samthedigital

I see the story in the two games as parts of a whole, so comparing the two is somewhat redundant on that end. It's also important to note that this is the primary reason I go back to these games, and that's not true for any of the other games in the series. This is exactly why I like the gameplay in Path of Radiance. It's simple from a tactical perspective relative to most entries in the series, and when that's what I'm looking for Path of Radiance is my first choice. That's not to say that I like Radiant Dawn any less, but it depends on my mood also.

I skip the map with rewarp. As alluded to earlier chapter 20 is one instance where I give Lyn to someone else to make use of Astra Storm, but it's not the only option available. If I don't have enough strength for a one round warp/rescue (if not cheesing) or killing him during the re-warp chain would also work. There's also an Entrap user in chapter 21 if I remember correctly. In both cases we can finish the map before they get the chance to use them even without using fancy cheese. The well exists. It takes about 4-5 chapters to get 2000 SP. In a worst case scenario we get all the SP we need to finish our builds by chapter 21 or so, but realistically it should take less time. As established in the other topic where we talked about Corrin I do not care about the dragon veins. Ivy makes the best use of the engage because of the flying subtype and 1-3 range access. Hortensia can do this too, but there are various reasons why I would want Ivy with Corrin instead. To be sure this is still not making best use of Ivy; it's just something that she's best at because she's a magic flyer. You're copying lenticular's argument almost verbatim, and I already responded to her. The short of it is that my options are limited when it comes to 1-2 range magic nukes. I would not get the same performance if I dumped those resources on literally any other unit, so in a sense it's a massive letdown for everyone else that they can't reach that potential.

9/10 (assuming Maddening, but difficulty doesn't really change anything for him tbh) He needs to wait a few chapters for canter and a good class swap. He also isn't able to do a few specialized things as well as some other units, and I find that to be slightly more valuable than what he brings to the table. Otherwise it's not really complicated; he has the best bases for a physical unit relative to join time, and his growths are also fantastic. I probably couldn't list every single emblem or skill that Kagetsu works well with. The only thing he's lacking is guaranteed crits with a Wrath/Vantage build (using Ike, you can still make it happen in a more limited fashion with Leif), but he makes up for it by being able to double without Lyn. I like pairing him with Roy to meet some doubling thresholds while engaged, but honestly the sky's the limit; he's great with anything that isn't primarily helping magic units and doesn't necessarily need an emblem if there isn't one available. As far as skills go Canter is the obvious choice, and the second one is largely up to preference based on what the player wants him to do. I've personally tried him as a Wyvern with various emblems on my second Maddening playthrough. I'm pretty sure all I had was Canter and something like str+2 because the well didn't exist and I had no idea what I was doing. He was still fantastic though. On my latest Maddening playthrough he went Hero and got Canter and Dual Assist+. I figured that he would put the Hero class in a better light for me, but it really didn't. He was still great, but the class holds him back a lot as it would with any other unit in my opinion.

Just for reference I clear the game in around 300 turns on average completing every map; that averages to 7 turns each or so. I do take advantage of several skips and such, but I also like to clear most of the maps without them; it really just depends on how much I like playing the map the "normal" way. For people that play slower and/or have trouble energy circle hopping something like Favorite Food can work too. I used it on my Byleth unit exclusively, but I can see someone making good use of it with Corrin. Dreadful Aura was one of the two most defining emblem effects in my first Maddening clear, and from what I've read that's a common experience. I should probably actually talk about Yunaka to bring things back on topic somewhat and because I haven't actually given her a rating. I'd give her a 4/10 simply because I find that the Thief class is limited and it takes a lot of work to reclass her into something more appropriate. Since the ratings window has closed I'll probably save my thoughts on the Thief class in general for the Zelkov thread though.

