Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: There's a Steam sale on and I'm playing old emulated Fire Emblem games. Fail.
Finally gave up hope of it ever coming to 3DS store and just playing it emulated. This has its own advantages, in a jury-rigged speed-up enemy turn functionality as well as mid-battle saves. Yeah, yeah, I know that part of the appeal of FE is that every decision can matter, but that's a disadvantage when the "decision" is the equivalent of a misclick, something that can happen pretty easily! I think I've sent back 3 equipped weapons to the supply due to clicking forward too fast when picking up new items, and even ate a casualty off of "Amelia moves next to Eirika, grabs a Sword from the stash to replace her broken one, but fails to equip it leading to getting barely 2-rounded by axe dudes @65 HIT instead of likely not 2-rounded @35 hit or so." Also move healer in, but default staff location is the 1 HP off somebody who just leveled up, not the horrible bleeding corpse in front. I like being able to move fast and write off the occasional mistake, since the maps can be kinda long. BUT I'm trying to be diligent and not level-up cheeze. (I think I may have done this once or twice, but I'd probably do that on a real cart, too, if it happens soon enough.)
Anyway. Trying Hard mode but Eirika mode (did Normal Eph eons ago). Also trying to use some different characters, but within reason (i.e. waiting for Rennac when Colm & Neimi both start turning out very good? nope.jpg). Random thoughts:
Chapters 1-8 (aka pre-split): MOSTLY just snoozes where the AI is set to the very simple "attack people who wander into my wakeup range = threat range, sit still otherwise." And very friendly-to-the-player architecture. Chap 3, Bazba's Bandits, is especially notable: there are doors and breakable walls that you're clearly supposed to open, but my Eirika will do no such chivalrous thing. The bandits will die, trapped in their own rooms, because they weren't given permission to open the doors themselves and I have wall-piercing arrows or something. Chapter 5 is okay at least, you have to move sorta quickly to deal with brigands and safely recruit Joshua, although I'm frankly not a fan of this "old FE" thing that was obsessed with having all recruits be enemies you have to talk to.
There is one exception, which is Chapter 6, the fog of war map with a time limit before the civilians are devoured by spiders. I guess there is at least the option to play this map really slow and just let 'em be devoured (why would you want to promote Neimi to Sniper anyway), but even still this map would still not be easy! I avoided using Seth earlier but this is very much a map to break out the Sethinator on, and even he isn't foolproof with various enemies carrying cavalier-killer weapons. Sheesh, not a gentle difficulty curve at all, which is okay I guess (you wouldn't want things to be at max volume constantly, it'd be impossible to train up weaker units).
Elf mentioned that C8, "It's a Trap!", is legit, but not really seeing it. The enemy AI here is still "stand still and wait for doom", and it doesn't seem to use later tech from the likes of FE11/12/13 where aggroing one guy will aggro all his friends too. Nope, you can lure the knights guarding the treasure rooms out 1-2 at a time pretty easily, and the thief arrives really really late even taking it slow (and then steals my Elixir before I can steal his lockpicks. Sigh. I guess I'll settle for taking the Elixir back.) The boss, Tirado, has pretty badass Def & Res (doesn't get fried to Lute, weirdly enough...).... but... uh, Reigenleif, and to a lesser extent Rapier/Armorslayer exist. So yeah, more an excuse to show off Eph being a badass.
After the split, it's new territory for me. C9 is interesting and difficult but slightly unintuitive: both villagers are under immediate siege by pirates, and you will probably have to reset the first time for moving insufficiently slowly on them. Even if you get them, the game doesn't warn you that Amelia will wander off on turn 12, so Eirika also needs to hustle it on over to recruit her. More "break out the Seth" time. C10 you similarly get to rush around and is pretty fun. C11 is mechanically sorta easy, but has Fog of War and a Deathgoyle who will kick your ass in the SE corner, and also has an annoying mechanic (sorta in C10 as well?): enemy reinforcements triggering on poking your head in the wrong spot. So Colm checks out the SE corner himself and they bum rush in leading to a reload from the Deathgoyle; but I approach the corner in force, the enemy moves, then I crush them where they stand knowing about it. How dare I try and move quickly rather than methodically, etc. There's some minor time pressure in not letting the Recover staff get stolen from a chest, but it's not too bad (and you kinda want it stolen anyway, at least on your time, saves a lockpick if you can kill the thief afterward).
C12 is a total yawn, lowish level monster fodder that mostly stands still. I guess because maybe you're supposed to train up Ewan here?
Anyway... running Eirika, Tana, Ross, Colm, Neimi, Lute, Amelia (Cav), Gerik, Marisa, & L'Arachel at the moment. Forde & Joshua were looking okay but eh, used 'em last game too bad. Natasha... UGH, staff XP is a thing, even moving slowly and spamming healz like crazy she's still a bit behind on level and became obsolete as a staff bot once Saleh joined. L'Arachel, argh, you look at her stats and they are crazy good, almost as good as Natasha's despite being 10 levels lower, but then you remember the horrible staff XP formula and how it doesn't really accelerate when you're "behind", which at least the trainees get from kill-feeding. We'll see how far I can get her before I get frustrated and early-promote her.
Speaking of trainees, I ignored 'em last run and am using both Ross & Amelia this run. Pirate Ross was super-helpful in Eirika C9 with helping distract the invading pirates from the delicious village (along with a seaborne Colm), so good on him. Amelia is... totally awful on join, ugh, 4 move and gets doubled and killed by anything that can counterattack her even if chipped into fatal, so god forbid attempting to grind her on a real cart. Luckily there are some archers at the end of C9, and more importantly, the boss can be lured into equipping a bow... I almost never boss grind in FE games, but damn if this isn't way saner than trying to safely give Amelia kills. Amelia does a 2-3 damage poke of the boss for huge XP, rescue, take, drop, repeat next turn while the boss shoots at Joshua. Joshua & Natasha even hit their B support conversation which involves dodging arrows and curing for wounds during it, very appropriate (I got 'em married before ditching 'em from the team). Once this is done, she becomes a great Cavalier, with stats close to L11 Forde except for Defense... nice. Marisa is turning out pretty good for me as well, I know that she can get Str-screwed sometimes but that hasn't happened so far.
