FionaKaenbyou

From what I understand, Sigurd's Canter is a generally useful skill to have on anyone. Getting to adjust your position post attack means you can do stuff like move to a defense tile or step aside to let another unit land a killing blow.

So I grabbed Engage on launch day, hoping to get a good time out of it because I'd heard the combat was really tight. I started on Hard mode, had a generally rough time for the opening three chapters, then swapped back down to Normal on chapter 4 because I couldn't figure out how to properly protect Louis and Chloé. Then after a few chapters of Normal I realised I wasn't having a great time there either. I'll say right now I'm not some FE savant. I've beaten games like FE7 and Three Houses on Normal but I understand that's a very low bar to clear. Even then I felt like Normal mode didn't offer me a meaningful challenge from what I played of it, and the maps felt boring more than anything else. (In particular, the low movement of most of the army meant I didn't get the usual power fantasy feel of the game being easier.) But playing on Hard mode added new enemies and gave the previous ones 3 or 4 points in all their meaningful stats. Which was enough to turn the mage near Louis from dealing 10 damage on turn 1 to 28 because they crossed the doubling threshold. That felt like it was taking the challenge too far in the OTHER direction. I've been wondering if I'm approaching the game from the wrong direction. I'm a minmaxer by nature, so I like to get an army of super buff units. But in Engage that feels like it doesn't fly, between the early units being kind of weak (Etie...) and Emblems being so much more powerful than everything else. It feels more like how I've seen the SNES era games described - less of a unit growing simulator, and more of a game where every map is a puzzle you have to solve with the elements you're given. It also didn't help that I avoided the weapon forgery stuff out of the constant concern of 'what if I need these resources for something important later?' There are so many resources to juggle - gold, SP, bond fragments, ingots, ingredients - that I really struggle to make an informed decision on what's worth investing in. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do if I give the game another shot? Should I stick to Normal or commit to Hard? Would it be better to wait a while for people to figure out more optimal strategies so I'm not constantly paralysed by indecision?