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First time playing - thoughts on difficulty so far (Ch 17)


emazur
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For reference I've beaten the 3 GBA games on normal (back when GBA games were still made) and last year got back into the series starting with Path of Radiance (normal), Radiant Dawn (normal - US), and Three Houses (Normal then Hard for the main game, Hard for the DLC). Radiant Dawn normal and 3H DLC hard are what I consider to be quite hard but reasonable and I wouldn't want to play anything more difficult. Comparing Awakening (hard casual) to those two I consider Awakening to be much more difficult and I'm really glad I chose casual instead of classic or else I would have had to restart the game. In particular from chapter 16 and chapter 17 (which I just completed) they very suddenly spiked the difficulty big time, especially compared to Ch 15 which to me was just a modest challenge with no deaths/retreats from my team and I wasn't very demanding with my battle preparations.

CH 16 (Naga's Voice - tree level) - suddenly a large number of enemies have silver weapons which are very damaging and said enemies can also take quite a beating. Reinforcements to boot. Approximately half my squad died on this battle. Going in I still had several characters unpromoted and hardly with the best weapons so I took care of all that after battle to prepare for Ch 17

CH 17 (Inexorable Death - Pheros level) - same as CH 16 but even more reinforcements and also many enemies with powerful magic. When I finished this level I only had 5 surviving team members and I doubt I could have lasted beyond another 2 turns. This is the only level in the entire game for me where Frederick went down (because of that powerful flame magic). If you're curious of those 5 members: Chrom, Robin, Lucina, Nowi, & Anna (Tharja, easily one of my MVPs, was teamed up with Anna and was my last team member to be be defeated)

I'm really hoping it doesn't get harder than this. I still have things I can do in case (30,000 gold can buy a lot of forgings, there are also single battle consumables). I'm not asking for help - just wanted to give my thoughts on the difficulty so far.

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Updated thoughts on difficulty:

Chapter 17 Prologue (defend Tiki). I lost Tiki on turn 4 and won the battle on turn 5. I thought it would be very very hard to both defend and win. I moved on but looked up the strategy should have been to teleport her against the castle wall so fewer team units need surround her. Maybe if I ever play it again I'll try that. This is the first prologue available in a while - I found out afterwards the others only trigger from a marriage but for me only Chrom and Robin married so far)

Chapter 18 (Lava stage) was only moderately challenging - no team deaths and I opened 1 of the 4 chests and probably could have opened at least 2 more before the ground collapsed into the lava but I decided to play it safe and end the battle 1st opportunity

Chapter 19 (Warhart stage outside castle) - man, what a huge pain in the ass that was with the endless and numerous reinforcements (hard/casual). I lost the battle 1st time when Robin went down (tried grouping all to the bottom right and then snaking up) and decided next time only the highest defense units can be on the front line along with 2 healers paired up with speed units for hopefully dodging:

Chrom + Robin

Kellam + Nowi

Tharja + Virion

Sumia + Frederick

Lucina + Cherche or Cordelia (I forgot which)

Lissa + Anna

Libra + Say'ri

Strategy

B/c of the endless reinforcements the 2nd time my strategy was to go straight forward while guarding the healers as much as possible (mostly Libra, Lissa I often had to leave exposed but she dodged everybody and blasted out El Thunder 9 times total). Therja was who went ahead farthest since she basically gets free shots w/ Nostferatu and often 1 rounds the enemy (I equipped her with 80 Nosferatus just in case and wound up using 22).

I defeated Walhart on the 5th turn in 1 round (Sumia did 3 strikes with the Brave Lance [1st time using it] and Frederick did an assist strike w/ Silver Sword).  It might have gone at least 6 turns but Lissa lured Walhart in on the 4th (she dodged the attack and countered with 10 damage) easily within reach of all my team. Also I used Sumia's speed rally and Libra's luck rally at the end - I think that probably helped a lot as Libra was exposed to guard Chrom before the final assualt on Warhart - Libra was attacked numerous times but always dodged and usually countered w/ Killer Axe.  

Casualties

On turn 4 Lucina (Lv 10 Great Lord, 51/51 HP - unit with highest strength stat) was defeated for the first time since she joined. Kellam, Nowi, Cordelia also went down on turn 4. Casual mode saves the day

This battle felt really overwhelming the 1st time when I lost but now I know what to do in a similar situation.

