#any FE veteran would tell you not to waste EXP on your pre-promote in the beginning

[my-current-obsession]

I see a lot of people saying that the royals (mostly Alfred, but I’ve seen a fair bit of complaining about all the others too) are statistically bad in Engage. I have to wonder, what difficulty is this based off of? On my Hard playthrough most of the royals were my best units, and Alfred in particular was amazing. Ivy and Celine were probably the weakest two - Ivy due to being a bit slow and having AWFUL dex and luck, and Celine just lacking power due to splitting her attention between strength and magic.

Is it just Maddening that they’re specifically bad for? I have not (and will not) played that mode in any FE but my impression is very much that Maddening mode is a different experience and you’re basically forced to play a certain way to win. That’s probably even more true here since fixed growths are in play, so you can’t count on RNG to give you good units. You have to find the ones that the game wants you to use, and stick with them.

For me, one of the biggest joys of FE has always been the RNG of it all - I love the random growths meaning different characters shine (and suck) each run, which encourages you to give different units a try. I love that, at least on Normal and Hard, you have enough breathing room to basically play how you want - favor the units of your choice, reclass whoever into whichever classes you fancy, etc - and doing so MIGHT make your life harder but probably won’t doom your entire run. The versatility and random nature of your units growths makes strategy & combat in this game infinitely more appealing and adds to its replayability.

Like I LOVE Persona games and Stella Glow (which gameplay wise is fairly similar to FE) but in those games the characters are what they are, and the stats on level-up are set in stone. Once you’ve done ONE run and know what works, Complacent Gaming kicks in and you repeat the exact same steps in future runs. In FE even if you use the same characters in the same classes, their performance WILL vary based on how blessed or cursed the RNG has been for them.

If Maddening IS as difficult and particular as I’m assuming, and basically every unit’s viability is determined from the moment you get them and you HAVE to play a specific way to win... is it really right to judge units based on that specific difficulty? Like, sure, so-and-so SUCKS on Maddening, but so does EVERYONE except this specific handful of units and if you use anyone else you’re just hurting yourself.

I feel like we should be judging characters based off a difficulty where everyone is at least VIABLE from the beginning, but judging how likely they are to REMAIN that way based on their growths/classes/personal skills/etc.

To put it another way, what would a tier list of a Maddening run look like? My impression is that it has two, maybe 3 categories of who you can actually use, who gets benched immediately, and MAYBE a middle category of who exists to fill a spot on the team and take a few hits/deal a smidge of damage for just a little while until someone better comes along to replace them. Meanwhile on Normal and Hard you can have a full spectrum of who on average is statistically the best through the worst, with everything in between. And considering several “unusable” units on Maddening are at least GOOD or even better on a normal or hard run, can you really call them bad? At the very least CLARIFY you mean they’re bad on Maddening specifically instead of in general.

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage #fe17 #happy for all the people who love maddening mode out there but it's Not For Me #for one i am a casual gamer that doesn't hate myself. I want a challenge but not TOO MUCH #(this is the same reason i don't fight superbosses in KH games. it's equivalent to smashing my head repeatedly against a brick wall IMO) #and if i'm right about how maddening works it also sounds like it takes the most fun aspect of FE out of it for me #since i'd be railroaded into using specific characters and strats instead of being able to play however i want with whoever i want #basically i want people to clarify if they mean maddening mode specifically when they call units awful #because i'm not bothered at all by people saying ANYONE is bad on maddening. i believe you i guess. i also don't care. #maddening plays by a distinctly different set of rules so i barely think of it as the same game #any FE veteran would tell you not to waste EXP on your pre-promote in the beginning #yet awakening lunatic is affectionately called Frederick Emblem so... i've learned to think of that difficulty as its own entity #but most units can be used on hard and the royals specifically are mostly still GOOD on hard #if i had polls i might not have made this post at all btw. because really what i want to know COULD be condensed into poll questions #what difficulty do you prefer/think is default/judge characters by & were the royals GOOD units for you? #anyway my second (hard) run is underway and alfred CONTINUES to be a great unit for me #about to go into chapter 10-11 and alcryst and diamant are doing great so far too #celine however is struggling. she is REALLY hurt by trying to be physical AND magical. she ends up middling in both #she might end up outright benched in this run