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Hardest Route for you


Nio
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So i remember when the review copies were out there was this rumor about GD being the hardest route and BE the easiest. Well that was a lie.

After finishing all 4 routes i think that there are a lot of factors that can contribute in a route being hard or easy, mostly experience, optimization, etc. I dont think NG+ should be used when debating this for obvious reasons. Also, this game is kinda easy overall, so there is not a hardcore old school route for now.

With that said, my tier would go like this:

1. Blue Lions: Hardest for me. Final map was insane.
2. Black Eagles Church: Have some peaks here and there, but it wasnt that much compared to BL in my opinion. Final map was also pretty good.
3. Tie with BE Edelgard and GD. I would say BE Edelgard is probably the easiest but it was the first one i played, so that matters, but the last 2 maps are harder than anything GD threw at me. I do think GD is really easy, not a single map was challenging for me. Even the final boss was kinda easy (really, really epic tho, probably best final battle right with BE Edelgard and the epic atmosphere)

So what you guys think? This is obviously my opinion and should not be taken seriously when debating this stuff. Just would like to hear other opinions.

Edited by Nio
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I think I would rank them:

BL - Final boss with 30 range. Big-ass machines. Mages all over the damn place sniping you from the edges. A Wall you have to literally run around to get the ones sniping behind you. Just absurdity. A lot of this route has a lot of Demonic Beast type enemies which can make some maps more grating. I will mention that I didn't have a Dancer in this playthrough and I only used like 2 Fliers so that may have attributed to struggling a bit more~

GD - While it has the same maps as mentioned above without a 30 range boss, the final map in itself was, at least for me, honestly not that hard. It was extremely long, yes, but it could be easily picked apart and by the time only the boss is left, he's easily ganged up on. I honestly think the 2nd to last map was the hardest one.

BE - The final map was also pretty challenging, but that was honestly the hardest map in the route. Everything else honestly didn't give me too much trouble and I rarely had unit deaths.

I haven't finished the Church route yet so this may change when I finish that~

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Hello, I'm new to the forums here but I've been reading them for ages. Thought it would be fun to join in on the discussions.

I've only played 3/4 routes on hard/classic (starting BE church tonight), but of the ones I played I had the most trouble with BE-Edelgard. Mostly due having some really terrible hit rates against many of the enemies after the time-skip. Also those 4 range light spear golems that started showing up later were pretty annoying to deal with sometimes. Final boss was epic, but pretty easy with Edelgard's special combat art. The lack of early relics also gives you less tools to work with at the start, though this is really pretty minor all things considered.

I can definitely see why you would pick BL. BL was my first route, and if I hadn't gotten lucky with my experimentation throughout the game, that last map would have been a nightmare. It can be cheesed pretty effectively though with the Retribution gambit. Swordmaster Byleth with a killing edge+ and vantage got sent to stand in the middle of siege magic central with retribution gambit up. Was surprised how well that worked out. I will also say that BL lacking a good warper makes it a bit harder as well. Sure Manuela can warp, but her range isn't very good and it comes fairly late vs the other routes (or not at all if you don't end up using her or recruiting someone else who can). However the early access to most of the relics do make the route a little easier in my opinion since they can help their users snowball in the early game and/or one-round tough enemies they probably shouldn't be able to.

GD is kind of hard for me to rate since I wanted to check out the NG+ features and such. I didn't abuse the features too hard, but I'm sure it would have been more difficult than I remember it being. I agree with you that the final map wasn't really that hard, but definitely the most epic final battle so far. This is a bit unrelated, but I think GD had the most satisfying conclusion of the routes I played.

Anyways, those are my thoughts so far, interested to see what other people have to say on the matter.

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Difficulty is pretty much not really a thing until the final maps, so I think the route one plays first will feel a bit more difficult (less experience and probably NG+).

For me it was the case, I did CF first and it was easy, but the later runs felt easier, largely due to NG+ (those statues exp bonuses really add up). Also it's shorter, which means you don't snowball as hard as in the other paths. I'm either proud or very ashamed to say that the last map of CF took me 46 (yes, forty-six) turns, mostly because I was REALLY heavy on mages and the golems are completely immune. Also I didn't want to rush the boss so took the time to clear it completely (also not sure how much you can rush, there's a Fortify user who keeps on healing her). I can safely say I've never appreciated a skill or a class more than Terrain Resistance for my Holy Knights and Paladins, my god was it a grind. I also didn't know that dismounting would negate some of the  Mov penalty (since the tile description only said "reduces Mov", not "reduces Mov for cavalry"), so it was even slower on the fire, it really delivered the pain and grindiness of war lol.

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The last two BL maps made me want to hang myself. Never doing that route again without a wyvern brigade at my back.

