Shaky Jones Posted March 5 Share Posted March 5 (edited) Map design is basically my number 1 concern when it comes to FE. Bad maps are the biggest red flag in my relationships with this franchise that my therapist keeps telling me to stop getting back together with. SoV doesn't have good maps, I automatically hate it. CQ has great maps, I automatically ask for its hand in marriage. TRS had a great story, cast of characters, decent music, and lots of cool worldbuilding elements and events that add replay value, but the maps were Gaiden 2, so I disposed the body and the family never got to mourn their death properly. However, I consider 2 games in the series to have a very mixed set of maps when it comes to quality: New Mystery and Thracia. I'd best describe the overall map design of these two games to be that of "high highs and low lows". I've only played Thracia once though, so we're not talking about that. FE12 time. In case you can't read the words under my profile, my favorite FE game is FE12, and I constantly replay this game, basically every other month. That said, there's so many times where I go "ugh, not this map...". So I'm challenging myself to dissect and figure out just how many maps in this game are doo doo horse manure. Am I being a hypocrite again? Answer: Ruben infected me. I am the Lord of Cord. Reviewing and ranking every single map in this game would take up way too much of my time and space for a single post, so I'll break it down into multiple posts throughout this thread. You can comment how much a certain map caused you grief and misery to convince me to lower whatever number I gave it from 1 to 10, and I'll most likely reply with "skill issue" and rank you out of 10. I hate that I have to say this, but 5 is average, 7 is good, 3 is bad, 9 is one of the best in the series, and 1 is Blazing Blade. I'll go into this with the mindset of both maniac and lunatic mode in mind, as certain maps will have specific lunatic only changes that drastically change the way the map can be played. I'll use images primarily from FE WOD (except for first 2 prologues), as it shows decent images of FE12 maps on lunatic with occasional boxes made to signify certain reinforcement triggers, so thanks to that site for actually caring about this game. I play on a real DS. No way I'm screenshotting my own gameplay. I will not assume the player is aiming for a decent turn count, but instead a run in which they want every chest and all units recruited, as that's how most of my runs tend to go. I'll factor in mind the potential changes of the map if the player chooses to omit saving everybody for a significantly less frustrating or tedious time completing certain maps and am open to suggestions to potential ways to view the map dependent on certain teams the player might have, but if you're not using pirate Wrys, you are playing the game wrong. Part 1: Prologue 1-8 This part will likely be a waste of time, as no matter what I say, replies will most likely be "prologue le bad". Spoiler Prologue 1: The Old and The Senile Spoiler This is a pretty poor start to an FE game. Not the entire prologue per se, as I am an apologist for the prologue's puzzle-like aspect of gameplay that teaches players about possible ways to tackle difficult scenarios within maps that they might not have otherwise considered or put much thought in, but this specific chapter is very bad all things considered. It's just 1 soldier and Jeigan as the boss in a blank square. For most experienced players, this chapter won't be able to provide any new information or strategical challenges to overcome, and for the 3 people out there who somehow chose fe12 as their first game in the series, this chapter doesn't let you do anything to learn. With only 2 enemies that both use lances, you will not learn about the weapon triangle. You'll either just have the advantage, or you wont. The only thing the normal mode tutorial screen really gives you is a giant wall of text that will most likely overwhelm the player and scare the poor fella. All you get to learn is that clicking the avatar lets them move. Wow. But since this post is mainly focused on high difficulty play, let's bring up the senile elephant in the room for the lunatic players out there. You can literally get solftlocked in the very first part of the damn game. Yeah for those who didn't know, you can play the prologue in 2 different ways. You can either make a Clergy's child armor knight Kris that trivializes the early game, or you can make a sub optimal Kris that can't get past the first boss of the game. If your Kris isn't sturdy enough, you're donion rings. Prologue 1 on lunatic more or less serves as a Kris check. "Did you make a good enough Kris to beat our game?". Classes like pegasus Kris, mage Kris, myrm Kris, etc. will need to given a certain set of past/present/future stats in order to tank enough hits to beat this prologue alone. On my male mage Kris run, I got stuck on this chapter and had to redo my Kris under different traits just to be allowed to attempt my own challenge run. If you know this though, or you're just using a good Kris (armor, cav, fighter...), this chapter is more or less just "rig Kris's first level up" as it only takes 30 seconds. It's either a chapter so insignificant that you don't even acknowledge it, or it's your reminder that your build was a mistake and IS hates you for it. Rating: 3/10 It's too short to hate hate, but the fact that it wasn't designed around all Krises in mind is stupid. The funniest thing is that in reverse lunatic, you get a 2nd vulnerary so that you can get away with varying Kris builds. Why not do that for both lunatics!? Did they only playtest reverse and assume the former was fine? Prologue 2: Kent and Sain Archetype Spoiler Depending on your Kris, Luke will either engage the avatar or Ryan. On lunatic, Ryan can stand on the fort for the +1 defense and slight HP recovery rate to barely survive 2 hits from Luke, allowing for you to finish him off by turn 3. This chapter isn't special in any major way, unless you consider this chapter to be what might inform the player of how FE12 AI works, as many FE games would make the enemy always target the archer, as they can't counter, but FE13 enemies strictly prioritize higher damage input, so people using fighter Kris might be confused seeing him attack Kris and taking heavy damage from the counterattack. I don't consider this very common though, and most people likely won't immediately pick that up from this prologue chapter alone, but it might've been worth mentioning. Regardless, you use the forts, chip him with whoever didn't get targeted, then slap him on turn 3. This should be fine with most variations of Kris, but I've not tried lunatic prologue with every Kris yet. The next part is a little boring, as you'll likely spend several turns recovering in the 2 forts before approaching Roderick, given that you have no healer yet, and your vulnerary resources are rather limited, especially if your Kris required you to waste all vulneraries on prologue 1 just to overcome Jeigan. After that, defeating Roderick is nothing noteworthy. Just a matter of who you want to give the kill to. If you pick Ryan, you're based. Rating: 4.5/10 It's a nothing chapter. I'd give it a 5 to signify how mid it is, but the waiting makes it a little worse, even if the overall time is still rather small due to the map size. What would new players even get out of this? I doubt you need the forts on normal mode. Prologue 3: Noob Filter? Already? Spoiler No one likes this chapter. Even on hard mode, people get stuck here. I got stuck here on my first run. There's multiple enemies, the space is still far too small, and now you have 3 of 4 squishy units to worry about. In maniac and above, your army more or less all get 2RKO'd. Personally, I'm still not a fan of the chapter, but I've grown to at least half-respect it. I'd say that the purpose of this chapter is to teach players how to handle moments of feeling cornered during a tough map, something that mainly applies to higher difficulties. On my hard run, this felt pointlessly tedious, but on maniac, I felt like I was actually in a situation where I had to consider how I would be trying to save myself out of a saucy pickle, something that would then happen multiple times throughout the main campaign, in which I felt like my trial and errors through prologues like these helped me strategize how to survive them. If you didn't figure it out last chapter, you'll likely realize here how enemy AI prioritizes those with lower defense. They usually go for Ryan first, or Kris if you made them accurate to yourself. This can be used to your advantage to place enemies in a certain position to make counter attacking easier the following turn. You also need to be careful not to position your wall in a way that makes the northwestern fighter provoked to move alongside the initial enemies that you are all within range of. This is very much a puzzle map. You need to consider the best formation of a wall defense, something I've made multiple times in this game when in range of too many enemies, primarily dracoknights (chapter 3 and 5 are common moments of first lunatic mode struggles). Tankier Krises that can survive 2 hits will play a key role in being one of the only units allowed to stick out of the enclosed formation, ready to strike at the enemy the following turn, whereas mages Krises can make for good bait to provoke and damage enemies who otherwise could go after Luke and Roders, allowing them to potentially stick outside of the wall-like formation, as enemies who originally can 2RKO Luke will make their own wall attacking Ryan/Kris, blocking their own ability to reach Luke/Rody. Even if it doesn't seem like it, there's more than one way to set up your units to survive the seemingly unsurvivable, and I respect that. At the very least, this map feels like it does work around multiple Kris builds, unlike P1. Make no mistake, I don't like this chapter. It's still flawed, tedious for something so early in the run, and will almost certainly give you multiple deaths before you get the hang of it, which nobody enjoys experiencing, but I consider a lot of those deaths to be a learning experience, or at least that's how it felt for my first maniac/lunatic runs, and I sometimes do have fun getting past this prologue portion nowadays to see if I still remember the knowledge I learned from the struggling challenges I faced playing this somewhat difficult game. Not a great chapter, but I don't think it's terrible, as I'm sure most people would likely say this sent them to intensive treatment. Rating: 6/10 Maybe I'm being a little too nice, but there's a reason I prefaced this post with me dubbing myself "Lord of Cord". I'm biased. I love this game to bits and I find a majority of deaths to be my fault and something to learn from as opposed to calling CQ chapter 10 unfair when my Niles misses the 70% hit against the peg and i lose the chapter. 5.5 is probably more fair. I might have to come back to this. If this gets any responses, I'm sure it'll all be calling me dumb for not giving this 3/10. It's not Rev bad at least. Prologue 4: Is Russia Canon In Archanea? Spoiler Here's the chapter you play if you tell Jeigan you know that FE11 exists. Here's the chapter you played. I believe it's mostly well known across FE12 players that the Athena map is simply the objectively better map to choose. Her map is much simpler and more or less serves as a lesson in choking this point and weapon rank importance within the weapon triangle buffs during combat. Many enemies are sword units, so a lance Kris helps out quite a bit, especially armor Kris. That said, Caeda can choke the point well enough on her own with the help of Wrys, who cannot fight, but his staff can aide your wounded. There's one archer who will try ruining this strat, but Ryan can simply bait him by laying in the corner of the boxed area, heal once with a vuln or Wrys, then defeat him with a 3rd attack on turn 3, allowing for the rest of the map to be free xp for Kris, Ceada, or Ryan (giving multiple kills to Luke/Rody is trickier and likely won't help as much). The map can certainly be played aggressively, but if this isn't your first run, odds are you're just trying to get the prologue over with. Even as someone who kinda likes the prologue, I usually play it safe because I want to reach Arran gaming already. There's something therapeutic about letting Ryan chip all these guys while Kris reads his "How to piss off fans with as few steps as possible" handbook. On my first lunatic run, I used cav Kris and tried training Luke here. It was really hard, but honestly very fun, and it still required some chokepoint strats with the middle area and weapon trading to make the enemy swordies deal much less damage with their +3 might buffs negated to your lance, letting your cavs actually survive a round. It's fun. Would recommend at least once. It's nice that the option to make it simple is there though. Sometimes you just don't have all day. But maybe you want to try the Jeorge map for the sake of extra challenge. After all, the reward has to be amazing. A prepromote with 2 range during the prologue? I'll take that! FE12: 5 points lmao Why? Actually why? If the Athena map is the easily abusable one, why let that map give you a genuinely amazing prologue unit, while the challenging map gives you the Norne Block. Honestly, P4 would be nearly perfect in my eyes if it was reversed. Imagine if beating one person here made you recruit the other unit that you didn't fight, like Gaiden? In an alternate world where the game actually asked you which map you wanted to play instead of a silly fake question, imagine the player thinking they can play the easier Athena map for Jeorge, only to get trolled and Jeorge just sends his pupil, Gordin. I've done Jeorge's map once on lunatic. It was brutal, and not even remotely worth it. Athena is so much better than Gordin's 2 range. Just train Ryan man. I swear he's better than ya give him credit for. Honestly, I'm basically just gonna rank the Athena map and just dock a point for the confusing mix up of making the harder map nobody plays yield a worse reward. Hell, most people will probably play it on a first run because many of us go into FE12 having played FE11, so we tell Jeigan that to avoid words words words, not knowing the fate we just sealed ourselves in. What is this, a Kaga moment? Overall Rating: 6.5/10 Ya know what, I can do seperate ranks. Why not? Athena Gaming: 7.2/10 It's good, but can't really be called great if it's so easily cheesable. I really want to say it's better than just 7, but 7.5 seems a little too nice, so there ya go. I'll try not to do those kinds of numbers again. Jeorge's Morgue: 5.5/10 It's not even strictly an awful map. There is strategy to it, like positioning your units to trapping Jeorge while killing as many other enemies, but I can't get over how pointlessly difficult this small map is on lunatic for what feels like a self inflicted nerf. Prologue 5: That's Not a Plain Tile Spoiler The enemy positioning is pretty nice here. The compact nature of the prologue works well in this type of map methinks. You can't just hide to the corner, but you clearly can't just go to the forts and tank everything, or they'll just run past Kris and corner Wrys and co. Athena helps a lot assuming you got her, and Merric's initial stats are quite helpful here, so the fanservice of "returning character aides you" is kinda cool here. I appreciate that even on high difficulties, Athena can still 1rko the southern hunter while your team needs to kill the other enemies that you pulled northwest. There's a good chance one hunter will remain alive and within enemy range, so you'll have needed to kill in a way that didn't leave your army crippled, and Caeda can be guarded from them. Luckily, Wrys doesn't get OHKO'd yet, so he'll likely get their attention, and you'll be fine. Afterwards, it's a matter of baiting out the remaining brigands and thief without overextending your units, given their largely shared range. That can be a fun process. I find the structure of this simple square to be well done for what little space they had to work with. It's not too difficult to cause annoyance like p3 or p4 Jeorge can be, so you can feed kills to whomever you wish without much worry, but it still requires somewhat careful play and decent planning to not slip up. Bad news: the boss has no portrait. Awful map. 0/10. Rating: I just said 0/10. Are you stupid? Prologue 6: Ogma Balls Spoiler If you told Katarina "yes", you fight Doga Balls. If you told her that her life serves zero purpose, you fight Oghma Mountains. Draug is considered the easier map, while Ogma is a more rewarding unit, the way p4 should've been. Or at least I think that's how it works. I'll be honest, in my 15+ runs of this game, I have literally never played Draug's map. Can't break the flow now. It's a bit of a shame that Cecile has nearly no use throughout the prologue past being a weapon backpack given her nonexistent defense combined with these small maps, but it's not really worth giving her xp here anyways as we all know mage Cecile is where it's at. Seriously, it's a fun build. I highly recommend. As for everyone else, you can finally bench people, so at least the "puzzle map" vibe that some dislike is lessened due to having more freedom/choices for how they can tackle the following maps. Definitely use at least one ranged unit, as one peace of info that will drastically help is knowing that ranged units such as archers will always go first when attacking, allowing for AI exploits that can become a significant advantage for the player. I wouldn't say it's mandatory to know, but quite helpful, especially if you're like me and your Ryan missed a 93 during your lunatic ironman and now you have to take risks. Actually, the archer's AI had nothing to do with it. It was getting Ogma to attack Athena over Caeda who was also in range of a cav as Ogma did more damage to Athena and bosses move prior to regular 1 range enemies. Bad example, whoops. Honestly, this chapter in particular just feels really satisfying to dominate with your inside knowledge of the game, but again, I don't think it's mandatory to know. I've seen a few retreat to the corner and will fight those that reach them to make dealing with the remaining enemies easier, and it works, but I personally prefer viewing this chapter as a test of chokepoint strats, much like Athena p4, but handled much better. At the very least, you hopefully know of enemies preferring weaker units to attack, so have Ryan or Merric bait the archer while tankier units plug the 2 spots. As long as you don't kill on enemy phase, you don't need to worry about their strength. How you deal with turn 2 can go multiple ways depending on your team, and I love dealing with them every time. Usually, I have Kris plug the top bridge and Athena the bottom. Have Ryan chip the archer from the very top, go kill the fighter on turn 2, Merric kills the other brigde fighter, have Caeda finish the archer above where the top fighter initially was, have Kris move 1 spot left, now beneath Caeda to prevent her from being attacked by both Ogma and the cav, and then Athena remains choking the bottom point while chugging a vuln. The rest should be simple afterwards assuming no one was too weak to survive Ogma. Of course I only listed one way I beat this chapter, as I've done this chapter at least 4 different ways, so again I say this chapter is far from some simple Kris solo chokepoint map or some oddly specific puzzle with only 1 or 2 ways to clear it with no losses. There's runs where Kris can't choke any points, or where I chose to field Wrys, or when I missed an attack and had to come up with a backup plan to pretend I prepared for it. It's a well made defense map that once again places importance on weapon triangle advantages, given how significant lances are against Ogma, and it makes you carefully consider how to make the best use of every unit while planning out not just the turn you're on, but how it will affect the following turn....unless your name is Cecile. She really does nothing. Of course if all that is too much, you can always just do Doga. I looked up P6 lunatic just now and every result was just Draug map. Cowards...I can't review the Draug one. I haven't played it. Someone give it a rank for me. Rating: 8/10 It's stupidly high for something so simple, but for a small "puzzle-like" map, it does it's job incredibly well, lets the player teach themselves the best ways to chokepoint and go on the aggressive soon after (it's basically impossible to stall with how squishy most units are), and the single archer plays a critical role in how you take him out without running to your own doom. It's an excellent fun size map and when I first beat it on lunatic, I felt that I learned more about Fire Emblem itself, as cheesy as that sounds. Amazing short map. Prologue 5 Rating: 6.5/10 It's not special enough to warrant a 7. Still, it's alright. Kinda cool. I swear, if any of you consider 7 to be "okay", I'm making the next FE game TMS 2. Prologue 7: Cain Deez Nuts Fin In Yo Mouth? Spoiler If you lie to Katarina and tell her you like the idea of changing the script to where she's boring, you fight Cain. If you tell her once again that her life serves zero purpose, you fight Est. I'm not a big fan of the Est map personally. She has too much reach over the map and Cain is generally a more useful unit to have for prologue 8, not that either are all too useful in comparison to Athena's double emblem. Ogma will help a lot in this chapter for either route, but if there's one thing that annoys me, it's the inconsistency of Ogma's ability to 1RKO the enemy archers on lunatic. They can spawn with either 28 HP and 3 DEF, or 29 HP and 4 DEF. If they have the former, Ogma's base stats with the steel sword can 1RKO them, but if it's the latter, you're just short of reaching it, becoming incredibly annoying if he ends up being your clutch unit against them. Stat variance can be troubling in most FE games, but in this case, it's not just a slight inconvenience with bad luck compared to whatever growths you got, but it can outright change your strategy for how you take out the enemy. I want to say that for this chapter, stats feel fine tuned to be exact damage either for or against you, as I feel many maps and enemy stats on lunaic do indeed feel very meticulously crafted rather than just given bloated stats for the sake of it, but the rolls can just throw it all off here. For Cain's map, Athena just barely dies from the west myrm and archer together, but Ogma lives, which means Athena just barely lives on maniac. However, if both the archer and the myrm spawn with the lower STR value, their combined ATK power won't kill Athena. This is very rare though, so I often assume it's mostly intended she dies and can't block. The armor knights die from 2 fire attacks (2*12 from base Merrc) combined with Ogma's steel sword strikes (6*2. 