Those numbers don't represent a unit that is notably worse in my opinion. The losses in res and luck look bad on paper, but I'm not using my Mage Knight to fight magic units. The loss in luck is concerning to be sure, but it's also one of the less costly fixes relatively speaking. You can find some numbers on SP generation from the well here if that helps in your evaluation. The reason to give those resources to Ivy in particular is because ideally I want a flying target with good 1-2 range. That removes every unit without a magic stat from the pool since there aren't a lot of good 1-2 range options and it's harder to reach benchmarks when hitting defense rather than resistance. I noted the similarity between Griffin Knights and Ivy in my last post, and I do think that they can replicate Ivy's combat to some degree. It's just that I have some reservations about their combat against bulkier enemies given the Levin Sword's lower might and the lower magic stat of the Griffin Knight class. There are also even fewer units that have the staff proficiency to use Warp and Rescue while also being in the class, so at the very least there aren't that many units that can replace her, but the same can be said for any combat unit really. I don't consider the Bonded Shield user to be a resource for Ivy necessarily. The bulk of my combat units are on wings, and I might need it for them too, so it's more that I want a magic user that fits well with the team composition than having Ivy nuke everything for the sake of it. The only unit that I can think of with demonstrably better combat is Panette, and she doesn't have 1-2 range. Chloe, a unit that you gave a perfect rating, needs engage attacks and/or heavy investment in contested resources to reach certain benchmarks if she reaches them at all. An Armour Knight in chapter 21 has 65 HP and 15 resistance, and Ivy doesn't need any of that to one round them if memory serves. If you do give her that investment she then can double, and I am pretty sure it lets her one round at least two or three more enemy types depending on her magic and level. What other units would you invest those resources in to get that kind of result? The best physical units don't need help with speed, and you're matching them at best with another unit with the speed investment. You don't get a magic unit on wings with Pandreo or whatever other magic unit you can think of, and he doesn't really need the help doubling, so again at best another unit doesn't net you unique utility. Griffin Knights don't get sky high magic atk, and I could go on. Ivy really is unique in that sense and the reason I think that she's a good investment target.

On average an LTC completes maps in fewer turns than it takes the engage timer to run out. Someone has even done it in an ironman setting on hard mode, so it's possible to do that much less getting to the next engage circle on time. I play a little more casually, but 3-4 turns of Bonded Shield, a Byleth Dance, Wrath/Vantage, or whatever other related tool is more than enough to make a lot of progress in a map.

This is very true, but I made that point because her floor is roughly on par with those characters (minus the heavy Anna investment) give or take a few points of speed. What's best for the team as a whole is also more of a personal experience thing. The 1-2 range EP nuke can be more valuable than blasting off a long range target every once in a while, and there are always multiple solutions to any given problem. Chapter 20 as you alluded to is one of the situations where I would not give Lyn to Ivy (I'm also not worried about the enemy actually using Entrap though; the chapter is done before he gets the chance to use it), but outside of that I use Astra Storm for cheese purposes and don't really find any long range enemy to be much of a problem. Lyn isn't even required to make Ivy good though. As others have mentioned she can fix her speed with skills and the like, and SP books aren't nearly as contested as Lyn is. You can assume that we distribute our resources evenly across our team and Lyn can afford Canter and Speedtaker or you subscribe to the idea that we don't penalize units when they make the best use of resources out of anyone and she gets Speedwings and even heavier SP investment. Even without speed investment she's also great with Corrin because of the flying 1-3 range synergy with Dreadful Aura, and I'd imagine that she'd perform well in other utility roles if you really don't want her to do anything better. I would just deal with the off chance that she gets crit. Realistically she's going to be protected by Bonded Shield when facing multiple enemies. It's rare that I would need her to face a single crit, and rewinds are plentiful in that kind of situation. I'd say that Ivy has more in common with a Levin Sword Griffin Knight than a Sage. Mystical units need a Qi Adept for the 100% Bonded Shield and can't ignore terrain which is at least half of Ivy's utility for me.

I'm going to point out that without help every unit not named Seadall kind of sucks. The difference between a Panette without any help and Ike!Panette and Vantage for example is doing basically nothing to OHKOing everything on player phase and soloing entire sections of maps on enemy phase. Ivy can do something similar with Bonded Shield and speed help, but she's not limited to 1 range. Without investment you're not going to get that level of combat from anyone, and there aren't many units that stand out with help either, at least on Maddening. It's also worth mentioning that Ivy's speed only needs a lot of help in her base class. She gains 4 points of speed as a Mage Knight, and her speed end up being very comparable to the units you mentioned. You can fix that problem with an engrave or a skill. The caveat here is that this the case for you, but it's definitely not true generally speaking. Astra Storm can be used a grand total of twice per map in the best case scenario unless we're playing at a snail's pace, so unless there's a really important Astra Storm target losing it as a damage option isn't a problem. In return we get incredible 1-2 range combat with an enemy phase to boot when combined with Bonded Shield. Hortensia can't take any physical damage and does nothing to magical units in her base class, so even if you're actively not using any of your resources on anything Hortensia should still perform worse than Ivy. Ivy might have problems getting crit once in a while, but that's still a lot better than not being able to take a hit whatsoever. With the well giving us thousands of SP though we can afford things like Speedtaker much less Speed+4 or something like that which helps her a lot more than anything we could give to Hortensia to fix combat.

