General Banzai Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 Hello everyone. I haven't been active here recently but I'm a longtime Fire Emblem veteran and I've beaten most of the hardest difficulties in the series (Thracia 776, Shadow Dragon H5, Awakening Lunatic+ Classic) without grinding, cheese, or DLC. Engage recently reignited my excitement for Fire Emblem so I decided to take a spin on Conquest Lunatic Classic, one of the few hard difficulties I hadn't yet attempted. For context on my level of expertise on this game coming in, I had played through Fates three times before, once for each route (Hard Classic). I beat Conquest on Hard Classic about four years ago, so while I had a general idea of the maps and challenges to expect, my memories were a little vague. I also had little knowledge as to unit tiering, i.e. I wasn't super certain on which units were good or not. I began the game without much of a long-term macro-level strategy regarding who to use, who to pair up, who to reclass, and so on. I figured I could sort that out as I went. In my Hard playthroughs I went with a male Corrin because I felt like the early Flame Shuriken you get in most routes amps Felicia's offensive capabilities, but this time I decided a bulkier and stronger early game unit would be more useful, so I went with a female Corrin. Regardless, I didn't think Jakob would be a useful long-term unit so I decided to avoid feeding him many kills. In the first 5 chapters before Branch of Fate I prioritized putting as many kills onto Corrin as possible. As a side note, Chapter 5 is a hideously poorly-designed chapter on Lunatic. It seems as though there is only one correct solution for approaching the group of enemies at the bottom of the map, requiring a specific unit to be placed on a specific tile to strategically lure the enemies in a particular way, as if any two enemies attack Corrin she'll die. I really dislike this constraining of options; it makes the game feel more like a puzzle game than a strategy game. (I also hate how the game gives you an exciting, powerful tool--dragon Corrin with extremely inflated stats--and then makes every enemy have a wyrmslayer to that tool is rendered weak.) Making it to branch of fate, I began my run of Conquest. Chapter 6 is a pretty non-notable chapter so I'll begin by discussing: Chapter 7 This map is pretty boring, as it is designed to force you to sit in a choke point and slowly deal with the wave of enemies rushing your position. There's no benefit for not sitting in the choke point, so that's what I did. I decided to funnel experience onto Corrin and Silas in particular. I knew that Effie was useful in the early game but decided she would probably fall off long-term, so while I used her for walling off areas and chipping down enemies, I avoided giving her kills. I hate Arthur so I decided against using him pretty quickly. Anyway, this map is a bit of a snooze so there's not much to say; I easily beat it my first attempt. Chapter 8 This map has a much better design than the last. The core concept of visiting houses before enemies is a Fire Emblem staple, but the adjustment that when enemies visit houses they gain reinforcements adds urgency to it. I reset my first two attempts, as my strategy was to send Niles and Odin to the left and try to visit those houses before the enemy got to them, but decided this strategy was nonviable. Instead I moved north, handling the reinforcements from the first house with some smart positioning on Turn 2 so I could intercept the village visiting enemy and protect the northmost house. Then I dealt with reinforcements from the left as they came toward me. Ultimately, I saved two houses; I wonder what the best strategy is to save three? The new units in this map are Niles and Odin. I knew from my past playthrough that Niles is very useful, so I determined to use him, but for some reason I was also possessed of the notion to use Odin, thinking his durability might make him useful with Nosferatu. Using Odin would turn out to be in some ways a terrible decision and in some ways one of the most important ones to the run; I'll clarify later. Chapter Mozu Boring chapter. (I forget, in fact, whether I did this chapter before Ch 9 or before Ch 10.) It was in fact so boring I played extremely sloppily and took a dumb restart simply for ignoring enemy ranges. I used this map to feed kills onto Odin, who started a little underleveled compared to my other units. I decided instantly not to use Mozu, but I wonder if, knowing what I do now about this game's difficulty curve, using her might actually be pretty useful. Chapter 9 This is another boring map. There is no impetus for the player to move quickly (Azura can easily remain safe with basic movement), and the map is full of chokepoints that can be easily cleared with safe if slow play. I took out Haitaka's archers over the wall and then proceeded with some Chokepoint Gaming; the only hiccup was the wave of reinforcements that included a couple appearing behind my lines, but I was able to clear them without any trouble. I attempted to capture Haitaka knowing his Rally Def skill can be super useful in the early game, but Niles missed his capture attempt and I didn't want to restart the whole map so I just killed him. Overall an easy chapter with no restarts. I briefly entertained the idea of using Nyx and pairing her with Odin, which was an even worse idea than just using Odin, but luckily it wouldn't last long. I did decide that I would pair Corrin with Silas, believing it would be useful to get an early power spike with a quick S rank support. Chapter 10 Before this chapter began, I promoted Elise, which instantly gave me another powerful combat unit whose high magic and speed allowed her to one round nearly any enemy on the map, even if she was pretty frail. My first run of this map went decently and I reached the final turn before I missed a 90% hit chance with Selena and she died. Even though I didn't plan to use Selena, I prefer to beat these games without losing any units, so I restarted. Doing so was actually a blessing in disguise, as with some tweaks to my strategy I was able to visit all four houses and clear the map even easily than the first time. This is a great map, but everyone already knows that. I like how it initially prompts the player to play aggressively, before swarming them with reinforcements that make the last few turns a tense retraction around the defend point. I also like how it gives you the ballista and fire orb and organizes enemies in a way that makes using those tools satisfying and useful. In my Hard playthrough, I had avoided using any of the game's strong prepromotes, but this time I decided I should probably use Camilla. I also decided to use Beruka and pair her with Niles, believing their stat benefits paired up would even each other's weaknesses out. I dropped my scheme to use Nyx and instead decided to pair Odin with Elise. Chapter 11 This chapter is probably one of the worst-designed maps in Fire Emblem history (I think most of the worst-designed maps in Fire Emblem history are in Fates, unfortunately). It's so goofy and gimmicky, slow and tedious. This would be the first and last time I would be tricked by this game into splitting my forces in two when I didn't have to, and sent a half of my army into each of the routes. Camilla was able to easily clear one half, while my other half struggled a little and needed to wait for Camilla to arrive from behind to handle the Lunge ninja room. I also wasted a Rescue staff use in this map; had I known how valuable this staff would be later in the game, I would've saved it. Otherwise, the map was mostly easy and just boring, and I beat it my first attempt. Chapter 12 Another lousy gimmick map. Hitting the pots is basically gambling unless you know which pot gives which effect; I hit the absolute minimum number of poison pots and proceeded through the map normally. There is little else to make this map interesting beyond its dumb gimmick, and I had next to no trouble. I decided I would not use Lazlow or Peri, although I briefly thought about pairing Lazlow with Camilla; a friend told me that Camilla was better paired with Keaton, so I believed that. As a side note, why does this map have an entrap staff user that entraps your unit into a room with just one rinky dink swordsman? Is it just to introduce the concept of entrap? Seems exceptionally pointless otherwise. Chapter 13 After the last two maps this one is a breath of fresh air. No gimmicks, only some solid map design and gameplay. I restarted twice in the first few turns as I tried to figure out how the AI worked for the squad around Takumi as well as how quickly the wyverns carrying knights reach me, then proceeded with my plan. I used Freeze on Takumi and then baited out his squad. Kiting backward, I took care of the units around him while keeping Takumi out of range, and then put Camilla in range of the wyverns to intercept and one round them on enemy phase, causing their knights to fall mostly on the south side of the canal. Once I had thinned out the other enemies, I could swarm forward and wipe out Takumi quickly. I moved down the bridge and baited Reina's cavaliers with my bulky Corrin and Silas, then cleared them all out the next player phase. This gave me access to the villages before the weirdly crippled 3-move outlaw could reach any of them, so I was able to visit them all. I had Elise run into Orochi's squad and assassinate the single cavalier, with her high res allowing her to tank all the mages in the rest of the squad. I did not anticipate the cavalier and wyvern reinforcements, so when I pulled Scarlet's squad and they showed up on either side of me I was put in a somewhat bad situation, but by casting Freeze on Scarlet I was able to focus on clearing the small fry before