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Fire Emblem Awakening |OT| Lord of the RNG

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CorvoSol

Member
The developers themselves can't agree on the "right" way to play Fire Emblem. What I do is pick Casual mode, not because of permadeath, but because Casual allows you to save the game in the middle of battle. That way when someone dies I can restart from the beginning of the turn instead of the beginning of the entire chapter.

I also do this.
 

PBalfredo

Member
I think there is a right mindset for playing Fire Emblem. One that values your units and doesn't just have the player throw them at the enemy like disposable zerglings. Classic mode just reinforces that mindset. If you're disciplined enough to play Casual and avoid treating every unit except Chrom and the MU as pawns, great. If not, you're doing it wrong.
 
I've decided to restart in Casual. Not only have I forgotten everything I've done up to where I stopped 2 months ago, but I feel pretty confident that I'm going to suck my first time through and may not have time for a second time through this year.
 

Draxal

Member
The developers themselves can't agree on the "right" way to play Fire Emblem. What I do is pick Casual mode, not because of permadeath, but because Casual allows you to save the game in the middle of battle. That way when someone dies I can restart from the beginning of the turn instead of the beginning of the entire chapter.

Pretty much this, best of both worlds. No wrong way to play this game.
 

Gvaz

Banned
What don't you like about it?

I don't like how units don't help out nearby units in battle.

I don't like that I do fucking absurdly stupid paltry damage to enemies, requiring much more turns to kill things. He has 30 hp and you do 5-8 points of damage to him, sword on axe typecasting properly. He does 5-8 points of damage and you only have 15! HP. I can stand this shit if i was vs a commander unit, not from every fucking trash mob.

In FEA I can frequently kill things in 10 turns. In FERD it takes a lot more effort to do anything.

In FEA I can turn off combat animations, I can't see a way to do that for FERD.

Also I play on Casual on FEA because permadeth is dumb and frustrating.

I find it kind of bothersome that you have the option to turn off what difficulty you're playing on for streetpass teams, because of the perceived OH NO WHAT A NOOB HES PLAYING ON CASUAL LETS MAKE FUN OF HIM. That's fucking unnecessary drama bullshit.
 

Frolow

Banned
So I've decided to go with the following pairs for my next playthrough:

  • Chrom X Olivia
  • Robin X
    Aversa
  • Ricken X Lissa
  • Donnel X Sully
  • Henry X Sumia
  • Libra X Mariabelle
  • Lon'qu X Cordelia
  • Gregor X Panne
  • Stahl X Miriel
  • Gaius X Tharja
  • Kellam X Nowi
  • Vaike X Cherche

Now I just need to decide on classes and skills for everyone. I've already decided that Morgen's going to be a Sage/Dark Filer with Shadowgift, but that's as far as I've gotten. Any advice?
 

McNum

Member
It's been a while since i played Radiant Dawn, but I think you turn off the combat animations by selecting an empty square, picking Option off the menu that pops up and you can set the animations to On, Off, and Individual there. Radiant Dawn really got its difficulty curve place upside down, though. The first third of the game is much harder than the last third.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
I don't like how units don't help out nearby units in battle.

I don't like that I do fucking absurdly stupid paltry damage to enemies, requiring much more turns to kill things. He has 30 hp and you do 5-8 points of damage to him, sword on axe typecasting properly. He does 5-8 points of damage and you only have 15! HP. I can stand this shit if i was vs a commander unit, not from every fucking trash mob.

In FEA I can frequently kill things in 10 turns. In FERD it takes a lot more effort to do anything.

In FEA I can turn off combat animations, I can't see a way to do that for FERD.

Also I play on Casual on FEA because permadeth is dumb and frustrating.

I find it kind of bothersome that you have the option to turn off what difficulty you're playing on for streetpass teams, because of the perceived OH NO WHAT A NOOB HES PLAYING ON CASUAL LETS MAKE FUN OF HIM. That's fucking unnecessary drama bullshit.

You're complaining about a lot of things I prefer from that game.

