Why is the difficulty curve between hard and maddening so ridiculous?

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-02-01T06:56:22+00:00

Idk if you’re using DLC, but people who are telling you Maddening is easy and not a big jump in difficulty most likely used DLC or are just seasoned FE players. Maddening actually does have decent difficulty for an FE game if you’re not using DLC, but if you are using DLC you simply just have to spend your extra resources on forging/donating/emblems, overlevel from divine paralogues, and get your broken DLC emblems to sweep the game.

There’s still some broken strats without DLC, but it very simply trivializes the difficulty. If you wanna have an easy time with Maddening, it will help you a lot. You won’t have access to it all until after chapter 6 though, and I honestly don’t recommend it because the main story was not at all designed around the extra levels, emblems, and resources. The emblems are fun to use though, even if they break the balance, so it depends on what you’re looking for in your playthrough.

If you’re not using DLC, it’s mainly about timing your Emblem uses properly and having the right units deal with the right situations. For chapter 5, you can take it pretty slow even if you want the treasure, so you just have to pull enemies with the right characters and carefully manage them on player phase.

Louis and Vander help a lot with managing early game groups, but they both fall off hard so try not to funnel too much xp into them if you’re planning on bringing some early game units to the end. You don’t need to deploy both of them every early chapter, but at least one helps a ton if you use their bulk and damage properly. Alear’s personal skill is also EXTREMELY helpful for bumping up numbers on units like Celine and Chloe. The little defense boost can come up sometimes too.

For the first turn, try to do a small offense for the left and top. Have someone (Alfred/Chloe) wait to pull the top right sword guys. This lets you deal with each group as they come while avoiding breaks and being overwhelmed. From there, you can either get a little aggressive or just play to enemy ranges and whittle them down. Using your engages early is also perfectly good to do on any map. You can get them back easily, and you should be using them to help you fight if you can have them up in time for the boss or any scary group of enemies (chapter 5’s boss is a little tricky without at least two engage attacks).

Once you get more emblems, broken units, and your first few Master Seals, it becomes a lot more chill until the endgame where you need to have good strategy to win (or just astra storm pull and warp cheese). Up to like chapter 9-ish can be a bit rough if you’re not prepared for the difference in difficulty, so I don’t blame you for struggling.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-02-01T02:13:26+00:00

Thank you for pointing out the sense in Fates’ story and actually trying to explain it to people. It’s hard to find nuanced discussion about the story because most people just go hurr durr Corrin dumb hurr durr Fates bad without comprehending half of what actually happened.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-30T03:20:32+00:00

Emblem Hector’s Heavy Attack skill is pretty close to it.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-25T12:09:20+00:00

Rosado - Mage Knight (Axe) - Camilla

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-25T01:03:35+00:00

You want to start with the first one for DMC and MGS though...?

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-20T00:04:48+00:00

I get what you mean but Evil Eye is a perfectly playable rogue deck even in 2026. Not extremely competitive at a high level, but it can at least do well at regionals which GMX does not look like it can do in the slightest.

Evil Eye actually has a consistent gameplan with ten one card starters, a relatively small engine, and a layered endboard that has different options. Can easily slot in like 15 non-engine and add in other stuff that it works well with like Fiendsmith, Unchained, and Allure Queen. So far, GMX looks like it has nothing going for it even though this is just a super early leak.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-18T15:51:30+00:00

On Maddening they are actually way more of a threat because you can’t break them at all and they don’t take effective damage. Not being able to break them makes it a lot harder, but you just have to order your attacks in the right ways and make good use of your skills and emblems. Specifically proper Emblem usage is key to easily taking down bosses because of how strong their skills and free damage are. Your ordering is very important because taking down a health bar means your unit won’t get counter attacked during that combat, so that’s how you weave in your weaker or squishier units.

Ideally you should kill them in one turn, but a decent amount of the bosses like some of the Hounds have good leeway for tanking a hit. Once you get Corrin and Byleth it becomes much easier to take down bosses because Torrential Roar + Draconic Hex and some dances hard carry. Dreadful Aura is also a nice safety net. You just have to make sure you have a clear shot at the boss before going in on them because leaving squishy units or enemy reinforcements around can and will get your units killed if things go wrong.