taking out Scarlet herself. Overall, after my first two early restarts, I beat the map without trouble. I decided Benny and Charlotte sucked and that I would not use them. By the end of this map Niles had reached Lv 20 and was ready to promote to Bow Knight. I had decided to wait until my units hit 20 to promote them, as so far the game had been pretty easy and I didn't feel like I needed the immediate power boost. Chapter 14 With this map, I added Keaton to my army and mostly solidified my force (before children): Corrin x Silas, Niles x Beruka, Odin x Elise, Camilla x Keaton, and of course Azura. I was also using Jakob as a staffbot still, and keeping around Lazlow for his rally ability. This map is decent, and I like how the kinshi knight reinforcements break up your attempts at Chokepoint Gaming, but this map introduces the lousy status staves this game likes to spam at you with no real ability to counter them beyond tanking them, which is pretty annoying and anti-strategic. I reset the map once due to not anticipating the kinshi knights. My second run I had my promoted Niles with Beruka pairup intercept them; at this point he was fairly tanky and also able to easily kill the flying enemies. The map was easy otherwise and I opted not to capture the boss, as I didn't think I'd use him much. I did capture a couple of low level generic flying enemies on a whim, which would come in handy much later in the game. By the end of this map, I level 20 promoted Corrin and Silas (to Great Knight). You also get Leo in this chapter, but he was so slow I decided he wouldn't be worth it. Chapter 15 Hate this map. It hardly counts as a map. I hate using Gunter. I wish I had my whole army, at least then the map would be engaging. As it stands it's painfully boring. I got all the statboosters and got out. There is nothing else interesting to say about this map. Chapter 16 By now my S ranks were starting to come in, but I decided to hold off until my units gained their lv 5 promoted skills to pass down. You get Xander this map and I used to him to clear half the map while the rest of my forces dealt with the other half. As I had promoted Beruka and Odin by this chapter and my units were starting to get very powerful, I didn't have much difficulty here. This is a fairly mediocre map that once again relies on status staves to inject some artificial difficulty into things. At the end I decided to recruit Shura, as he would be a useful unit for the next couple chapters due to his staff use and solid chip damage. Chapter 17 Ninja Hell. Another horribly designed map that really highlights this game's obsession with debuffing your units, which has to be one of the least fun mechanics in all of Fire Emblem. Not only is it generally unfun to feel weak, but it makes it far more tedious and unreliable to calculate what enemies will do to you on enemy phase, eliminating good strategic elements from the gameplay while also making it extremely slow to progress through the map. This map just turns into Chokepoint Gaming anyway, with my high leveled bulky units like Xander, Silas, Camilla, and Beruka sitting in chokes and fielding large groups of ninjas who did almost no damage to them. Keaton promoted by this chapter, leaving my entire army promoted. Chapter 18 The midgame had turned into a snooze and this map was little exception. Arming my units with Hammers and Armorslayers I slaughtered the generals to the south and then moved north as a concerted force. The map has a time limit that seems to want to force your units to split in two to handle both bosses simultaneously, but the time limit is so generous that it's easy to send everyone south and then head north as a squad afterward. I collected the treasures and even had time to spare before killing Zola. Chapter Kana Now it was finally time to start recruiting children. I had paired Corrin and Silas thinking that an immediate couple of child units recruited early would help me through the early game, but the early and mid game were both so easy that I decided to hold off before I could get Draconic Hex on both of them. I kicked this chapter's ass, clearing it before the two bandit brother bosses even appeared. Kana's stats were garbage and my experience was that he's generally a useless unit, so I reclassed him to kinshi knight and gave him a bow for high movement and safe application of Draconic Hex, which would be the most use I got out of him. Chapter Sophie These maps that were designed to be done in Birthright are all really easy and I smashed my way through this one with no trouble, easily saving all six NPC soldiers in the process. I had thought Sophie might be a second a Silas but her much lower defenses rendered her fairly mediocre. This game isn't really like Awakening where children will always outlcass their parents. Sophie would mostly become a pairup bot for some of the other children I would recruit. The other note about this chapter is that I captured the boss Nichol, who would be useful later. Chapter Ophelia By this point in the game I had figured out Odin was dogshit. His higher bulk didn't do anything, he had no offense, no speed, he sucked. I had stuck with him hoping Ophelia might be useful, especially since I was hording spirit dust and had a whopping three of them ready to drop on her. Having never used Odin before I was not prepared for this map, which actually took some resets as I had to trial and error figure out where enemy aggro lines were to avoid getting myself swarmed as I aggressively attempted to visit every village quickly. It took several attempts and I even started to get frustrated, making sloppy mistakes in my tilt; this map was easily the most I struggled since the game began. In the end, though, I beat it while visiting every village, which was useful as they give some pretty good loot (I think one of my three spirit dusts was from a particularly difficult-to-reach village). After the map, I had Ophelia snort all that dust to become Cocaine Oomfie, with an absolutely devastating 32 magic as a level 2 Sorcerer. While Odin was a dogshit unit who was doing nothing except pairing up and occasional chip, Ophelia quickly turned out to be an ace unit who would be invaluable for the rest of my playthrough. I gave her a forged Nosferatu, a forged Lightning (brave tome), the Calamity Gate that reverses weapon triangle advantage, and the Horse Spirit that made her bulky and fast, and she was ready to rip. Chapter Velouria This map is pretty stupid with its Entrap set up. As Cocaine Oomfie was easily my best unit I didn't want to use the dragon vein to silence everyone including my own units, so I plowed through it with my very bulky Dragonstone Corrin. Nonetheless it took me a few attempts to figure out the best way to enter the set-up, which like Chapter 5 seems to be designed in a way that there are almost no good ways to approach it. This would be a sample of things to come... But at this point I was blissfully ignorant. (Why does this map have Velouria randomly spawn in the middle of fucking nowhere too, like come on.) When Velouria joined, she immediately was a very strong unit, with good stats all around and an inherited Savage Blow from her mother Camilla. Chapter Nina I knew ahead of time that Nina was a fairly mediocre unit, so I saved her for last. I'm not sure how you're supposed to save the treasure in this map, so I didn't. Instead I moved up to the middle, beat the enemies and Nina, and beat the map normally with little trouble. I promoted Nina to Outlaw instead of Bow Knight as I wanted the additional staff utility; this decision would actually turn out to be quite smart, as her high skill meant she had very high accuracy with offensive staves despite her mediocre magic. She also had both Rally Skill and Rally Def from her parents, which made her a useful rally bot. With that I had collected all my children. It was time to continue the actual game. Chapter 19 With the power injection into my army of Ophelia and Velouria, as well as the general leveling I gained from all the paralogues, this map was a breeze despite its idiotic Naruto gimmick. That brought me to... Chapter 20 Fuga's Wild Ride. God. This is another one of the worst Fire Emblem maps of all time. The movement gimmick is so fucking annoying, and worse yet there's Hayato with a Hexing Rod in the middle of the map. The Hexing Rod is absolute cancer. Every issue with uncounterable status staves magnified into the most brutal and unforgiving status effect possible. What's the strat to deal with it? Either get a lucky dodge or avoid it entirely. Maybe slowly bait its use on your pair-up units, I suppose, although the enemy position makes that difficult and it's tedious to do anyway. After some trial and error figuring out weather patterns, I settled on a strategy in which I quickly blew all my units up to Fuga, took him out, and then proceeded back through the map to collect all the treasure. It probably took 5-7 attempts, making this the most difficult map in a while, but it felt like almost all of that difficulty was rooted in frustrating and unfun gimmick mechanics. Chapter 21 Ophelia with the brave tome was able to one round the stone golems, which made this map exceptionally easy. By hitting the dragon veins every chapter and prioritizing moving my units quickly while Ophelia cleared the golems, I was able to move up the map with little difficulty and cleared it in 7 turns. I wonder how difficult this map would be if I didn't happen to have an extremely powerful mage with a forged brave tome? I feel like this game's gimmicks are sometimes trivialized if you have a very specific unit build, but are otherwise utterly obnoxious to deal with. Chapter 22 I wasn't falling for the "split up your army" trick this time. I used pair-ups to put all of my units on one side of the map and then proceeded