RD's difficulty is kind of wonky, but I still think it was better balanced than Awakening outside the initial section with the Dawn Brigade. And it's a harder game, I'd say it's normal mode is between Awakening's Hard and Lunatic difficulties.

I also prefer Fire Emblem without grinding and world maps, and I wouldn't mind if the pair up/dual systems didn't make a return either because that (along with the grinding) is a factor that led to Awakening's poorly balanced difficulty.

Edit: And only the two most recent games in the series have casual/classic mode options, permadeath is a staple series "feature" and not an option for the first 11 games.
 

Rarutos

Member

Well, you're kind of going from one of the easier games in the series to one of the hardest, so it makes sense you'd get frustrated. Awakening is the first time characters next to each other help in battle though, and since you're going backwards, series wise, you kind of have to expect that some things in Awakening just won't be there.

And I'm pretty sure you can turn off animations in Radiant Dawn. :)
 

Gvaz

Banned
Edit: And only the two most recent games in the series have casual/classic mode options, permadeath is a staple series "feature" and not an option for the first 11 games.

That makes sense why I hadn't played any before FEA because I don't like permadeath in ANY games. I'm not going to invest time where my character can die and there's nothing I can try to do to fix it. I need to feel like im making progress rather than hitting my face on a wall.

Some android "roguelikes" get around this by going "well gold carries over, so you can make your new dude stronger than he was at first, and pick up the loot from your old body!" which is much better.
 
I don't like how units don't help out nearby units in battle.

I don't like that I do fucking absurdly stupid paltry damage to enemies, requiring much more turns to kill things. He has 30 hp and you do 5-8 points of damage to him, sword on axe typecasting properly. He does 5-8 points of damage and you only have 15! HP. I can stand this shit if i was vs a commander unit, not from every fucking trash mob.

In FEA I can frequently kill things in 10 turns. In FERD it takes a lot more effort to do anything.

In FEA I can turn off combat animations, I can't see a way to do that for FERD.

Also I play on Casual on FEA because permadeth is dumb and frustrating.

I find it kind of bothersome that you have the option to turn off what difficulty you're playing on for streetpass teams, because of the perceived OH NO WHAT A NOOB HES PLAYING ON CASUAL LETS MAKE FUN OF HIM. That's fucking unnecessary drama bullshit.

Awakening is one of the easier FE games; RD is one of the hardest. Push through the Dawn Brigade section and you'll get to use other armies with better units in Parts II and III.

Turning off animations is the first entry in the Options menu, just like in Awakening and every other FE game.

Awakening's Casual Mode retained a feature introduced in Radiant Dawn: the battle save. Make liberal use of it if you're getting frustrated. You can avoid permadeath by using the battle save properly.

What difficulty are you playing on? (What difficulty did you choose in Awakening?) If you're on Hard, just restart on Normal or Easy. Easy if you want something closer to Awakening's Normal. Normal is ever so slightly easier than Awakening's Hard in my opinion.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
Awakening's hard mode gets pretty darn easy after the first 4-5 chapters. I didn't do any grinding on my second playthrough until I hit the second continent (since all I was really after were characters, story be damned), and somewhere around chapter 5 or 6 the majority of the challenge had dissipated.

My first playthrough was another matter entirely, since I made things more difficult on myself by promoting at level 10-15 thinking "bah, I can just grind if I need to!" And then proceeding to not grind.

Radiant Dawn's normal mode is also more difficult at the start, but I recall it at least maintaining a fair bit of challenge throughout the entire game. Awakening becomes really easy, and that sentiment seems to be shared (it was discussed here a few pages back).
 

Nohar

Member
Also, note that Radiant Dawn difficulty settings are mistranslated. Easy is in fact the "Normal" mode in the Japanese version, Normal is hard, and Hard is Lunatic.

Gvaz, I honestly advise you to stop playing Radiant Dawn. RD is a sequel to Path of Radiance, the FE GameCube, and the story is much more interesting if you played PoR beforehand.
Like others said, the 10 first chapters of RD are insanely difficult compared to the rest of the game. If you manage to get past them, everything will be far easier to handle.
And, yes, you can turn off animations...

