People who say harder modes on FE are easy make me feel bad.

[Dragoncat]

It just annoys me. I've played since GBA days, and when I tried Awakening on hard for my first playthrough it kicked my butt and I had to start over on normal mode. Granted I rarely used pair up, which is supposedly broken. But coming from old FE with rescue instead of pair up I didn't get used to using it.

Now we have people saying "3H is easy on maddening mode" and I'm just like...how did these people get so good and I'm over here doing casual mode so I can beat all paths in a timely ish manner.

Why do I suck?

[Stroud]

I think a lot in fire emblem has to do how you are ready to deal with frustration and "memorizing" and time you are ready to trade for the game. In older fire emblem it was a lot redoing the maps for me at least. Which goes faster in 3H because of the Divine Pulse. "Turn Wheel".

Otherwise maybe you can look at what do you struggle. Is it setting up units in a manner which makes it more easier, with the right classes and right skills and such. Or is it more that you struggle with thinking about solutions for the maps. There is also the right management of items and in case of 3H battalions and such. Which also can overwhelm a bit and made less efficient. 

Overall I would say you should not feel to bad though. Personally I think the players who are really good are less than you think. Many of us just can deal with frustration while pushing through and take a lot of time. Especially in old fire emblem games, if you sit for an hour on a map and something fails so you have to reset, can be really frustrating. 

Edited October 20, 2019 by Stroud

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Well Three Houses on Maddening I feel is less a matter of tactical play and more "how much time do you have?" because the best strategies outside of NG+ or Casual mode are always turtling as much as the objective allows. It can be impressive to watch somebody knock out an Infernal map of Heroes with F2P four star units, but nobody wants to play an entire game of that, it's boring.

[Nym]

1 hour ago, Dragoncat said:

Now we have people saying "3H is easy on maddening mode" and I'm just like...how did these people get so good and I'm over here doing casual mode so I can beat all paths in a timely ish manner.

The early game is far from easy actually. It gets easier when you start to get better class, weapon ranks, skills, better weapons, etc.

Actually, this is every harder mode in recent Fire Emblem games (except Lunatic +) in a nutshell.

[Zkitty8]

Don't feel bad, just improve at your own pace and have fun. I think being good at fire emblem is mostly about just being aware of your surroundings and what your units' strengths and weaknesses are. When I started playing fire emblem, I also started out playing on lower difficulties. I made a lot of mistakes, but usually they were my own fault for not being careful so I learned from them. Then when 3H came out I was able to jump into hard/classic without too much trouble using the knowledge I had from playing previous games. (I've also beaten maddening mode once on blue lions route but I wouldn't say it was easy. I actually struggled a lot with the final map. 😅)

So basically, the people that are really good at fire emblem are probably that good because they've practiced a lot.

[Dragoncat]

29 minutes ago, Zkitty8 said:

Don't feel bad, just improve at your own pace and have fun. I think being good at fire emblem is mostly about just being aware of your surroundings and what your units' strengths and weaknesses are. When I started playing fire emblem, I also started out playing on lower difficulties. I made a lot of mistakes, but usually they were my own fault for not being careful so I learned from them. Then when 3H came out I was able to jump into hard/classic without too much trouble using the knowledge I had from playing previous games. (I've also beaten maddening mode once on blue lions route but I wouldn't say it was easy. I actually struggled a lot with the final map. 😅)

So basically, the people that are really good at fire emblem are probably that good because they've practiced a lot.

See, my problem is I've been playing since the GBA games. I'm not new.

[Flere210]

Honestly, i find this annoying and mildly elitist. 

In the tales of Maj'Eyal comunity some madman finished the game on nightmare(The "hard" in a normal/hard/lunatic scale) whitout using skills and there are a bunch of obnoxius "lunatic players" that use that as a "proof" that the game is very easy despite more than 50% of the playerbase not having even a single win.

If you mastered something certain things became so much second nature that you start to take them for granted and you cannot understand that some players just does not do that. 

No amount of experience would ever make me not put a dancer in the range of 5 paladins because sometimes i just get distracted and do bad moves. This does not mean that i don't know that putting a dancer in the range of 5 paladins is wrong. 

Edited October 21, 2019 by Flere210

[Dragoncat]

18 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

Honestly, i find this annoying and mildly elitist. 

In the tales of Maj'Eyal comunity some madman finished the game on nightmare(The "hard" in a normal/hard/lunatic scale) whitout using skills and there are a bunch of obnoxius "lunatic players" that use that as a "proof" that the game is very easy despite more than 50% of the playerbase not having even a single win.