down that side easily and cleanly. There was absolutely no challenge when I did the map this way and I was even able to take out Sakura for a free stat booster before ending. Beating this map and the last one with such ease made me feel very confident in my abilities. Little did I know the game's difficulty was about to spike. Chapter 23 Every map from here on out is horrible, laced with that puzzle game design that I mentioned hating in Chapter 5 and Chapter Velouria. It feels like enemies are set up in very particular ways as to require very specific solutions to the problems. By this point in the game I essentially had three very strong units: Ophelia, Velouria, and Camilla. Everyone else was essentially in a supportive role, unable to do much on their own. I think the really annoying thing about this map is how it presents three very specific setups in a row that you have to figure out in one go or else tediously repeat the first couple again and again. I decided to skip Hinata's squad entirely, not because he looked unbeatable but because I didn't want to have to deal with him every time before I approached the true challenge of the map, climbing up the wall with the Lunge lancers who pull you into range of Oboro's squad. I used Kana, Nichol, Beruka, and Camilla to fly my units over the ridge, bypassing Hinata, and captured the generic enemy with four rally skills (Rally Man). Then I moved up the wall. My strategy for the wall was for Ophelia to run in and kill one of the Lunge lancers, then dance her and kill another while standing at the tail end of Oboro's range, where only Oboro's paired-up mage can attack. I then swarmed the rest of my units in to clear as many of the other enemies on the wall as possible. Unfortunately by this point most of my units were pretty weak, even former tank monsters like Silas. With Velouria, Camilla, and Keaton I could clear some of the enemies, but I had to tiptoe around the archers with Counter and then survive a counter attack from the mages who come from the right, who could double and one round units like Silas and Xander. It took several attempts to figure out, which is aggravating because even skipping Hinata there's a lot of tedious movement set up to fly my units over the ridge. Once I had a run that survived the first turn on the wall, I was able to mop up Oboro pretty quickly, then I had to deal with Takumi. Takumi is a piece of shit. Not only does his area have another Lunge set up (seriously I am so sick of these Lunge set ups, please just let me play normally without having to worry about my positioning changing in the middle of enemy phase), but Takumi himself has a lot of dogshit skills like Rend Heaven that really up the RNG of fighting him. Not wanting to repeat scaling the wall after so many attempts, I approached him extremely defensively--perhaps too defensive. I used two of my remaining three Rescue staff uses to rush units in, attack Takumi, and pull them out without having to worry about the Lungers. (I only had to use one of those uses due to really bad RNG causing me to miss a fairly high hit chance. That shitty RNG would have lasting ramifications for the rest of the run.) Eventually, with Ophelia and Velouria, I took Takumi out and beat the map. Chapter 24 The maps did not get any easier. I attempted this map many times, approaching from every possible direction: the left, the north, the middle. Ophelia with Nosferatu was able to tank massive waves of enemies, but then the 12 movement fliers would show up and eventually pick off my weaker support units. Eventually, after several failed attempts and much frustration, I decided to repeat a strategy I used for Fuga's Wild Ride, which was to use the map's movement gimmick against it to quickly reach and assassinate the boss. Using Nichol and the generic fliers I captured much earlier in the run, I set up a strat by which I was able to get Ophelia, Velouria, and Keaton to Hinoka the first time she activated the movement-boosting dragon vein. My extremely powerful Velouria doubled and one rounded Hinoka and had a fairly decent chance to hit (80%), so it was a mostly reliable strategy. I didn't exactly like it though because it felt like cheese, essentially skipping the entire map, and without going back and fighting all the enemies afterward like I did with Fuga. However, I'm not certain if I could deal with the waves upon waves upon waves of flying reinforcements, so I went with this strat and cleared the map. Chapter 25 This is the worst map in the game. This map made me want to die. The first thing I figured out was that Corrin could, with Vulneraries in convoy, tank Ryoma indefinitely, so there was no need to rush. That meant I could avoid splitting my forces up and handle Saizo and Kagero with my full squad. Even so, the dogshit debuffing from Ninja Hell returned, but even worse this time as it now stacked. On top of that there are multiple rooms with shitty Lunge set ups, like jesus christ stop doing these Lunge set ups please they are so fucking tedious to deal with. Unlike Chapter 24, there was no easy way to beat the chapter, so here's how I did it. First, I used Xander to bait the three Master Ninjas with seal Defense to the immediate left of the starting point. Xander got his defense shredded by 30 (6 for seal def and 4 for shuriken from each ninja), but somehow was able to survive without issue. Then I baited the swordsmaster and ninja force above with Camilla, who by this point was so strong that if positioned in a smart way could kill one of the two ninjas on enemy phase, reducing how much she gets debuffed. After clearing those groups, I had to approach the shitty longbow Lunge setup room. The longbows meant that a unit of mine could essentially be lunged halfway across the map, so there was no chance except to very tediously and with very specific movement setups approach the room so I could take out both longbowmen at once. I first baited the paired up swordsmaster, who can be pulled by himself without aggroing the lungers if you attack him and then use Shelter to pull the attacker out of range. I did the same strat to pull the ninja in the leftmost corridor. Then, I sent Camilla with the Dual Club to fly to the extreme north of the map, where there is a single tile out of range of the Lungers. The remaining swordsmasters went to fight Camilla, leaving the Lunge longbowmen relatively undefended. I poured into their room, killing them both with Ophelia and Velouria, and then mopped up the remaining enemies. There was another pair of Lunge longbowmen near Saizo; to deal with them, I used Freeze on one and then rushed in with Velouria to kill the other. Then I was able to pour in, clear the remaining enemies, and finish Saizo. After that I ran my units all the way back through the empty half of the map to deal with the other side. I left Beruka by Corrin at this point so she could increase her survivability with Rally Defense, allowing me to indefinitely tank Ryoma. Using Camilla, Ophelia, and Velouria I cleared the first part of Kagero's side of the map. For the corridor with spy shuriken poison strike grisly wound ninjas, I used the same Shelter strat to aggro the guys in the middle of the corridor without ending player phase in range of the spy shurikens. I then had Camilla Lunge one of the spy shuriken ninjas into the corridor so I could kill him and then kill the second spy shuriken guy with Ophelia. Using Freeze once more, I was able to clear the rest of the area safely, then I proceeded to Kagero, who was very simple to defeat. I'll mention that the first time I beat Kagero I fucked up. I did not realize there was a door at the south of the map that would open upon killing Kagero. Having robotically been using Vulnerary + Rally Def every turn, when I killed Kagero both Corrin and Beruka had already moved. This meant Beruka was now in range of Ryoma, and he instantly one rounded her, forcing me to restart this aggravatingly endless and tedious chapter that required loads of boring movement set ups. I did it though! The second time through I made sure to have Corrin get onto Beruka and fly safely out of Ryoma's range. Then I killed Ryoma with Velouria and Ophelia, finally freeing myself from this hellish map. Chapter 26 After the last map this one looked more doable--despite the endless status stave spam (if it's not debuffing it's status staves, I swear with this game). I restarted once at the very beginning of the map to test how the AI worked for the first room, and then cleared this map on my first real attempt. Having beaten Lunatic+ before, I know every strat in the book to deal with Counter, so I was able to handle the Counter heroes in the first room by unequipping Velouria and Keaton and drawing the heroes out without counter attacking. After clearing the first room, I sent my entire force to the right to deal with the sages, ignoring the stone golem room entirely. The main difficulty or annoyance of this chapter was honestly Iago's seemingly random AI. I could never get a handle one what staff he would use or who he would use it on, and sometimes I would take a risky play in his range only for him to do something totally useless like cast Silence on Camilla. When there is no strategy to deal with status staves except tank them, I really wish enemy AI was more consistent or predictable. Anyway, Ophelia was more than equipped to wipe out the sages in the room by herself, while my other units handled the reinforcements. That just left the final room, with Hans and his goon squad. I opened the doors, baiting out all the enemies except Hans, and then retreated back, kiting them. The beastkillers on the generals meant I couldn't just tank them easily with Velouria or Xander (my bulkiest units), but I was able to tank them with Camilla and Dragonstone+ Corrin. The major waves of sage