Othin

Looks like I'll have to play farther. That does sound like it fits the FE13 pattern, except with the "couple of easy maps" that FE13 really never has. Although replaying the early maps on Lunatic+, I think I'd find them not as difficult on a second playthrough of Lunatic. But I presume we're speaking from moderately different standards anyway. I'm also interested in trying Lunatic Reverse, but I don't think FE12 could get as much of a difficulty increase from that compared to Lunatic as FE13 does with Lunatic+. Lunatic+ adds two skills; one can be Vantage+, getting the same bonus, but with a second skill as well. And Vantage+ is honestly on the lower end of Lunatic+ skills. Counter, Great Shield+, and Holy Shield+ are far scarier, and Pass often is as well.

Hmm. I'm not sure.

So the story can do these three things: A) Fit with the gameplay as we know it B) Expand beyond the gameplay as we know it C) Contradict the gameplay as we know it B is okay. C is not. "Segregation" is no excuse.

It really varies depending on what you need. Often, even your fastest characters won't have enough Spd to double certain enemies without a bonus. You never have enough Spd, no matter what. For this reason, mass-stacking defenses at the expense of Spd will never work. That's just asking to be doubled, and with enemies having 60+ and sometimes even 70+ Atk by the last few chapters, no amount of defense will be enough to manage that. A General like that will be doubled by everything and be absolutely destroyed by magic users; even if he takes huge care to avoid magic, he still won't last long against physical attacks. If he's getting hit for 20 damage twice per round, he won't last longer than a Swordmaster that has just enough Def to not get OHKOed.

Fuck well-roundedness; go for specialists in the stats you need, and everything can be useful except Skl and Luck. Berserkers really stand out because the gargantuan Str and Spd bonuses can make any physical unit into a monster. Being able to give solid bonuses in two stats at once is often important, but while Spd is incredibly important because of how hard it is to double and often to avoid being doubled, I wouldn't say having or boosting Def is any more important than Str, Mag, or Res when you need them, although Mag didn't come up much because I spent most of the game with MU as my only good magic user - which frequently went very wrong; don't let that happen if you can possibly help it. Offense is best defense; being able to score the critical extra damage to kill an enemy is incredibly important. Def and Res mainly matter when you need a specific amount of defenses to survive an extra round on the enemy phase to start cutting into enemies you need to hurt. Which is a common situation and can often let you damage enemies more than boosting offenses directly can, so again, it's really important, but I wouldn't say any of the raw offenses or raw defenses are more important than the others. More than anywhere else, it's the most important stat both to have and to boost, so focus on characters like Swordmasters that can have it or can pass it to other characters. Remember that you also have Cries to boost stats just like in Double; it's worth investing in a Falcon Knight for Speed Cry, even if you don't have her fight. Elincia has it if you get DLC, but she takes a while to be able to recruit.

In the Japanese version, the numbers were in a foreign language (German). So in the English version, the numbers would also have to be in a language other than English, even if that language is not German.

No. The bonuses are nothing special, and growths will never kick in because they can't fight. Leave the two of them alone together with a single full-HP enemy and they'll both end up dead.

They do have those skills, so yeah, that has to be the case. I saw accuracy rates below 100%. Means they don't all have Absolute Hit set instead of Accuracy +20, and probably don't have other changes, either. That's disappointing.

Nope. Not so far, anyway. The enemies don't have the hyper-aggressive AI they do in FE13, so it's easy to slow down and carefully cut through them in reliable ways. The main issue is exactly what I suspected: FE12 doesn't have enough options. Because you can't do a whole lot more than take on the enemies in simple combat, they have to be weak enough to take on in simple combat, leaving simple ways to cut them down. You don't have skills and Double and all that stuff to worry about like in FE13, fighting off additional characteristics enemies can have and manipulating your own added tricks. Although perhaps I should get a bit farther before judging it. I should mention that I'm playing this basically blind. Don't care what drafters do because they almost exclusively use a playstyle I despite. To me, games are something to play, not something to perform. Not in the slightest; they're really great and require massive amounts of teamwork and tactics. The later characters join with huge stat bonuses to be highly effective, and you have a ton of more options in the form of past-game characters that you can recruit when you're ready to challenge them. Although you're right that there are a number of earlygame characters - particularly Sol and Soiree - who are only briefly useful and lack staying power because of inability to grow. Children characters probably also have issues, but it depends. I was able to get Lucina to be highly effective, but it did take some time.

