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Awakening: a stats-oriented game rather than a tactical RPG


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Hi there,

I've played Awakening a few times and I finished it once in hard (during my Kellam only run). While the main game can offer you a tactical performance if you play without grinding, I've found that the paralogues' difficulty is just stupid. Let me explain: I'm doing a generals only run. My team so far is Kame(avatar) with Nowi A, Tharja with Lon'qu S, Kellam with Sully S (Kjelle was hard enough to recruit with the desolation sorcerers hitting 20-ish x2 on my fastest units, x4 on Kellam and litterally tsunamis of reinforcements), Kjelle which is level 12 so she's on the side for the moment (80 stats aside of 33 HP it's ridiculously low...maybe I should've levelled Sully in EXPonential growth because 9 spd at her join was really bad), Fred with Cordelia A (yes, I reclassed him directly into knight before chapter 5 with Anna's shop that gave me a second second seal and a magister and he was a pain in the ass to get going at the beginning but now he's better than Kellam in nearly everything) and Chrom level 2 with Olivia level 1 (Lucina level 10 with aether and luck +4 has more stats than her father, like far more, but still unusable from the get-go).

I've beaten Kjelle's paralogue overusing Kame and Tharja because they were my fastest units and Fred because he was holding silver weapons and his Cordelia support helped him stay relevant. But now I have to beat Noire paralogue. In hard mode. My units have average 30 def +2 and their supports, speed ranging from 15 (Kellam...) to 26 (Tharja without Lon'qu's bonuses). Using rally def I have 36 average total def. The ennemies hit 2x on Kellam with around 42 damage (except maybe Falco knights, and I'm not even sure they hit less). there are shittons of ennemies, all have 8 movement, some use bows, they can't be ORKO because LOLHP and LOLDEF and LOLSPEED. how am I supposed to beat a chapter with so high stats and keep both Fuchrom and Noire alive? The answer is simple: screw no grind and level everyone to 20/20 and maybe reset them to 20/1 until they cap all of their fuckin stats. No but seriously, how can we still call FE a T-RPG after seeing that? And these are my stats using 65% of the random encounters I've had access to+Kjelle's paralogue and Donnel's paralogue earlier. Kellam is 20/5 (he can't ORKO so he doesn't gain as much exp), Fred level 20/8, Kame 14-14/9, Tharja 10-20/6. They have more stats than they're supposed to (except poor Kellam who I'm gonna bench straight after his daughter can do the job better than he ever will). And yet they struggle even with rally-abusing. Noire died when the top ennemy units joined with the middle ones (impossible to kill them fast enough without hero weapons, even Kame deals around 15 damage per hit with steel lance B rank and Nowi A support against 50+ HP ennemies).

The worst is that I bet there are paralogues even harder (I mean ennemies with even higher stats). It's no more a T-RPG, it's a stupid grinding game. If generals with 36 def can't tank with potions, it's not normal. In a T-RPG game, there are 3 kinds of levels: 1. The ones with high quality but little number ennemies (and a few low quality fillers), 2. The ones with low quality waves of ennemies, 3. Puzzle maps (lunatic early game is the best example but it is also the best example of a LOLSTATS game rather than a T-RPG since you absolutely can't win these without oversuing Fred, the only units able to tank 2 hits+). And in Noire's paralogue, I see a mix of all these. Meaning you fight fckin hoards of high quality ennemies with max mobility coming from every corner of the map and taking you in sandwich, to recruit a unit who can't do shit and get nearly OHKO by anything. Even Lunatic Donnel is easier to recruit (and he still needs a level up while Noire doesn't require any). How am I supposed to play Noire if I have to reach endgame just to reach the stats requirement for her paralogue's completion? What's this game design?

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From what I remember, I think the enemy's in the paralogue's and DLC levels will 'scale' with your best units like in fates; also by using second seals this will give your units more levels but also your enemies as they seem to have much higher level of stat gain on increasing levels.

