lenticular

I'm not getting my point across. My point isn't that Pokémon must not have ways to play it that are difficult. My point is that Pokémon must have a way to play it that is easy. My point is that the difficult choice has to coexist alongside the easy choice. One way of doing that would be difficulty levels. Another is options like switch/set. Another is the inclusion of mechanics that make the game easier but are easily avoided by anyone who cares to challenge themself.

The existence of battle items provides a nice pseudo difficulty option for the game. At their most basic level, Pokémon games need to be beatable by children so they've got to be pretty easy. "No battle items" as a self-imposed challenge run is easy to come up with and easy to keep track of, and provides enough of a bump to difficulty to be meaningful. If battle items were completely removed from the series, the games would probably end up being rebalanced to keep the overall difficulty level largely the same. Except that there wouldn't be the easy and obvious challenge run any more. One thing I wouldn't mind seeing, though, would be to have this officially codified as an optional difficulty setting, in the same way that set/switch exists as an option. It wouldn't really do a whole lot, but it would still be nice just as a way to remove temptation and/or to give the go ahead to play that way for people who would otherwise be nervous to try.

Another option would be to give the Laguz access to Beorc classes, but have them use slightly different mechanics. Beorc units could have Awakening-style reclassing, where they each have their own personal set of available classes and no way to access other classes; on the other hand, Laguz could not have any inate reclassing options but be able to switch to the class of their support partner once they reach an A support, similar to Friendship Seal reclassing in Fates. In terms of lore, this would be because laguz are only willing to try their hand at Beorc fighting styles after they've learned first-hand how strong it can be. Another possible problem with RD reclassing is that there are a lot of characters with unique or storyline classes. Just among Beorc characters (or those who have Beorc-like classes), Ike (Hero), Micaiah (Light Mage), Elincia (Queen), Sanaki (Empress), Volke (Assassin), Mist (Valkyrie), Black Knight (Black Knight), Pellaes (Dark Sage) and Sephiran (Chancellor) all have unique classes, and while Sothe's class isn't unique, he does have a storyline promotion which could make it awkward to reclass him. Would those characters be allowed to reclass? And would other characters be able to reclass into those classes? For instance, I could imagine Mist being a good fit for Elincia's class, except that it would make no sense for her to suddenly become a queen. It would be easy enough to get around by changing the class names, I guess. But then there's also the question of whether it would make these characters less "special" if they weren't unique any more. In terms of possible reclass options, how about: Fiona: Pegasus Knight (fits her character well and would really help make the most of her free Savior skill) Sothe: Armour Axe (would fit his protective nature) Callil: Swordmaster (only the most elegant and graceful of weapons for such a lady, naturally) Nephenee: Sniper (some proficiency with a bow fits her character, and part 2 doesn't have a sniper otherwise) Oliver: Archsage (dark) (no way he isn't secretly a dark mage all along) Shinon: Rogue (has the right stat spread already, fits his scumbag character, more thief availability is always good)

How about instead, "Receives doubled benefits from all shields"? Which would not be nearly as good early on, but would scale better and actually have the potential to be better in the late game. It would also give the option of equipping a Hexlock Shield for +8 Res, which could be mighty tempting. As an alternative, how about: "Hearty constitution: Nullifies damage from all sources other than direct attacks"? That would include terrain damage, poison damage, splash damage from gambits or meteor, and damage from poison strike. I've generally found poison strike to be one of the biggest weaknesses of physical tanks in Maddening, so being able to laugh them off would be really nice. The more that I've been thinking about these, the more glad I am that there aren't any abilities that give extra gambit uses. Gambits are pretty much the single most powerful thing that a character can do on their turn, so a character with extra gambit uses would risk turning into something of a gambit-bot. Which would be very powerful, no doubt, but I don't think I'd find them fun to use.