*roll-eyes at the "perma-death is dumb and frustrating" line* Perma-death is what makes the FE series interesting: you can't just blast your way through the enemy lines and sacrifice units without paying attention. It's that feature that force you to think before moving and to make strategic choices, unlike in some other Tactical-RPGs where there is simply no need for strategy after a while (sorry Disgaea: I love ya, but strategy isn't your forte when you can unlock completly overpowered characters that can solo whole chapters).
 
Awakening's hard mode gets pretty darn easy after the first 4-5 chapters. I didn't do any grinding on my second playthrough until I hit the second continent (since all I was really after were characters, story be damned), and somewhere around chapter 5 or 6 the majority of the challenge had dissipated.

My first playthrough was another matter entirely, since I made things more difficult on myself by promoting at level 10-15 thinking "bah, I can just grind if I need to!" And then proceeding to not grind.

Radiant Dawn's normal mode is also more difficult at the start, but I recall it at least maintaining a fair bit of challenge throughout the entire game. Awakening becomes really easy, and that sentiment seems to be shared (it was discussed here a few pages back).

Yeah, I started on Hard, figuring if I can handle RD I can handle this, played a few chapters, thought "Well, this isn't what I bargained for" and restarted on Normal. This was before I discovered Pair Up and grinding and all the stuff that makes it easy.
 
I decided to give Lunatic a shot. Normal Classic was an absolute joke since I went for all the characters and did a lot of support stuff to see the conversations. By the end of the game, I could just walk one of several godly characters down the middle of the map without a worry in the world. I figured Hard would be a "normal" level of difficulty, so I skipped that and went to Lunatic to see how much of a challenge it is, and boy is this difficulty dumb.

It turns the first few chapters into a complex puzzle to trade Frederick items without ever ending the turn in enemy range. My game clock says just under an hour to get to Chapter 4, but in real time it was more like 4-5 hours of soft resets and praying to the RNG gods (mostly in chapter 2, because I went into that one in a condition where I absolutely needed one or two lucky blocks in order to live past the second turn. I also got greedy one time when I was about to win and accidentally lost a character, costing me an additional hour or so)

It is satisfying to chip away at the solution to the problem of all of your characters being completely impotent except for Frederick, especially when you finally figure it out how to do it, but it also feels super silly. Apparently it gets better when you unlock the DLC and are able to buy the maps to grind on, but the road there is a bit ridiculous, I don't like grinding as a solution for difficulty, and I like the idea of paying $2.50-$6 for the privilege even less. Part of me wants the lunatic experience, but having to grind and pay to do it may be a deal breaker.

Hard Casual may be better for me. I think I'm done with Classic, since I soft reset all deaths anyway, the only difference in switching to Casual is that the odd occasion when I lose a character to greedy experience farming at the end won't force me to replay the entire map.

Permadeath is the best thing about the series.

Isn't permadeath in like every strategy-RPG? Final Fantasy Tactics has it. Valkyria Chronicles has it. XCOM has it. Not sure if Disgaea and Phantom Brave have it since I haven't played either of those in a while. The only difference is it's instantaneous here, whereas others give you a short window to revive.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
I decided to give Lunatic a shot. Normal Classic was an absolute joke since I went for all the characters and did a lot of support stuff to see the conversations. By the end of the game, I could just walk one of several godly characters down the middle of the map without a worry in the world. I figured Hard would be a "normal" level of difficulty, so I skipped that and went to Lunatic to see how much of a challenge it is, and boy is this difficulty dumb.

It turns the first few chapters into a complex puzzle to trade Frederick items without ever ending the turn in enemy range. My game clock says just under an hour to get to Chapter 4, but in real time it was more like 4-5 hours of soft resets and praying to the RNG gods (mostly in chapter 2, because I went into that one in a condition where I absolutely needed one or two lucky blocks in order to live past the second turn. I also got greedy one time when I was about to win and accidentally lost a character, costing me an additional hour or so)

It is satisfying to chip away at the solution to the problem of all of your characters being completely impotent except for Frederick, especially when you finally figure it out how to do it, but it also feels super silly. Apparently it gets better when you unlock the DLC and are able to buy the maps to grind on, but the road there is a bit ridiculous, I don't like grinding as a solution for difficulty, and I like the idea of paying $2.50-$6 for the privilege even less. Part of me wants the lunatic experience, but having to grind and pay to do it may be a deal breaker.

