to a similar roster of characters, but don't be afraid to bench units, if you feel like they are getting RNG screwed or you find someone cooler you want to use. You'll keep getting new characters even in the later stages of the game. Also normal mode generally gets pretty easy later on and no character is truly unusable, so don't feel bad about using your Waifus and Husbandos, even if they're not the best choice gameplay wise.

For healers weapon rank is generally way more important than stats. The mount is very nice, but being able to use Physic at C is like a pseudo mount. By giving BEXP to Mist you're essentially tying up stats on her that other units could have used to snowball. Jill and Marcia especially make great use of extra levels, so investing in them seems much better. If your Mist already has some staff EXP there isn't really a point to putting BEXP into her, just keep spamming heal and she'll get to lvl 10 eventually. If you haven't used her at all yet it might be worth considering, only if you feel like you really need a good staff user right away for some reason, since the promotion gives her a staff rank C. The opportunity cost is still huge though, so it really doesn't seem worth it still. For the long term I'd say just field her and let her get EXP and weapon rank that way, if you wanna use her. If you're playing slower Ilyana and Soren also get a staff rank at promotion, which can be quite useful. Also, since some people have brought it up, Soren does also have some staff utility as a Sage later in the game. He only gets rank E at promotion though, which means your powerful Sage is now relegated to being a staff bot until he's gone through an entire Heal staff to raise his weapon level. That's a lot of turns of not attacking with your promoted unit, when base level Mist or Rhys could do the exact same job. Rhys even starts with staff rank D. Not to mention you get someone with staff rank A in the late game. Sages only get the option of healing about halfway through the game and only become really good at in the last ten chapters or so, if you focus on them. Yeah it's cool to have a combat unit that can throw out a Physic or a Sleep, but there is also quite a bit of investment behind it, so I wouldn't really call Soren (or Ilyana) the best healer in the game. Not to mention the fact that they both have three other weapon ranks that they can train.

What I'm trying to say doesn't really have anything to do with enemies being harder, if that's what you meant. Tormord is usable for some time, but you don't really have the resources to make him much better beyond what he already is on hard. Every tried bringing him to the tower on hard? It's a real pain. On normal, everyone can be made really good, because XP is so abundant. On hard you have little to no spare resources. This means units that join underleveled suffer (like Fiona), because they require more investment relative to the total resources you have. Same applies to units like Tormod that appear very little and aren't ready for Endgame. His performance changes very little in Part 1, but then he becomes basically unusable. On other difficulties he remains at least an option, because you have enough spare change you can throw at him, to make him good. Similar performance in 1 and not even an option in 4/5 sounds worse to me, no? Mind you, he's not the only one with this problem, just an example and probably not the best one I could have picked. Lyre, Lethe, Kyza, Vika, Fiona, Nealuchi, Lucia, Astrid, Makalov, Pelleas, Kurth etc. all require some sort of extra investment, either to keep being useful or to make them worth using in the first place. So compared to a unit like Ike, who needs basically no extra investment at all on any difficulty, if there are less extra resources you can throw around they become worse (no WT also makes Ike better, but that isn't really relevant to my point). Hell even Jill suffers form this (though she's obviously still really good). Basically if a unit requires some moderate to significant investment at some point, that makes them a bit worse in general on normal mode, but a lot worse on hard.

Since on hard you only effectively get a quarter the BEXP you'd get on normal, units that have bad availability and rely on BEXP to catch up (e.g Tormod, etc.) also become really bad on hard.

Did they bring back shove?

Manic Mode is much more challenging than Hard Mode and multiple times slower. In Hard Mode you can just move a good unit near a bunch of enemies without thinking too much about it and that unit will most likely kill everything. In Maniac mode you need proper resource allocation like supports, forges, BEXP, etc or that unit will die, because enemies are much tougher and there are way more of them. Maniac mode does also fix the stat problem of promoted enemies and gives them more stats than unpromoted enemies. Overall Maniac Mode is much harder difficulty wise, harder than RD Hard, I'd say. It just also takes ages, since enemies have a lot more stats and thus are alive for longer and there are so many enemies. The enemy phases are probably 2-4 times longer depending on the map and it'll take a lot more turns to clear maps too. If it had the QoL features of RD I'd recommend it, but as it stands, it's a great challenge for a seasoned player, but you do have to be somewhat resistant to boredom. You could also wait, if the rumors about a remake are true, maybe that has a Maniac mode with animation/enemy phase skipping.