12+24=36, Armor HP =34-35), but the armor counter + the myrm deal exact damage to kill Ogma, forcing the player to deal with them through other means, or trying to make them prioritize different units on enemy phase. Of course, this is only under the assumption that both the myrm and armor roll the higher STR end, so you could just get lucky. I swear half of the math in this chapter just incentivizes resetting until the numbers are in your favor, given how strict stats are for the prologue on high difficulty, For most other previous chapters, numbers are pretty consistent. Enemies have 6 speed on p3, 7 on p4, 8 on p5 (Ryan needs +1 spd to not get 1rko'd on L), damage is roughly the same across these prologues, but 7 feels like my strats will sometimes work, and other times screw me over. It's happened to me multiple times, and it's annoying. There's no orbs or reclassing yet, so you can't do much about it. That said, the general design of the map itself is decent. It's quite blunt about how it's meant to teach you about ambush spawns, and it works. You're told about roughly when it will happen, and your goal is to plug as many forts as possible to prevent being swarmed, which as a concept works perfectly under such a compact map. The formation of the enemies are great, the variety of armors to myrms and archers for Cain's map works well imo, and the more open area of Est's map makes it easier to reach around and fight the enemy, but also easier for the archers to strike and you might struggle more to reach the forts in time if you weren't making good use of your movement. I like that the center myrm in Cain's map has one tile where no one else can reach, practically begging Caeda to park there. The higher the difficulty, the more spots you need to plug in under a limited timeframe. Make careful use of how you attract enemies and how you can defeat them while ensuring that your unit will plug a spot (only Caeda can reach top right fort in Cain map, so she can't afford to kill western units) These maps feel like they were made with thought and care, which should be the bare minimum for a strategy game, but half of this series has taught me otherwise. P7 is quite challenging imo, but not unfair or completely overwhelming. It becomes overwhelming if you let it become overwhelming. It really enforces aggressive play and rewarding you for doing so, advice that is extremely useful for high difficulty in most FE games (especially FE12 ch4 L). It's only ruined by how much the stat variance can throw you off. At least always be on the higher end so I can know what to plan for immediately instead of figuring out what they could be after 6 resets. Rating: 8/10 It honestly could've been an 8.5, but that damn stat variance nonsense really pissed me off on my first lunatic run. It's not as big a deal in maniac though. Still hard, but the decent units will pull their job off without rng factors as long as you don't make any foolish mistakes. Great time there. I won't rank the 2 maps separately here, as I find the general idea to be similar enough in both versions, and I appreciate the ability to choose what I want from my rush map given what type of mental disability I gave my Kris, or if my Ryan is a deity or sin incarnate. Prologue 8: Why Didn't Legion Help? Spoiler This chapter sucks. It's not an awful map, but it's unnecessarily boring. It's the opposite of the previous map. Instead of challenging the player to play aggressively while effectively using chokepoints to survive the onslaught that is the enemy phase, you're forced to stand still for 6 turns! Why? If you aggro the center brigand made apparent by his silver axe, most of the map will rush you. You are screwed. As such, you need to bait out as many enemies as you can before making this move, but due to the reinforcements, it's not in your best interest to make any aggressive moves past maybe baiting one corner of the brigand/hunter duo to make incoming thieves easier to kill. Otherwise, you mostly just sit there and wait for the 2-3 waves of reinforcements to come to you before actually making progress finishing off whichever enemies you didn't previously kill before you actually play the damn map and fight the silver dude. At least the layout of enemies makes fighting some thieves a little tricky when they partially in range of brigands, but it's not very tough to 2 range them. I like using lance units to chip thieves while taking minimal counter damage and using your swordies (Athena and Ogma) who can still double brigands to feed to ya boi Ryan, but as long as you play slowly, it's an easy map. Just slow. There's no punishment of waiting 50 turns by the throne to heal or anything. Getting the silver axe guy to move and dealing with the somewhat distant mages is the trickiest part of the map, but losing at that point feels more annoying than anything else because then it's back to waiting emblem. At least this chapter introduces the save circle mechanic. Does that thing have a proper name? Maybe I shouldn't say the chapter sucks. The layout is fine enough, and it can be fun to take out Katarina's thief squad on lunatic with the levin thieves (exclusive to lunatic) although I don't like that they can randomly have 13 or 14 speed, meaning Merric might be able to bait them and deal chip damage, or he might not, once again dependent on luck. I'd fix that simply by keeping them at 13 so you can have a simple way to aggro Kat's squad without hoping for a speed level and actually doing something to get an edge for a relatively challenging set of units to fend off. The real mind boggling part of this is simply the concept of making a bite sized defend map, because that's basically what this map is trying to be. It's not, but you're defending the castle from invaders, and you send several turns forced to defend the throne from waves of enemies rushing towards Marth's head. But defend maps don't work unless they're big. You need multiple chokepoints, multiple ways to fight back! Elincia's Gambit, CQ chapter 10. They wouldn't work in a simple top to bottom style of "stand still and kill reinforcement". This is definitely a map that needed to have been done in a regular sized FE12 map to have worked and suffers greatly from tiny emblem. Previous prologues mostly worked because for as small as they were, they were made with the map being the size of a 3H fan's brain in mind. Trees and forts and mountains form their own walls and influence the enemy to move a certain way as to prevent being cornered being the only thing to it, with p6 serving primarily as how to make the best of preventing yourself from being cornered (although you could corner yourself and fight then if you so choose to). It rewarded initially shielding yourself to bait the enemy in some way to then go all in on an assault, whereas p8, while more than just enemies rushing you, doesn't do anything creative with the space given or taken away from you. You just stand completely still, and then you walk down and the challenge ends right when it starts. The 2nd half is nice enough, but besides making a wall in turn one with units like Cain and Ogma sticking out to counter twice, p8 is simply not special or very strategic. It does the opposite of what previous prologues teach the player to do for the main game. Rating: 5/10 Sorry Katarina, but your assault was mid. You're mid. Get of my sight, and don't come back to become another chapter. Part 1 Rating: 6/10 Spoiler The prologue is.....alright. It has its ups and downs. It can become rather tedious to play every single time you replay the game. It does not feel friendly to the flexibility of creating a Kris. But the puzzle solving aspects of many prologues are solid. They can offer their own depth of guidance for somewhat newer players to think outside the box, take advantage of DSFE enemy AI, learn the benefits of player phase focused combat, making good use of the weapon triangle, and certain prologue chapters offer their own customization with limited deployment slots under different variations of maps with different recruitments that can incentivize replayability combined with making different Krises to still attain a sense of "fresh" gameplay that doesn't become "use X and do Y to win" like p1, p2, and p3/p5 to an extent can. At the very least, the prologue is neat for giving some semblance of character to the 7th platoon, because Kaga spent all his time hypnotizing damsels. I like the prologue....enough. If you dislike it still, fair enough, but it's more than just "unfair nothing map garbage". Small maps in this game can certainly suck, but trust me. It gets a lot damn worse from here. First post will likely be scuffed and not very informative or in depth of anything major, as I mostly just want to get into the main game already. There's only so much to say about such small maps past "enemies are strong, so block effectively and play aggressive". I'd love to get into the nitty gritty of enemy stats and positioning per chapter and how reclasses can let you tackle certain challenges alongside the plethora of possible ways enemies could approach you depending on when and how you aggro'd them, and on which difficulty you're playing. There's only so much to discuss with prologue stats, as other than using armor Kris or getting Ryan past getting doubled threshold for the 2nd half of prologue, the precise stats aren't too significant. Most units won't get doubled. Athena and Ogma double. The enemies hit hard. The maps are small. Simple as. I suppose I can mention Caeda getting 1 speed letting her double the p7 mrym or 2 speed growths can let her double most p8 thieves on L, but it's not the biggest deal in the world. We need to reach Arran already. Might eventually add tier list rankings alongside ratings to eventually make a map tier list. Depends on how much I care to revive Serenes. I'm sick as Kaga rn. I really don't have much to do rn. Edited March 6 by Shaky Jones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 6 Share Posted March 6 I though the game gives you an extra vulnerary on higher difficulties specifically to ensure the first map isn't a sot lock? Is that something that my translation patch is secretly altering that the original game didn't do? The prologue 5 boss does have a portrait They just sortta forgot to actually give it to his unit data. Either that or they were too lazy to edit a mini mug for the generic ruffian. Hey, at least he's allowed to have battle music! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted March 6 Author Share Posted March 6 1 hour ago, Jotari said: I though the game gives you an extra vulnerary on higher difficulties specifically to ensure the first map isn't a sot lock? Is that something that my translation patch is secretly altering that the original game didn't do? On normal mode, you get nothing. On hard through lunatic, you get 1 set of vulns. Only on reverse lunatic do you get 2 vulns. For those that enjoy playing on regular lunatic, it is very much still possible to get screwed out of Judge Jeigan. As much as I'd like to be among the fe12 council that knows every possible Kris outcome to tell you whether any form of maniac Kris gets screwed over without optimal traits, I mostly pick the same 3 classes, or ignore Kris entirely. But as someone that usually plays regular lunatic, I always have to deal with the fear of literally getting stuck on p1 just because I didn't do armor Kris this time. Heck, I once saw an fe12 lunatic blind LP on YouTube and the poor fella got stuck because they wanted peg Kris and of course they're not gonna know how the trait system works. 1 hour ago, Jotari said: The prologue 5 boss does have a portrait They just sortta forgot to actually give it to his unit data. I dont really count this as such because let's be real. Most dsfe players spam start the second a cutscene appears. I remember Lumel and Toras from their interesting portraits that I constantly see every run, as well as how they play into the maps themselves (10 range early draco and ballistacian who knows geometry). Boss quotes can be memorable too, but admittedly this portrait and just being a birgand in a brigand map makes him very forgettable. At least Gazzak and Gomer looked cool. 1 hour ago, Jotari said: Hey, at least he's allowed to have battle music! I havent played the prologue with animations on in so long, I dont remember if previous bosses had boss music or not because they're "le good guys". That also doesn't help. Most bosses are Fe11 pals, and p8 features the important oc. P5 just has an unused unit data face looking like a default image for any brigand in modern FE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imuabicus der Fertige Posted March 6 Share Posted March 6 20 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: CQ has great maps, I automatically ask for its hand in marriage. Spoiler They´ll be so cute togetha! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 6 Share Posted March 6 6 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: On normal mode, you get nothing. On hard through lunatic, you get 1 set of vulns. Only on reverse lunatic do you get 2 vulns. For those that enjoy playing on regular lunatic, it is very much still possible to get screwed out of Judge Jeigan. As much as I'd like to be among the fe12 council that knows every possible Kris outcome to tell you whether any form of maniac Kris gets screwed over without optimal traits, I mostly pick the same 3 classes, or ignore Kris entirely. But as someone that usually plays regular lunatic, I always have to deal with the fear of literally getting stuck on p1 just because I didn't do armor Kris this time. Heck, I once saw an fe12 lunatic blind LP on YouTube and the poor fella got stuck because they wanted peg Kris and of course they're not gonna know how the trait system works. I managed to beat Jeigan with a pegasus Kris on my maniac playthrough. I can't tell you the exact build, but I did focus on the one with the high physical and magical growth, which I think locks you out of getting bases increase in those stats. But that was maniac and not lunatic, so perhaps a soft lock is possible with those higher enemy stats. In your expert opinion is there a significant difference between lunatic and maniac? Because maniac was still fairly damn challenging for me with most end game enemies having literally capped stats and class changing to sword master being a basic requirement to double anything (not even my Falco Knight Kris could double things!). I can't imagine the game getting much harder outside of the Vantage aspect that Lunatic' uses (but Lunatic and Lunatic' are different settings). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted March 7 Author Share Posted March 7 (edited) 5 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said: Spoiler They´ll be so cute togetha! 2 hours ago, Jotari said: I managed to beat Jeigan with a pegasus Kris on my maniac playthrough. I can't tell you the exact build, but I did focus on the one with the high physical and magical growth, which I think locks you out of getting bases increase in those stats. But that was maniac and not lunatic, so perhaps a soft lock is possible with those higher enemy stats. Based off what I'm reading from the FE wiki, Maniac Jeigan will generally have 10 STR and lunatic 11 STR (they both obtain low decimals which I assume represents the likelihood of rolling up to 11/12). This means he'll usually have +1 STR, but then you factor in the additional +1 might from the newly obtained A rank on lances that increases his weapon affinity buffs, as lunatic gives all characters A ranks from the very start of the game, meaning he'll have +2 total might added to his attack (I'll go over exactly what each weapon rank bonuses give each type, but generally, most weapons gain +1 might at C, and another at A, with 2 exceptions). Not only that, but units who have A rank on a given weapon type and use said type in combat while having the weapon triangle advantage, they'll gain a +1 might buff they otherwise would not have gotten, making enemies gaining the advantage noticeably worse for lunatic early game (same applies for fe11 h5). While insignificant to a tankier Kris, this can easily make or break your survivability when you're a peg Kris with 18 and 5 def (vanilla Kris with no trait buffs), or mage Kris with 2 defense. In fact, a mage Kris with no defensive base stat increases will literally be unable to survive a counterattack with a vuln usage, as Jeigan will have 16 attack on lunatic (11 STR + 3 might jav + 2 might A rank lance bonus), meaning your 2 DEF Kris with 18 HP will take 14 damage, and when you use a vuln to recover, you'll go from 4 to 14 HP, still getting killed the following enemy phase. If you need to use 2 vulneraries just to counter 1 additional time, you know you're not getting past the senile. Myrm Kris would also need to deal with the +1 damage bonus the enemy receives, so that's essentially +3 might from maniac, and her measly 4 base defense isn't going be enough to let vulneraries heal up the damage that ol man Jenkins can dish out. Not only that, but I didn't yet mention that you'd also be losing 1 might from your sword attack with Jeigan's A rank lance bonus dealt with because of lunatic mode. At the very least, myrm Kris's default bases will always double Jeigan (he has 7 speed in both maniac and lunatic), but the minimal 5 base STR combined with the pitiful 5 might iron sword - the weapon triangle disadvantage penalty means you're not going to 2RKO him, not unless you gave Kris the Orphan's child +2 base STR bonus. While technically, peg Kris can survive through and kill Jeigan on lunatic with the 3 given vulns, you still need to account for the initial lancer, who's likely going to chip away at you once. That one attack will likely be all that's needed to screw you over. A unit like Peg Kris needs to hit Jeigan 4 times to kill him. 3 times would need to be from counter damage, and the 4th right when you've ran out of vulns and you gotta deal the finishing blow now. Chances are, this moment is why they gave you a 2nd vulnerary on reverse lunatic. You can't initiate combat, at least not without getting hit first. But that doesn't resolve the possibility of the first enemy's strike leaving your HO low enough to where you already have to use up one of your very limited heals. HP wise, Jeigan and solider #5 are laregely the same. Defense doesn't change. It's mostly the +2 attack that does you in. Honestly, a separate post could and probably should be made about this. It's interesting to analyze, but it unfortunately gives people more reason to shit on FE12. Damn. 2 hours ago, Jotari said: In your expert opinion is there a significant difference between lunatic and maniac? Because maniac was still fairly damn challenging for me with most end game enemies having literally capped stats and class changing to sword master being a basic requirement to double anything (not even my Falco Knight Kris could double things!). I can't imagine the game getting much harder outside of the Vantage aspect that Lunatic' uses (but Lunatic and Lunatic' are different settings). Hey, you used Frost too. You're also an expert now. Lunatic mode in FE12 is very interesting given how stats and caps work for this game. Naturally, they can't afford to just do stat bloat emblem like Awakening or 3 Houses. The game would be unbeatable, or least become a pure Kris solo. Stat wise, the game is nearly identical. Most stats are increased only by 1, with the prologue sometimes being exactly the same or lategame enemies gaining +2 to a stat, but these increases are incredibly minor compared to the jump between that of normal and hard or hard and maniac, or most difficulties in the series really. Instead, the game will use various other means to tweak the game into forcing experienced players to play certain maps differently than they normally might have or even could've. The most plain and noticeable change is thst all enemies begin to use silver weapons as early as chapter 1. The moment the game begins, all enemies will use either silver weapons, or ranged/effective weapons that have been forged, with the ladder essentially being given stats of a silver weapon. This assures that the one "stat" that has been significantly increased is the one that causes the biggest threat to the player's survivability without changing how difficult it is to kill said threat (no massive defense or speed/avoid increase). The same can be said for FE11 H5 adding silvers as early as ch10 over just giving enemies +3 to all stats. You'll also need to factor in the weapon rank bonuses as well as the potential weapon triangle buffs that the newly obtained A ranks will cause, so enemies can deal up to 6 more damage than on maniac, becoming a major factor in early game lunatic, although I'd say becomes somewhat irrelevant throughout the later half from personal experience. Chapter 1 and 2 will actually play a huge role in how I'll explain the impact of just how much the damage in the early can change the game or leave things relatively similar from maniac. Generally, I'd say the might increase, while more dangerous and unfriendly to enemy phase strats, is not what makes lunatic mode hard. If you can handle the aggressiveness of maniac, the silvers won't be all too much to worry over. What makes the game harder is all the little things the game will change behind your back, almost personally customizing each map to screw you over in some way that you didn't experience in your maniac run, or removing gameplay items or elements that normally was your crutch for getting past a hard chapter. For instance, no silver card. Ever. No warp staff. Unlucky. Drill grounds? No more HP recovery between rounds. Boss abuse? Xp is removed after enough chip attacks. In chapter 4, the first wave of reinforcements in the forts of the sand in front of you appear almost immediately, at turn fricken 2. The enemies that surround Ogma and co become aggressive as early as turn 3. Chapter 5 changes Jeorge's sniper squad AI to attack you the moment you are within their line of sight instead of being right next to them. Not only that, but the chapter also adds a dracoknight in the middle of the map, covering the range not occupied by said sniper squad, forcing you to aggro him to to avoid death by firing sqaud, only doing so will aggro all the western wyverns that normally stay in place until you're near the village. Not only that, but even then, they also screw you over by moving Rickard 1 space up, just so you can't reach him with Julian on turn 1. You can't say they didn't plan this difficulty out. Is it fun? Only if you're incredibly masochistic, but I certainly respect it more than 3 Houses adding ambush spawns to a game clearly not designed around it. The difficulty aspects of this game is a major reaosn why I wanted to make this post, and I will be covering how these maps play out in both maniac and lunatic to give different perspectives to how the map was revamped to accommodate for different types of skilled players, something I very much look forward to nerding out over, so keep an eye on that if you're still curious about just how different lunatic can be. I was gonna go in depth about this in the chapter 1 post itself, but now I'm probably just gonna make that post tomorrow lol. At least I can make it shorter though. Keep it related to the chapter at hand. To answer your question, yes. There's a big difference, and stronger enemies have almost nothing to do with it. Edited March 7 by Shaky Jones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 20 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said: Based off what I'm reading from the FE wiki, Maniac Jeigan will generally have 10 STR and lunatic 11 STR (they both obtain low decimals which I assume represents the likelihood of rolling up to 11/12). This means he'll usually have +1 STR, but then you factor in the additional +1 might from the newly obtained A rank on lances that increases his weapon affinity buffs, as lunatic gives all characters A ranks from the very start of the game, meaning he'll have +2 total might added to his attack. Not only that, but units who have A rank on a given weapon type and use said type in combat while having the weapon triangle advantage, they'll gain a +1 might buff they otherwise would not have gotten, making enemies gaining the advantage noticeably worse for lunatic early game (same applies for fe11 h5). While insignificant to a tankier Kris, this can easily make or break your survivability when you're a peg Kris with 18 and 5 def (vanilla Kris with no trait buffs), or mage Kris with 2 defense. In fact, a mage Kris with no defensive base stat increases will literally be unable to survive a counterattack with a vuln usage, as Jeigan will have 16 attack on lunatic (11 STR + 3 might jav + 2 might A rank lance bonus), meaning your 2 DEF Kris with 18 HP will take 14 damage, and when you use a vuln to recover, you'll go from 4 to 14 HP, still getting killed the following enemy phase. If you need to use 2 vulneraries just to counter 1 additional time, you know you're not getting past the senile. Myrm Kris would also need to deal with the +1 damage bonus the enemy receives, so that's essentially +3 might from maniac, and her measly 4 base defense isn't going be enough to let vulneraries heal up the damage that ol man Jenkins can dish out. Not only that, but I didn't yet mention that you'd also be losing 1 might from your sword attack with Jeigan's A rank lance bonus dealt with because of lunatic mode. At the very least, myrm Kris's default bases will always double Jeigan (he has 7 speed in both maniac and lunatic), but the minimal 5 base STR combined with the pitiful 5 might iron sword - the weapon triangle disadvantage penalty means you're not going to 2RKO him, not unless you gave Kris the Orphan's child +2 base STR bonus. While technically, peg Kris can survive through and kill Jeigan on lunatic with the 3 given vulns, you still need to account for the initial lancer, who's likely going to chip away at you once. That one attack will likely be all that's needed to screw you over. A unit like Peg Kris needs to hit Jeigan 4 times to kill him. 3 times would need to be from counter damage, and the 4th right when you've ran out of vulns and you gotta deal the finishing blow now. Chances are, this moment is why they gave you a 2nd vulnerary on reverse lunatic. You can't initiate combat, at least not without getting hit first. But that doesn't resolve the possibility of the first enemy's strike leaving your HO low enough to where you already have to use up one of your very limited heals. HP wise, Jeigan and solider #5 are laregely the same. Defense doesn't change. It's mostly the +2 attack that does you in. Honestly, a separate post could and probably should be made about this. It's interesting to analyze, but it unfortunately gives people more reason to shit on FE12. Damn. How are his hit rates against you? I'm guessing WTA gives him 100% hit on Myrmidon Kris, but if he has anything less than that again mage or peg Kris then it's technically not a soft lock, even if the chances of him missing two 99% hits or something is infantasimal. 