Hardest fire emblem game

[AnnetheCatDetective]

I haven't played-- well, nearly enough of the games, because I got into the series late, and wasn't able to catch up with all the prior GBA games. I do think FE9 was the easiest, in my experience... at least, because I didn't go in and try to set it to a harder mode, since it was my introduction to the series and all-- and then going back to FE8, it felt harder at the time... But yeah, that's not taking into account going in and saying 'hey, give me the hard mode!' or 'give me the easy mode!', or imposing specific challenges upon myself, that's just the first two games I played. (although, then after that, playing Lyn felt easy, so maybe my experience with the series is informing my feelings more than the games themselves)

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Conquest, which I anticipate will make 8 and 9 both look like a total cakewalk. (although, for me, I don't think easy/hard has anything to do with good/bad-- some days I don't want a challenge because I just want to unwind, after all. Other times I want to challenge myself, either by picking a harder game/mode or by limiting myself to not using certain favorite powerhouses)

[Foxxie]

I was going to give it to Thracia, but after two pages worth of thought, I'm going to give it to Binding Blade.

Thracia is no doubt hard, but it always felt more cheap than truly difficult. It needs a strategy guide because if you go it blind with all of those mechanics, you'll probably hit a wall pretty soon. In the same way I don't consider certain modes in otherwise easy games to qualify (because they're specifically made to be obtuse pains), I don't think a game literally designed to be unplayable without outside help counts, either. It's not hard with a guide, as intended, and it's certainly doable without one if you have patience.

That left me with Genealogy and Binding Blade. For me, 4 was a culture shock. Gone were the succinct battles in favor of gruelling, huge maps where even the prologue took longer than three Sacred Stones missions. There was castle management and baby-making to think about (okay, that part I could handle thanks to Awakening). All in all, it felt like a FE game that was designed to rework the series and add a depth of strategy without putting it into insane territories. Hard? Yes, but maybe more because it's such different mechanics.

The title goes to Binding Blade because it's exactly what you expect of a FE game (at least, GBA and GC/Wii offerings) but it's difficult. Bigger maps, RNG that hates you, and (for me) a cast and story that didn't hook me, so the entire reason to continue with the game was just overshadowed by its difficulty level.

tl;dr everything can be hard if you make it hard but binding blade is pretty hard by itself thanks for your time

[Reality]

I'd say 12, with 5 second. They are the only games that are immune to low manning. 12 is much more clear cut, since surviving requires using almost everything you have and it's inconsistent, while in 5, while encouraging more variety than 11 and 14, is actually more consistent to survive, because of it's reliance on so called cheap shots that lose their bite if you know they're coming.

11 is pretty great on reverse, but their are characters that can grow, and of course, warp staff. Some of the maps lifted from FE1 give you more of a positional advantage than they should, which the strong enemies can't compensate. At least the enemies with forges and braves makes it way better than the "medium FE"s

14 Nohr I had a blast the first time through, but now people have already figured the skills out enough to flat out not use half of the charathers, and I'm worried that it will go down even more.

6 and 10 are decent, but I feel its a set of maps rather than the majority of the game. Some people get thrown off by the unit switching in Chapter 3, but I honestly don't require multiple "top tier" unit to be working together, and the weak characters are much more usuable than the weak charathers in FE6-.

FE13 Lunatic + is a special case. One of the biggest things I worry about while playing it is actually getting complacent. After you build the skills up, you kind of autopilot the maps except for enemies with 3 specific skills. Tactically It's easier than 6 and 10, the challenge is heavily on the side of setup. I guess I'd still put it 5th place.

Also I didn't find 4 hard. It might have difficulty if you intentionally went with unpaired children, but the natural (as opposed to cleaning out) approach to gen 1 gets should get you at least 2 holy weapons and there aren't that many levels in gen 1 that sigurd isn't qualified for. Gen 2 can approach FE6 difficulty, but I remember it more for competing with FE 2 and 14 hosido for most tedious game ever.

[Levin's Scarf]

FE5 can be very unforgiving if you don't know what you're doing. The fact that you're limited in resources and capable units can make things tough. It also doesn't do a very good job of explaining mechanics and gaiden chapter requirements... In fact it doesn't explain anything at all.

[PKSlowpoke]

Fire Emblem 1: Meh

Fire Emblem 2: Hard, you really have to make use of grinding and Mila's shrine buffs. Godawful growths (Except for like 3 people) don't help either.

Fire Emblem 3: Same as 1

Fire Emblem 4: The only main "difficult" thing is how big the maps are. Seriously, is all that moving necessary?

Fire Emblem 5: I haven't played enough of it, since I'm picky and won't settle for these half done translations

Fire Emblem 6: Slightly. The fact that Roy becomes squishy after a while and doesn't promote until very late game doesn't help at all.