reinforcements that spawned behind me were a problem, though. Had I known about them ahead of time, I might have left Ophelia far back to handle them solo, but as it stood I had to scramble to clear them on player phase. Ophelia also got frozen by Iago dealing with the reinforcements, which put me in a dire situation. Somehow, with intelligent dual strike attacks, I managed to clear the sages while maintaining my frontline of Camilla and Corrin. Camilla did have to avoid a low percent crit chance from an enemy berserker, but I didn't get screwed by RNG. After the initial panic and with my frontlines re-established, it was easy for Ophelia to snipe enemies safely, and soon I had cleared the initial wave. I baited Hans's squad to attack me over the wall, proccing the reinforcements associated with him while remaining safely out of their range. I managed to draw Hans and one of his annoying Counter/Countermagic generals ahead of the rest of the force and swarmed and killed both before the other enemies reached me. I used my final use of Freeze to safely handle the other Counter/Countermagic general and then cleared out every enemy on the map except Iago. For a boss at the end of an extremely long chapter, Iago really has way too much critical hit chance. Luckily, Ophelia had so much res that she was able to fight him without dying even if he did get a critical, and I took him out and finished the map. Finally, I was at the end of the game. Chapter 27 Cumlord Garon's map is actually absurdly easy despite it very gimmicky setup. I was able to consistently beat it quickly by putting my best units in the rooms to the north and having my units to the south be high movement mounted units like Kana, Nichol, etc. With this setup, I let Kana and Nichol and co get Entrapped into rooms and then immediately flee those rooms without fighting the enemies. While the squad from the top moved south, my strongest units were able to clear their rooms, reach Garon, and kill Garon before it became a problem. It was a good thing I came up with such a consistent strat for this map because I would need to play this map many times over and over thanks to the next map. The only other thing of note to happen in this map is that Niles hit Level 15, giving him Shurikenbreaker. "Damn," I thought. "I wish I had that for Chapter 25." Endgame I knew from my Hard playthrough that this map was a real piece of shit. Chapter 25 had honestly made me dread whether I could beat this map at all. I looked up how other people beat this map and it was always the same story: RESCUE CHEESE! Warp a bosskiller with extremely specific skills to Takumi turn one and then do 25x4 damage to him with a brave weapon to get a one turn kill. Well, that's not my style and I didn't have the appropriate skills anyway. I was doing this the intended way, by trudging straight down the middle and wiping out every enemy in my path. My team was thus: Corrin, Silas, Sophie, Kana, Camilla, Keaton, Velouria, Ophelia, Odin, Elise, Niles, Beruka, Xander, and Rally Man. I had a single use of the Rescue staff remaining, no Freeze staves, and the 4-use Silence staff I got from Chapter 25. If I had more Rescue I think this map would have been very easy. As it stood, I had to somehow deal with the stacking Enfeeble maids without being swarmed by the squads of enemies in their range. Turn 1 I sent Ophelia with Odin pairup straight down to take the four enemies with axes and tomes near the first mage. Her extremely high stats + rally meant she was being attacked with 12% hit rates and one rounded all of the enemies in retaliation. Meanwhile, Elise cast silence and was then danced to silence again, rendering two enfeeble maids silent. The third enfeeble maid was baited into enfeebling a frankly worthless Sophie. I actually got comedically unlucky dodgetanking with Ophelia and she got hit TWICE at 12%, leaving her with very low HP, which meant I needed to waste a turn healing her with Elise and couldn't use Silence on the next turn. On turn 2, I had Camilla kill one of the sages coming from the right, then danced her and flew her down to kill the rightmost enfeeble maid. Nina then rescued Camilla in a way that positioned her to clog up the rightmost corridor, protecting my units from the mage. Ophelia moved to wall of the rest of the corridor, killing one of the two remaining mages. Niles with Shurikenbreaker and Beruka pairup moved to kill the central enfeeble maid. In this position he would also bait out two master ninjas, who had very low hit chances on him. I positioned Velouria to deal with the heroes coming from the left; she killed all three on enemy phase. Niles had a chance with his killer bow to crit one of the master ninjas, but didn't get it. Instead I used Entrap to pull it to me, then killed it and the other master ninja while putting Ophelia in range of the malig knight and paladin squad. She was able to wipe them out easily. My strat had been going well so far but then I made a mistake and accidentally put an unpaired Corrin in range of the general squad near the last enfeeble maid due to some fuckery with the barriers you erect to block Takumi's blastwave. Luckily, Corrin was pretty tanky with the dragonstone equipped and survived the attack, and this had the benefit of drawing the generals up to me. I walled the generals off with Nosferatu Ophelia. As the paired up cavalry moved from the south, I handled them with Velouria, Keaton, and Xander. Clearing out the rest of the enemies, I was ready to move south as the BDSM guys started spawning. I rushed south, killing the last group of enfeeble and hexing rod monks near Takumi, and maxing the guard bars of Ophelia and Camilla in the process. The next turn, Nina cast Enfeeble on Takumi and I sent in Velouria to attack him first. With rally, she took pitiful damage from him, even with Vengeance, and set him up for an easy kill with Ophelia's brave tome and guard bar. Finally I beat the game: No DLC, no grinding, no cheese, and no deaths. Final Thoughts While I appreciate the effort that was made, I think Conquest has some of the worst overall map design in the series. There are only a few maps I would consider actually good design; many of the rest rely on goofy gimmicks or utterly obnoxious enemy setups, which make you feel like you're trying to solve a puzzle rather than fight an army. So many elements the game loves to spam at you, like status staves and debuffed, have no real counter, and constantly make you feel weak. It's an extremely unfun experience, especially compared to Engage. Engage makes you feel powerful, but attaches opportunity cost to your power to force you to still use that power intelligently. The game also allows you to use many different strategies and unit combinations, while the maps are all much shorter and often encourage aggressive play. By contrast, Conquest seemed to encourage slow play, with so many maps devolving into Chokepoint Gaming and ending up taking 20 to 30 turns. (In Engage, I rarely had a map take over 10 turns.) While Conquest is more creative than the no-brain difficulties of H5 and Lunatic+, which don't feel like they were even playtested, Conquest seems to rely on the player really knowing their eugenics. Would I have even beaten this game if I didn't decide to use dogshit Odin or if my friend hadn't told me to pair Keaton with Camilla? Without Ophelia and Velouria I don't know if it would have been possible. Awakening has boring, big empty square style map design, but in some ways that is less bad than some of the horrible maps Conquest throws at you. If you were to ask me to rank the worst maps in the series, many of them would be from Conquest. Thracia 776 is a much better example of interesting map design that doesn't rely on very specific solutions to problems, in a game where low enemy stats and low player stat caps craft a more consistent experience no matter who you decide to use. Frankly, I kind of hope to never have to play Fates again, now that I've accomplished the Conquest Lunatic clear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
link16hit Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 (edited) I also did Lunatic Conquest but on casual (battle save...), but use rescue to move my character to Takumi. Never thought about children. I think I only had Ophelia. You can also train Mozu up to 10 in her chapter, then switch to archer (Hoshido). She's pretty good, my Niles had bad growth in Lunatic. Also the lack of restore staff hurts so much in this game. At least Engage have it Edited March 12, 2023 by link16hit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 (edited) 5 hours ago, General Banzai said: This chapter is probably one of the worst-designed maps in Fire Emblem history (I think most of the worst-designed maps in Fire Emblem history are in Fates, unfortunately). Personally, I'd say chapter 25 Conquest is a clear candidate for being among the worst designed maps in FE history. I don't have to fight everything else, but the game doesn't tell you that the floor in the dueling chamber severely cuts damage dealt is a big middle finger to the player. But more to the point, it's a massive RNG fest. I also don't like the part where you either take forever defeating Ryoma because you do shit damage, or you go through everything else to trigger the Dragon Vein, and have to worry about having all that work be for nothing because Ryoma can now instagib you if you're unlucky. "FE equivalent of a PKMN starter battle but with attack debuffed to the minimum" and "Russian Roulette" are two bad extremes, especially for this late in the game. 5 hours ago, General Banzai said: As a side note, Chapter 5 is a hideously poorly-designed chapter on Lunatic. It seems as though there is only one correct solution for approaching the group of enemies at the bottom of the map, requiring a specific unit to be placed on a specific tile to strategically lure the enemies in a particular way, as if any two enemies attack Corrin she'll die. I don't like that either. Also, once those enemies are lured in, it becomes bad to worse, as 4 dark mages spawn. 