I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for.  You're complaining HP is too high, but your character's going to die in the range or more than one unit.  Should you just instantly be dead if anyone is in range? It doesn't really feel much different from previous Fire Emblem games where everyone except maybe my white mages could take at least a hit.  I'm actually finding characters dying in one hit more frequent in this game, mostly because of the lack of pairing and weakening of rally.  Although it also could be because I take more risks knowing I can divine pulse if it goes badly.

The rest of what you're saying simply doesn't square up with what I'm playing.  There are tons of mounted units, not to mention that the enemy has access to bows as well.  So I have no idea how you're killing anything that could potentially counter attack your weaker units.  Last level I played had literally over a dozen wyverns.  If you know a way to kill them all without ever getting in their range, I'd love to know.  

I have seen one person in this topic agree that the game is easy, but they're playing on normal casual.  I'm sure if you look on reddit you could find people that agree with any opinion.  As for your "cold hard facts" I have no idea what you're point is.  It's a fact that you have more range in this game... so? That's a completely neutral fact that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the game's difficulty.  

Anyway... here are some things I could truthfully say.  In Awakening, I never had to worry about my frail units being counter attacked ever, because they could be paired up behind a bulky one.  In either game I could attach fliers to my bulkier units, giving them all the benefits of bulk classes without the drawback.  In Awakening, my characters recovered half their health when they killed enemies.  In Fates I could make a duplicate of my best character allowing them two have two turns.  In Awakening, I had characters that got a bonus turn when they killed an an enemy unit letting them instantly run to safety or kill another one.  In Fates, I could duplicate my best units, then each of those duplicates got a bonus turn for killing an enemy, allowing my most powerful character to attack four times in a turn.  In Awakening, my character could kill an enemy, recover half his hp, move again, and regain the other half.  In Fates I revived a dead character. 

Point is, there are lots of other cold hard facts you have to consider if you're talking about the game's difficulty, but you're just focusing on one, which absolutely screams confirmation bias.  

I'm looking for more reason to care about how I position my units, the order I move them in, just general gameplay depth. Units being more vulnerable naturally means I need to be more thoughtful in my approach. I like having that tension where one small mistake means someone dies. I was just playing Fates not too long ago so the contrast is stark to me. Already mentioned the difference between the game's frailest units, there's also crits and flying weakness to bows, which are instant death in Fates, but in 3 Houses I've survived through those which is just crazy to me.

Of course I'll bait enemies that I can't reach, Calavry and Wyverns love to suicide in. Enemy magic are mostly 1-2 range, bows 2-3 range, so I can either outrange or melee, using gauntlets/brave weps against magic if I need to avoid the counterattack.

So why do you care how many agree when you believe one can always find people who agree? Personally I couldn't careless how many agree or disagree, I only believe facts and evidence. As for range meta, it should go without saying that being able to attack further off enemies without retaliation makes the game much simpler than if you couldn't do that.

Sure you can make Awakening/Fates a cakewalk if you buy dlc and grind and stuff, but in their rawest form they provide more depth and challenge than Three Houses in it's rawest form does. In Awakening/Fates, I can choose to play an easy game or a harder one, but in Three Houses I can only choose to play an easy game.

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.

EDIT: I should note there's a couple of spells like thoron that have a built in extra space of range, but they're limited in both usage and effectiveness so I don't think that's especially problematic.

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.

Thank god for that, because Three Houses is excellent and honestly, the best FE to date

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.

My first FE gmae and I loved it so did alot of the Twitch streamers I follow and it was the first FE game for them aswell.

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.

Only one of the things I mentioned requires a DLC item.  The rest are all options in the normal game, and options you don't really have to grind for.  And there's plenty more you could through out there like vengence/nosferatu, free streetpass skills, debuff weapons, broken weapons the royals have etc, but it seems that you don't want to actually consider any of these factors.  I guess you could choose to never pair your units or anything.  By the same logic you could choose to never use ranged weapons.

So yeah, if you use the best options in three houses and don't take advantage of any of the good options in fates or awakening, then they're much harder than three houses.  You care about facts and evidence... but just ignore any that go against you.