Redoing GD on hard mode classic for comparison. Initially did it on normal/classic and it was pretty much a cakewalk even with my idiot self. I suspect it's still easier by a notable degree but who knows when everyone is wielding silver weapons.

it got a lot easier when i figured out killing myson on turn 1 was a marvelous idea

Edited by Crysta
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I imagine most people's difficult route is the one they did first since the game becomes much easier once you know how it works.

BE-E was my first route and I had exactly one flier and one mount, which made it much harder than it needed to be. Doesn't help that you have 4 less chapters to build skill ranks.

BL final map and GD final map were both not too bad, but may have felt much harder had I gone like the first route. Not even to say I planned units out or anything, but had a much more purposeful path through classes; knowing to avoid useless classes like priest, stuff like that.

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i honestly don't understand how BL final chapter's been so difficult for so many players, i mean if you send your units to crash against the enemy army of course it becomes hard

edelgard does have 30 range and attacks twice per turn, but she never attacks the same unit twice, and she doesn't deal much damage

when directly facing her, she has some damn annoying skills, such as desperation, vantage and wrath, but that's what dedue and dimitri are for, to tank hits and deal tons of damage

i just moved all of my units on the left side of the map, patiently killing enemies one by one, or more in the same turn if possible, but always making sure my units were out of all those mortal savants' range

i have to admit, my bow knight ashe basically did all the dirty work with parthia, backed up by my beloved girls, wyvern lord hilda and dark knight annette

felix, dedue and dimitri took care of all those snipers, war masters and whatever, while mercedes, flayn and marianne healed everyone when needed

 

anyway, the game as a whole is very, very easy (talking about classic hard mode), and i really couldn't decide which route is the hardest

probably i'd say church route (thanks rhea) and edelgard route (thanks random beast units, dimitri, rhea and 75-avoid cyril), because of my inexperience

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I'd say Crimson Flower was the hardest for me (Granted I haven't finished Verdant Wind/Silver Snow yet), Azure Moon was pretty easy since I just avoided Myson and went around the left vicinity of the map. Crimson Flower was the most difficult for the simple fact that I was under-leveled by virtue of it being my first play through (and I didn't grind Prof Level like I should have, so my units were under-leveled for the last two maps. Plus... ignorance, Chapter 17's mission battle took me by surprise the first time, but I adapted well on the second attempt.)

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Golden Deer was the hardest for me if only because i literally was only able to beat the final boss because i got lucky with a crit. That man is way too damn strong. I do not want to face him on Lunatic.

That said, i haven't beaten Blue Lions yet and i don't plan on playing the Church route.

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I think Golden Deer was the easist one by far. Having Lysithia on your team early makes the first chapters much easier. Late game she also destroys all enemies.

 

I even managed beat  the whole game on hard without losing anyone and without using any permanent boost. On the other hand, on the Crimson Flower path I lost Ferdinand on the last chapter. Even though the Crimson Flower route is shorter than the other routes, the last 2 chapters are the most challenging of all maps in the game in my opinion. But again maybe it was not as easy for me because I didn't abuse of Edelgard's weapon skilll. Maybe next time when I do the path may be much easier

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I only completed GD hard classic but it must be the easiest route. Most of his house are quite competent and can dodge or tank a few hits, although all of them became redundant in part 2. Towards the later maps my "strategy" mainly consists of Lysithea's warp and Claude's killer bow in 3 turns.

Have no problems with BL so far either. Maybe BE will be more challenging because it seems they don't have many outstanding members apart from Edelgard.

Hopefully they will fix the difficulty in Lunatic mode ...

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1. Church route, it had too many enemies for me at the end, though while I was happy to not see Gronder Field again, the final map was difficult. The sheer amount of enemies on the map made it hard, along with the Boss barely even being hurt unless you took out every last enemy. That and I didn't think I would be fighting a dragon on this route so I wasnt prepared. 

2. Black Eagles- Surprise pegasi that can one round your units is not very fun. Though now my petra has earned the title dragon killer since she took the boss on solo.

3. Golden deer- It was very straightforward for me since I avioded the posion till it disapeared after murdering an enemy. Along with the fact it felt like a victory lap after winning to me. 

4. Blue Lions- Easiet because warping dmitri and watching a show happen. I honestly didnt expect it to work at that time but he beat edelgard himself,

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Only finished Edelgard's path and Blue Lions, currently playing through Golden Deer. I plan on doing the Church route as well.

* * * * *

1. Edelgard's Route 

Spoiler

While also my first route, those finale maps were rough. It didn't help I relied heavily on mages and there being those accursed Golems who are immune to magic while their armor is up. Also, I had no fliers whatsoever and just had Ferdinand as my Cavalry unit (although Bernadetta became a Bow Knight for the very last chapter).

