You're in for a lot of fun after the timeskip imo, I had the same experience as you, having to turtle hard through chapters 1-5, then slowly my units were getting strong enough to handle enemies on their own and now after the timeskip it's turned into a very playerphase oriented game, for my unit lineup at least
@@Abundy This is similar to my experience on NG Maddening as well. Lots of turtling early and use of combat arts to avoid counters, things ease up before timeskip and then the first time skip chapter. Weeeeeeeew! That was very very rough, especially since I abandoned some of the default house members.
@@DoctorTog Chapter 13 is brutal if you abandon certain units from your class. I game planned for this chapter from the start after watching someone else play this map.
Just wait till the time skip there’s an absolutely ridiculous difficulty spike again it’s amazing I love the challenge I actually have seen the game over screen and it’s so much fun to know one wrong move is an easy death on your characters, in my opinion this is by far the most rewarding and fun mode, the others are just laughably easy
maddening mode feels like some one said “well the game has divine pulse. Can we make a mode that will make players use more than half of there divine pulses. That could be fun ” -_- for me, I like having multiple students from multiple classes, and maddening makes it not worth the lost of exp.
Eh, maddening started feeling like hard around 50 hours in (half way through pre-timeskip give or take 30 hours). Many of my units even feel stronger than my original units even in relation to the enemy despite being severely stat screwed. Aside from a few paralogues that feel actually impossible without cheesing it ofc.
@@saidin0142 same here, everybody carried training and iron... other than my pegasus knights, they were allowed to carry silvers due to naturally lower strength but crazy speed never used steel other than on archers.... to 1 hit flyers instead of bringing super slow I do wish there was an in between for hard/lunatic(or maddening) ... hard isn't that hard and at least on the GBA ones... lunatic is just crazy
@@TQDigitalMod yeah, hard mode is a joke to anyone with some planning in mind (except some god forbid chapters like BE 17 and 18) but maddening is plain and simple bs sometimes
Samuele Zaninello yeah- pretty much. Can we just get something that is Conquest hard mode levels of challenge please? That game was nearly perfect when it came to difficulty (later maps could get stupid at times, but not to the extent of 3 Houses maddening)
It's mitigated somewhat by time rewind - making it more of a temporary nuisance than a fuck you've lost moment - but it's still bullshit. A game based on careful position and understanding the potential moves of enemy units is undermined when they can just generate whatever they want and attack you.
@@nah4467 in some ways I like they have pass... You can just braindead turtle anymore , a lot of higher difficults before was "send jeigan first and let them soft then or killed them" or just send your strong units and let them kill everyone slowly with godlike avoidance. Yeah sure you could get hit or luck crit and it's over. But now you can't do that because enemies actually hit you or gambit you and you are dead. I like a lot maddening mode.
@@tqnpersonal wyvern are usually fast as well. not quite as fast as assassins or pegasus knights, but when they have 30 speed at level 20, it makes sense why wyvern riders would also be crazy fast post timeskip.
@@cryguy0000 I think hard is pretty easy for an FE game in 3h. If you play completely blind (which I recommend more than using a ton of guides) it may be a bit difficult for you, but you can get into it pretty fast. Good luck, have fun!!
@@cryguy0000 hard will be more than challenging enough for you. Anyone who says hard is actually easy is a fire emblem vet and Is unaware of the huge bias they posses. I think hard is exactly what your looking for if you want a challenge and you've never played an FE game before.
@@johnathanera5863 Yeah, I mean I'm used to tougher RPGs like Nocturne and Persona 3. I played the Awakening demo and Normal seemed a bit on the easier side, I'm new to the tactical RPG stuff. The closest I got to it is Yakuza Kiwami 2s Majima Construction
I have always considered ambush spawns to be artificial difficulty, they are simply a way to unfairly catch the player off guard and do not really test one's efficiency or tactics unless an NPC hints at their future appearance. (like how FE6 did at times...although not enough of the time)
@@johnathanera5863 Well I think most of the time reinforcements do get announced.. its just that they dont say if they are ambush spawns or not so you might as well treat any reinforments as ambush spawns
I hate ambush... But at least I don't have to reset all the chapter anymore and If you played the game before you should have a good idea were there are ambush (Miklan chapter, Great bridge, Blood of the eagle and Lion, Petra and Bernadetta paralogue, etc.)
I think Maddening sounds really fun, but I really wish that it wouldn't be so front-loaded in terms of difficulty. I do also dislike how they thought Ambush Spawns were an acceptable way to increase difficulty.
It's kind of a strange difficulty curve with the first chapters being tough, 6-11 being pretty easy and then when the timeskip rolls around it gets really difficult again, depending on the tools you have available/how rng blessed your units are
Mablung Balrog I don’t know for him but the speed you have to reach to not get doubled by sword masters and assassins is ridiculous in maddening. I couldn’t imagine how speed blessed a unit would have to be to not get doubled in lunatic. There might not be enough levels to get the required speed so stat boosting an already speed blessed unit might end up making the other characters that rely on those be less efficient to use or near impossible. This includes some of the lords (my edelgard had 18 speed at the end of my hard classic play through)
that's cool, wrong person though. but swordmasters and assassins are footlocked and swordlocked, so any unit with range capabilities and canto can easily outmaneuver them, gauntlets and brave weapons are fantastic on high strength and low speed units because they can essentially double their high might without needing to be speed blessed and not risking a counterattack from a speedy high crit swordmaster, and this game seems to not care for the res stat on any non enemy mages, so just using two mages can easily beat them anyways.
@@mablungbalrog424 Lol what do you mean by "all we need is the fire emblem"? Unsure if you didn't piece it together or not, but Byleth has the Crest of Flames??? Crest of Flames can also translate to Emblem of Fire... Fire Emblem 😂😂😂
I think it’s because the devs don’t want to redesign maps to be harder so they just raise stats or bring in ambush spawns. Leads to huge gaps in difficulty between modes.
i hate reunion at dawn, i my byleth had to do everything alone because my units just die all the time, luckyly she was a pegasus rider, so i just put her in abush and she start to dodge everything, in the 6 try I could end the map (sorry for typos english is not my native language)
Really, i feel like fates nearly perfected lunatic mode. Birthright is still easy until late game Revelations has it's moments. Conquest was challenging but didn't feel cheap.
I think there should be a level in between hard and maddening .. Cindered shadows hard mode had the perfect difficulty level imo. I'm on chapter 15 on maddening and it has been a roller coaster so far. I get that it's a "hardcore" mode but sometimes it straight up feels like the game is cheating. Enemies that hit twice with sub 20 hit rate and you miss the counter that has a 90... Resetting when the rng is down the toilet and using divine pulse after ambush spawns is maddening for sure lol Update: I beat the game (azure moon maddening) without anyone on my team dying. Tbf it peaked at chapter 13-14 and after that it got easier. But I still think ambush spawns are cheap af..and you need to be prepared for chapter 13 so if I could turn back time I would have a save file at chapter 12 so I could've tweaked a bit more in preparation for chapter 13. Maddening is still awesome though because you feel so good about yourself after each victory lol. Fun fact: it took me 69hours and 2 minutes no rush.
You forgot the part where your healers will be your highest level characters for the first few chapters because they are constantly healing. Marianne was the first to hit many a class level requirement in my GD maddening.
Actually not all the bosses move. Rhea does not move at the Battle of the Monastery, Lonato does not move in his map, Dimitri does not move in CF, and others.
@@benjaminpevzner6261 Healing spells (as well as dancing) reward fixed amounts of Exp, on a difficulty that severely reduces combat exp gain, so yes, healers are noticeably easier to train than most other units, especially if they are good in combat in their own right.
Mercedes is about 5 levels above everyone else in my playthrough. She's an absolute god. My dancer is getting up there. You don't get much in the way of white magic as blue lions which probably made it worse.
True Chivalry (Felix's Paralogue) on maddening reminds me why "sAvE the viLLagerS to GeT ALL the ReWarDS" missions are the thing I hate more than ambush spawns of assassins with pass and make me want to throw the controller at the TV.
When I got to the time skip on Maddening NG, the difficulty spike was insane. I didn't train half of my house because my main army consisted mostly of recruits so that very first map for GD was hilariously difficult as I had 3 level 3 units that die the second turn after they appear if I don't miraculously find a way to save them. Not to mention having to survive the "swarm AI" of Maddening on a map where you can't effectively turtle due to unit placement and the raw damage of enemies. I had to do some crazy things and have crazy RNG to get through that map without any deaths. Thank God for the free nuke gambit Claude gets.
same but my units were at good lvl yet they just keep dying, so my byleth did everything, she was a pegasus knight so i put her on a bush a let her avoid everything, on the 6 try i end the map by luck
@@josegutierrrez8392 At the very least give them higher prowess abilities, combat arts, multiple weapons, like effective ones so that getting to S+ Rank in mounted and armored classes means something, and give some of them class mastery.
Ignatz has been my MVP for maddening so far. Early rally speed really makes a difference to unit performance. For example, I was able to bait the death knight in his first chapter on turn 1 with a level 10 mercenary byleth, then kill him with just byleth on turn 2 player phase. No lysithea needed. And its not just rally speed. Seal strength + break shot, thief utility(im going assassin class line with him in this playthrough) make him a really powerful utility unit. The fact that he has a really high authority level for the sake of rallies also allows him to use powerful battalions, which give me the option to either make him have burst damage or to give him high level utility battalions such as the indech sword fighters or the wyvern 1 damage battalion. All of this adds up to make him a fantastic utility unit, which only truly shines in maddening where you can no longer oneshot all enemies with anyone
i used an ignatz mage. i feel its legit his best build, he gets a nice spell list and his pretty good growths for it. ignatz is actually much better on maddening than hard mode
Rally speed is still situational and it cost both xp and turn. Considering the endgame having a unit like Ignaz with few viable offensive mobility options is a risk I wouldn't take (too fragile as a flyer, bowknight remains). If you can make him reach S authority having him alongside a max dancer can make for gamebreaking 1T rush (+4 Str, Dex, Speed then stackable with dancer +4 Dex, Speed, Luck) but I still wouldn't invest in him that way or if I did I'd go ham on the support style, make him a healer (he's got physics at C and ward at B) to make him gain easy exp especially if he's going to be positionned slightly behind due to using rally the previous turn on allies before they go to war and considering his magic growth white knight would do him good. Anyway, if it works till the endgame like that for you please ping me because I'm interested on how it turned out and if he was still usable that way!
If you're looking for a difficulty between hard and maddening, I'd argue that New Game Plus maddening is good for you. Access to all gambits from previous runs. Assuming you maxed out the enlightened one class you have immediate access to sacred power's +/- 3 damage dealt/received for adjacent allies. The reduced EXP is not a problem if you've leveled up the statues high enough. Makes it possible to play the game aggressively from much earlier on.
Honestly, I like Maddening Mode. However, one of the worst parts, in my opinion, is how long maps become. Paralogues are a slog, and it feels mandatory to do them for exp and loot.
@@bo5935 That's called sarcasm because all of those are required elements to go through the game in this difficulty which you pick. And this actually make sense in universe because it is fine and dandy to do everything with a training axe + in easy mode however does it makes sense in universe? Not so much. I assume that when you pick a difficulty level you know how restricted you'll be by said difficulty but it seems I was wrong. Can't wait for infernal difficulty (doesn't mean I'll be able to clear it even with NG+ just that I'll say about the same thing). If the criticism was about how much they just added numbers to create an artificial difficulty I would have remained neutral because it is true that some spikes were poorly handled. If it was about how ambush+pass was bullshit, to some extend I agree with it. However if you complain about how careful you need to be which in turn is making the map slower and how there are restriction on your inventory/exp management while knowingly signing up for it, I'm just left wondering what the person expected from the difficulty mode which was described and leaked prior to release. Now be a good boy, mama's calling.
@Pierre-François Casanova It is completely fair to dislike Maddening because it forces you to play in a very slow and calculated way. It’s forcing you to do something that is not enjoyable. I’ve just started my maddening mode play through so I don’t really have my own opinion on it yet. However to say that it forces you to play it a very slow in boring way isn’t a valid criticism is downright stupid.