I'm still not convinced. The buff that Byleth's personal gives to adjacent units is rarely significant, unless you are willing to severely sacrifice Byleth's combat to make it so, which isn't worth it. If you benefit from it twice per turn (probably an over-estimate, at least for me), use it equally on everyone in your army (, and have 11 non-Byleth units that you're using, then that means that each of themgets an average of an extra 3.6% xp overall, which is a fraction of one level above the curve. It's still nice to have, since it's pure upside, but I don't see how it's overpowered. Unless you're using the ability significantly differently from me and in a way that I haven't thought of, I think that you're greatly over-estimating it. Oh, that's good to know. It's always nice to get confirmation that the actual maths lines up with my personal intuition. This is an exaggeration. I agree that they're both better units than Raphael, but not that they're strictly better in all cases. Compared to Balthus, Raphael has: better HP, luck and dexterity; more supports with Golden Deer students for more reliable linked attacks; better availability in a Golden Deer playthrough, including Chapter 13 and Chapter 1, both of which can be tricky on Maddening. None of these advantages are amazing, but they definitely do exist. (And that's even leaving aside the fact that he's the only one of the three units that you can even use if you're don't have the DLC and aren't playing as Blue Lions.)

What are you basing that on? I find that I tend to reach an equilibrium point with my lord about two levels higher than everyone else, at which point the bonus is approximately cancelled out by the penalty from xp scaling. An average level up is somewhere around about 4 stat ups for a Three Houses lord on average, so I'd estimate it the personal as being worth somewhere around about 8 extra stat points. I can see 10 being possible, since I used very rough numbers and that seems to be within rounding error, but I don't see how it's worth anywhere close to 20 stat points. It's a strong ability, for sure, but I don't think it's overpowered. Especially considering that those stat points are going to be spread across all stats, with relatively few going into the most important stats. It makes the lords just a little bit better at everything, which is great to have, but generally not as powerful as getting a particularly strong buff to a single stat. I would disagree with this as well. Not so much the first part as the second. I'd agree that Caspar is one of the weakest units in the game (though I don't think I'd call him outright bad; everyone in Three Houses is at least servicable) but I don't think it's necessarily a problem if bad units exist. Figuring out which units are the best is part of the game. Trying to make weaker units work anyway is a part of the game. I wouldn't want these things to go away in the name of game balance (which I think is a hugely over-rated concept for single-player games). Anyway, of the actual skills that you're suggesting, a lot of them seem pretty overpowered to me. @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate already mentioned a couple of the ones I'd consider too powerful, so I'll just second what she said. Another thing that I'll add, though, is that a lot of the ones you're adding are overly complicated, wordy or fiddly compared to what we actually have in the game. They should be easy to remember and, ideally, all the abilities should be simple enough that even a beginner player should be able to have an intuitive feel for what they do after reading them only once. If you have multiple breakpoints or multiple effects tied to a single ability, then it's mostly going to be confusing. I had to read some of them multiple times to fully understand what they would do, and I'm the sort of person who talks about Fire Emblem games on Internet message boards. I like a lot of your suggestions, but I think that these two are my favourites. And honestly, I kinda wish these were just the default vanilla versions.

When it comes to the next mainline Pokémon games (Gen IX, not remakes or spin-offs or anything) which of the two hypothetical situations would you prefer: 1. The game has a small number of total pokémon, let's say 150 total. There is no national dex, no way to transfer pokémon in from older games, no way at all to acquire other pokémon. Those 150 are all that we get. However, what we do get is full bespoke animations for every move on every pokémon. Gone are the days when we see a pokémon wiggle a bit, then a generic animation plays, then the enemy pokémon recoils a little. Instead, every single move that we see has an animation that is comparable to or better than the absolute best animations in Sword and Shield (eg, Pyroball). 2. We get the full pokédex. Every single pokémon that has ever existed is available to catch. Many of them are only in the post game (or via transfer or trade), but they're all there. However, this means that we get the most abysmally lazy and generic graphics and animations, comparable to or worse than the absolute worst that Sword and Shield have to offer (eg, Tail Whip). Obviously, it would be nice to be able to have both, but that's increasingly unrealistic with every passing generation and every new pokémon. Honestly, asking for either one of them is likely a little ambitious. So if you had to pick one direction, which would you rather? For me, personally, I'd prefer the first. I never transfer pokémon between games anyway (except transfering the Regis from Gen III to Gen IV so I could get Regigigas), and I don't really feel a need to have all the pokémon available. 150 of them would be enough for me to feel that I had plenty of choice and variety and I'd be able to pick a full team of six pokémon that I really like, which is all that I really care about. Though that's just me with my tastes and preferences. Which would you prefer?

