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[MTZehvor]

Lonely_Dolphin said:

MTZehvor said:

Fuck's sake I hate this website revamp and the new quoting system. Formatting this shit is impossible.

I'm just gonna take this point by point because trying to split it up is taking me longer than writing my response out.

>Another reason I can aggro so easily is because enemy groups are generally spaced too far away to support each other.

I'll come back to this in a second, but that...really hasn't been my experience. If anything, the sheer number of ballistas, riders, cavs, beasts, etc. result in a bunch of situations where it's very easy to get surrounded if you're not careful. It's not as crazy as Awakening, but I think that's more due to the sheer nature of the map layout and Awakening being far more open. Something like Chapter 13 or 19 though: I'm not sure sure how there's a possible argument for enemy units being too far away. They're all very tightly packed together, and baiting them out consistently is kind of a necessity (or at least was for my units).

>Not all Fire Emblem games are balanced the same way, and the rest of that argument I could say also, that you're underleveled and unluckly.

You could say that, although reading through this thread and going by the experience of other people I know playing on hard, it seems like far more people have had an experience similar to mine than yours. It seems much more likely that your experience is the abnormal one rather than everyone else here being simultaneously unlucky.

I'm not terribly sure how we could be underleveled though, that doesn't make much sense to me. If we're all finding the desired amount of challenge in the game, wouldn't that mean we were leveled properly?

>I'd rather use facts to support my opinion, such as overall higher tankiness where even my frailest unit can take a hit when in Awakening/Fates they'd die instantly, aswell as up to 5 range letting me attack further off enemies without them counterattacking.

...it seems to me like at least one of your "facts" are largely dependent on stats/leveling themselves. In Awakening/Fates, your units with the lowest def/res are probably getting offed if they get attacked by a phys/magic user, and that has definitely (for me and it seems most of the other people in here) been the case in 3H as well. Lysithea, Marianne, Ignatz, all of them get routinely doubled and die in one attack if they're left out to dry. You could attribute this to leveling, but that just makes it dependent on the earlier issue.

Larger range is a thing in this game, but I don't see how that especially breaks it given that it's an ability that requires investment through either skills (bowfaire) or assist magic/rare staffs, so not many units are going to be able to capitalize on it. Admittedly player units can capitalize with an extra space through the use of combat arts, but those remove the chances for doubles and destroy your weapons so it has downsides. And, given that you've already stated you're willing to ignore some of Awakening's more "overpowered" stuff to preserve challenge, it seems like it'd be just as easy to remove range increasing tools/abilities if you truly feel it's that broken.

Broadly speaking, yeah, all I can say is I think you've either gotten very lucky with growth rates or you're horrifically overleveled, going by the video and what you've said up until now. It may not be "facts," but the vast majority of people that I've encountered don't seem to be running into these kinds of issues. 3H is by no means the hardest FE game, but if even your weakest units can take a hit on hard and survive, then something is definitely different with your playthrough than mine.

Best way to solve this is with proof! I'll try to provide examples later of the poor enemy placements.

You're not gonna peer pressure me into changing my mind. Everyone in the entire world could say 3 Houses is challenging, but as long as the facts my opinion is based on remain the same then I have no reason to change it. Plus like I said before, I know I'm not the only one, I gots anecdotes too.

Enemy stats are always the same, your unit's stats can vary a bit, but generally they'll end up around the same ballpark every playthrough. I've certainly never had a unit that has frail base stats and growths ever get the level ups to change that, though I guess I can't say it's impossible, but extremely unlikely for sure. If doubled then yes my frailer units will be 1RKO'd. Assassins and Swordmasters who outspeed all my units are quite threatening I'll admit, or atleast they maybe would be if not for range meta lul. Most other units like archers, calvary, mages, wyverns, knights, that all my units double my squishies can take a hit from. Shall I show proof of this?

"Not many units are gonna be able to capitalize on it" - you say after seeing the video I posted where all my units have bow/magic haha. You can't see for sure if Seteth does, but it'd be silly to assume he don't at that point. Ignoring dlc and optional grinding is quite a bit different from ignoring game mechanics, and telling me that I need to make the game hard for myself... is that not admittance that the game isn't hard? It's not my job to make Hard mode live up to it's name, that's on the developers. I want to actually need to play optimally and then still find it challenging, that's a proper hard mode.

Why is it so hard to accept that the game is easy, or at the very least, easier than recent games? Just because a game is easy doesn't mean it can't still be good and fun, both things I've already said this game still is.

First off, I'm...not trying to peer pressure you into changing your mind? I'm not quite sure where that's coming from. More than anything I'm just curious why you've had an experience that differs from mine. As the writer assigned to review the game for this site, I do my best to try and make sure I haven't missed potential issues (and positives) that others may have noticed. If someone feels differently about a game than I did, I try to figure out why and see if there's something else I should be taking into consideration when writing my review.

I'm not accusing you of lying here by any means: I fully believe you when you say that your units will survive a hit. It's, again, something that's just strange to me, because my units are not in that ball park. The three units I mentioned earlier die to just about any physical attack (maybe Ignatz could survive one), and more than that will die to doubles and get doubled by most things. The only reason I bring it up is to say it feels a little silly imo to dismiss the previous argument as differences in leveling/growths and then introduce your own argument which is itself heavily based in unit levels/growths.

When I say that units have difficulty "capitalizing on," I don't mean that they can't just immediately use ranged attacks. It's that you have to invest a substantial amount of time in units for them to hit from more than their standard distance away. Additional archer range only comes from bowfaire, which requires a heavy investment into bows and staying with the archer/sniper class for a while, and additional magic range comes from very specific spells (which generally speaking aren't particularly useful if units don't have good magic stats to begin with) or from staffs, of which there are a limited amount and are optimally placed on your best magic units. More than anything, I'm just confused how you managed to get a consistent wealth of units with high skill stats on magic/bows necessary to have those skills (as well as the skills they need to be able to use their standard weapons) and then all have them seemingly back in their more standard classes by the time of that video.

And, truth be told, I don't really see how just removing skills from the active skill list is any more troublesome then avoiding pair ups/broken skills in Awakening/Fates. That's...legitimately all I'm suggesting here. All you need to do is remove an ability or item and swap it out with something else if you dislike the "range meta." It's no different than just opting to avoid pairing up in Awakening/Fates, or not using some of the more "broken" skills like Galeforce/Ignis in Awakening. I've also never once mentioned optional grinding or DLC in this conversation, so I'm a little uncertain of why you're continuing to bring it up.

I feel like the insinuation in your last paragraph is misplaced. If the vast majority of people on this thread is challenging (and from doing a quick scroll through of Serenes Forest/FE Reddit, at least a slight majority of the FE community in general believes it provides at worst a decent challenge on hard), is it truly so hard to believe that most people actually found it challenging, rather than we're all just in immense denial over it? You could more reasonably argue that we're all less skilled, or that you took advantage of something better than we did, but the implication that we all just can't admit that the game is easy feels rather questionable to me.

Last edited by MTZehvor - on 08 August 2019