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I think it's only on lunatic but thanks for answering.

[Also RNG hates me. My Arthur is getting shitty level ups all the time while over-favored and my Garcia in my mod I'm testing RN has the sme growths as Arthur (with 120% HP) and he got 1 point in skl and spd, 3 in def and 8 in HP but litterally nothing else (5 level ups with 50% growths barely showing...it hurts...).Edit: Arthur from Fates.]

Edited by mangasdeouf
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Only risen skirmishes in Lunatic and L+ scale with your highest-leveled unit.

Awakening child paralogues scale with respect to when you recruit the child's fixed parent. Sully shows up in chapter 1, so her child's paralogue (Kjelle's) map is on the easier side with generally level 20 unpromoted enemies and a number of promoted ones at level... 3-ish. Probably with Steel weapons, if I remember the map correctly. (This actually puts the map enemies at around the equivalent of the Mila Tree chapter in-game, which is I think Ch16.) The only paralogues with weaker enemies are Morgan's and Owain's, and even then the enemies are roughly the same level 20 unpromoted and level 3 promoted ones, just with more of the former and less of the latter.

Noire's mother, on the other hand, is Tharja, who shows up at chapter 10, the third-last fixed parent you recruit. The enemies in Noire's paralogue are therefore on another level compared to those in Kjelle's, even setting aside the foibles of the map (lots of fliers and horsies)

Part of the issue is probably that you're using only Generals. Tharja isn't exactly an exemplary example of a General, she's not a great example even of a Dark Mage. But you're also trying to do a (relatively) tactically challenging paralogue with a lot of hyper-mobile, aggressive, probably flying enemies that are higher leveled than you are. Even with a pretty balanced team, this paralogue is going to be challenging if you're doing it fresh out of recruiting Lucina (or even a couple chapters after).
Maybe go do chapter 14, 15, and 16 first, then revisit Noire's paralogue.

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Part of the tactical aspect of this game is being able to stack stats to counter enemy stats of run certain skill builds to offset particular enemy advantages.

Are you really sure you have the stats right here, though? I don't have access to Hard Mode stuff, but I'm looking at Lunatic's right now and even considering the hackforges and higher Str, the heaviest hitters get 52 Atk (the Falcon Knights get 48). That's barely enough to meet your 2x 21 damage and this is an entire step up. I find it hard to believe that Hard Mode is going to have identical stats to Lunatic.

Further, this map is entirely physical, so an army of Generals really shouldn't be getting burst down. 30+2 base Def is plenty because you can stack your up to near invincibility. Like, if I were to throw a Def Tonic at this and then pair one of those 30-Def Generals to the other, that gives you 30+2+2+8 = 42 Def. If they have an A support, they can hit 44. If you can still fit in that Rally Def, you'll hit 48. At this point, your Generals are taking single-digit damage from Lunatic enemies. Hard enemies should be crying in shame over their inability to deal damage.

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Unfortunately, yes. The easiest way to beat Awakening, even on Lunatic (actually, especially on Lunatic), is to stack all your exp onto a single unit, until they tower over the enemy in sheer stats. Who needs strategy if you have a unit that mows down everything and doesn't die? Using more units only makes the game harder, as you spread out the exp more, and no amount of strategy can make up for how much lower your stats are.

While Awakening is probably the most egregious, every FE game is a statfest. Here's a simple thought experiment: pick any FE game on any difficulty. Player A is competent and plays the game "normally". Player B plays sloppily, but gets +5 stats to all their units. Who do you think will have an easier time?

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That's the kind of problem that comes about as a result of infinite counterattacks. If one juggernaut can fight as much as they want on any given EP, then the player can just butcher a small army with one unit. It's probably too late to change that as it's more or less a fundamental part of the FE engine, but the main games might need to either deploy more siege/3-range weapons or steal a page from Heroes and start giving enemies Wind-/Water-/Firesweep-like stuff.

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