Ein, I started an FE12 Lunatic playthrough today and am currently laughing at it. No, this is nothing like FE12 Lunatic. Except they do.

Your file's MU is set; you can select the other nine at will from any of your characters.

Raffin is already promoted. Besides, the promotion system is like in FE4, sort of. Level doesn't reset, but characters can get up to LV20 before promotion, then after promoting, they can get to their current level +20. So their maximum promoted level can range from 30 to 40 depending on the character; pre-promoted characters are set to have a maximum level of 30 as if they promoted at LV10. You can also get Super Proofs that increase their maximum level to their current level +10, so any character can reach LV40 with that - 40 is still the maximum. Regardless, as Raffin's and Sasha's promotions are irregular and aren't level-dependent, I assume they don't influence the leveling system. So there's absolutely no reason to have Raffin wait. Granted, there are some downsides to the class change, but if you want the class, there's no reason not to go for it.

If Henry is keeping pace with Sariya, which isn't exactly a realistic situation. Sariya joins four chapters earlier and can easily get a substantial level lead, and because she's fighting so much better than he is, that level lead keeps growing. That head start and better effectiveness also lets Sariya get ahead in building up supports to increase her Double payoffs. But it's true that they shouldn't really end up in a situation where Sariya is 10+ Spd ahead of Henry to double things that double him. On Hard, she can double things with good buffs, while Henry doesn't have too hard of a time avoiding being doubled, but he's still not doubling things. On Lunatic, Sariya isn't doubling anything, but Henry's going to have a hell of a time finding things that don't double him. The Myrmidons in his joining chapter have 24 fucking Spd.

On NM, maybe, where characters can take hits and enemies can miss. On the harder modes, durability becomes much more valuable of a commodity, and you really do need to focus on reliable, raw defenses, because the only situation where your characters are going to be dodging is a Swordmaster vs. a Berserker, and not even that on Lunatic+ if the Berserker has Absolute Hit. It's hard to withstand attacks, but it's a substantial concern. I didn't really use Henry on Normal, but I tried to use him on Hard and didn't have much success. He's just too damn slow. I should mention that while it might not be coming up yet, the impact of Double is huge on the higher difficulties. This isn't FE12: enemies are far out of the reach of your characters' raw stats.

The other part is that as FE13 characters, you can only get them once, as opposed to past-game characters, whom you can recruit again after dismissing them from your team.

Hey, I just so happen to have my Lunatic+ file on Ch5. Let's see, Richt joins with 20 HP, 5 Spd, 6 Def, and 3 Res. Enemy Barbarians have 28 Mt and 11 Spd, solidly OHKOing him and doubling him. The Myrmidons have 23 Mt and 17 Spd, not OHKOing him, but cleanly one-rounding him regardless. Even the Mage one-rounds him with 19 Mt and 10 Spd, although he only needs +1 Spd to avoid being doubled and survive. That's easy enough to get with a Double, but he's not getting away with that against the Barbarians or Myrmidons. And there's only one Mage on the map. The Dark Mages have 18 Mt and 7 Spd, so he can survive a round against them no matter what. On the other hand, they all have Nosferatu, so they'll be healing 7 HP from hitting him, and he only does 8 damage to them. Finally, the Dracoknights have the same 28 Mt and 11 Spd as the Barbarians, and also the possibility of getting the Strength +2 skill. The boss won't have that skill, but he has 29 Mt and 12 Spd, and has 1-2 range unlike the others due to having a Tomahawk instead of a Steel Axe. Neither Richt nor Miriel are surviving anything on Lunatic. As for Henry, the only things that don't double him in his joining chapter on Lunatic are the Fighters, and he's not surviving two hits. Granted, he only needs +1 Spd or +3 Def to avoid being one-rounded by Archers, which is reasonable, but it's still a pain. Don't get me wrong: these characters are useful. Ranged attacks are valuable in Lunatic and even moreso in Lunatic+; I'm finding Viole useful despite him being one-rounded by everything just because half the enemies have skills that fuck up melee attacks somehow. But yeah, on Lunatic, they're not surviving things.

