Fire Emblem Awakening Difficulty?

[jiffy]

Hey people

I have a question about FEA difficulty.

I started playing fire emblem since the burning blade with eliwood and all then went on to also play sacred stones (which was less enjoyable due to the skirmishes and all that made it too easy). In the end i didnt really like the new fire emblem games that came to the gamecube so i just continued playing my gba fire emblem games over... and over... and over... and over... and over again. I've beat every difficulty and know just about every secret on both games now.

Ive finally now decided to attempt playing fire emblem awakening... cuz apparently EVERYONE cant stop talking about how good the game is...ive even bought a used 3ds JUST to play it...

Which brings me to my question: how difficult is fire emblem awakening IN COMPARISON to the GBA FIRE EMBLEM titles?

Based on my experience would I have a hard time playing?

[Ownagepuffs]

This should be in the Awakening sub forum, mate.

The game has the easiest normal mode, hard mode is good at getting you accustomed to the game, Lunatic is harder than almost every FE and Lunatic+ is currently the hardest in the series. You also have the option of casual mode (no perma death) and classic (perma death). It's hard to gauge Awakening's difficulty because it varies a lot from difficulty to difficulty.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

we have an awakening sub form, this happens way too often.

i'd say you should play on hard if you have experience with some of the other games

[Jedi]

This should be in the Awakening sub forum, mate.

The game has the easiest normal mode, hard mode is good at getting you accustomed to the game, Lunatic is harder than almost every FE and Lunatic+ is currently the hardest in the series. You also have the option of casual mode (no perma death) and classic (perma death). It's hard to gauge Awakening's difficulty because it varies a lot from difficulty to difficulty.

I'd actually say that's FE8/9 personally.

Meanwhile Lunatic+ I only recommend if you really like frustration and fake difficulty.

[jiffy]

This should be in the Awakening sub forum, mate.

The game has the easiest normal mode, hard mode is good at getting you accustomed to the game, Lunatic is harder than almost every FE and Lunatic+ is currently the hardest in the series. You also have the option of casual mode (no perma death) and classic (perma death). It's hard to gauge Awakening's difficulty because it varies a lot from difficulty to difficulty.

Sry ^^;; first time using the forum T.T

Wow lunatic really sounds hard

S

we have an awakening sub form, this happens way too often.

i'd say you should play on hard if you have experience with some of the other games

This should be in the Awakening sub forum, mate.

The game has the easiest normal mode, hard mode is good at getting you accustomed to the game, Lunatic is harder than almost every FE and Lunatic+ is currently the hardest in the series. You also have the option of casual mode (no perma death) and classic (perma death). It's hard to gauge Awakening's difficulty because it varies a lot from difficulty to difficulty.

Btw what's with the casual mode stuf... it's so ... UN-FE

YUCK

MODEDIT: yo don't doublepost & casual mode owns thank you

Edited April 1, 2015 by Integrity

[Magical Glace]

FE13 NM is easiest because the game just gives you so MUCH.

[Jedi]

FE13 NM is easiest because the game just gives you so MUCH.

and FE9 gives you more money then you could possibly spend.

[Mekkah]

I started playing fire emblem since the burning blade with eliwood and all then went on to also play sacred stones (which was less enjoyable due to the skirmishes and all that made it too easy).

If you grind in any game, it's going to be easy. Try playing the game without abusing extra experience.

[jiffy]

If you grind in any game, it's going to be easy. Try playing the game without abusing extra experience.

Oh so they call that grinding...

Grinding wasnt possible in fe 7 right?

FE13 NM is easiest because the game just gives you so MUCH.

Wait awakening is the easiest???

Edited April 1, 2015 by Starman

[Roflolxp54]

Sry ^^;; first time using the forum T.T

Wow lunatic really sounds hard

S

Btw what's with the casual mode stuf... it's so ... UN-FE

YUCK

Wait awakening is the easiest???