However, most of my difficulty may stem from splitting my party. My good units could only carry so much, and if a "bad unit" got caught out of position, they are dead. If I stuck to a "deathball" things may have gone a bit smoother.

I had to send Byleth to help out my B team being harassed by Rhea and the Church during the 2nd to last chapter, and then I had to cheese Dedue because my party was split and couldn't handle his transformation without someone dying. Then for the finale I basically had to turtle my way up to the top (because I wanted to be a wise guy and head up the middle and right sides instead of going around the edges). Surprise Pegasus Knights were not fun, but I managed to handle the situation without any losses. The hardest part was getting to the boss, killing the boss was relatively easy compared to all the crap I had to go through to get there.

2. Blue Lions Route

Spoiler

Yeah, there's a bunch of Siege tomes and weaponry going on, but I found it to be more of a nuisance than any real threat (save for the finale where I had to wait for the guys to waste their magic before pressing forward.) My strat here was to simply kill every last one of them kill them before they could kill you by rushing ahead with Stride and Warp strategies.

However, I did end the showdown with Hubert slightly earlier by warping Byleth to kill Hubert, and I didn't have any trouble with TWSITD forces in the finale because I warped Byleth to kill that Myson guy. Edelgard herself was laughably easy as it was like I was setting up an execution instead of fighting a boss.

 

Edited by Sire
Put stuff in Spoiler Tags just in case
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6 hours ago, Nio said:

So i remember when the review copies were out there was this rumor about GD being the hardest route and BE the easiest. Well that was a lie.

After finishing all 4 routes i think that there are a lot of factors that can contribute in a route being hard or easy, mostly experience, optimization, etc. I dont think NG+ should be used when debating this for obvious reasons. Also, this game is kinda easy overall, so there is not a hardcore old school route for now.

With that said, my tier would go like this:

1. Blue Lions: Hardest for me. Final map was insane.
2. Black Eagles Church: Have some peaks here and there, but it wasnt that much compared to BL in my opinion. Final map was also pretty good.
3. Tie with BE Edelgard and GD. I would say BE Edelgard is probably the easiest but it was the first one i played, so that matters, but the last 2 maps are harder than anything GD threw at me. I do think GD is really easy, not a single map was challenging for me. Even the final boss was kinda easy (really, really epic tho, probably best final battle right with BE Edelgard and the epic atmosphere)

So what you guys think? This is obviously my opinion and should not be taken seriously when debating this stuff. Just would like to hear other opinions.

Hardest: Blue Lions because I stopped doing battles once I hit the war phase and wanted the get the last route done to avoid any spoilers on youtube algorithims. Too many mortal Savants and both 'lord' character Res was low 20 and 22. Jumped back to beginning of month and did 9 battles with just two lords and steamrollled the last map with them, giving them everyone else's relic items.

2. Black Eagles final mission, characters had bloated offensive stats but garbage defense (def and res) they could dodge tank with the rest of them but coudn't survive a hit (avg hp 30-38) final mission became an escort mission using Byleth and Edelgard and two healing adjutants, (healing focus and Byleth faith magic was my friend) fought Rhea with just hose two units after taking left side path, didn't do many battles because got impatient for plot.

3. Golden Deer for the easiest, Wyvern Lord Hilda OP, God-blessed statroll Raphael grappler, surprisingly middle of the pack Felix, Divine retribution Byleth, quirky support Claude (weakest of my lords), my church characters, Windsweep crit Sword of the Creator for easy win, defeat general maps are just route maps with different names right?

Unknown: Black Eagles church

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Most of the routes are pretty easy until the last few levels for me.

Crimson Flower had somewhat of a challenge with the strong reinforcements and the final level having really bad terrain that's awful to navigate. I only had one falcon knight in my first playthrough since I didn't really force it on a lot of characters. I assume if I played this route again it would be easy.

Azure Moon last two levels were similar but with more awareness of on the game works it wasn't too bad and abusing indech swordfighters for DC makes siege mages easy to handle. Though enemy warmasters were very strong with their good speed HP and damage. 

Verdant Wind was pretty much a cakewalk all the way through with no real hurdles.The final level was pretty easy compared to the others except the final boss itself. Granted a lot of it has to do with the repeat maps as I'm playing the same map for the 2nd or 3rd time with minor variations. Though one of the Verdant Wind only paralouges had a pretty strong boss compared to the main story but it wasn't too bad. Also I don't know why the endgame still had you facing advanced classes when the other maps contained mostly master class enemies endgame. 