Ohh boy, that sounds like a mess, but maybe a very fun mess. Ignoring unit's that are probably free/banned, Jill is pretty easily the best unit on the Dawn Brigade side (maybe too good) and probably Oscar on the Greil Merc side, I'd say. Zihark and Ilyana are obviously good. Ilyana probably has the best availability of any unit overall (not sure, haven't done math). The Greil Mercs have some other good units like Boyd, Mia and Soren. Really any unit that joins early in PoR and stays with them is pretty good, cause they're bound to available a decent amount. The real question for multiple units is how RD availability and some units being free, because of perspective switches, impacts things. Marcia is really good in PoR for example, but not as great in RD. She's in very few chapters, and one of the chapters she is in is easy because either Haar is free or Haar is banned and she is free. Also keep in mind, assuming normal difficulty for both games, PoR is a lot easier than RD. PoR hard and RD normal might make it more interesting. All in all very much depends on the rules of the draft. Also how do you handle Largo? I don't know why that's so funny to me, but I just imagined them phasing in and out of existence with a Thanos snap.

Wow, I had no idea that existed, very nice! Knowing all this ahead of time makes things a lot less stressful. Also yeah it looks like only about 60-70% of non-Laguz have 2 range in later chapters, I thought it was more like 80-90%, but I guess those enemies are just more annoying, so I remember them a lot more. I'd say something like Oscar-Kieran gives a good amount of avo (22), too, and is reasonably fast (A at chapter 16? I think?) And Pegasus/Wyvern Riders are of course not Cavaliers with wings, but their own classes. I kinda just always lump in all mounted units with Cavaliers and then confuse people when talking about mounted units. Already edited my previous post for clarity on that point.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Probably not, it's just a grindfest you complete for bragging rights, it's an absolute chore of unimaginable proportion. Enemy phases are already long on hard, but with the amount of enemies in Maniac mode, turns take multiple minutes on enemy phase alone. "Clash!" probably has 70+ enemies counting reinforcements. On the other hand more enemies mean more EXP. And there are a LOT of enemies. Almost every enemy has 2 range, which, combined with their high stats, means you will never one round in enemy phase (you barely one round at 1 range too). So all the enemies get multiple turns of movement/attack and you'll have to wait even longer. Difficulty wise it is definitely possible if you're familiar with the game, it just takes some waiting. If I were to make a comparison for a Falcom enthusiast, it's like playing Trails in the Sky No NG+ Nightmare, but you're not allowed to use Turbo. All in all not really my idea of fun, but if you get over the waiting it is quite a satisfying challenge to complete. If you really want to try, my advice would be: Javelins and Hand Axes (and their better variants) are super important, swords are even worse Mounted units are king, use them Earth (and other dodge) support is even better, since dodging is the only viable way of damage mitigation with the amount of enemies around, so keep support partners together Remember to use all item/weapon slots especially on your Laguz, Staffbots and Rogue, weapons will break often so keep backup (keep in mind Rogues need free inventory space to steal) There is next to no BEXP around, but don't hoard it, use it to snowball, you'll need all the immediate advantage you can get There are a lot of enemy Siege Tomes, Pure Water is your best friend Sniping some Bosses (e.g. with your own Siege Tomes) and leaving EXP behind can the best way to clear a map Hope that helps.

This Haar vs Camilla thing might have started as a joke, I don't know, but I've seen way too many people having actual, serious discussions about it. I'm glad that seems to be a minority then.

Is that actually still an argument people are having? Or is it just a meme?