Awakening is considered one of the easiest Fire Emblem games to date, if not the EASIEST, if played on Normal difficulty. Perhaps the low difficulty on Normal diffculty, especially with Casual mode (Awakening is the SECOND game in the series to give the option to remove permadeath) is a major factor in its popularity, being especially accessible to casual players and those new to Fire Emblem. (Many people choose not to play Fire Emblem because of permadeath.)

Lunatic difficulty however can be a different story -- and you have to beat the game in Lunatic difficulty to unlock Lunatic+ difficulty, which is more luck-based.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Roflolxp54

[jiffy]

Awakening is considered one of the easiest Fire Emblem games to date, if not the EASIEST, if played on Normal difficulty. Perhaps the low difficulty on Normal diffculty, especially with Casual mode (Awakening is the SECOND game in the series to give the option to remove permadeath) is a major factor in its popularity, being especially accessible to casual players and those new to Fire Emblem. (Many people choose not to play Fire Emblem because of permadeath.)

Lunatic difficulty however can be a different story -- and you have to beat the game in Lunatic difficulty to unlock Lunatic+ difficulty, which is more luck-based.

Icic so it can basically be both super easy or super hard (harder than most other previous fe games)

[Czar_Yoshi]

It has by far the widest difficulty range of any FE out there. Normal/Cas is the bottom of the barrel, Lunatic+/Cla is the top of the top, even with DLC. Unfortunately it's got a bit of a reputation as fake difficulty because bashing your head against the RNG to clear one playthrough and say you did it takes considerably less time than learning its ins and outs and the methods for taming it reliably (many of the necessary tactics are counter-intuitive and Normal/Hard do nothing to help you discover them or realize that they're important). Anyone who doesn't invest the time in figuring it out (and by time I mean years- it's still not fully broken yet) will get very frustrated. Everyone who has done so loves it.

That said, you should probably start on Hard. Awakening's story can be very immersive and is a great experience (for most people) on their first playthrough, and while you definitely could tackle Lunatic with prior FE experience there will be significantly enough resets and character deaths to break that immersion and ruin your day.

[jiffy]

It has by far the widest difficulty range of any FE out there. Normal/Cas is the bottom of the barrel, Lunatic+/Cla is the top of the top, even with DLC. Unfortunately it's got a bit of a reputation as fake difficulty because bashing your head against the RNG to clear one playthrough and say you did it takes considerably less time than learning its ins and outs and the methods for taming it reliably (many of the necessary tactics are counter-intuitive and Normal/Hard do nothing to help you discover them or realize that they're important). Anyone who doesn't invest the time in figuring it out (and by time I mean years- it's still not fully broken yet) will get very frustrated. Everyone who has done so loves it.

That said, you should probably start on Hard. Awakening's story can be very immersive and is a great experience (for most people) on their first playthrough, and while you definitely could tackle Lunatic with prior FE experience there will be significantly enough resets and character deaths to break that immersion and ruin your day.

wow... sounds pretty difficult... and fun!

can you explain the concept of fake difficulty in specifics???

I don't really get it

Basically are you saying that the difficulty is fake if you rely on luck and RNG to win through lunatic?

And you're also suggesting that there is a reliable way to go through lunatic, although it might take some time to do it... right?

Edited April 1, 2015 by Red Fox of Fire

[jiffy]

It has by far the widest difficulty range of any FE out there. Normal/Cas is the bottom of the barrel, Lunatic+/Cla is the top of the top, even with DLC. Unfortunately it's got a bit of a reputation as fake difficulty because bashing your head against the RNG to clear one playthrough and say you did it takes considerably less time than learning its ins and outs and the methods for taming it reliably (many of the necessary tactics are counter-intuitive and Normal/Hard do nothing to help you discover them or realize that they're important). Anyone who doesn't invest the time in figuring it out (and by time I mean years- it's still not fully broken yet) will get very frustrated. Everyone who has done so loves it.

That said, you should probably start on Hard. Awakening's story can be very immersive and is a great experience (for most people) on their first playthrough, and while you definitely could tackle Lunatic with prior FE experience there will be significantly enough resets and character deaths to break that immersion and ruin your day.