The post timeskip has a brutal difficulty spike. I feel like the difficulty is good, as it finds a nice balance between difficult enemies and overwhelming odds. But crimson flower post timeskip is definitely a wake up slap
N/A H not to mention blue lion final map puts you in a soft timer and dimitri can get random crit’d. I guess it’s my fault for playing through it blind but all my squishies were rendered useless in that map
Fabiocean *Vietam styled flashback* We don’t talk about such things here, for fear he may come back. I get were your coming from with divine pulse or what I personally would like is the difficulty be balanced in a way where you aren’t slamming your face into a brick wall until you eventually get thru, idk hector hard mode/ conquest lunatic were amazingly balanced difficulty settings were things like divine pulse aren’t necessarily, but to each his own
They just have to add 1 thing and we will be back to playing 4 units, sacrifice the others and go through it. List is: - increase by 1 point weekly battles cost - add 1 passive to ennemies - add trickery ambush spawns (flyers or thieves to break formation) - improve ennemy stats more intensely earlier - give Gambit to more ennemy units and earlier - limit even more xp gain - add random fairs - more mobile units early on - full map aggro - better weapons/more two range weapons on ennemies to force trading instead of allowing to deal some safe cheap damage or abusing terrain/choke points - more weakness negation equipment on ennemies However, if they just add fog/ unflyable terrain on most map or add mount/unmount penalties (as ennemies don't use it), it would be interesting because we would finally have use for torch and not go flyers like braindead systematically. But I believe that'd be too much too ask. Still the list is huge.
It honestly wasn't that bad for me, and it was my first time playing it no less. As long as you know that the ambush spawns (with Hubert/Catherine) only appear when Petra gets close to the "escape tile", then you can kill most enemies on the map before the reinforcements show up and make it more doable. There were other paralogues that I found much harder for sure (the Alois x Shamir one and the Leonie x Linhardt one were hell incarnate X_X).
my petra had to run an assassination mission on the enemy commanders on the right, and my bernadetta with full hp investment and vengeance had to be warped in at 1 hp to one shot catherine on 40% hit. edelgard's paralogue i failed 4 times with an hour into each run, similar for leonie and linhardt's. game got randomly impossible on these maps.
Reunion at Dawn is one of the worst experiences I've had in a game. Think it took me about 6 or 7 attempts before I finally resided myself to losing a few units and scraping through. Honestly thought my run was dead there
@@buoyantbagel6683 Actually Wyvern Lords do give a lance skill boost, as you need to build it up to become that class. It's obviously lower than axes since lances aren't the primary weapon.
Petra, Ingrid and F!Byleth were my MVPs due to being the only units being able to double normally and dodgetanking a lot of hits. Honorable mention to Sylvain and Ferdinand for their Swift Strikes Combat Art. Plus i recently found out that you can stack cooking bonuses so sometimes i would cook for speed 3 times.
A lot of the hardest chapters are right around the time skip. I felt that the defense map just before was super tough compared to the other maps because the enemies hit hard and don't let up. And you better hope you have a good Byleth, or post time skip bandit fighting might be impossible due to pass.
I didn't necessarily think the defense map was that bad, but pushing forward is a lot harder, so the fire trap becomes a much more integral part of the map solution. Hanging back, just outside of the Falcon Knight attack range seems like the safest strategy to me. Then again, chapter 13 makes almost anything seem easy by comparison. That map is hella dumb.
Funnily enough, i think Mekkah picked the hardest possible option, BE without NG+, due to having the worst early game and lacking good recruitment options like Catherine, Cyril and Seteth. Doesn't devalue any of the criticism, just wanted to point it out.
@@Abundy Cyril was a tank for me. Then again I tend to have characters who are stat screwd for other people get absolutely stat blessed for me. Then there are the characters that seem to be getting stat blessed constantly for everyone and just nuke the map with their magic. Talking about the living nuke known as Lysithea.
Abundy Cyril isn’t you usual villager. He has super easy access to Wyvern Lord, and the highest speed growth tied with Petra, Leonie, and Manuela. His bases are average compared to other units around that time. He also has access to point blank volley, a great combat art. Cyril is underrated.
Maddening Mode just plays like Early Gaiden: Everyone can do nothing except for the main lord and another unit. The earlygame is so slow and the endgame is more tedious than hard. Also ambush spawns are more stuoid than an actual challenge
After starting a new playthrough of SS, and refusing to use Edelgard pre timeskip, I will say that the Lords aren't necessary and everyone can pull their own weight when push comes to shove.
I really like how maddening incentivises you to make use of things you would otherwise ignore because they seem unnecessary (e.g. rally charm, it worked wonders for me early on). They also evened out the difficulty post-time skip to the point where it didn't feel like you could cheese through the rest of the game. Honestly can't be dissatisfied.
I really appreciate maddening mode as a way to play NG+ without the game being too easy. I found NG+ Hard mode to be easy to zoom through, but I'm enjoying the challenge which Maddening gives even with the NG+ bonuses :). Also, having learned that 3H has levelups up to level 99?? Makes me want like, a new kind of Ng+ with level carryover and like crazy strong enemies in ch.1
"These fellas" are the worst fellas. I'm doing Church route for the first time in Maddening (no NG+), and currently a couple chapters past the timeskip. I feel like the difficulty peaked at The Gautier inheritance (Miklan's chapter), dropped a bit, got significantly more difficult in the Pallardo map (the first mission post-timeskip), probably because I'm not using all of my original students. It's slowly feeling easier again. I find the best way to deal with Maddening's extra difficulty is to use monastery time wisely. Abuse tournaments for funds to stock up on good weapons, and plant the right stuff in the greenhouse to get necessary stat boosters, especially Speed Carrots. Serenes Forest has good greenhouse info. I've been building up the statues evenly to get the Divine Pulse bonuses and EXP boosts. I also slightly overleveled some really good units like Byleth and Petra, by giving them first dibs on a lot of kills, getting them more XP. I'm not lowmanning but Maddening would probably be a little easier with that approach, since it spreads XP around less.
Not Cutty I’m also doing Church route Maddening new game and I agree with you, Miklan was part 1 at its hardest, the reunion chapter was where it got harder again, but after that things got better up until chapter 18 & 19 where I’m currently at. Many of the enemies double every one of my units, even my fastest - Petra who was a wyvern lord. But despite that it didn’t feel like the early game because I at least had many options for dealing with enemies. Now where I’m worried is the final boss. I’ve been told that for some people that it’s statistically impossible for them because their units are too weak to finish the map
Yeah I agree, I thought I couldn't pass the Pallardo map either when I played it on my church route. You better be using the first students to appear on it!
I've never liked games that make their enemies harder by just "ooga booga big stat numba". I'd have preferred for them to make a different AI where the enemies make any attempt to assault you, rather than most missions just be having one guy with good avoid chance sitting right on the edge of an enemy's range and baiting everything.
I remember one time in Maddening where an enemy decided to use a lure gambit on my bait unit and then massacre her. I was both impressed and irritated.
“Cuts EXP in half.” You know what I can’t stand? When a game has a “hard” mode that’s not enjoyable. Sadly most hard modes are: you deal less damage, you take more damage, enemies have higher HP, you gain less XP etc. that’s an exercise in frustration. I would preferred if the enemy AI was improved to make the strategy building more of a challenge rather than having stats increased and other things decreased because that just seems like artificial difficulty
That's my main issue with SMT/Persona games. The "difficulty" usually affects how much exp and money you get on top of taking double and dealing half damage so you need to grind waaaaaaaay more and can instantly die and lose all you progress
I mostly really like maddening, but the * Before Dawn map for Blue Lions is extremely bad. You don't get a prep screen before it, and Gilbert is deadweight, and your first reinforcements are Mercedes and Annette trapped in a corner they can't get out of, so if you don't want anyone to die you have to have trained Ashe into a tank in part 1 or get extremely lucky. It's not great.
That map can suck it, honestly. The only reason it was slightly workable for me is that I made Byleth, Ferdinand and Petra Wyvern Riders (and Seteth was there because I was on Church route but he wasn't as good as the others). But even with FOUR Wyverns (and a blessed af Caspar) the map was still all kinds of crazy stuff...
@@Chosen_Din my caspar sucked so much, same with petra, my strong units were berni, ferdinand and Lin and they were the last to apear, bless that Hero ferdinand that just crit every hit and that byleth that dodge everything or i would have prob killed my switch
@@tiagogreenday0 The existence of Caspar and Ashe is why the Golden Deer, with their 3 authority+ characters compared to the other houses 2, make a good argument for the strongest house. serenesforest.net/three-houses/characters/growth-rates/ Like look at Ignatz in GD, he is just a low charm Claude, with alongside Lysethia both have authority+ in addition to Claude. GD have Lysethia(best oneshotter), Hilda(high speed,res,cha for an A.knight to survive mages/battalions) and Leonie. 3-range-reason for Lorenz and brawler Raphael also just work without issue, and Marianne presses your physic button just fine. Ashe and Caspar are always bad and there's not much you can do for them. Also bows and magic tend to be stronger options than melee weapons in general in this game. You only need Byleth and like 2-3 other melee units, and Blue Lions stacks on too many melees whereas Crimson Flower also has Caspar, making their mages be held down a little. My order would be GD > CF > BL.
What I've found that helps on maddening mode... focusing on just a few select characters. Mercedes is a must due to her overall healing repertoire. Why this is also important? She'll level fast on the non storyline fights where you can sit and heal each other up for xp, this heal xp was not cut in half, the only xp that was cut was BATTLE exp. So Mercedes can still heal/physic/fortify and even restore for xp and get massively leveled pretty quickly. Manuela is in a similar boat where she can level up super fast. Heal/ward/warp/Silence. Silence gives a crapton of xp on the maps she can use it on (need an enemy caster). She also gets a great speed and good defense growth for a caster Lorenz is actually very useful. Heal/ward/recover help out for leveling him up, not to mention for a mage character he is extremely tanky with high hp and good defense growth and with his relic make him a vary valuable bishop/dark knight (bishop for the 2x white magic uses while leveling in the random battles) and thyrsus can further increase his tankiness while also allowing him to attack from afar. Dark knight again is still ideal for non leveling fights. Felix is another good one due to his Aegis shield that he can obtain later. He also learns decent white magic spells to sort of level up off of with a little bit of help to turn into a priest/bishop and mortal savant isn't a bad class for him (even if it hurts speed a bit, will get to that later) But his Aegis makes him tanky enough to survive multiple assaults in maddening. As much as I love a lot of other characters, the fact is they take more effort to train. so simply leveling these along with Byleth as well as whatever their faction leader is helps out tremendously. After the power level abuse from 'healing' and 'warding' each other, the focus should be gardening with lots of Pale Blue Seeds for Speed carrots. There really isn't ever a point where more speed hurts you. Once you've finished getting your skill levels for the classes you want, Flying is always a good one to go for next because the wait> avoid is really useful even on units that aren't flying. Get enough speed and even the most accurate enemies won't touch you. Manuela hits this status pretty easy with her ridiculous speed growth. I'd consider making byleth into a wyvern lord/pegasus knight but only if byleth got RNG blessed with defense. You really only want to do this if you get to the point where archers can't damage you. Which isn't too hard with a good growth rate and funneling all the defense items to him/her.
Mgiddo or they could provide more of a challenge then arbitrarily limiting my units growth. You’re right that as is it wouldn’t be hard, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
@@MegiddoZO there's a feature in the witcher 3 where if set ON , All Enemies that are under leveled will be raised to MATCH your current level. So if your lvl 20 and are in area with lvl 5 bandits and want a challenge they'll be made lvl 20 instead. The onlybones not affected are enemies out ranking you (if you're lvl 20 and come across a lvl 30 enemy they'll stay lvl 30.) I wish more RPG games would adopt this feature since it keeps challenge alive but doesn't make it cheap. They can have a difficulty slightly below Maddening where the enemies still have the same abilities but all match your highest level unit in terms of level. Red canyon most of the party was only lvl 2-3 with a couple of 1s while the enemies have nearly25-30 units at lvl 7.
I wish there were something in between Hard and Maddening mode. You literaly get 5 Donnels (Insert any other trainee archetype) that will go up against total beasts in the early game. There is no Jaigan to kill at least one Person and it becomes very draining after a while. Byleth and your Lord are your only Units that hold up against the enemies
It's a shame that IS chooses to make difficult modes by "balancing it around Divine Pulse", which is pretty lame. Having the gameplay be trial and error, but not as punishing as in older games, is still annoying. Being encouraged to turtle to do anything is also really a drag. There are better ways to make the game more difficult without turning it into an EP turtlefest. However, I do agree that it is nice that combat artes and gambits are more important (albeit, I'm old school and would rather not have these mechanics at all), but at least they matter here. Similarly, the optimization of class matters a bit more too, which is nice. My view is there are different ways to make the game difficult, but it should be more about positioning and getting punished for not playing fast enough, rather than forcing you to play slowly to get anywhere.
My fiance kept telling me he didn't like my playstyle of moving my units in a pack, but I didn't know that was called turtling. That makes so much sense.