10/10; any difficulty really, but I've mostly played Maddening Ivy is the best unit in the game in my opinion. She has some problems; notably she needs help doubling, she wants an accuracy engrave, and she doesn't get early access to canter. The upsides are obvious though; she has access to the best class in the game because she's a flyer with tomes and staves. Her ability to use almost every staff you'd want is neat, but it's only a secondary thing when the main thing she wants to be doing is attacking into enemies with her huge magic stat. She makes for a fantastic Bonded Shield target partnered with another flier for enemy phase shenanigans, but even if it's just for player phase she's often one of if not the best damage dealer most of the time. Her join time and investment requirement are the main things that she can be criticized for. I wouldn't exactly disagree with someone who docked a few points for her join time, but I don't really factor it into my ratings all that much. The investment required is not a fair criticism though, at least in my opinion. The resources she wants are contested; she wants some mix of Lyn, Speedwings, Speedtaker/Speed+, etc, but she also makes better use out of it than anyone else because generally speaking hitting resistances is better, and Lindwurm is the best class in the game. This is also a game where almost every single unit is bad without committing some resources to them. Giving her Lyn does deny someone else the use of a good Astra Storm. I only use this on select maps and situations, so I'm perfectly fine not having it most of the time. Ivy can also fix her speed with some combination of skills and speedwings too, so she's not necessarily tied down to the emblem. I suppose there are some other ways to make use of her, but I find fixing her speed to be the best solution. The basic set is Lyn!Ivy with Canter/Speed+ and an accuracy engraved bolganone. If she doesn't need one of her skill slots for whatever reason Divine Pulse+ is nice to let her use a different engrave while also letting her use Freeze more consistently. Hit+X works for a better displayed hit, but I'm pretty sure that DP+ is about as good for attack hit for less SP cost. I'm sure that some other stuff could work, but she really doesn't want for anything else honestly.

It might be an objective way to rank units, but utility units like dancers can't solo maps, so they wouldn't do very well in this kind of tiering system. It's also not a good metric in the sense that it's limited in scope and naturally won't be applicable to many different situations. To be sure you're not wrong for ranking units this way if that's what you want to do. People speedrun Fire Emblem games on the easiest difficulty (good speedruns also tend not to be very consistent outside of games that can be RNG manipulated), and while it's closer to a solo than most other kinds of playthroughs they still sometimes use multiple combat units when it's the faster option. They point they're making is that while they might be better relative to units in other games they still might perform badly relative to units in their own games. If we use Gilliam as an example he doesn't have a lot of utility in a speedrun, draft race, LTC, etc. I could list a multitude of Armour Knights that can't solo their respective games that still have more utility in those kinds of playthroughs.

This is great advice for an ironman run. It's a little more nuanced than that otherwise; sometimes the riskier strategy has enough of a payoff to offset the luck factor. To be sure it leans a lot more on safety in the titles without any form of battle saves/turn wheels/etc, but that's not always the case. Chapter 20 of my latest Conquest playthrough comes to mind. I don't remember the specifics because it's been a while since I played it, but I developed a strategy that got to the boss in 5? turns using the wind, but killing the boss required a bit of luck since the hit rates weren't ideal. The alternative was developing a strategy that cleared out the map a lot more slowly and methodically which would have taken significantly more time to do. The best advice you can give to someone who struggles with item management is to tell them not to worry about it too much. I find that people tend to be more conservative with their resources to the point of not using them or saving them for the end of the game when it's not going to have nearly the same impact. It takes experience (multiple playthroughs) to get a good idea of where resources are best spent, but most of the time hoarding resources is worse than using them "badly". If your friends are interested in getting a lot better though there are two options. Playing a lot is one way to do it, but watching good players play and doing research speeds up the process.

The trick is to play fast enough to get to the next energy circle before the engage meter runs out. If you aren't able to do that I can see why you'd find more use in the dragon veins. To put it into perspective I didn't use a single dragon vein in my last Maddening playthrough; if I ever need to slow enemies down the engage window is enough, and even that's less necessary the more I play. The people that really liked Yunaka were using the dodge tank build on Hard mode. That was the case in the first month of the game's life cycle anyway. It is pretty effective, but she needs some favoritism so that she can start snowballing. Otherwise she will fall off the way you experienced.

