So far I really like all maps I’ve played, which admittedly is only 5 so far. (Playing on Hard difficulty btw, from trying it out a bit Normal difficulty felt a lot smoother but I noticed Items and Unit Placement differed from Hard so I prefer Hard.)
Least liked is the fog map btw, though only partially because of the fog. The Steel Axe Brigands perfectly 2-shot Agnessa and so far this is the only map where I felt like I could not grab all side objectives.
Maybe Avani could go for the cave by abusing her 3 range against the Tomahawk Brigand instead of Skyler so Skyler can go left and steal the Red Gem? But I’ve been trying to conserve Longbow uses so IDK about that.
Also the chapter became a lot easier when I realized you win as soon as you kill the boss so I didn’t have to worry about my units dying on Enemy Phase afterwards. (My bad for not checking Status)
Anyway, you can really tell the enemy placements and unit stats were planned and very exact, especially in Normal Mode.
One gripe I have though is the stats in Hard Mode can get thrown off by the enemy auto level growths, including the hard mode bonus levels. The difficulty of the maps vastly change depending on whether or not an enemy get an extra point of HP/Def/Str
An enemy getting an extra point of HP and/or Def and they suddenly go from being ORKO:ed to surviving with 1~3 HP, or from requiring one hit to kill to requiring doubling, which give them a retaliation attack etc.
One extra point of Str and suddenly a player unit goes from being able to take 3 hits to dying in 2.
This wouldn’t really be a problem if it weren’t for that the stats keep changing after each reset, so I have to constantly check enemy stats and readjust my strategy or I could just reset the game until I get the right enemy stats.
Now that’s just default Fire Emblem enemy auto level behavior, but I really want to emphasize this point—that because the unit base stats are so precise—these +1 HP/DEF/STR have disproportionately large impact on increasing difficulty as they’re always huge break points in enemy survivability and/or lethality.
Basically every time I reset there’s a 50/50 chance that my strategies won’t work anymore and I have to decide between going for it anyway and hope I just get lucky, think up an alternate strategy (that’s hopefully just as good at getting all objectives etc.), or just reset a few times more until I get an easier map.
I’ve got a few different suggested solutions to these perceived problems:
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Fixed Enemy Growths: I’m not sure how feasible it is but if enemy stats are the same regardless of how many times the game is reset then there won’t be huge changes in difficulty depending on enemy auto level RNG.
Either the enemy growths use Average Stats or somehow all enemy stats are randomized at the start of the game and don’t change after resetting, only changing when you completely start over, like how FE Fates Conquest has fixed level ups for the player units. (The latter is probably completely unreasonable but it would be the ideal solution imo.)
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Adjust enemy base stats: Lower enemy base Def by 1 and/or maybe HP by 1~3 points. (or alternatively increase them if the increased difficulty was intentional)
This way even if the stats change a bit it won’t have any real impact on gameplay.
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Remove enemy growths (especially Hard Mode bonuses) in the first few chapters:
The time when the impact of enemy stats changing between resets is the most impactful in the beginning, before prep screen and stat boosters can be used, and before level ups have added variance to the player units.
At least I think you should remove the +2 hard mode enemy level bonus in the Prologue chapter.
Also, like I mentioned before, if Agnessa had 31 HP instead of 30 she’d pretty much increase her survivability by 50% to all the steel axe users (dying in 3 attacks instead of 2), but maybe this was intentional?
While there’s some pros to having varied enemy stats, like (which is also why ideally stats would be random but not change after resetting) I think that the difficulty massively changing depending on +/- one or two stats here and there takes away from the real highlight of this hack, which is the map layout, unit positioning and calculated stats.
The variance would be interesting if players had to readjust their strategy between runs (and I guess if you play Ironman you’d have to, but as much as I like what I’ve seen of this hack so far I would never ever play this Hard mode ironman, and I don’t think you’ve really intended for the game to be played in Ironman either), but when my choices are to rethink my strategy and come up with a bunch of alternatives or reset the game a few times until I get the right enemy stats I’m just going to reset the game.
Note: I originally just intended to give some feedback but I got really hung up on talking about Chapter 5 “Slumber Disturbed” so I moved it to last and a TL:DR would be that I’d really like if that cliff tile wasn’t a cliff tile .
A question/suggestion about this cliff tile (highlighted with ingame cursor) in the 5th map “Slumber Disturbed”:
Is it intentional that units can’t move there? (I guess you’d have to make the forest tile below impassible terrain instead)
Lots of rambling about this cliff tile and current vs potential turn 1 & 2 actions
With the extra space from removing the cliff I would be able to use two 2-range chippers and a Melee to finish the skeleton off without retaliation or one chipper + one Melee + potential healing (keep in mind the skeleton can crit, so Agnessa barely survive if she get a Def level up or use Guard Lance) or Agnessa attacking from 2 Range (diagonally from the down-left outside of Strigoi range) + 1-2 Chippers (If I use Agnessa with Short lance + Francis with Thunder then they can kill the skeleton without a 2nd chipper, but my Francis has 3 overkill damage with thunder, and he’s got +2 Mag compared to his base stats.
Now I’m not sure how lucky/unlucky I was with the enemy auto level RNG when I checked this, but I imagine it’s pretty close.
And ofc this is under the assumption that the player has Short Lance and Thunder uses left, I bought a Javelin and mostly used Fire to conserve uses, so I had no problem (other than remembering that I had a short lance in supply )
And in melee range, like I said, if you get critted by the skeleton then Agnessa will be in danger of dying to the Strigoi, and she can’t kill the skeleton if she uses Guard Lance, so you have to have a chipper. And if she did get critted then you need to heal her, which means you have to use Avani to kill from 3 range.
My Old & New Turn 1 Strat
Chip with Francis then finish off the skeleton with Agnessa, and pull the Maelduin with Camian.
After checking more thoroughly, while making this post, the Strigoi moves even if there’s no player unit it can attack.
Since I originally wasn’t aware of that, I gave a speed booster to Camian so he doesn’t get doubled by the Maelduin, since I wanted to pull both the Strigoi and Maelduin to advance faster.
So there was no need for Agnessa to pull and tank the Strigoi as I can kill the skeleton with one chip + agnessa 2 range and could’ve used her to pull the Maelduin without having to boost Camian’s speed for him to do it.
My Old Turn 1 Strat Positioning:
New Strat:
Anyway, so it seems my original Chapter 5 “Slumber Disturbed” turn 1 strat I used wasn’t necessary and sorry that this post became so long since I thought that maybe I should look a bit into things.
Though it still would’ve been nice to have that extra tile of space just so it’s not as crowded and hard to reposition the units.