So, apparently, 3H has some of the lower (lowest?) difficulty in all of the FE entries? Your opinions?

[henrymidfields]

I know over at TV tropes, the bread-and-butter chapter battles are considered to lack the challenge and thus a bummer in that regard. However, is there someone who thinks that the lowered difficulty is actually a good idea?

I'm still in the middle of the White Clouds, so this may change, but I think I can understand why they made it easier for the main battles, at least on Normal Mode. There are variety of choices you can make to spend each month/chapter, some which don't necessarily involve raising your units. It wouldn't be very good game design if half of the chapters on Normal become unbeatable because of a wrong choice one made in-game months ago...

[Barren]

It’s been a thing in video games for a long while now. Developers tend to offer the game with a difficulty selection because some gamers are casual and just want to have a good time. So I think it’s fine to include a difficulty selection whether it’s normal or hard. 
 

Normal mode does have it’s draw backs. For starters, pending on how much you actually grind, you’ll find yourself plowing through the chapters like dominos. It might be boring in that sense. But it can be fun at the same time because you can experiment with builds and combinations that can be achieved thanks to free battles.

[Yexin]

Yes, it is incredibly easy.
No, I don't think it's a good idea.

Speaking strictly about what I have experienced in my 5 playthroughs (CF, SS, AM, VW, SS) on Hard-Classic Mode:
1) If you grind, you'll end up finding out you're actually playing "Slicing Butter with a Hot Knife: The Game";
2) If you don't grind, it's still one of the easiest FE ever (no, 2 slightly more challenging maps aren't enought to suddenly label the whole game as "hard");
3) Many of these difficulty problems imo are due to how "open" 3H's system is: you can literally make a whole Wyvern Lord team, a thing not even PoR and SS allow you to do, and they are usually brought up when it comes to talk about easy FE games;
4) The Pulse mechanic is a thing, and imo it has more cons than pros;
5) Skill Emblem, that is all;

there is more i could list, but i think i made myself quite clear
this is not to say I don't understand why they made it so easy, because I perfectly do: this is to say that I personally don't like it being so easy, for the reasons listed above

Edited January 4, 2021 by Yexin

[Benice]

Personally, were it not for the existence of Seth, I'd honestly find Sacred Stones HM harder than TH hard; (Even then, I still think SS is harder.) Hard mode only really had two maps that were somewhat tricky for me: Lorenz' paralogue and chapter 19. And that is including the fact that I used Warrior Lysithea, Warlock Raphael and had no fliers aside from Claude. Between the fact that gambits are way too powerful for Hard, Wyvern Lord existing with almost everyone being able to get into it easily, and enemies being weak, the game breaks in half if you breathe too hard.

As for Maddening, the difficulty is really mercurial as far as I've seen-The first five or so chapters were really hard, chapters 6-11 were fairly easy, it looks like chapter 12 is gonna be tough, and I've heard horror stories about 13.

 

Really, the reason I oppose TH's class system is that it makes difficulty really hard to balance for the developers-Maddening being softlock central is a prime example of this. They couldn't really make Hard mode difficult for fear of that.

[Shadow Mir]

I can't agree with SS being harder - for one, enemies barely had stats, and the fact that they tended to weigh themselves down doesn't help. Nor does it that even late in the game, unpromoted enemies are still common, not to mention the monsters generally being less threatening than human units. And this is all ignoring the Mondoragon in the room that is Seth.

17 minutes ago, Benice said:

Wyvern Lord existing with almost everyone being able to get into it easily

In practice, I find that having a lot of fliers tends to be discouraged because good flying battalions are rather limited.

[Benice]

50 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

In practice, I find that having a lot of fliers tends to be discouraged because good flying battalions are rather limited.

I personally found that, at least on hard, it barely mattered-The only people I had running battalions consistently were Ignatz and Lysithea, (for extra crit).as well as Claude with the immortal corps. Regardless, I know you get at least a few solid enough flying battalions on non-VW routes, (IIRC two seiros pegasus knights, Cichol wyvern co., Galatea pegasus corps, but that is off the top of my head, so there may be more or I may be mistaken) and also Golden Deer wyverns and Immortal Corps on VW. Either way, you can get your strongest physical units into WL quite easily.

Speaking of fliers, I feel like the absurd dismounting mechanic also helps serve to make the game easier. There's technically a drawback to dismouning, but it's really miniscule.

