Mandokarla

I have decided to torment myself, and so I have started Conquest Lunatic. Female +speed/-mag Paladin Corrin, I'm on chapter 11. Already paired Silas with Effie and recruited Sophie. Paired Nyx and Odin. Paired Corrin with Jakob to maximize the abuse of his personal skill. Recruited Anna -- planning on making her a Mechanist and then heart sealing to Adventurer after I get Replicate, so I can get more healing on the board. I have used the free gifts from Anna, I made Nyx a witch, gave boots and paragon to Corrin. I used the dread scroll path bonus on Jakob, because he will also be a combat unit when I need more damage on the board. I have the EXP grind dlc map, and I am not afraid to use it if I get completely roadblocked. I had to grind a few levels out for chapter 10 (roughly 2 levels for everyone). Selena died on the last turn of Pearl Harbor, and I really didn't care to restart for her. What do you guys think I should do in terms of future pairings and strats? Any general advice? I do not intend to use the grind map a lot -- only when I hit a non-paralogue chapter that makes me reset more than six times in a row, without having an invasion or paralogue to get exp from.

Amelia just isn't worth it, Ewan can become a dark god of destruction -- if you want to completely halt any story progress to tower grind him. Ross is the only trainee that can reasonably be used with success. IMO the only time to use Amelia is if you somehow got Franz (Better Seth) killed.

I really love Cormag personally, he has some really fascinating supports. Joshua is also a favorite. My all time favorite from GBA though? That's really damn hard... I think Lyon is a fantastic villain, and Orson's whole mini-arc gave me chills the first time. So lets do favorite unit and villain. Unit: It's a tie between Cormag, Tana, and Canas. Every one of them turns into a lategame monster, and the two guys have great supports. Villain: Gonna have to go with Lyon. I love the "road to hell is paved with good intentions" template for characters.

I actually found CQ Normal easier than Awakening Hard Classic. Awakening Hard is significantly easier than CQ hard though, in my experience.

Skip Revelations. From a story perspective, it absolutely shouldn't exist, and from a gameplay perspective, I personally also think it shouldn't exist. Conquest has some of the best overall gameplay of the entire franchise -- with Chapter 10 (henceforth known as Pearl Harbor) being my favorite chapter in the entire franchise. It never felt unfair to me, and the unit balance is pretty good, with most characters being viable by default, and others really shining with Heart Seals ( Namely Odin, but he's a favorite character of mine, so I baby him a wee bit). The royals in Conquest are also more interesting as characters for the most part, with Leo's supports across the board being pretty damn good, and Xander's being decent. I love me some titty, but Camilla is a rather ironically flat character. Outstanding unit though. TL;DR Get Conquest for sure, skip Revelations for the love of god, and maybe get BR (I haven't played it, so I can't speak to gameplay).

I bought the game two days ago and I have just reached chapter 22. I've found that a lot of the child units are hard to get going at a good time, mostly because the difficulty of their chapters varies SO drastically. Owain's was easy as piss, but Severa's was actually kinda hard the first time I went at it, and then Nah's is weird too. It's all weird. So I've hard to use the worldmap encounters to get most of the children going. I've also felt that a bad pairing in this game feels more punishing for the kid than in Fates (maybe its because the optimal kids in this game are so much stronger than the optimal kids in Fates, so by comparison...). The story is also significantly better than Fates, which I knew beforehand, but it feels good to give a shit about a newer FE game's plot and characters again. My robin is +Mag, -Str, and paired with Anna to create my adorable little Morgan -- who I made an Assassin for variety. Want to know how I beat both of the Walhart chapters? I paired myself up with my daughter and Morgan quite literally soloed the map with a Levin Sword. She killed Walhart with Lethality both times actually. Morgan is best daughter, she's just so busted. And adorable. The game is definitely pretty damn unbalanced, but I do kind of enjoy that. The characters feel like they are just overall better than most of Fates' characters -- even if they have a trope, there is a deeper character most of the time, where in Fates a deeper character was hard to find, and most of them were on the Nohr route. So far, I've had more fun in Awakening than I have in either Conquest or Revelations, and I can see how much replay value IS built into the game by default. I can see where the longtime FE vets take issue with the game, but so far I've not felt that any aspect of the game was just so egregiously bad that It spoiled my mood. I have yet to really play with Second Seal abuse, I only used it on Gaius to get make him a myrmidon before master sealing him to Assassin -- where he has been performing very, very well. His support with Nowi is pretty cute too. Overall, I think Awakening is a pretty solid game, I enjoy it. Will I ever attempt Lunatic/Lunatic+? Probably not, because I know how fucking stupid those difficulties are in this game. Do you guys have any tips for future playthroughs and for the endgame? Is it worth picking up Nah, Noire, and Batman (kids I haven't grabbed yet).