20 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said: Hey, you used Frost too. You're also an expert now. Lunatic mode in FE12 is very interesting given how stats and caps work for this game. Naturally, they can't afford to just do stat bloat emblem like Awakening or 3 Houses. The game would be unbeatable, or least become a pure Kris solo. Stat wise, the game is nearly identical. Most stats are increased only by 1, with the prologue sometimes being exactly the same or lategame enemies gaining +2 to a stat, but these increases are incredibly minor compared to the jump between that of normal and hard or hard and maniac, or most difficulties in the series really. Instead, the game will use various other means to tweak the game into forcing experienced players to play certain maps differently than they normally might have or even could've. The most plain and noticeable change is thst all enemies begin to use silver weapons as early as chapter 1. The moment the game begins, all enemies will use either silver weapons, or ranged/effective weapons that have been forged, with the ladder essentially being given stats of a silver weapon. This assures that the one "stat" that has been significantly increased is the one that causes the biggest threat to the player's survivability without changing how difficult it is to kill said threat (no massive defense or speed/avoid increase). The same can be said for FE11 H5 adding silvers as early as ch10 over just giving enemies +3 to all stats. You'll also need to factor in the weapon rank bonuses as well as the potential weapon triangle buffs that the newly obtained A ranks will cause, so enemies can deal up to 6 more damage than on maniac, becoming a major factor in early game lunatic, although I'd say becomes somewhat irrelevant throughout the later half from personal experience. Chapter 1 and 2 will actually play a huge role in how I'll explain the impact of just how much the damage in the early can change the game or leave things relatively similar from maniac. Generally, I'd say the might increase, while more dangerous and unfriendly to enemy phase strats, is not what makes lunatic mode hard. If you can handle the aggressiveness of maniac, the silvers won't be all too much to worry over. What makes the game harder is all the little things the game will change behind your back, almost personally customizing each map to screw you over in some way that you didn't experience in your maniac run, or removing gameplay items or elements that normally was your crutch for getting past a hard chapter. For instance, no silver card. Ever. No warp staff. Unlucky. Drill grounds? No more HP recovery between rounds. Boss abuse? Xp is removed after enough chip attacks. In chapter 4, the first wave of reinforcements in the forts of the sand in front of you appear almost immediately, at turn fricken 2. The enemies that surround Ogma and co become aggressive as early as turn 3. Chapter 5 changes Jeorge's sniper squad AI to attack you the moment you are within their line of sight instead of being right next to them. Not only that, but the chapter also adds a dracoknight in the middle of the map, covering the range not occupied by said sniper squad, forcing you to aggro him to to avoid death by firing sqaud, only doing so will aggro all the western wyverns that normally stay in place until you're near the village. Not only that, but even then, they also screw you over by moving Rickard 1 space up, just so you can't reach him with Julian on turn 1. You can't say they didn't plan this difficulty out. Is it fun? Only if you're incredibly masochistic, but I certainly respect it more than 3 Houses adding ambush spawns to a game clearly not designed around it. The difficulty aspects of this game is a major reaosn why I wanted to make this post, and I will be covering how these maps play out in both maniac and lunatic to give different perspectives to how the map was revamped to accommodate for different types of skilled players, something I very much look forward to nerding out over, so keep an eye on that if you're still curious about just how different lunatic can be. I was gonna go in depth about this in the chapter 1 post itself, but now I'm probably just gonna make that post tomorrow lol. At least I can make it shorter though. Keep it related to the chapter at hand. To answer your question, yes. There's a big difference, and stronger enemies have almost nothing to do with it. That honestly is the kind of difficulty scaling I prefer over stat buffing or just plain removing features (but I still love you Radiant Dawn hard mode, don't worry 😘). In practice though it sounds like the result would be to just make the early game way harder while the end game is the same (except you have to bother fighting Gharnef now). I think if or when I play New Mystery again I'll jump straight to Lunatic+, which does make me a bit sad that I'll never get to experience the fun using Mage Stone Tiki or Nagi against Glower Sorcerers. I can stand removing warp, but removing my secret shop dragon stones is unacceptable. Some ambitious young modder should remove a wall tile or something to make that area accessible after you speak to Tiki. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X-Naut Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 If the prologue was skippable I might be inclined to replay FE12 more. It's just such a drag compared to the main game and my opinion on it has only soured over time. I think the biggest problem is the game's desire to kingmake Kris; customizable units work as a piece to fill out the existing team, not as an early carry who's expected to stand one head above everybody else. This leads to some "creative" solutions to making a map beatable when some of your carry's stats can swing by ten points between runs, including testing for some things I'd argue have no business being tested for. I'm also partial on the tutor units as I'll call them. While I appreciate how they flesh out the squad, I don't like that you're given the units as they'll join later on. This creates awkward an conflict of interest on who to invest in and outright screws over a few late-joiners when they return. It doesn't help that most are tied to possibly the worst "route splits" in Fire Emblem. Storywise, it also feels like Kris is cheating their way through exams when you can ditch most of the platoon and just use tutor units. Caeda and Gordin are the most egregious examples; the former is their future queen playing peon to a bunch of new recruits, including during an actual emergency. The latter should also recuse himself or not be allowed to join when his little brother's in the platoon, not to mention how distasteful his recruitment is. P-3 thru P-5 is rock bottom. An Escape Room with two Fighters who cannot be 3HKO'd by your non-Kris units, 2HKO them in return and in some cases require you to reroll for Skill stats to bait a 2% crit chance. fun /s The only positive thing I can say is I've never seen Ryan miss Caeda despite the sub-80 hit rate. Don't know if that hit's aimbotted but I'd hate to be the guy who learned it's not. Then it's immediately followed by the worst of the worst route splits in a vague after-chapter choice and the less I have to say about that the better. Thankfully it's uphill from there, with the only real bumps being Cecil making you wrap up preps on P-6 and Katarina hitting a bit too hard. (i.e. I think all the tutor units should survive a round at full) Aside from her P-8 is definitely the high point of the prologue and is a unique spin on a defense mission. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 27 minutes ago, X-Naut said: If the prologue was skippable I might be inclined to replay FE12 more. It's just such a drag compared to the main game and my opinion on it has only soured over time. I think the biggest problem is the game's desire to kingmake Kris; customizable units work as a piece to fill out the existing team, not as an early carry who's expected to stand one head above everybody else. This leads to some "creative" solutions to making a map beatable when some of your carry's stats can swing by ten points between runs, including testing for some things I'd argue have no business being tested for. I'm also partial on the tutor units as I'll call them. While I appreciate how they flesh out the squad, I don't like that you're given the units as they'll join later on. This creates awkward an conflict of interest on who to invest in and outright screws over a few late-joiners when they return. It doesn't help that most are tied to possibly the worst "route splits" in Fire Emblem. Storywise, it also feels like Kris is cheating their way through exams when you can ditch most of the platoon and just use tutor units. Caeda and Gordin are the most egregious examples; the former is their future queen playing peon to a bunch of new recruits, including during an actual emergency. The latter should also recuse himself or not be allowed to join when his little brother's in the platoon, not to mention how distasteful his recruitment is. P-3 thru P-5 is rock bottom. An Escape Room with two Fighters who cannot be 3HKO'd by your non-Kris units, 2HKO them in return and in some cases require you to reroll for Skill stats to bait a 2% crit chance. fun /s The only positive thing I can say is I've never seen Ryan miss Caeda despite the sub-80 hit rate. Don't know if that hit's aimbotted but I'd hate to be the guy who learned it's not. Then it's immediately followed by the worst of the worst route splits in a vague after-chapter choice and the less I have to say about that the better. Thankfully it's uphill from there, with the only real bumps being Cecil making you wrap up preps on P-6 and Katarina hitting a bit too hard. (i.e. I think all the tutor units should survive a round at full) Aside from her P-8 is definitely the high point of the prologue and is a unique spin on a defense mission. I'm kind of with you on the tutors from the narrative perspective. The likes of Athena and Wrys are fine, but the 7th Platoon are meant to be scrubs, yet they have people like Merric and Ogma with them! Gordin I don't mind so much since he is playable from chapter 1 so that makes sense, and Draug was kind of necessary because they needed an armoured knight and he's the only one that makes any sort of sense (though they could maybe have used Roger and leveraged it to make his later recruitment less a repeat of his first recruitment). Imo Katarina should have been playable in the prologue (until the last one, obviously). That would have solved having no mages. Norne also feels like an obvious character to be here if Gordin is too experienced. And lastly, instead of Cain, give us Frey! He's the new character not beholden to anything. Or just give us Arran early so we can be prologued about a Jeigan's role. True worst thing about the prologue is no reclassing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 (edited) Replies: Spoiler On 3/6/2024 at 5:40 PM, Jotari said: How are his hit rates against you? I'm guessing WTA gives him 100% hit on Myrmidon Kris, but if he has anything less than that again mage or peg Kris then it's technically not a soft lock, even if the chances of him missing two 99% hits or something is infantasimal. I will say from experience that his hit usually ranges in the 90s on lunatic. Maybe 80s if using fighter Kris. One thing I forgot to mention is that on lunatic, all enemies get a hidden +10 hit rate increase, because you simply aren't allowed to play DSFE the same way you would 3 Houses. Technically, you CAN just get lucky, but do you really want to reset the chapter 20+ times just to get away with your res blessed flier Kris? If the average likelihood decrees that you're donion rings, you play assuming the worst. It's definitely how a strategy game should be designed. Just because you SHOULD be able to dodge to 11 hit enemies with Shanan in chapter 7 doesn't mean it's okay to design the chapter around that assumption when I just got hit 2 times in a row and died because there's no vulneraries in that damn game. I'm not saying that if it's not 100, then you'll always miss, as I'm sure FE6 fans would frown upon me saying hit rates should generally always land, but there's a reason FE6 earlygame is so damn frustrating. You don't want victory or loss to feel like it's chance based. It'll always affect how you play with the occasional miss or stat screwed lord that forced you to play differently than you did in your previous run. That's about 1/3rd of the fun methinks, but damn if I'll quiet about half of my army barely having 70 hit for the first 8 chapters. This is hardly related to any point because I don't think a single person is ever going to defend dodging Jeigan's attack as an excuse, but I'm Shaky Jones. I love taking opportunities into going off topic to rant. On 3/6/2024 at 5:40 PM, Jotari said: That honestly is the kind of difficulty scaling I prefer over stat buffing or just plain removing features (but I still love you Radiant Dawn hard mode, don't worry 😘). In practice though it sounds like the result would be to just make the early game way harder while the end game is the same (except you have to bother fighting Gharnef now). Lunatic mode is kinda mixed among fans from what I hear. Some find it amazing (like me for the most part), praising the detail that goes into it and yada yada I wrote a short essay on it just now, and others find it to be completely unfair nonsense that makes players die and win through trial by error and the loss of staves and money ruins the fun. There's certainly some truth to dying to the sudden unknown, but at the very least, you can just stick to maniac that keeps a more steady pace of difficulty without overstepping any boundaries. If you hate that too, then that's skill issue. Oh don't get it wrong. The lategame is significantly harder than on maniac. The amount of stuff they do to those last few chapters are fuckin brutal. FE11 mainly makes the lategame hard through brave weapons, while FE12 just does forged silvers, which honestly doesn't change a whole lot when it comes to your own presumably capped army in which Warrior Yubello scoffs at their might. It's everything else. Unfortunately, I consider a lot of said changes to be annoying, which I'll get to when I get there. Chapter 20 is much better in maniac than lunatic, even though stat wise, it's virtually the same chapter. On 3/6/2024 at 5:40 PM, Jotari said: I think if or when I play New Mystery again I'll jump straight to Lunatic+, which does make me a bit sad that I'll never get to experience the fun using Mage Stone Tiki or Nagi against Glower Sorcerers. I can stand removing warp, but removing my secret shop dragon stones is unacceptable. R' Lunatic does make your save file red, so you have that going for ya. You mean mage stone Bantu? I rarely use warp, but no shop does suck. Really it does. I've only done maniac Bantu because lunatic Bantu just sounds unfun. It's doable for sure, but there's not much to it. Boring. Besides, someone already killed R Lunatic Medeus with him, so I can't even record it to say I created history. I'm the Maji Minister, not the Bantu Buddhist. I rarely play on R Lunatic because I consider it to be slightly less fun lunatic. Sure, there's more strategy when it comes to staves, as even on regular lunatic, I often have an abundance of physics, and my obsession with bows becomes justified, but I don't want that to feel like an obligation. It's annoying when you can't have Caeda kill the cav with her wing spear because she gets one shot in retaliation before scratching the fella. It almost makes you value player phase less because going in for the kill becomes suicide if your whole squad isn't somewhat beefy. Again, the game is design so you certainly do have ways to get by regardless and trying to turtle will probably backfire hard, but it does reduce the freedom that I love about DSFE. It's not a bad difficulty though. In some ways, I think vantage+ is pretty cool to see on enemies as an official challenge run. It'd be kinda cool to see in other FE games. Certainly better than random skills that's for sure. On 3/7/2024 at 1:51 PM, X-Naut said: If the prologue was skippable I might be inclined to replay FE12 more. It's just such a drag compared to the main game and my opinion on it has only soured over time. I think the biggest problem is the game's desire to kingmake Kris; customizable units work as a piece to fill out the existing team, not as an early carry who's expected to stand one head above everybody else. This leads to some "creative" solutions to making a map beatable when some of your carry's stats can swing by ten points between runs, including testing for some things I'd argue have no business being tested for. There it is. Yeah no, that's fair enough. Kris being favored so heavibly can ruin some of the strategy that comes with this game, which is a shame since I really do think game provides simple yet effective strategy elements that no other game comes close to, at least for me. It's addicting as heck, but when Kris is so vastly superior in every way, it can really undermine how you tackle multiple runs. It's why my favorite runs tend to be that of Krisless runs or sub-optimal Krises, but trying to use bad Krises can be tedious knowing that you're subjecting yourself to a much more tedious prologue. I probably am being a little too nice to the prologue, but that's largely because I think everyone else is too mean to the prologue, and there's gotta be a balance somewhere that really dictate's it's worth. On 3/7/2024 at 1:51 PM, X-Naut said: 'm also partial on the tutor units as I'll call them. While I appreciate how they flesh out the squad, I don't like that you're given the units as they'll join later on. This creates awkward an conflict of interest on who to invest in and outright screws over a few late-joiners when they return. It doesn't help that most are tied to possibly the worst "route splits" in Fire Emblem. Storywise, it also feels like Kris is cheating their way through exams when you can ditch most of the platoon and just use tutor units. Caeda and Gordin are the most egregious examples; the former is their future queen playing peon to a bunch of new recruits, including during an actual emergency. The latter should also recuse himself or not be allowed to join when his little brother's in the platoon, not to mention how distasteful his recruitment is. From a narrative perspective, I don't really think about it, but it is rather funny. Gameplay wise, I mostly ignore investments past Kris and Ryan, as I generally go into the game assuming most units are at base. One level up isn't gonna change the world for Cain or Est. If Caeda can get away with recruiting dozens of men behind his bride's back, I don't think she cares about manipulating the results of Marth's personal recruited army I always saw things as its own balance. Units like Athena are meant to be good for their time specifically as an immediate reward, while actually taking the effort to bring Luke and train help will help more in the long run. I personally enjoy it, even if it completely screws over Athena fans when she actually joins, but I like using shit units, so that arguably makes her better for me. Merric is fine because mages are just good in general, and his stats feel fine tuned to work pretty well in the prologue without being super OP and they're still servicable when he returns in chapter 10, and it's significantly helped by him having excalibur right when a bunch of wyvern begin to show up. Brilliant game balance imo. Truly a Kaga's passion moment. Est makes sense because she's Est. Ogma and Draug are good. Cain did get done dirty though. On 3/7/2024 at 1:51 PM, X-Naut said: P-3 thru P-5 is rock bottom. An Escape Room with two Fighters who cannot be 3HKO'd by your non-Kris units, 2HKO them in return and in some cases require you to reroll for Skill stats to bait a 2% crit chance. fun /s The only positive thing I can say is I've never seen Ryan miss Caeda despite the sub-80 hit rate. Don't know if that hit's aimbotted but I'd hate to be the guy who learned it's not. Then it's immediately followed by the worst of the worst route splits in a vague after-chapter choice and the less I have to say about that the better. Thankfully it's uphill from there, with the only real bumps being Cecil making you wrap up preps on P-6 and Katarina hitting a bit too hard. (i.e. I think all the tutor units should survive a round at full) Aside from her P-8 is definitely the high point of the prologue and is a unique spin on a defense mission. For me P1 through 3 is rock bottom, and that's someone who's impartial to 3 and finds 1 and 2 to be too short to despise. It gets way better at 4, but that's admittedly assuming I always play Athena and ignoring the awful way they handled telling the player about the split and dealing with getting Gordin. Funny