[Florete]

Having the lowest difficulty is perfectly fine. The problem is the lack of proper harder difficulties. Even though it was my first run of the game, hard mode in 3H was way too easy, easier than the oft-cited Sacred Stones in hard mode. Maddening mode is then a huge jump in other direction. There's just no proper...I guess I would call it "casually difficult" mode in the game.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Florete

[Tables]

One of the things to keep in mind when comparing FE game difficulties is that veterans tend to compare the highest difficulties (sometimes excluding things like FE13's L+, or FE12's L') while more casual players are likely to compare the Normal difficulties.

 

While every FE game is of course easier on low difficulties, the difference between difficulties is sometimes much larger than others. For example FE13 is notable for having big shifts between difficulties. Three Houses has the same issue - Normal mode is has enemy stats remaining low for basically the entire game, which coupled with your characters very fast levelling and huge numbers of divine pulses means the game becomes incredibly easy. Maddening on the other hand is pretty brutal, especially in the first few chapters, and maintains a reasonable difficulty forever unless you really know the mechanics and how to maximise your character's potential, and there's only one difficulty between them. On the other extreme, look at games like FE4 and FE15. FE4's difficulty is barely noticeable, just modifying the AI a bit. FE15 there's definitely a difficulty increase from Normal to Hard but it's not a big jump.

 

As a result of how different these shifts can be, different FE games can be assessed differently for their difficulty by different groups. A casual FE player looking at the normal mode of games would certainly see 3H as being pathetically easy, FE13 as being extremely easy, but FE4 as being fairly tough. A more experienced player looking at the highest difficulties would look at 3H Maddening as being a solid challenge, FE13 as being hard, and brutal if you play L+, but FE4 is fairly straightforward. Same games being compared, but looking at something completely different within each game.

[Marienburg]

My first 3H playthrough was Golden Deer on Hard for 10 chapters at which point I switched to Maddening Blue Lions because I was getting a bit bored. Going in blind I'd say that FE8 and FE9 were easier. My controversial take is that for me FE6 and FE7 were also easier the first time through. In 3H maps like the red canyon paralogue, ch12 and ch13 that force you to stop and go 'wait, what the hell is this and how do i do this'. Just like FE8 and FE9, FE6 and FE7 just didn't have anything like that for me. 

[SumG]

How good or bad of a thing it is depends a bit on what type of franchise Fire Emblem wants to be.  Three Houses is by far the most narratively intensive game in the franchise; many previous iterations, particularly in the GBA and earlier era games, have only a slim veneer of plot to connect the chapters.  If you're going to have a narratively focused game, then you need to ensure that the people who are playing the game for the story have a means of getting to the end even if they aren't very good at the game.  I've never played Normal mode, but I've heard it's extremely easy.  Even Hard mode isn't particularly hard.  And I don't mind those difficultly levels existing where they are because they are there to ensure everyone gets to see the story.  Maddening is fairly difficult (I can't comment on how it compares to other games' Lunatic modes), and is in place for enfranchised players.

Regarding the specific complaints about story missions (that the objectives are too simple and maps uninteresting), again I chalk this up to designing for accessibility for newer players.  By keeping the objectives and maps simple, new players are less likely to get confused or frustrated.  More challenging maps and objectives *do* exist in Three Houses, but are typically limited to the optional paralogues.  If you're looking for a challenge, then you can opt in them.  If you find them too difficult, you don't have bash your head against a wall.

Some enfranchised players grouse about how Three Houses was designed because the game is no longer specifically designed for them.  It's designed to be more welcoming to new players along the critical story path, while providing optional challenges in terms of side quests and paralogues.  This is a pretty prevalent design over the last 10 years or so, and something Nintendo *loves* to do, so these arguments sound like a bunch of pissing in the wind to me.  And if these design change mean that the player base for the games is larger (and we get more releases due to that), then I am more than put in the extra effort to have fun on the paralogues.

[Samz707]

33 minutes ago, SumG said:

How good or bad of a thing it is depends a bit on what type of franchise Fire Emblem wants to be.  Three Houses is by far the most narratively intensive game in the franchise; many previous iterations, particularly in the GBA and earlier era games, have only a slim veneer of plot to connect the chapters.  If you're going to have a narratively focused game, then you need to ensure that the people who are playing the game for the story have a means of getting to the end even if they aren't very good at the game.  I've never played Normal mode, but I've heard it's extremely easy.  Even Hard mode isn't particularly hard.  And I don't mind those difficultly levels existing where they are because they are there to ensure everyone gets to see the story.  Maddening is fairly difficult (I can't comment on how it compares to other games' Lunatic modes), and is in place for enfranchised players.