Basically are you saying that the difficulty is fake if you rely on luck and RNG to win through lunatic?

And you're also suggesting that there is a reliable way to go through lunatic, although it might take some time to do it... right?

[Vascela]

Lunatic+ is an unlockable difficulty by beating Lunatic Vanilla. When you load the map, there are random enemy skills assigned (such as Luna+, enemy always negates half your defending stat, or Hawkeye 100% displayed hit no matter what). It gives the air that randomness decides whether or not you can complete the game before you take your first turn (which is what it was when L+ was first tackled). Now we have turn by turns for at least the hardest 3 chapters in the game, and the rest is pretty straight forward as long as you know what you're doing.

But for the people who don't know the turn by turn setups or don't know how to handle the game through and through, it looks fake. But for the people who found some fairly consistent (not perfect, but decent success rates), see it more as a real challenge/puzzle.

[Czar_Yoshi]

What Fake Difficulty means varies by genera, but in SRPGs fake difficulty generally refers to cases where the RNG is more powerful than the player is.

A lot of people look at Lunatic+ and see it this way, because all those extra skills enemies can get are randomly assigned at the start of the battle, which means you can't do the same strategy twice and just expect the same thing to happen each time. The raw enemy stats are also so high that you can't just muscle through the skills with raw stats for quite some time- and when you can, the game will try to make you pay anyway. So essentially you need to just keep resetting until the skills don't get in your way enough to not die to them, and the enemies have bad normal luck in fights so you can win. Doing things that way, it definitely is fake difficulty.

When playing by an incredibly strict set of rules that can only be discovered through trial and error (or with help from some friendly gurus, of which you'll find a good deal here), though, you can get a perspective change which actually eliminates a large amount of randomness (or more precisely, allows you to do something about what you get handed). The random aspect of the skills is entirely based in the map generation before battle starts. Once you start fighting, the skills don't change- so as long as you plan ahead perfectly you can't get screwed again by random skills coming out of nowhere (except on reinforcements). And there's absolutely no randomness to when the skills activate or what they do: depending on how you engage the enemy, they can either activate and do a lot or do absolutely nothing (or you can take them anyway and still be fine, in some cases). Sometimes it's even possible to use them to your advantage.

Of course, even though the skills are controllable you've still got to deal with the massive stats behind them, and dealing with them generally prevents you from using the strats that hard counter vanilla Lunatic- you'll still have to contend with massive attack stats, reinforcement ambushes, shaky hitrates, huge zerg rushes, and recruits in grave peril. Minor RNG things like low% crits can and will do you in, and with the amount of leeway you have you cannot eat a single one- even if you somehow get incredibly stat blessed, have a string of lucky Dual Guards and clear out all but the last two or three enemies, one slip could still result in your death. There's a lot you can do to try to reduce the odds of failure, but never quite enough. The game is absolutely unforgiving and one wrong teambuilding decision is fully capable of sinking your entire run. There's no way to know in advance how much exp you'll get from certain maps, no way to learn to budget your cash, no way to learn exactly how much time you have to head off thieves and no way to figure out what classes will be liabilities and how to counter that in upcoming maps. Planning is so huge in this that chapter resets are simply a fact of life caused by circumstances that are sometimes avoidable and sometimes aren't- resetting your whole file is a reality that's just as common to face as resetting over a unit death in any normal mode, except it can be a lot harder to see coming.

Lunatic+ is brutal and deserves its reputation. Don't take it lightly. Never disrespect it. But also don't blow it off as nothing but RNG; it's an incredibly deep difficulty for those with unflinching resolve and a huge amount of time on their hands. For more information, I'd advise you check this thread (the next stream will be around 7 pm PST on Friday, if you're interested).

I still recommend starting on Hard/Classic.