that we both agree on it going uphill on the 2nd half, only to completely change at p8. I consider p8 to be the big low point. After a series of highs, it suddenly takes a downward spiral to become slog emblem after the fact pacing of the previous chapters. Not to say you're wrong for liking the chapter, but I can't call it a unique spin of defense maps when the premise undermines the main appeal of defense maps in the series. Incentive to push back. If you're just sitting there waiting for them, it's a boring map. I think there's a reason many people aren't fans of defend maps. Defense maps are meant to be challenging through a brutal onslaught coming from multiple sides that you need to micromanage to not get overwhelmed by. What's the unique spin? Having no choice but to wait 7 turns for the reinforcements to stop from one single direction? I can't say I see the appeal. It's not even like the map ends at turn 12 and Katarina moves on turn 10. Now that'd be interesting. Katarina hitting hard is fine. How else can she stand out? You're not meant to tank her. Really, what makes her kinda silly is that Athena just 1RKO's her, and I think even Ogma can too with some RNG (and default on maniac). I've never heard of the crit thing. I might die once of twice from being reckless, but usually p3 is manageable if you know how to wall. I haven't used every Kris on lunatic though, so there probably are certain builds that can require some rng. I just haven't experienced it yet. Lucky me. I still stand by the fact the the prologue is slightly underrated and offers new ways to learn FE through its seemingly BS map designs, but I'll absolutely concede to it being poor design from how it determines the maps you play, as well as how Kris heavy it leans on. P3 is probably bad, but I like telling people they have skill issue. On 3/7/2024 at 2:26 PM, Jotari said: (though they could maybe have used Roger and leveraged it to make his later recruitment less a repeat of his first recruitment). But the joke is too funny not to repeat! On 3/7/2024 at 2:26 PM, Jotari said: Or just give us Arran early so we can be prologued about a Jeigan's role. "Here's a Jeigan. He's an xp thief." *puts him in corner and has even less units for prologue* On 3/7/2024 at 2:26 PM, Jotari said: True worst thing about the prologue is no reclassing. It's more rewarding when you finally do get it. Chapter 1: [Bomb Joke] Spoiler Awakening reference Normally in FE3, you'd start right here. That's great, but then you're like "Who the hell is Luke?". And then after the first wave of tax evaders receive justice, you regreat starting a book 2 run as you now have to traverse through a whole ass forest surrounding the fort. I'd show a screenshot, but the wiki has it filled with enemies, so you can't really see it. Unfortunately, Kaga didn't know how else to introduce the concept of dismounting your cav serving as a potential benefit without beating it into your head as you take 5-6 turns to move from the forest to the throne. It's a good thing FE12 didn't decide to be completely faithful to the original. The Jeigan lines aren't worth it. Before I get into the nitty girtty, I do want to point out that the lower brigand marked with 3 stars is present only in maniac and above, whole the northern S.T.A.R.S. member only appears in lunatic Here is the map on maniac as a frame of reference: The lunatic brigand doesn't change much though, as he doesn't move with the others on turn 1. Really, he's just extra xp. Note: Brigand M/L: 29/31-32 HP 22/27 ATCK 9/10 AS 2 DEF Hand Axe Brigand M/L: 16/17 ATCK Hunter M/L: 25/27 HP 16/21-22 ATCK 8-9/9 AS 2 DEF note: Maniac hunters will rarely spawn with 8 STR, while lunatic hunters have a 50/50 chance of gaining +1 STR from maniac. Similarly, they have 8.4 speed on maniac, and a flat 9 speed on lunatic. On lunatic, the thief that spawns at the cave will have a forged levin sword as opposed to the standard silver upgrade from his steel sword counterpart in maniac. Besides the one thief, there are no reinforcements in this map. If you use Malicia, you are boring Brigands gain no might bonus from their A rank weapon bonus, as axe rank only gives you increased hit rate Lorenz will drop a mend for being talked to. This does not happen if you kill him instead. I noticed that FE Wiki org has a crap ton of info on FE12, so I might just screenshot enemy stats and map images for next time, if that's okay with everyone. I'll still try to write my own notes and such. Still tryna figure out how I wanna format these map reviews, since it's my first time making posts that aren't just rants. Benchmark M/L Stats: 17/18 ATCK to 1RKO most enemies 12/13 STR with iron sword (male/reclassed cav Kris is common for this) 8/9 STR with steel sword (swordmaster Arran lol) 10 STR with steel lance on lunatic(19-1 from WT disadvantage penalty), but hit rates may not be in your favor 15/16 ATCK to 1RKO just the hunters 13/14 AS to double and meet 1RKO capability 6/7 AS to not f**king die. Don't be an armor. The most obvious takeaway from this stats of this chapter is the sheer might of lunatic brigands. They have 27 whole might. Half of the 7th platoon get one shot. This is a chapter that is much different from maniac to lunatic, and the main reason for this basically is just the added strength. It might sound like common sense, but as I've said in the previous reply to Jotari, much of what makes lunatic difficult comes from external factors. This chapter just happens to be one where the focus is self defense against monstrous strength with a bag of marshmallows. Although stats are only increased by 1 on average, the usage of silver weapon this early adds +4 strength to practically all enemies. Given that most enemies gain +1 STR, this means everyone will have at least 5 more attack on lunatic than they do on maniac. Lastly, maniac enemies will spend a good chunk of the game with weapon ranks of B, and A on lunatic. For most weapons, this increase will give them +1 might, so they'll now have +6 might, something you can potentially see through the hunters. Brigands will only have +5 might though, as axes are the only weapon type to gain no might from weapon rank bonuses. However, they WILL gain +1 might if you are using lances against them, so keep that in mind. Here's how weapon ranks work in DSFE (and 3DSFE technically): Weapon Rank Bonuses: Swords: [C]+1 might +2 might [A] +3 might Lance/Tome/Bow: [C]+1 might +1 might, 5 hit [A] +2 might, 5 hit Axe: [C] +5 hit 10 hit [A] 15 hit Units who have an A rank proficiency with a given weapon type and battle with the WT advantage will gain +1 might alongside your previous bonuses. Conversely, units who have a WT disadvantage against someone who has an A rank proficiency will lose -1 might during battle. Units who have the WT disadvantage gain none of the advantages given to them by their weapon rank bonuses, so sword fighters with A rank swords attacking a D rank lance unit will lose the +3 might bonus, but will not suffer the -1 penalty, nor will they take increased damage themselves There's technically a staff bonus, but it's largely irrelevant. Actual Damn Review: This is a test of managing enemies attempting to rush you before you are overwhelmed, something that will happen often throughout the game. Luckily, FE12 is a game with a lower quantity of enemies, so you'll never experience something like Awakening enemy rushing...most of the time. Enemies are positioned in a way where you can typically kill the western most brigand while avoiding the range of most other enemies sans center boy. You might be able to deal chip damage against 2 brigands on maniac, but not on lunatic, where you'll only have some units capable of surviving even 1 brigand. The map may seem overwhelming at first, but given how incredibly low their defense is, an all out assault on turn 2 is much more feasible than on SD H5, where it feels like you need 4-5 units just to kill 1 enemy, unless you're Caeda or Jeigan. Reclassing will be your best friend, as the 7th platoon in their base class will hardly accomplish anything. Here's additional notes pertaining to said team: Merc Draug hap 22 HP and 5 defense. He dies exactly in one hit to brigands. Vannila stat Armor Draug on maniac will take 11 * 2 damage. He has 22 HP. Unlucky. Pirate Draug has 13 AS, meaning he can immediately double at base on maniac, but gets one shot on lunatic. Fighter Draug will barely survive. Untrained Luke and Rody will die in one hit as every class on lunatic. They are are best off reclassed as ranged unit such as mages or archers/hunters for this chapter on lunatic, ESPECIALLY ON REVERSE LUNATIC. Myrm Gordin has 13 AS, meaning he can double on maniac, but only has 21 HP and 6 DEF, so use him as a merc instead if you're on lunatic and you already have other units who are using bows If you keep Gordin as a bow user, consider reclassing him into a hunter, as he gets doubled and 1RKO'd on lunatic with his 6 AS, but will barely survive as a hunter with 8 AS and 23 HP/5 DEF. This is debatably pointless though, as he preferably shouldn't be within anyone's range on turn 1, and you're hopefully capable of killing remainders the next turn, but I've been in situations calling for it before. Even if you trained Cecile, she's probably getting OHKO'd. If your goal is just to beat the game on a higher difficulty, I'd recommend not giving her kills and relying on a unit such as cav Catria for your lady sword user, but if you're incredibly based really want to train Cecile, I'd honestly recommend making her your mage. She has incredibly high growths as one and her lack of a defense growth means very little in lunatic when she's going to die in one hit regardless. At the very least, she can deal slight chip damage for this chapter as opposed to just standing there in the back doing nothing (I made her a cleric in my current ironman and she's promoted now with 15 MAG and 21 AS in chapter 7). General Arran will do a decent job tanking the brigands and dealing heavy damage with his silver lance if your Kris is too frail to attack and survive the western brigand followed by the center one's enemy phase attack. On maniac, he will be able to tank most attacks with ease and can trivialize the later half of the stage but elitists will tell you draco Arran is better despite not doubling or surviving 2 attacks on luna Sniper Arran has 13 AS (maniac threshold) and swordmaster Arran can use a steel sword to 1RKO maniac brigands or lunatic brigands with a +1 forge. To me, a lot of fun in this chapter comes from finally being able to reclass, and seeing how doing so can greatly affect your odds of survival on any given circumstances. In this chapter, reaching thresholds to not get insta-killed is the priority, and having at least one tank is practically a necessity, which can either be achieved through Kris or Arran. I find dealing with the brigands to be pretty fun. It's not the worst thing in the world despite what a first glance might lead you to believe in a game without any skills or combat arts to turn the tides with. As long as you don't panic, the first segment should not pose as a major threat. I personally much prefer this chapter on lunatic, where my actions matter much more given the punishment of not following in Dimitri's footsteps. That and it's really easy to solo the chapter with Kris and General Arran on maniac. Lunatic bumps the one stat needed to throw a wrench in your plans of steamrolling without making enemies excessively tanky or overabundant in number. That first western brigand I keep mentioning? I've had runs where I kill him with just Kris, attack with Arran and throw a cav to finish him off, use mage Cecil and Gordion to chip from a distance to then kill with Kris while forming my western half squad in a way that prevented the brigand from reaching Cecile (he went after Draug instead of Gordin due to technically dealing more raw damage). I really like the particular placement of the brigands for this chapter. They're just spread out far enough to where they don't all reach you simultaneously and force you to just wait for them, but they can't be cherry picked one by one. You need to make sure you know what you're doing when you're positioning your units on the prep screen. I like the initial challenge. Of course, this is all strictly mentioning the first portion of the chapter. The 2nd half, on lunaitc....is kinda shit. Multiple enemies await near Lorenz to ambush you when you get too close. One of the best things you can do is have general Arran get close enough one turn, then rush straight into the fort with a vuln at hand. You can begin moving the rest of your team closer to rush the enemy when the time is right. However, given the sheer might of enemies on lunatic, Arran will only be able to hold the line for so long. 2 brigand strikes is all it'll take for him to be in critical condition. Luckily, he can live another turn with the fort healing plus a vuln, but he's not going to clear the way by then, even with a silver lance. It's also worth cirticizing that on lunatic, Arran already risks being killed by a 1% crit, which is stupid. It's incredibly difficult to run in at any time with how many of them huddle up next to Arran, and using Arran's turn to attack first has a very high likelihood of him dying given that it's basically impossible to ALL of them in one attack phase, and whoever is left past Arran and the fort is almost guaranteed to die from the remaining brigands/hunters. There certainly is strategy to how you can go about ensuring that you kill and position in a way that blocks other brigands from reaching the same unit while you have a healer heal Arran and the healer is now protected from 2 range given the new units in front, and I do give more credit to this part of the stage nowadays being able to reliably pull this off in my current ironman, but I can't say I didn't feel this part was incredibly hectic and gave me trial and error vibes my first 2 lunatic runs. Don't even get me started on reverse. I do feel like I'm a little more inclined to say that this was just skill issue on my part, and I kinda like playing this bit now, but I can't say I ever look forward to "the part where Arran chokes the point" in my runs. I just don't dislike it anymore. Certainly better doing this crap that walking 500 miles through the damn rainforest in FE3. It's an okay segment, and the annoyance of repeatedly dying here is made up by the fact that there's a save circle right before it. Good game design. Where the fuck where you in Conquest? Too bad Lorenz doesn't explode anymore? Why? That's the best part of FE3. It's so over. edit: never use colons in serenes. Rating: 7/10 Spoiler It's a good map. Not a great map. But a good one. I would've said 6.5 a few years back, but I've grown to appreciate it a little more over time. It's certainly better than tank emblem of fe11 ch1 followed by the man who sold the hand axe. It's fun in maniac where you have a little more breathing room with training the 7th platoon and more options to reach doubling thresholds like with myrm Gordin or pirate Draug, but I like the intense pacing and action of lunatic more here. Fun chapter overall. Not incredibly challenging, but it keeps you on your toes. Edited March 9 by Shaky Jones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 (edited) 44 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said: Replies: Hide contents I will say from experience that his hit usually ranges in the 90s on lunatic. Maybe 80s if using fighter Kris. One thing I forgot to mention is that on lunatic, all enemies get a hidden +10 hit rate increase, because you simply aren't allowed to play DSFE the same way you would 3 Houses. Technically, you CAN just get lucky, but do you really want to reset the chapter 20+ times just to get away with your res blessed flier Kris? If the average likelihood decrees that you're donion rings, you play assuming the worst. It's definitely how a strategy game should be designed. Just because you SHOULD be able to dodge to 11 hit enemies with Shanan in chapter 7 doesn't mean it's okay to design the chapter around that assumption when I just got hit 2 times in a row and died because there's no vulneraries in that damn game. I'm not saying that if it's not 100, then you'll always miss, as I'm sure FE6 fans would frown upon me saying hit rates should generally always land, but there's a reason FE6 earlygame is so damn frustrating. You don't want victory or loss to feel like it's chance based. It'll always affect how you play with the occasional miss or stat screwed lord that forced you to play differently than you did in your previous run. That's about 1/3rd of the fun methinks, but damn if I'll quiet about half of my army barely having 70 hit for the first 8 chapters. This is hardly related to any point because I don't think a single person is ever going to defend dodging Jeigan's attack as an excuse, but I'm Shaky Jones. I love taking opportunities into going off topic to rant. Lunatic mode is kinda mixed among fans from what I hear. Some find it amazing (like me for the most part), praising the detail that goes into it and yada yada I wrote a short essay on it just now, and others find it to be completely unfair nonsense that makes players die and win through trial by error and the loss of staves and money ruins the fun. There's certainly some truth to dying to the sudden unknown, but at the very least, you can just stick to maniac that keeps a more steady pace of difficulty without overstepping any boundaries. If you hate that too, then that's skill issue. Oh don't get it wrong. The lategame is significantly harder than on maniac. The amount of stuff they do to those last few chapters are fuckin brutal. FE11 mainly makes the lategame hard through brave weapons, while FE12 just does forged silvers, which honestly doesn't change a whole lot when it comes to your own presumably capped army in which Warrior Yubello scoffs at their might. It's everything else. Unfortunately, I consider a lot of said changes to be annoying, which I'll get to when I get there. Chapter 20 is much better in maniac than lunatic, even though stat wise, it's virtually the same chapter. R' Lunatic does make your save file red, so you have that going for ya. You mean mage stone Bantu? I rarely use warp, but no shop does suck. Really it does. I've only done maniac Bantu because lunatic Bantu just sounds unfun. It's doable for sure, but there's not much to it. Boring. Besides, someone already killed R Lunatic Medeus with him, so I can't even record it to say I created history. I'm the Maji Minister, not the Bantu Buddhist. I rarely play on R Lunatic because I consider it to be slightly less fun lunatic. Sure, there's more strategy when it comes to staves, as even on regular lunatic, I often have an abundance of physics, and my obsession with bows becomes justified, but I don't want that to feel like an obligation. It's annoying when you can't have Caeda kill the cav with her wing spear because she gets one shot in retaliation before scratching the fella. It almost makes you value player phase less because going in for the kill becomes suicide if your whole squad isn't somewhat beefy. Again, the game is design so you certainly do have ways to get by regardless and trying to turtle will probably backfire hard, but it does reduce the freedom that I love about DSFE. It's not a bad difficulty though. In some ways, I think vantage+ is pretty cool to see on enemies as an official challenge run. It'd be kinda cool to see in other FE games. Certainly better than random skills that's for sure. There it is. Yeah no, that's fair enough. Kris being favored so heavibly can ruin some of the strategy that comes with this game, which is a shame since I really do think game provides simple yet effective strategy elements that no other game comes close to, at least for me. It's addicting as heck, but when Kris is so vastly superior in every way, it can really undermine how you tackle multiple runs. It's why my favorite runs tend to be that of Krisless runs or sub-optimal Krises, but trying to use bad Krises can be tedious knowing that you're subjecting yourself to a much more tedious prologue. I probably am being a little too nice to the prologue, but that's largely because I think everyone else is too mean to the prologue, and there's gotta be a balance somewhere that really dictate's it's worth. From a narrative perspective, I don't really think about it, but it is rather funny. Gameplay wise, I mostly ignore investments past Kris and Ryan, as I generally go into the game assuming most units are at base. One level up isn't gonna change the world for Cain or Est. If Caeda can get away with recruiting dozens of men behind his bride's back, I don't think she cares about manipulating the results of Marth's personal recruited army I always saw things as its own balance. Units like Athena are meant to be good for their time specifically as an immediate reward, while actually taking the effort to bring Luke and train help will help more in the long run. I personally enjoy it, even if it completely screws over Athena fans when she actually joins, but I like using shit units, so that arguably makes her better for me. Merric is fine because mages are just good in general, and his stats feel fine tuned to work pretty well in the prologue without being super OP and they're still servicable when he returns in chapter 10, and it's significantly helped by him having excalibur right when a bunch of wyvern begin to show up. Brilliant game balance imo. Truly a Kaga's passion moment. Est makes sense because she's Est. Ogma and Draug are good. Cain did get done dirty though. For me P1 through 3 is rock bottom, and that's someone who's impartial to 3 and finds 1 and 2 to be too short to despise. It gets way better at 4, but that's admittedly assuming I always play Athena and ignoring the awful way they handled telling the player about the split and dealing with getting Gordin. Funny that we both agree on it going uphill on the 2nd half, only to completely change at p8. I consider p8 to be the big low point. After a series of highs, it suddenly takes a downward spiral to become slog emblem after the fact pacing of the previous chapters. Not to say you're wrong for liking the chapter, but I can't call it a unique spin of defense maps when the premise undermines the main appeal of defense maps in the series. Incentive to push back. If you're just sitting there waiting for them, it's a boring map. I think there's a reason many people aren't fans of defend maps. Defense maps are meant to be challenging through a brutal onslaught coming from multiple sides that you need to micromanage to not get overwhelmed by. What's the unique spin? Having no choice but to wait 7 turns for the reinforcements to stop from one single direction? I can't say I see the appeal. It's not even like the map ends at turn 12 and Katarina moves on turn 10. Now that'd be interesting. Katarina hitting hard is fine. How else can she stand out? You're not meant to tank her. Really, what makes her kinda silly is that Athena just 1RKO's her, and I think even Ogma can too with some RNG (and default on maniac). I've never heard of the crit thing. I might die once of twice from being reckless, but usually p3 is manageable if you know how to wall. I haven't used every Kris on lunatic though, so there probably are certain builds that can require some rng. I just haven't experienced it yet. Lucky me. I still stand by the fact the the prologue is slightly underrated and offers new ways to learn FE through its seemingly BS map designs, but I'll absolutely concede to it being poor design from how it determines the maps you play, as well as how Kris heavy it