Fire Emblem 7: Juuuuuuuust right. Easy enough to have fun, but easily punishing.

Fire Emblem 8: As long as Seth is a thing, you'll be fine.

Fire Emblem 9: Pretty balanced like Blazing Sword

Fire Emblem 10: This is subjective based on difficulty

Fire Emblem 11/12: Haven't played enough of because my computer is an actual potato

Fire Emblem 13: The only thing that makes Awakening hard is Lunatic/Lunatic +

Fates: Easy, but grinding for supports and EXP is soooooo tedious.

So yeah, Gaiden takes the cake for me.

[Yvette]

From what I've played thus far:

FE1: Eh. Mechanics are archaic, but that's more of a pain than actual difficulty. Marth is OP.

FE2: Not that difficult, but growths are horrendous. This makes it difficult to train good units, but also makes dead units easy to replace. Alm and Celica are a couple of the only decent units. Forced grinding is a pain in the ass.

FE3: Easy. Mechanics have begun to improve at this point, so it's pretty alright.

FE6: Pretty close to finishing the game, the only thing difficult about it is the hit rates. Character growths are less than stellar, but the game isn't unnaturally balanced out of your favor so it works out. Harder than FE1 and FE3, but still not much of a challenge.

FE8: A joke. If it weren't for a certain more recent entry this would take the cake as easiest game in the series. Even if you take Ephraim's route, still easy. This is all assuming no grinding.

FE9: Third easiest in the series behind Sacred Stones. Was the first FE game that I beat, even as a beginner it posed no challenge.

FE10: One of the hardest. With Normal Mode actually being Hard Mode in the original Japanese version, it shows. "Easy" mode, if we're considering that the actual "Normal" mode, is actually pretty easy however.

FE13: ..................Oh my. Literally requires zero effort. Started my first playthrough on NM, only to delete that file entirely and start over on HM because it was so overwhelmingly easy. HM was equally as easy: if HM were used as the Easy mode for this game, I wouldn't have been able to tell. No grinding

FE14 (Birthright): Basically mildly more difficulty FE13. Improved the pair-up mechanics, making it less broken. Still retardedly easy.

FE14 (Conquest): This one took my vote as most difficult. HM felt difficult, and was the perfect challenge for me personally. Though I admit, I have yet to play it on Normal, which I've heard is still challenging.

FE14 (Revelation): Slightly more difficult Birthright. So, easy.

Was between FE10 and FE14 (Conquest) as most difficult. Voted FE14 because I guess if we're comparing FE10's NM as being the actual HM, I'd say Conquest was the more difficult one.

Haven't played enough of FE4 to have much input on that one. Also, though I'm taking into account higher difficulties, I'm not counting Awakening's Lunatic+. That mode is hard for all of the wrong reasons.

[BerserkStaff]

fe 5 difficulty is so overrated. enemies suck and you have plentiful warp to get through the rest of the game. you get enough staffbots and enough silence and sleep staves to disable enemy berserk/sleep/silence users. hammerne is broken. you also get plenty of op weapons starting chapter 1. the final chapter you can disable every boss except elf with status staves. the only chapters that takes a decent amount of actual strategizing are chapters 4,4x, 5, 16(sort of), 20 (which you can block reinforcements, and 21x. other than that every other chapter is trivialized in one way or another. see my thracia guide (my first topic post) for more details.

fe 6 hard mode chapters 4-7 are hard because most of your team dies in one or two rounds thats not marcus or dieck or rutger. enemies are brutal and low hit rates hurt you more than it hurts the enemies. maps are long which means resetting is more frustrating. at least fe12 my unit is overpowered and reclassing makes the game easier. enemy AI is predictable bc they always go for whom they can do the most damage to regardless of how much damage they take.

[Nintales]

In terms of fair difficulty, which is what I rate, 14!LunaNohr wins it. Some of the hardest fire emblem battles ever. 10, 12, 20 and 25 are probably imo the hardest FE chapters ever due to their ingenious map design and painful groups of mobs.

In terms of unfair difficulty, FE13!Luna+ wins. This is a game that's almost unwinnable without hyper low-manning and/or grinding.

In terms of very unfriendly difficulty, Thracia wins. Doing Thracia blind is a chore. But unlike FE14 or FE13, if you do it again and remember the tricks... It's way less harder.

I just feel like Thracia is punishing hard the first playthrough, but if you play multiple times the same game, Nohr!Luna is probably the hardest out of all Fire Emblems, simply because it uses all the creativity the developers had.

[Lord Tullus]

In terms of fair difficulty, which is what I rate, 14!LunaNohr wins it. Some of the hardest fire emblem battles ever. 10, 12, 20 and 25 are probably imo the hardest FE chapters ever due to their ingenious map design and painful groups of mobs.

