So, is it challenging ?

[Missile]

It's been a while since the japanese release and I think that now, we know the game enough to say if it's challenging or not.

I'm talking about every mode (except normal) and paths (conquest, birthright, invisible), is it good enough on hard ? More challenging than Awakening on Lunatic ? (which is stupid, not hard)

Is the map design more interesting ? Are there better ways to beating a harder mode without pairing up everyone and just destroy everything ?

Thanks for the response and sorry for my english if it's confusing to read

[Ryo]

Hoshido Hard and Lunatic is like Awakening Hard. Play however you like there.

Nohr's difficulty is quite different from Awakening's style, in the sense that the enemies are not as buffed but there are much more things going on in the map that you have to worry about other than the enemies swarming at you, like status staves, debuffs, enemies' skills and how they're pre-designed just to fuck you up. Sometimes it will induce a lot of unnecessary frustrations. The more difficult maps are more towards the end, except for maybe chapter 10, so early-game is not like Awakening's chapters 2 and 3. Basically Nohr Hard is much more difficult than Hoshido Lunatic, but I would say is the best path and difficulty gameplay-wise. Nohr Lunatic is similar to Nohr Hard on most parts with only some subtle differences, but sometimes those can be enough to make you rethink your strategy entirely. Pairing up everyone theoretically still works, but that's not gonna save you if you don't think, and some situations require you to use Attack Stance or a combination of both.

Can't speak about IK since I haven't played it, but the style is more similar to Awakening from what I've heard. It has buffer enemies and encourages low-manning (well, most of the cast are shits anyways...)

[CocoaGalaxy]

Hoshido Hard/Lunatic is between Awakening Hard and Lunatic, closer to the lunatic side I would say

Largely speaking though, all the routes are more difficult than Awakening Hard, less difficult than Awakening Lunatic

It's kind of hard to talk about things without a baseline though, but I'll try anyway

In Hoshido, the main difficulty is the higher number of enemies meaning that it's easy to have exposed units who probably are liable to being killed in 2/3 hits

In Nohr, it's more of a tricky thing, in that they put more skills and enemy placement, with some map design on the side

On Invisible Kingdom, it's largely straightforward though enemies are pretty brutal in terms of stats, though that tapers off towards the end

And the map to map "gimmicks", though most of them aren't really that bad, just some of them make map movement a bit of a drag

Edited November 1, 2015 by CocoaGalaxy

[Ryo]

It also depends on what you subjectively see as "hard", really. If you think enemies with ridiculously buffed stats and/or skills are hard, then nothing can compared with Awakening Lunatic(+). I don't really know how to compare Nohr Lunatic to Awakening Lunatic either, because they're nothing alike and induce different kinds of frustration, so I can only say that they have "different styles" of difficulty.

[gayserbeam]

I'm going to rank everything in a sort of relative heiarchy of (arguably subjective) difficulty.

Hardest

Awakening Lunatic +

The use of randomness to create actual impossible situations makes this by far the most frustrating, especially early on.

Conquest Lunatic

Enemies, especially named enemies, are given some pretty devious skills and you'll be fairly restricted in the units you can reliably use.

IK Lunatic

Some gimmicks in IK are really annoying, and Lunatic just adds more enemies to take advantage of them.

Awakening Lunatic

Awakening can be easily broken, eventually, but the first five chapters of Awakening Lunatic are more frustrating than most of Fire Emblem in general and you have to rely heavily on Frederick which limits unit choice.

Conquest Hard

Those darn ninjas.

Birthright Lunatic

Hoshido's Lunatic isn't much more difficult than Hard, really. You still stomp the game into dust when Ryoma joins.

IK Hard

IK is just generally annoying, but you get so many strong prepromotes that the game basically builds your best team for you.

Birthright Hard

The significantly slowed down EXP gain for high-level units and the lack of really tanky characters makes it harder than Awakening Hard overall. Still, you have a lot of freedom and your brothers are both overpowered when they join.

Conquest Normal

Is still harder than Awakening Hard because of the routes's several little tricks. Still, Effie, Flannel and Xander are completely indestructible glaciers here so it isn't very challenging.

IK Normal

Same idea as Nohrmal, just with more tricks and more indestructible tanks.

Awakening Hard

Offers a lot of freedom and the maps are mostly open spaces that you put Robin in the middle of and click "End Turn".

Birthright Normal

Basically Sacred Stones.

Awakening Normal

The only FE game where you can rig yourself to take 0 damage for the entire game?

