Rigel Castle Battle Differences

[Interdimensional Observer]

I happen to be playing on Normal for the first time, just to make my Alm-females Celica-males run a little easier, and I then made it to the battle against Rudolf at Rigel Castle and I noticed right away it seemed radically different from what I remembered it to be on all my Hard runs.

Fortunately, I had a Alm-males Celica-females Hard run also in Act 4, so I got to Rigel Castle on that and compared, and yes, the enemy formations are absolutely night and day depending on the difficulty. 

On Hard, eight Bow Knights are atop the castle walls in a symmetrical formation, the Arcanists, Barons and Gold Knights are in the center-north near Rudolf, who has notably higher stats on Hard than Normal, including actual Luck not from the Angel Ring! Does any other enemy have that? All enemies are packing Javelins and nasty Silver weapons or Shields as well.

On Normal, the enemy formations are an absolute mess! The Gold Knights and Bow Knights are mostly shoved off to the left in two messy packs that comes after you right from the start. Curiously, two Gold Knights are carrying Ridersbanes, which none have on Hard, while the other enemies have Silver, Javelins, and in some cases weaker Steel equipment. Rudolf, two of the Bow Knights, and all of the Barons and Arcanists are on the top of the wall, but in the lower right corner of it. It’s like Alm managed to reach the battlefield before Rudolf had the time to arrange the pretty diagram he sets up on Hard.

Looking at an LP of NES Gaiden, it is the same mess as Normal, which seems anti-climatic. Victory is just Warp Alm to the top of the wall and bait Rudolf and you’ll quickly win- Delthea using the Mage Ring to then safely nuke this old man with an objectionable plan optional. 

I’m not saying that Hard makes this battlefield a masterpiece- it isn’t. It relies on Hard and Normal alike on you being so foolish as to walk into a big open area to die to strong enemies. Holding at the two-space corridor leading to the slaughter pen makes things easy- so as long as you don’t die to the bunch of Bow Knights, who are annoying precisely for the reason why Bow units are good in Gaiden- that massive 1-5 range. Thanks to it, a unit here has to put up with up to 6 bow strikes a turn here instead of the 2-3 you’d normally expect at a chokepoint in FE. It also makes it much much harder to have units directly behind your chokepoint holders. What I am saying is that for an SoV map, the Rigel Castle battle on Hard is relatively good, which is to say a crude nice idea.

Back to the differences between Hard and Normal, I did noticed some minor changes in the other levels (though I don’t recall seeing any in the Duma Tower forced battles when I ran the difficulties shortly after each other here), like more Bow users with weapons, a higher number of Mire Arcanists compared to Miasma ones, and a handful of additional units like the extra Seabound Shrine Necrodragon and some extra Arcanists at Mila’s Temple. However, none of these amount to the radical change of Rigel Castle. Why did they truly “correct”, if that word best describes it here, only this battle? 

Better enemy formations can only do so much to correct the faults of Gaiden’s battles, the geography of the primitive battlefields is a HUGE issue, and class balance- in particular bow units, is another. But nonetheless, they could have made Normal the “classic” enemy layout experience and Hard a totally revamped one. 

[Jotari]

From what I know of that map, I can't imagine it'd make any sort of difference to the strategy needed to win. Even the bow Knights don't seem like they'd make that much of a difference as they'll probably wont target the bulky defensive units you hold the choke point with.