5 hours ago, General Banzai said: While I appreciate the effort that was made, I think Conquest has some of the worst overall map design in the series. There are only a few maps I would consider actually good design; many of the rest rely on goofy gimmicks or utterly obnoxious enemy setups, which make you feel like you're trying to solve a puzzle rather than fight an army. So many elements the game loves to spam at you, like status staves and debuffed, have no real counter, and constantly make you feel weak. It's an extremely unfun experience, especially compared to Engage. Engage makes you feel powerful, but attaches opportunity cost to your power to force you to still use that power intelligently. The game also allows you to use many different strategies and unit combinations, while the maps are all much shorter and often encourage aggressive play. By contrast, Conquest seemed to encourage slow play, with so many maps devolving into Chokepoint Gaming and ending up taking 20 to 30 turns. (In Engage, I rarely had a map take over 10 turns.) While Conquest is more creative than the no-brain difficulties of H5 and Lunatic+, which don't feel like they were even playtested, Conquest seems to rely on the player really knowing their eugenics. Would I have even beaten this game if I didn't decide to use dogshit Odin or if my friend hadn't told me to pair Keaton with Camilla? Without Ophelia and Velouria I don't know if it would have been possible. Awakening has boring, big empty square style map design, but in some ways that is less bad than some of the horrible maps Conquest throws at you. If you were to ask me to rank the worst maps in the series, many of them would be from Conquest. Thracia 776 is a much better example of interesting map design that doesn't rely on very specific solutions to problems, in a game where low enemy stats and low player stat caps craft a more consistent experience no matter who you decide to use. Frankly, I kind of hope to never have to play Fates again, now that I've accomplished the Conquest Lunatic clear. While I agree Conquest does have some stinkers map design wise, in my book, nothing can top Binding Blade for worst overall map design in the series. Pretty much every gaiden is obnoxious for one reason or another, and you gotta put up with all their shit to get the true ending. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as the game spams long, winding maps that make the game feel less like a strategy game and more like a walking simulator with hints of strategy here and there, with the result being a game that's extremely tedious and unfun to play. On Awakening's map design: I think Awakening's map design wasn't that bad overall; it definitely doesn't deserve the hate it gets when there's worse out there *hackBINDINGBLADEcough*... On Conquest: I also feel its unit balance is just wack. On the one side, we have units like Camilla, Xander, and Elise that are guaranteed to be useful. On the other side, we have the likes of Nyx, Odin, Charlotte and Arthur who are pretty much beyond help from the beginning. Or they need lots of help to be usable and they give you nothing of note for it, which stands out like a sore thumb when other units can do their jobs better and without putting in so much work. It REALLY doesn't help that Fates has features that NEED online to actually be usable thanks to excess randomness (this isn't a strike against Conquest, but rather against Fates as a whole). Â 5 hours ago, General Banzai said: Having beaten Lunatic+ before, I know every strat in the book to deal with Counter, so I was able to handle the Counter heroes in the first room by unequipping Velouria and Keaton and drawing the heroes out without counter attacking. Actually, that was unnecessary, as Counter got nerfed in Fates, now requiring the opponent initiate combat to work. All this being said, congratulations. Edited March 13, 2023 by Shadow Mir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Banzai Posted March 13, 2023 Author Share Posted March 13, 2023 1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said: While I agree Conquest does have some stinkers map design wise, in my book, nothing can top Binding Blade for worst overall map design in the series. Pretty much every gaiden is obnoxious for one reason or another, and you gotta put up with all their shit to get the true ending. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as the game spams long, winding maps that make the game feel less like a strategy game and more like a walking simulator with hints of strategy here and there, with the result being a game that's extremely tedious and unfun to play. I agree, FE6 is also one of the worst-designed games in the series. The maps are way too large and linear, meaning there's little to do except move forward fielding small sets of enemies at a time. The low hit rates are also consistently obnoxious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eltosian Kadath Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 5 hours ago, General Banzai said: I didn't think Jakob would be a useful long-term unit so I decided to avoid feeding him many kills. Early Jakob is really good, if you are willing to spend the resources to reclass him. The butler class is the thing most holding him back, and if you are willing the spend your first Heart Seal to fix that, he can be amazing whole game through. Plus the way Jakob and Felicia work lets you get some of the potent Lv 15 promoted skills way earlier than you should, and if you keep spending resources on them for reclassing you can get a powerful units out of them into even into the lategame.  5 hours ago, General Banzai said: Chapter 5 is a hideously poorly-designed chapter on Lunatic. It seems as though there is only one correct solution for approaching the group of enemies at the bottom of the map, requiring a specific unit to be placed on a specific tile to strategically lure the enemies in a particular way, as if any two enemies attack Corrin she'll die. I really dislike this constraining of options; it makes the game feel more like a puzzle game than a strategy game. I did manage to play this map on Lunatic in a way where only Dragon Corrin saw combat for a Lunatic PMU run once, but it take a fair bit of creativity to pull off. I do like that it is an early point where Fates is showing that you can't get away with one strong unit stomping all over the map, no matter how powerful they are you have to use them strategically.  5 hours ago, General Banzai said: I knew that Effie was useful in the early game but decided she would probably fall off long-term, so while I used her for walling off areas and chipping down enemies, I avoided giving her kills. Effie is a great unit even into the lategame, as she just hits so hard with her huge strength growth (and personal skill that supports that), although you really want to promote her to Great Knight instead of General, as she has the speed growth not to need Wary Fighter, which is one of that class's main appeals  5 hours ago, General Banzai said: Then I dealt with reinforcements from the left as they came toward me. Ultimately, I saved two houses; I wonder what the best strategy is to save three? Personally, I find the easiest way is to send at much of your army as you can to west to go for the two houses on that side (in addition to the free one at the start). The setup you need to get the one in the north-east (that is basically used as a tutorial for how the reinforcement mechanic works) is extremely specific, and resource intensive, so you almost always need one of the western houses anyway, and it is easier to just concentrate your forces going that direction instead of splitting up to try hitting the middle, and one of the western ones.  5 hours ago, General Banzai said: The new units in this map are Niles and Odin. I knew from my past playthrough that Niles is very useful, so I determined to use him, but for some reason I was also possessed of the notion to use Odin, thinking his durability might make him useful with Nosferatu. Using Odin would turn out to be in some ways a terrible decision and in some ways one of the most important ones to the run; I'll clarify later. Odin is a really good, but also very specific unit. The ONLY thing he is good at is Nos-tanking, and he is by far the best unit in the whole game at Nos-tanking, and there are places where Nos-tanking lets you pull off absurd things, but that is his one niche.  5 hours ago, General Banzai said: As a side note, why does this map have an entrap staff user that entraps your unit into a room with just one rinky dink swordsman? Is it just to introduce the concept of entrap? Seems exceptionally pointless otherwise. It is something you have to think about if you only brought one locktouch unit, as its entrap range does cover the easiest to reach chest. Also just out of curiosity, did you go for the Ryoma kill, or simply escape to end the map?  5 hours ago, General Banzai said: I decided Benny and Charlotte sucked and that I would not use them. These two are plenty usable as well, but both extremes statwise. Charlotte can fairly reasonably hit absurdly high strength and speed combinations, which lets her kill almost anything you want, although she ends up relying on the fact that she is one of the few units on your team that might actually hit 60 HP to tank hits, and she does come rather underleveled, so you do have to baby her for two or three maps before she catches up. Benny is closer to the party's level at the time, and hits some absurdly high defense levels, and the Lv 5 General skill of Wary Fighter keeps his speed from being as much of an issue latter on.  5 hours ago, General Banzai said:  By the end of this map Niles had reached Lv 20 and was ready to promote to Bow Knight. I had decided to wait until my units hit 20 to promote them, as so far the game had been pretty easy and I didn't feel like I needed the immediate power boost. I generally wait til 20 for units I am actually using in Conquest, as you might actually hit 20/20 by endgame with some of them, although if you are just using them as a backpack, might as well promote them immediately at level 10.