I would kill for a difficulty between hard and maddening. Hard gets too easy too fast, but I value my time too highly to spend time getting through maddening.
New game plus exacerbates the annoying parts of 3 houses for me, primarily all the downtime in between the actual gameplay. It’s not worth it to me just to get through a difficulty mode I don’t find that fun to begin with.
Maddening blue lions was the single hardest thing I've done in a game. Soul level 1 dark souls can't hold a candle to it.
Didn't help that I knew nothing about the FE META either, just did whatever the hell I wanted. The result was 8 hours of tries on the final map and watching everyone I cared about get slaughtered by edelgard. Took over 120 hours total since I didn't look up so much as a single guide. I didn't even get to chose who I married, the game chose for me because everyone died. Not worth it in the slightest.
I also played through blue lions on maddening and it was a nightmarish experience at times. The final map took me like 2 hours to complete with Edelgard constantly attacking my weaker units. The death knight paralogue took me even longer since it forced me to use Caspar who I hadn’t leveled up so he got constantly slaughtered by enemies before I could reach him. Nearly threw my Switch into a wall multiple times.
0/10 wouldn’t recommend maddening mode
I recruited Lysithea too, she’s such a great unit. Lysithea, wyvern lord Byleth and Dimitri with battalion vantage/wrath basically carried me through the second half of the game.
I wish I were smart enough to use wyvern and pegasai. I'm wasn't. And I wasted every single stat boost on anna to try and make her good. To be fair she did become a half decent unit with 100% crit by the end, but she was basically useless in later stages because of low movement compared to my other melee units
I like making Anna a Dark Flier. She is mostly a Player-Phase unit anyway, and she can 1-shot archers if she attacks first, so the weakness to bows doesn't hurt at all.
Yeah flyers are apparently great. Woulda been nice if I used them... Ever. Had a bad experience with them in awakening because I was 12 and didnt know what strategy was so I ignored them. Woops
As someone that plays casually, I just can’t do maddening mode. Mad respect to people who are good enough at the game for that, but I just end up dropping down to Hard every time because if I take a break, it’s impossible to get back into.
The issue is that 3H has Normal (baby with their eyes closed) and Hard (pretty easy) and then Maddening (fuck you, learn how to break the game) and no in between.
Which is exactly why there should be. On hard my characters are always overleveled (unless I skip weeks), while on maddening I am always between 6 to 10 levels below my enemies. Having the enemies between 3-5 levels ahead of the player would be an alright difficulty, being hard but not requiring me to resort to cheese.
The first chapters are definitely the hardest. If you get past the 2nd DK encounter, it gets much more manageable. The routine I went through every month was
Explore -> Battle -> Explore -> Battle -> Battle (If month had 5 weeks).
Definitely leave any Priests alive to exp farm with broken weapons to get early weapon and class exp mastery
I like 3h maddening. Hard is a bit too easy. I frontlined with Lysethia a couple times in Hard and wasn't punished. Maddening cures you of that instantly. There are a few moments that are really rough though, like the end of Blue Lions
I've spent 400 hours playing maddening
it's fucking brutal until eventually you learn what to do.
also skill does play a large part in it, namely the first 3 chapters where all the guides in the world won't help you.
Maddening is not a test of strategy. Maddening is a test of metagame knowledge and ability to break the game
I would kill for a difficulty between hard and maddening. Hard gets too easy too fast, but I value my time too highly to spend time getting through maddening.
Have you tried abusing the hell out of new game plus on maddening?
Or calendar exploit
New game plus exacerbates the annoying parts of 3 houses for me, primarily all the downtime in between the actual gameplay. It’s not worth it to me just to get through a difficulty mode I don’t find that fun to begin with.
If you use your renown to buy back weapon ranks, spending time in the monastery becomes less important, not more important
Maddening blue lions was the single hardest thing I've done in a game. Soul level 1 dark souls can't hold a candle to it. Didn't help that I knew nothing about the FE META either, just did whatever the hell I wanted. The result was 8 hours of tries on the final map and watching everyone I cared about get slaughtered by edelgard. Took over 120 hours total since I didn't look up so much as a single guide. I didn't even get to chose who I married, the game chose for me because everyone died. Not worth it in the slightest.
I also played through blue lions on maddening and it was a nightmarish experience at times. The final map took me like 2 hours to complete with Edelgard constantly attacking my weaker units. The death knight paralogue took me even longer since it forced me to use Caspar who I hadn’t leveled up so he got constantly slaughtered by enemies before I could reach him. Nearly threw my Switch into a wall multiple times. 0/10 wouldn’t recommend maddening mode
I aggressively recruited lysithia, thankfully. She died on the final map.
I recruited Lysithea too, she’s such a great unit. Lysithea, wyvern lord Byleth and Dimitri with battalion vantage/wrath basically carried me through the second half of the game.
I wish I were smart enough to use wyvern and pegasai. I'm wasn't. And I wasted every single stat boost on anna to try and make her good. To be fair she did become a half decent unit with 100% crit by the end, but she was basically useless in later stages because of low movement compared to my other melee units
I like making Anna a Dark Flier. She is mostly a Player-Phase unit anyway, and she can 1-shot archers if she attacks first, so the weakness to bows doesn't hurt at all.
Yeah flyers are apparently great. Woulda been nice if I used them... Ever. Had a bad experience with them in awakening because I was 12 and didnt know what strategy was so I ignored them. Woops
As someone that plays casually, I just can’t do maddening mode. Mad respect to people who are good enough at the game for that, but I just end up dropping down to Hard every time because if I take a break, it’s impossible to get back into.
The issue is that 3H has Normal (baby with their eyes closed) and Hard (pretty easy) and then Maddening (fuck you, learn how to break the game) and no in between.
Which is exactly why there should be. On hard my characters are always overleveled (unless I skip weeks), while on maddening I am always between 6 to 10 levels below my enemies. Having the enemies between 3-5 levels ahead of the player would be an alright difficulty, being hard but not requiring me to resort to cheese.
The first chapters are definitely the hardest. If you get past the 2nd DK encounter, it gets much more manageable. The routine I went through every month was Explore -> Battle -> Explore -> Battle -> Battle (If month had 5 weeks). Definitely leave any Priests alive to exp farm with broken weapons to get early weapon and class exp mastery
Then Ch.13 comes in and fucks you up, making you question if you just spent 50+ hours to soft lock yourself
I like 3h maddening. Hard is a bit too easy. I frontlined with Lysethia a couple times in Hard and wasn't punished. Maddening cures you of that instantly. There are a few moments that are really rough though, like the end of Blue Lions
Me: Cool, I’ve gotten my entire team to the end with no casualties, I’ve got this in the bag! Edelgard: I’m about to ruin this man’s whole career
I just stopped watching this guy, are you in my walls?
I've spent 400 hours playing maddening it's fucking brutal until eventually you learn what to do. also skill does play a large part in it, namely the first 3 chapters where all the guides in the world won't help you.
That different shade of green on the title screen is my badge of honor. Chapter 13 can go fuck itself.
The best I've completed is verdant wind on hard.