I find Maddening to be a little too front-loaded on the difficulty since you have virtually no safe option besides turtling it up at the start of the game, and the difficulty even lets up halfway to the timeskip if you're experienced with 3H, know what you want to do with your units to raise them and how to do it. Also, up front you have like 3 Divine Pulse charges which in such long chapters can get pretty sparse, while later on (currently just past timeskip myself) you both get more charges and need less. Iunno, I like the mode once your team starts to distinguish itself and you actually have options, but when all your units come down to 'mediocre 4 Mov combat unit' and your opponent already has proper classes like Thieves and Archers, I just don't think the game *can* be all that fun. That's not really the fault of Maddening and more the game itself, but it does cause you to feel pretty helpless in Maddening's difficulty. You have zero counterplay to Archer's Poison Strike and it can feel a little cheap at times. Also the ambush spawns, while not quite as bad as in Awakening bc I found they often spawn in places where they can't immediately attack you, are still cheap and bullshit and should go away thanks. Divine Pulse is not an argument for BS like that.
I think one of the sneaky things the game pulls on you is that after the first few chapters, the game starts feeling a little easier, but I think it's partially due to the enemies moving on from iron to steel weapons and eating the AS penalty. It's only temporary but it's a good way to give the player some breathing room.
Yeah this mode very much gave me FE6 vibes where strong enemies are present for the whole game but the beginning chapters in particular can be a bit turtle heavy. Dont worry though later on and especially after the timeskip you'll have much more breathing room to go fast and furious like in Hard mode while also not being brainless either. One thing you forgot to mention specifically that I think is really beneficial for the game is that not only is normal exp cut, but also skill exp including skill exp gained from lectures is cut as well. This is really cool for incentivizing players to stick to training what each student is already good at and therefore making them feel way more distinct since it's much more costly to have them substantially deviate from their "canon" kit. Having beaten GD on this mode and making my way through Beagles currently I'm very satisfied with it.
Funny enough Remire village is about the point where turtling strategies become less effective. Aside from simply just trying to save all the villagers, you're on a pseudo timer due to the death knight charging down, and Solon running away like a coward if you're trying to play things slow. Post time skip ups things again, and the first time skip map can be a run killer, especially if you've relied a lot on recruitments. If you don't have a good, tanky flying unit, you're probably in a bad way. Might be the cheapest thing about Three Houses, the one moment where it surpasses even some of Awakening's bullshit.
I agree with you Mekkah, Maddedning makes your resources very valuable and I'm mostly happy about it. My main disagreement with you is the turtling thing. Ever since the beginning I've been using Stride to establish my units fast on the map and kill enemies before they can kill me. To me it's a player phase fest and I rarely take more than 10-15 turns per map. But I'm glad you're enjoying playing it tour way. That's what FE is all about.
Honestly when I was at the point you are at I thought my units were catching up with the enemies. But right about at the end of pre timeskip the enemy units got a huge boost in stats and started getting fare skills. I didnt do much paralouges though so I may have been under leveled. I almost got soft locked on the first chapter of azure moon. Luckily I had thyrsus on Annette and that was the only reason that the chapter was beatable.
0:25 - EXP gain isn't exactly cut in half. The game uses a lookup table based on your level relative to the enemy and your difficulty to work out what to multiply EXP gain by, and it just gets harsher and harsher as you go up in difficulty. For example if you are equal level to an enemy, on Normal you would gain 100% EXP, on Hard you would gain 70% EXP, and on Maddening you would gain 20% EXP. If you were 5 levels below the enemy, on Normal you'd gain 125% EXP, on Hard you'd gain 100% EXP and on Maddening you'd gain 45% EXP. Full table - forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/89413-healingsupport-action-exp-formula-exp-table-from-level-1-to-50/&do=findComment&comment=5512905 Also, you gain marginally less skill EXP from weekly study goals - 4 points less per week in each skill, regardless of if it's a strength/weakness/neutral compared to Hard, and 8 points less compared to Normal.
I have watched a few maddening mode videos and I normally do not play on the hardest settings...but the more I watch of these, the more I want to try it. Once I finish my BE Church route, I will do a maddening run. Thanks Mekkkah, I really enjoyed the video.
@@AProperNoun Need to look up who is forced deployed in the danger zone, and who is optional to train because they deploy in the back corner where you can hide them behind the damaged walls.
Miklan's chapter was one of hardest in maddening for sure, pretty sure I had to divine pulse all the way back to turn 4 just so I could set up dealing with the archers + horde that was charging toward me better and prepare for "these guys" by surrounding my fragile units against the wall. I find all the chapters more enjoyable because something like "Mangs strat" will be punished. RNG also felt a lot more brutal in maddening and sometimes even 90%+ accuracy for you will miss.
Even if there was bs involved, I definitely did not expect maddening to change that chapter from a total slog to perhaps the most intense chapter in my playthrough.
My maddening playthrough went pretty smoothly until I reached chapter 13 just after the time skip... I am playing the Black Eagle church route and the reunion mission is the biggest bulls*** I've seen so far. Everyone gangs up on you as soon as you aggro some specific enemies, and there's no prep screen so you better have prepared yourself before the PREVIOUS the battle. I've made it through but it was mostly just luck. If it wasn't for my Byleth dodging and countering with critical almost every enemy I would've never made it.
Church route maddening may as well be impossible. I was only barely able to beat the first chapter because of Claude’s broken Gambit. Seteth doesn’t have that.
This is what you need to prepare for. Right here. I think people don't expect much from this map, and it catches them off guard like nothing else in the game. I had Lysithea and especially Leonie, but I see how it can be a run killer.
@@OnlineVideoSurfer I thought this map was a problem on Hard already, so I was anticipating trouble well in advance, but nothing could have prepared me for the levels of BS this map presented me with on Maddening. BL route, btw, and I don't imagine that's any better than the other routes that get this map. I'm still not sure how I managed to scrape by without deaths when I did, and it took me many resets to get to that point as well.
@@OnlineVideoSurfer I was trying to prepare for this map, but both Byleth and Dimitri were one AS too slow, so they were getting doubled. And I think Dimitri was getting Speed screwed in general and he got a level 1 Battalion that lowers his Avoid, so no dodge tanking for him even with Swordbreaker. It took an extremely nukey Annette and Wyvern Ashe with Immortal Corps to bail them out. Yeah, NG+, training all of my in-house units, and even then I had trouble because my Lords were 1 point too slow. FeelsBadMan
@@laggalot1012 I was lucky I had Wyvern Leonie, and used my old FE6 Milady strats of dumping every physical and move stat booster I found into her. She still had to be careful but she could fight well enough with assistance from Claude, with Lysithea doing cleanup on the other side. When I played Blue Lions hard Dimitri just soloed all the thieves, so it didn't even occur to me that this level could be a problem. I thought it was meant to be a scripted triumph of your reunited army and your now super, if crazy (for BL) lord. Not thieves powerful enough that they could take on the Empire themselves!
I remember struggling in the Miklan map a lot because Gilbert triggered all the archers and they would all run towards me. I had to make sure he dies for that not to happen lol.
Ambush spawning is something that when done correctly can add a good amount of pressure and difficulty. When done incorrectly, it's either not difficult to deal with or the more likely case it's unfair. I love how ambush spawning works when you're warned about it and can prepare accordingly. Miklan's chapter was fucking bs though with those thieves. In one attempt I tried to keep Gilbert up to see if he would trigger those thief reinforcements... he pulled everyone on the map instead including miklan 😅
Just past the timeskip now on my Maddening, No Monestary, No NG+ Run, went with Golden Deer because it was the only house I had yet to play. Really fun.
I've only gotten past the second Death Knight chapter so far, but I am loving the challenge with most of the levels, only level I found a bit unfair and not very fun was The Gautier Inheritance. Gilbert can pull the entire damn map to you if he ends up surviving against the first few enemies, so my strategy relied on having Gilbert die so he wouldn't pull the archers near Miklan, thus pulling the rest of the map. I found it a bit dumb that my entire strategy had to rely on a green unit I have no control over dying before i could do anything else
I have more satisfaction in Maddening not from the difficulty but the skills I have acquired from playing in the mode. Charm matters; Gambit and Gambit Boosts matter. That shifts the paradigm where now we should focus more on Tea Times or Charm boosters. I’m still using combat arts post-timeskip for accuracy or because I’m still not doubling everything. While not consistent, that means those who have combat art Crests are starting to see those procs. These mechanics are probably what the designers intended but the overall easy difficulty in Normal/Hard couldn’t let them shine until Maddening. And now here I am with my 53+10 Charm Byleth and still going.
Yeah another thing to add in maddening mode is that your abillities that you can ignore in hard and normal mode become way, way more relavent and essential to grind. Like, I tried to master and dark bishop class in as many characters as possible as it increases the survivability of my characters and are easy to get mastery points in in the random battle maps if you leave one enemy magic caster on the map on the fire lava stage and just heal everyone bit by bit, which boosts faith xp along with give your characters auto heal and health steal for killing enemies later on as an example. Fire map is good as every turn a dude is on the lava tile and they take damage. Also can be really good for XP grinding in maddening.
Just wait till the time skip there’s an absolutely ridiculous difficulty spike again it’s amazing I love the challenge I actually have seen the game over screen and it’s so much fun to know one wrong move is an easy death on your characters, in my opinion this is by far the most rewarding and fun mode, the others are just laughably easy
In "Hoes Mad" mode I feel like I may make everybody a "wyvern corps" that are not healers haha. I've seen warp, stride, rescue and dance cheese still being useful on this mode whether its one turn kills or just to run away from enemies doubling. I'm also planning to make most of my units go through the soldier class. Idk if that is smart or not, but reposition seems like it would be handy on maddening mode. As for the warp cheese, it is especially great for getting Thrysus, the staff that exists for Lysithea on Lorenz's paralogue.
Chapter 13, hunting at dawn, is my bottleneck rn. I can’t find myself wanting to go back and play knowing that RNG is the only thing’ll keep my units alive. In my opinion, FE difficulty should come from demanding complex strategizing of the player, not trial and error. Please, if I’m too awful a gamer to beat 30+ units with 30+ AS using just Petra, Seteth, and my Byleth, let me know
Right now Im playing Maddening and am at the first post-timeskip chapter. Im doing Church route and am not using a single BE character besides Petra. Oh boy, that decision kinda bites me in the *ss right now. Only having three usable units is something else
I love and hate maddening mode. I keep rage quitting. That Miklan chapter gave me so much trouble. Granted I am not the best fire emblem player so I have to restart maps anyways. But that map pissed me off so much. The reinforcements in this game are way worse than in other games. Or at least that’s how it feels
Conrad Korbol They’re same-turn reinforcements. They exist way back. Notoriously in modern FE like FE6 and FE 13. I consider them as the worst FE mechanic.
It’s a very lazy design that either forces a rewind or a reset in previous games. Those rewinds could be used for other mistakes rather than the game making lazy surprises.
Awakening's would still be worse, even if this didn't have time rewind. The time rewind really does help adapt to the bullshit. Though it is still bullshit all the same.
@@christianvisperas7438 I mean is it? the right gambits can hold down a couple of units for a turn easily. Sure you want to save them but I'm not sure if the game forcing you into surprising situations is lazy. You still choose how you deal with them.
Yeah I feel the same about maddening. Im doing a golden deer play through and Ignatz is the strongest character in the game because he can gambit stride and rally speed 🌚
My first play through was GD on normal because I thought I would get through it quicker, but after taking well over 100 hours, I now regret that decision. Especially since I am an extremely experienced “LTC type of player”. I jumped straight into Maddening with the Blue Lions, and it has been slow going so far. I spent 69 turns on the Red Canyon map cheesing the enemy healer who had Renewal to make sure Annie got to Lv5 and to master everyone’s base class for the HP+5 skill. It’s actually really enjoyable figuring out strategies because the first few turns of each map have been incredibly difficult. I am looking forward to maximizing my exploration days, since I got a good feel for how to it optimally from my first play through. Gonna focus on maxing my professor tank ASAP.
Oh, on my first attempt of the mock battle map, I put Byleth with a bow in range of Dorothea and she crit me for a quick game over. Maddening is a perfect name for the difficulty.
One of your vids got me to do a GD, no recruit, classic, maddening run. Chickened out and did NG+ and DLC, though. With 400 hours of grinding before that, it's almost easy. Everybody's some sort of flyer pre-time skip, which really helped with that reunion map.
I think Maddening mode was actually pretty fun and one of the things that helped were a lot of mages. They attack from 2 range so the enemy can't counter attack, even early game, they do quite a decent amount of damage and late game your stronger mages can easily one round most units. And their weakness of taking way too much damage isn't that bad bc #1: they tend to be a bit faster so getting doubled is less likely #2: maddening enemies will break your main combat units anyways so letting the enemy get as few attacks in as possible is vital, #3: they can't hit you if you kill them first.