leans on. P3 is probably bad, but I like telling people they have skill issue. But the joke is too funny not to repeat! "Here's a Jeigan. He's an xp thief." *puts him in corner and has even less units for prologue* It's more rewarding when you finally do get it. Chapter 1: [Bomb Joke] Reveal hidden contents Awakening reference Normally in FE3, you'd start right here. That's great, but then you're like "Who the hell is Luke?". And then after the first wave of tax evaders receive justice, you regreat starting a book 2 run as you now have to traverse through a whole ass forest surrounding the fort. I'd show a screenshot, but the wiki has it filled with enemies, so you can't really see it. Unfortunately, Kaga didn't know how else to introduce the concept of dismounting your cav serving as a potential benefit without beating it into your head as you take 5-6 turns to move from the forest to the throne. It's a good thing FE12 didn't decide to be completely faithful to the original. The Jeigan lines aren't worth it. Before I get into the nitty girtty, I do want to point out that the lower brigand marked with 3 stars is present only in maniac and above, whole the northern S.T.A.R.S. member only appears in lunatic Here is the map on maniac as a frame of reference: The lunatic brigand doesn't change much though, as he doesn't move with the others on turn 1. Really, he's just extra xp. Note: Brigand M/L: 29/31-32 HP 22/27 ATCK 9/10 AS 2 DEF Hand Axe Brigand M/L: 16/17 ATCK Hunter M/L: 25/27 HP 16/21-22 ATCK 8-9/9 AS 2 DEF note: Maniac hunters will rarely spawn with 8 STR, while lunatic hunters have a 50/50 chance of gaining +1 STR from maniac. Similarly, they have 8.4 speed on maniac, and a flat 9 speed on lunatic. On lunatic, the thief that spawns at the cave will have a forged levin sword as opposed to the standard silver upgrade from his steel sword counterpart in maniac. Besides the one thief, there are no reinforcements in this map. If you use Malicia, you are boring Brigands gain no might bonus from their A rank weapon bonus, as axe rank only gives you increased hit rate Lorenz will drop a mend for being talked to. This does not happen if you kill him instead. I noticed that FE Wiki org has a crap ton of info on FE12, so I might just screenshot enemy stats and map images for next time, if that's okay with everyone. I'll still try to write my own notes and such. Still tryna figure out how I wanna format these map reviews, since it's my first time making posts that aren't just rants. Benchmark M/L Stats: 17/18 ATCK to 1RKO most enemies 12/13 STR with iron sword (male/reclassed cav Kris is common for this) 8/9 STR with steel sword (swordmaster Arran lol) 10 STR with steel lance on lunatic(19-1 from WT disadvantage penalty), but hit rates may not be in your favor 15/16 ATCK to 1RKO just the hunters 13/14 AS to double and meet 1RKO capability 6/7 AS to not f**king die. Don't be an armor. The most obvious takeaway from this stats of this chapter is the sheer might of lunatic brigands. They have 27 whole might. Half of the 7th platoon get one shot. This is a chapter that is much different from maniac to lunatic, and the main reason for this basically is just the added strength. It might sound like common sense, but as I've said in the previous reply to Jotari, much of what makes lunatic difficult comes from external factors. This chapter just happens to be one where the focus is self defense against monstrous strength with a bag of marshmallows. Although stats are only increased by 1 on average, the usage of silver weapon this early adds +4 strength to practically all enemies. Given that most enemies gain +1 STR, this means everyone will have at least 5 more attack on lunatic than they do on maniac. Lastly, maniac enemies will spend a good chunk of the game with weapon ranks of B, and A on lunatic. For most weapons, this increase will give them +1 might, so they'll now have +6 might, something you can potentially see through the hunters. Brigands will only have +5 might though, as axes are the only weapon type to gain no might from weapon rank bonuses. However, they WILL gain +1 might if you are using lances against them, so keep that in mind. Here's how weapon ranks work in DSFE (and 3DSFE technically): Weapon Rank Bonuses: Swords: [C]+1 might +2 might [A] +3 might Lance/Tome/Bow: [C]+1 might +1 might, 5 hit [A] +2 might, 5 hit Axe: [C] +5 hit 10 hit [A] 15 hit Units who have an A rank proficiency with a given weapon type and battle with the WT advantage will gain +1 might alongside your previous bonuses. Conversely, units who have a WT disadvantage against someone who has an A rank proficiency will lose -1 might during battle. Units who have the WT disadvantage gain none of the advantages given to them by their weapon rank bonuses, so sword fighters with A rank swords attacking a D rank lance unit will lose the +3 might bonus, but will not suffer the -1 penalty, nor will they take increased damage themselves There's technically a staff bonus, but it's largely irrelevant. Actual Damn Review: This is a test of managing enemies attempting to rush you before you are overwhelmed, something that will happen often throughout the game. Luckily, FE12 is a game with a lower quantity of enemies, so you'll never experience something like Awakening enemy rushing...most of the time. Enemies are positioned in a way where you can typically kill the western most brigand while avoiding the range of most other enemies sans center boy. You might be able to deal chip damage against 2 brigands on maniac, but not on lunatic, where you'll only have some units capable of surviving even 1 brigand. The map may seem overwhelming at first, but given how incredibly low their defense is, an all out assault on turn 2 is much more feasible than on SD H5, where it feels like you need 4-5 units just to kill 1 enemy, unless you're Caeda or Jeigan. Reclassing will be your best friend, as the 7th platoon in their base class will hardly accomplish anything. Here's additional notes pertaining to said team: Merc Draug hap 22 HP and 5 defense. He dies exactly in one hit to brigands. Vannila stat Armor Draug on maniac will take 11 * 2 damage. He has 22 HP. Unlucky. Pirate Draug has 13 AS, meaning he can immediately double at base on maniac, but gets one shot on lunatic. Fighter Draug will barely survive. Untrained Luke and Rody will die in one hit as every class on lunatic. They are are best off reclassed as ranged unit such as mages or archers/hunters for this chapter on lunatic, ESPECIALLY ON REVERSE LUNATIC. Myrm Gordin has 13 AS, meaning he can double on maniac, but only has 21 HP and 6 DEF, so use him as a merc instead if you're on lunatic and you already have other units who are using bows If you keep Gordin as a bow user, consider reclassing him into a hunter, as he gets doubled and 1RKO'd on lunatic with his 6 AS, but will barely survive as a hunter with 8 AS and 23 HP/5 DEF. This is debatably pointless though, as he preferably shouldn't be within anyone's range on turn 1, and you're hopefully capable of killing remainders the next turn, but I've been in situations calling for it before. Even if you trained Cecile, she's probably getting OHKO'd. If your goal is just to beat the game on a higher difficulty, I'd recommend not giving her kills and relying on a unit such as cav Catria for your lady sword user, but if you're incredibly based really want to train Cecile, I'd honestly recommend making her your mage. She has incredibly high growths as one and her lack of a defense growth means very little in lunatic when she's going to die in one hit regardless. At the very least, she can deal slight chip damage for this chapter as opposed to just standing there in the back doing nothing (I made her a cleric in my current ironman and she's promoted now with 15 MAG and 21 AS in chapter 7). General Arran will do a decent job tanking the brigands and dealing heavy damage with his silver lance if your Kris is too frail to attack and survive the western brigand followed by the center one's enemy phase attack. On maniac, he will be able to tank most attacks with ease and can trivialize the later half of the stage but elitists will tell you draco Arran is better despite not doubling or surviving 2 attacks on luna Sniper Arran has 13 AS (maniac threshold) and swordmaster Arran can use a steel sword to 1RKO maniac brigands or lunatic brigands with a +1 forge. To me, a lot of fun in this chapter comes from finally being able to reclass, and seeing how doing so can greatly affect your odds of survival on any given circumstances. In this chapter, reaching thresholds to not get insta-killed is the priority, and having at least one tank is practically a necessity, which can either be achieved through Kris or Arran. I find dealing with the brigands to be pretty fun. It's not the worst thing in the world despite what a first glance might lead you to believe in a game without any skills or combat arts to turn the tides with. As long as you don't panic, the first segment should not pose as a major threat. I personally much prefer this chapter on lunatic, where my actions matter much more given the punishment of not following in Dimitri's footsteps. That and it's really easy to solo the chapter with Kris and General Arran on maniac. Lunatic bumps the one stat needed to throw a wrench in your plans of steamrolling without making enemies excessively tanky or overabundant in number. That first western brigand I keep mentioning? I've had runs where I kill him with just Kris, attack with Arran and throw a cav to finish him off, use mage Cecil and Gordion to chip from a distance to then kill with Kris while forming my western half squad in a way that prevented the brigand from reaching Cecile (he went after Draug instead of Gordin due to technically dealing more raw damage). I really like the particular placement of the brigands for this chapter. They're just spread out far enough to where they don't all reach you simultaneously and force you to just wait for them, but they can't be cherry picked one by one. You need to make sure you know what you're doing when you're positioning your units on the prep screen. I like the initial challenge. Of course, this is all strictly mentioning the first portion of the chapter. The 2nd half, on lunaitc....is kinda shit. Multiple enemies await near Lorenz to ambush you when you get too close. One of the best things you can do is have general Arran get close enough one turn, then rush straight into the fort with a vuln at hand. You can begin moving the rest of your team closer to rush the enemy when the time is right. However, given the sheer might of enemies on lunatic, Arran will only be able to hold the line for so long. 2 brigand strikes is all it'll take for him to be in critical condition. Luckily, he can live another turn with the fort healing plus a vuln, but he's not going to clear the way by then, even with a silver lance. It's also worth cirticizing that on lunatic, Arran already risks being killed by a 1% crit, which is stupid. It's incredibly difficult to run in at any time with how many of them huddle up next to Arran, and using Arran's turn to attack first has a very high likelihood of him dying given that it's basically impossible to ALL of them in one attack phase, and whoever is left past Arran and the fort is almost guaranteed to die from the remaining brigands/hunters. There certainly is strategy to how you can go about ensuring that you kill and position in a way that blocks other brigands from reaching the same unit while you have a healer heal Arran and the healer is now protected from 2 range given the new units in front, and I do give more credit to this part of the stage nowadays being able to reliably pull this off in my current ironman, but I can't say I didn't feel this part was incredibly hectic and gave me trial and error vibes my first 2 lunatic runs. Don't even get me started on reverse. I do feel like I'm a little more inclined to say that this was just skill issue on my part, and I kinda like playing this bit now, but I can't say I ever look forward to "the part where Arran chokes the point" in my runs. I just don't dislike it anymore. Certainly better doing this crap that walking 500 miles through the damn rainforest in FE3. It's an okay segment, and the annoyance of repeatedly dying here is made up by the fact that there's a save circle right before it. Good game design. Where the fuck where you in Conquest? Too bad Lorenz doesn't explode anymore? Why? That's the best part of FE3. It's so over. edit: never use colons in serenes. Rating: 7/10 Reveal hidden contents It's a good map. Not a great map. But a good one. I would've said 6.5 a few years back, but I've grown to appreciate it a little more over time. It's certainly better than tank emblem of fe11 ch1 followed by the man who sold the hand axe. It's fun in maniac where you have a little more breathing room with training the 7th platoon and more options to reach doubling thresholds like with myrm Gordin or pirate Draug, but I like the intense pacing and action of lunatic more here. Fun chapter overall. Not incredibly challenging, but it keeps you on your toes. *Oh I'm not at all defending 20/20 endgame Jeigan; the second enemy in the game as a design decision. It's absolutely horrid game design to have something so basic be such a road block. I'm just saying it's not actually a "softlock" if he can miss. Which is difference in design terms. An unreasonably difficult enemy where you basically have to get lucky to win. That's bad, scummy, Thracia stafflike etc. But a softlock, that's something else, that's embarrassing. Developers aren't meant to make their games literally unplayable. Virtually unplayable, yes, but literally unplayable, no, they go to efforts to stop that (though Fire Emblem has a series has never tried to work around the soft lock of selling all of your weapons and then buying and reselling at a loss until you have no money and no weapons). *I actually implemented Lunatic Reverse as the hard mode for my Pyrathi game. Haven't actually played through it on that setting to see how much of a nightmare it is, but since it actually has the same stats as normal mode I figure it's doable, just more interesting. *If the map were a legit defend map with Katarina moving only on turn 10/12, then not only would that work better for gameplay, but it'd be nice for the plot's gameplay story integration too, since you wouldn't have to reduce Katarina's HP to zero and then not kill her. She could simply run away with a full HP bar. Also, hello, how many guards did she drug. Marth has a whole kingdom here. Surely some more guards can come to his rescue in 12 turns. *I'd be more tolerable of reusing Roger's one joke if he had literally anything else going for him as a character. Recruitment in these early games with no supports is important as it tells you who these people are. Repeating the joke is just spoiling the potential to do something different with Roger (oh wait, this game does have supports, wherein Roger only supports with Kris and it's just the same goddamn joke again). Edited March 9 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saint Rubenio Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 22 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: Too bad Lorenz doesn't explode anymore? Why? That's the best part of FE3. It's so over. FE12 is a prequel to FE3 book 2, you can tell because dynamite hasn't been invented yet. 21 hours ago, Jotari said: (though Fire Emblem has a series has never tried to work around the soft lock of selling all of your weapons and then buying and reselling at a loss until you have no money and no weapons). I was going to say this is like complaining the developers of Super Mario Bros didn't account for the posibility of a player taping down the right D-PAD button and losing all their lives to the first goomba, but then I realized... no, that just means the game restarts. What you say just straight up kills a run if you do it lmao. I mean, I understand working on the assumption that nobody's going to be so funny as to do that, but... Sheesh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 (edited) 3 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: FE12 is a prequel to FE3 book 2, you can tell because dynamite hasn't been invented yet. I was going to say this is like complaining the developers of Super Mario Bros didn't account for the posibility of a player taping down the right D-PAD button and losing all their lives to the first goomba, but then I realized... no, that just means the game restarts. What you say just straight up kills a run if you do it lmao. I mean, I understand working on the assumption that nobody's going to be so funny as to do that, but... Sheesh. I lie though, Awakening had some redundancy in this regard my always ensuring you have Chrom and his unbreakable Falchion. So theoretically you could always win a skirmish or spot pass with him to get money to buy more weapons. And of course, Gaiden/SoV doesn't let you sell weapons at all. Fates also has unbreakable weapons and presumably the unsellable Yato and Dragonstone (and every chapter before you get them new characters join with weapons? I think?) and likewise you probably can't sell Liberation and wouldn't have an opportunity to suicide your run before getting it in Engage. But, yeah, for most of most games it should be theoretically possible to just end your save file by donating all your money to the armourer by giving him back all his weapons until you have no money or weapons. Radiant Dawn does let you make unbreakable weapons, but only for its last few chapters. It'd be rather hilarious to play for so long and then just annihilate yourself before Deghensea (though do you have access to shopping in the tower? Maybe you'd have to do so earlier). Ike would still exist with Ragnell, but I'm not sure how viable doing the endgame as an Ike one weapon solo is. Especially if you've sold all your elixirs and let your passive healing Heron (and Elincia with Amiti) die. Edited March 10 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X-Naut Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 On 3/8/2024 at 7:24 PM, Shaky Jones said: If Caeda can get away with recruiting dozens of men behind his bride's back, I don't think she cares about manipulating the results of Marth's personal recruited army To be fair, the prologue's sequence of events reads better if you imagine Kris as Jagen's nepo baby 🤪 In the case of P-8, I can see the argument that the map might be too overbearing but there is absolutely incentive to push back, it's called "not dying." And it's a lot more dynamic than most defense maps where you pick the points to choke; you have to manage a line that constantly shifts, leveraging your one healer, remaining vulneraries and even the throne while still killing the intruders because they will likely KO a weakened unit if they reach the next enemy phase. Could it be improved? You bet, and you could even change it up drastically... On 3/8/2024 at 7:58 PM, Jotari said: *If the map were a legit defend map with Katarina moving only on turn 10/12, then not only would that work better for gameplay, but it'd be nice for the plot's gameplay story integration too, since you wouldn't have to reduce Katarina's HP to zero and then not kill her. She could simply run away with a full HP bar. Also, hello, how many guards did she drug. Marth has a whole kingdom here. Surely some more guards can come to his rescue in 12 turns. Like this right here. It could be a much more suspenseful map if you dropped the prep screen, dropped the tutor units and made it just Marth and the platoon holding out until familiar faces join as reinforcements. It'd take a big overhaul and very careful design to avoid a softlock though, especially if platoonmates got KO'd earlier. And the drugging bit is why I don't like how the tutor units are handled, specifically the senior knights. Two are the "wrong" choice in the vague chapter splits, they're being matched or even outdone by their juniors so quickly, they do jack for the narrative after you recruit them and do jack at all if you don't. (Cain being a generic drill sergeant notwithstanding) It's like the devs are intentionally making them look bad to make the new guys look better. Anyway, narrative grievances aside. I was sort of hoping you'd keep posting more than one at a time but it's your thread, you do what you do. I'll just group my chapter replies as I see fit, and Chapter 1 stands out enough to get its own post. I think this chapter's a tad too overtuned for the "first" chapter. You said it yourself, Gordin and Draug get ORKO'd by Barbarians at base without reclassing and the entire 7th Platoon save for certain Kris builds get OHKO'd or one-rounded as a Knight. Draug even gets one-rounded on Maniac! I'm amazed the Hunter one-rounds no one by comparison, and Chapter 2 sees average enemy Atk dial back a point or two. It further emphasizes the scaling problem Kris introduced, and while the prologue gave you a taste this is where the game more or less tells you it's here to stay. I also think silvers could have been added more gradually. P-8 sprinkled a few on select enemies, keep doing the same here and slowly work your way up to full silvers by Chapter 5 or 6. Midgame could also use this approach and sprinkle in a few silver forges earlier but we're a long way from Anri's Way. At least more map space and reclassing softens the problem. Also glad they cleared that clot of mountains blocking the pass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted March 11 Author Share Posted March 11 Replies: Spoiler On 3/8/2024 at 4:58 PM, Jotari said: *Oh I'm not at all defending 20/20 endgame Jeigan; the second enemy in the game as a design decision. It's absolutely horrid game design to have something so basic be such a road block. I'm just saying it's not actually a "softlock" if he can miss. Which is difference in design terms. An unreasonably difficult enemy where you basically have to get lucky to win. That's bad, scummy, Thracia stafflike etc. But a softlock, that's something else, that's embarrassing. Developers aren't meant to make their games literally unplayable. Virtually unplayable, yes, but literally unplayable, no, they go to efforts to stop that (though Fire Emblem has a series has never tried to work around the soft lock of selling all of your weapons and then buying and reselling at a loss until you have no money and no weapons). Some wish to respect the literal definitions of words and the primary purpose of its meaning. I only care about the practicality of words, as that is the fate of gen Z. Killing the definition of words. If the run isn't realistically doable without an unimageable degree of rigging that no player would be willing to subject themselves to, it might as well be considered a softlock. When maps lead to a 50/50 shot based off rng, it's annoying, but you can just deal with it. When it's well over 95% against you, it's not even worth considering, as it's much better to just make a different Kris and the point is clear that you generally can't get away with your build. It might as well be labeled "impossible", even if resetting 30 times for a dodge isn't completely out of the realms of possibility. You're not going to tell a friend "just spend 1 hour resetting until you get lucky". Virtually unplayable and literally unplayable are both essentially the same degree of garbage in my eyes. Even virtually means they've failed in every aspect and get a 0/10 in game balance there. I'm not giving credit to sprinkled poop over regular poop. I'm still puking. On 3/8/2024 at 4:58 PM, Jotari said: I actually implemented Lunatic Reverse as the hard mode for my Pyrathi game. Haven't actually played through it on that setting to see how much of a nightmare it is, but since it actually has the same stats as normal mode I figure it's doable, just more interesting. No playtesting. You really are an IS employee waiting to be hired. On 3/8/2024 at 4:58 PM, Jotari said: If the map were a legit defend map with Katarina moving only on turn 10/12, then not only would that work better for gameplay, but it'd be nice for the plot's gameplay story integration too, since you wouldn't have to reduce Katarina's HP to zero and then not kill her. She could simply run away with a full HP bar. Also, hello, how many guards did she drug. Marth has a whole kingdom here. Surely some more guards can come to his rescue in 12 turns. It'd be better for sure, but I'd likely also make some tweaks to added reinforcements, and probably prevent the the silver axe guy serving as a trigger, letting turn 10 alone make the map move, so you can be actually incentivized to start heading down beforehand to prevent making the last 3 turns you vs a dozen brigands. On 3/8/2024 at 4:58 PM, Jotari said: I'd be more tolerable of reusing Roger's one joke if he had literally anything else going for him as a character. Recruitment in these early games with no supports is important as it tells you who these people are. Repeating the joke is just spoiling the potential to do something different with Roger (oh wait, this game does have supports, wherein Roger only supports with Kris and it's just the same goddamn joke again). In Roger's case, that's the point. They want to reaffirm that they really did just make him the simp, and that's honestly just as funny to canonize. There's plenty of other characters though where they really dropped the ball and underutilized potential character depth. Roger just happens to be the one guy where it really is better to just double down. It's why he's techincally one of the more popular Archanea characters. It's an iconic bit. That said, he should've had more supports, but I probably would've made them all equally as "joke-ish". Basically just supports with random girls that he sucks to flirt with, or have him support with Marth, being the inverse of the Malicia Caeda support. There's one thing that irks me though. How dare you not give my boy a happy ending? He's basically just branded as "forever alone" in some variation, and even fe12 just goes "yeah he dies alone lol". It'd be one thing if he had some chad arc where he realizes there's more to life than women, but no. His ending still states that he always wanted love. He just didn't get it. That's not very nice. Roger's my boy. 21 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: FE12 is a prequel to FE3 book 2, you can tell because dynamite hasn't been invented yet. You know Ruben, while I discuss everything great about FE12 maps, you should make your own thread about everything shit in FE3! 