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2nd update on thoughts of difficulty

Chapter 20 (Walhart indoors battle) - much easier than chapter 19 though still challenging. Opted not to try to open the chests. No ally deaths. Lissa continues to impress - I promoted her to master class in order to bring some extra offense with tomes when she was open but she turned out to be quite the powerhouse - dodging everything and countering with powerful magic. I made a positioning error on turn 1 (Kellam was too far away to complete a 3 tile wide wall of characters) so I put her in his place due to her recent performance. The Cervantes boss went straight for her on that turn and she dodged and did a one shot kill and did great against all other units who targeted her.

Chapter 21 (Five Gemstones) - 1st play I failed to notice the assassins carried bows so Sumia went down early. Had to restart the battle. 2nd play Robin went down by the door before the boss b/c I left her exposed by trying to move through the door too quickly. That one move was a mistake but I tried again from a battle save prior to that move and this time completed the battle with no ally deaths. Lesson learned: don't determine if enemies have bows by surveying visually - check their inventories

Chapter 22 (Aversa stage) - the enemies here are tough as nails and AI seems smarter than usual. 2 of my allies had to retreat: Libra b/c I failed to notice the assassin enemy had the pass skill so he went right through the choke point that Tharja was blocking & Sumia b/c she went north on her own to take out the bow knight who split apart from the rest of his group. That went fine but the following turn the axe equipped enemy very unexpectedly went north to follow her and took her out instead of my much much closer placed allies who were all rallied up. Chrom also came within 3 points of falling from the enemy who carried the counter skill which I don't recall seeing up til now (I believe that was the same unit who took out Sumia). Lesson learned: check for enemy skills during battle prep which I hadn't been doing so far except for the main boss. Side thought: it felt nice not having to deal with reinforcements while heading north to take out Aversa (who went down fairly easily with a bow shot from Virion and wind magic from Robin)

Chapter 23 (Validar stage) - I lost Sumia very early on due to not noticing she was within reach of an assassin with a bow (I guess I only half learned my lesson from Ch 21). I also lost Lissa very early on due to assuming she would continue to dodge everything but the enemies here are very fast and and hit very hard. Losing those 2 early on eventually led to other fallen allies 3/4 through (Nowi and Anna). Tharja, my weapon of mass destruction, actually ran out of Nosferatus towards the end - guess I should have stocked up more like I did on Ch 19 . She still had other magic to lead off with 22 damage on Vailidar, followed by a powerful strike from a rallied Celina, and Libra who rarely takes on bosses and who was my final active character on that turn hit the death blow with 8 points of damage from the Bolt Axe (Validar had 7 points left prior to this. Had Libra failed it's quite possible Celina would have gone down on the next turn. I wish the battle would have ended after Validar is defeated but 2 of his reinforcements were still on the board and I took care of them. The most difficult battle since Chapter 19. Then as now I had to heavily rely on Tharja's nosferatu magic to mow down the army (she's maxed out now at level 20 so I'd like to rely on her less)

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update 3:

Chapter 24 (Awakening) - no deaths. It had the potential to be very punishing since there are so many enemies within close range that just sending Tharja out on her own to clear the field still left ally units exposed on turn 1. My next most powerful unit, Lucina (who maxed out at level 20 during this battle), is powerful but by no means invulnerable. By having Anna pair up with her she was able to reach the fortress on the bottom on turn 1 and get a speed boost. Kellam plugged the gap between the walls and my high movement units (Sumia and Frederick) were placed on the the far north of the map so they could immediately move south on Turn 1, hopefully drawing all enemy attention to Tharja and Lucina. This strategy worked though one enemy did move to the northern part of the map instead of towards Tharja. I dealt with him by sending in Sumia equipped with a Brave lance  and then warping her back south (I think maybe only the 3rd or 4th time I've used warp in the entire game so far)

Chapter 25 (To Slay a God) - this battle was certainly easier than Chapter 23 but a couple careless mistakes caused some deaths. On turn 2 I failed to notice Robin was within a distance attack of a griffon rider approaching from the bottom right and due to her poor speed she got doubled and died. Had to restart. Later in the battle I failed to notice I failed to notice a griffon rider was equipped with wind magic so when I sent Sumia to take care of one of the three armored generals up north she was within striking distance of that griffon and went down. Her paired up unit (Frederick) went down after her.

