VC: So, I sat down and plowed through all of the skirmishes on Hard. Pretty fun, as they mix things up a lot. Layouts range from just silly to "holy shit, that's unfair." My only real beef with the Hard mode skirmishes? Every enemy grunt uses stat-down bullets, and there aren't words for how much I hate getting hit with attack-down. Note that I did these without resorting to Awaken + Alicia cheese. Bring the whole army and wipe out all enemy units for the most complete victory possible. Yeah, I wasn't really worrying about rank.
Outskirts of Bruhl: Brutal, probably the hardest map here. You start out surrounded by three enemy camps. And I really mean surrounded--almost all their goons start within firing range and it's hard to even get your foot soldiers a chance to attack before they get cut to pieces. It's hard to prioritize targets because everything out there is a substantial threat to you. The lancers stand a very good chance of killing the Edelweis in one or two rounds if you don't eliminate them immediately (and it's hard for engineers to live long enough to act here--I brought three in hopes that sheer numbers would let one survive the first round and heal the Edelweiss. Only one of them actually did). But the troopers and gatlings will almost instantly kill any of your foot soldiers that you try to move. And each of the camps summons reinforcements every turn. It's a logistical nightmare. Had to race Rosie and Vyse forward and hope they lived long enough to reach flamethrower range. They did--at critical HP and attack-downed, but it was enough to break through the line and capture that one enemy camp that's only guarded by a sniper. Once you've got a foothold, it's just a mop-up operation, but getting anyone to survive that opening hail of bullets is just a bitch.
Vasel Mk. 1: The enemy summoning five reinforcements a round to support their final camp sounded like it could be scary, but...there are only two ways for said reinforcements to get out of that camp and attack you. Plop a few scouts down in front of these narrow alleys and everyone dies before they can get out. When their reinforcements have got themselves killed, they have nothing back there but a couple turrets. I had a lot of casualties breaking through their forward camps, but imperial guns sacrificing range for power means you're always better at holding a position than they are.
Kloden: Pretty easy. Had a scare when that one sneaky lancer popped up behind the Edelweis, but...then he opted not to take the easy OHKO shot, for some reason. Instead, he ran all the way around the tank and shot it in the side twice (note: he starts out right behind you, so this is extremely :psyduck:).
Barious Desert: Is tank country. In other words, Audrey solos. Seriously, that woman is insanely good. I've got her one-shotting everything without even having to target the radiator. A-ranked this without any trouble.
Upper Fouzen: I had one reset due to surprise lancer. The sad part is that I'd even found him on the first round--but with a unit that had already attacked, and on the last action of the round. Scattering the entire party is a funny gimmick, but it's easy to deal with when you know who needs to go where. Once you frag the tanks, the enemy basically has nothing to worry about here.
Marberry: Another "scatter the party gimmick." Alicia starts out caught between a gatling and a trooper that likes to hit you with attack-down before you can even fire. Ew. Aside from the plot PCs starting out in enemy territory, though, the battle plan is functionally identical to normal Marberry.
Windmill Plaza/Naggiar Plain: Pretty simple. They switch around your starting position, but there's nothing that makes these maps notably more difficult than normal. Naggiar is more time-consuming since you have to circle around the whole map, but that's about it.
Vasel Mk. 2: It's like trench warfare, but in the streets. Send an engineer forward, build barricades, staff the wall with a group of scouts, watch them cut up anyone trying to approach you during the enemy turn, then move forward and repeat. It's only made difficult by the fact that the enemy regens half its army each turn (seriously, it's like eight units) and they don't even have to spend any actions to call these reinforcements. I had to identify which enemy units didn't respawn, blow the sandbag walls down from afar, then snipe the no-longer-crouching enemy units in the head, until the enemy base was clear (they start out with about half a dozen scouts/troopers in their camp, behind sandbags, so sending a unit within firing range is just asking for a casualty; none of these enemies leave the camp, as they instead use the respawned fodder to assault you every round). The respawning units will always rush forward and attack, so I could always count on them to be cut down by the wall of bullets coming from my line. The only thing that could really screw up my defenses was a lucky lancer shot tearing down a barricade (which is why we have an engineer on the line). Fight was mainly just a slog; it took ten turns and that was still enough for a B (I was perhaps overly cautious on that run, on account of a first attempt which went the proverbial bridge too far and saw the front line get cut to pieces because of being stationed too close to the enemy base).
I think that's pretty much everything there is to be done with the game, short of getting the DLC (which I should do).