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said:  Ninja Hell. Another horribly designed map that really highlights this game's obsession with debuffing your units, which has to be one of the least fun mechanics in all of Fire Emblem. Not only is it generally unfun to feel weak, but it makes it far more tedious and unreliable to calculate what enemies will do to you on enemy phase, eliminating good strategic elements from the gameplay while also making it extremely slow to progress through the map. Fates debuffing is one of the mechanics they have to prevent you from just steam rolling the game with just 1-2 over-leveled people. As your units get debuff, your best front liners have to cycle into more back-line position, with you having to find another way to fill their role in the front until they recover enough to cycle back up to the front. It encourages you to build up a more rounded team, although you still have the waiting option if your team can't handle it at the moment.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: I had stuck with him hoping Ophelia might be useful, especially since I was hording spirit dust and had a whopping three of them ready to drop on her. I generally consider Ophelia (with basically any even slightly magically inclined mother) to be the best mage in Fates, so good choice. Plus her paralogue gives you some really vital resources for using a mage.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: Nonetheless it took me a few attempts to figure out the best way to enter the set-up, which like Chapter 5 seems to be designed in a way that there are almost no good ways to approach it. That is what those Silence Dragon Veins are for, using them at the right time to ignore all the enemy mages/staves after you have used all of yours makes the approach a lot easier, although you need to be prepared for the turn after...  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: I'm not sure how you're supposed to save the treasure in this map, so I didn't. Generally, you catch and kill the looters before they escape, which can be quite tricky to pull off, although some creative lunges through walls can help you accomplish it in time.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: What's the strat to deal with it? Either get a lucky dodge or avoid it entirely. Maybe slowly bait its use on your pair-up units, I suppose, although the enemy position makes that difficult and it's tedious to do anyway. Baiting its uses with units that couldn't take a hit even if you wanted them too (like Azura, or Elise) is a similar option to the back of pair-up baiting option. Simply jumping them is the best option, although that tends to be dependent a lot more on the specific situation at hand, and might require you to have a team good enough to continue on even if one of your best units got debuffed.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: After some trial and error figuring out weather patterns, I settled on a strategy in which I quickly blew all my units up to Fuga, took him out, and then proceeded back through the map to collect all the treasure. Settled on the classic riding the winds strategy to deal with Fuga then, well done.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: I wasn't falling for the "split up your army" trick this time. I used pair-ups to put all of my units on one side of the map and then proceeded down that side easily and cleanly. That is kind of a shame, as that map is a lot more fun if you go the split army route.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: By this point in the game I essentially had three very strong units: Ophelia, Velouria, and Camilla. ...Only three good units. It sounds like you had some questionable exp management on your run, as you should have a few more than that on your side.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said:  (seriously I am so sick of these Lunge set ups, please just let me play normally without having to worry about my positioning changing in the middle of enemy phase), Lungers are a funny thing to deal with, but they have some clear counters in freezing/entrap/rescue staff, alternatively if you can find a way to kill them on the attack they use to lunge it doesn't trigger at all, or if you can simply tank whatever is coming that tends to deal with them as well.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: I used two of my remaining three Rescue staff uses to rush units in, attack Takumi, and pull them out without having to worry about the Lungers. Using that many rescue uses is going to hurt, especially on a lunger setup that really isn't all that dangerous.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: Eventually, after several failed attempts and much frustration, I decided to repeat a strategy I used for Fuga's Wild Ride, which was to use the map's movement gimmick against it to quickly reach and assassinate the boss. That is a fun way to handle the map, but you really need half or more of your troops to be flier to pull it off. Personally I think the map is at its best when you are splitting up, and leapfrogging from dragon vein, to dragon vein to counter her uses of it, but you need a mostly grounded party to really pull that strat off. At least you didn't have to go with the build a defensive line in the corner strat I have heard used on this map as well.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: Unlike Chapter 24, there was no easy way to beat the chapter, so here's how I did it. The easy way is having a Corrin capable of dealing with Ryoma, but not all Corrins can.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: The longbows meant that a unit of mine could essentially be lunged halfway across the map, so there was no chance except to very tediously and with very specific movement setups approach the room so I could take out both longbowmen at once. I first baited the paired up swordsmaster, who can be pulled by himself without aggroing the lungers if you attack him and then use Shelter to pull the attacker out of range. I did the same strat to pull the ninja in the leftmost corridor. Then, I sent Camilla with the Dual Club to fly to the extreme north of the map, where there is a single tile out of range of the Lungers. The remaining swordsmasters went to fight Camilla, leaving the Lunge longbowmen relatively undefended. I poured into their room, killing them both with Ophelia and Velouria, and then mopped up the remaining enemies. Surprised you didn't use a freeze or entrap staff to defang the first of the 3-range lunge combos  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: There was another pair of Lunge longbowmen near Saizo; to deal with them, I used Freeze on one and then rushed in with Velouria to kill the other. Then I was able to pour in, clear the remaining enemies, and finish Saizo. like you did here with the second.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: I then had Camilla Lunge one of the spy shuriken ninjas into the corridor so I could kill him and then kill the second spy shuriken guy with Ophelia. That is a fun way of dealing with them, while pressing in.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: The main difficulty or annoyance of this chapter was honestly Iago's seemingly random AI. I could never get a handle one what staff he would use or who he would use it on, and sometimes I would take a risky play in his range only for him to do something totally useless like cast Silence on Camilla. It isn't random, he is literally just cycling through his staves in equipment order. On turn 1 he uses the staff at the top of his inventory, turn 2 he uses the staff in the second equipment slot, on turn 3 he uses the staff in the third equipment slot, on turn 4 (on Lunatic at least, as he only has 3 staff on hard/normal, and instead he cycles back to the top) he uses the staff in his fourth equipment slot, and turn 5 he goes back to top of the list and will use the staff in the first equipment slot again, pattern repeats indefinitely. As long as you know the turn, you know the staff he will use, although I guess you didn't notice the pattern.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: Ophelia also got frozen by Iago dealing with the reinforcements, which put me in a dire situation. The best way to deal with freeze is to have your units in a more attack stance oriented formation, than a guard stance oriented one. If you units are next to each other unpaired, the frozen unit can pairup with someone who started adjacent, use their movement, than any manner of switch-transfer combination to make what attacks & attack stance hits you need them to, although you should probably try to transfer-separate whoever ended up in a pairup by the end of those maneuverings to keep from being bogged down by pairups.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said:  I baited Hans's squad to attack me over the wall, proccing the reinforcements associated with him while remaining safely out of their range. I managed to draw Hans and one of his annoying Counter/Countermagic generals ahead of the rest of the force and swarmed and killed both before the other enemies reached me. I used my final use of Freeze to safely handle the other Counter/Countermagic general and then cleared out every enemy on the map except Iago. I am a bit surprised Hans wasn't one of your entrap targets, but I guess it all worked out.