Fire Emblem SG

[Jowy]

For me this map was the hardest:




On HHM with only a few units allowed this map was a nightmare. Not only was it hard to actually stay alive, but there are two recruits you need to reach in time and a legion of Pegasus Knights that swarmed Merlinus. Oh, and a boss cavalier that moves.

Fenn, Iron Man is indeed the plan right now, but we should discuss it. Someone who's more familiar with the game should let me know if the variant is too hard or if it's too easy.

[Jowy]

Just noticed that Katon was also up for Sacred Stones, so we have three players. We can add in a fourth if someone wants to join us.

[Katon]

Hardest maps for me were 23 (thanks again for jumping in at that point, Fenn; I was going nowhere slow on it, thanks to the problems you've already discussed) and 24 (needing Marcus and Isadora to be turn-perfect to have a chance of keeping Wallace alive, IF the RNG let enemies hit him enough for him to use an elixir but not enough to kill him, while keeping the boss + a horde of myrmidons distracted with just half our army). 27 was also annoying, although for different reasons - the hard bits weren't harder than any other random chapter, but I had to kill literally 60+ enemies every time before reaching the part of the level that actually needed practice.

I don't think that list of hard chapters is hugely different from a standard HHM run. 23 would be easier if we'd been allowed to use Florina or Fiora, and 24 might have been slightly less painful if we'd had a good cavalier. On the other hand, Marcus and Isadora were still outmatching the vast majority of enemies then, and while a third paladin on the rescue force would have been nice I'm not sure we could easily have spared someone from either of the other fronts. The main headache specifically from this variant came at the beginning when the game was assuming we had more legal warm bodies than we actually did. Once our numbers started catching up and Erk/Lucius/Priscilla started being able to dodge-tank at least some physical attacks, it was more or less back to the usual grind.

Fenn, do you remember any surprises as to who got most/least kills?

Agreed on a separate thread for FE8, and Iron Man seems to be the most ready-to-go variant anyone's suggested so far. I've been noodling around with the idea of not allowing duplicate weapons (e.g. only one unit gets to use a Javelin on any given map), but that would fall into the same hole this variant did of being barely distinguishable from a normal playthrough by endgame - having Silver + Killer + 1-2 range + Sacred Twin versions of every physical weapon type is plenty, and you can usually get by fine with one magic user per type.

[Fenn]

Fortunately I had a savestate at the end credits so I was able to review unit stats. Our unit with the most victories was, surprisingly, Priscilla with 184 kills. Our next highest units were Dart, with 158 kills and Wil of all people with 151. Dart would often go and handle portions of maps all by himself, but I'm not quite sure how Priscilla racked up so many wins, unless she really dominated on Cog of Destiny.

I don't think an Iron Man of FE8 would be too hard - we should probably restrict Seth's use for the first half of the game, just because of how invincible he is early on, but otherwise it shouldn't be too easy either. Or we could always try a hardtype mod.

[Brian Shanahan]

Well done on the win lads. It was definitely worth the wait seeing this one out.

[Molach]

Enjoyable read. Good reporting. Fun.

And this from a guy who didn't know Fire Emblem existed until this thread.

[Katon]

Weird that Priscilla wound up so high - I wasn't trying to feed her during Cog of Destiny, but if the AI decided to focus on her on that map to the exclusion of Lucius/Erk that could explain it. Most of those enemies could do so little to any of the three of them that I didn't actually care which the AI targeted. It's hard to think when else she could have racked up so many kills, though; I think she had the best physical defence of the three magic-users towards the end, so I was a bit more willing to throw her forward, but then again she spent the first half of the campaign unable to attack. I've never seen a healer win the kill tally before.

[ipecac]

Well played and reported!