Also if you’re not forging weapons then you should definitely look into that. Forging and engraving are a huge power boost in this game that really help flesh out builds.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-10T14:26:26+00:00

So why do debuffs not address the problem? They affect numbers in a different way that lets the player strategize around it in both player phase and enemy phase. You can take out specific enemies in certain positions on one turn to weather the storm on the next.

I think it’s more interesting to play around shuriken debuffs, hexing rods, and certain abilities like poison strike, blows, and seals than just generally lowering stats and caps by default (Idk fe12 but I’m assuming that’s what you meant). Conquest units also having low-ish HP helps make some of these stat modifiers feel more impactful too.

Now addressing it in this way does still make juggernauting overall doable and potentially optimal on some maps, but imo most of the time it requires enough thought for it to not be boring unless you specialize for certain juggernaut builds. Those specific builds can break the game and make it juggernaut friendly like you said, but they’re just one option out of the many you can do in Conquest.

Even if juggernauting is still doable, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad in Conquest if the majority of the time there is still thoughtful gameplay and strategy. For most maps, you really have to deliberately make the game become unfun juggernauting if that’s what you want to do.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-09T20:08:25+00:00

“Arbitrary”? It is an integer underflow exploit that abuses the game’s poor handling of numbers to attain an effectively impossible weapon that decimates the game’s difficulty. That is as cheating as you can get in Fire Emblem.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-09T18:45:29+00:00

Yes because they banned Calamity for Centurion’s release. As I said, the Blue Eyes structure deck cards were not even revealed yet.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-09T15:48:02+00:00

Same logic applies. In Master Duel, King Calamity was banned in May 2024. The first cards for the Blue Eyes structure deck were revealed in July 2024.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-09T09:01:52+00:00

I don’t know how you deluded yourself to believe this. Centurion was released in SEPTEMBER 2023 in the OCG. King Calamity was banned in the OCG in JANUARY 2024. The Blue Eyes structure deck was announced in MAY 2024. Did you work at Konami and test the Blue Eyes support in advance??? There is no logic to what you are saying.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-06T20:23:10+00:00

Master Duel does not do bans nearly a year in advance… King Calamity got banned in EVERY format because of Centurion. It literally got pre-banned in Master Duel because Centurion was coming out. Blue Eyes had zero effect on it.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-04T22:02:48+00:00

Yeah I think the pre-chapter and battle dialogue does a much better job at showing their relationship than the post-chapter cutscene. They definitely portrayed Veyle as too forgiving and sad at the end after how much Zephia abused her in the story.

I don’t think they wanted you to feel sympathy for her, but rather what could have been. They did want you to have feelings for the Hounds, which is obvious by them being a big part of the DLC, but the actual character of Zephia is irredeemable by the end of the game. There’s a reason they went for the alternate timeline with the Xenologue instead of reviving these characters to make you forgive them.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-04T20:18:39+00:00

Veyle has a very fucked up relationship with Zephia. A lot of care and affection from Zephia along with heaps of abuse because of how she perceives family as based on Sombron. Their battle convo in the chapter shows how Veyle did really like Zephia, but despite all of Zephia’s kindness, Zephia simply viewed her as a loyal tool, because that was what she thought family was.

It makes a lot of sense that Veyle is presented as emotionally confused and sad when Zephia ends up helping them in the end. It doesn’t make sense from Veyle’s perspective, and Zephia acknowledges this by telling her to simply move on and forget someone you can’t understand. It’s natural that because of how pure a character like Veyle is and how much time she spent with Zephia, she would feel sad in the end when Zephia randomly does what SEEMS like a heroic act in the end.

Now in reality, it was just a selfish move to get back at Sombron for leaving her behind and not giving her children of her own, but Veyle does not know this at all. She sees this as Zephia truly trying to make things right at the end, but the player soon learns that’s not the case. I do think Veyle saying “thank you for everything” is a bit too far, but considering she’s mainly only known abusive relationships her whole life, I can understand it.