1. I want for unit builds to be more about choosing the skills you want, and less about there being a few choices that are objectively better but that you have to grind to get. I don't enjoy unlocking classes through supports or unlocking skills through classes or whatever. It all feels like a lot of hoop-jumping. Give me much freer choice with my builds, and balance the game around that. 2. I want difficulty levels to be changable on the fly, with both increasing and decreasing difficulty level being available at will. This is something that many games manage to do without any problem, and I don't see why Fire Emblem can't. As an example of the sort of problem that is caused by not having this, I have a friend who picked up Three Houses and started it on Normal/Classic because it was the first time she had ever played any game with turn-based tactics elements. She enjoyed it, but after she got used to it, she started to find it too easy, grew bored, and gave up on the game because there was no way for her to increase the difficulty. 3. I want a setting that is something other than "vaguely medieval western europe except with magic". There's nothing wrong with castles and knights and lords but it's been done plenty of times and I'd like to see something else again.

That's fair. It was probably a poor choice of words for me to describe him as having an "arc". You're right that he doesn't, really. But I did feel that his story was complete. But then, I think I'm generally happier with unanswered questions than a lot of people are, and I can see how it might be an issue for people who hate that sort of stuff. Except that what we ended up with was a lot of inconsistency between PoR and RD, which honestly feels like it asks more questions than it answers. At least, it does if you want to try to take the story seriously and not just brush it off as "the writers didn't know wha tthey were doing". Well, let's just say that I don't find Oliver even the tiniest bit funny and leave it at that. I also vaguely recall there being a line about how he isn't going to contest Elincia's reign, yes. Though I think it was just a single throwaway line somewhere, basically saying "we acknowledge that this could have been a plot point but we don't want to deal with it so we're just going to mention it quickly and hope that's enough". And for me, Renning on his own isn't the problem so much as the fact that it's that on top of the other characters who are brough back, and on top of all the other little inconsistencies or retcons. Each one on its own is acceptable, but in aggregate, they made me enjoy the game less. (And yes, he's a perfectly serviceable unit, but it's not as if Radiant Dawn has a shortage of decent cavalry units or a shortage of end game units, so I don't think much would be lost from a pure gameplay perspective if he weren't around.)

Personally, I'd have prefered if they'd just let the Black Knight stay dead and come up with a version of Radiant Dawn's story that didn't have the character at all. He had an arc in Path of Radiance, it was finished, it was a satisfying ending, and bringing him back didn't really add anything. And while they were at it, they should have let Oliver and Renning stay dead as well. Having so many retcons just made it seem as if the story hadn't been properly thought through and that they didn't really care about the world they were creating.

I am going to go ahead and predict that there will be a new Fire Emblem game. Since the series began, the longest gap between two consecutive games has been a bit over 3 years and 3 months, between Genealogy and Thracia. If we go through this entire year without a new Fire Emblem, then it'll be a new record for longest dry spell in the series history. And yeah, if any time was going to break the record, covid time could easily be it, but I'm going to choose to be optimistic instead over this one. I also think that there will be a short window (less than 6 months) between announcement and release. I think that Nintendo and IS will want to avoid a repeat of how the release date of Three Houses kept being pushed back, so they won't announce it until it's very close to being done. More speculatively, I'm going to predict that it will be announced in a Nintendo Direct in February, and then released in July. I think it will be a brand new game with a brand new setting, rather than a remake or a direct sequel. I think that it will use a modified version of the engine and mechanics from Three Houses, similar to how Fates shared a lot of DNA from Awakening. However, I do think it will be a less ambitious game than either Fates or Three Houses, and will only feature a single route.

"Teeeell Meeeeg Iiii loooove heeeer!" *splat* Like I said, messy. Poor Brom. And even if you ignore the unfortunate effects of gravity, he'd still be useless since the terrain on that map is all either sky or clouds, which non-fliers can't even cross. So he'd be stuck in one place, unmoving, useless, and deperately trying not to think about gravity.

I don't think thaty we really benefit from having even more terms for what is largely the same concept. Yeah, there's definitely a continuum from "literally just the original code plus an emulator for the original hardware" to "basically a completely new game, but taking inspiration from the original", but I don't think that it's helpful to try to define exact boundary points along that continuum. It's too fuzzy. Where exactly the boundary between an enhanced port and a lazy reskin? Is there one? Probably not. No matter what terminology we end up using, we're going to have to add a lot of description if we want to understand the nuance of exactly what we're looking at. And no matter what terminology we end up using, we can also guarantee that game marketing is going to exaggerate and overhype to make their games sound better than they actually are.