Only 1 battle remaining

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Update 4: final battle & overall verdict

Final Chapter (Grima)

A hard battle that really pushes you to move forward quickly or get eaten by reinforcements. I'll put it in the top 3 most difficult battles along with Ch 19 and 23. I made a positioning error on turn 2 which took down Robin (man those mounted enemy units with 2 range attacks can move deceptively far) so I restarted with a bookmark at the beginning of turn 2 doing everything the same except for Robin

Strategy:
Tharja (paired with Chrom) to clear out the right side, all other units to clear out the left side. Rescue staves, which up til now have almost gone unused (they're pricey for only a small quantity), I anticipated would be needed (both healers equipped) and I'm glad I did - when flying reinforcements appeared on the south I could send Virion to kill the lead one and then rescue him after all other units continued to press forward. Also to punch through Grima's berserker guard (left side) I sent Sumia up along with the Brave Lance and then rescued her. I'm not sure if that was necessary as those guards seemed resistant to leaving Grima's vicinity as I noticed when positioning Lucina to bait the center berserker guard so I just took him out on the next turn. All other guards were untouched

Robin cast rally prior the assault on Grima - Chrom I believe was not affected b/c he was paired with Tharja (actually I never paired them before this chapter) at the start of the turn

Sumia (with Brave Lance) + Nowi : made a big dent taking off between 20 and 30 HP
Lucina + Say'ri : took Grima's health to below 20 HP
Chrom + Tharja : finished him off (a standard hit was forecast at either 17 or 19 HP)

Casualties:

Kellam - dark rider near the top took him out with magic
Cordelia - same turn reinforcements above the middle of the map. I only used her very lightly in the game but brought her along since I noticed she had speed rally

Overall verdict on hard/casual difficulty

I'll start off with saying I'm someone who hates grinding and won't do it. I did maybe 50 to 75% of the optional Risen battles up til about Chapter 7 (though not for the purpose of grinding) and almost completely stopped doing them until lightly at the end of the game in order to top off someone's level or weapon level (I would have preferred the bonus exp method in Path of Radiance & Dawn). As you can see by the stats from the pictures below (taken on turn 1 or 2 of the final chapter) I was hardly overpowered (Robin's defenses were paper thin - weakest Avatar from any Fire Emblem I've played though Rally is helpful). So from my perspective I didn't grind and can't complain that I had to since I beat the game. I also hate reading guides and completely prefer to play games blindly rather than being told what to do

I greatly enjoyed the game but what I really don't like is that if I hadn't made 2 or 3 fortunate decisions on characters (below) I would have had to grind (did I mention I hate that?) or just give up due to excessive difficulty - mainly from reinforcements. Giving up would have felt very frustrating and like I wasted my time.

1) Sumia was my MVP for about 70 to 80% of the game b/c of her ability to dodge and double but she started off a bit on the weak side - I made the fortunate decision build her up (pair w/ Kellam or Frederick to boost especially defense). That paid off soon enough and I started sending her out solo much more. If I hadn't put her on the front lines this already difficult game would have been much more difficult. Though it's possible I would have made an alternative good decision (perhaps Lon'qu who I benched not long after he ran out of Killing Edge. Speedy and performed well when used though that might have been b/c of Killing Edge which is hard to find and a bit pricey. Plus I already had sword wielders like Chrom and Robin). About 130 victories (#2) by the credits

2) Lucina - about on par with Sumia but some qualities that made her essential in other ways: higher defense, not vulnerable to arrows, and frequently uses skills or criticals. Essential to the last 20% of the game (especially ch 24 where I needed a character ahead of the others who could defend, dodge, hit, and take an arrow if needed). But I considered not using her from the start b/c of the saturation of sword users. I mainly figured b/c she's a Lord and Chrom's child she should get powerful so I kept her in and this paid off - a very fortunate decision

3) Tharja - as I discovered on Chapter 19 I could not have beaten the game without her due to her ability to clear out a large number of enemies with Nosferatu (maybe Henry? But if remember his DEF was sharply lower. Never used him). About 180 victories (#1) by the credits. Never in any Fire Emblem game (or Tear Ring Saga) have I had to deal with so so many reinforcements which meant either Tharja or grinding is a must.  I had been using Ricken as my sole tome user on the field and phased him out not long after getting Tharja. Unpromoted Ricken was level 18 and doing fairly well when I stopped using him - if I had my heart set on building him up instead I would have missed out on using Tharja. So Tharja was yet another very fortunate decision

In my particular case it happened to all work out but despite that fact I had an extremely diverse and well rounded team (lords, magic, great knight, archer, heavy armor, etc.) due to the reliance on fortunate decisions I'm going to have to give the hard difficulty a big thumbs down that I would never recommend to someone who liked playing blindly and who hates grinding. Because of this experience I may decide to play on normal for the next two 3DS games and use my second stringers if it's too easy