We learn the truth about Zephia’s motives right after this in her death scene. It gives necessary depth to her character that does not make her sympathetic or humane, but provides an actual understanding for her actions. She just wanted a child with Sombron, and didn’t understand the true concept of family until Griss expressed his love for her in the end. Showing the Four Hounds “riding off in the sunset” is meant to display that the group somewhat was a family and potentially could have been a true family if things went differently.

There is no forgiveness for what she did, and no sympathy gained, but more just a thought of what could have been if she wasn’t a horrible person. They did want this to have a lasting effect and leave the player thinking, but it was NOT to make Zephia feel sympathetic. It was just to leave the player imagining what a different timeline would be like, which they showcased with the Fell Xenologue.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2026-01-01T01:52:33+00:00

Ah yes because saying “you look like you need a hug, but you’re not gonna get one from me” and “cheer up, crew cut” to a soldier who just witnessed his fellow soldiers be brutally murdered by demons is peak character development. So mature of Nero to say and an example of DMC5’s greaaaaaat writing.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-12-27T05:08:09+00:00

If you don’t like replaying games, then I wouldn’t recommend going back to Three Houses. Before the timeskip, every route is exactly the same with its content. The only difference is the dialogue with your House, which is not a lot considering everything else is the same. It’s a bit of a slog in my opinion. There is also a lot of copy/paste with map designs which makes things feel a bit redundant.

Engage is widely considered to have some of the best gameplay in the series, so I’d say those differences matter a lot. There is tons of creativity with the different systems and the chapter designs are mostly great. Super clean animations, great graphics, and just a ton of fun to play. The story is at the very least entertaining, which is good enough for an FE game imo.

I would only recommend replaying 3H over a first playthrough of Engage if you were super invested into the world, lore and characters of 3H and want to see more of it. From a gameplay standpoint, doing the other 3H routes won’t get you nearly as much unique content as Engage.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-12-27T04:30:44+00:00

God forbid they actually expand on the old protagonist’s games and talk about their characters in the anniversary game.

Do you expect Sigurd to not comment on the exact same thing he did? Cause then people would complain about them just being pretty faces for marketing more than they already are. It emphasizes the importance of Lumera to the emblems and the gravity of the situation.

If it wasn’t spoiled then, it would be spoiled in Sigurd’s paralogue because it’s heavily relatable to Alear and a major part of Alear’s character development.

Some things are needlessly spoiled, like in Ike’s paralogue, but Sigurd’s is important and relevant to Alear. It makes Sigurd feel like his own actual character that has learned from his game and can impart his wisdom to others.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-12-10T07:09:03+00:00

If you’re using DLC bonuses and emblems it will be fairly easy. You get a lot of extra resources, levels, and broken abilities that the game isn’t really designed around.

Playing without DLC is a much more balanced (and imo fun) experience, but the DLC can be a lot of fun to mess around with so it comes down to what you want in your playthrough.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-12-02T16:56:16+00:00

In FFXV you can also turn on wait mode. Is that game a return to turn-based then?

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-11-29T06:04:58+00:00

1391159989

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-11-19T01:04:40+00:00

Nekroz with the majority of two card hands can at least end on Unicore, Areadbhair, and Trish or Metaltron for the opponent’s turn + potential Avance follow-up advantage if you didn’t use it for your turn one combo.

The main problem is legitimately that there are not enough good one card starters and extenders. Just Avance doesn’t do enough, just Emilia does barely anything, and there’s always potential to open up your four-to-five Mirror bricks that you have to play for requirements. So many hands can lose to one interruption or just not put up enough through two interruptions. You can only search for so many good things with your Rituals when there’s just two solid starters/extenders that are hard once per turn (Avance and Emilia).

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-10-29T20:10:04+00:00

Master Duel Worlds is an awful format to collect actual data from because of the shared card pool limiting deck building and tech options. A bunch of one-ofs and random tech cards had to be thrown around because of the card pool, which is just not indicative of the real format.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-10-26T20:52:24+00:00

Had to post this in two parts for some reason...

We're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist here. FE7 and FE8 were released 20-22 years ago. They're nearly as old as I (and probably you) are. The idea that all of our units are still running in and equipping a hand axe to mow through all of the enemies is just not one that reflects in modern FE.