2 sides of the same coin, as they say. After all, who better to go into details of every little flaw of beloved title Mystery of the Emblem than Mr "FE1 Is Leagues Above Shitstery of the Badblem That I Would Personally Choke to Death With my Bare Hands if it Was a Person I Fucking HATE This Game!". It's true, he really said all that. 21 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: I was going to say this is like complaining the developers of Super Mario Bros didn't account for the posibility of a player taping down the right D-PAD button and losing all their lives to the first goomba, but then I realized... no, that just means the game restarts. What you say just straight up kills a run if you do it lmao. I mean, I understand working on the assumption that nobody's going to be so funny as to do that, but... Sheesh. Before you know it, they're gonna bring back Phoenix mode, but having no weapons turns you into an actual Phoenix with Tibarn's stats. 2 hours ago, X-Naut said: In the case of P-8, I can see the argument that the map might be too overbearing but there is absolutely incentive to push back, it's called "not dying." And it's a lot more dynamic than most defense maps where you pick the points to choke; you have to manage a line that constantly shifts, leveraging your one healer, remaining vulneraries and even the throne while still killing the intruders because they will likely KO a weakened unit if they reach the next enemy phase. Could it be improved? You bet, and you could even change it up drastically... It's too easy of a chapter compared to the rest. There really isn't much incentive. You really do just sit on top and make a wall occasionally. Honestly, trying to pull certain enemies during the reinforcements often feels like a self imposed challenge that doesn't actually help me at all, as I really can just do that after reinforcements. It's boring. It's not a good defend map. The choke points elements are a lot more defined in how you split and switch things up in maps like CQ ch10 or Elincia's Gambit. This map is just needlessly basic and only fits the definition of a defense map by the context of the story, but quite literally is not a defend map, nor does it feel like one other than the boring part of standing still. I just wish that brigand that pulls everyone wasn't place near the top. I like being able to start pushing downwards in CQ10 to make my life easier before turn 7 happens. if it was that the moment you went below the top chokepoint, Takumi immediately destroyed the water and the entire map ran at you, the chapter would suck, at least to some degree. 2 hours ago, X-Naut said: Like this right here. It could be a much more suspenseful map if you dropped the prep screen, dropped the tutor units and made it just Marth and the platoon holding out until familiar faces join as reinforcements. It'd take a big overhaul and very careful design to avoid a softlock though, especially if platoonmates got KO'd earlier. It's a big ask, but cool in theory. I still like using the tutor units and love the way the stats feel fine tuned around them, with the option of trying to train 1 or 2 7th platoon members of your choice throughout to make them viable for the main campaign to be pretty cool in relative to gameplay factors, but I suppose it's rather silly narratively. Never been a story guy, so I don't really care at the end of the day. 2 hours ago, X-Naut said: And the drugging bit is why I don't like how the tutor units are handled, specifically the senior knights. Two are the "wrong" choice in the vague chapter splits, they're being matched or even outdone by their juniors so quickly, they do jack for the narrative after you recruit them and do jack at all if you don't. (Cain being a generic drill sergeant notwithstanding) It's like the devs are intentionally making them look bad to make the new guys look better. I only really see Gordin as the wrong choice. Cain's pretty good for p8, and while Est isn't amazing, she can do her job and at least has res against the mages and levin sword thieves. Draug's fine, but the idea is that Ogma's chapter is supposed to be more rewarding as a trade off for being harder, so it's fair to me. I don't think there's any intentional nerfing. It's just poor balance around Kris being OP. Cain has great bases for P8, and I've never seen non Kris units surpass him by then. He mainly got screwed over by sucking when he returns in ch8. He'd work out better somewhere in ch5 or so, but I wouldn't know how to narratively fit him there. Kris probably could've been balanced more if certain prologue maps didn't let you use him. You'd basically need tutor units then so you're not just stuck with pure scrubs "ch5 could work well off training grounds". In a hypothetical where Katarina was temporarily playable, she could help your units out not make certain lunatic prologues nearly impossible while not turning everything into Kris Emblem, but maybe she'd occasionally lead Kris elsewhere while the 7th platoon is forced to face off against assassins who are saved in the nick of time by tutor units or something. I'm just kinda throwing ideas at random here, but I'd mainly just say there has to be a way to make Kris less mandatory and make Cain not as shit in the main campaign, but other than that, I like the functionality of the prologue. 3 hours ago, X-Naut said: Anyway, narrative grievances aside. I was sort of hoping you'd keep posting more than one at a time but it's your thread, you do what you do. I'll just group my chapter replies as I see fit, and Chapter 1 stands out enough to get its own post. I was originally gonna do that, but then these posts would only come out every other week. I'm very slow when it comes to making posts. If I rushed it, you'd get "Hey guys, here's chapter 1. Enemies hit hard. Reclass your units! General Arran is good. The map is good.". That's it. I want this thread to serve as an in depth analysis of each map and how well they work. People don't give these maps enough credit imo, and enemy stats feel so...perfect to me that I want to explain how they're more than "unfair stat bloat". That my friend, is called "skill issue". Play a lower difficulty. This isn't 3H. And of course, there's absolutely abysmal maps that deserve a full on Shaky Jones TM rant. We all know what map is coming up. So yeah. Sorry about the slow pacing, but it's for everyone's good. If I threw slop. I'd be supporting quantity over quality. This is New Mystery, not Blazing Blade. I will add multiple posts when it comes to gaiden maps though. I might also do more than one main map if I find there isn't much to say about them, but don't bet I'll do that much, if at all. 3 hours ago, X-Naut said: I think this chapter's a tad too overtuned for the "first" chapter. You said it yourself, Gordin and Draug get ORKO'd by Barbarians at base without reclassing and the entire 7th Platoon save for certain Kris builds get OHKO'd or one-rounded as a Knight. Draug even gets one-rounded on Maniac! I'm amazed the Hunter one-rounds no one by comparison, and Chapter 2 sees average enemy Atk dial back a point or two. It further emphasizes the scaling problem Kris introduced, and while the prologue gave you a taste this is where the game more or less tells you it's here to stay. While I do think it's a little silly that base class Draug gets 1RKO'd on maniac (I think they should've given him 1 more defense), I enjoy the element of hard hitting player phasing that's required on lunatic. While it's a lot at a first glance, there's always been something fascinating to me about early game silvers. Like "wow, I'm gonna overcome silvers!". I feel accomplished when I beat these maps. After all, lunatic mode promotes itself as "the highest difficulty the series has to provide". Not even the game. The whole ass franchise. Maniac keeps the general premise of hard hitting enemies while not being overbearing, so if the potential OHKO's bother you, then you're likely better off with maniac mode. I find it to be a more of a matter of preference than maniac ch1 being good and lunatic ch1 being bad. Compare this chapter to ch2 of 3 Houses on maddening. Technically, it's easier because enemies don't all 1RKO you. They come pretty darn close though, and most of your team are all basic 4 move units who basically have 0 AS while enemies have a whopping 9 to 11! That's actual stat bloat. It becomes worse because all that speed, skill, and luck causes them to have good avoid, so you often struggle to even land hits, so it becomes almost rng reliant. You'd want to use gambits, but then you'll have 45 hit with them. Archers hit from way too far away and you're too early in the game to have a counter for it, as you can't just reclass to an archer. If you think you're clever by unequipping Byleth's sword to gain AS and not get doubled anymore, now they have a crit chance against you, as the 30% growth increase essentially gives all enemies good crit chance, and the only way to avoid that is through the proficiency skill that reduced crit avoid. An actual skill you need to waste a slot on. By the lategame, even that won't be enough. Enemies will just have 50+ crit, and there's very little you can do against it other than turtling with the rafael gem or ochain shield. Back to ch2, it's stupidly long, and enemies are very repetitive in a pattern of 3 to 4 enemies right next to each other thrown at you 4 times or so, and that's the map. Many people hate the lack of a Jeigan or anyone with good move or defense to counter the speedy poison strike enemies. It's just really annoying. Tedious at best. FE12 doesn't do that. The threat is large, but you can work against it. You can kill them without waiting them out and hoping you land low hit chances. You have units like Arran to tank them or 1RKO them depending on your team or what you want from it. The enemy's spread is big enough to where you can chip some of them before becoming ovwrwhelmed with proper positioning. You can use high move units and such to ensure your reach is big enough to wipe out the turn 2 brigands instead of just running backwards a lot like in other high difficulty early maps like Awakening or 3H. It feels brutal, but fair. It still feels fun to work around. Again, it's opiniated, and it's fair to not like the thought that you can get OHKO'd. That's why maniac exists. It's still challenging, but doesn't try to completely push you to your limit. That's the point of lunatic mode. And then you play lunatic so much that you then use shit builds on it and somehow still overcome it and you feel like you transcended. Man, I love this stupid questionably balanced game. I will say this though. Give 1 more defense to Draug, and 1 more speed to Gordin. It'd help a lot for this chapter and makes reclassing just a tad less necessary. Also, it'd make people possibly consider actually using Gordin. I like the Kaga approach of making it sudden during an arc change. Enemies will get weaker than what you see in ch1 at least, so you're less likely to get 1RKO'd for a while at least, not counting mages and such. Sometimes I've thought of enemies getting silvers by ch7 to display a change from the arc in which you've worked under and killed Lang, with maybe Lang's chapter himself being full of silvers to make the boss chapter stand out more, but I've grown too fond of the silvers in the first 4 chapters to desire that anymore. 3 hours ago, X-Naut said: At least more map space and reclassing softens the problem. Also glad they cleared that clot of mountains blocking the pass. I like how people shit on FE12 for the prologue making the start of an FE12 run kind of a slog, but book 2 just gives you a fucking forest in chapter 1 followed by chapter 3. Heck, even chapter 2 and 4 have a lot of walking, but given how much slower fe3 runs, it's a lot more noticeable there. "I swear it gets better" is something I've heard and said many times, about both games. If you don't mind, what would you rank chapter 1 from a proper scale. 1/10, F-S tier, etc (preferably 1/10 because it's what I'm currently doing). Just curious how others might feel in comparison to my own rankings. If you're fine with that, maybe I can average out how often others' opinion differed from my own, and by what margin did it range at? Maybe it'll average out to -.5 throughout a sea of -1 balanced by the occasional +2 that others might simply like way more than me (I don't see that happening though). What will the largest outlier be? Probably still prologue 3, but maybe it turns out I'm the only chapter 12 fan. Chapter 2: Macedon't Have Kids Spoiler Note: The 2 Dracoknights next to Rumel are only present in lunatic Otherwise, the map is the same In the original Mystery Of The Emblem, the ladysword dropped by the thief dealt effective damage towards brigands/pirates/etc and other thieves. given the accessibility of an E rank silver sword in a game where one can reclass whenever they wish, this was likely considered a fair trade off 3 units are recruited this chapter: Catria, Warren, and CORD THE LORD Catria: 22 HP 7 STR 2 MAG 8 SKL 14 SPD 9 LCK 8 DEF 6 RES [C rank lances] joins automatically at the start of the chapter and thus cannot be reclassed until next chapter can 1RKO hunters and soldiers at base with a steel lance on maniac if given one Warren: 22 HP 7 STR 5 SKL 8 SPD 1 LCK 4 DEF 0 RES talk to her with Catria. someone please tell me the lore between these two. there has to be a manga or interview that explains please please ple- Cord: 22 HP 9 STR 7 SKL 8 SPD 5 LCK 5 DEF Average DSFE RES [E rank axes] enter the village to win the game If you didn't use Cord, you didn't actually play New Mystery. Enemy Stats: (Taken From FE Wiki Org) Maniac: Dracoknight: 20 Might Sword Cavalier: 22-(23) Might Lance Cavalier: 18-(19) Might Soldier: 16-17 Might Hunter: (16)-17 Might Average Might: 17 and 19 (18 total, but separated as cavs often attack in 2nd half vs hunters and soldiers) Sword Cavs hit hard, but can be reduced to 20 if using lances. Arran can tank with with relative ease in most lace focused classes Draco Arran helps a lot against the massive forest in the center as well as reaching the escaping thief, but he will then be susceptible to the hunters General Arran can defeat most enemies without much trouble, but will struggle to reach the thief and will need aide to kill them Average Speed: 9 and 10 Doubling Threshold: 13-14 Speed 7th platoon members are unlikely to face being 1RKO'd, however an untrained Rody left as a cavalier will be doubled by hunters and soldiers. Luke does not have this issue. Base Gordin will also be doubled, but he'll be fine as a hunter, retaining his bow rank for the wyverns. Lunatic: Axe Dracoknight: 24-(25) Might Lance Dracoknight: 25-(26) Might Sword Cavalier: 24-25 Might Lance Cavalier: 24-25 Might Soldier: 23-24 Might Hunter: 21-22 Might Average Might: 25 Hunters are the weaker outlier Average Speed: 9 and 11 Doubling Threshold: 13 and 15 15 is unlikely even for Kris (if not Merc/Myrm class). 13 is more common on him, and even potentially on Marth if given many thief kills on P8 for cav rapier 7th Platoon Minimum Speed: 6 to 8 The cavalry likely won't 1RKO the 7th platoon at base anymore, but the soldiers and hunters can very much double them with 11 AS if the units have not been trained or reclassed. If you wish to use the 7th platoon, it's intended that you have trained them at least a little beforehand. However, you certainly can use them in alternative classes and they can easily catch up, but this particular chapter mainly helps if you have mounts or bow users. Review: The main difference between this chapter and the last for me is the reduction of enemy might from 27 to 25. It might not sounds like much, but that 2 might difference is often what keeps most of the 7th platoon from being OHKO'd. This is why I believe the incredibly large strength of the brigands was intentionally made to one shot you by EXACT damage. You won't really see those numbers again until chapter 4, which by then you'll have likely gained quite a few level ups and will have replaced members you're not training with new units who fare off just fine against later enemies. For maniac, the enemies won't be capable of killing anyone besides certain possible mage reclasses, and even then, a level up or two in ch1 can change that. However, the first wave of enemies in this chapter can be somewhat fast, at least for your starting crew that may or may not have been trained throughout the prologue. For lunatic, you can still risk getting 1RKO'd if they can double you, but I don't consider the odds of it to be too high. Hunters can and should be killed on player phase, so their speed should be irreverent, aside from your own bow users in which hunter Gordin has 8 AS, meaning he won't be doubled. Cavaliers are somewhat slow, so they shouldn't pose the largest threat. Dracoknights are made to be fast and you're only meant to bait them with your stronger units. They're not fast enough to double any form of Arran at least. Given that they all fly towards you at the same time, failing to kill them on the following player phase most likely means you're dead regardless. As such, I don't consider the high speed to be a death sentence for the 7th platoon. If anything, the introduction of dracoknights for this chapter and the following one help a lot as last minute xp dump for any 7th platoon members you'd like to train. Soldiers are probably the main annoying enemy for the 6 people that want to train Roderick. Luke only needs 1 speed as a cav to avoid being doubled. Cord has enough speed to avoid getting doubled by all but the boss. Catria is fast, fast enough to double cavaliers and even most other enemies in the map on maniac. I reckon the +1 speed on lunatic mainly serves to nerf Catria early on given how stupidly busted she is in this game. Strategy-wise, the biggest challenge the map poses is the possibility of every enemy forming a "We Hate Marth" club, most likely fueled by their Smash Bros addiction. That is to say, the soldiers and cavaliers all begin to run towards the same direction while all within each other's range. Chances are, even Kris won't be able to survive all of that. It would take a lot of retreating to kill them without dying, and then you would miss the ladyblade, an item that proves to be incredibly valuable in higher difficulties. The map has a large forest in the center with two possible pathways: left and right. Use them. The thief may be escaping towards towards the left end of the map, but sending everyone that way will only ensure your doom. The player needs to decide who to send in each direction as to split the enemies apart on their search for the almighty Cord. You can also run through the center of the map as to have some of the hunters and soldiers run into the forest as to slow them down, although you'd need to be careful as not to trap your own units, especially if the cavaliers reach near the bottom of the forest from the east before everyone has made it out. There's multiple ways to split your army, but just don't rush everyone in one direction. In that sense, I enjoy playing the chapter, as the AI for me has went through multiple split paths, leading to very few runs feeling the same for this chapter. It's about manipulating the enemy into splitting up, followed up by adapting to the situation. I also appreciate that the chapter introduces the importance of effective weaponry. The cavaliers can be a real threat to your team with their high move, but Marth's rapier can make short work of them, or however the saying goes. The dracos naturally play a big role in the chapter, hence why you're given Ryan, Gordin, and Warren so early on. It's nice. I like it. Combine that with the incredibly low defense FE12 enemies have, and this chapter plays nothing like FE11 H5 early game. The overall pacing during actual gameplay is much better and less slow (it takes so long to kill enemies in H5 without extensive aide before forging). It's a shame that the pacing is slightly ruined by the end where Marth pointlessly has to walk up to the throne, which takes like 3 extra turns from when you kill the boss, but at least DSFE is generally fast, so it'll only take like 12 seconds. If there's one major gripe I have with this chapter, it's hit rate. The hunters will usually start running straight down through the forest and it's easy to reach them with your own hunters to potentially finish off with other units. However, they're in a forest, meaning they'll have a solid chance to dodge. Many times, I get frustrated because I constantly miss against them even though the hit rates are far better than what you'd see in a game like FE6. Steel bows generally won't have the best hit, especially this early on. Even if you forge hit rate, which you should, you're going to have