If you mastered something certain things became so much second nature that you start to take them so much for granted and you cannot understand that some players just does not do that. 

No amount of experience would ever make me not put a dancer in the range of 5 paladins because sometimes i just get distracted and do bad moves. This does not mean that i don't know that putting a dancer in the range of 5 paladins is wrong. 

YES THANK YOU.

[Zkitty8]

if you want to get better at playing on higher difficulties, my advice would be to practice or even just watch how other people play them so you can see their thought process. But if you're having fun playing on normal and just enjoying the story and characters then that's fine too. There isn't a "wrong" way to play.

[XRay]

I have played since the GBA era, but I prefer to do the easiest mode possible. I just want to focus on the story, feeling poweful, and the waifus.

And if I really want to have a cleared Lunatic file or whatever achievement, then I just copy whatever strategy others use.

Edited October 21, 2019 by XRay

[Parrhesia]

A thing that you can become blind to after a while in this series is that the games are... hard, certainly on classic. They have a reputation as such for a reason.

I can't speak for FE13, but I certainly felt playing FE14 that it required a whole different skillset to the GBA FEs... and, indeed, the GBA FEs compared to chunky, attritional Tellius, or tricky bastard FE5. GBAFE is very pared down, focused on murdering as many weak grunts on enemy phase as possible before you're overwhelmed. A single cursory scan for effective weaponry was generally enough. FE14 suddenly had guys randomly be invincible on even-numbered turns, guys who did double damage at all times, and occasionally terrible gimmick stages. Adapting to that required a very different skillset. Consequently, I literally wiped on two maps on Hard/Casual. But FEH, which has the similar kind of 'everyone has skills', is played at a slower pace and with generally close-to-even numbers; suddenly I'm really good at FEH. I'd probably be able to bring some of those skills into FE14 if I went back to it, too.

I pretty much always play on Hard (or equivalent), and Casual when it's available. On FE15, I turnwheeled back for deaths where possible, but it left scope open to just breeze through random encounters, or have a nuclear option to brute-force objectives, where that was lower on frustration.

This is all kind of irrelevant though. How good you are at a video game... doesn't... matter. Being good might be a point of pride personally, sure. If you can do FE11 H5 on 0% growths in under a hundred turns standing on your head, that's something you can be pleased with! But if the mode that gives you the most joy is Normal / Casual ... that just means you're a Normal person who plays games Casually. If you draw your enjoyment from brutalising the enemy head-on, that's entirely valid.

[The Roger The Paladin]

People need to remember that there's no wrong way to have fun.... well not in the context of Fire Emblem.

[XRay]

8 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

If you draw your enjoyment from brutalising the enemy head-on, that's entirely valid.

I agree. Being able to curbstomp enemies in Awakening on Normal/Casual felt awesome. Nothing feels quite like doing octo attacks (or higher) with two Brave weapon user Pair Ups. Taste the power of bonds and friendship!

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

For me it depends on the game, mainly on their mechanics.

FE10 is a game I can play in hardest difficulty almost in my sleep since I know the AI behavior and how to make best use of the biorhythm and supports.

Conquest, on the other hand, I could not even beat in hard, and in easy I could beat the final chapter by losing a half dozen of people.

 

I am doing Three Houses in maddening right now which is a mixed case for me. It is actually not too hard, but stupid mechanics like ambush spawn (which should be vanished for once and for all) make this game artificially harder.

[Interdimensional Observer]

For myself:

• FE6 Hard- Haven't tried yet. Normal was a bit tight as is.
• FE7 Hector Hard- Haven't done Ranked, but I can do it just fine otherwise.
• FE8 Hard- My usual mode for this game, with no/minimal grind.
• FE9 Hard- Not very hard, so the usual.
• FE10 Hard- Its changes are mostly cheap, so I stick to Normal, which is already Japanese Hard.
• FE11- Never really experimented with the five Hards. But, I did do H5 to completion once, with a little Warpskip.
• FE12- Hard was easy and yet challenging at the same time. I dare not try higher.
• FE13- Did Lunatic once, not fun, never going to try L+. Nor did I buy Apotheosis. And yet, Hard is easy if you just use a few Pair Up snowballs.
• FE14- BR Lunatic is my usual. Rev I've done on Lunatic too. CQ Lunatic I had to cheat on via plenty of BP/VP items, it was otherwise too brutal.
• FE15- Hard isn't that hard, so my usual.
• FE16- Not gotten to yet.
• TMS- Did a Hard run, still easy beyond some bosses. If Encore has Lunatic from the get-go, I'm on it, otherwise it'll be Hard.
• FEH- My brain didn't want to strategize with this game. It wanted to be mindless.

