Othin

FE13 Lunatic skills are, for the most part, randomly distributed, but they're usually not hugely game-changing. The big one is Counter, for obvious reasons, but while that can require some substantial strategy changes, it shouldn't ever keep you from completing a chapter as long as you keep it in mind. Lunatic+ is somewhat more hectic and can require fundamentally different strategies depending on the skills. Having played through Ch9, I think it worked well overall with most chapters remaining fair regardless of the configuration, the only exception being Ch7. Granted, I found the later Lunatic chapters much harder than the earlier ones, so my stance on this may not stay constant throughout the game if I get back to it.

They have the same names.

There's fun in building your way up slowly and there's fun in just flying straight to the seventh gate. There's no real harm in adding a variety of options for people who might enjoy playing the game different ways, as long as they remain rewarding. The problem is, different people have different ideas of what challenges will stay exciting when they know there's an easier way out. So there's no universal way to draw the line.

Exactly. That means that at the very least, those pairs have different support rates than others. The question is whether or not there are further differences within the two types of supports. It does sound like the answer is "yes", but I don't want to assume. Normal? Absolutely. Hard? Pretty much, yeah. Lunatic? Hell no. Lunatic+? Let me put it this way: a third of the enemies have Absolute Hit.

It's definitely not completely uniform, since children can access their C support with their parents immediately. Don't know if that's just a special case, though.

Oh? Do explain how you managed to beat, say, Ch20 on Lunatic without getting really crafty with cycling characters through various Double formations while simultaneously fighting off enemies far stronger than your own team. You've completed FE13 Lunatic, right? You wouldn't be foolish enough to make that claim without having done so?

Hey Reikken! Been a while. Worth mentioning that while Luck is as terrible as always, Hit and Avoid get an interesting spin on the highest difficulty levels. Dodging enemy attacks becomes near-impossible against most classes, making Avoid almost worthless, and it gets hard to hit most enemies in turn, making Hit hugely valuable. Spd is still by far the most important stat, probably more so than ever, simply because of how insanely fast the enemies are, but a substantial difference in Skl also becomes more prominent than it typically was in the past. The gain per point is still pretty low, but with higher stats, there are also higher differences between stats, so those differences can add up to something that really matters.

Heh, after playing FE13, the earlier games' system seems incredibly unwieldy due to not having a convenient way to display two separate groups at once.

See, FE12 really doesn't have buffs. The few buffs it has are just pathetic. So being possible meant having enemies you could plausible take on with your characters at pretty much base strength. Not much fancy stuff necessary. FE13 has buffs, and on the highest difficulties, you damn well need them. You toss around characters without buffs and most of them are likely to be one-rounded. Surviving such an onslaught requires making full use of the far more complex mechanics to get your characters to the strength they need, which is of course much more difficult, requiring far more creativity and planning. That's the two Lunatic difficulties pitted against each other, with FE13 coming out quite a bit ahead. When we get to Lunatic' vs. Lunatic+, the gap just gets even wider. Lunatic+ enemies get two added special skills, and Vantage+, containing the entire Lunatic' buff to FE12 enemies, is among the weakest. So FE13 Lunatic is already harder than FE12 Lunatic, and on Lunatic+, the weakest enemies get more of a bonus than any of the Lunatic' ones do. So yeah. There's really no question about it.

Should I get the bandages or is it too late?

1. Yes 2. No 3. Yes 4. No

Do note that S23 is unfeasible until quite a ways into the postgame, being the hardest non-DLC map. Regarding DLC costs, Series 1 costs 5150 yen, I think, and Series 2 costs 2400, for a total of 7550. So yeah, you'll put a dent in the price, but most of it's still there.

Exactly. Of course, if you're grinding enough to have that, you can make the game pitifully easy in the first place. And granted, in a situation where weapons with all fifteen upgrades are broken, weapons with just eight would... still be broken. You can max out Mt and get a substantial Hit or Crit boost, so the rest really doesn't matter, making it not a big deal either way.

No, it wouldn't. And yeah, it's limited. The DS forges could already get insane and in a game with grinding for unlimited cash, it'd get even crazier. Also, the stronger you can forge, the worse it is for the non-forgeable weapons. Hauteclere is fixed at 21 Mt and 70 Hit, while a Steel Axe has 11 Mt and 70 Hit but can be forged. If you could forge as absurdly as in the DS games, you could have a Steel Axe match its Mt with far better hit, and overall ending up just as a better weapon. This is to say nothing of weapons stronger than Steel. Granted, most ultimate weapons have their own advantages, but it still really takes away from the point of them.

Yeah, MU can pair with anyone. Aside from Mark, of course.

http://serenesforest.net/fe13/support.html

Yeah, deleted files' MUs stick around. Deleted files' bonus past-game characters also stick around, for that matter.

It's counted as an ultimate weapon, and therefore you can get extra copies through the Infinite Divine Weapons DLC.

There are three files. Not nearly enough. As for skirmishes, there are additional limits on higher difficulties: on Normal, you can cheaply buy an item to summon skirmishes against weak Risen enemies at will, but on other difficulty levels, the item's cost is increased drastically, making it not very feasible and restricting you to times when the enemies randomly show up on their own. On Lunatic, those same Risen skirmishes gain levels and stats at an absurd rate based on progress in the game, having all enemies promoted with all their stats capped in the 40s by like halfway through the game. They're basically impossible to take on outside of postgame, and not at all feasible for grinding. DLC remains an option for grinding, but it can be a challenge to grind really weak enemies there because the enemies still get rather powerful in most of the maps, even the ones originally meant for earlygame. While it's nowhere near to the extent of the skirmishes, enemies in the low-level Spirit Talisman maps regularly break 20 in their best stat on Lunatic. A few of the DLC maps don't scale with difficulty, though: Entombed Heaven remains an option for training any characters against extremely weak enemies on any difficulty level. You can also use Gold and Silver, but it's much slower, especially for characters only strong enough to take on the weakest of the enemies there.

Yeah, you can. For any character weapon other than Othin's Handaxe, you can just summon the character and buy it from them. You have to summon them again for every single copy of the item you want, but it's a lot easier than the alternatives.

No.

Sol Luna Magnificent Flame Astra Aether Lethality Vengeance

Although, now that I think about it - SSBM came out before even FE6 was out. It was reusing the theme from a game earlier than FE7 - I think it was FE3. So yeah, Together We Ride does have a bit of a history as well, but nothing special to the series itself. The "standard" is still using a new theme.

They've reused some of them. If I remember right, FE4/6 have the same theme, and it might have shown up someplace else as well. So that one, at least, is more of a "standard" than FE7's, despite still being used in a small minority of the games.

Not quite; the parents stay playable, and the children are a minority of the characters even when they show up. So it's the best of both worlds.