To be clear, I don't think that just straight up removing permadeath and not doing anything else would make ambush spawns good or make Fire Emblem good. My point was more along the lines that if permadeath wasn't a thing then that would open up more different design space which could be used to implement ambush spawns in a way that I would find interesting. I agree that Casual mode FE is pretty boring, but that's because of the way it's designed. Every map in FE is deisgned to be possible to get through it without taking any casualties, which means that just completing a map is seldom challenging in and of itself. There are a few exceptions, mainly in the form of defends maps (eg, the harbour map in Conquest) and maps where your lord (or some other loss-condition unit) is under threat (eg the Micaiah + Black Knight level of Radiant Dawn), but they are pretty rare. The challenge in Fire Emblem isn't just completing the maps; it's completing them without taking losses. If you're resetting when you lose people, then the challenge is in getting a perfect completion of every level. If you're ironmanning, then the challenge is in taking few enough losses that you're able to hold off attrition and still field an army. As things stand with Fire Emblem as it currently is, ambush spawns in Casual Mode are pointless but ambush spawns in Classic Mode are unduly punishing. When trying to keep as many people alive as possible is the main challenge of the game, killing people off arbitrarily just makes a mockery of that challenge. For me -- and I believe for many people -- challenge is only fun when it feels like I'm the one in control and that I would manage to succeed and overcome the challenge if only I could do better, be better. If there's too much that's reliant on luck or circumstances out of my control then I'm just going to find that frustrating. I also generally disagree with the idea that it's desirable to accurately depict war in video games. Actual war is shit. Just really really shit. That's true now, it was true in the medieval period, and I'm sure it would be true in the various faux-medieval fantasy worlds depicted in Fire Emblem. On the other hand, video games are generally supposed to be fun. So we get a highly santised fictional version of war which is designed to be fun to play far more than it's designed as an artistic commentary on war. Adding a few random unfair deaths isn't nearly enough to make an accurate depiction of war but it is enough to hurt the game mechanically.

Yeah, I was imagining a map with low enough enemy density that the Armor unit couldn't just daisychain from one to the next (and that it was in a game without tools like Stride to overcome the problem). I don't know how likely that is to come up in actual real play, but it's definitely easy enough to conceive of a hypothetical map where no amount of galeforce could make the Armour unit viable. Actually, thinking about it, here's a concrete example. No amount of Galeforces could make me prefer to have an Armour than a Flier in the Part 2 Prologue of Radiant Dawn. Trying to complete that chapter with Armours would be... let's say "messy". And OK, that's a bit of a silly example, but it is illustrative of my basic point that context is everything.

Thinking about this some more, the big problem with giving so many galeforce uses to a single character is that it would completely distort the way that the game is played. I'm generally less down on armour classes than a lot of people are. I don't think they're particularly good or anything, but I also don't think that they're completely trash. But, for the sake of the argument, let's assume that they are currently completely garbage. It might then be the case that if you gave four or five uses of galeforce per turn to a knight or general, that they might become decently balanced, but only if people carried on playing the game in more or less the same way that they do now. In that case, the armour classes might lag behind everyone else and not get into combat very often but when they did see combat they'd make it really count. However, people wouldn't carry on playing in the same way. If you give players an ability that is extremely powerful but only situationally, then they will do everything they can to make sure that the situation comes up as often as possible. Let's consider the situation where you only have one armor knight. The first thing that you do is make sure that you give them Boots or a Movement Ring or whatever other tool the game has available to up their movement rate. This will typically be enough to let them keep up with other infantry units, but for good measure, I'm also going to permanently assign my dancer to my armour unit, to make absolutely certain they aren't going to fall behind. And yes, giving up Boots and a Dancer to make this work is a big sacrifice, but getting a unit who can make 5 or 6 attacks per turn is an even bigger reward. Or even worse, what if I have multiple armour knights? Well, then I'm going to have my army advance much more slowly, keep everyone together, but be able to completely obliterate anyone who gets near me because I have multiple units who can attack 5 or 6 times per turn. Would I miss out on some secondary objectives by playing this way? Sure. I also wouldn't care because there's no reward that any of these objectives could give me that could be better than the multiple attacks that I already have. And in this case, not only would the ability have completely warped the game, but it would have warped it into something considerably less fun (at least for me; I don't find turtling and ignoring secondary objectives to be a fun way to play).