I still feel like there should have been a mid step between hard and Infernal, it reminds me far too much of Awakening's Hard > Lunatic, BUT thankfully not to that extent. One is fairly doable, not really that hard, and is mostly fine if you take your time and think things through. Then there's lunatic where everyone and anything can kill you in the first maps no questions asked without issue. But 3 Houses at least let me get to chapter 8 before realizing I wasn't having fun anymore, but in the same map I did so, it went from having to think through every move I made to 'I threw Claude at them, they died.' Enemies suddenly had 10+ Attack Speed or more, Pass, Poison Touch, there were no more cluster of higher tier enemies attacking alongside their lesser brethren, units that would double AND kill me in one go went from that to literally not doing crap to me. One thing I'll never ever miss is Ambush spawns, and the one explicited in the video was the one that made me finally understand turtling slow was the way to go in that scenario and that was it. I had to drop it down in the Alois/Shamir map, but thinking it a little further, I should have stuck on the red canyon map instead then went to that one, anyhow, can't say I haven't tried Lunatic/Maddening, and it was certainly a lot more fun having than I expected, before it started being too much for me. But again, the moment I dropped down to hard, the game became a cakewalk again because I had to take all the advices/strategies I've used in maddening to heart and suddenly they were no longer necessary, having a forged steel lance/steel bow+ in most units was almost an necessity in Maddening, and an advice I would give anyone trying it out.
I think you are pretty right with most of your Opinios there. I only tackled the golden deer route in ng+ on maddening (which makes the early levels way more bearable) and i have to say: i really like the mode so far. While the game still has some gut punches, atleast now it fights back against Player who accumulated some Knowlegde. The Laterne levels are a different cake though and really gives you a run for your money. I am currently Stuck in Edelgards throneroom. Not only are the enemys still on anyway higher level then every unit except my dancer, nur due to some unlucky magic level Ups on my Lysithea killing many enemys in one turn is simply not manageable. Edelgard Atem way to many steroids too and can attack up to 4 Times in one Phase (could be more - byleth died after the 4th attack)
I'm about to finish my first Maddening Mode, no NG+ playthrough on Golden Deer route. A couple things I want to highlight: 1) Turtling is my best friend. So are bows and magic for softening up targets before a kill. These things have always been important but much more so in maddening mode. 2) Since the enemies are much tougher and thus take more hits to down, I find my units gain a lot more weapon exp and support hearts in battle compared to hard mode. 3) Around the time where my units were getting strong enough to hold their own against enemy units, the paralogue chapters started rolling in. These chapters were the hardest for me because you cannot turtle many of them. I spent a lot of time trying to optimize methods of doing them. 4) Once you get your team off the ground, the story chapters become rather trivial. I remember thinking that the final chapter of the first half where the monestary is getting attacked was super easy. But then.... 5) Holy hell, the first chapter of the 2nd part truly deserves the title of maddening. Having Byleth solo that many high stat enemies in a forest area was super rough. Especially since I was insistent on protecting my unleveled Lorenz and Ignatz. 6) After the first chapter of the 2nd half though, it was pretty much smooth sailing. My entire team at endgame consists of flyers and its beautiful.
As low as 25-30 and up at least 50''s for other stats. Some go up to the 70's or even 80's with HP caps reaching over 100. Depends on the character but you'll likely never cap a stat through normal play
Reg: Welcome to the Salty Spitoon. How tough are ya? Mekkah: I play Fire Emblem: Three Houses on Maddening. Reg: Yeah so? Mekkah: Just to chill. Reg: Yes sir, right this way.
I enjoyed Crimson Flower NG (no +) on Maddening Mode for the most part; like you said, it forces you to very carefully consider all of your options and actually optimize everything you have at your disposal. While I agree turtling is often the best approach for the first half of the game, I personally felt the strategy of quick offensive approaches became the better option later in the game. There are some levels where enemy reinforcements keep coming every turn or two, and at first I tried to overcome these through slow progression, but when I kept get overwhelmed I then used the approach of rushing in a couple of units to halt the reinforcements, while the rest of the team moved in as quickly yet safely as possible to cover them.
I'm glad I saw this video, I'm planning for my first Golden Deer run (on new game+ since I like the idea of Fiendish Blow on Marianne and Lorenz from the get-go) to be on Maddening. So hearing it isn't totally unfair is enough to put my worries to ease.
Miklan's chapter with GD took me 3 1/2 hours. The map design was brilliant. Takes FULL advantage of your units 4 move. Gives you a false sense of relief once you get past the theives that spawn in the upper right corner then hits you with a whole mess of archers behind armor knights. They even provide you with a false chokepoint afterwards. Loved it.
The level design after the timeskip is just bad. I'm okay with ambushes making divine pulses fair, i'm okay with exp growth, abilities, everything. But, why did everymap after the timeskip turn into an ambush-fest were the game just showers you with 60plus enemy units everyturn forcing me to turn everyone into a wyvern archer or use Byleth as the god of destruction? It's not strategic anymore Is a matter of stats and abilities Where's the balancing when I have to forget about positioning and tactics and just rely on numbers... Increasing the difficulty does not mean turning an SRPG into an sRPG
The Gautier chapter took me 42 turns because of those pass thieves, having to put everyone in a 3x3 grid to protect people and bait them. I agree with a lot of your thoughts! Especially on how useful gambits and combat arts were. Early game definitely has a lot of turtling, but I found very few after the time skip. There were several paralogues I had to set up 1 or 2 turn clears for so that I could complete the alternate "keep the green units alive" objectives (Felix, Lorenz', Ignatz/Raph's come to mind, where I 2 turned, 1 turned, and 1 turned them). Some maps I've had to play COMPLETELY differently than hard mode though, like the Dorothea/Ingrid Paralogue. Or the.... the... Marianne paralogue...........
Im playing Maddening through NG+ and it feels perfect! Im nearing the end of the Blue Lions route and it's getting really tough! Ive had to restart twice to avoid losing any units since I ran out of Divine Pulse charges
I think you could've explained the EXP gains better. It's not just half EXP. It's more like enemies give EXP as if they were 5 levels down and most enemies are around 5 levels higher than usual. I think this was put into place to prevent grinding maps for EXP on training maps as those enemy's scale very poorly level wise.
I have just finished my BL Maddening playthrough, and that makes it my first clear of a Lunatic-level difficulty in any FE game (not that I've tried it often). My personal impressions, I think this game's difficulty has a bit of a W shape. The start is rough due to limited options and the maps are tediously slow, I must admit. Then the game mellows out a bit as your units catch up in power up until about chapter 11 or 12, though it remains substantially more difficult than Hard. Then chapter 13... is honestly kind of BS. If any map at all has any potential of ending your playthrough forcibly, it'll be this one. Have a backup save of chapter 12 ready and prepare with this map in mind, just to be safe. The map is a difficulty spike in it's own right, but it goes beyond fair challenge and is just plain stupid. Then the difficulty mellows out again a little and starts climbing again around... chapter 17 or so? Stat inflation kicks into high gear across the last few maps, so the game still ends pretty difficult and endgame certainly gave me plenty of trouble, though it never again reaches chapter 13's levels of idiocy, thankfully. Never assume you can start slacking due to the game getting easier, as the difficulty will eventually go back up again and you want to be ready for it. Relevance of combat arts and gambits is very nice, indeed. And as a side effect of the increased enemy stats and count, training weapons and class rank is sped up a fair bit as well, and I think that's quite nice.
Oh boy, chapter 13 was rough on my NG+ maddening Church route using only Byleth, Edelgard, Hubert, and church staff. Surprisingly, after many attempts (about 6 or so, all divine pulses used rigging RNG), nobody died. It required Byleth just charging forward into the 4 way intersection and enemy phasing every thief and merc the map had to offer before the students arrived.
Игры
Ever since making this video I've gotten a little further. I'mm a start streaming that playthrough soon enough.
You're in for a lot of fun after the timeskip imo, I had the same experience as you, having to turtle hard through chapters 1-5, then slowly my units were getting strong enough to handle enemies on their own and now after the timeskip it's turned into a very playerphase oriented game, for my unit lineup at least
@@Abundy This is similar to my experience on NG Maddening as well. Lots of turtling early and use of combat arts to avoid counters, things ease up before timeskip and then the first time skip chapter. Weeeeeeeew! That was very very rough, especially since I abandoned some of the default house members.
@@DoctorTog Chapter 13 is brutal if you abandon certain units from your class. I game planned for this chapter from the start after watching someone else play this map.
Just wait till the time skip there’s an absolutely ridiculous difficulty spike again it’s amazing I love the challenge I actually have seen the game over screen and it’s so much fun to know one wrong move is an easy death on your characters, in my opinion this is by far the most rewarding and fun mode, the others are just laughably easy
@@lanceareadbhar i played silver snow route and it was hell in chapter 13. i didnt put any resources into edel or hubert but it was still ridculous
Hard mode and Maddening mode feel so distant, there's practically a room for another difficulty settings between them.
That has been the case with all fire emblems since the ds...
Just taking away the half xp would make the mode different enough.
Still I feel that maddening was made with this intent.
maddening mode feels like some one said “well the game has divine pulse. Can we make a mode that will make players use more than half of there divine pulses. That could be fun ” -_- for me, I like having multiple students from multiple classes, and maddening makes it not worth the lost of exp.
Eh, maddening started feeling like hard around 50 hours in (half way through pre-timeskip give or take 30 hours). Many of my units even feel stronger than my original units even in relation to the enemy despite being severely stat screwed. Aside from a few paralogues that feel actually impossible without cheesing it ofc.
@@DoggyP00 welp you learned the game so it is most likely just experience talking.
Maddening mode: exists
Iron bow: allow me to introduce myself...
Iron weapon were the only ones that I used on hard, forged btw
@@saidin0142 same here, everybody carried training and iron... other than my pegasus knights, they were allowed to carry silvers due to naturally lower strength but crazy speed
never used steel other than on archers.... to 1 hit flyers instead of bringing super slow
I do wish there was an in between for hard/lunatic(or maddening) ... hard isn't that hard and at least on the GBA ones... lunatic is just crazy
@@TQDigitalMod yeah, hard mode is a joke to anyone with some planning in mind (except some god forbid chapters like BE 17 and 18) but maddening is plain and simple bs sometimes
Samuele Zaninello yeah- pretty much. Can we just get something that is Conquest hard mode levels of challenge please? That game was nearly perfect when it came to difficulty (later maps could get stupid at times, but not to the extent of 3 Houses maddening)
Mojo1356 if only there was a medium difficulty between your easy and IS comes to steal your knees
"And if you think I'm wrong, think again, because it is, in fact, my opinion."
Gold
Ambush reinforcements is the bane of higher FE difficulty settings. They're a cheap way to make the games "harder".
It's mitigated somewhat by time rewind - making it more of a temporary nuisance than a fuck you've lost moment - but it's still bullshit. A game based on careful position and understanding the potential moves of enemy units is undermined when they can just generate whatever they want and attack you.
Not only do we share the same sentiment, we posted our sentiments at approximately the same time, lol.
Especially, when they have Pass
They have pass!! That's bull
@@nah4467 in some ways I like they have pass... You can just braindead turtle anymore , a lot of higher difficults before was "send jeigan first and let them soft then or killed them" or just send your strong units and let them kill everyone slowly with godlike avoidance. Yeah sure you could get hit or luck crit and it's over. But now you can't do that because enemies actually hit you or gambit you and you are dead. I like a lot maddening mode.
The game gets easier as you get closer to the time skip. However the post skip difficulty spikes are something else.
Oh boy those 35+ speed stats on wyverns got on my nerves, especially when they were ambush spawns.
@@adrianmccarthy6502 you act like assassins and pegasus knights didn't have 30+ spd pre timeskip
@@Fabiocean2000 Well, fast wyvern is a surprise, those two ain't
@@tqnpersonal wyvern are usually fast as well. not quite as fast as assassins or pegasus knights, but when they have 30 speed at level 20, it makes sense why wyvern riders would also be crazy fast post timeskip.
Beat BE:Church on NG Maddening last night and I'm still having nightmares about the 50AS Swordmasters and Falcon Knights over here
What's truly Maddening is the difference between """hard""" and maddening
Cindered shadows got hard right. Although I only had to redo chapter 2 and 6, but it was much harder than the main game on hard.
If I'm new to fire emblem, will "hard" still be hard? Or is it just a misleading way to say normal?
@@cryguy0000 I think hard is pretty easy for an FE game in 3h. If you play completely blind (which I recommend more than using a ton of guides) it may be a bit difficult for you, but you can get into it pretty fast. Good luck, have fun!!
@@cryguy0000 hard will be more than challenging enough for you. Anyone who says hard is actually easy is a fire emblem vet and Is unaware of the huge bias they posses. I think hard is exactly what your looking for if you want a challenge and you've never played an FE game before.
@@johnathanera5863 Yeah, I mean I'm used to tougher RPGs like Nocturne and Persona 3. I played the Awakening demo and Normal seemed a bit on the easier side, I'm new to the tactical RPG stuff. The closest I got to it is Yakuza Kiwami 2s Majima Construction
I have always considered ambush spawns to be artificial difficulty, they are simply a way to unfairly catch the player off guard and do not really test one's efficiency or tactics unless an NPC hints at their future appearance. (like how FE6 did at times...although not enough of the time)
Well yes, and ambush is cheap and unfair that is a given, I think the best word to describe them would be annoying.
