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Lonely_Dolphin said:
MTZehvor said:

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.

My bad, you were calling my experience abnormal because of what others have said so I assumed that was your point in saying so. It's great that you're gathering opinions to make the most informed review possible.

Do they die to any unit, even armored? Have you promoted them? Are you using HP+5? Just like you're not sure how my units are surviving, I'm not sure how your units are dying. xD

Bowfaire is a class skill for Sniper and Bow Knight that gives +5 dmg when using Bow. Bowrange +1/+2 is the class skill that Archer Sniper and Bow Knight has that gives more range. For none archer classes, there's Curved Shot unlocked at D-Rank Bow for 3 range aswell as Longbow. You can gain weapon rank for any weapon regardless of what your current class is by using the weapon and through teaching. Also when I said all units can have Magic/Bow, I mean and/or. I only have Ignatz actually using both. I have 3 dedicated Mages, one who already has a 3 range spell, so I gave the other two the wands that increase range. That I had to say all this means you must not be taking full advantage of the range meta, that would certainly explain our different experiences haha.

I don't avoid those things though. Pair-Up, Galeforce, etc. as broken as they are in Awakening are an inherent part of the game, just like the range meta is in Echoes and 3 Houses. Usually people talking about Awakening/Fates being broken factor in the dlc and grinding, as that's how you would get galeforce on every possible unit. That's the non-raw stuff I avoid.

You can't spin that back around to me as I'm not dismissing your claim and evidence by saying you're just underleveled and unlucky. I know some people find the game challenging and that's fine, but that alone doesn't mean it's not easier than the 3DS games. It's the way the game is designed, mechanically and fundamentally, that determines this. If you don't agree with that logic, eh fair enough. Apparently a Lunatic mode is going to come in an update, that could change my mind, here's hoping!

Depends on the unit: I do recall keeping +5 HP on some of them, but others it just seemed like a waste (esp when many long range enemies like fliers have significantly better speed than my squishies), so I used the spots for other things.

I do I think I understand the gist of your strategy, and I've played around with it myself at the start of the game (having every unit wield a ranged weapon of some kind). It's just that it...didn't seem especially effective for me, mostly because of the experience required to get there. It seemed like I was just better off giving people javalins or throwing axes or whatever, as that required far less time investment and it seemed like a smarter use of time developing skills they excelled at. I believe I'm also familiar with what everything you stated (I believe I've referenced everything you mentioned in previous posts, albeit with the name confusion for the bow skills). The problem is that with unit interests/weaknesses, I just simply haven't found time to push for getting everyone into either a magic/bow class at some point, letting them develop skills to move to the next class, and then promoting them to higher classes where they can actually wield weapons that are strong enough to be effective to any degree. Just as a comparison point, I've had Leonie learning armor since basically the start of the timeskip when I realized I wanted to make her into a Great Knight. I assigned her to learning armor (exclusively for most of the time, so a 1.5 multiplier) and had her boosting armor learning skills with group tasks...and 8 chapters later, she's just now finally hitting B rank. B rank is where most of the quality spells/silver bows unlock, which seems to kind of be the bare minimum for doing significant damage in later maps. Maybe combat just boosts it by a crazy degree, I have difficulty imagining it being substantial enough of a boost to overtake group tasks by enough of a margin that it would be a worthwhile investment of time.

I'm also aware of the combat arts, but I've largely done my best to avoid relying on them too heavily since, well, they chew through weapons really quickly. Also being limited to one attack for most of the arts means that they haven't been especially useful to me either most of the time since moving one space closer generally isn't that much more harmful and you can often get a double from it.

That being said, it's good to hear something like this, because it may very well be that the game has balancing issues designed around teams that are very heavily ranged focus. Perhaps it just requires a heavier investment at the beginning that I simply didn't put the time into because it didn't seem like it would pay off well. My team isn't really set up to test something like that now, so I can't vouch for how good or bad it is. But it's helpful to keep in mind, and hopefully something I can go back through and test on a later playthrough.

EDIT: I also want to say, I'm not putting any of this out there to bash Awakening/Fates. I thoroughly enjoyed both games (as my banner probably indicates), and Awakening would probably be in my top 10 all time. I'm also not going to necessarily disagree with you that this game is inherently easier than Awakening w/o grinding, I just haven't found it to be as easy as you've said. But, again, different experiences.

Last edited by MTZehvor - on 08 August 2019