Hard Casual may be better for me. I think I'm done with Classic, since I soft reset all deaths anyway, the only difference in switching to Casual is that the odd occasion when I lose a character to greedy experience farming at the end won't force me to replay the entire map.

Like I said above on the previous page, hard mode basically becomes a joke, but I guess it depends on how good you are at the game. The difficulty starts off rock solid, but goes downhill rapidly. I haven't properly beaten the second half of the game, but the consensus among series veterans seems to be that it's piss easy, and considering what I've seen of the first half of the game with no grinding (well, up to chapter 15), I can see that being the case.
 

Gvaz

Banned
I game the system if there's a permadeth mechanic, because I hate it and the entire mechanic.

I mean really, if I lose even one character I restart if it means I lose that character, and that gets really tedious, not challenging.

Basically I have an extremely low tolerance for tedium. If something feels even the slightest bit tedious, I go fuck it and either give up or brute force my way through.

I prefer easier -> harder than vice versa.
 

Roto13

Member
Ya, doing second playthrough with a femmu trying to use different supports this time so I can't force Donnel on her.

Ricken's the only other palatable choice for me.

And it's really, bad because she is like 1000 years old, I really don't like her at all.

"Little girl it's totally ok to bone because she's technically 1000" is the worst anime trope.

The worst one.
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
I would put "It's okay to bone your sister because she's actually your half-sister" and its variants near the same point.

It's okay to bone your sister/mom because she's not actually your sister/mom, you just call her that.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
I game the system if there's a permadeth mechanic, because I hate it and the entire mechanic.

I mean really, if I lose even one character I restart if it means I lose that character, and that gets really tedious, not challenging.

Basically I have an extremely low tolerance for tedium. If something feels even the slightest bit tedious, I go fuck it and either give up or brute force my way through.

I prefer easier -> harder than vice versa.

Did you ever mention what difficulty you are playing on?

I agree with the poster who said you're better off playing Path of Radiance first if possible. The two play the same and Path of Radiance is a much easier game, even on normal mode (which is the equivalent of easy in Radiant Dawn due to the messed up translation).
 
"Little girl it's totally ok to bone because she's technically 1000" is the worst anime trope.

The worst one.

Remember when old 90's anime would have like a 2 minute disclaimer at the beginning of videos explaining that all the girls are at least 18 and attending a junior college?
 

GuardianE

Santa May Claus
Do male-female pairs automatically marry after reaching S-rank, or is there a choice made? I wasn't entirely clear from the OP.
 

ffdgh

Member
That was my first and will forever be my fave severa. Blonde severa clashes with personality but I like it.

And Donnel gives purple and it matches her portrait imo.
 

Kincaido

Got 99 problems and only one of them is a waifu
Farmer peasant gives purple hair.

All the hair colors of mai daughteru
/waifu in another save

FUcsWus.jpg
 

Mr. Fix

Member
Black-haired Severa is the best, even though Lon'qu and Cherche are the canon pair. Donnel's the best for Sully/Kjelle though, since it gives her access to the Dark Flier class. I just can't pass that up.
 

Kincaido

Got 99 problems and only one of them is a waifu
Lon'qu is the only worthy substitute for Kincaido. I do love red hair Severa though <3
 

CorvoSol

Member
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFinally have Olivia to the point where she does decent damage as a Dancer. She practically solo'd them wyvern riders with her Killer Edge or whatevs.
 

OceanBlue

Member
What's the point of having a dancer when your team has Galeforce?

I've had a couple of turns in the Rogues DLC where some of my guys couldn't finish off an enemy in one turn or I needed a specific unit to avoid a Weaponbreaker skill, to heal, or to plug a wall. It's not completely useless, especially for a team like mine which is really sword/spear heavy and lacking axes/bows.
 
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