So ends my ironman run, perfect until "Foreign Land And Sky".

[Alastor15243]

Okay, so I had resolved to play my first run blind ironman hard, no resets or divine pulse uses, until and unless the game demonstrated that playstyle to be outright impossible.

It just did so.

I can't believe they brought ambush spawns back. How. I thought their complete removal in Fates meant they realized they were a terrible idea. But no, they're back now, and they're almost as bad as in Awakening. No, they don't show up and attack all on the same enemy phase, but they show up in the middle of your turn, after you've moved at least one and likely more of your units. This nearly cost me a unit twice, but I somehow managed to use what characters I had nearby to save them the first two times this happened, and I managed to get all the way to this point, more than 60 hours in, without losing a single unit except for Caspar getting non-lethal KO'd during the Battle of the Eagle and Lion because I forgot about Felix's crest.

Yeah. I don't think I'm getting out of this one. If I keep sticking to ironman, my run is utterly ruined. Catherine's reinforcements showed up all over the map, surrounding several of my squishy mages who have already moved for the turn. I'm gonna look at it some more, but it's really, really looking like no matter what I do, half of my army is going to be dead the second I select "end turn". And I don't think I can recover from that if I don't restart the chapter. And as if to add insult to injury, the secondary "get Petra to the exit square" victory condition just outright disappears when she gets in range of it and triggers this, as if the game just trolled me by tricking me into an ambush.

I honestly get the feeling, playing this game, that the rewind mechanic has stopped being an optional feature you can just pretend doesn't exist, and that it's actively started affecting game design. This ambush spawn system really, genuinely feels like it was designed, intentionally, as something to which the turnwheel is the expected strategic counter. It's the only tool they give you that would realistically let you defend against this. But if I started using it, given that I got this far without a single death, I'm pretty confident the rest of the game is going to be a cakewalk. So I guess I'm just going to have to abandon ship on this ironman thing and start the chapter over. What a shame.

Anyone else have any similar experiences with the ambush spawn system?

Edited August 5, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Armagon]

33 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And as if to add insult to injury, the secondary "get Petra to the exit square" victory condition just outright disappears when she gets in range of it and triggers this, as if the game just trolled me by tricking me into an ambush.

The map is just bullshit and it's not even because of the ambush spawns. Ambush spawns are whatever, Edelgard eats most of them anyway. The reason the map is bullshit is because it changes your victory condition with literally no warning the moment you get close to completing the original. It's honestly just bad game design and i'd nominate this as one of the worst maps in the series.

If the original objective was kept intact, the map would be a lot more bearable. Even with ambush spawns, by that point in the game, you should have someone with Warp so warping Petra would've made things easier but nah, the game won't let you.

[The Roger The Paladin]

I was trying the same thing on the Blue Lions route. Certain events happened that were a little more drastic than an ambush spawn that resulted in Byleth's death (mercifully no one elses).
Go figure if you fail the mission, a divine pulse is forced instead of the game over screen. I used this to restart the mission as if I got a game over but without moving my units to more advantageous starting positions given what I'd learned. Long story short, between this and a certain map prior I learned the game really loves to throw curve-balls with mission objectives and force a divine pulse. As for what curve balls I've encountered I'll put them in a spoiler tab.

Spoiler

The two maps I'm talking about are one post time-skip where Rodrigue appears and the mounted boss and his goons all go straight at him. Which is a big "fuck you" to anyone who hadn't decided to arbitrarily head the way with more damage tiles first.

The other map, "The Blood of The Eagle and Lion", tricks you into thinking it's a rematch of "The War of the Eagle and Lion", but if you take control of the hill with the ballista (something you'll want to do), you'll suddenly find it ablaze with all your units on it in the "disturbed" condition. Plus reinforcements will appear from not one but TWO directions.

In both cases the game literally baits you into doing something, and then royally wrecks you for it. There was  a third instance in the next chapter that might have also qualified if Ingrid didn't happen to be the only unit in range and take zero damage from the untelegraphed revelation that there's machines that automatically attack with long range magic. But as it went, it didn't matter to my run at all.

So long story short, I've been semi-fortunate in that I haven't actually lost anyone to bullshit curveballs, But now the game has me paranoid about them.

[MiaMain]

I hate this map. Was just waltzing through this game, until this. Level recommendation was also way lower than it should have been for the map. Hubert shows up and 1HKOs someone with meteor. Special place in hell for this map. Probably harder with the church route, since my best tank was afk, and my stud mage was picking me off from across the map. Plus all the trees keep you super slow, so you're mages have trouble keeping pace to take out the heavy armoureds that are everywhere. Meanwhile theives and swordmasters are ripping through the bush to kill any stragglers. And after dropping 5 heavy tanks literally on top of you, the game sends several pegassus knights to kill you in a couple turns.