Regarding the specific complaints about story missions (that the objectives are too simple and maps uninteresting), again I chalk this up to designing for accessibility for newer players.  By keeping the objectives and maps simple, new players are less likely to get confused or frustrated.  More challenging maps and objectives *do* exist in Three Houses, but are typically limited to the optional paralogues.  If you're looking for a challenge, then you can opt in them.  If you find them too difficult, you don't have bash your head against a wall.

Some enfranchised players grouse about how Three Houses was designed because the game is no longer specifically designed for them.  It's designed to be more welcoming to new players along the critical story path, while providing optional challenges in terms of side quests and paralogues.  This is a pretty prevalent design over the last 10 years or so, and something Nintendo *loves* to do, so these arguments sound like a bunch of pissing in the wind to me.  And if these design change mean that the player base for the games is larger (and we get more releases due to that), then I am more than put in the extra effort to have fun on the paralogues.

Then why not make it so Maddening is actually a good step up from Hard mode that provides that challenge instead of the absurd difficulty that I hear it is?

A better way to do it would to just have better designed difficulties overall, so people wanting a challenge or not can both be satisfied.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Samz707

[Aethelstan]

22 minutes ago, SumG said:

Three Houses is by far the most narratively intensive game in the franchise; many previous iterations, particularly in the GBA and earlier era games, have only a slim veneer of plot to connect the chapters.

Three Houses has a dynamite story. But I wouldn't say most narratively intensive by far. I gotta plug FE4. I think it's better than the VW, SS, or CF routes of Three Houses and rivals AM. Path of Radiance is also up there. I also don't think the FE7 plot is thin once it gets to Bern and if you put in the time to learn Nergal's backstory. Shadow Dragon, Sacred Stones, and many others are nothing special narrative wise though.

My biggest gripe about the lower difficulties is I don't think Intelligent Systems is good balancing them and that makes a lot of new players think the game is just poorly designed. On the harder difficulties you are forced to use all the tools at your disposal to get by. Some franchises are really good at encouraging you to do all that stuff even at lower difficulties so you always get the full experience but FE is usually not because that's never been IS' forte. On lower difficulties in casual mode there is just no reason to worry about inventory management, learning skills outside the most obvious class tree, or even something as basic as unit placement on maps because no matter what you choose your unit will likely be able to kill whatever it comes across.

I think casual mode is part of the problem. The maps in the series are partially balanced around the enemy being able to use kamikaze tactics while you cannot, so even if you have better stats than them like on lower difficulties, the computer still has an advatage you lack. But with casual mode there is never a negative consequence to just bum rushing the boss with all your units regardless of the map. So that's the only strategy many players ever pursue. On higher difficulties, casual mode can still be challenging and fun for some players, but it kills the exeprience completely on lower difficulties in my opinion.

All that said, I prefer the franchise making lots of money to it not doing that because that's how we get more games. So if the cost of that is some people falsely believing the games are two dimensional it's a very small price to pay.

[Marienburg]

45 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Then why not make it so Maddening is actually a good step up from Hard mode that provides that challenge instead of the absurd difficulty that I hear it is?

A better way to do it would to just have better designed difficulties overall, so people wanting a challenge or not can both be satisfied.

You can do this with NG+, making maddening as easy or hard as you want it to be. If you want a challenge on your first playthough, I don't think the first couple of chapters in Maddening are really that different from Radiant Dawn Normal. Yeah you have Sothe, but you still have to play carefully because any stray npc will 2 shot most of your team and 1 shot your lord and healer. Three Houses is probably still more difficult, but the playstyle ends up being the same.

[Samz707]

3 minutes ago, Marienburg said:

You can do this with NG+, making maddening as easy or hard as you want it to be. If you want a challenge on your first playthough, I don't think the first couple of chapters in Maddening are really that different from Radiant Dawn Normal. Yeah you have Sothe, but you still have to play carefully because any stray npc will 2 shot most of your team and 1 shot your lord and healer. Three Houses is probably still more difficult, but the playstyle ends up being the same.

There's still elements like Ambush Spawns though.

[Marienburg]

1 minute ago, Samz707 said:

There's still elements like Ambush Spawns though.

I think the only one that's bad are the pass rogues on Miklan which are annoying to deal with even if you know about them. After that you have so many divine pulse charges that it doesn't really matter if you have to burn one because you walked right on top of an ambush spawn. But maybe that's just me. I know people complain about ambush spawns in FE6 and I thought those were all fair and had no problems with them.

[Samz707]

Just now, Marienburg said:

I think the only one that's bad are the pass rogues on Miklan which are annoying to deal with even if you know about them. After that you have so many divine pulse charges that it doesn't really matter if you have to burn one because you walked right on top of an ambush spawn. But maybe that's just me. I know people complain about ambush spawns in FE6 and I thought those were all fair and had no problems with them.