Can we get a mod to just smite this guy? He's toxic and contributes nothing to any conversation or the community

I'm using a translation patch I found on these forums, and I'm using an emulator -- there's no other feasible way to play it for me.

I'm willing to forgive a decent amount of this considering that at the time of the game's creation, the consoles were limited. They had to inflate the playtime (and therefore the "worth") of the game somehow, and the larger maps, hidden items/interactions, and children all extend that -- either literally or through potential replay value. With modern technology and capacity this game could become truly, truly spectacular. I actually think FE4 should get it first, just because FE4 has the most potential to improve with a remake. We already know that Binding Blade remake is a certainty and that they will hype the shit out of it when it does come out. I'll be honest though, I don't know if I'd get an FE6 remake -- I couldn't get through FE6 in its current state because I just can't make myself care about the cast in the beginning. I know the good, interesting characters (Hugh, Niime, Fae) join later, but the earlygame has one interesting character: Rutger -- who literally exists to hate Bern, and that's it. I already care more for the characters in FE4 in the two chapters + prologue than I did in the first six or seven chapters of FE6.

I used the Warp and Return staves we were given to cut my backtracking time in Ch.2 down to like, three(?) turns. I figured that's why we were given them when we were.

I'm aware of the pawnbroker mechanic, it's just bad.

Of all of the trainee/recruits, Amelia is just the worst. I have never trained her up and thought: Wow, this was a positive use of my time. And in a no-grind run, AKA the only way to play sacred stones with any hint of a real challenge, she's just unusuable. Franz is the best Cavalier you will need come endgame, Generals are useless because of movement, Great Knights just don't offer enough for me either -- though if you need that weapon triangle control, you should have Duessel. You don't need any other GK after Duessel. Paladins are just more useful. As for the Sage vs Mage Knight argument -- Do you need staff utility? If yes (meaning your aren't using Artur/Moulder/Sayleh/Natasha or they died) then go Sage. In every other situation, Mage Knight is just more useful because of the Con boost and mobility. In Sacred Stones caps really don't mean shit, you won't reach them until the Creature Campaign, and IMO the endgame is a novelty with no real driving reason to complete. At least SoV's endgame had some form of lore/plot around Totally-Not-Grima. They tried.

So I started playing FE4 for the first time a few days ago, and I am thouroughly enjoying it. I only just cleared chapter two, and there are some things I actually like a lot about the game's ambitious design choices, and so far I've found that the writing (willing to cut some slack due to potential loss of meaning or nuance in the translation) to be better than pretty much every other FE game I've played or watched a playthrough of -- aside from probably the Tellius games for plot, and I love the characters of Sacred Stones. Considering the resources at the time of this game's development, they tried some really ambitious things, and I feel like they did quite well with what they had at the time. I actually really enjoy the massive maps that span half a country. It makes me feel like I'm actually leading a campaign into a foreign nations, it makes betrayals and support by other castles/factions within those maps feel more impactful and immediate than, say, everything about Iago in Conquest. It makes the game take a lot longer per chapter, but there are significantly fewer chapters to balance that out. Being able to repair weapons and abuse the arena is nice too, though probably not great challenge wise (unless the difficulty spikes later on, which I hope it does). I enjoy the OST a lot, the player phase music so far hasn't been as active as the newer games, because of the longer maps. Its pretty chill, and that helps it be relaxing and makes it more enjoyable for me. Sigurd is over-fucking-powered, as is Quan to an extent, but I don't really mind that. I've already been spoiled as to some things plotwise, so I'd appreciate nobody dropping spoilers in the responses. I like some of the class decisions, like troubadours getting swords -- even though that kinda doesn't make a ton of sense, it's fun. The game is pretty strongly cavalry-emblem, but there are a few non-mounted units that I feel are strong enough to slow down for (Deirdre, Ayra the Goddess, Llewyn), and I like how the characters so far seem to be non-tropey. Cavalry units feel like the harassing, in-and-out mobile attacking force that they were in actual history, and as bad for balance as that is, it feels good to use. So far, my biggest gripe with the game is the total lack of a trading mechanic. It's just tedious and annoying and unfun. The way skills work is interesting, and I'm not sure I like it or not. Doubling and Crits being locked to skills feels unnatural to me, but some skills are interesting -- it feels like this system was a template for the FE9/10 skill system. So far, I'm loving the game. I would, with only what I've played so far, happily buy an Echoes remake of this, because the ambitions of this game could be fully realized by modern tech resources -- and that would be a pleasure to see.