a solid chance of just missing, and there's not much you can do from there. I find the chapter in theory to be really fun when you engage the hunters in the forest, and the soldiers/cavaliers through the western and eastern half of the map, but it basically boils down to "will you hit the hunters?". I can see the argument for this signifying that you're meant to let them leave the forest first, but that personally just sounds really boring and by then, a lot of enemies will have already caught up if not destroyed by Kris, and I'd rather not give the entire map to them. The main annoying part is dealing with the dracos. On paper, the dracos are really cool. There's 5 of them on lunatic, and you have Gordin and Warren to use steel bows against, potentially Ryan as well, and even Arran can use bows as a sniper or general. Assuming you've made at least one bow forge, you can attempt to deal significant damage to them with forged steel bow followed by a conga line of trading to ensure the 3 middle dracos are at minimal HP to then feed to the units of your choosing while your stronger units find out how to kill the western and eastern most dracos with minimal aide, especially considering they're too far apart to reach with units who stood at the center. It's fun to plan out and in many runs, do play out really well. However, much like with the hunters, it relies on your bows hitting. If you miss, you lost. They will kill you. It's the same problem you can have with ch7 of FE6 hard mode, although much less severe given that you can at least partially mitigate the odds of missing due to forging, and you can also use the save circles to not be forced to redo the entire map. It is rather annoying to deal with on an ironman though, but I don't expect the game to be specifically built around that though, so I won't be too harsh in this regard. There certainly were instances where I miss one bow attack and still manage to kill them all, but there always does seem to be at least a little bit of RNG reliance, given that dracos have somewhat decent avoid, and for some reason Warren only has 5 skill (it should've been 9 or so given his intended purpose here, and low luck also translates to low hit in DSFE). Units like Marth, Kris, Catria, Cord, Arran, and reclassed Draug all can bait the dracos and deal enemy phase damage without getting doubled, so there's always a way to get the advantage without relying on lucky growths. In some instances, you can even double dracos, and that feeling gets me going bone mode. Seriously, Draug's base speed is insane. Training 7th platoon members and turning them into mercs also does the job well. Example: Spoiler Taken from current ironman. Arran gets doubled, but survives the boss. Another nitpick is that because the boss uses axes, the silver lance can miss, which makes things unnecessarily difficult, but you'll usually strike and you are intended to use save circles. All in all, it's fun to decide who parks where, and plan out how you'll take out the dracos next turn accordingly. When Kris and Gordin both missed, I was forced to make this risky attack, but given how low the odds were of missing all 3 hits, I'd say it's honestly more fair than I remember it being, so props to either the chapter for always giving you a workaround, or props to me for not dying. Sorry if the DS is dirty. I've had this since I was like 5. Taken from a different runs 16 months ago. Swords are a great way to kill them with 100 accuracy. Ryan is the best 7th platoon member and no one can tell me otherwise. I apparently really like having Draug perform risky attacks. It's fun. I like this chapter. I like the high of getting 80 xp per kill to my shaky hit rate axe units. Sue me. Why You Should Use Cord: Spoiler In fairness, most of my complaints over the possibility of missing wyverns can hypothetically be said about any difficult FE game, but I mainly find it noticeable here on ch2 lunatic in which the dracos practically require silver lance chipping and steel bow bowing. I like Warren, but he usually has 70 hit on them, which isn't great. It's a lot easier to reach 100 hit, or attacks that are generally reliable later on (and you can afford to miss more often later sans late-lategame), but on this specific moment this early in the game, I find it difficult to do much other than have a strong merc maybe. This complaint is also mostly only applicable to lunatic. On maniac, there's only 3 wyverns, so you'll be fine. It's overall still a pretty good bit. I'm just often unlucky. Rating: 7.5/10 Spoiler It's a great map weighed down slightly by how often you can struggle from hit rate issues. Decent variety. An incentive to split your team. It has Cord in it. You get to fight prepromotes already to signify the challenges of this being a sequel for already experienced players. It has Cord the lord. It exemplifies the importance of effective weaponry. It has Mister Maji. It has an optional rush objective. Cord Cord Cord. But it does also have Catria, so it loses 9 points. -1/10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted March 11 Share Posted March 11 I'll reiterate what I said on the elitists topic about really liking Rummel as a throne boss who can straight up abandon his throne, but won't be cheesed for it. The extra might and other two wyverns means it's probably impossible to seize the castle without killing him, unless you're willing to let him just kill something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X-Naut Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 5 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: I will say this though. Give 1 more defense to Draug, and 1 more speed to Gordin. It'd help a lot for this chapter and makes reclassing just a tad less necessary. Also, it'd make people possibly consider actually using Gordin. Better idea, throw Gordin's "Ryan Minus" growths paradigm where it belongs: 🚽 (also yeah pls give Draug a real defense base, seriously he's a Knight for crying out And I'd probably give the map a 6 or 7 out of 10, it's a good premise if a slightly overbearing on enemy stats. FE12 maps generally improve the earlygame over FE3, and this might be the best improved. Between more horizontal space and a different forest layout the thief is no longer constantly hiding in Dracoknight shadow, and you can choose between Catria or Dracoknight!Arran to track him down. Two more Dracos to challenge you on the boss but they come out of the lesser mooks, and the map makes better use of the cavs and space by trying to flank you with one. As @Jotari said it's also a rare example of a moving boss that doesn't compromise his seize. Cord exists but his recruitment and performance on this map are inoffensive vs later additions. You brought up how top-heavy enemies are compared to FE11, and I agree it's an improvement; but it feels inefficient to drop enemy defenses and then raise the HP values. Slightly lower HP without Def penalties would be fine with the game's higher power standard compared to FE3. The only enemy type who might be too bulky at class base are Cavaliers, who as a class should've had one less when Roderick and Cecil both join with personal deficits. It's most pronounced on the Dracoknights: while FE3's 13 Defense is probably too much, being even harder to straw ORKO with a loaded prologue unit would drive home the value effective damage brings to the table. Totally agree that you'd need better bows if you did that though; I wish the remake didn't nerf bows by 1 Mt/10 Hit here more than ever. One last gripe, seeing level 1 promoted enemies next to level 1 unpromoteds will never feel right. I wish they capitalized on the prologue's inclusion to scale the main game up a little when that arc fills the Level 1 Babyland role. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aircalipoor Posted April 20 Share Posted April 20 (edited) Making a topic about FE12s awful maps and stopping right before chapter 3? You had one job. Edited April 20 by Aircalipoor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted April 20 Author Share Posted April 20 1 hour ago, Aircalipoor said: Making a topic about FE12s awful maps and stopping right before chapter 3? You had one job. So people were reading my thread. Nice. Okay so I've been having this on the back of my mind for a while now. Even today I've been talking with others about my passion of map design and how I wanna come back to this, but the reason I stopped was because I got incredibly sick and couldn't get out of bed for weeks. Then I got preoccupied with multiple dentists appointments that have finally caught up with me and now the government has decided I owe them free labor once again. As for personal excuses, I've been playing a lot of mods on my new laptop and my brother naturally wants to borrow my laptop to play some games we couldn't run before. Right now, I'm playtesting for a new upcoming hack by none other than Mr Fe6 boss man @Saint Rubenio, and im doing a bit of Garonquest and FE6 Archanea to the side. Furthermore, me and my brother enjoy playing board games, and pre ordered ones are barely starting to show up now, and now I have to play a game I've never heard of to catch up on references ill otherwise miss when playing with him. Tl;dr: I've been fuckin busy. But its coming. I do not want to stop posting and I did have stuff written for this. It just got eaten up by serenes during my sick break. Unlucky. Hope anyone still sticks around by then. Won't be able to update often, but if anyone is still interested, I'll be more than glad to rant. Actual Answer: Chapter 3 was so bad that it killed me. Also what do you mean by awful maps? Just you wait until Nerring Gaming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted April 21 Share Posted April 21 5 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: So people were reading my thread. Nice. Okay so I've been having this on the back of my mind for a while now. Even today I've been talking with others about my passion of map design and how I wanna come back to this, but the reason I stopped was because I got incredibly sick and couldn't get out of bed for weeks. Then I got preoccupied with multiple dentists appointments that have finally caught up with me and now the government has decided I owe them free labor once again. As for personal excuses, I've been playing a lot of mods on my new laptop and my brother naturally wants to borrow my laptop to play some games we couldn't run before. Right now, I'm playtesting for a new upcoming hack by none other than Mr Fe6 boss man @Saint Rubenio, and im doing a bit of Garonquest and FE6 Archanea to the side. Furthermore, me and my brother enjoy playing board games, and pre ordered ones are barely starting to show up now, and now I have to play a game I've never heard of to catch up on references ill otherwise miss when playing with him. I bet your dog ate your copy of New Mystery too. 5 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: Also what do you mean by awful maps? Just you wait until Nerring Gaming. I find the key to that map is that Nerring stops the reinforcements. Trying to do it conventionally is borderline impossible. You've got to risk everything and blitz him LTC style. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aircalipoor Posted Sunday at 02:50 PM Share Posted Sunday at 02:50 PM Fair enough when online FE discussion became stale after 15 years. Also understandable to struggle to keep a series ongoing when few comments on it. Makes you question the point of publishing it in the first place. 12 hours ago, Jotari said: You've got to risk everything and blitz him LTC style. Not too terrible with Caeda or a Hammer Dracoknight rushing him and then getting rescued. The urgency, narrow streets filled with Paladins and Horseman, and the Wolfguard recruitment chain make for a proper challenge to claim the capital. Really good counterproposal to 20, the final big indoor chapter. Better than whatever 18 was supposed to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted Tuesday at 03:46 AM Author Share Posted Tuesday at 03:46 AM You know what's worse than playing chapter 3 of New mystery? Getting an illness that affects your entire family that lasts over a month and has left me addicted to Tylenol! Followed up by REDOING the post on chapter 3 that you were halfway done with including replies that have now lost all context. They call me Matthis, the way I wanna you to kill me right now. Replies: Spoiler On 3/11/2024 at 3:36 PM, Jotari said: I'll reiterate what I said on the elitists topic about really liking Rummel as a throne boss who can straight up abandon his throne, but won't be cheesed for it. The extra might and other two wyverns means it's probably impossible to seize the castle without killing him, unless you're willing to let him just kill something. Moving bosses are the only way to make a boss work. I would say Enage taught us that, but Kaga clearly already knew this because of how much he loves making weak stationary bosses even in the lategame only to hit the player with the capped Camus that has a legendary weapon and he rushes you. He just chooses to make everyone else suck to make his OC chad who cucks somebody look cool. On 3/11/2024 at 5:01 PM, X-Naut said: Better idea, throw Gordin's "Ryan Minus" growths paradigm where it belongs: 🚽 I keep reading that as Ryan's World. This disgusts me. On 3/11/2024 at 5:01 PM, X-Naut said: And I'd probably give the map a 6 or 7 out of 10, it's a good premise if a slightly overbearing on enemy stats. I personally enjoy the enemy stats and find the balance of maniac and lunatic to be the perfect way to differentiate whether the player wishes for a 2RKO or 1RKO experience, but I can see how some moments are needlessly overbearing. Can't all be Conquest. On 3/11/2024 at 5:01 PM, X-Naut said: FE12 maps generally improve the earlygame over FE3, and this might be the best improved. Between more horizontal space and a different forest layout the thief is no longer constantly hiding in Dracoknight shadow, and you can choose between Catria or Dracoknight!Arran to track him down. Two more Dracos to challenge you on the boss but they come out of the lesser mooks, and the map makes better use of the cavs and space by trying to flank you with one. As @Jotari said it's also a rare example of a moving boss that doesn't compromise his seize. Cord exists but his recruitment and performance on this map are inoffensive vs later additions. Do you mean earlier editions? Is Cord in Awakening and I don't remember? Oh you meant the map itself. Usually when I think edition I assume different games. He's similar to FE11 H5 early where you might not think much of him compared to the competition (Barst in FE11 and Catria/reclassed Draug in FE12), but when compared to the 7th platoon, Cord's high base speed and servicable strength with an axe that helps against half the map being lances is nice when you give him the time of day. Some FE11 units will have 6 speed, so Cord's 9 is great. I will say, it's kinda dumb that they nerfed him to have 8 speed in FE12. I know his strength went from 7 to 9, but he's supposed to be the fast axe guy and now Bord kinda loses half of his niche when Cord has similar strength in a game with not nearly as many armored enemies. Cord is the best unit in the series, that much is undeniable, but for the average joe, he's not going to do too much in FE12 to a lot of what makes him underrated in FE11 not being quite as effective. I still say he's a good unit, but not spectacular like I still insist he is in Shadow Dragon. Yeah FE12 maps do way better than FE3. Glad we can agree on that. That should be put in between everyone's "Kris stole Jeigan's line" rants. Make it a Serenes rule. On 3/11/2024 at 5:01 PM, X-Naut said: You brought up how top-heavy enemies are compared to FE11, and I agree it's an improvement; but it feels inefficient to drop enemy defenses and then raise the HP values. Slightly lower HP without Def penalties would be fine with the game's higher power standard compared to FE3. The only enemy type who might be too bulky at class base are Cavaliers, who as a class should've had one less when Roderick and Cecil both join with personal deficits. It's most pronounced on the Dracoknights: while FE3's 13 Defense is probably too much, being even harder to straw ORKO with a loaded prologue unit would drive home the value effective damage brings to the table. Totally agree that you'd need better bows if you did that though; I wish the remake didn't nerf bows by 1 Mt/10 Hit here more than ever. Make both the enemy HP AND defense low and you get Sacred Stones. Make enemy HP AND defense high and you get Path of Radiance. Make enemy HP low but defense high, and you get Conquest. Make HP high and defense low and you get New Mystery. Conquest sometimes feels annoying when some of my unfortunate strength screwed units deal 3 damage and cannot kill anything compared to my berserker who does 21 * 2. The main reason the game will do this though is because it wants to incentivize pair up attacks. This is an extremely fun mechanic to play with, but it admittedly feels really annoying when I'm using Swordmaster Odin and my pair up attacker is doing more work than me. PoR gameplay on maniac is just a slog. I don't want to forge a bunch of steel axes just to be able to kill things. By making HP high, you still make it an accomplishment to 1RKO and 2RKO certain enemies. If it was like every has 22 HP and 4 DEF, literally anybody can kill, which makes reaching high stats feel weightless, and player phase combat would be too easy. You'd basically HAVE to add a bunch of enemies to make up for it in order to make it a challenge to kill all the enemies on player phase, and that would just be super annoying on reverse lunatic. With low defense and high HP, it gives units of both low and high strength to deal moderate damage to the enemy. Sure, one will obviously do way better than the other, but you have more options and variety over who gets to kill whom. It's also just less subtracting so setting up exact damage kills for fighter Wrys is easier, and you don't need to worry about your peg Linde doing 1 damage like Lena in H5 SD. Yes, this is something that seriously affects my ability to enjoy a game. Also low HP and more defense would just make mages way too OP. WIth chapter 1, the brigand's HP is somewhat high, but it still does not take a lot to 1RKO them. Okay maybe I'm going completely off topic, but I'm just trying to say that I think in general, low defense and high HP is the way to go for enemy design. It makes for better scaling and rate of damage dealt. Bows definitely need to be better though. That +10 hit would straight up make a world of a difference. On 3/11/2024 at 5:01 PM, X-Naut said: One last gripe, seeing level 1 promoted enemies next to level 1 unpromoteds will never feel right. I wish they capitalized on the prologue's inclusion to scale the main game up a little when that arc fills the Level 1 Babyland role. While the prologue is still a very shaky subject when it comes to game balance, I will say that I love how FE12 utilizes early prepromotes. It brings me excitement in a way no other FE game does and I honestly wish more FE games used early promoted enemies. Them standing out in front of lvl 1 enemies is a highlight and it's always super satisfying being able to get 65 xp kills right off the bat. It's a thing that reminds you that you are playing a sequel game and the dracos being the enemy fliers shows the previous struggle of Macedon's might now being something you're already accustomed with is really cool to me, especially when you move from book 1 to book 2. The level 1 enemies are so the enemies don't just start off unbeatable for any units that couldn't train much throughout the prologue and still provide moderate xp to most people who aren't Kris without interrupting the general flow of how leveled enemies work in FE12. On 4/20/2024 at 7:42 PM, Jotari said: I bet your dog ate your copy of New Mystery too. I would make a Nintendo PC joke, but I do use an actual cartridge for FE12. But no, I ate my dog before it had the chance. On 4/20/2024 at 7:42 PM, Jotari said: I find the key to that map is that Nerring stops the reinforcements. Trying to do it conventionally is borderline impossible. You've got to risk everything and blitz him LTC style. Oh you mean the lil bitch strat? On 4/21/2024 at 7:50 AM, Aircalipoor said: Fair enough when online FE discussion became stale after 15 years. Honestly I have a lot of things I want to talk about but everytime I post, I take a stupidly long amount of hours typing up paragraphs of nothing that tend to resonate with very few people. Usually I'm better off talking crap on things people like. That usually does the trick. THEN I can talk about boring FE math. This post somehow took me like 4 hours to do. It didn't even feel that long. On 4/21/2024 at 7:50 AM, Aircalipoor said: Not too terrible with Caeda or a Hammer Dracoknight rushing him and then getting rescued. The urgency, narrow streets filled with Paladins and Horseman, and the Wolfguard recruitment chain make for a proper challenge to claim the capital. Really good counterproposal to 20, the final big indoor chapter. Better than whatever 18 was supposed to be. Am I the only one who has never Nerring skipped? Just have 5 snipers! Use Warrior Frost. Oh well. That's like 5 months from now, if I'm dedicated. We're barely at chapter 3, and oh boy is it a chapter. Chapter 3: Nice For Frost To Invite Us Over For Woodcutting eh Cord? Spoiler gay Cord Note: On normal and hard mode, this map follows the original script in which the dracoknights in the center of the map will not move unless you enter the armory. On maniac and above however, every dracoknight will be given completely different AI in 2 total sets, with the center set being the most noticeably damaging to a blind player as they no longer follow the gimmick provided by FE3 regarding the armory, leading to the house of the npc warning you of the armory to most likely be a guy who really wants that business to fail. Descriptions of the specific AI on the dracos will be shown from the wiki org on enemy stats, but will also be provided below as an attempt of a simplified yet detailed version learned through personal experience. Spoiler Set A: The left half of the 6 dracos above the player's starting position who share AI with the dracoknights at the center of the mountain EXCEPT the westernmost draco Set B: The right half of the 6 dracos above the player's starting psotion who share AI SPECIFICALLY with the westernmost draco of the mountain area Set A will move when in range of at least 2 of them. That is, if you place someone such as Kris in range of the left half of the 6 dracos right above Marth, you will inadvertently trigger the rest of Set A, aka a majority of the dracos in the mountain center, towards either your army or at Palla, the ladder unable to survive against them in maniac and above (not 1rKO dead but overwhelmed). Set B will move at turn 8. This consists only of the 3 dracos furthest east in the map alongside 1 dracoknight closest to the southwestern village who is presumably design to move towards the Lord who has just recruited a live silver axe. The rest of Set B will also move if you aggro the westernmost dracos first. This map is one of very few maps in the series to feature more enemies on a lower difficulty. On lunatic, there are 4 dracoknights within the mountain zone. On maniac, there are actually 5 (5th draco is part of Set A). Whether this 5th draco was intended for lunatic and was accidentally placed on maniac or was intentionally removed from lunatic for potentially being too much while all bearing silver weapons