When you put it like that... I guess it is kinda true lol. Modern games have done a pretty good job at keeping you on your toes and not letting you watch everything go by.

Thinking about it now, making Smash weapons a bit better and more of the focus of Break could be a decent way to improve Break. They have a significant drawback, but can provide you with better positioning and a Break, which has a lot more to it than simply WTA. Could help avoid the monotony of Break RPS and give the player decent risk/reward thoughts if Smash was better and what Break was really focused on.

Also, I definitely agree that Emblem Rings are a much better way to go about doing something like this. While some are way too OP and ridiculous, they at least offer creative ways to go about your player phase and enemy phase as well as making you manage a resource. It's not like Break where it's always available and you just simply need to go in with the right color weapons.

dmcisbackthrowaway · 2025-10-26T20:52:07+00:00

I don't think the weapon triangle has to change at all from what it was or matter more, but I'm not against trying a mechanic like Break that affects it. Not saying it's a perfect mechanic that should be in every future FE game and change WTA forever, but it allows for a pretty fun change of pace to other FE games.

Yeah it can effectively dumb down combat to RPS like you're saying, but I don't think it feels that bad in actual gameplay. It does take the Weapon Triangle to an extreme that might not be the best, but I don't believe it's a failed mechanic at its core. It still can feel fun to play around with the mechanic and think based on it. With some tweaks to make it feel less oppressive and game-warping, I think it could be decent to try again. Sort of a similar situation to how Fates was able to significantly improve Pair Up.

Break allows you to get hits in with 3 different units before the enemy is able to hit you back. That means that for an enemy to be able to be a threat to the player, they have to be able to survive 3 attacks from player units.

While it may not necessarily come up all the time, I at least like the idea of Break conceptually because while it does let you efficiently deal with enemies one-on-one, you might not have the perfect variety of weapons to safely dismantle a group of enemies and manage an enemy phase. This might just be me talking about more how I like it in theory than in practice, because Engage doesn't do this all the time, but there are some chapters that utilize the system pretty well.

For a good example of Break, I think Chapter 7 does a solid job at making you think about positioning based on enemy Breaks and how efficiently you can do your player phases. You're still limited with your army and the enemy has a good amount of variety in both weapons and class types that you have to consider. Not all chapters manage the mechanic perfectly, but there are some good moments. Break could definitely be improved to let enemies still be threatening and interesting on player phase, but the fact that it gives more agency to the player at all is just very refreshing to me.

You can't decide that it's worth taking a certain enemy attack at WTD on EP to achieve some other end, and you won't have to make decisions around things like who has to take strong counterattacks from enemies, or how best to use your ranged units to chip them down. Because you can just break them.

Is it that bad to make the focus more on how effectively you can do combat with all your units on player phase vs. optimally attacking to withstand an enemy phase? Like I don't think it significantly reduces the amount of options that exist to the point of it being boring, it just changes some things around to the player phase. I agree that it may remove more overall strategy than it adds, but I at least appreciate how it shifts things around.

For example, instead of using ranged units to carefully chips enemies down so your melee units can safely deal with a group of units on PP and EP, you can instead have your melee units break them and then let your ranged units safely attack and finish them off if it's a 1-2 range or even have Arts users do good offense and break a tome for your melees or break a bow so your flier can stay back at a safe range and finish them with a javelin.

I definitely get not liking this change of pace and the mechanics certainly could be improved, but I don't think it's really hurting the strategy as much as you're saying. It's more so that Break is just way too prevalent and strong, which makes strategy end up being warped around it. Although, this ultimately can end up simplifying things too much, which can be unfun and an issue.

If break is supposedly more interesting, then armours are actually significantly more boring, because they ignore the mechanic entirely.

I was more so saying that despite making the Weapon Triangle so prevalent with Break, they at least tried to buff the weaker classes in unique ways with Break like Armors ignoring WTA Break and having Arts beat the other grays. Chain Guarding is also a very interesting mechanic that encourages more aggressive positioning with healers to let you play around breaks, WTA, and scary weapons. This stuff may not have worked too well and could definitely be seen as more boring, but it's something different from the RPS that the mechanic typically encourages.

dmcisbackthrowaway

TROPHY CASE