If you're making an opportunity cost argument the loss of the 1-3 range Dreadful Aura and Draconic Hex on a unit with more movement is far more impactful. I don't find myself using any of the dragon veins much because Dreadful Aura is a more potent defensive tool if I actually need one; I'd rather take a more offensive approach. I would probably prefer the fog when not engaged to get more enemies to attack into my unit in theory, but Yunaka's lack of bulk can make it difficult for that strategy to work effectively on Maddening. It can be pretty effective on Hard mode if Yunaka gains enough levels though.

7/10 for Maddening I've talked about Lapis enough for a lifetime, but here are some quick points: 1. She does really well with heavy early investment, but a lot of the resources she wants are heavily contested. (Energy Drops, Second Seals, etc) 2. Her personal just makes it harder for her to crit sometimes. She doesn't really have the con to wield heavy weapons without making sacrifices, so relying on killer weapons is sometimes the best way to net her one rounds. 3. Her 1/2 range options are limited until she gets Roy after chapter 19. He actually fixes quite a few of her issues, but it does mean that she's not very flexible when building a team. 4. There are a lot of decent physical attackers, and emblems are more of the reason that they shine than the units themselves. Lapis doesn't have a magic stat, and she doesn't really stand out that much amongst the huge pool of units we have outside of that speed stat. All that being said if I'm using some magic Chloe build and have a Second Seal to spare (Wyvern) she can do really well over the course of a playthrough. There are probably more effective ways to use the resources to be sure, but it's not that big of a deal. Low investment Lapis is really average and probably wants to go into a mounted class eventually anyway.

10/20 Etie has 44 HP with a tonic as a Sniper, so she can survive. I would probably opt to go Warrior or something and she would fare better. To be fair I'm not sure that Etie would be my dragon killer, but I'm not giving Alcryst much credit for it either given the amount of options we have later on in the game.

That's effectively what I did, but I would much rather not have to every time I want to use them. The other issue that I have with the dlc items aren't opt in; they are transferred to the inventory right away. The "solution" is to uninstall the dlc and the like, but it's an extra step that I wouldn't have to take in Three Houses or Conquest for example.

The Cindered Shadows approach of having a self contained challenge was what I was expecting going into it since I didn't want to risk spoiling anything before buying. The half approach isn't what I wanted, but I would have personally enjoyed it quite a bit if I didn't have to play through it every single time just to use the characters. I don't understand why it couldn't have been implemented in a similar way where the units scaled to the party relative to the chapter or whatever. I want to go back and play the Xenologue on Maddening myself when I have the time. I tried Maddening originally when the well is first unlocked, but it was practically impossible to get through the opening without having a perfect defensive formation, and I didn't have the patience to figure out if it was even doable. I ended up playing through on Normal mode after unlocking the first 6 emblems and DLC characters because I wanted to use the DLC characters on my playthrough. I have to wonder when the player is expected to go through the Xenlogue though. It seems to me that it's more fun to do later on in the game given the extra options, but then there isn't any point to the unlockable characters being tied to it because we don't get to use them.

You're expected to have set up your units with good skills, emblems, etc. It's a neat idea in theory, but none of the DLC is implemented well in my opinion; it doesn't work well in practice. I could rant about it, but I'll refrain for now.

My team is usually comprised of a lot of flying units, so while I can see the utility it's definitely something that would be more situational for me. It's probably not much of an ask to give her a speedwing or two depending on team composition or giving her more speed from Lyn either. I would revise my rating to a 7.5 or 8 then, but I'm still not confident because I haven't tried it out myself yet.

I'm going to give Citrinne a 7/10 for Maddening, but it's a somewhat speculative rating. Theoretically in the best case scenario she can get enough investment to start doubling and nuke enemies with a bonded shield partner on Enemy Phase. If she was able to do that consistently I'd go even higher, but I'm not sure if it's possible to get Citrinne there if I've committed some resources to get another unit (probably Ivy) to double too. I'm also not sure if she could double enough with some kind of Griffin Knight Levin Sword build because of her build issues. She's a great Bonded Shield target because of her low defenses; it's just that I find that it's a lot more limiting to do this as a Make Knight rather than as a flying class. She has access to Canter a few chapters earlier than Pandreo and Ivy too, so there could be a few situations where she has some more utility than the two of them given a lot of investment. She is a lot worse if she doesn't get enough speed to double. She's probably the best Celica user for a few chapters and has access to Canter, but it gets a lot worse as the game goes on. I can see her being paired with Corrin to some success or have some random staff utility, but that's something that any other magic user does well too. I do value that magic stat a lot more than I do units with middling physical stats though, so I still consider her to be better than average. I'm not a fan of resetting for Dire Thunder since it loses more time than it would ever save without getting lucky, so I'm not factoring it into the rating. I'd probably bump her rating a point or so because she's a lot better with low investment as a player phase nuke, but just being that isn't enough to compete with the best units in the game.