Easiest

[Missile]

Thanks for the clear responses everyone ! That's actually the kind of difficulty I like

[Giga Man]

How do reinforcements work? In Awakening, reinforcements appeared after the enemy turn on Normal, but on Hard, they appeared before the enemy turn and moved during that same turn. However, in FE7 on normal (it's always normal on the first playthrough, right?), reinforcements moving during their turn of appearance or during the turn after was dependent on the map, I think. I thought that was interesting to say the least.

[Ryo]

Reinforcements spawn after enemy phase. But sometimes they literally show up out of nowhere so you can't always predict where they would spawn.

[PuffPuff]

Hoshido Hard and Lunatic is like Awakening Hard. Play however you like there.

Nohr's difficulty is quite different from Awakening's style, in the sense that the enemies are not as buffed but there are much more things going on in the map that you have to worry about other than the enemies swarming at you, like status staves, debuffs, enemies' skills and how they're pre-designed just to fuck you up. Sometimes it will induce a lot of unnecessary frustrations. The more difficult maps are more towards the end, except for maybe chapter 10, so early-game is not like Awakening's chapters 2 and 3. Basically Nohr Hard is much more difficult than Hoshido Lunatic, but I would say is the best path and difficulty gameplay-wise. Nohr Lunatic is similar to Nohr Hard on most parts with only some subtle differences, but sometimes those can be enough to make you rethink your strategy entirely. Pairing up everyone theoretically still works, but that's not gonna save you if you don't think, and some situations require you to use Attack Stance or a combination of both.

Can't speak about IK since I haven't played it, but the style is more similar to Awakening from what I've heard. It has buffer enemies and encourages low-manning (well, most of the cast are shits anyways...)

Nohr Hard/Lunatic

Not to mention throwing more traps to further make it frustrating. (Stage Hazards)

Except for Ch26, no enemies have C'mere staves. Still is hard enough with everything else.

Nohr Normal

More difficult than even Awakening vanilla Lunatic. The stage hazards are still there as well as the gamebreaking Ninja's. Unless that other games are played, better use Casual/Phoenix.

Hoshido Hard/Lunatic

I find Hoshido to be quite a surprise on Hard/Lunatic as the Valkyries/Maids usually have c'mere staves bringing you into the frey of many enemies. Hope you have Silence staves for them.

The third defending My Castle map I find to be more difficult than on Nohr's for them packed with deadly skills like Faires, Astra, all Golems having Counter limiting your options to attacking them to only units that are usually squishy enough to getting 2HKOED!

IK

Haven't played on Hard/Lunatic

I'm going to rank everything in a sort of relative heiarchy of (arguably subjective) difficulty.

Hardest

Awakening Lunatic +

The use of randomness to create actual impossible situations makes this by far the most frustrating, especially early on.

Conquest Lunatic

Enemies, especially named enemies, are given some pretty devious skills and you'll be fairly restricted in the units you can reliably use.

IK Lunatic

Some gimmicks in IK are really annoying, and Lunatic just adds more enemies to take advantage of them.

Awakening Lunatic

Awakening can be easily broken, eventually, but the first five chapters of Awakening Lunatic are more frustrating than most of Fire Emblem in general and you have to rely heavily on Frederick which limits unit choice.

Conquest Hard

Those darn ninjas.

Birthright Lunatic

Hoshido's Lunatic isn't much more difficult than Hard, really. You still stomp the game into dust when Ryoma joins.

IK Hard

IK is just generally annoying, but you get so many strong prepromotes that the game basically builds your best team for you.

Birthright Hard

The significantly slowed down EXP gain for high-level units and the lack of really tanky characters makes it harder than Awakening Hard overall. Still, you have a lot of freedom and your brothers are both overpowered when they join.

Conquest Normal

Is still harder than Awakening Hard because of the routes's several little tricks. Still, Effie, Flannel and Xander are completely indestructible glaciers here so it isn't very challenging.

IK Normal

Same idea as Nohrmal, just with more tricks and more indestructible tanks.

Awakening Hard

Offers a lot of freedom and the maps are mostly open spaces that you put Robin in the middle of and click "End Turn".

Birthright Normal

Basically Sacred Stones.

Awakening Normal

The only FE game where you can rig yourself to take 0 damage for the entire game?

Easiest

Awakening Lunatic+ having no fixed skills on enemies does actually make it impossible as the mode itself already screams out Bow users with the amount of Counter that the foes have.

Why no mention of Benoit?! D:

Defensive Formation is one of the best skills in the game. Plus, negates Speed Seal.