Personally, it's still annoying to have to essentially save-scum because of bad game design.

Even if Hard ends up being too easy for me, I absolutely do not want to deal with having my strategy get  screwed over because the developers implemented a lazy form of "difficulty".

[Marienburg]

14 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Personally, it's still annoying to have to essentially save-scum because of bad game design.

Even if Hard ends up being too easy for me, I absolutely do not want to deal with having my strategy get  screwed over because the developers implemented a lazy form of "difficulty".

I take it you haven't played the game yet? It's really not as bad as people make it out to be. There's maybe 4 relevant ambush spawns across the entire game and none of them force you to change your entire strategy, rather just revise unit placement. And it's not like the ambush spawns come out of nowhere, warp in the middle of your team, and one shot your healer. On the Miklan map you're warned ahead of time that there's enemies trying to get to you from the lower floors.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Marienburg

[Samz707]

1 minute ago, Marienburg said:

I take it you haven't played the game yet? It's really not as bad as people make it out to be. There's maybe 4 relevant ambush spawns across the entire game and none of them force you to change your entire strategy, rather just revise unit placement. 

I have but am still in the early game on Hard, I already actually would have had to divine pulse in the Miklan one if it wasn't for me intentionally training Bernadetta up so that she could just barely survive those two enemy spawns, since they occurred after I'd already moved everyone in range of them.

I simply don't want to deal with any ambush spawns because having to memorize  enemy spawns isn't fun gameplay.

 

[Aethelstan]

18 minutes ago, Marienburg said:

I think the only one that's bad are the pass rogues on Miklan which are annoying to deal with even if you know about them. After that you have so many divine pulse charges that it doesn't really matter if you have to burn one because you walked right on top of an ambush spawn. But maybe that's just me. I know people complain about ambush spawns in FE6 and I thought those were all fair and had no problems with them.

I generally agree with you that most of the ambush spawns are fine. I would only add one more example to your one of Miklan's being annoying. Felix's paralogue has a spawn point that puts out some decently fast rogues right in the path the villager's AI will take to their escape point. Your units are usually pretty spread out on that map so you may need to divine pulse way back to set people up who can intercept them.

I usually find ambush spawns annoying in some older games because you can do everything right and only lose becasue it's your first time playing the map and you didn't know they would be there. But I think it's uniquely fine in 3H because of divine pulse. I think that's mainly what the developer intended it for.

[Marienburg]

6 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

I have but am still in the early game on Hard, I already actually would have had to divine pulse in the Miklan one if it wasn't for me intentionally training Bernadetta up so that she could just barely survive those two enemy spawns, since they occurred after I'd already moved everyone in range of them.

I simply don't want to deal with any ambush spawns because having to memorize  enemy spawns isn't fun gameplay.

 

Alright, good. There's one other instance in which you will have to divine pulse because a pegasus knight will shove a javelin up your healer's posterior, but otherwise there's nothing else egregious like that.

[SnowFire]

Re initial comment: Well, that's why there's multiple difficulty modes.  The issue isn't chapter battles vs. paralogue battles; it's that Normal Mode is essentially easy mode / plot mode.  Some people want that experience.  If you wanted more tactics & strategy, I'd recommend restarting on Hard mode; Normal is not going to give that to you.  Also, TVTropes is a wiki.  I really, really wouldn't give them much credit for any balance comments, as the collective will tell you every unit is simultaneously overpowered and underpowered.  (I'm not even kidding about that, you can see the same characters on their overpowered lists and their underpowered lists.)

Re other comments, I agree that a difficulty mode in-between Hard & Maddening would have been nice, as would toggle-able difficulty that lets you go back up as well as down.  That said, there's a large difference in how you approach Maddening that does let you customize the experience - Maddening NG Classic, Maddening NG Casual but trying to only abuse deaths occasionally, Maddening NG Casual letting units "die" left and right, Maddening NG+ that doesn't go crazy on the imports and keeps just statue level & batallions, Maddening NG+ where you unload a bunch of busted lategame skills early...  you have options.

Re Samz707: "I simply don't want to deal with any ambush spawns because having to memorize  enemy spawns isn't fun gameplay."  But - you don't have to.  It's fine to dislike the Divine Pulse mechanic, but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to use it, especially on a first run of the game.  Just back up a turn.  If you only ever use DP for ambush spawns or misclicks, it'll be just as gripping as you like and you don't have to memorize ambush spawns anymore, problem solved.