It depends on the map. In a very cramped map, with high enemy density, indoors with lots of internal walls that fliers can't go past, and a defend objective? Only one. And it wouldn't even be close. The armor knight with galeforce would be way better there. In a large outdoor map filled with rivers, with much lower enemy density, an objective like seize, arrive or kill boss, and a tight turn limit? Pretty much infinite. There's no number of galeforce uses that could make the armour knight good there. So, overall, it would depend on the specific game and the relative prevalence of levels where it was good and levels where it was bad.

I tend to see bexp more as generally a point in Titania's favour, and why I would probably rank her marginally higher than Seth overall. The two main arguments against using early-game prepromotes is that they level up too slowly and they take needed xp away from other units, leaving them under-leveled. Neither of these problems really apply when you throw bonus experience into the mix. It's trivially easy to level up Titania by throwing bexp at her. This is PoR bexp scaling that we're talking about, where going from --/19 to --/20 only costs about 5 times as much bexp as going from unpromoted 1 to 2, as opposed to RD bexp scaling where it costs 20 times as much. If you do level her up as you go along then she'll keep her status as unstoppable battle goddess pretty much indefinitely. Alternatively, if you just want to use her to trivialise the early game, then you can do so without having to worry that your other units are lagging behind where they're meant to be. You can just save up your bexp and then throw it all on Ike as and when you need it. Or on Oscar, Marcia, Jill, or whoever else you want to use.

I did think about doing that, but in the end I decided it would be much more fun to talk about the two games that I really did like a lot rather than grumbling and being negative about stuff that I didn't enjoy. After all, nobody really needs to see "Hot take! Random person on the Internet thinks that Metroid Dread was actually crap!" (Though, honestly, I don't think it was objectively crap, I just think that it was very much not for me.) I agree with most of this (though Monster Train isn't on my list since I played it last year). I don't think I ever got to Covenant 25 though, since I lost interest before I reached that point. It definitely doesn't have the replayability that Slay the Spire does, but being worse than StS is no crime at all, and it was still a whole lot of fun while it lasted.

You'll typically have more paralogues in Part 1 than Part 2, yes, but in order to unfavourably skew the ratio, you'd have to be doing more than twice as many in Part 1 than Part 2. For Part 1 paralogues, there are three that you're guaranteed to have access to (Sothis's, Flayn's and Dorothea & Ingrid's), an additional seven that are contingent on who you recruit (Alois & Shamir's, Raphael & Ignatz's, Hanneman & Manuela's, Ashe & Catherine's, Sylvain's, Felix's, Lorenz's) and then another two if you have the DLC. For Part 2, there are three guaranteed (Hubert's, Edelgard's, Bernadetta & Petra's), two contingent on recruiting (Leonie & Linhardt's (though, as you say...), Marianne's) and one more if you have the DLC (Anna and Jeritza's). It's certainly possible to do more than twice as many in Part 1, but it's also easily possible to do less than twice as many, which would then mean you'd have Raging Storm for over a third of chapters. As an example, imagine that you have the DLC and you only take all the free recruits. We'll say that you're playing as female Byleth, so let's include Sylvain in the free recruits. That would give you eight paralogues in Part 1 and four in Part 2, still keeping the ratio of 2:1. Or let's assume that you want to recruit literally everyone. That's twelve in Part 1 and five in Part 2 (not including the Linhardt and Leonie paralogue, since there's no Edelgard there either way). That does slightly tip the ratio in favour of Part 1, but not by very much.

I'm honestly having difficulty coming up with a full three. Most of the new games that I've played this year just haven't done it for me. Either I've bounced off them super quickly without really giving them a fair chance, or I've wound up actively disliking them. I don't know whether that's because they've all been bad and/or not for me, or just because the year has left me craving the comfort oif familiarity more than the excitement of novelty. My top two are easy though: 1. Life Is Strange: True Colors. I played and liked the original Life Is Strange, but haven't played any of the rest of the series until now. So it was on something of a whim that I picked up True Colors, but I'm really glad that I did. There's not much to the gameplay, but I play walking simulators so I don't really care about that. The characters, setting, writing and music are all absolutely top notch and I was thoroughly absorbed for my whole time playing it. 2. Wildermyth. This is a cute little indie TRPG with more depth to its combat than I originally credited it for. I don't think that its procedurally generated storytelling really stands up to the scrutiny of multiple replays, but I had a ton of fun with it. And for my third one... let's say New Pokémon Snap? That was OK, I guess.