Overall, I'm casually loosely efficient I'd say.

 

 

Let everyone play as they will however.

[DragonFlames]

The hardest FE game I beat was Conquest on Hard and looking back, I didn't have fun with it. Because it was hard for all the wrong reasons. I can play PoR on Hard no problem (haven't touched RD on Hard yet, though), but I prefer the Normal difficulty settings, because I play them more casually than anything else. I have yet to try Three Houses on Hard or Maddening and the latter I probably never will based on what I've heard about it.
Here's a quick rundown of the games I've played and what difficulty I used or usually use:

• FE6: One playthrough was enough for me. Did that on Normal. Didn't really enjoy it
• FE7: Played all three modes on once, then didn't touch it again.
• FE8: Played the game twice to have played both routes. Both times on Normal
• FE9: Usually, I pick Normal (or Easy if I want easy transfer bonuses for RD), but I beat it on Hard twice. The first time was with a friend, the second time by myself. Pretty smooth sailing, all things considered.
• FE10: Normal was the hardest I could muster. As Interdimensional Observer rightfully pointed out, that's Japanese Hard already, so it's no wonder it kicked my ass the first few times
• FE11: Played it on Easy and Normal, never touched Hard.
• FE12: Beat it once on Normal, then I got a new laptop that struggles to run the DS Emulator
• FE13: Beat it on Hard once, on Normal countless times. Also did both variations of Apotheosis. Fun times.
• FE14: I beat Birthright on Hard twice, which was pretty enjoyable, actually. Conquest on Hard was torture. I beat it and won't ever touch it again. Revelation exists for funny skill builds, so Normal/Casual it is there for that sweet, sweet easy grinding (how anyone would manage to grind skills on Hard or even Lunatic in this game is beyond me)
• FE15: I play this one for the story, so Normal is my go-to here.
• FE16: Only played Normal/Classic so far. I will try Hard one of these days, perhaps.

But yeah, I can only echo what others have already said here: Having fun is no objective matter. There is no "only way to play" and anyone saying differently has really low self-esteem. To me, it also doesn't matter if I'm "gud" at a video game or not. So long as I enjoy myself while playing, that's the most important part, I believe.

[Tamanoir]

On 10/21/2019 at 2:25 AM, Dragoncat said:

See, my problem is I've been playing since the GBA games. I'm not new.

Well, I play since GBA games as well, and I'm still as awful as ever. Except now, I'm fine with it

IMO It's more satisfying to win with your own units, using your own strategy, even if it isn't perfect, even if it makes the game harder. Victory by your own merits. If my broken, inefficinent playstyle allow me to makes it to the end, then I know it was worth playing.

[Dragoncat]

22 minutes ago, Tamanoir said:

Well, I play since GBA games as well, and I'm still as awful as ever. Except now, I'm fine with it

What I'm not fine with is the eliteism, basically.

[Anacybele]

Coming in here because Dcat showed me this thread after I said I couldn't do anything to complete chapter 17 of the Blue Lions route in TH. And I don't have any idea what to do on it. And yet I've seen multiple people say this game is easy. Easy for them maybe. I personally think this is the hardest game in the series that I've played so far, and I've played RD, which is also hard. I've also played FE7, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Awakening, and Fates Birthright.

I also typically just play classic mode on the easiest difficulty in my first playthroughs because I'm no expert player. But I don't want to think I suck either. I don't believe I suck. Middle of the road player, maybe. Between being bad and being good. I wish to be better than that still though. I don't need to be a complete expert or anything. I just don't want to freaking struggle.

TH imo does some stupid shit with enemies on occasion though. Like making Petra's avoid so high that you basically can't ever hit her unless you get extremely lucky. which is dumb. This is supposed to be a strategy game, not a game of luck. I had this same problem with the BK battle in PoR. It's too luck-based.

This time I actually managed to take her out quickly by using Ashe + killer bow. But even then, he only had a 22% chance of criticaling, so it was still rather lucky that he did critical her. And I still struggled against Petra badly in my Golden Deer run.

So overall, I share the sentiment that I feel very discouraged when I repeatedly see people say that a game I struggle with is easy.