I love playing with battle animations at least on the first playthrough.

After that it's usually a matter of how I feel at the moment.

I think it does. I think putting in so many units and forcing the player to watch them all move such that the game takes forever to give the player control back is bad design.  I think that's awful design.

Ah, well. I agree about that. The chapter does have a few flaws. However, the chapter also has a load of good things going for it, and that is what prevents it from being bad.

what are the good things of that chapter? I gave up from playing hard mode there... so tell me good reasons to make me come back there.

But you managed to make it past Geoffrey's gambit (maybe if you actaully let your useless cannon fodder get kills it would be easier)?

Elincia's gambit has several issues, most of them stem from having the level take nearly 2 hours to finish, and when playing on hard mode after that length of time most peoples brains go comatose, IMO.  The only saving grace to that level is you don't need to kill Ludveck, and camping out at the choke points will allow you to win (and this isn't too bad either because your big characters still get great XP).

Thinking about these levels again just brings out the only flaws I see in RD, the first 2 chapters are overly frustrating and would really turn off many players.

you mean the chapter before? (where there are a lot of horses against us) i tried to kill all of them with marcia causing her to rise a lot of levels but the others remained poor.

what is that cannon fodder your refering to?

but next time i'll try it i won't try to kill the boss then (but i would like to steal him )

In Normal and Easy, killing him isn't too bad.  In Hard, it's not worth it especially since you need to divide your forces if you want to steal from the lower left enemies.

It's not that hard, you're just playing the level the wrong way. Or well, not the most effective way.

By taking a defensive stance, I'm sure the level will be dull. If you attempt to charge at them, it will be far more fun. Send a flier down to the right, and pull the enemies down there. This will give you a ~ 4 round gap, from most of the enemies from the right side. The left side is easy to block, with a Brom/Nephenee (or someone else, if you prefer that).

Now, charge down the right side. There won't be many enemies there. As the enemies you pulled down on the right side now attempt to return, make sure you use your flier to keep them going back to where the Royal Guards will arrive.

Now you have a easy-to-hold situation. You have the Royal Knights from the right, and two single-squares to keep. On hard, this is enough. Just keep this position.

On normal, you can go for Ludveck if you please. He's not very difficult.

As for the length...

- Turn battles off completely.

- Set the game to high speed

It will still take a touch over an hour, though (I used 1h 13 min last playthrough).

How would you know if he's easy to kill in easy?

I do also agree, it doesn't make a lot of sense trying to get the kill in this level.  The goal is ussually to get as much XP as possible, so it is actually a better idea to allow the lower left enemies up to the main platform, because I very sure there is more XP from them then there is from Ludveck.  So I actaully feel you are wasting more XP by not killing all the lower left enemies.

Would you like to argue that he's easy in normal but not in easy?