I used to be of broadly this opinion as well, but have generally come to appreciate Edelgard as a unit more and more over time. Saying that Raging Storm is only available in 6 chapters sounds pretty damning, but Crimson Flower only has 18 chapters total, so those 6 chapters make up a third of the game. They're also some of the hardest chapters in the game, definitely some of the hardest chapters on Edelgard's route, so the impact is even more than what you'd expect for being available in a third of all chapters. I also don't think it matters all that much that you can't just spam Raging Storm with impunity. Obviously, she'd be better if she could spam it, but that doesn't stop her being absurdly powerful as is. The big benefit is that you use it when you need it. Edelgard is the best unit by a long way at the times where you absolutely need a broken overpowered unit; at other times she's merely very good. This concentration of force to the exact point that it's needed is incredibly strong. I think you're underselling Edelgard's early game a little bit here. She isn't completely dominant in the same way that Seth or Titania are, but she still has a big early game advantage. Some numbers: I'd also say that starting at level 1 is an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Right from the start of their games, Seth and Titania start losing the advantage that they have over everyone else, since they're leveling up much more slowly. By contrast, Edelgard is actually leveling up faster than anyone else due to her personal ability. In short, I'd say that while Seth and Titania are outstanding early game units who are merely very good in the late game, Edelgard is an outstanding late game unit who is merely very good in the early game. That said, I do agree with you about Three Houses having a narrower range of unit strengths than most other games in the series, which is a big part of the reason why I only had Edelgard as an honourable mention and not my overall top choice. (The other big reason is that I think that her personal class is a big newbie trap, which makes her considerably worse for inexperienced players, which was one of my criteria.) That was why I picked Robin as my overall top choice. However... ...even though I haven't ever played Thracia and have no idea who Safy is, I am tempted to change my pick now just because I am feeling contrary today.

My criteria would be: Fantastic availability Very strong throughout the whole game, from the start to the end Equally as good for a new player on the easiest difficulty setting as for a veteran player on the hardest difficulty setting Offers something that can't be replicated or replaced by any other unit The game is notably harder if you decide not to use them. And while I haven't played the entire series... yeah, that sounds like Robin to me. Honourable mention to Edelgard who starts out being probably the best unit in the game due to her great base stats and finishes off being probably the best unit in the game due to how ridiculous Raging Storm is.

After the casting announcement for the upcoming Mario movie that has one female main character amongst a ton of male characters, my answer to this question is "literally any female character". Some personal favourites, though: Pauline. Taking one of gaming's original damsels in distress and turning her into an actual character with agency and competence in Odyssey legitimately made me tear up, and I really hope Nintendo build on that. Birdo. She shows up a decent amount, but she's one of my favourites, so I still want more. And I want proper trans Birdo and not "let's retcon that and pretend it never happened" Birdo, thank you very much. Hariet. I just really love her character design with the bombs and the hair and would love to see her get some extra time in the sun. Various Wario characters. I have never played a single Wario game, but I still know some of the characters like Ashley and Penny. If someone like me who doesn't care at all about Warioware thinks they'd be good additions to Mario spinoffs, then that can only speak well of them. Queen Bee. I think she was in one Mario Kart game at some point? I think she could be cool in Mario sports games, though, where the combination of her size and flight could make her really interesting. The Penguins from Cool Cool Mountain in Mario 64. Who doesn't love penguins?

Honestly, my advice would be to drop down a difficulty notch. There's a lot of daft posturing within fandom along the lines of how everyone should play on Maddening/Classic and that anything below that is a failure and not a True Fan™ and it's all nonsense. Play on whatever difficulty is most fun for you. I'll particularly point out that several of the later chapters in Crimson Flower are comparable in difficulty to chapter 12, so if you're having trouble there then you're likely to continue having trouble later on. Also, if you're used to FE games with infinite grinding (eg Sacred Stones, Awakening, Birthright, Shadows of Valentia) then you can get that from Three Houses on Normal difficulty. Normal difficulty gives you the option of auxiliary battles that don't cost any battle points, letting you do as many as you want. As @SnowFire points out, this will only take you so far because of the way that xp scaling works in Three Houses, but it's an option if you want it. Normal difficulty also gives the option to retreat from battle at any point while retaining any xp you've earned in that battle. It's not exactly fun to use this over and over, but it's an option to pick any potential softlock and might be preferable to reverting to an old save and replaying a bunch.