Boomhauer007

Branching or limited, anything else you start to lose unit identity. Third tier has always been pointless. RD it was basically second tier since most units came promoted anyway. You aren't gonna find a ton of fans of grinding on serenes, definitely not a casual website.

Part of the point of three houses is that none of them are perfect. Claude is only willing to go as far as he can get without actually being in mortal danger, if you spare him in Crimson Flower (or just play Azure Moon) he's pretty nonchalant about everybody he allowed to die before he skirts off to Almyra. He tells his friends to retreat but not the normal soldiers? After everything falls apart in both routes he's like "ah shit you got me, oh well see ya". There's definitely some messed up stuff there the game doesn't touch on. Edelgard and Dimitri have already been discussed in previous posts but you get the point.

I think it was actually birthright, but I was specifically thinking of the map where the dragon veins triggered the tornados that hindered only fliers. although the Hinoka map is also one. I would say the issue with conquest is you always have control of when fliers are hindered since it's all DV controlled. There are also some maps in 11 and 12 that have so many ballista that fliers are a wasted effort on the map, but that only works one map at a time. But those are all temp solutions, I kind of agree that it's nearly impossible to truly balance a class set that has such a comical level of movement advantage over the others.

I'm sure most of the posts will be new classes but I'd be more interested in them scaling back flying classes. 16 games and they're consistently the best units and usually by a huge margin, at least attempt to nerf them at some point. There's a lot of ways you can try, whether it's lower stat caps (3 houses what were you thinking), lower growths, bringing back ballistas. Obviously dismounting needs to take your action for the turn, super canto needs to disappear again, and they certainly didn't need innate avoid bonuses. I also wish they'd play around with movement penalty "terrain" for aerial units more, but it took 14 games for them to try that so I'm not holding my breath.

After like 10 weeks of making my way through this topic killing time at work, I finally hit the end. It's almost surreal, and you aren't even a third of the way through the series lol. It's been a good read though, especially games 1-3 which I never played. I think I remember this coming up earlier, but are you going to do 6 on normal or hard? Such vastly different experiences.

I was half asleep last night and almost forgot I posted this lol. I know looking at only phased based stuff is a limited viewpoint, it's just what I was thinking about. Anyway, I actually find Conquest fascinating from a design standpoint (I could write an essay on it), specifically here because I think OP EP was something it gave such an interesting shake at figuring out through skills. Certain blow eliminates dodge tanking (in case the weird formula it used didn't enough), lunge prevents you from aggroing single parts of a group, poison strike and grisly wound guarantee damage, the bunches of shurikens are constantly dropping stats, and of course inevitable end and staff savant exist. Not to say it's perfect, but that game did so many interesting things, really wish more entries took attempts like that. Btw, I played genealogy as aggro group by standing on the edge of range, wipe on player phase. Got halfway through Tharcia and then heard I was on a rough old translation patch (those menus oh god) and am now basically holding out for a 4/5 remake, I played that as heavy PP since I was constantly capturing enemies.

I feel like this is a simple question with not a simple answer. Idk that "both" or "a mix" really counts; to me every game devolves into one or the other eventually. Of the ones I've played, here's how they broke down for me: PP focus: Genealogy, Shadow Dragon, Echoes, 3 houses EP focus: Binding Blade, Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Awakening, Fates Listing it out is almost weirder. Genealogy and SS are probably the two easiest but in separate categories. Shadow Dragon and Fates (conquest) are probably the hardest but also separate. Of course, difficulty doesn't mean balance, but I thought it was interesting to note. I personally find PP games to be better in balance regard, as EP games tend to be "throw your best unit out there and watch them solo half a map". Yet as I say that, genealogy is probably the second least balanced game (nothing tops awakening), and 3 of the 4 PP games are largely assisted by their super strong warp staves. I'm not sure where I'm going anymore but this is why I posted, someone will have an answer better than my rambling thoughts.

Variable AI is a neat idea but would probably take a very long time to implement into every map. I remember the creators of wargroove talking about how it's basically impossible to make AI that can even come close to competing with a person in games like these, and that realistically all you can do is make the situation difficult or give the AI an advantage that you have to overcome. IIRC it was largely that programming dynamic AI is something that was either impossible or extremely difficult. I'm sure someone else can talk to it better than I can.

CF was my first route. Chose the kill Claude option thinking it'd be some nonsense where they stop you anyway, then it actually happened and it was like "wait are we the bad guys". Tbh the whole invasion of the alliance in CF is bad feels, at least the kingdom is harboring the church but you go and sack Leicester just because it's there.

Oh man wait until endgame, final chapter SS on maddening has a legit claim to hardest chapter in the game.

I just can't buy F!Byleth as a top flight mercenary when she's like 155 cm and 47 kg. And of course, half that weight is in her chest. Combine that with her ridiculous outfit and the whole character model comes off as pandering.

Off the top of my head... Mercedes / Caspar Dorothea / Ingrid (for the full reward) Leonie / Linhardt Ferdinand / Lysithea

Lol Crimson Flower has a case for the hardest of the four, no idea how it's tied for first in the poll. I don't see how it's anything but Azure Moon. It has by far the easiest early game with Dedue being an actual tank and Sylvain being handed the lance of ruin in chapter 5. Speaking of being handed things, you can get every relic in this route and are literally just handed Failnaught. You have probably the strongest group of characters of the three, with really Ashe being the only weak link. Azure Moon has by far the easiest endgame too, with a single use of retribution largely trivializing the siege spam that would otherwise make the level difficult. Chapter 13 is probably the only really challenging chapter, but that's the case in every non Crimson Flower route.