Glitch, bug, same difference: it's clearly not intentional or expected. Stability has nothing to do with it. And yes, it's an error with how the weapons are classified. That's why I called it the Brave Axe glitch: the weapon isn't classified correctly and gives incorrect output at times. By the way, Paris does have a conversation with Ike in LvD F. It's only a couple of lines, though, and I can't take a clear picture of the dialogue. Anyone able to record it for translation?

The only way to permanently miss a sidequest is to kill off a pairable female. Characters can reach an A support with every character they can support in a single playthrough, although some supports are only available with certain pairings. The only real constraint is just one S support per character.

Depending on how you look at it. I was using "the second time" to refer to the start of the second unpromoted class.

That just means the guide is accurately observing the results. It means nothing about whether or not the results are supposed to happen. I myself recorded the same changes in this site's Enemy Data section. You might as well say, "That's not a glitch. Based on Othin's guide, the game replaces the Brave Axe with forged Silver Axes on purpose." Neither source has anything to do with developer intent, and therefore neither source can be used to draw any conclusions about it.

So what does it say to indicate that it's intentional? Are you sure it's not just acknowledging it with no indication of whether or not it was supposed to happen?

Seriously? That's bizarre. Does it explain why?

As I thought, Limit Breaker doesn't affect HP caps. I got Ephraim first; I keep getting Lords first for some reason. He's got Royal Weapon for his added skill, along with a Brave Lance and Ephraim's Bravelance. As with in LvD, but it's still funny, especially since the names are still just as similar in Japanese. His team has five Griffin Knights and four Valkyries, all having one of the Sword/Lance/Axe Slayer skills. The Griffin Knights all have Brave Axes, meaning particularly funny results on the higher difficulties, where the Brave Axe glitch means they all turn into Silver Axes when forged. It's easy to miss it in the main story since only the Dark Warlords use Brave weapons, so Vier is the only enemy affected, but it stands out more in SpotPass and DLC on higher difficulties, making all the forged Brave Axes get turned into forged Silver Axes. Hopefully the localized version fixes this so those enemies scale properly.

With grinding, every character is very usable. Donny stands out as being incredibly hard to use without grinding because of his abysmal bases and needing to reach LV10 twice to promote, starting over with a new weapon the second time, but on the other hand, his growths are mind-bogglingly high. Training him in the main story isn't worth the payoff, but he's fun to use regardless.

Something else that bugs me is that Ike actually falls short skill-wise compared to other DLC characters. In RvB and LvD, Ike has Aether, indicating that his SpotPass version has it as well. So his only skill on top of his SpotPass skillset is Luna, which his SpotPass version can get anyway - unlike every other DLC character, which has some skill completely outside of the regular class set to be unique from their SpotPass version. Except Eltshan, of course. Now, Ike does have Aether already, but nothing unique that's also DLC-unique. Marth and Ephraim also had special skills in their SpotPass versions. Ephraim has Royal Weapon, while Marth... well, Marth is weird. He has two SpotPass versions, but his class doesn't have any skills, so he has a full custom set of skills. King Marth isn't out yet, but Prince Marth has the three Dual+ skills, Luck +4, and Charisma - having Dual Support+, Luck +5, and Charisma as special skills. Meanwhile, DLC Marth keeps Charisma and adds Good Growths as a second skill, staying unique and having two special skills. Surely Ike could have gotten a special skill as well instead of Luna, especially as the final DLC character. DLC Ephraim actually passes up Royal Weapon for Conqueror, an even more unique skill. Now, Ike couldn't have reasonably given up Aether, but Ephraim acts as another important example in his skillset, as his non-class skills are Conqueror, Carrier, and Defender: as an LvD character, he has three of them, even forming synergy between Carrier and Defender. Cellica also has three non-class skills: Royal Weapon, Holy Shield, and Dual Support+. Royal Weapon is her "special" skill, while Dual Support+ is carried over from SpotPass, while Holy Shield is a bonus. But Ike only gets Aether and Luna, two skills instead of three for the final LvD character. Why not tack on Royal Weapon as a third non-class skill and as another unique one, forming synergy with Sol, Luna, and Aether, and opening up DLC Ike as a second character alongside Lucina able to use the amazing Royal Weapon / Aether / Astra combo? Would certainly be a worthy prize for the final DLC character. But no, they didn't even bother. It doesn't make any sense. On the bright side, his portrait actually looks okay ingame. The lighting on his face in particular seems changed from the full art and not as bizarre.