The only, and I mean the only classes Kagero had less than 100% hitrate against in my run were snipers/bow knights and the odd master ninja. And those hit rates were still regularly 80+%. What happened to yours? Also, Kaze's personal doesn't use HIS luck, it uses his pair up partners'

Do you care to provide an actual argument, or just insult someone else for its own sake? Response edit: Niles does indeed do those things -- to a point. His strength is horridly low for much of the game, and while his speed is excellent, there comes a point where he fails to ORKO Ninjas (when the Ninja Cave comes around, he might not even double the Master Ninjas -- mine didn't). Flyer counters are nice, but when you get to Hinoka's chapter you could have several other (better) anti-air units: Archer!Mozu, Nina, Anna, Xander might as well be one, I had Kinshi!Shigure and he was plenty. Even Shura, if you didn't take the free boots, can do that. Regarding capturing units -- I've never found much value in it besides rallyman. There just aren't enemy units that make me think, "Oh yeah, Its worth it to give up one of my party slots for this mook". Aside from rallyman, and maybe Gazak as an excuse to use Aurgelmir. But berserkers are just...meh.

Shit you're right. Where would you put Fuga, Scarlet, and Rhajat? I haven't played BR, so I left Scarlet out because I have no idea how decent she is, and I haven't used the aforementioned trio. I'll add in Anna, Izana, and Percy

Somewhat unrelated, but I have enjoyed this kind of discussion and I like seeing your input, I have made some edits to my list as a result of them. Do you guys thing a similar topic would be fun to discuss in the FE7 / FE8 forum sections? I know FE8's would require more rules to tone down the "everyone is viable because Easy-Stones" argument, which is valid but isn't as fun. FE7 would be considering HHM, unless there are objections. More related to this list, where would you guys rank my "classes" (combined and generalized as they are) against eachother? I mean, would you rank Ninjas above or below Archers? Fliers above cavaliers? I'm curious.

I used the same strategies in CQ!Hard. It worked decently well, I only had to use attack stance against, as Levant said, Kotaro. Though, Witch!Ophelia was a good solo unit, because she could warp-transport people in fun ways. BUT this entire thread of thought is a tangent to the purpose of the thread itself.

Yeah braves cost more than they probably should, but they're still strong. But the way I play is pretty aggressive, so I need that guard stance to survive EP. Attack stance adds damage that, for the most part, isn't really impactful. I personally think Silver weapons are just...not great. Especially in a situation where they are in EP range, and you can't get a bulky enough unit close enough to trade-swap them to a better weapon. That debuff hurts man -- and only Dread Fighters can really deal with stacking debuffs and statuses. Maybe I'd have a different experience if I didn't have many of my strong units in classes that can be strong in both player phase and enemy phase. My Dark Knight!Corrin has actually been pretty damn strong, do recommend. Despite Kagero's relative frailty, I switch her in front when I have to deal with other mages or ninjas, and that works fine. My Revelations Xander is paired with Hinoka, who doesn't take magic damage. At all. So she can switch to cover his weakness. This is the kind of planning I use when I'm playing

Personally speaking, I've never found attack stance to be that great, though I tend to run my teams with a mindset of "You are a specialist in ______ role" with a pair up partner that either counters their weakness or is a balanced unit that gives good support stats. Attack Stance is just too risky in many cases in my experience, though I might just be bad at the game -- I haven't attempted Lunatic in either route yet (I think Rev!Lunatic will be easier than Conquest!Hard though, aside from maybe Ch.26--Endgame). You're right about limited speed pair ups though, those can be hard to parcel out properly.