Have to toss another vote at Between Heaven and Earth. Bonus points for the cool stuff they did with that and Blue Skies and a Battle. I think all of the post time skip map themes are really good.

There is absolutely a use for a unit with sky high strength that you can slap gauntlets on. Deleting mages and those pesky vantage snipers is not a useless niche, and rally strength is much more useful early game on maddening than hard where it isn't needed. He's not a great unit, but he's definitely not the worst

The idea of tiering is interesting, especially with something like Seiros Holy Monks. It's very realistic that this is the only stride gambit you get in non BL routes, which automatically makes it incredible despite its tiny stat increases. Similarly, Indech Sword Fighters are statiscally eh for A rank, but when retribution is relevant it trivializes siege tome maps. Along the same line, availability will be a big consideration. Some B ranks are available very early, giving you huge early game stat boosts. Meanwhile, some of the great gambits (can't remember which BL battalion gives retribution at D) are single route only which imo knock them down. This write-up is an excellent starting point, thanks for throwing it together.

I think small maps are generally easier to do more with, it's hard to make big maps anything besides rout or capture. I don't have screenshots, but I think conquest did some interesting things with bigger maps. Example A is Ignatius paralogue; it's still rout but the added dimension of Ignatius essentially being a sitting duck forces you to race to rescue while simultaneously holding off the force arriving through the forest. Example B is Percy's paralogue; also still rout but the huge enemy density is balanced by the dragon veins that reward you for grouping them up and allowing one unit to wipe multiple enemies from the map. Since this is the 3H board, I'll add that this game's big problem is that it's full of small maps that are also unvaried objectives. Only a very small amount of maps force you to approach anything differently (white clouds 11, silver snow 21 come to mind), and almost every single map is trivialized by fliers. It's crazy to think the map design went from conquest to this, it feels like a completely group made them.

I would probably do GD next, CF gives you a lot of wrong information which will be corrected on GD. BL isn't bad or anything, but it's a much more focused story within its bubble. I don't have any Rhea advice, everything that has been said covers everything, there's not much to it. I will say there's no benefit to do it all at once since you're not starting with SS, it's much less of a hassle getting A in NG+.

I take it you haven't seen endgame/ch 21 silver snow lol. Strong case for hardest maddening map (with SS ch13 being up there too), it is complete stupidity in its difficulty.

The maps are identical with the exception of the final chapters, and ch17 GD does not exist in SS, SS is 21 chapters. The major events of the story are the same until the very end. You get an info dump about Byleth at the end of SS.

It's nifty on a vantage build since you can save a skill slot, and having swordfaire synergizes with wo dao+. Other than that it's kind of pointless. I will say I made Seteth one on a hard run and he turned out as one of my best units, not that a personal single run matters but I can say it worked once.

The good: Characters are far and away the best in the series. Monastery conversations went a very long way in fleshing them out. The story had a lot of neat ideas, although some of the execution fell flat. The class system is a cool start; with a second crack at it after seeing how it played out I think it could be really good. Love that there is no canon or golden route. War sucks, it shouldn't end perfectly. The battle themes are some of my favorite. The okay: I hate the map reuse as much as anytime, but I firmly believe it's the trade-off for getting everything in one package and not separate games. Locked spell lists are simultaneously good and bad. The bad: Maddening is pretty wack. It's really upsetting to see them make a well designed difficulty in conquest just to fall back to the awakening lazy turd difficulty of pumping stats and same turn reinforcements in the middle of the map. It also stems from the main issue that there's far too much to account for to ever balance this game successfully. Stat caps are non existent, classes are terribly balanced, and players are given incredibly unfair tools like Thyrsus and support gambits such as blessing and stride. The main 3 weapon classes lack identity and all feel the same. The monastery gets so tedious, but skipping isn't a realistic option on maddening. Oh, almost forgot, white clouds is way too long and extremely tedious on replays, a branch of fate would go a long way.

While it might be better statistically to recruit late, I feel like you lose out on skills too much for it to be worth it. Intermediate classes have some of the most useful skills in the game, and waiting too long forces you to send units backwards through those. I might also add a note about combat arts that allow you to double becoming much much better. It was never necessary on hard, but things like Hunters Volley and Swift Strikes are free doubles on units that otherwise would never be able to.

I made a rant topic about this map for GD on gamefaqs last night. Ch13 is the shining example of lazy difficulty and lack of play testing. I imagine it's even worse on BL without flying / pass / ashes and dust Claude to help you. No prep screen, no knowledge of where allies spawn until the map is in full swing, ridiculous enemy stats (even at level 27 Byleth was doubled by the mercs and assassins), pass means you can't even turtle them. Stupidity just goes on and on. Only having 2 characters means divine pulse isn't even super useful since you can't always reroll RNG. I think it took 4 hard resets / full runs of divine pulses to get through that intro. And I had the benefit of wyvern master Claude who had rushed alert stance+ specifically for this chapter, had wyvern Lord Hilda, and vantage wo dao+ on Byleth; none of that stops complete reliance on % misses. Now I'm mad all over again lol.

Every ch13 except Crimson Flower is fighting bandits to reclaim the monastery where your allies slowly trickle in, sometimes in bad spots against high level enemies. CF ch13 is just a normal map. GD specific stuff: Rush Lysithea to dark spikes if you want to easily take out ch4 death knight (Luna works well too, just less cheese). After that, pump everything into faith for warp. Doing Lorenz paralogue as soon as it's available can turn Lysithea into the delete button she always is. Incidentally, this map can be warp skipped if you choose to since Acheron has lower stats than random enemies in the map. Hilda's personal is incredible early game, especially for bows doing chip damage. Lorenz and Ignatz are susceptible to being stat screwed, everyone else should be fine.