Changes to this game’s maddening that you are NOT a fan of

[Barren]

So as the title says which change to Engage’s maddening mode you’re not a fan of?

I’ll start: they made certain enemies and vast majority of bosses being immune to effective damage like wrymslayers and ridersbane. To me this severely limits the usefulness of most of your go to weapons. Especially when you have bosses being immune to being broken on top of that.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Barren

[Dark Holy Elf]

Honestly I think Engage has one of my favourite Maddening modes in the series, I associate almost all of them as having at least one change I strongly dislike (e.g. reinforcements which act immediately) but I have no complaints here.

Personally I think bosses immuning their weakness is a good thing if you're going to make weaknesses as impactful as 3x might, and them being immune to break is just outright good because otherwise they'd be braindead easy to cheese. Engage Maddening has some of the most fun bosses in the series IMO, they're still not super tough but they're enjoyable and frequently a good test, at least until some of the emblem nonsense spins out of control in the second half of the game.

[samthedigital]

There are a few maps where the enemy stat bloat is annoying, but that opinion is probably partially influenced by my latest playthrough which necessitated the use of some of the worst units in the game. Otherwise I can't think of anything in particular that I dislike when it comes to the difficulty mode, but I don't remember much of my HM playthrough besides chapter 17 either.

[Jotari]

I played Maddening first and I thought it had some of the best boss encounters in the series. Much as I loathe the Four Hounds as an overused concept in the narrative, they were always fantastic to fight in gameplay. So, no, can't agree that giving a delete button for them (well other than Smash Weapon Emblem attacks) would make the game better.

Now as for what I would change. I think I'd do something different with Fell Xenologue. I did thoroughly enjoy playing it, and Maddening really did manage to pose a genuine challenge even with enforced Casual Mode...but...IDK it kind of also sucks for as much as I enjoyed it? The idea is obviously that you're using preset levels and builds for your units. And at first I was really excited about this idea. It was a chance to use units I didn't have a chance to in the main campaign...only no, you absolutely can't do that. Because Maddening Fell Xenologue requires you to have your best skills and Emblem bond levels to pass even the first few turns of the first chapter. You are not clearing it with your level 7 Yunaka who only had Micaiah for one chapter. So then, rather than being this weird sort of neutral experimental thing, it becomes an exercise in frustration where you're just limited in what you can normally do. You don't have units in the preferred classes you've chosen for them and you don't have access to any of your forged or engraved weapons you rely on. The whole preset level feels like it's limiting potential strategy instead of facilitating it. And the very worst part, is that this results in the mandatory deployed plot important units coming across as hugely weak compared to your main team. Rather than being equal players, you need to protect (or choose when most efficiently to sacrifice) half your team. I'm sure on Hard this design philosophy works as intended, but Maddening is just too difficult to do anything but attach Canto+ and Speed Taker etc to you're Lv20 Bonded units and write off Nel and co as trash (and even then the final battle took me like three tries at two hours a piece). I reiterate, I still enjoyed immensely Fell Xenologue because I do relish a challenge like that, but it felt like a challenge more because it was poorly designed than the idea being executed well.

[Shadow Mir]

19 hours ago, Barren said:

So as the title says which change to Engage’s maddening mode you’re not a fan of?

I’ll start: they made certain enemies and vast majority of bosses being immune to effect damage like wrymslayers and ridersbane. To me this severely limits the usefulness of most of your go to weapons. Especially when you have bosses being immune to being broken on top of that.

Honestly, effective weapons are hardly useful in Engage anyway. They're too weak for how heavy they are. I would go as far as to say they're about as much of a meme as PoR effective weapons (10 damage vs an armor and no double... yeah, that's worth it). Especially the wyrmslayer, which ends up being useless against the shit it would've been nice against, aka Corrupted Wyrms. 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Honestly, effective weapons are hardly useful in Engage anyway. They're too weak for how heavy they are. I would go as far as to say they're about as much of a meme as PoR effective weapons (10 damage vs an armor and no double... yeah, that's worth it). Especially the wyrmslayer, which ends up being useless against the shit it would've been nice against, aka Corrupted Wyrms. 

The Emblems tend to have somewhat useful effective weapons. Well, at least you're not required to save an inventory slot for them, so they can come in useful. The downside is no forges of course which lets regular weapons outstrip them pretty quickly. Unless they have Effective Corrupted, which is super useful late game when virtually every enemy fought is corrupted.

Edited September 24, 2023 by Jotari

[samthedigital]

The Armorslayer and Ridersbane are situationally useful early on in the game. The Hurricane Axe can also be useful until it stops one shotting wyverns. I'm pretty sure that it takes 6 magic or something like that for any unit with a Hurricane Axe to one shot wyverns in the Roy paralogue for example; it doesn't take much. Otherwise yeah, they're pretty lackluster and require a lot of investment for them to do anything.