[eifel105]

2 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

I was trying the same thing on the Blue Lions route. Certain events happened that were a little more drastic than an ambush spawn that resulted in Byleth's death (mercifully no one elses).
Go figure if you fail the mission, a divine pulse is forced instead of the game over screen. I used this to restart the mission as if I got a game over but without moving my units to more advantageous starting positions given what I'd learned. Long story short, between this and a certain map prior I learned the game really loves to throw curve-balls with mission objectives and force a divine pulse. As for what curve balls I've encountered I'll put them in a spoiler tab.

  Reveal hidden contents

The two maps I'm talking about are one post time-skip where Rodrigue appears and the mounted boss and his goons all go straight at him. Which is a big "fuck you" to anyone who hadn't decided to arbitrarily head the way with more damage tiles first.

The other map, "The Blood of The Eagle and Lion", tricks you into thinking it's a rematch of "The War of the Eagle and Lion", but if you take control of the hill with the ballista (something you'll want to do), you'll suddenly find it ablaze with all your units on it in the "disturbed" condition. Plus reinforcements will appear from not one but TWO directions.

In both cases the game literally baits you into doing something, and then royally wrecks you for it. There was  a third instance in the next chapter that might have also qualified if Ingrid didn't happen to be the only unit in range and take zero damage from the untelegraphed revelation that there's machines that automatically attack with long range magic. But as it went, it didn't matter to my run at all.

So long story short, I've been semi-fortunate in that I haven't actually lost anyone to bullshit curveballs, But now the game has me paranoid about them.

As far as the Blood of the Eagle and the Lion: I was frustrated at first but in retrospect I actually like that the developers had the enemy make a smart tactical decision overall. I learned that conventional tactics that worked in the school phase will be punished in the later chapters and that has saved me from a lot of bull ambushes and traps later on.

[Alastor15243]

4 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

Go figure if you fail the mission, a divine pulse is forced instead of the game over screen.

No. Please tell me this isn't true. Why would they do this? Have they completely lost all respect for their core audience whatsoever?

[The Roger The Paladin]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

No. Please tell me this isn't true. Why would they do this? Have they completely lost all respect for their core audience whatsoever?

I was pretty surprised as well. I imagine if you run out of divine pulses before that, you do get a game over, but lord knows how. I've only used two and they've both been because I died.
That said, given you can go back to any point I just went back to the start of the battle, seeing as I was going to have to reload anyway. Doing so at least gave me the penalty of not being able to reorganize my inventory/battalions/classes/arts/skills/starting positions, which arguably was more of a disadvantage than the time taken to reload.
 

3 hours ago, eifel105 said:

As far as the Blood of the Eagle and the Lion: I was frustrated at first but in retrospect I actually like that the developers had the enemy make a smart tactical decision overall. I learned that conventional tactics that worked in the school phase will be punished in the later chapters and that has saved me from a lot of bull ambushes and traps later on.

I feel like it was a lazy way of adding difficulty, even if logical on an in universe perspective. It's an enemy capability that is neither a standard gameplay mechanic or hinted at prior. Worse, it's one that only works the first time. Anyone replaying the game will know they're better served having a sniper take care of the issue from outside the trigger range. Changing goalposts and beginner's traps are being used as a supplement for actual design.

[Alastor15243]

36 minutes ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

That said, given you can go back to any point I just went back to the start of the battle, seeing as I was going to have to reload anyway. Doing so at least gave me the penalty of not being able to reorganize my inventory/battalions/classes/arts/skills/starting positions, which arguably was more of a disadvantage than the time taken to reload.

I don't think my starting positions have ever mattered much at all in this game. This game almost never has enemies in range of your initial position like other games did. Which is good, because this game, for some reason, doesn't even let you highlight individual movement ranges from the preparation screen. You can press ZR for the full range of all of them, but you can't highlight individual ones until you start the chapter. I can't tell you how many times I found that feature useful in my initial ironman run of Fates, but here the starting positions are so forgiving that the feature's absence is more of an annoyance. This game just does not challenge you at all with your opening gambits, or pressure you in any way to do things quickly.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Fabulously Olivier]

I hated that map. But it also gave me one of the biggest laugh out loud moments ever.

 

Catherine shows up. I use Bernadetta to weaken her from a distance. Bernadetta says "It's Thunderblade Catherine, we're all done for!" and promptly one shots Catherine. It was the most Bernadetta moment ever.