is currently unknown (to this poster's knowledge). Maniac Version: Spoiler The village on the south of the map right below the bridge is exclusive to New Mystery, providing a bridge key. In the original Mystery of the Emblem, Warren has a bridge key already in his inventory. Moreover, you could find a bridge key as a hidden item in this chapter. As neither are present in FE12, a village was placed to introduce the uncommon item right when it is needed. You can also find the Iote's Shield as a hidden item around where the boss is standing in FE3 B2. You do not obtain the Iote's Shield in FE12 until much later. FE3 Map: Spoiler 4 new units are obtained in the chapter: Palla, Julian, Matthis, and Bord The Builder. Linde joins at the end of chapter 2. Palla: 24 HP 10 STR 2 MAG 11 SKL 16 SPD 9 LCK 9 DEF 6 RES [B rank lances] Palla joins at the start of the chapter so she cannot be immediately reclassed. It is also important to remember that fliers do not gain tile bonuses, especially if you're playing maniac. Her sliver lance combined with her high base speed allows her to 1RKO most enemies on lunatic for multiple chapters, making her the best candidate for your silver lance that Arran is carrying if you are boring, as Kris is either not in a lance class or can kill without it, and draco Arran is likely losing his nieche with 2 powerful flier units at your disposal and he can still provide with classes that grant him an automatic C rank such as sniper or swordmaster, while General Arran is often best used chipping dracos with bow. Bord: 22 HP 10 STR 0 MAG 8 SKL 6 SPD 1 LCK 5 DEF 0 RES [C rank axes] Bord is recruited in the western village. Originally, the village only contained a silver axe, one which was unusable given than Book 2 featured no playable axe units. He comes with his iconic hammer, which can actually be used on one enemy on his joining chapter, unlike his previous entry. He will most likely miss the boss and die There is a youtube channel called JimmyFE who more or less is the embodiment of Bord, similar to the Cord Connoisseur/Maji Minister being the guy whose post you're reading. Julian: 20 HP 7 STR 0 MAG 8 SKL 14 SPD 7 LCK 6 DEF 0 RES [E rank swords] Thieves still cannot promote or reclass, and Julian's growths are very similar to that of his FE3 counterpart, but in a significantly harder adaptation of Super Hammer Bros. This makes him both less enjoyable and outright worse to use than physical Frost. Matthis: 21 HP 7 STR 0 MAG 3 SKL 7 SPD 1 LCK 9 DEF 0 RES [E rank swords, D rank lances] There is a 95% chance that every wiki site and Serenes itself is lying about Matthis growths. @Saint Rubenio can confirm that not a single person who has actually used Matthis has had him fail to deliver as anything but the best unit in the game. This includes both of when I used him as a cleric/sage in lunatic and as a general in my maniac PMU. He is also busted in FE11. Linde: 20 HP 0 STR 4 MAG 5 SKL 8 SPD 8 LCK 2 DEF 4 RES [D rank tomes] On maniac, she will have a tendency to barely survive most attacks by 1 or 2 HP, but will frequently need to level HP to keep up prior to her promotion bonuses. On lunatic, giving her an angelic robe will put her in a similar state with slightly higher odds of not being OHKO'd except from brigands. Her bases are similar to that of Cecile if she is reclass into a mage, mostly being -1 to her bases being 1 level below her but with 10% more magic and 15% more speed, albeit unable to utilize Aura for some time. Enemy Stats: (Taken From FE Wiki Org) Maniac: Silver Axe Dracoknight: 24 Might Steel Axe Dracoknight: 20 Might Silver Lance Dracoknight: 24 Might Steel Lance Dracoknight: 20 Might Cavalier: 21 Might (Steel) 15 Might (Jav) Average Might: 20 and 24 As Palla only has 9 defense and 24 HP, she will be killed in 2 shot against a cavalier. She will NOT gain any defense bonuses from the fort as she is a flier. Linde will survive combat against the steel dracos and barely survive the cavaliers, but will be OHKO'd by the silver wielding dracos Average Speed: 9 and 10 While cavaliers will still be unable to double most of the untrained 7th platoon, it is possible for dracos to double someone such as an untrained Rody who is still a cavalier or in a slower class. Realistically though, you've either benched him or gave him enough levels to surpass this threshold, as chapter 3 marks when you must undeploy multiple units, assuming nobody has died yet. Pirate Draug needs only 1 speed to double dracos. Lunatic: Silver Axe Dracoknight: 24-25 Might Silver Lance Dracoknight: 25-26 Might Cavalier: 27 Might (Silv) 21 Might (Jav+) Average Might: 25 and 27 Linde's aura can prove to be incredibly useful, especially on reverse lunatic, however everything except a cavalier with a javalin and the ballistae will do more than enough to OHKO her. Arran can barely survive against 3 dracos as a General, serving as a good way to bait them out if Kris is unable to. Average Speed: 10 Speed can vary heavily in this chapter depending on rng. Given that units such as Draug have 13 speed as a pirate, as well as the many opportunities the player has to give kills to Kris over other units, it's very possible to have exactly 14 speed and require reset spamming if you need to rig the doubling threshold. This is mainly mentioned because this is typically the first chapter I personally find myself just barely missing benchmarks for on lunatic. Similarly, a Marth with 13 speed has a 60% chance to be able to double and 1RKO the cavs with his rapier. Reinforcements: Turn 2 and 3 will have one cav on north center fort, easily blockable by Palla who is presumably intended to wait until thief is in range, then kill on turn 3. Turn 4 will have cav spawning from all 3 forts. Turn 5 will have cavs spawn in the left and right fort, but not the center. Let's make things more properly formatted here. I'll make a list of all the pros followed by the cons. We can compare and contrast. Pros: You can recruit Bord You can recruit Matthis. Hunter Cord can get a LOT of experience from all the dracoknights in this chapter. Cons: Everything else Let's be real. Nobody reading this is even interested in a professional well constructed analysis of chapter 3. Or rather, you don't think the chapter deserves it. Given that I wasted over a month away from Serenes and then just ranted about how crappy 2024 has been, professionalism is out the fucking window, at least for this post. We're Fire Emblem fans. We get obsessively angry over the most pointless things. And this is something that actually matters. Bord map. So let's get angry How the HELL is the player supposed to know about ANY of the BULLLLLSHIT that this map throws at you!? What happens when you start the map? "Those are lots of wyverns! I'll juat put ol Krissy boi here and he can slam some draco p- whAT THE HELL WHY IS THE ENTIRE MACEDON ARMY MOVING!?" They all fly to Palla and she's dead. Unlucky! Attempt #2: "Fuck me, that was unfair. Oh well. It was turn 1...I'll just...walk left for a while....but Palla can just go and kick that thief's ass and chill on the center fort. Bro's heading right to it anyways. That has to mean the game wants me here." A few turns later... *2 cavs spawn left and right of her* "Wha- you've gotta be kiddin me! Well I mean this is just maniac, maybe she'll barely li-aaaand they do exact damage to 2 shot her. Of course they do! By the stones..." Attempt #3: "How about I just leave? Screw those gu- ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? There's MORE cavs in turn 2 and 3 on the center!? Well that's just of a waste of vulns! Screw that I'm resetting! Not wasting my silver on that." Attempt #4: "Well if I just block the left fort with her after turn 3, only one could reach me right? Okay, that worked! A bit stupid these reinforcements expect me to know to do that, but we living! We livi- OH COME ON THERE'S MORE!? I JUST PUT HER BACK IN THE CENTER FORT!!!" Or you tried running for it but there's another left cav and you didn't use a vuln because you didn't think you'd need it. Many ways this can go, but chances are, your blind ass got you killed again. Attempt # 6 to 9: "Fuck me! That took forever, but I think I got the strat to keep her alive...At least the rest of my team has an easy time down there......" "There's no way I'm actually supposed to walk this whole all way am I? Ugh, and those dracos at the right corner just won't come to me! Why!? That's so stupid. Let me guess, knowing this game they'll just magically decide to move out of nowhere on like, turn 8 or somethi- WHA- I WAS JOKING! I WAS JOKING!! Bord can't even outrun them, and of course his speed is low enough that be gets doubled! Of course it is!" Attempt #10AND/OR11: "Urrrrrghhh.....I don't play this game anymore. I must've spent 100 total turns on all these runs just walking...Ugh, I still don't get these dracos, but I dealt with the turn 8 ones. Maybe NOW I can bait the other ones. I already died like twice trying. Surely now I have the hang of it." *later* "YES! YES! YES! I DID IT! The map is as good as done! The cavs will be a piece of cake now!" *Matthis moves* *attacks silver lance Palla* "NO! NO! NO! FUUUUUUU-" Attempt #FE12: "SHOUZO KAGA! DO YOU HEAR ME!? I did it all! I killed Palla's reinforcements. I painstakingly spent years getting her to fly all the FUCKING way around this BIG ASS MAP to reunite with Marth and pals and dealt with half these FLYING GOVERNMENT DRONES and have boxed this pink haired BITCH to keep his ass from killing himself AGAIN and I swear if ANYTHING goes wrong....IM GOING WITH HIM!!!" .......... "There's a Gaiden requirement.....?" Experience will vary widely given how many different ways I've heard of people beating this chapter and have seen LP's of people blindly dying A LOT here. I don't think a single ironman I've seen has ever kept Palla alive. Unlucky. This isn't something you get punished for because you're playing your first run on a high difficulty. The map is just so drastically different between hard and maniac that it's IMPOSSIBLE to predict what will happen on maniac until you've died from it MULTIPLE TIMES. Now, for lunatic, there will be several more instances of specific changes that will only be introduced on that difficulty, and I will be discussing how they manage to increase the strategical element of the map and the positives they provide as opposed to something mindless like 3 Houses simply throwing in ambush spawns or FE7 HHM throwing spam at you or making certain maps fog for no reason, but even past that, this map automatically fails the "common sense in map design" check because there is simply TOO MUCH change that even 1 death will not be enough to learn. You can't really defend something with "the save circle will keep you from redoing the whole map and now you know" when you're going to die 10 different times to jumpscares. The sheer number of deaths I've had on my first few runs due to trial and error is mad. It took me literal dozens upon dozens of deaths until I learned almost EXACTLY how the AI in this chapter works. I say almost because I still hesitate on whether being in range of 2 dracos from the center will aggro them or if it's specifically the ones on the left side of the 6 eastern dracos. I often don't bother having Palla reunite with the player until most dracos are already dead and have her solo the top reinforcements but apparently very few people I know do the same even though I assumed you had to do that. Speaking of which, I have only ever went around the mountain twice in all my runs of the game. I simply can't be bothered to walk for THAT long. However, this gives you NO tactical advantage whatsoever. Taking the long road is the objectively easier path. The ONLY reason to take the direct bridge is to clear the map in fewer turns if you have failed to unlock the gaiden chapter requirements through it's ordinary means (clear the prologue with no more than 1 "death"). When you take the bridge, you're really only making it incredibly easy for Matthis to die. Astram is the strongest man in the continent, and Matthis is the most suicidal man in the continent. Okay, let me actually try to turn this back into a review. Sometimes, when you literally know the ENTIRE MAP inside and out, chapter 3 can at some point reach levels of....fun, kinda. It is genuinely a nice challenge trying to manage to Set A dracos from the south when you need to kill the 3 initial dracos with the following 3 to 4 more hot on your trail. You need to use your units properly with your new Aura tome, all your bows, and even the newly obtained lady sword if you've gotten it. Personally, I don't really use Linde at all these days, as I find early game Aura to be busted and using Linde bores me compared to getting Wrys or even using mage Cecile. You also need to make sure you're careful with how you position. I've done multiple runs where I've baited out the dracos in multiple ways, Some runs I get them into the bottom right corner in which I have to ensure my low moving frail units run first into the forest with enough space to not be in range of the dracos that will corner you while also trying to not be so far that I won't be able to attack them the following turn, testing my ability to plan my movement ahead and build a proper wall of units to make sure I don't ever get in range of one too many dracos. It can be a lot of fun and pose a real challenge with a surprisingly large amount of thought. Other times, I've tried fighting the mountain dracos right when I'm in the center, trying to go all out before they can corner me or try to camp in the waters out of my range. This is very risky, but damn was I proud of myself in the early days of conquering them in maniac WHILE boxing Matthis (I baited the 2 of 3 dracos while near the boss). You can also try splitting the dracos from the south to attack from both the west and east, but this is much easier said than done. Remember, these guys have 10 move and most of your guys only 6. I don't dislike this. It's a good challenge. But they couldn't have been implemented this in a worse setting even if the devs of Gheb FE made this. Set B, when you don't know what you're doing, will likely get a cheap kill on you. When you DO know what you're doing, they're boring. You just wait until turn 8, and then you kill them. For me at least, because of all the crap that Palla goes through, I can't bait out Set A BEFORE turn 8 because they'll often just go north towards her and by the time she's done over there, it's already near turn 8. The map gives you no rush incentive to play fast unlike other maps. Playing slow is simply the best choice, mostly due to the uncertainty the player is certain to have otherwise. So you deal with Palla's boys through trial and error, wait until turn 8, kill Set B, and THEN you can actually attempt to kill Set A. This is likely where you use your first save point. This will be the one fun part of the map. Too bad it's right back to Shit Town from here. Now what? You play Genealogy. Yep, walking sim. You can either take the bridge and truck through somewhat faster at the cost of Matthis dying of a heart attack, or you can take the safe way and go the LOOOOOOOOONG way. It is so mind numbingly boring. How did Kaga think this was acceptable. How did FE12 devs not consider to change this? You were willing to do all these tweaks for the AI and make the numbers exact to 2RKO Palla in maniac and still get killed after a silver hit and a fort heal in lunatic. Yeah, the lunatic strat is similar to maniac, but with more vuln spamming and likely running away post turn 5 to have time to heal. The one draco to the left who moves on turn 8 was clearly places intentionally to punish players for having Marth run off alone to recruit Bord while everyone else waits for the rest of Set B, but why? Maybe focus on...making a good map!? Honestly, if you are willing to turtle, and you are told how the AI and allll the reinforcements, beating the map is actually rather easy and mostly rng proof. I would know because I've helped multiple struggling FE fans with what is basically my own Dr Shaky Jones Guide to beating this chapter. Left comments on it to small LP'ers, helped a guy on Teehee I believe and I had to give my own brother a step by step instruction on how to beat chapter 3 on maniac because there is no way I was gonna let him tackle that blindly. Shaky's Special Sauce: Spoiler Turn 1: Move Palla to center fort. Move Marth and a trained hunter or hunter Draug with a forged iron bow towards Bord's house. Keep everyone else at the start. Turn 2: Keep moving Marth Turn 3: Kill thief with silver lance Palla. Turn 4: Move Palla to left fort with silver lance equipped Turn 5: Heal Palla with vulnerary. One cav will still be alive and another will spawn on right fort. Staying on left will prevent left spawn. Turn 6: By now Marth should be able to recruit Bord give or take a turn. Get ready for the axe draco with the master seal. Palla will need another heal to survive maniac. You can equip an iron lance if you want and then finish them off next turn. If on lunatic, one vuln will not be enough. Run away and heal. Attack with maniac strat next turn. Turn 7: Finish with Palla (or you can technically keep running but fort healing). Turn 8: By now you need to have set up your team to fight set B. This shouldn't be difficult, as you can have the bulk majority of your team remain behind to ensure victory and save time walking to and back, especially if you're not confident you'll first try or miss a lot and ended up wasting time with the walking. Turn 9: Kill dracos. Have reclassed bow users, use Aura and the ladysword (for example: cavalier Catria). Put Marth in range of axe draco with a steel sword. He will survive even at base on lunatic. Turn 10: The left draco will have reached you now. Attack with your one bow user. Either they have died or are at low HP. Finish off with Bord or Marth. If on reverse lunatic, Marth cannot attack anymore. Bord can hypothetically kill, but missing guarantees your death and he has 1 luck. Base Gordin could kill with a forged steel bow, but the hit rate likely won't be 100, and this guide is mainly intended for minimal rng, something I used in my lunatic ironman that is currently on hold. Reunite everyone together before aggro'ing Set A. You can aggro before if you want, but save first as to make sure they don't split and chase Marth and Bord who will not be able to outrun them. This will be the only challenging part that you'll have to actually strategize for. Personal reccomendation is stay in the right corner and after killing the initial wave of Set A, use Kris, General Arran, Cav Catria, and hopefully 1 trained 7th platoon member to serve as blocking defenders for any potential holes dracos could slip through to attack frail units you might've left too far away from the forest riddled corner. This method rarely fails me. At this point, you will unfortunately have to walk for 7 years to the end where you recruit Julian, deal with the few cavaliers with either General Arran or Kris and the map is basically done. If you take the long route, Matthis is fairly easy to recruit albeit one instance where he may attack and die, but will only be a problem once. Be careful though, as despite Matthis having a javelin, he will often settle for attacking at close range for "optimal damage", leading to his demise. It's an incredibly slow and boring strat, but that's just because this is an incredibly slow and boring map. I didn't really specifically go into a rant about the walking aspect as much as I did the AI and random reinforcements for Palla because everybody rants about the movement, but people like Genealogy for some reason, so what do I know about that topic? The AI is what actually constitutes chapter 3's "map design" but it honestly just completely ruins the map and the stat buffing that normally makes the game more fun and challenging now just screws over Palla because you stand no chance of adapting to any situation. I'm aware that many people have their own way of playing this, and feel free to share them because my creativity dies with this chapter. In FE3, it's simple and incredibly boring. In FE12 maniac and above, it's FE5 blind + FE4 length with one good combat moment and 1 of 2 based units who serve to make you reset because you honestly didn't think he'd go for pirate Draug instead of the literal unarmed archer. Rating: FE3/10 (Ruben HATES FE3) Spoiler Is this what you waited for? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted Tuesday at 05:42 AM Share Posted Tuesday at 05:42 AM (edited) 2 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: being in range of 2 dracos from the center will I accidentally made this quote completely as is on mobile, and how I'd love to figure out what I did so I can quote specific sections of long posts. Anyway, on topic, linked AI is one of my most liked things about the DS games, but suffice to say, yes, this is an absolutely terrible example of it. In general though, it helps to make the enemy actually feel like they're more intelligent and require strategies st least marginally more complex than Fire Emblem's age old "bait in the outer most enemy and then run away". Which is way too much of the overall Fire Emblem series experience. EDIT: oh wow, it's just been there as a pop up when you highlight, all this time. Quote section. No more tedious breaking up of quotes for me. Edited Tuesday at 05:51 AM by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X-Naut Posted 12 hours ago Share Posted 12 hours ago (edited) Oh hey, this lives! I'm gonna have to rephrase my statement of the remake generally improving earlygame maps, because this is a tossup and I view the following map changes less favorably. On the bright side I appreciate that the mountain dracos are used more proactively, although they could probably stand to have a more sensible trigger. Like, say, lowering the drawbridge rather than a random turn. Still better than dawdling around endlessly and getting pegged by Palla/Catria if you never visit the shop. On the other hand, I dislike how the new AI and giving him an iron lance affects Matthis. In FE3 you could reliably move Linde towards the boss and pick-and-choose who he targets by not giving that person a 1-2 range weapon. Also matched his ineffectual personality for him to just throw javelins at people who can't fight back. Also, Marth being one tile short for the two south villages back-to-back. Because yeah, this map needed another microaggression. IMO it'd be better if you right-shifted the map, got rid of the west and placed a bridge to Julian's house along the east margin. The second batch of dracoknights now presents an additional challenge for getting Marth to him, while the mountain dracos have more buffer space with this map angle. Granted you'd have to find a new place for Bord and the Bridge Key if you truly want to cut the tedium, or at least don't place them in villages. On 4/22/2024 at 11:46 PM, Shaky Jones said: Do you mean earlier editions? Is Cord in Awakening and I don't remember? I meant compared to the other FE3 absences and FE11 originals the game sprinkled in, many of which are more painful to recruit, less useful for that point or both. Also worth noting that Cord's personal bases are literally unchanged from Shadow Dragon, the stat changes being a result of Fighter bases getting retooled. Bord too aside from receiving +2 Skill to put him ahead of Cord so that he's actually the more skilled axe guy. Edited 11 hours ago by X-Naut Hate is a strong word when there are worse recruitments down the line. Still don't like how it changed, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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