It depends on how close to the players they are I guess
Yeah ambush spawns would be fine if they gave you a heads up a turn before they show up imo.
@@johnathanera5863 Well I think most of the time reinforcements do get announced.. its just that they dont say if they are ambush spawns or not so you might as well treat any reinforments as ambush spawns
I hate ambush... But at least I don't have to reset all the chapter anymore and If you played the game before you should have a good idea were there are ambush (Miklan chapter, Great bridge, Blood of the eagle and Lion, Petra and Bernadetta paralogue, etc.)
I think Maddening sounds really fun, but I really wish that it wouldn't be so front-loaded in terms of difficulty. I do also dislike how they thought Ambush Spawns were an acceptable way to increase difficulty.
It's kind of a strange difficulty curve with the first chapters being tough, 6-11 being pretty easy and then when the timeskip rolls around it gets really difficult again, depending on the tools you have available/how rng blessed your units are
I think new FE games have had an issue with keeping difficulty consistent throughout the game.
Just ask Chaz if it gets hard again after the time skip.
As if maddening wouldn’t be insanely difficult without them…
I hate how IS keeps changing the difficulty names, it used to be Maniac then Lunatic and now Maddening.
The original was CLEVER AI
@@xuanathan Kaga did it first, babyyy
At least those keep the insanity motif. Heroes uses fucking infernal ruining the god damn theme
i only here for say nice pfp
@@martinacosta9554 thanks
I mean; the mode lives up to its name.
great, now all we need is the fire emblem
Mablung Balrog I don’t know for him but the speed you have to reach to not get doubled by sword masters and assassins is ridiculous in maddening. I couldn’t imagine how speed blessed a unit would have to be to not get doubled in lunatic. There might not be enough levels to get the required speed so stat boosting an already speed blessed unit might end up making the other characters that rely on those be less efficient to use or near impossible. This includes some of the lords (my edelgard had 18 speed at the end of my hard classic play through)
that's cool, wrong person though.
but swordmasters and assassins are footlocked and swordlocked, so any unit with range capabilities and canto can easily outmaneuver them, gauntlets and brave weapons are fantastic on high strength and low speed units because they can essentially double their high might without needing to be speed blessed and not risking a counterattack from a speedy high crit swordmaster, and this game seems to not care for the res stat on any non enemy mages, so just using two mages can easily beat them anyways.
@@mablungbalrog424 Lol what do you mean by "all we need is the fire emblem"?
Unsure if you didn't piece it together or not, but Byleth has the Crest of Flames???
Crest of Flames can also translate to Emblem of Fire... Fire Emblem 😂😂😂
Not sure how I feel about Maddening. I think Fire Emblem in general has a problem finding a balance between Hard and Lunatic.
I think it’s because the devs don’t want to redesign maps to be harder so they just raise stats or bring in ambush spawns. Leads to huge gaps in difficulty between modes.
i hate reunion at dawn, i my byleth had to do everything alone because my units just die all the time, luckyly she was a pegasus rider, so i just put her in abush and she start to dodge everything, in the 6 try I could end the map (sorry for typos english is not my native language)
Really, i feel like fates nearly perfected lunatic mode.
Birthright is still easy until late game
Revelations has it's moments.
Conquest was challenging but didn't feel cheap.
I think there should be a level in between hard and maddening .. Cindered shadows hard mode had the perfect difficulty level imo. I'm on chapter 15 on maddening and it has been a roller coaster so far. I get that it's a "hardcore" mode but sometimes it straight up feels like the game is cheating. Enemies that hit twice with sub 20 hit rate and you miss the counter that has a 90... Resetting when the rng is down the toilet and using divine pulse after ambush spawns is maddening for sure lol
Update:
I beat the game (azure moon maddening) without anyone on my team dying. Tbf it peaked at chapter 13-14 and after that it got easier. But I still think ambush spawns are cheap af..and you need to be prepared for chapter 13 so if I could turn back time I would have a save file at chapter 12 so I could've tweaked a bit more in preparation for chapter 13. Maddening is still awesome though because you feel so good about yourself after each victory lol. Fun fact: it took me 69hours and 2 minutes no rush.
@@sonicthehedge Hard on Birthright is noticeably more difficult than Hard 3H. Lunatic is something else though.
You forgot the part where your healers will be your highest level characters for the first few chapters because they are constantly healing. Marianne was the first to hit many a class level requirement in my GD maddening.
Lmao yes, Mercedes was level 10 for me before dmitri had hit level five
Actually not all the bosses move. Rhea does not move at the Battle of the Monastery, Lonato does not move in his map, Dimitri does not move in CF, and others.
Dimitri is sitting on a throne with counter attack and insane attack power, so he is still pretty dangerous regardless.
Rhea never moves unless you kill the units in front of her
Boss abusing
My problem with maddening is that my healers are getting overleveled>
Really?
My healers have been really underlevelled. I had to feed Marianne so many kills just to keep her levels roughly equal to the others
@@char1194 really? ive had to use up all my healing spells in maps throughout the first several chapters cause 80% hp was often one shot range >
@@benjaminpevzner6261 Healing spells (as well as dancing) reward fixed amounts of Exp, on a difficulty that severely reduces combat exp gain, so yes, healers are noticeably easier to train than most other units, especially if they are good in combat in their own right.
Mercedes is about 5 levels above everyone else in my playthrough. She's an absolute god. My dancer is getting up there. You don't get much in the way of white magic as blue lions which probably made it worse.
Fucking, Miracle
True Chivalry (Felix's Paralogue) on maddening reminds me why "sAvE the viLLagerS to GeT ALL the ReWarDS" missions are the thing I hate more than ambush spawns of assassins with pass and make me want to throw the controller at the TV.
Stride is your only best bet in that one.
@@nah4467 Stride and warp completely trivialized that map for me in like three turns or less
Just kill the boss on turn 2/3
Sylvain's is worse
@@Abundy or just kill the bosses on turn one lol
When I got to the time skip on Maddening NG, the difficulty spike was insane. I didn't train half of my house because my main army consisted mostly of recruits so that very first map for GD was hilariously difficult as I had 3 level 3 units that die the second turn after they appear if I don't miraculously find a way to save them. Not to mention having to survive the "swarm AI" of Maddening on a map where you can't effectively turtle due to unit placement and the raw damage of enemies. I had to do some crazy things and have crazy RNG to get through that map without any deaths. Thank God for the free nuke gambit Claude gets.
Chapter 13 is really rough and hell.
same but my units were at good lvl yet they just keep dying, so my byleth did everything, she was a pegasus knight so i put her on a bush a let her avoid everything, on the 6 try i end the map by luck
@@tiagogreenday0 Mine was a foot lock Male Byleth my only hope was his budding talent and a thicket
Skills are good... But stat inflation at the beginning is a tad too unfair
Wish there was a mode with the enemies have 5 abilities AND MATCH your highest lvl unit in your class/roster.
@@josegutierrrez8392 At the very least give them higher prowess abilities, combat arts, multiple weapons, like effective ones so that getting to S+ Rank in mounted and armored classes means something, and give some of them class mastery.
I mean lore wise it makes sense you are bringing students against people who kill regularly
@@freeph78 t-they studied more? I dunno lol
@@wwld9823 they carry a glock
Ignatz has been my MVP for maddening so far. Early rally speed really makes a difference to unit performance.
For example, I was able to bait the death knight in his first chapter on turn 1 with a level 10 mercenary byleth, then kill him with just byleth on turn 2 player phase. No lysithea needed.
And its not just rally speed. Seal strength + break shot, thief utility(im going assassin class line with him in this playthrough) make him a really powerful utility unit. The fact that he has a really high authority level for the sake of rallies also allows him to use powerful battalions, which give me the option to either make him have burst damage or to give him high level utility battalions such as the indech sword fighters or the wyvern 1 damage battalion.
All of this adds up to make him a fantastic utility unit, which only truly shines in maddening where you can no longer oneshot all enemies with anyone
Finally! Someone sees his true worth. I use the same combo and it helps with getting rid of so many enemies.
Ive been doing something similar with Annettes personal skill
i used an ignatz mage. i feel its legit his best build, he gets a nice spell list and his pretty good growths for it. ignatz is actually much better on maddening than hard mode
Rally speed is still situational and it cost both xp and turn. Considering the endgame having a unit like Ignaz with few viable offensive mobility options is a risk I wouldn't take (too fragile as a flyer, bowknight remains).
If you can make him reach S authority having him alongside a max dancer can make for gamebreaking 1T rush (+4 Str, Dex, Speed then stackable with dancer +4 Dex, Speed, Luck) but I still wouldn't invest in him that way or if I did I'd go ham on the support style, make him a healer (he's got physics at C and ward at B) to make him gain easy exp especially if he's going to be positionned slightly behind due to using rally the previous turn on allies before they go to war and considering his magic growth white knight would do him good.
Anyway, if it works till the endgame like that for you please ping me because I'm interested on how it turned out and if he was still usable that way!
Grind Poison Strike on him as well and he'll be a literal softener on even the most armored units
If you're looking for a difficulty between hard and maddening, I'd argue that New Game Plus maddening is good for you. Access to all gambits from previous runs. Assuming you maxed out the enlightened one class you have immediate access to sacred power's +/- 3 damage dealt/received for adjacent allies. The reduced EXP is not a problem if you've leveled up the statues high enough. Makes it possible to play the game aggressively from much earlier on.
Reinforcements with pass
Me: :-)
Yato “Thanks. I hate it.”
reinforcements with pass and gambits
yeah...that pirate paralogue was fucked without a flyer
The paralouge _A Hard Miracle_ from _Awakening_ made me hate pass, and I never have much of a use for that skill when I have it.
Honestly, I like Maddening Mode. However, one of the worst parts, in my opinion, is how long maps become. Paralogues are a slog, and it feels mandatory to do them for exp and loot.
And equipment and batallions and weapon level... Ho wait this game wasn't about people fighting in a tactical warfare style?
@@corsicasanova So you're just gonna make up an argument for someone else and criticize it? Take your medicine and go to bed lmao. Trippin
@@bo5935 That's called sarcasm because all of those are required elements to go through the game in this difficulty which you pick. And this actually make sense in universe because it is fine and dandy to do everything with a training axe + in easy mode however does it makes sense in universe? Not so much. I assume that when you pick a difficulty level you know how restricted you'll be by said difficulty but it seems I was wrong. Can't wait for infernal difficulty (doesn't mean I'll be able to clear it even with NG+ just that I'll say about the same thing).
If the criticism was about how much they just added numbers to create an artificial difficulty I would have remained neutral because it is true that some spikes were poorly handled. If it was about how ambush+pass was bullshit, to some extend I agree with it. However if you complain about how careful you need to be which in turn is making the map slower and how there are restriction on your inventory/exp management while knowingly signing up for it, I'm just left wondering what the person expected from the difficulty mode which was described and leaked prior to release.
Now be a good boy, mama's calling.
@@corsicasanova
Yikes.
@Pierre-François Casanova
It is completely fair to dislike Maddening because it forces you to play in a very slow and calculated way. It’s forcing you to do something that is not enjoyable.
I’ve just started my maddening mode play through so I don’t really have my own opinion on it yet. However to say that it forces you to play it a very slow in boring way isn’t a valid criticism is downright stupid.
The post timeskip has a brutal difficulty spike. I feel like the difficulty is good, as it finds a nice balance between difficult enemies and overwhelming odds. But crimson flower post timeskip is definitely a wake up slap
Blue Lions Chapter 13 is a literal fish in a barrel
N/A H not to mention blue lion final map puts you in a soft timer and dimitri can get random crit’d. I guess it’s my fault for playing through it blind but all my squishies were rendered useless in that map
@@dragonfly4698 Thank god I got my fast Sylvain and Stride warp dancer combo
Maniac Mode: the sequel
Stuff148 Nah, Maniac is still worse.
Salem Lunatic awakening is straight up unfair in parts
@@theoneandonly1368 don't forget lunatic+. on the other, it might have been easier overall if you had divine pulse.
Fabiocean *Vietam styled flashback* We don’t talk about such things here, for fear he may come back. I get were your coming from with divine pulse or what I personally would like is the difficulty be balanced in a way where you aren’t slamming your face into a brick wall until you eventually get thru, idk hector hard mode/ conquest lunatic were amazingly balanced difficulty settings were things like divine pulse aren’t necessarily, but to each his own
Impossible difficulty: no divine pulse, you restart the game if defeated
Dorothea’s songstress skill is waaay too useful in early maddening stages, I actually think about her positioning in the map a lot more than before
What should I do if I'm watching a Mekkah video and a notification for a new Mekkah video pops up?
blame mangs
Infernal has a much higher chance of being awful than it does of being good, its kinda depressing
I don't disagree necessarily but, out of curiosity, what makes you say that?
