Do FE games have unwinnable situations

[The Unlikely Knight]

49 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

In Echoes you can easily have an Alm who is too weak to deal with his lategame solo section, but unlike the Ike cases you can at least go level him up to fix this. I guess in theory if he got unbelievably bad levels you could get stuck, though?

This almost happened to me when playing Echoes. I wasn't paying enough attention to Alm's levels and he nearly keeled over when I reached this solo section. Thank goodness for Mila's Timewheel and those healing tiles in the solo run! They helped immensely, and his level ups did even things a bit.

[Gradivus.]

I'll interpret unwinnable situation as "you saved at the start of a chapter and there is no way to beat the chapter from that savepoint".

- Prologue-4 of SD is never unwinnable. If everyone except Marth gets killed before, he still gets the Door Key at the start. He can recruit Gordin to distract the knights. The enemies can be soloed by Marth, even at base (you just need not to be too reckless).

- Any Conquest, FE12 or FE11 lategame map can be unwinnable on the highest difficulties if you lost all warp staves (in FE11) and all good units. FE12 replacements and free silvers have no chance, and certainly Corrin solo lategame is impossible on Lunatic, at least as soon as you reach C26's final room or Endgame. Even FE11 replacements might have no chance unless you made some forges in advance.

- If Julia is dead, no holy weapons were passed down, you lost the Berserk Sword and don't have a Power Ring, FE4 Endgame is impossible because Ares, Seliph and Shanan are all too weak (2x2, 2x2 and 3x2, respectively) to kill Julius.

- FE12 Medeus can also be impossible. If you don't have the Falchion or a very potent magic user, or Marth is OHKOed and you don't have good enough Magic/Hauteclere users to suicide chip Medeus, it can't be done.

- In general, difficulty spikes like HHM CoD and FE6 HM Sacae 18/19 can be unwinnable if you lost a crucial unit and just accepted the loss because the game felt easy enough back then.

- If you have less than 6 units, FE5 Endgame is impossible. The switches have to be occupied simultaneously.

Edited September 3, 2017 by Gradivus.

[Snowy_One]

Yes. Though it pretty much has to be through making mistakes on-par with dropping bombs on your own troops. The most obvious one would be not raising your lord up and letting the units you've leveled die leaving you with a bunch of units too weak to do anything. Outside of that there are a *few* specific moments per game like the aforementioned 'not raising Ike to fight Ashnard in FE9 hard'. Though these moments still come under 'effectively self-sabotage' territory.

[Emperor Hardin]

The escape chapter 14x in Thracia 776 requires the units to go over mountain tile terrain, which everyone but poor Dalshin can go over. Due to Dalshin's high build base and growth, if you're using him, he will likely have 20 build, making him unable to be rescued. 

This means you'll have to restart the map and not use Dalshin, or leave Dalshin behind resulting in him being captured by the enemy. 

Edited September 4, 2017 by Emperor Hardin

[Dayni]

I may have found a funny example.

In Birthright/Revelations, you can get the skirmish maps, which will include the map for Sevenfold Sancuary, certainly a map I always disliked, but pretty unmemorable until now.

If an enemy in the upper part of the map has a staff like Silence or Hexing rod, and then moves to use it and steps on the stair tile on the bottom, the top of the map is inaccessible, making the map unfinishable (you can't even hit it at 3 range as the distance between the stair tiles is 4 tiles away (Where are my SoV archers now?)). This can be circumvented because the units will only move off after certain turns (though I can't say I know the logic), so the sooner the better.

So Skirmishes can become unintentionally unwinnable apparently, though not without player involvement (or lack thereof) again.

[Harvey]

5 hours ago, Emperor Hardin said:

The escape chapter 14x in Thracia 776 requires the units to go over mountain tile terrain, which everyone but poor Dalshin can go over. Due to Dalshin's high build base and growth, if you're using him, he will likely have 20 build, making him unable to be rescued. 

This means you'll have to restart the map and not use Dalshin, or leave Dalshin behind resulting in him being captured by the enemy. 

So...he can't walk through that terrain? Because if he can, then how is it unwinnable?

 

Edited September 4, 2017 by Harvey

[Emperor Hardin]

4 hours ago, Harvey said:

So...he can't walk through that terrain? Because if he can, then how is it unwinnable?

 

Armor units cannot cross over hills no matter what, all other units have some way of crossing.

In an escape chapter, every unit has to reach the exit or else they are captured.

[eclipse]

On 9/2/2017 at 2:25 PM, Gradivus. said:

- Prologue-4 of SD is never unwinnable. If everyone except Marth gets killed before, he still gets the Door Key at the start. He can recruit Gordin to distract the knights. The enemies can be soloed by Marth, even at base (you just need not to be too reckless).

It is possible to make it unwinnable, but it requires a lot of work.  Recruit Gordin, then wait for the armors to march past the fort.  Since you can't reach the fort, your choices are either a closed door or an advancing wall of units who can murder you outright.

[Gradivus.]

But you can just soft-reset and play the map anew, right? I was assuming that for a chapter to be unwinnable you need to have no ways to win at the point you load the save.

Tbf any map can be made impossible by spending all money and tossing your weapons on previous maps, but that doesn't happen by accident (and by that logic P4 is impossible if you dropped all your weapons before).

Edited September 7, 2017 by Gradivus.