Edit: Also, don't confuse Lunatic with Lunatic+. The former lacks random skills and is merely a festival of zerg rushes with high Str and HP that can be overcome through stats alone- all it takes is making up your mind fast and not changing it on who you want to train, and not wasting too much exp or money. Without having to worry about perfect player phase control, you can approach it in many more ways and always fall back on your Avatar if something goes wrong with your long-term planning (and if you can't because your Avatar isn't strong enough, you'll get stuck early enough that a reset isn't so bad)- it's still a huge slap in the face if you're unprepared, but gives you quite a lot more freedom in what you can do.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[jiffy]

What Fake Difficulty means varies by genera, but in SRPGs fake difficulty generally refers to cases where the RNG is more powerful than the player is.

A lot of people look at Lunatic+ and see it this way, because all those extra skills enemies can get are randomly assigned at the start of the battle, which means you can't do the same strategy twice and just expect the same thing to happen each time. The raw enemy stats are also so high that you can't just muscle through the skills with raw stats for quite some time- and when you can, the game will try to make you pay anyway. So essentially you need to just keep resetting until the skills don't get in your way enough to not die to them, and the enemies have bad normal luck in fights so you can win. Doing things that way, it definitely is fake difficulty.

When playing by an incredibly strict set of rules that can only be discovered through trial and error (or with help from some friendly gurus, of which you'll find a good deal here), though, you can get a perspective change which actually eliminates a large amount of randomness (or more precisely, allows you to do something about what you get handed). The random aspect of the skills is entirely based in the map generation before battle starts. Once you start fighting, the skills don't change- so as long as you plan ahead perfectly you can't get screwed again by random skills coming out of nowhere (except on reinforcements). And there's absolutely no randomness to when the skills activate or what they do: depending on how you engage the enemy, they can either activate and do a lot or do absolutely nothing (or you can take them anyway and still be fine, in some cases). Sometimes it's even possible to use them to your advantage.

Of course, even though the skills are controllable you've still got to deal with the massive stats behind them, and dealing with them generally prevents you from using the strats that hard counter vanilla Lunatic- you'll still have to contend with massive attack stats, reinforcement ambushes, shaky hitrates, huge zerg rushes, and recruits in grave peril. Minor RNG things like low% crits can and will do you in, and with the amount of leeway you have you cannot eat a single one- even if you somehow get incredibly stat blessed, have a string of lucky Dual Guards and clear out all but the last two or three enemies, one slip could still result in your death. There's a lot you can do to try to reduce the odds of failure, but never quite enough. The game is absolutely unforgiving and one wrong teambuilding decision is fully capable of sinking your entire run. There's no way to know in advance how much exp you'll get from certain maps, no way to learn to budget your cash, no way to learn exactly how much time you have to head off thieves and no way to figure out what classes will be liabilities and how to counter that in upcoming maps. Planning is so huge in this that chapter resets are simply a fact of life caused by circumstances that are sometimes avoidable and sometimes aren't- resetting your whole file is a reality that's just as common to face as resetting over a unit death in any normal mode, except it can be a lot harder to see coming.

Lunatic+ is brutal and deserves its reputation. Don't take it lightly. Never disrespect it. But also don't blow it off as nothing but RNG; it's an incredibly deep difficulty for those with unflinching resolve and a huge amount of time on their hands. For more information, I'd advise you check this thread (the next stream will be around 7 pm PST on Friday, if you're interested).

I still recommend starting on Hard/Classic.

Edit: Also, don't confuse Lunatic with Lunatic+. The former lacks random skills and is merely a festival of zerg rushes with high Str and HP that can be overcome through stats alone- all it takes is making up your mind fast and not changing it on who you want to train, and not wasting too much exp or money. Without having to worry about perfect player phase control, you can approach it in many more ways and always fall back on your Avatar if something goes wrong with your long-term planning (and if you can't because your Avatar isn't strong enough, you'll get stuck early enough that a reset isn't so bad)- it's still a huge slap in the face if you're unprepared, but gives you quite a lot more freedom in what you can do.

Wow your explanation is perfect!! I truly have a thorough understanding of fake difficulty in general and as it is applied to fe13 now... I think I get the big picture. Thanks so much to take the time to explain this for me!