CyclonSilver I have to imagine it could just be the issues of Maddening but magnified. Ex: even more divine pulse reliance and turtling/slow play.
They just have to add 1 thing and we will be back to playing 4 units, sacrifice the others and go through it. List is:
- increase by 1 point weekly battles cost
- add 1 passive to ennemies
- add trickery ambush spawns (flyers or thieves to break formation)
- improve ennemy stats more intensely earlier
- give Gambit to more ennemy units and earlier
- limit even more xp gain
- add random fairs
- more mobile units early on
- full map aggro
- better weapons/more two range weapons on ennemies to force trading instead of allowing to deal some safe cheap damage or abusing terrain/choke points
- more weakness negation equipment on ennemies
However, if they just add fog/ unflyable terrain on most map or add mount/unmount penalties (as ennemies don't use it), it would be interesting because we would finally have use for torch and not go flyers like braindead systematically. But I believe that'd be too much too ask. Still the list is huge.
Fully optimized, I think Infernal will be really fun. I am currently LTCing BL maddening, it it is a very enjoyable time
@@corsicasanova it's "enemies", not "ennemies"
I just wanna see how someone beats Petra/Bernadetta's paralouge on maddening.
For me that was painful on Normal
It honestly wasn't that bad for me, and it was my first time playing it no less. As long as you know that the ambush spawns (with Hubert/Catherine) only appear when Petra gets close to the "escape tile", then you can kill most enemies on the map before the reinforcements show up and make it more doable.
There were other paralogues that I found much harder for sure (the Alois x Shamir one and the Leonie x Linhardt one were hell incarnate X_X).
Marianne's paralogue
@@majorclementine1412 and Leonie's/Linhardt's paralogue is going to be hell as well
my petra had to run an assassination mission on the enemy commanders on the right, and my bernadetta with full hp investment and vengeance had to be warped in at 1 hp to one shot catherine on 40% hit. edelgard's paralogue i failed 4 times with an hour into each run, similar for leonie and linhardt's. game got randomly impossible on these maps.
Reunion at Dawn is one of the worst experiences I've had in a game. Think it took me about 6 or 7 attempts before I finally resided myself to losing a few units and scraping through. Honestly thought my run was dead there
I did church route Maddening mode.
I fucking hate Seteth.
@@music79075 Yeah, Seteth isn't that great, people just like to gush over him being a flyer prepromote.
AkameGaKillfan777 Seteth would be great if his class path actually gave lance bonuses instead of Wyvern Lords having only axe abilities.
@@buoyantbagel6683 Actually Wyvern Lords do give a lance skill boost, as you need to build it up to become that class. It's obviously lower than axes since lances aren't the primary weapon.
I’m doing Church route Maddening no NG+ Bylass solo... Will it be impossible to save all of my babies😢
Time skip is when the difficulty picks up again. Also gauntlets were the real MVP in the early game
lucio banaga Then the armor knights game
@@ssjx3705 Aura Gauntlets: allow me to introduce myself
Petra, Ingrid and F!Byleth were my MVPs due to being the only units being able to double normally and dodgetanking a lot of hits. Honorable mention to Sylvain and Ferdinand for their Swift Strikes Combat Art.
Plus i recently found out that you can stack cooking bonuses so sometimes i would cook for speed 3 times.
A lot of the hardest chapters are right around the time skip. I felt that the defense map just before was super tough compared to the other maps because the enemies hit hard and don't let up. And you better hope you have a good Byleth, or post time skip bandit fighting might be impossible due to pass.
I didn't necessarily think the defense map was that bad, but pushing forward is a lot harder, so the fire trap becomes a much more integral part of the map solution. Hanging back, just outside of the Falcon Knight attack range seems like the safest strategy to me.
Then again, chapter 13 makes almost anything seem easy by comparison. That map is hella dumb.
@@laggalot1012 That wasn't the map I was talking about. I was talking about pre time skip when Rhea is there.
@@joelfisher3732 Oh, I see now, my apologies for the mistake.
@@laggalot1012 It's OK, I should have been more clear about that in my comment.
Funnily enough, i think Mekkah picked the hardest possible option, BE without NG+, due to having the worst early game and lacking good recruitment options like Catherine, Cyril and Seteth. Doesn't devalue any of the criticism, just wanted to point it out.
Cyril isn't good, but Catherine is a godsend if you recruit her early
@@Abundy haven't tried maddening yet, but Cyril is fucking great on hard if you train him just a little
@@Abundy Cyril was a tank for me. Then again I tend to have characters who are stat screwd for other people get absolutely stat blessed for me.
Then there are the characters that seem to be getting stat blessed constantly for everyone and just nuke the map with their magic. Talking about the living nuke known as Lysithea.
Abundy
Cyril isn’t you usual villager. He has super easy access to Wyvern Lord, and the highest speed growth tied with Petra, Leonie, and Manuela. His bases are average compared to other units around that time. He also has access to point blank volley, a great combat art. Cyril is underrated.
This is one of the reasons I picked Black Eagles (but also because I have played it the least)
Maddening Mode just plays like Early Gaiden: Everyone can do nothing except for the main lord and another unit. The earlygame is so slow and the endgame is more tedious than hard. Also ambush spawns are more stuoid than an actual challenge
After starting a new playthrough of SS, and refusing to use Edelgard pre timeskip, I will say that the Lords aren't necessary and everyone can pull their own weight when push comes to shove.
Maddening update:
For those who crave for fish.
I really like how maddening incentivises you to make use of things you would otherwise ignore because they seem unnecessary (e.g. rally charm, it worked wonders for me early on). They also evened out the difficulty post-time skip to the point where it didn't feel like you could cheese through the rest of the game. Honestly can't be dissatisfied.
I just looked it up, and yeah Rally Charm is probably pretty good, considering that each point of charm gives your gambit +5 hit.
I really appreciate maddening mode as a way to play NG+ without the game being too easy. I found NG+ Hard mode to be easy to zoom through, but I'm enjoying the challenge which Maddening gives even with the NG+ bonuses :). Also, having learned that 3H has levelups up to level 99?? Makes me want like, a new kind of Ng+ with level carryover and like crazy strong enemies in ch.1
Chapter 17 on maddening will be crazy, good luck.
Chapter 13: Let me introduce myself
thanks, I'll need it
Commenting so the RUclips algorithm will recommend this channel to other people
"These fellas" are the worst fellas.
I'm doing Church route for the first time in Maddening (no NG+), and currently a couple chapters past the timeskip. I feel like the difficulty peaked at The Gautier inheritance (Miklan's chapter), dropped a bit, got significantly more difficult in the Pallardo map (the first mission post-timeskip), probably because I'm not using all of my original students. It's slowly feeling easier again. I find the best way to deal with Maddening's extra difficulty is to use monastery time wisely. Abuse tournaments for funds to stock up on good weapons, and plant the right stuff in the greenhouse to get necessary stat boosters, especially Speed Carrots. Serenes Forest has good greenhouse info. I've been building up the statues evenly to get the Divine Pulse bonuses and EXP boosts. I also slightly overleveled some really good units like Byleth and Petra, by giving them first dibs on a lot of kills, getting them more XP. I'm not lowmanning but Maddening would probably be a little easier with that approach, since it spreads XP around less.
Not Cutty I’m also doing Church route Maddening new game and I agree with you, Miklan was part 1 at its hardest, the reunion chapter was where it got harder again, but after that things got better up until chapter 18 & 19 where I’m currently at. Many of the enemies double every one of my units, even my fastest - Petra who was a wyvern lord. But despite that it didn’t feel like the early game because I at least had many options for dealing with enemies. Now where I’m worried is the final boss. I’ve been told that for some people that it’s statistically impossible for them because their units are too weak to finish the map
Crimson Flower Ch 17: “I’m about to end this man’s whole career”
idk how everyone's byleth gets good. mine always has shitty speed and no bulk
Yeah I agree, I thought I couldn't pass the Pallardo map either when I played it on my church route. You better be using the first students to appear on it!
Aint Falco my byleth was fast enough to not get doubled by the death knight wielding an iron sword and he has over 20 strength.
I've never liked games that make their enemies harder by just "ooga booga big stat numba". I'd have preferred for them to make a different AI where the enemies make any attempt to assault you, rather than most missions just be having one guy with good avoid chance sitting right on the edge of an enemy's range and baiting everything.
Ur comment is hilarious 😂
I remember one time in Maddening where an enemy decided to use a lure gambit on my bait unit and then massacre her. I was both impressed and irritated.
There needed to be another difficulty. I found that hard was too easy but maddening was too frustrating.
“Cuts EXP in half.”
You know what I can’t stand? When a game has a “hard” mode that’s not enjoyable. Sadly most hard modes are: you deal less damage, you take more damage, enemies have higher HP, you gain less XP etc. that’s an exercise in frustration. I would preferred if the enemy AI was improved to make the strategy building more of a challenge rather than having stats increased and other things decreased because that just seems like artificial difficulty
That would be fantastic, but that sounds like balancing the entire game again, and people will buy the game anyway so
That's my main issue with SMT/Persona games. The "difficulty" usually affects how much exp and money you get on top of taking double and dealing half damage so you need to grind waaaaaaaay more and can instantly die and lose all you progress
I mostly really like maddening, but the * Before Dawn map for Blue Lions is extremely bad. You don't get a prep screen before it, and Gilbert is deadweight, and your first reinforcements are Mercedes and Annette trapped in a corner they can't get out of, so if you don't want anyone to die you have to have trained Ashe into a tank in part 1 or get extremely lucky. It's not great.
That map can suck it, honestly. The only reason it was slightly workable for me is that I made Byleth, Ferdinand and Petra Wyvern Riders (and Seteth was there because I was on Church route but he wasn't as good as the others). But even with FOUR Wyverns (and a blessed af Caspar) the map was still all kinds of crazy stuff...
@@Chosen_Din my caspar sucked so much, same with petra, my strong units were berni, ferdinand and Lin and they were the last to apear, bless that Hero ferdinand that just crit every hit and that byleth that dodge everything or i would have prob killed my switch
The Before Dawn chapter is hard as hell on all difficulties I find. Even Normal mode.
@@tiagogreenday0 The existence of Caspar and Ashe is why the Golden Deer, with their 3 authority+ characters compared to the other houses 2, make a good argument for the strongest house. serenesforest.net/three-houses/characters/growth-rates/ Like look at Ignatz in GD, he is just a low charm Claude, with alongside Lysethia both have authority+ in addition to Claude. GD have Lysethia(best oneshotter), Hilda(high speed,res,cha for an A.knight to survive mages/battalions) and Leonie. 3-range-reason for Lorenz and brawler Raphael also just work without issue, and Marianne presses your physic button just fine. Ashe and Caspar are always bad and there's not much you can do for them. Also bows and magic tend to be stronger options than melee weapons in general in this game. You only need Byleth and like 2-3 other melee units, and Blue Lions stacks on too many melees whereas Crimson Flower also has Caspar, making their mages be held down a little. My order would be GD > CF > BL.
I seen to remember Gilbert being a pretty solid bait unit due the fact that he was taking around ten damage a turn.
What I've found that helps on maddening mode... focusing on just a few select characters.
Mercedes is a must due to her overall healing repertoire. Why this is also important? She'll level fast on the non storyline fights where you can sit and heal each other up for xp, this heal xp was not cut in half, the only xp that was cut was BATTLE exp. So Mercedes can still heal/physic/fortify and even restore for xp and get massively leveled pretty quickly.
Manuela is in a similar boat where she can level up super fast. Heal/ward/warp/Silence. Silence gives a crapton of xp on the maps she can use it on (need an enemy caster). She also gets a great speed and good defense growth for a caster
Lorenz is actually very useful. Heal/ward/recover help out for leveling him up, not to mention for a mage character he is extremely tanky with high hp and good defense growth and with his relic make him a vary valuable bishop/dark knight (bishop for the 2x white magic uses while leveling in the random battles) and thyrsus can further increase his tankiness while also allowing him to attack from afar. Dark knight again is still ideal for non leveling fights.
Felix is another good one due to his Aegis shield that he can obtain later. He also learns decent white magic spells to sort of level up off of with a little bit of help to turn into a priest/bishop and mortal savant isn't a bad class for him (even if it hurts speed a bit, will get to that later) But his Aegis makes him tanky enough to survive multiple assaults in maddening.
As much as I love a lot of other characters, the fact is they take more effort to train. so simply leveling these along with Byleth as well as whatever their faction leader is helps out tremendously.
After the power level abuse from 'healing' and 'warding' each other, the focus should be gardening with lots of Pale Blue Seeds for Speed carrots. There really isn't ever a point where more speed hurts you.