I would give Alcryst a 5.5/10. He's basically just a vehicle for an Emblem that has early access to Canter. His stats are fairly middling to low everywhere even with his personal applied, so he's still a little limited in being able to abuse some of the stronger offensively oriented ones without a lot if investment. Alcryst's Bow proficiency lets him use Silver Bows as a Warrior, and he's one of several units that start in a covert class to perform start of map cheese (without any investment necessary) with Lyn when that's applicable. It's honestly not much to set him apart, but it lets him do a few small things that not every unit would be able to do. I used Alcryst on my first Maddening playthrough. It was before the well mechanics were introduced, and I naturally knew a lot less about the game than I do now. I'm pretty sure that he was a Warrior with Dual Assist+ and his only utility was in killing flying units and potentially tanking a unit or two with Ike. I'm not really using that playthrough to judge him as a unit though for obvious reasons.

I didn't have a strong first impression of the game. I am not a fan of the Monastery/Somnie/etc mechanic, but I had no idea how much of it I could skip, so naturally I did everything and had a miserable time with that part of the game. The gotcha moments and the like are no better, and while I like the general map design there are a few that were (and still are) a bit of a slog to get through. I was also expecting Maddening mode to be similar to the difficulty in Three Houses, so I played on Hard mode to learn the game. That was a bit of a mistake because it's not really an appropriate difficulty (for me) once I learned the mechanics. Chapter 17 expects you to know what all of the emblems do and to use them to your advantage, but it doesn't really add to it past that point. My opinion of the game drastically improved on my next few playthroughs. Gotcha moments are only bad once, and most of the content in the Somniel is skippable. I also don't feel like I'm missing out on something when I skip activities and such which is a huge improvement over Three Houses. I still don't like it, but it's tolerable. The skill system and engage mechanics really make the game a lot more replayable since it's a huge sandbox in terms of build creation and strategy selection. Maddening is also a fairly balanced difficulty when compared to some of the other games in the series, at least in my opinion. I don't have much if anything to say about the story or characters and the like. This is probably a pretty basic take, but I haven't enjoyed the story in Fire Emblem games much since Radiant Dawn, so I didn't expect much and didn't get much out of it besides a few laughs during some of the campy moments.

It's actually completely infallible in this game. With a +5 Killer Axe forge, Lyn Engrave, Wrath, and her personal active she reaches 100% crit. Her accuracy with the Lyn engrave and Hit+X reaches 100% against just about every enemy in the game too. There are some exceptions in the late game (she has 90-95% crit against the Wolk Knights in the Bond paralogue in Maddening iirc), but those are problems that other team members can solve while Panette's either off doing something else or not taking advantage of Vantage on that particular turn. So in short the build is very effective, but you can't turn your brain off completely to make it work either. Her bulk can be good enough while engaged too. If I remember correctly my winning strategy for chapter 19 involved warping her in and tanking a few Wolf Knights to get Mauvier to Rescue Marnie, and she was able to kill a few enemies on the way too. It's kind of funny because I was expecting her to keel over with all the 1-2 range attacks she was taking, and I was testing stuff out rather than using it as a legitimate strategy.

People pair her with Ike to take advantage of the free Wrath. I also wonder if you had done the Ike paralogue before giving up on Warrior Panette or not. She isn't really meant to actually take a lot of damage. If Vantage isn't your thing she is probably not going to be an effective enemy phase unit in that class, but she should still be capable of killing just about everything in the game in one hit with a Killer Axe. The class options really just comes down to a matter of playstyle and build choice though.

I think that it's a good idea to add the fact that Hortensia can be used in this kind of fashion too. She isn't really meant to be a combat unit, so she can come in and out of the lineup depending on need and doesn't take away from the exp the rest of the team wants.