I didn't intend from the beginning to jump into Lunatic or Lunatoc + as soon as i got the chance since, based on my previous experience with fe games I understand that it takes some time to understand the dynamics of the system. I will heed your advice and stick to easier difficulties (definitely in classic mode) for a while until I adapt to fe13. Once I think I'm ready, I'll definitely check the thread for some advice. This is my first time using a forum and it's pretty cool that you can share information with intelligible people that share common interests! >_< Once again thanks so much for your assistance!!

[omega zero]

I think random skill distribution is a double-edged sword from the devs perspective, in terms of getting people to grow as FE players. This is probably because there is no incentive not to reset, unless you want to challenge yourself further by finding consistent clears. The reason this is the case is because some random distributions are simply easier to deal with than other distributions. Imagine if the skills were still distributed in a manner that seems random, but all iterations were about the same difficulty in terms of developing an approach. Then I think there would be less complaints about the perceived fake difficulty, and more people trying to develop solid clears. Alternatively, the devs need to get the message across that they are not trying to defeat the player, rather they want the player to realize that reliable solutions are possible, so the player should devise such solutions.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Trying to make skill distributions "balanced" and less random is basically asking people to find a way to exploit them- I think a much better way would be to have a mode that puts Lunatic+ skills onto the Hard mode enemies. Less zerg, better exp gain, and enemy Atk isn't punishing enough to cause a game over due to one missed KO or overlooked foe, but the benefits of working around enemy skills still encourage the player to figure it out.

Making resets less desirable: simply add a reset counter that's displayed at the end of the game. More creative/work intensive solutions would be to re-add a ranking system (something Awakening sorely lacks) or force the player to watch this upon every non-game over reset.

Once I think I'm ready, I'll definitely check the thread for some advice.

Oh, that's not a general advice thread (you'd want The Lunatic Club in my sig and on the front page for that). That's a routing thread for a resetless (no saves, single segment) clear of Lunatic+/Classic using no Spotpass/DLC and keeping all units alive. It's the best example out there of exactly how far it's possible to push the difficulty.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Knusperkeks]

I do not believe showing the player a huge 'you suck' sign every time he concedes is any fun at all.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Sssh, I never said who it was fun for...

[omega zero]

Trying to make skill distributions "balanced" and less random is basically asking people to find a way to exploit them-

How so? Is planning to take on specific Apotheosis enemies (for example) exploitative?

Hard+ might be a good idea.

Also, wouldn't a reset counter hurt players who are trying to devise consistent clears? For testing approaches and placements, etc.

Edited April 1, 2015 by omega zero

[Czar_Yoshi]

How so? Is planning to take on specific Apotheosis enemies (for example) exploitative?

It is, actually. Secret Apo is pretty clearly balanced around the player having a fully capped/married team but no idea what they're going up against. Having full access to the enemy data and the patience to use it when building a team lets you handle it with stats 10-20 below normal with minimal chance of death- when fully prepared, there are maybe five enemies in the whole map that even have a chance of not dying, let alone actually killing you if you're prepared (and the two that can kill you only have a ~25% chance to do so even if they somehow manage to fight you).

If you're working on a guide for a consistent clear, you wouldn't want to do the actual run in your planning/testing file. But aiming for simply not dying regardless of whether or not you can repeat your movements (once you really know what you're doing) isn't actually what incurs a lot of resets- it's doing stupid things to look for hidden AI exploits to make clears that are completely skill-proof that does.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[omega zero]

"Exploiting" the way the devs coded the enemy units? Heh.

But I get what you mean.

Anyways, from what I've gleaned from the various discussions about L/L+, it seems as though Veteran really warped the game. But people don't realize that and point fingers at other things as to the perceived cause of imbalances, like children or random skill distributions.

[Azurelibra]

Normal is like FE8 difficulty ( A LITTLE harder?)

Hard is FE7 Difficulty on a run when you start on Hector/Eliwood path (no op Lyn and Florina 4 u ;/)

I haven't finished HH on FE7 But based on what I hear it would be compatable

(Lunatic+ is rng based so I have no plans to ever play it )

Hard/Classic MIGHT be a good starting point since you already played a few games

@OP