The next Fire Emblem

[Super_Boom]

RolStoppable said:

Hector hard mode is tougher than Radiant Dawn on hard, certainly if you try to S rank it. I only finished it once with a B rank, but that was already a good challenge, because the stat growth rates are so poor. Way too frequent that you only get +1 on HP and nothing else (or only two stats grow which is still bad). I was also pissed that it's basically impossible to get access to one sidequest chapter in HHM, because the stats of the enemy you have to kill are so damn high.

Radiant Dawn's hard is EXP minus 5 for all actions, except staves and Micaiah's healing. Bonus EXP cut in half. No hard save in chapters, unlike on easy and normal. No enemy attack ranges displayed, so you have to count the squares. Weapon and magic triangles disabled, so everyone is more prone to getting hit.

I don't think I S-ranked HHM either, it was difficult enough just completing it with all possible side-quests. I'm not sure how I pulled it off, easily one of my most frustratingly challenging video game experiences. I think I recall getting a few Null Level Ups (no stat gains) during that playthough. Jeebus, what a waste of a perfectly good level up.

I assume the side-quest you're talking about is the one where you need to kill the Kishuna the Magic Seal, right? That was pretty frustrating, both because you needed to kill such an overpowered character, and get Nils to some arbritary level during the prologue story. I think I ended up taking 20+ turns on the final chapter in Lyn's story to achieve that, basically far more than anyone who didn't know about the prerequisite beforehand would attempt. What made it worse was that a key part of the story could only be discovered through that side-quest set. I'm not sure what the developers were thinking when they planned that. It's the same story as the prerequisites to recruit Sephiran, or see that final Ike/Soren conversation in Radiant Dawn.

I guess that exp penalty isn't quite as bad as I originally thought, though losing all the BEXP would be a pain. Not quite as bad as losing the attack grid though. I swear by that thing!