As a side opinion, as for the 1-unit massive mow down technique (Tharja) that I had to use starting with Chapter 19 to deal with an overwhelming number of enemies, at first the idea seemed horrible (and I assume this is not needed on normal difficulty). But then I reconsidered and figured that it's just the reverse of using a single armored unit when defending to block off and kill an overwhelming number of weapon units that I've done in previous Fire Emblem games which I had no objection to. Plus my other units were still needed during the battle to help out - especially dealing with the boss and to keep building their levels for future unknown challenges and threats - so there was still plenty of danger to keep me on my toes

awakening01a.png

awakening02a.png

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22 hours ago, emazur said:

As you can see by the stats from the pictures below (taken on turn 1 or 2 of the final chapter) I was hardly overpowered (Robin's defenses were paper thin - weakest Avatar from any Fire Emblem I've played though Rally is helpful).

What asset and flaw did your Robin have? Because at a glance, I find that kinda hard to buy.

22 hours ago, emazur said:

I would have preferred the bonus exp method in Path of Radiance & Dawn

Personally, my main gripe with bonus experience is that it's easy to abuse.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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12 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

What asset and flaw did your Robin have? Because at a glance, I find that kinda hard to buy.

Personally, my main gripe with bonus experience is that it's easy to abuse.

TLDR - poor: DEF, RES, SPD. Good: Rally, helped build Chrom and Lucina earlier in game

STR, while decent, is still only middle of the pack on this team and nullified by her abysmal defense so if she tried to strike someone w/ the sword she'd get hit back hard, and due to her poor speed she'd also be doubled. MAG looks pretty respectable (#4 on the team but I'll be generous and say tied for #3) but poor RES again left her extremely vulnerable. Poor DEF, RES, and SPD are not at all what you want during the last 20% of the game - from the above chapter summaries (I don't expect anyone to have read them all) whenever I lost a battle it was usually b/c an enemy (often bypassing much closer targets) went straight for her (and there were some close calls not mentioned like almost getting doubled by the Mire distance magic). She was my only unit to reach S level support (along with Chrom) so she helped build him up earlier in the game (also reached B level with Lucina). But Chrom's RES is very poor - basically tied for second to last, so pairing up w/ him and putting him on the front lines was too risky for the last 20% of the game. And it also seemed like a waste to pair her up with anybody towards the last 20% b/c it was better to have her use Rally and let others benefit from it. So Rally for sure is an asset once she gets it. But otherwise an extremely vulnerable unit despite being in the #2 tier as far as level reached (level 17)

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2 hours ago, emazur said:

TLDR - poor: DEF, RES, SPD. Good: Rally, helped build Chrom and Lucina earlier in game

STR, while decent, is still only middle of the pack on this team and nullified by her abysmal defense so if she tried to strike someone w/ the sword she'd get hit back hard, and due to her poor speed she'd also be doubled. MAG looks pretty respectable (#4 on the team but I'll be generous and say tied for #3) but poor RES again left her extremely vulnerable. Poor DEF, RES, and SPD are not at all what you want during the last 20% of the game - from the above chapter summaries (I don't expect anyone to have read them all) whenever I lost a battle it was usually b/c an enemy (often bypassing much closer targets) went straight for her (and there were some close calls not mentioned like almost getting doubled by the Mire distance magic). She was my only unit to reach S level support (along with Chrom) so she helped build him up earlier in the game (also reached B level with Lucina). But Chrom's RES is very poor - basically tied for second to last, so pairing up w/ him and putting him on the front lines was too risky for the last 20% of the game. And it also seemed like a waste to pair her up with anybody towards the last 20% b/c it was better to have her use Rally and let others benefit from it. So Rally for sure is an asset once she gets it. But otherwise an extremely vulnerable unit despite being in the #2 tier as far as level reached (level 17)

Uh, that doesn't quite answer my question, which was this: what asset and flaw did you pick for Robin during character creation?

RE: Rally Spectrum, imho, jt's absolutely amazing on paper, but when the cost of using it is forcing who is most likely going to be one of my best units, if not my best unit, to give up their turn, I can't help but wonder if it really is a practical option...

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45 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Uh, that doesn't quite answer my question, which was this: what asset and flaw did you pick for Robin during character creation?

RE: Rally Spectrum, imho, jt's absolutely amazing on paper, but when the cost of using it is forcing who is most likely going to be one of my best units, if not my best unit, to give up their turn, I can't help but wonder if it really is a practical option...

Oh that - I had totally forgotten about that part of the game and thought you were asking my opinion of what her assets and flaws were. For asset I think I chose LUCK. I don't remember flaw but possibly RES.

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