FE Fates Conquest:
Just did some of the most whined-about & allegedly hardest missions in a row in C20 & Sophie.
C19, Kitsune swarm - From chat, Elf found this mission a bit easy, but it's actually the only mission where I've accepted a "death" in Casual. Hey a bunch of 1-range guys, sounds harmless, right? Except these dudes are all incredibly evasive, sport critical rates, hit weakness on horseys (sorry, Silas/Xander/Elise/Bow Knight Niles! That's... a lot of the team....), aggro as a huge group, and go untargetable if they can't figure out anything to do like 2HKOing your dudes w/ Life or Death. I'm pretty sure that if I was playing on Classic, the only "safe" way to do the map would be the cheeze strat of sending Effie / Bennie in a pair-up forward and just letting your General solo them all, or at least most, but meh. The boss & his bros are pretty nasty too, being even more evasive & deadly! Sheesh. The enemies just outstat you hard even if the player has a huge strategic edge.
C20, Wind dancing - Oh dear. Tons of enemies with a critical chance, Kinshi Knights flying around with ridiculous range, enemy reinforcements... ow ow ow. About the only saving grace is that most of the "right" side of the map errs pretty heavily on the physical side, so Xander can run around causing chaos there without worrying TOO much about dying. Anyway, there were many reloads here. I didn't have to reload for it but it's pretty easy to screw up the final boss approach, which is full of Lunge bow-women who can hypothetically use mystic arrow shots to push you into the boss's range from a long distance off. Another enemy sporting a decent crit rate, I might add!
At this point I *still* didn't have any kids other than Percy (whom I'd only gotten thanks to dragging Arthur out of retirement for some easy castle battle affection grinding), and I wasn't using Percy, so time to fix this. I ran Ghostly Gold & another shot at Before Awakening. Before Awakening actually kinda annoyingly legit when you just want to grind affection, I got Chrom & Lissa & Leo killed (well, "killed" for Leo. i'm not counting this as a real death like the one in C19 when it's affection grinding.)
P5, Sophie's Paralogue (Silas x Beruka) - OH SWEET LORD. The one saving grace this chapter has on C20 is that it's a lot shorter, but talk about a brutal first 4 turns. You have to push really hard AND blockade the bridge if you don't want the villagers suiciding, and even if you do everything right, the Berserkers still easily sport 10% crit rates if you don't equip Bronze. Ended up having the Xander/Elise/Silas/Sophie squad take out the top half of the map while Dragonstone+ Corrin in a pair-up with Camilla was on blockade duty. But it's so, so easy to be slightly out of position and have Silver Axe dudes smash you in the face, with support, and murder you extremely dead. After all the save/reloading for C20, I tried to do this one vaguely more legit, and still ate more resets than I'd like. That said... you have served me well, Silas, but the time has come for you to enter retirement. Your daughter is better than you at, like, everything. Except supports since I'm not running other kids yet. Oh well.
Interlude: Flora. Ugh, they couldn't figure out a plot reason for Flora to join up? Disappointing. She just joins the ranks of the Corrin sycophants, as she just couldn't keep Corrin out of her mind or something. SIGH. Anyway... oh wow Flora is DIRE. How many games have the naive, klutzy, incompetent, & trusting one of a pair be the badass in combat, and have the serious, competent, spy one just be terrible? With that speed she can't be anywhere near the frontlines, but her magic is like 10 points worse than Felicia's, so she's not much good for the backlines as a healer either. And it's not like she's a surprise maid tank. (To be sure, having some subpar units so that Classic players aren't totally screwed by running out of staff-users is fine of course, but she isn't kidding about the subpar thing. Renault is feelin' good.)
P22, Nina's Paralogue (Niles x Elise) - Nina. Nina, Nina. We need to have a chat. You want to be Robin Hood, and I get it. Except I don't, because news flash, you ARE The Man. See that crown next to your name? You're royalty! Stop being a class traitor, and if you really think this specific noble sucks, you can probably just ask for him to be executed anyway. Also your dudes already have like 5 Shining Bows, why do you need to rob 1 more? This also probably counts as more like a "raid" then thievery anyway. I left you for last assuming that I shouldn't kill you, but I guess I have to, so people don't die when they are killed. Glad you pointed out the noble was corrupt though, since that means I get to keep your stolen stuff for me or something. Anyway, that said, Nina will replace Shura quite nicely. Thanks to being Elise's daughter, she's going to be terrifying with a Shining Bow +1 as an Adventurer. Good times. She's a LITTLE frailer in Def than Shura, but better everywhere else, so I'll take it.
Interlude, fun fact: Offspring Seals are NOT TRANSFERABLE. I figured I could always just catch up Percy later if I wanted to by recruiting a kid I didn't care about, but nope. Eh, whatever, I'll keep my grim assassin kid Beruka anyway & Camilla for the flyers department.
EDIT: Oh yes, I realize it'd probably have been a bother, but it'd be nice if Fred's Silver Lance in "Before Awakening" was a rigged one without the stat decline, like in Awakening. Since I screwed up that mission on my 2nd go through, Fred did a l of the heavy lifting, and was at 5 Str & 0 Skl by the end, with his trusty lance mysteriously betraying him and sapping his strength by like -23. what is happppppening to me why does silver lance work this way nooo.