[Marienburg]

8 minutes ago, Aethelstan said:

I generally agree with you that most of the ambush spawns are fine. I would only add one more example to your one of Miklan's being annoying. Felix's paralogue has a spawn point that puts out some decently fast rogues right in the path the villager's AI will take to their escape point. Your units are usually pretty spread out on that map so you may need to divine pulse way back to set people up who can intercept them.

I usually find ambush spawns annoying in some older games because you can do everything right and only lose becasue it's your first time playing the map and you didn't know they would be there. But I think it's uniquely fine in 3H because of divine pulse. I think that's mainly what the developer intended it for.

Exactly, I think you're right that the developers intended it to be this way because Divine Pulsing ambush spawns is literally canon in Three Houses. Once at the beginning when the bandit tries to kill Edelgard and again when that green unit turns red and kills you know who.

[Agro]

I'd argue that the ambush spawns that happen in The Face Beneath (Caspar and Mercedes' paralogue) are pretty bullshit too. If Mercedes and Caspar are uninvested this chapter is practically impossible since the Snipers will murder either of them unless they advance far enough, but if they advance too far the Dark Mages and the Giant Wolf will also murder them.

FE3H's Hard difficulty holds up OK if you're playing blind. I remember genuinely struggling with the later chapters of CF because I hadn't invested into Authority at all so my fliers had no battalions, my Bernadetta was still a Pegasus Knight as I hadn't made enough effort to get her into anything else, and I didn't realise that you could purchase gifts at the markets to increase motivation for characters - I was just relying on flowers for that before. 

Maddening is definitely pretty tough. I think most players (myself included) are experienced enough to use Warp strats, etc. especially in the later chapters which leads to the experience of thinking that they're easy.

[scigeek101]

Hmm what's the criteria for comparing difficulty. 

 

If it's ability to see the ending sure. Three houses is pretty much the easiest one because of all the options it throws you for character building and divine pulse for turn rewind and casual mode and all that. 

 

In terms of like hardest difficulty? Well maddening is hard but I don't think it's quite on the same level of some of the previous games insane lunatic options or stuff like reverse lunatic so it's definitely on the easier end there. But it's still a good deal harder than the early games where we had one difficulty option and that's that. Or games like Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance where Hard mode is closer to normal mode and easy mode is really easy. 

So idk. I guess overall it's definitely one of the easier games. But I felt like that's mostly because of the tools the game gives you. More freedom makes it a lot easier to break. I think Sacred Stones and and Path of Radiance are technically easier games but they feel a bit harder I guess because you don't have the divine pulse or casual mode options. 

Three Houses I've not played on Normal so I don't really know what it's like there. Hard mode felt pretty good to me. Not so easy it's brain dead but not so hard either. If it weren't for divine pulse though some of the bosses would have been really annoying especially since you don't really get replacement units in 3 houses so much so losing your units isn't something you could live with as easily in the old games. 

Is it possible to screw yourself out of the ending in Three Houses classic mode? Nemesis was pretty tough I can imagine getting stuck there if I played really badly up to that point and had no units left. I don't think it would have been so easy if I approached it the way I approached my first ever FE playthrough by letting all my units die and not caring about recruiting certain characters until I got about halfway through and figured out that my replacements were getting a bit weak to hold their own. 

 

 

 

[Shadow Mir]

On 1/4/2021 at 5:50 PM, SnowFire said:

Also, TVTropes is a wiki.  I really, really wouldn't give them much credit for any balance comments, as the collective will tell you every unit is simultaneously overpowered and underpowered.  (I'm not even kidding about that, you can see the same characters on their overpowered lists and their underpowered lists.)

Are you talking about this page? Because I would consider that a YMMY topic - see: Ayra, for example. She was considered broken for quite a while, until people realized that her awesome combat would not see much use in practice, barring the arena, because her game very heavily favours mounted units. Or for another example, Gonzales from Binding Blade. Some people think he's good because he hits hard and is fast. Others don't, because he's extremely inaccurate.

On 1/4/2021 at 5:23 PM, Marienburg said:

I think the only one that's bad are the pass rogues on Miklan which are annoying to deal with even if you know about them. After that you have so many divine pulse charges that it doesn't really matter if you have to burn one because you walked right on top of an ambush spawn. But maybe that's just me. I know people complain about ambush spawns in FE6 and I thought those were all fair and had no problems with them.

Do you think nomads spawning from random huts around the boss area (chapter 18 Sacae) is fair? Because I don't.

Look at this map:

There are 15 huts around the boss area. Once you get into that circle, nomads and nomad troopers spawn from the huts nearby. The catch? You don't know which huts will spawn them. Even blocking them off isn't safe unless you block all of them, which is absurd.