[soarta]

9 hours ago, Armagon said:

The reason the map is bullshit is because it changes your victory condition with literally no warning the moment you get close to completing the original. It's honestly just bad game design and i'd nominate this as one of the worst maps in the series.

While I'd agree and this is somewhat relatable to when I first played that paralogue (I had to divine pulse back to turn 12 from 30 because they gambit-spammed my Petra), I noticed that the timing for these spawns might be tied to Petra/Bernadetta moving to a certain tile on the map as well as a turn-restriction. I'm not sure at what turn they spawned when I moved everyone besides Petra and Bernie towards the bottom right tile, but they came asap once I moved my Petra, and I was able to stall for like 3-4 turns and get everyone to safety. Granted I went from left to right and the forest doesn't help with progressing through the map, I feel like these are the two conditions for them to spawn.

It's bullshit regardless, but this is what I noticed right off the bat.

[Alastor15243]

Aha.

Ahahahaha.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Guess what guys? I looked at it again this morning, and turns out I did actually have a chance to get everyone out alive by leaving the green units to die and abusing the hell out of Edelgard's previously-untouched personal weapon and combat art. I might have even managed just using it once to get one extra move for Edelgard, but when I figured out that the thing could give you an extra turn more than once per turn, well, let's just say I used a hell of a lot of that thing's durability to shorten the odds. Looks like I win this round and the ironman run is still alive and well.

For now.

Make no mistake though, I'm still mad as hell I was put in that situation in the first place, even if getting out of it legitly was incredibly satisfying.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Armagon]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

No. Please tell me this isn't true. Why would they do this? Have they completely lost all respect for their core audience whatsoever?

.....what? Wait, let me get this straight? If your Lord dies to some bullshit, you'd rather restart the whole map as opposed to going back a turn or two and saving yourself like 30 minutes.

 

5 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

I imagine if you run out of divine pulses before that, you do get a game over, but lord knows how

You do. I've had it happen to me like once or twice. Though i also had like, 4 Divine Pulse charges when it's happened.

[Alastor15243]

22 minutes ago, Armagon said:

.....what? Wait, let me get this straight? If your Lord dies to some bullshit, you'd rather restart the whole map as opposed to going back a turn or two and saving yourself like 30 minutes.

My issue is that the bullshit exists. Making the player a hair's breadth from impossible to kill because the game is badly designed is so many orders of magnitude less fun than having a well balanced, difficult game that I find it offensive.

This series used to be balanced around its permadeath mechanic, whether you play it ironman, treat losing a unit as a fail state, or gauge the benefits and costs of letting a unit die. Even when Echoes added the turnwheel, the game at least let you pretend it didn't exist by giving you the option of accepting the game over rather than using the turnwheel and its absurdly broken twelve mulligans in a game that doesn't even have a lunatic mode.

Here though, they make you rewind. It's like the developers forgot that classic players even exist, or else the developers seriously think the game is still hard for them even with all of these rewinds. That's why I can't believe they force you to rewind when you die. I feel like they just completely stopped designing  the game with people like me in mind, the people who have been playing the games since they came overseas and sometimes even before.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Armagon]

11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Here though, they make you rewind.

See, you actually can just hit B when the automatic rewind activation happens and the game will ask you if you want to accept defeat. So no, they don't make you rewind. If you want to get a game over, you totally can.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

See, you actually can just hit B when the automatic rewind activation happens and the game will ask you if you want to accept defeat. So no, they don't make you rewind. If you want to get a game over, you totally can.

That's barely any better. The fact that they assume that most people wouldn't want to do that, to the point that they don't even bother to tell you the option exists like they did in Echoes, says way too much about who this game was designed for.

[Jedi]

3 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

That's barely any better. The fact that they assume that most people wouldn't want to do that, to the point that they don't even bother to tell you the option exists like they did in Echoes, says way too much about who this game was designed for.

Not for you obviously considering you've done nothing but bitch about it. Why don't you get over yourself and your long winded essays and do something you actually enjoy. 

This obviously isn't something you enjoy anymore. So distance yourself away from it and save us your unnecessary bile. 

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Not for you obviously considering you've done nothing but bitch about it. Why don't you get over yourself and your long winded essays and do something you actually enjoy. 

This obviously isn't something you enjoy anymore. So distance yourself away from it and save us your unnecessary bile. 

Given that I haven't insulted anyone in this thread, that seems more than a bit uncalled for, and a logical fallacy at that.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Fabulously Olivier]

I actually find the side of the community that takes offense at the existence of the rewind mechanic to be despicable. It's not a matter of the game being made for or not made for anyone.