Once you've finished getting your skill levels for the classes you want, Flying is always a good one to go for next because the wait> avoid is really useful even on units that aren't flying. Get enough speed and even the most accurate enemies won't touch you. Manuela hits this status pretty easy with her ridiculous speed growth.
I'd consider making byleth into a wyvern lord/pegasus knight but only if byleth got RNG blessed with defense. You really only want to do this if you get to the point where archers can't damage you. Which isn't too hard with a good growth rate and funneling all the defense items to him/her.
I absolutely despise the halved exp. let my units grow to match the challenge damn it!
but then it wouldn't be a challenge anymore at the end
Mgiddo or they could provide more of a challenge then arbitrarily limiting my units growth. You’re right that as is it wouldn’t be hard, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
@@MegiddoZO there's a feature in the witcher 3 where if set ON , All Enemies that are under leveled will be raised to MATCH your current level. So if your lvl 20 and are in area with lvl 5 bandits and want a challenge they'll be made lvl 20 instead. The onlybones not affected are enemies out ranking you (if you're lvl 20 and come across a lvl 30 enemy they'll stay lvl 30.)
I wish more RPG games would adopt this feature since it keeps challenge alive but doesn't make it cheap. They can have a difficulty slightly below Maddening where the enemies still have the same abilities but all match your highest level unit in terms of level. Red canyon most of the party was only lvl 2-3 with a couple of 1s while the enemies have nearly25-30 units at lvl 7.
The first map post time skip is insane, those thiefs are just too strong. Also battle at gronder field gave me problems
I wish there were something in between Hard and Maddening mode. You literaly get 5 Donnels (Insert any other trainee archetype) that will go up against total beasts in the early game. There is no Jaigan to kill at least one Person and it becomes very draining after a while. Byleth and your Lord are your only Units that hold up against the enemies
It's a shame that IS chooses to make difficult modes by "balancing it around Divine Pulse", which is pretty lame. Having the gameplay be trial and error, but not as punishing as in older games, is still annoying. Being encouraged to turtle to do anything is also really a drag. There are better ways to make the game more difficult without turning it into an EP turtlefest.
However, I do agree that it is nice that combat artes and gambits are more important (albeit, I'm old school and would rather not have these mechanics at all), but at least they matter here. Similarly, the optimization of class matters a bit more too, which is nice.
My view is there are different ways to make the game difficult, but it should be more about positioning and getting punished for not playing fast enough, rather than forcing you to play slowly to get anywhere.
They could just Hardcode DP at one or 3 and make better designed stuff..
My fiance kept telling me he didn't like my playstyle of moving my units in a pack, but I didn't know that was called turtling. That makes so much sense.
Maddening mode: For those who crave a challenge....
And pain.
I find Maddening to be a little too front-loaded on the difficulty since you have virtually no safe option besides turtling it up at the start of the game, and the difficulty even lets up halfway to the timeskip if you're experienced with 3H, know what you want to do with your units to raise them and how to do it. Also, up front you have like 3 Divine Pulse charges which in such long chapters can get pretty sparse, while later on (currently just past timeskip myself) you both get more charges and need less.
Iunno, I like the mode once your team starts to distinguish itself and you actually have options, but when all your units come down to 'mediocre 4 Mov combat unit' and your opponent already has proper classes like Thieves and Archers, I just don't think the game *can* be all that fun. That's not really the fault of Maddening and more the game itself, but it does cause you to feel pretty helpless in Maddening's difficulty. You have zero counterplay to Archer's Poison Strike and it can feel a little cheap at times.
Also the ambush spawns, while not quite as bad as in Awakening bc I found they often spawn in places where they can't immediately attack you, are still cheap and bullshit and should go away thanks. Divine Pulse is not an argument for BS like that.
I think one of the sneaky things the game pulls on you is that after the first few chapters, the game starts feeling a little easier, but I think it's partially due to the enemies moving on from iron to steel weapons and eating the AS penalty. It's only temporary but it's a good way to give the player some breathing room.
The Ashen Wolves hard mode is exactly what the middle ground between Hard and Maddening would be
Yeah this mode very much gave me FE6 vibes where strong enemies are present for the whole game but the beginning chapters in particular can be a bit turtle heavy. Dont worry though later on and especially after the timeskip you'll have much more breathing room to go fast and furious like in Hard mode while also not being brainless either.
One thing you forgot to mention specifically that I think is really beneficial for the game is that not only is normal exp cut, but also skill exp including skill exp gained from lectures is cut as well. This is really cool for incentivizing players to stick to training what each student is already good at and therefore making them feel way more distinct since it's much more costly to have them substantially deviate from their "canon" kit.
Having beaten GD on this mode and making my way through Beagles currently I'm very satisfied with it.
Funny enough Remire village is about the point where turtling strategies become less effective. Aside from simply just trying to save all the villagers, you're on a pseudo timer due to the death knight charging down, and Solon running away like a coward if you're trying to play things slow.
Post time skip ups things again, and the first time skip map can be a run killer, especially if you've relied a lot on recruitments. If you don't have a good, tanky flying unit, you're probably in a bad way. Might be the cheapest thing about Three Houses, the one moment where it surpasses even some of Awakening's bullshit.
I agree with you Mekkah, Maddedning makes your resources very valuable and I'm mostly happy about it.
My main disagreement with you is the turtling thing. Ever since the beginning I've been using Stride to establish my units fast on the map and kill enemies before they can kill me. To me it's a player phase fest and I rarely take more than 10-15 turns per map.
But I'm glad you're enjoying playing it tour way. That's what FE is all about.
Honestly when I was at the point you are at I thought my units were catching up with the enemies. But right about at the end of pre timeskip the enemy units got a huge boost in stats and started getting fare skills. I didnt do much paralouges though so I may have been under leveled. I almost got soft locked on the first chapter of azure moon. Luckily I had thyrsus on Annette and that was the only reason that the chapter was beatable.
Nah I lost Annette in Pre Time skip and while it was much more difficult, Ashe and Gilbert sacrificed themselves to distract the enemy.
0:25 - EXP gain isn't exactly cut in half. The game uses a lookup table based on your level relative to the enemy and your difficulty to work out what to multiply EXP gain by, and it just gets harsher and harsher as you go up in difficulty. For example if you are equal level to an enemy, on Normal you would gain 100% EXP, on Hard you would gain 70% EXP, and on Maddening you would gain 20% EXP. If you were 5 levels below the enemy, on Normal you'd gain 125% EXP, on Hard you'd gain 100% EXP and on Maddening you'd gain 45% EXP.
Full table - forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/89413-healingsupport-action-exp-formula-exp-table-from-level-1-to-50/&do=findComment&comment=5512905
Also, you gain marginally less skill EXP from weekly study goals - 4 points less per week in each skill, regardless of if it's a strength/weakness/neutral compared to Hard, and 8 points less compared to Normal.
I have watched a few maddening mode videos and I normally do not play on the hardest settings...but the more I watch of these, the more I want to try it. Once I finish my BE Church route, I will do a maddening run. Thanks Mekkkah, I really enjoyed the video.
The post time skip difficulty is crazy. You better level the characters in your own house
*Laughs in level 5 ignatz*
@@AProperNoun Need to look up who is forced deployed in the danger zone, and who is optional to train because they deploy in the back corner where you can hide them behind the damaged walls.
Miklan's chapter was one of hardest in maddening for sure, pretty sure I had to divine pulse all the way back to turn 4 just so I could set up dealing with the archers + horde that was charging toward me better and prepare for "these guys" by surrounding my fragile units against the wall. I find all the chapters more enjoyable because something like "Mangs strat" will be punished. RNG also felt a lot more brutal in maddening and sometimes even 90%+ accuracy for you will miss.
Mang's strats usually are always punished lol.
N/A H sadly not all the time for Mangs, that's why he never learns. Oh and also "I aM ColOrbLinD!" or "I'm hUnGRy!" are his excuses
Even if there was bs involved, I definitely did not expect maddening to change that chapter from a total slog to perhaps the most intense chapter in my playthrough.
My maddening playthrough went pretty smoothly until I reached chapter 13 just after the time skip... I am playing the Black Eagle church route and the reunion mission is the biggest bulls*** I've seen so far. Everyone gangs up on you as soon as you aggro some specific enemies, and there's no prep screen so you better have prepared yourself before the PREVIOUS the battle. I've made it through but it was mostly just luck. If it wasn't for my Byleth dodging and countering with critical almost every enemy I would've never made it.
Church route maddening may as well be impossible. I was only barely able to beat the first chapter because of Claude’s broken Gambit. Seteth doesn’t have that.
This is what you need to prepare for. Right here. I think people don't expect much from this map, and it catches them off guard like nothing else in the game. I had Lysithea and especially Leonie, but I see how it can be a run killer.
@@OnlineVideoSurfer I thought this map was a problem on Hard already, so I was anticipating trouble well in advance, but nothing could have prepared me for the levels of BS this map presented me with on Maddening. BL route, btw, and I don't imagine that's any better than the other routes that get this map. I'm still not sure how I managed to scrape by without deaths when I did, and it took me many resets to get to that point as well.
@@OnlineVideoSurfer I was trying to prepare for this map, but both Byleth and Dimitri were one AS too slow, so they were getting doubled. And I think Dimitri was getting Speed screwed in general and he got a level 1 Battalion that lowers his Avoid, so no dodge tanking for him even with Swordbreaker. It took an extremely nukey Annette and Wyvern Ashe with Immortal Corps to bail them out. Yeah, NG+, training all of my in-house units, and even then I had trouble because my Lords were 1 point too slow. FeelsBadMan
@@laggalot1012 I was lucky I had Wyvern Leonie, and used my old FE6 Milady strats of dumping every physical and move stat booster I found into her. She still had to be careful but she could fight well enough with assistance from Claude, with Lysithea doing cleanup on the other side.
When I played Blue Lions hard Dimitri just soloed all the thieves, so it didn't even occur to me that this level could be a problem. I thought it was meant to be a scripted triumph of your reunited army and your now super, if crazy (for BL) lord. Not thieves powerful enough that they could take on the Empire themselves!
I'm surprised I didn't struggle too much on the Miklan map...But jfc...post timeskip bandit map was the biggest struggle.
I remember struggling in the Miklan map a lot because Gilbert triggered all the archers and they would all run towards me. I had to make sure he dies for that not to happen lol.
Ambush spawning is something that when done correctly can add a good amount of pressure and difficulty. When done incorrectly, it's either not difficult to deal with or the more likely case it's unfair.
I love how ambush spawning works when you're warned about it and can prepare accordingly. Miklan's chapter was fucking bs though with those thieves. In one attempt I tried to keep Gilbert up to see if he would trigger those thief reinforcements... he pulled everyone on the map instead including miklan 😅
2 hours for a single map... well, I will just stick to hard mode then...
Just past the timeskip now on my Maddening, No Monestary, No NG+ Run, went with Golden Deer because it was the only house I had yet to play. Really fun.
No monastery sounds crazy, exp/skill level wise, are you low manning?
No monastery? You absolute fucking...is this shit even possible?
I've only gotten past the second Death Knight chapter so far, but I am loving the challenge with most of the levels, only level I found a bit unfair and not very fun was The Gautier Inheritance.
Gilbert can pull the entire damn map to you if he ends up surviving against the first few enemies, so my strategy relied on having Gilbert die so he wouldn't pull the archers near Miklan, thus pulling the rest of the map. I found it a bit dumb that my entire strategy had to rely on a green unit I have no control over dying before i could do anything else
Hilda Cyril and Petra mode is pretty fun after timeskip
I have more satisfaction in Maddening not from the difficulty but the skills I have acquired from playing in the mode. Charm matters; Gambit and Gambit Boosts matter. That shifts the paradigm where now we should focus more on Tea Times or Charm boosters. I’m still using combat arts post-timeskip for accuracy or because I’m still not doubling everything. While not consistent, that means those who have combat art Crests are starting to see those procs. These mechanics are probably what the designers intended but the overall easy difficulty in Normal/Hard couldn’t let them shine until Maddening. And now here I am with my 53+10 Charm Byleth and still going.
Yeah another thing to add in maddening mode is that your abillities that you can ignore in hard and normal mode become way, way more relavent and essential to grind. Like, I tried to master and dark bishop class in as many characters as possible as it increases the survivability of my characters and are easy to get mastery points in in the random battle maps if you leave one enemy magic caster on the map on the fire lava stage and just heal everyone bit by bit, which boosts faith xp along with give your characters auto heal and health steal for killing enemies later on as an example. Fire map is good as every turn a dude is on the lava tile and they take damage. Also can be really good for XP grinding in maddening.