In terms of unfair difficulty, FE13!Luna+ wins. This is a game that's almost unwinnable without hyper low-manning and/or grinding.

In terms of very unfriendly difficulty, Thracia wins. Doing Thracia blind is a chore. But unlike FE14 or FE13, if you do it again and remember the tricks... It's way less harder.

I just feel like Thracia is punishing hard the first playthrough, but if you play multiple times the same game, Nohr!Luna is probably the hardest out of all Fire Emblems, simply because it uses all the creativity the developers had.

Exactly my thoughts. Except... what about FE 12? That game had me shivering. (BTW thracia was my pick)

[DemolisherBPB]

Like based off raw game alone. Assuming 'Normal' is the standard difficulty in the ones with choice FE 5 wins due to it's slightly older mechanics, one roll RNG, Same turn mover reinforcements, and design admittedly it's slightly easier if you already know some of the maps and such but your more likely to get hit but 4 35% hits in this than any other game based off my time with it.

But if we include actual difficulty options then FE 13's Lunatic + wins without a doubt since you can actually have unwinnable maps, but since that poor design over actual game play we can ignore it. Lunatic Conquest is actually well designed up to Endgame where they sorta just went, "How do we make this hard?" "Screw it just put 5 enfeebles with the one that makes debuffs stack" It sorta makes you throw meatshields.

Lunatic reveres in 12 is interesting, since on the face it's no harder than lunatic 12 but enemys pretty much have vantage +. I've not tried it but i imagine it can be painful without the right unit allocation, you'll probably use a lot of the pre-promotes and high HP units.

As an Honourable mention I give trying to play any game in a foreign language without knowing said language, mainly FE 1 where you have no idea what item is what, this is more of a joke as I actually tired this, it's not really that hard at all. you just guess.

[forsety]

Let's say you're used to playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, and you see the option to escape, and you're so happy because you're surrounded by enemies and you can't possibly defeat all their numbers, so you go ahead and you "select" the tile and press "escape" and the whole army goes along with you...

Now picture having the same situation for Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, and your lord is the closest one to the tile, so you use it and end the chapter. Then, the next chapter, you find out that because your lord was the only one to move up, they're the only ones that are available in it (and for the rest of the game until you recruit more people) therefore questioning why you were such a coward  and eager to leave the chapter, and didn't you just fight and let your units escape before you...?!

Also, picture having enemies taking your characters (they look like 'rescues' from FE6,7,8), and when you defeat those enemies, they drop your unit, only for you to realize they also took their weapons leaving your unit unable to fight *Cries*

Thracia 776 was so hard, but fun!

[Slumber]

Vanilla game: Definitely Thracia. Nothing even really comes close. Maybe Conquest, but even then there's a gap in difficulty.

With hard/lunatic modes: 12. Awakening's Lunatic+ is just cheap and annoying, but it can be abused through. 12 is a bit harder to just abuse through.

I'm gonna say 5 overall, though. Those higher difficulties on 11-13 aren't meant to be balanced at all, and I have a hard time saying that those modes are legitimately challenging, as opposed to just a test of patience. Those modes are a test of your ability to get the RNG on your side, as opposed to testing any real strategic ability you might have. Thracia is hard because of the mechanics at play in that game that are relatively unconventional for the series. But you can make FE5 a balanced experience pretty easily, and strategy can usually stump any obstacles. You just need to play with extreme care.

[Tango]

FE12 Reverse Lunatic is a nightmare. 10/10

[Harvey]

I just don't understand how people can claim that FE6 isn't anywhere harder than FE5 when you consider that the former has unpolished mechanics and a lot of things forced down on your throat. I have yet to play FE5 and I'll admit that I'm a bit scared to try it out but I'm guessing that its mechanics are well balanced...atleast that's what I'm assuming.

 

[Thor Odinson]

having played all FEs from 4 and on, most of them on the highest difficulty

12 L reverse is definitely the toughest

hell, raw 12 L is still harder than the rest of the L modes. I really had to get to know the AI and watch my positioning. Definitely cannot rely on any dodging whatsoever.

I mean, 13 L+ is really just chapter 2, once you get used to it, it gets really algorithmic and can be trivialized. I haven't really followed the 14NL strats, but it wasn't as hard as 12L anyway.  FE5 is only hard blind, and very easily broken if not blind. I enjoy trying to do extremely overpowered stuff in FE5.

[secondworld]

The highest Lunatic difficulties are clearly miles above the others. If we don't count these modes, since that's a question in the poll, then Conquest takes the cake easily.

[JimmyBeans]

Fe5 I think. Nohr Lunatic is probably the best designed hard game in the series, but the difficulty in fe5 comes a lot from unfairness.