 

More difficulty options are a good thing. You don't have to rewind, and it isn't like this is the first game to have ambush spawns. Not by a longshot. Past entries had far worse ambush spawns that actually move immediately on spawning; that's bad game design.

 

We now have a good dynamic. Do you want the easiest possible experience (normal/casual)? Do you want an easy experience with some risk (normal/classic)? Do you want a more engaging but more risk free experience (hard/casual)? Or a higher difficulty, higher risk experience (hard/classic)?

 

What rewinds do is act as check points. You've made a mistake. It could be a small one, like wanting to correct the positioning of a unit for optimal play. It could be a large one like a dead unit. It could just be an unlucky crit or bullshit case of taking multiple sub-30% hits in a row and dying. In any case, the penalty for dying is the knowledge that you've made some form of error, and have to change your approach in some fashion. The rewind is NOT a difficulty setting. It is a convenience setting. It allows the player to determine how much time will be lost because of that reset - whether that is an entire mission or part of a turn. 

 

As for Fates, let's not pretend that its approach to difficulty was in any way well designed. Hello entire groups of ninjas swapping your tank halfway across the map and slowly taking their health down via unavoidable poison strikes, resulting in cheap deaths at no fault of the player.

 

29 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Not for you obviously considering you've done nothing but bitch about it. Why don't you get over yourself and your long winded essays and do something you actually enjoy. 

This obviously isn't something you enjoy anymore. So distance yourself away from it and save us your unnecessary bile. 

Agreed. It's gotten out of hand.

[Michelaar]

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

No. Please tell me this isn't true. Why would they do this? Have they completely lost all respect for their core audience whatsoever?

As someone said, no one is stopping you from going back to the beginning of the battle, but for me personally, I am glad you don't have to start all over again. Don't put words in the mouth of this 'core audience' you speak of when you are the only one in this thread complaining about it.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Just now, Michelaar said:

As someone said, no one is stopping you from going back to the beginning of the battle, but for me personally, I am glad you don't have to start all over again. Don't put words in the mouth of this 'core audience' you speak of when you are the only one in this thread complaining about it.

I took issue with this as well.

 

Who is this "core audience" of which you speak? The series has 16 entries, counting remakes. Each and every one of these games is substantially different from the others. This isn't Mario. The only commonalities between Shadow Dragon and Sacred Stones are the genre and basic mechanics. It's why this fanbase is so divided to begin with. Fire Emblem doesn't have an easily definable core audience. It has an incredibly diverse one, and that was true even before Awakening.

[Alastor15243]

7 minutes ago, Michelaar said:

As someone said, no one is stopping you from going back to the beginning of the battle, but for me personally, I am glad you don't have to start all over again. Don't put words in the mouth of this 'core audience' you speak of when you are the only one in this thread complaining about it.

 

3 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I took issue with this as well.

 

Who is this "core audience" of which you speak? The series has 16 entries, counting remakes. Each and every one of these games is substantially different from the others. This isn't Mario. The only commonalities between Shadow Dragon and Sacred Stones are the genre and basic mechanics. It's why this fanbase is so divided to begin with. Fire Emblem doesn't have an easily definable core audience. It has an incredibly diverse one, and that was true even before Awakening.

Well. That's... disheartening, to say the least, but I suppose I'll have to accept that I'm completely outvoted on this issue. Makes me wonder... a lot of things, actually.

[dawnbomb]

i agree with Alastor, also, this game is kind of offensively easy, they give you way to much power, and ...well, idk, i mean its not made by fire emblem team, its made by romance of the three kingdoms, but still, there should be more difficulty options, and fairer map design. i've seen such a immense number of bugs in my gameplay, half the game is identical on every route, enemy AI is wonky / jank, and i'm pretty sure programmed not just to go for the kill anymore, but to box you in so you can't just go back 1 turn with the turnwheel, but that means their not that big of a threat.

overall, this might be the easiest FE game sense sacred stones, probably even easier.  legit might be the easiest in the franchise so far. for a series based on its permadeath difficulty, and then took a turn with casual mode to allow the stupid people access, to have a game thats such a hard face turn to the rest of the franchise in gameplay just feels bad.  i want to like it, i really do, it has great thematics and everything, but a tactical rpg should first and foremost be rated on its tactics, and it just doesn't feel like it was developed like that.   Sure, Fates had waifu bait and casual mode and so forth, but they were additions to the game, here, their the main focus and the gameplay was subtracted to crank waifu upto 11. Ugh.