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said:  The only other thing of note to happen in this map is that Niles hit Level 15, giving him Shurikenbreaker. "Damn," I thought. "I wish I had that for Chapter 25." It is entirely reasonable to have Shurikenbreaker for chapter 25 ( on 23 is about the earliest someone other than Jakob, Felicia, or Gunter is likely to get a lv 15 skill), and its a shame you made things harder on yourself with how you managed your experience gains.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said:  I knew from my Hard playthrough that this map was a real piece of shit. Chapter 25 had honestly made me dread whether I could beat this map at all. I looked up how other people beat this map and it was always the same story: RESCUE CHEESE! Warp a bosskiller with extremely specific skills to Takumi turn one and then do 25x4 damage to him with a brave weapon to get a one turn kill. Well, that's not my style and I didn't have the appropriate skills anyway. I was doing this the intended way, by trudging straight down the middle and wiping out every enemy in my path. That map is brutal on Lunatic if you are playing it straight, unless you cheese it with rescue, or are willing to let units fall in that final press. Well done making it through without Rescue cheese or death.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: no Freeze staves, You really burnt through those things. Admittedly I don't think endgame is the best map for them, so I guess that was probably a good use of your resources, although I usually have a few left over by the end, even on Lunatic runs.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: then I made a mistake and accidentally put an unpaired Corrin in range of the general squad near the last enfeeble maid ...Yikes, what a mistake to make so close to the end. At least it didn't end up biting you.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: Finally I beat the game: No DLC, no grinding, no cheese, and no deaths. Congrats.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: So many elements the game loves to spam at you, like status staves and debuffed, have no real counter, I disagree with the notion that they have no counter, as the counter is in how you use your tactical decisions to counter their effects, instead of simply having the restore staff.  6 hours ago, General Banzai said: Conquest seems to rely on the player really knowing their eugenics. I find this comment kinda surprising, as the first generation cast is good enough to make it through the game on their own, no eugenics needed at all. I get the funny feeling you were expecting the children to simply be better units, because child units in Awakening are, and thus didn't invest in many of first generation units as much, but in Fates the children are generally around the same ballpark as the first generation units.  7 hours ago, General Banzai said: By contrast, Conquest seemed to encourage slow play, with so many maps devolving into Chokepoint Gaming and ending up taking 20 to 30 turns. (In Engage, I rarely had a map take over 10 turns.) ...Just out of curiosity, did you end up relying more on guard-stance (AKA pairup), attack stance, or a healthy mix of both. I ask, as I generally find that heavy guard-stance/pairup use leads to a more passive style of play like you described here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 10 hours ago, General Banzai said: I agree, FE6 is also one of the worst-designed games in the series. The maps are way too large and linear, meaning there's little to do except move forward fielding small sets of enemies at a time. The low hit rates are also consistently obnoxious. The low hit rates are really obnoxious, yes, but that ain't the worst of it. What IS, though, is the fact that reinforcements come before enemy phase. Oh, and the class and unit balancing being absolute dogshit. 16 hours ago, General Banzai said: This game isn't really like Awakening where children will always outlcass their parents. I suppose it ain't, but I think that some of the parent characters in Fates (as a whole, not just in Conquest) are junk to the point where I'd rather just use their kids instead (I'm looking at YOU, Niles!!! Silas! Kaze! Odin!!! Subaki!!!). 5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said: I find this comment kinda surprising, as the first generation cast is good enough to make it through the game on their own, no eugenics needed at all. I get the funny feeling you were expecting the children to simply be better units, because child units in Awakening are, and thus didn't invest in many of first generation units as much, but in Fates the children are generally around the same ballpark as the first generation units. I'm not sure about that; I think some of the parents are borderline hopeless. Like all the ones I just mentioned, for example. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Banzai Posted March 13, 2023 Author Share Posted March 13, 2023 8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said: Surprised you didn't use a freeze or entrap staff to defang the first of the 3-range lunge combos A lot of my bizarre resource expenditure was due to my hazy memories of the game's difficulty curve. Early on, I assumed the game's difficulty curve would be front-loaded, like most Fire Emblem games, so I used resources whenever they were convenient. I also made some decisions like Corrin x Silas to prioritize receiving quick S rank bonuses and early children for an early game power boost. But when Ch 23 kicked my ass and I wound up wasting two Rescue uses, I realized the game's difficulty had really amped and remembered the final map being especially brutal, so I switched tactics and decided to save as many of my resources as possible, including my final Rescue staff and my Entrap uses. For the first longbow room, I felt like using Freeze wasn't useful because the two longbow guys start right next to each other, so if I froze one and killed the other I would be in range of the other anyway. Whereas the second pair start split up so there's more value to freezing just the one. Likewise, with experience, I'm used to not worrying about experience allocation once units are promoted. However, I'm not fully sure experience allocation was the issue. Silas and Beruka had been useful early on due to their high defense, but as the game continued their low speed ensured they were incapable of one rounding any enemies, making them no longer viable as combat units. Niles similarly struggled to maintain strength levels necessary to be a good fighter against most enemies. Odin's stats were all around pathetic and it was highly pointless using him when I had Ophelia. Early promoting Elise gave me a powerful mage for Ch 10 but by endgame, even though her level was high, she was too slow to double and fairly inaccurate. Sophie and Kana's stats were weak from the start. Most of these units seemed like nonstarters and it felt pointless to use them when Ophelia, Velouria, and Camilla were so superior. I think I could have fed Niles more experience if I remembered that he gained such a useful skill at Lv 15, though. And yeah, I did kind of assume kids would be like kids in Awakening. It's weird because Ophelia and Velouria felt like the power level of Awakening kids, while the other three were just kind of weaker versions of their parents. In Lunatic+, the kids were high risk high reward because it was difficult to get them (their paralogues were often very difficult) and they were underleveled on join, so I had planned a whole strategy where of the non-Lucina kids I would only get Kjelle due to the midgame dip in difficulty around the time her paralogue becomes available. In Fates it seems more like kids are just on the level of any other unit where you can't really tell how good they are until you get them. I think that's kind of my main problem. This game feels like it requires a lot more knowledge of things "behind the scenes" compared to other games in the series. Even in Lunatic+, which was a far more difficult game mode than this one, I was able to get by with more generalized knowledge about how the game works (like knowing Nosferatu is good). In H5, you really only need to know what Wolf and Sedgar's growths look like. Here you're talking about all these reclass options for units and which are good, which are bad, et cetera. It's so nitty gritty and requires so much more specified knowledge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iridium137 Posted March 17, 2023 Share Posted March 17, 2023 Quote it makes the game feel more like a puzzle game than a strategy game Quote laced with that puzzle game design that I mentioned hating Quote which make you feel like you're trying to solve a puzzle rather than fight an army Interesting. You're the first person I've seen that treats "puzzle" as a negative. A lot of the praise I've seen for Conquest also refers to it as a puzzle game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starburst Posted March 22, 2023 Share Posted March 22, 2023 Hey, congratulations! Lunatic Conquest is indeed a very demanding game, specially without planning. I find Hard Conquest more enjoyable, not because its easiness (it is still thrilling) but because its flexibility. Lunatic basically demands that you use everything at your disposal, while Hard lets you decide what you want out of this campaign on the go. (Normal is useless, an entirely different game.) Eltosian Kadath already addressed various points that you mentioned, and I agree with most of his notes. I use different approaches than yours in various