 

These playthroughs were in order of playing it. So once you learn what's good and what's not your 2nd/3rd playthrough on NG will be easy. I'm not expecting lunatic to fix some of the more exploitative parts of the game like the game's flier bias and movement creep. Unless lunatic nerfs the game's economy it will probably only be slightly easier than hard mode. The only game to really change the economy on higher difficulties is FE12 on lunatic where items like warp and silver card are removed and FE7 HHM changing a lot of the items you can steal but not really in a way to nerf the economy. 

It's just hard to rate the routes in difficulty as the game loves to reuse maps. Part 1 is almost identical and part 2 shares a lot of maps. Enemy placement doesn't really change much either. You would need to do a FE7 HHM approach and radically change the enemies. FE7 HHM added a lot more enemy pegasus riders to the early maps and some maps are dramatically different in enemies like Genesis and Cog of Destiny being almost exclusively magic enemies only. It really depends how much effort they go to change the game on lunatic/infernal. 

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So far I only reached the final map on Golden Deer and Blue Lions route. On BL route the difficult part was to reach the boss, on GD route was to defeat the boss. To be fair, GD final boss could be probably more managable with better preparations for it. Also I regret on BL route that I did not deploy Annette, I feel like she'd make this map much easier for me. I'm currently going for the Edelgard route to see how difficult that one will be, and then back to the church (have a save for that at ch12)

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I played BL first without the benefit of NG+ and I didn't see anything too tough on the last map. The asshole mage with a reduce-to-1-hp spell was fun to deal with but I think by tackling the first room carefully it all went mostly smoothly. Having Byleth and Dimitri able to tackle the middle room without too much worry was also nice.

I think Edelgard's route was actually the most difficult for me in terms of the final map because less chapters to prepare (screw grinding on weekends) and the pegknight reinforcements always required special attention. Catherine and Cyril running around with brave weapons also added an element of challenge.

Easiest I think would be GD, actually. Last map is almost trivial because of no reinforcements and nothing charging at you.

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8 minutes ago, psy_wombats said:

Easiest I think would be GD, actually. Last map is almost trivial because of no reinforcements and nothing charging at you.

I heard people thinking that the map doesn't have reinforcements, but if you don't deal with the mage at the south, there will be reinforcements - in forms of beasts iirc.

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I can see Blue Lions being hard to low turn count for the final chapter. However, at the same time I am not sure the condition needed for Edelgard to move from 1-30 range to 1-6 range. Eventually the siege weapon goes away. In addition, she had such low attack. 38 mt was not very high for that late into the game even on hard mode with only 77 hit and even if she could attack twice in the same turn she always targeted separate units. I have heard people say that had issues with that map, but I suppose its because it might be the only map with some odd mechanics.

Otherwise, it ended up being dimitri who she has 0% hit rate against and another squishy who could always survive one attack. Granted, Falcon Knight Byleth just evades everything and can't be easily killed even against axe, bows, gauntlets, and magic.

Edited by Vorena
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In my run, hegemon-Edel only targeted like, Mercedes or other squishy backliners so it was never an issue. Even if she did land a hit, it's not like I was expecting those characters to be tanking any other hits on enemy phase so there was no KO risk. And the aggro lines are still there.

32 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

I heard people thinking that the map doesn't have reinforcements, but if you don't deal with the mage at the south, there will be reinforcements - in forms of beasts iirc.

Oh, huh. But that guy's like 10 squares away, I would assume everyone kills him pretty fast. I think I tasked only two characters with that entire side (and one of the was comedy-value mortal savant Ignatz) and they still blitzed through before any reinforcements showed up.

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I'll say Edelgard's anti-church route was the hardest. The rationale being that it is the shortest route and you lose pretty much the entire teaching staff. Which I think means you cannot play with Flayn, Seteth, and Catherine who are arguably some of the better staff later in the game. I am still not sure the conditions for if people from the Church would stay with you or not. The other student you recruit could stay it seemed. 

The other piece being that since you have fewer months to prepare whatever build you want by about 4 chapters from 22 -> 18 it leaves less room for error. Chapter 18 is lv37 enemies there, so you should still have had plenty of time to level up and move into mastery classes if needed. However, its just a bullet point that this route leaves you with the fewest overall resources in a game that already throws mass quantities of resources at you.

They are indirect hits, but I think for many people it can be an issue to help provide some extra difficulty.

Edited by Vorena
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I didn’t find BL’s final map that terrible, either, but I went very ham on building up my healers, and the RNG gods favored Ingrid that day when she double crit Edelgard’s final phase into oblivion. 

 

To only fight to actually give me some hell was Marianne’s paralogue. 

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11 hours ago, redlight said:

If you kill the named mage with generic portrait on BL final map, all TWSITD enemies will retreat

Myson.

He also doesn't counter lol

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