Just wait till the time skip there’s an absolutely ridiculous difficulty spike again it’s amazing I love the challenge I actually have seen the game over screen and it’s so much fun to know one wrong move is an easy death on your characters, in my opinion this is by far the most rewarding and fun mode, the others are just laughably easy
In "Hoes Mad" mode I feel like I may make everybody a "wyvern corps" that are not healers haha. I've seen warp, stride, rescue and dance cheese still being useful on this mode whether its one turn kills or just to run away from enemies doubling. I'm also planning to make most of my units go through the soldier class. Idk if that is smart or not, but reposition seems like it would be handy on maddening mode. As for the warp cheese, it is especially great for getting Thrysus, the staff that exists for Lysithea on Lorenz's paralogue.
I often find myself using combat arts for the increased accuracy in maddening.
yeah i was burning through all my funds so fast cause of that
Cant wait for 0% Ltc maddening mode
Chapter 13, hunting at dawn, is my bottleneck rn. I can’t find myself wanting to go back and play knowing that RNG is the only thing’ll keep my units alive.
In my opinion, FE difficulty should come from demanding complex strategizing of the player, not trial and error. Please, if I’m too awful a gamer to beat 30+ units with 30+ AS using just Petra, Seteth, and my Byleth, let me know
Orlando Osgood the issue is that you have to have a strong starting party to beat reunion at dawn deathless.
Right now Im playing Maddening and am at the first post-timeskip chapter. Im doing Church route and am not using a single BE character besides Petra. Oh boy, that decision kinda bites me in the *ss right now. Only having three usable units is something else
I love and hate maddening mode. I keep rage quitting. That Miklan chapter gave me so much trouble. Granted I am not the best fire emblem player so I have to restart maps anyways. But that map pissed me off so much. The reinforcements in this game are way worse than in other games. Or at least that’s how it feels
Conrad Korbol They’re same-turn reinforcements. They exist way back. Notoriously in modern FE like FE6 and FE 13.
I consider them as the worst FE mechanic.
You can literally rewind around them. People need to not be so mad about using it.
It’s a very lazy design that either forces a rewind or a reset in previous games.
Those rewinds could be used for other mistakes rather than the game making lazy surprises.
Awakening's would still be worse, even if this didn't have time rewind. The time rewind really does help adapt to the bullshit. Though it is still bullshit all the same.
@@christianvisperas7438 I mean is it? the right gambits can hold down a couple of units for a turn easily. Sure you want to save them but I'm not sure if the game forcing you into surprising situations is lazy. You still choose how you deal with them.
Yeah I feel the same about maddening. Im doing a golden deer play through and Ignatz is the strongest character in the game because he can gambit stride and rally speed 🌚
My first play through was GD on normal because I thought I would get through it quicker, but after taking well over 100 hours, I now regret that decision. Especially since I am an extremely experienced “LTC type of player”.
I jumped straight into Maddening with the Blue Lions, and it has been slow going so far.
I spent 69 turns on the Red Canyon map cheesing the enemy healer who had Renewal to make sure Annie got to Lv5 and to master everyone’s base class for the HP+5 skill.
It’s actually really enjoyable figuring out strategies because the first few turns of each map have been incredibly difficult.
I am looking forward to maximizing my exploration days, since I got a good feel for how to it optimally from my first play through.
Gonna focus on maxing my professor tank ASAP.
Oh, on my first attempt of the mock battle map, I put Byleth with a bow in range of Dorothea and she crit me for a quick game over. Maddening is a perfect name for the difficulty.
One of your vids got me to do a GD, no recruit, classic, maddening run. Chickened out and did NG+ and DLC, though. With 400 hours of grinding before that, it's almost easy. Everybody's some sort of flyer pre-time skip, which really helped with that reunion map.
Maddening is okay but when will we get Maddening Reverse+?
I think Maddening mode was actually pretty fun and one of the things that helped were a lot of mages. They attack from 2 range so the enemy can't counter attack, even early game, they do quite a decent amount of damage and late game your stronger mages can easily one round most units. And their weakness of taking way too much damage isn't that bad bc #1: they tend to be a bit faster so getting doubled is less likely #2: maddening enemies will break your main combat units anyways so letting the enemy get as few attacks in as possible is vital, #3: they can't hit you if you kill them first.
I tried maddening and went back to hard after two story missions because it was my first time playing lol
I still feel like there should have been a mid step between hard and Infernal, it reminds me far too much of Awakening's Hard > Lunatic, BUT thankfully not to that extent.
One is fairly doable, not really that hard, and is mostly fine if you take your time and think things through. Then there's lunatic where everyone and anything can kill you in the first maps no questions asked without issue. But 3 Houses at least let me get to chapter 8 before realizing I wasn't having fun anymore, but in the same map I did so, it went from having to think through every move I made to 'I threw Claude at them, they died.' Enemies suddenly had 10+ Attack Speed or more, Pass, Poison Touch, there were no more cluster of higher tier enemies attacking alongside their lesser brethren, units that would double AND kill me in one go went from that to literally not doing crap to me. One thing I'll never ever miss is Ambush spawns, and the one explicited in the video was the one that made me finally understand turtling slow was the way to go in that scenario and that was it. I had to drop it down in the Alois/Shamir map, but thinking it a little further, I should have stuck on the red canyon map instead then went to that one, anyhow, can't say I haven't tried Lunatic/Maddening, and it was certainly a lot more fun having than I expected, before it started being too much for me.
But again, the moment I dropped down to hard, the game became a cakewalk again because I had to take all the advices/strategies I've used in maddening to heart and suddenly they were no longer necessary, having a forged steel lance/steel bow+ in most units was almost an necessity in Maddening, and an advice I would give anyone trying it out.
I think you are pretty right with most of your Opinios there. I only tackled the golden deer route in ng+ on maddening (which makes the early levels way more bearable) and i have to say: i really like the mode so far. While the game still has some gut punches, atleast now it fights back against Player who accumulated some Knowlegde.
The Laterne levels are a different cake though and really gives you a run for your money. I am currently Stuck in Edelgards throneroom. Not only are the enemys still on anyway higher level then every unit except my dancer, nur due to some unlucky magic level Ups on my Lysithea killing many enemys in one turn is simply not manageable. Edelgard Atem way to many steroids too and can attack up to 4 Times in one Phase (could be more - byleth died after the 4th attack)
I'm about to finish my first Maddening Mode, no NG+ playthrough on Golden Deer route. A couple things I want to highlight:
1) Turtling is my best friend. So are bows and magic for softening up targets before a kill. These things have always been important but much more so in maddening mode.
2) Since the enemies are much tougher and thus take more hits to down, I find my units gain a lot more weapon exp and support hearts in battle compared to hard mode.
3) Around the time where my units were getting strong enough to hold their own against enemy units, the paralogue chapters started rolling in. These chapters were the hardest for me because you cannot turtle many of them. I spent a lot of time trying to optimize methods of doing them.
4) Once you get your team off the ground, the story chapters become rather trivial. I remember thinking that the final chapter of the first half where the monestary is getting attacked was super easy. But then....
5) Holy hell, the first chapter of the 2nd part truly deserves the title of maddening. Having Byleth solo that many high stat enemies in a forest area was super rough. Especially since I was insistent on protecting my unleveled Lorenz and Ignatz.
6) After the first chapter of the 2nd half though, it was pretty much smooth sailing. My entire team at endgame consists of flyers and its beautiful.
Fe12 fixed the difficulty curve and soloing problems by capping stats early. So what are the caps in this game again?
Like 50 or 60
Caps are very high in this game. Lysithea for example has a magic cap of 89, 94 with statue...
As low as 25-30 and up at least 50''s for other stats. Some go up to the 70's or even 80's with HP caps reaching over 100.
Depends on the character but you'll likely never cap a stat through normal play
FE12 also gave you busted units(MU, Palla to a lesser extent Catria) in the first few maps. Prologue was also a way for MU to power level as well.
Reg: Welcome to the Salty Spitoon. How tough are ya?
Mekkah: I play Fire Emblem: Three Houses on Maddening.
Reg: Yeah so?
Mekkah: Just to chill.
Reg: Yes sir, right this way.
I enjoyed Crimson Flower NG (no +) on Maddening Mode for the most part; like you said, it forces you to very carefully consider all of your options and actually optimize everything you have at your disposal. While I agree turtling is often the best approach for the first half of the game, I personally felt the strategy of quick offensive approaches became the better option later in the game.
There are some levels where enemy reinforcements keep coming every turn or two, and at first I tried to overcome these through slow progression, but when I kept get overwhelmed I then used the approach of rushing in a couple of units to halt the reinforcements, while the rest of the team moved in as quickly yet safely as possible to cover them.
I’ve been playing maddening classic, but I have a friend playing on Hard Casual that brags about how fast he can clear everything 😫
I can't go beyond the "Gautier Tower"
Tempest Lance is easily the best of the starter combat arts. I can’t think of any other art off the top of my head that flatly raises your MT by 8.
Junkman true, I also love curved shot early game because enemies won't be able to counter
I'm glad I saw this video, I'm planning for my first Golden Deer run (on new game+ since I like the idea of Fiendish Blow on Marianne and Lorenz from the get-go) to be on Maddening. So hearing it isn't totally unfair is enough to put my worries to ease.
Miklan's chapter with GD took me 3 1/2 hours. The map design was brilliant. Takes FULL advantage of your units 4 move. Gives you a false sense of relief once you get past the theives that spawn in the upper right corner then hits you with a whole mess of archers behind armor knights. They even provide you with a false chokepoint afterwards. Loved it.
Lol it took me like 60 turns 😅😓
The level design after the timeskip is just bad.
I'm okay with ambushes making divine pulses fair, i'm okay with exp growth, abilities, everything.
But, why did everymap after the timeskip turn into an ambush-fest were the game just showers you with 60plus enemy units everyturn forcing me to turn everyone into a wyvern archer or use Byleth as the god of destruction?
It's not strategic anymore
Is a matter of stats and abilities
Where's the balancing when I have to forget about positioning and tactics and just rely on numbers...
Increasing the difficulty does not mean turning an SRPG into an sRPG
The Gautier chapter took me 42 turns because of those pass thieves, having to put everyone in a 3x3 grid to protect people and bait them. I agree with a lot of your thoughts! Especially on how useful gambits and combat arts were. Early game definitely has a lot of turtling, but I found very few after the time skip. There were several paralogues I had to set up 1 or 2 turn clears for so that I could complete the alternate "keep the green units alive" objectives (Felix, Lorenz', Ignatz/Raph's come to mind, where I 2 turned, 1 turned, and 1 turned them). Some maps I've had to play COMPLETELY differently than hard mode though, like the Dorothea/Ingrid Paralogue. Or the.... the... Marianne paralogue...........
Im playing Maddening through NG+ and it feels perfect! Im nearing the end of the Blue Lions route and it's getting really tough! Ive had to restart twice to avoid losing any units since I ran out of Divine Pulse charges
I think you could've explained the EXP gains better. It's not just half EXP. It's more like enemies give EXP as if they were 5 levels down and most enemies are around 5 levels higher than usual. I think this was put into place to prevent grinding maps for EXP on training maps as those enemy's scale very poorly level wise.
Yeah when I wrote the script for this not much was known about the exact EXP gain. There's more detailed tables out now.
I have just finished my BL Maddening playthrough, and that makes it my first clear of a Lunatic-level difficulty in any FE game (not that I've tried it often).
My personal impressions, I think this game's difficulty has a bit of a W shape. The start is rough due to limited options and the maps are tediously slow, I must admit. Then the game mellows out a bit as your units catch up in power up until about chapter 11 or 12, though it remains substantially more difficult than Hard. Then chapter 13... is honestly kind of BS. If any map at all has any potential of ending your playthrough forcibly, it'll be this one. Have a backup save of chapter 12 ready and prepare with this map in mind, just to be safe. The map is a difficulty spike in it's own right, but it goes beyond fair challenge and is just plain stupid.
Then the difficulty mellows out again a little and starts climbing again around... chapter 17 or so? Stat inflation kicks into high gear across the last few maps, so the game still ends pretty difficult and endgame certainly gave me plenty of trouble, though it never again reaches chapter 13's levels of idiocy, thankfully. Never assume you can start slacking due to the game getting easier, as the difficulty will eventually go back up again and you want to be ready for it.
Relevance of combat arts and gambits is very nice, indeed. And as a side effect of the increased enemy stats and count, training weapons and class rank is sped up a fair bit as well, and I think that's quite nice.
Oh boy, chapter 13 was rough on my NG+ maddening Church route using only Byleth, Edelgard, Hubert, and church staff. Surprisingly, after many attempts (about 6 or so, all divine pulses used rigging RNG), nobody died. It required Byleth just charging forward into the 4 way intersection and enemy phasing every thief and merc the map had to offer before the students arrived.
Chapter 13 (BL) was actually fine for me. I am still stuck at chapter 14, though.... I just can't get past it.