chapters or map sections, but in the end you were successful too. I would perhaps add that Lunatic Conquest is a particularly terrible game for blind runs, and yours played like one. And while some map sections of Lunatic are simply unfair, the experience is different when you know where you are headed and why you are making certain choices along the way. I have completed about twenty campaigns of Hard Conquest, and I still feel the thrill. I can only invite you to spice it up and play it with some restrictions, like a smaller party, no royals and no "backpacks", hoping that it will leave a better taste in your mouth than Lunatic did. Hard still plays like a puzzle in multiple instances, but I do believe that it is an entertaining one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Banzai Posted March 23, 2023 Author Share Posted March 23, 2023 On 3/16/2023 at 8:52 PM, iridium137 said: Interesting. You're the first person I've seen that treats "puzzle" as a negative. A lot of the praise I've seen for Conquest also refers to it as a puzzle game. Really not sure why I would want my SRPG to play like a puzzle game. I've heard people talk up Conquest in the light of "this is Fire Emblem updated to a more modern SRPG experience," but if other tactics type games play like Conquest, then I'm more than happy avoiding the rest of the genre altogether. In my opinion, Fire Emblem is at its best when it challenges your on-the-fly decision making and forces you to make choices on any given turn, rather than determining a "correct" strategy from battle preparation and simply executing it. This is also why I dislike LTC or efficiency runs; they don't feel like you're playing the game at all, but rather establishing some sort of rescue chain or warpskip strategy from the onset. RNG is unacceptable in such runs. I remember watching Dondon's 0% playthroughs of various games and he would talk about having a list of all RNs open so he could effectively RNG abuse any situation to ensure a 100% success rate. That's just transforming Fire Emblem into a puzzle game where you are either correct or you are not. Fire Emblem's gameplay is fundamentally based around variance. Not simply the RNG of encounters, but the RNG of stat gains promote long term variance in the power of your characters and what strategies become open or closed to you. The trick of a good FE is to design it in such away that unlucky variance doesn't feel unduly punishing, while retaining enough challenge that the player is forced to adapt rather than simply plow through no matter how things shape up. For instance, when enemy stats are monstrously inflated (such as in Shadow Dragon H5), you get to the point where missing a single attack or getting hit by a single 1% crit will force a reset, which then becomes extremely frustrating. There's no positive variance. On the other hand, when enemies are total chumps like in Path of Radiance, it really doesn't matter what happens because you can just charge Kieran and Oscar to the end of the map anyway. There's no negative variance. In Conquest, the lack of variance isn't about stats so much as its extremely puzzle-like enemy configurations that severely limit the number of viable strategies to approaching a map, necessitating specific movement patterns. It feels like almost all of the actual gameplay is rooted in determining the one way you're allowed to enter a room full of Lunge assholes or Counter dicks or Inevitable End debuff douchebags. The obsession with debuffing your units eliminates the value of having good units, since they just get turned into bad units if you're not playing a map the way the map intends you to play it. It's this reason why I think Thracia 776 remains one of, if not the, best gameplay experiences in the franchise. There are certainly some elements of it that are ridiculously punishing to blind runs (Leaf escaping, the sudden character unavailability in Ch 4, etc.), but other than those oversight-style hiccups the game is actually extremely forgiving. This is due to the combination of weak enemies and the 1 RN system, which leads to more RNG variance (i.e., an enemy is more likely to hit with a 35% chance than in other games). It means you're less likely to predict how any given turn will shake up, but the weaker enemies give you more leeway to adapt when things go unlucky. The scrolls allow you to easily build units to be strong, while the low stat caps ensure that you'll never get so far ahead of enemies that you can simply cakewalk your way through any given map. Additionally, gameplay design heavily revolves around completing side objectives to gain powerful and appealing items and characters. Most Thracia maps are fairly easy to beat if you're only concerned about finishing the map, but introduce a lot of challenge if you want to complete all the side objectives. This means that long term unluckiness with level ups or character power is less punishing, but you still feel challenged even if you're getting lucky because you're given more ability to pursue more difficult objectives. I think the biggest mistake in Awakening-and-afterward FE design is moving away from map side objectives, with fewer recruitable allies in maps, fewer optional items, and so forth. Even Engage, a game with gameplay I consider among the best in the franchise, doesn't have much of this (although it finds other unique ways to give you a lot of on-the-fly strategic decisionmaking with the limited-use emblems). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted April 26, 2023 Share Posted April 26, 2023 (edited) On 3/23/2023 at 3:45 PM, General Banzai said: The trick of a good FE is to design it in such away that unlucky variance doesn't feel unduly punishing, while retaining enough challenge that the player is forced to adapt rather than simply plow through no matter how things shape up. For instance, when enemy stats are monstrously inflated (such as in Shadow Dragon H5), you get to the point where missing a single attack or getting hit by a single 1% crit will force a reset, which then becomes extremely frustrating. There's no positive variance. Aside from that, I would also consider character select forcing to be an issue. I'd like to use the characters I like and still be able to clear the game; if that's not possible, or at the least insanely difficult, they've gone too far. On that note, I'd say SD H5 is clearly a case where they went too far. The earlygame has two hand axe douchebags that maim whoever they hit and double almost everyone, and to make matters worse, almost everything you can throw at them just gets healed off come enemy phase, because for whatever reason gates heal 20% HP. The first boss is an unpleasant experience too, as only one unit can do anything more than scratch damage to him, and the less said about Medeus, the better. And they clearly didn't learn their lesson then, because New Mystery Lunatic and Awakening Lunatic were more of the same. On 3/23/2023 at 3:45 PM, General Banzai said: It's this reason why I think Thracia 776 remains one of, if not the, best gameplay experiences in the franchise. There are certainly some elements of it that are ridiculously punishing to blind runs (Leaf escaping, the sudden character unavailability in Ch 4, etc.), but other than those oversight-style hiccups the game is actually extremely forgiving. This is due to the combination of weak enemies and the 1 RN system, which leads to more RNG variance (i.e., an enemy is more likely to hit with a 35% chance than in other games). It means you're less likely to predict how any given turn will shake up, but the weaker enemies give you more leeway to adapt when things go unlucky. The scrolls allow you to easily build units to be strong, while the low stat caps ensure that you'll never get so far ahead of enemies that you can simply cakewalk your way through any given map. Additionally, gameplay design heavily revolves around completing side objectives to gain powerful and appealing items and characters. Most Thracia maps are fairly easy to beat if you're only concerned about finishing the map, but introduce a lot of challenge if you want to complete all the side objectives. This means that long term unluckiness with level ups or character power is less punishing, but you still feel challenged even if you're getting lucky because you're given more ability to pursue more difficult objectives. I think the biggest mistake in Awakening-and-afterward FE design is moving away from map side objectives, with fewer recruitable allies in maps, fewer optional items, and so forth. Even Engage, a game with gameplay I consider among the best in the franchise, doesn't have much of this (although it finds other unique ways to give you a lot of on-the-fly strategic decisionmaking with the limited-use emblems). There's a good chunk of this I disagree with - notably, the part about Thracia being one of the best gameplay experiences in the series. IMHO... It feels much, MUCH more like an unmistakably alien experience, with weird mechanics that do the game more harm than good. Like the fact that healing staves can miss; that alone is an automatic dealbreaker for me. And that's only ONE of Thracia's many, MANY sins. If you're gonna have shit like that be a possibility, you NEED to have the gameplay be THAT DAMN GOOD for there to be just a CHANCE I can think of overlooking it. Needless to say, that's one litmus test it fails miserably, especially in light of its other egregious flaws. On side objectives: I would say that having a lot of side objectives in maps doesn't really make up for bad game design. Binding Blade has a lot of side objectives, but it's still among the worst entries in the series imho. Edited April 26, 2023 by Shadow Mir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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