being able to have multiple dancers, revive your characters en mass even in classic mode, turn back time upto 35 times per mad, low enemy stats, immense player mechancis and control, gambits letting you attack without retaliation, theirs just so many OP things that its just downright for kids, or n00b's first SRPG, and the map design shows, they didn't think (or care) about rudely changing victory conditions all the time, or having both slow and same turn reinforcements, and tons of other 'fuck you' game design things, it just feels like a normal SRPG, and not really fire emblem.

and don't even get me started on the semi final map of edelgard route having 

 

Spoiler

Hidden enemy stats, movement ranges, damage, skills, ect, by putting reinforcements INSIDE enemy units, that are also same turn instant attack reinforcements, that may or may not one shot you with little control or expectation for whats gonna happen.

like the fuck, i think everyone can agree awakening luna+ is BS, but shit like that is exactly the kinda shit you'd see in Luna+ just casually in a map, what a troll.

[De Geso]

3 minutes ago, dawnbomb said:

i agree with Alastor, also, this game is kind of offensively easy, they give you way to much power, and ...well, idk, i mean its not made by fire emblem team, its made by romance of the three kingdoms, but still, there should be more difficulty options, and fairer map design. i've seen such a immense number of bugs in my gameplay, half the game is identical on every route, enemy AI is wonky / jank, and i'm pretty sure programmed not just to go for the kill anymore, but to box you in so you can't just go back 1 turn with the turnwheel, but that means their not that big of a threat.

overall, this might be the easiest FE game sense sacred stones, probably even easier.  legit might be the easiest in the franchise so far. for a series based on its permadeath difficulty, and then took a turn with casual mode to allow the stupid people access, to have a game thats such a hard face turn to the rest of the franchise in gameplay just feels bad.  i want to like it, i really do, it has great thematics and everything, but a tactical rpg should first and foremost be rated on its tactics, and it just doesn't feel like it was developed like that.   Sure, Fates had waifu bait and casual mode and so forth, but they were additions to the game, here, their the main focus and the gameplay was subtracted to crank waifu upto 11. Ugh.


being able to have multiple dancers, revive your characters en mass even in classic mode, turn back time upto 35 times per mad, low enemy stats, immense player mechancis and control, gambits letting you attack without retaliation, theirs just so many OP things that its just downright for kids, or n00b's first SRPG, and the map design shows, they didn't think (or care) about rudely changing victory conditions all the time, or having both slow and same turn reinforcements, and tons of other 'fuck you' game design things, it just feels like a normal SRPG, and not really fire emblem.

and don't even get me started on the semi final map of edelgard route having 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Hidden enemy stats, movement ranges, damage, skills, ect, by putting reinforcements INSIDE enemy units, that are also same turn instant attack reinforcements, that may or may not one shot you with little control or expectation for whats gonna happen.

like the fuck, i think everyone can agree awakening luna+ is BS, but shit like that is exactly the kinda shit you'd see in Luna+ just casually in a map, what a troll.

Supposedly more difficulty options will be added in the future. (Lunatic, Infernal, Abyssal or something like that).

[Shadow Mir]

21 minutes ago, dawnbomb said:

overall, this might be the easiest FE game sense sacred stones, probably even easier.  legit might be the easiest in the franchise so far. for a series based on its permadeath difficulty, and then took a turn with casual mode to allow the stupid people access, to have a game thats such a hard face turn to the rest of the franchise in gameplay just feels bad.  i want to like it, i really do, it has great thematics and everything, but a tactical rpg should first and foremost be rated on its tactics, and it just doesn't feel like it was developed like that.   Sure, Fates had waifu bait and casual mode and so forth, but they were additions to the game, here, their the main focus and the gameplay was subtracted to crank waifu upto 11. Ugh.

I call bullshit. On this whole statement. Saying Sacred Stones is harder despite the best unit in said game being given to you in the prologue? With said unit being able to put in work against endgame enemies even at base level... on hard mode? Really now?? And the rest of your "argument" is an embarrassment, too.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Armagon]

13 minutes ago, dawnbomb said:

being able to have multiple dancers

You literally can't, what?

13 minutes ago, dawnbomb said:

gambits letting you attack without retaliation,

The enemy can do this too.

17 minutes ago, dawnbomb said:

for a series based on its permadeath difficulty, and then took a turn with casual mode to allow the stupid people access,

Mmm yeah, ok, you have lost all credibility in your argument. Your whole rant just comes across as "how dare they make the games more accessible". I thought we stopped shitting on Casual Mode years ago but i guess i was wrong.