Beruka consistently underperforms when needed. A 40% speed growth and a base speed of 9 pretty much ensures that she will never double anything that needs to be killed, especially in Conquest where most of the Hoshidan units that matter have either high or above average speed. Her only exceptional growth is skill, which is only so effective, and decently high defense growth. But why would you try and make a flyer tank in Conquest, where archers are significantly more abundant than Beast Killers, and mages are very common too? There isn't anything about her that makes me go "yeah, that's a powerful unit". Reina get's ORKO'ed a lot lategame, if you're still using her. 20% def growth and 9 base def makes her a reset liability, though her offensive growths are actually quite respectable for her class. But Shigure can be a Falcon Knight w/Staff utility, and staff utility is such a nice thing to have lategame when you have a lot of people that need healing. It adds options that otherwise aren't there, and can save you from a reset. As for Laslow, his personal skill is actually relevant and has an impact, unlike Selena's. His problems are fixed the same way Selena's are: a good pair up partner to patch up his deficient stat (in this case speed or defense). However, Laslow benefits more strongly in the lategame from weapons like the Brave Sword, which he has little trouble getting A rank for in Conquest if you use him -- he starts with C, which is nice. He doesn't have trouble doubling / doesn't need to double anything he was WTA over anyway.Additionally, while Rally Skill is admittedly the most useless rally in the game aside from maybe Rally Luck, it gives him more buffing power in combination with his personal, and a buff is a buff. His higher skill also helps him proc Sol more often, and as spotty as it is in this game, it's still additional survivability. As a Hero, Laslow 's only growths that are lower than Selena's are his Speed, Magic (who cares), and Res. Two of those stats don't matter, and the last is patched up with a good support pair up (Which could be Selena, that Soleil isn't bad). Where by comparison, Selena's growths are all under 50% aside from speed and hp as a Hero. She is faster, but decidedly average in every other way. Also, my definition of a semi-respectable rallybot is a rallyman that rallies at least two stats well, or one stat well and two others a little, without having to do some arcane combination of heart sealing and whatnot. If you pair him with another unit that has a rally skill you can turn Soleil into a more standard rallying unit, but that's unnecessary to me.

I have had no problems marrying of Azura. I always pair her up with Kaze, for a few reasons: In Conquest, Kaze's combat potential lies entirely on debuffing and being an anti-mage --- something Felicia does significantly better (she can just be a killer if you abuse Flame Shuriken), and you get her earlier, and she can heal. Another, if a unit fails to kill a target and Azura is left exposed there is a small chance that Kaze's personal skill will trigger and save Azura -- a chance that actually gets fairly large as the game goes on, with Azura's luck always being decent. The support will build slowly, but I just use Kaze a little bit each map to get those points built up. Dual Guard also builds support. If you really want to, dance abuse is possible while your main army is off clearing the map. In Revelations, I can do the same thing because Kagero does Kaze's job significantly better, and therefore I don't truly need him to be a dedicated combat unit. It's not hard to juggle them and build that support.

I can't believe I forgot Kiragi. Camilla!Kiragi as a Kinshi Knight has been like an F-22 Raptor on my Revelations run. He will be above Midori, and I may move Nina between him and Midori as well. I'd like to see some further arguments. Also, no, Peri's personal skill does not last into her next turn. It lasts for the rest of the turn it procs + that enemy phase. That's a big reason why Peri isn't considered a god tier offensive unit, if you could maintain those buffs with no downtime? That'd be busted.

That's...pretty stupid actually. I might have to give that a shot, that's very strong on paper.

I had mistyped, I meant to say Master of Arms, I have edited it. Kaze is still a very good unit, but Kag does that without needing forged knives. Felicia though, give that baby the Flame Shuriken and she nukes into the lategame. I count her as a healer class though, and those are just hard to rank well. If we did, It would probably be Elise and Felicia competing for #1, maybe Sakura close behind. Maybe.