What are your most liked and disliked hard modes in Fire Emblem?

[Shoblongoo]

EDIT: Woops--wrong thread!

Edited August 9, 2018 by Shoblongoo

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Aut said:

Certaintly understandable. Those bosses are some of the worst enemies I’ve ever had to face in Fire Emblem. Speaking of annoying bosses

 

Alright man, saying that you have your reasons for being unnecessarily aggressive still does not excuse the fact that you were being unnecessarily aggressive. I don’t think anyone asked you to disagree with them, especially about their opinion.

Anyways, Henning isn’t that bad, stop exaggerating. I think that Rutger could pull of being 14/1, which means he’s on average facing a 3% chance of crit, 56 hit 62 true hit w/ the steel blade (36 hit 26 true hit w/ hand axe), and survives a steel blade crit, while doing 8*2 damage (9*2 hand axe), w/ 64 hit 74 true hit (70 hit 82 true hit hand axe), and 64 crit. He will on average kill Henning in 2 rounds of combat no matter what weapon he wields (roughly 64% chance if Henning wields a steel blade for both battles, just for an idea), and can attack a third time if need be. Even if he’s 10/1 (or averaged lower than normal), he’ll on average still double Henning even w/ a hand axe, do 7*2 damage (8*2 hand axe), and, if you’re really feeling cautious, he survives a hand axe crit basically guarenteed (it’s about 4%, so it’s not exactly likely considering his hitrates). He’ll likely kill Henning in 2-3 rounds even if he’s underleveled. As for the other units, they can deal w/ Henning, but obviously they aren’t as good as Rutger, because after all, bosskilling is what Rutger is known for.

Also there is no reason to use multiple question marks, like really.

Mother of mercy... It's idealistic drivel like this that pisses me off to no end. You are the one exaggerating, not me.

1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

He's stationary. And the A.I. will not switch Henning's equipped weapon on enemy phase if there's no unit in range for him to attack, so there's a few different ways you can deal with him with hit-and-rescue strats on player phase. 

You can bait him into equipping his hand axe by placing an appropriate sword user at 2 range and ending your turn. 

As long as he's got the hand axe equipped you can comfortably attack him with any decently powerful sword user at melee rang then use your cavaliers to perform a rescue, so that he doesn't switch back to his steel sword and smack you with his more dangerous melee weapon.

Repeat until Henning is dead.

Alternatively, if Henning has his steel sword equipped, Lilina and Lugh can spam fire on him + get rescued out of hand axe range on player phase, so that he doesn't unequip his sword on enemy phase. 

Repeat until Henning is dead.

Or you can mix-and-match the previous 2 strategies; using any combination of fireballing him at 2-range when he's using his sword and stabbing him at melee range when hes using his axe to bring him down.

_______

He's actually one of my favorite bosses in FE6, in terms of gameplay design.

He's so strong and so intimidating vs. a low-level party.

But the game actually gives you a fairly diverse number of avenues for engaging him, and lets you handle the fight in whatever manner most befits your play style.

I wanna see more Hennings in fire emblem. He's a really well-designed early game boss. 

Who the hell are you and what have you done with Shoblongoo? Because the more I think about it, the more I think Henning is not unlike Gazzak in H5 - both have only one strategy to kill them that doesn't take forever and a day to produce results and/or rely on extreme luck (both of which your strategy about Lilina and Lugh fails at because they can't do too much damage to him - or at least Lugh can't [thanks to +5 res from the throne]; Lilina might be able to do something if you bothered to raise her, but her hit rates aren't exactly going to be reliable).

[Mandokarla]

I'll be honest, I really, really enjoyed Radiant Dawn Hard/Maniac mode. It felt fun, fairly well balanced, and aside from a few units that suck on all difficulties everyone did feel useable. 

Conquest Lunatic felt super well balanced and fair up until Ch.26. 

Edited August 10, 2018 by Mandokarla

[Aut]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Mother of mercy... It's idealistic drivel like this that pisses me off to no end. You are the one exaggerating, not me.

Oof that edge.

Also

post actual odds of things happening - “exaggerating”

posting feelings on how viable something is “not exaggerating”

You really need to stop doing this, because I’ve seen you do this in almost every thread you’re in.

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Who the hell are you and what have you done with Shoblongoo? Because the more I think about it, the more I think Henning is not unlike Gazzak in H5 - both have only one strategy to kill them that doesn't take forever and a day to produce results and/or rely on extreme luck (both of which your strategy about Lilina and Lugh fails at because they can't do too much damage to him - or at least Lugh can't [thanks to +5 res from the throne]; Lilina might be able to do something if you bothered to raise her, but her hit rates aren't exactly going to be reliable).

Alright, first of all, Gazzak is probably the best of the first three bosses in Hard 5, just because there’s a decently viable way to take him out quickly, unlike the other two. Second, Henning can definitely go down fairly quickly if you put in some actual strategy to the fight, even without a promoted Rutger. You can have two people attack w/ the same killing edge in a turn (have someone who can bait out the hand axe trade then rescue), and slowly whittle him down. Obviously this isn’t optimal, but it’s kinda hard to complain about it when the optimal strategy is always viable. Although w/ a trained Rutger (average 14/1), Henning isn’t putting up much of a fight, since in a player + enemy phase + player phase situation (w/ hand axe equipped for first player phase), Rutger has an opproximately 98% chance of killing him. I do believe that you mentioned that you have to get Lucky against bosses on thrones (specifically Henning), Mr. I’m not exaggerating? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Henning is good design for a boss, but he’s hardly material for the reason FE6 Hard Mode is terrible - for which he was your main cited reason, was he not? I’d hardly consider him Gazzak territory, since the most reliable strategy for him is like a 25% crit and a Devil Axe that has about a 25% chance to backfire.

More to the point, don’t point to Henning to bitch about FE6’s hard mode. He’s annoying, but unless you have the 2011 mindset of never promoting early, he’s not a big deal. I will say that I have my problems w/ FE6 Hard mode, but I wouldn’t say any of it is enough to make me think it’s terrible, and even if I thought it did, I wouldn’t go out of my way to pick fights with people who like it. Which is 100% what you did.

[Jotari]

7 minutes ago, Aut said:

Oof that edge.

Also

post actual odds of things happening - “exaggerating”

posting feelings on how viable something is “not exaggerating”

You really need to stop doing this, because I’ve seen you do this in almost every thread you’re in.

Alright, first of all, Gazzak is probably the best of the first three bosses in Hard 5, just because there’s a decently viable way to take him out quickly, unlike the other two. Second, Henning can definitely go down fairly quickly if you put in some actual strategy to the fight, even without a promoted Rutger. You can have two people attack w/ the same killing edge in a turn (have someone who can bait out the hand axe trade then rescue), and slowly whittle him down. Obviously this isn’t optimal, but it’s kinda hard to complain about it when the optimal strategy is always viable. Although w/ a trained Rutger (average 14/1), Henning isn’t putting up much of a fight, since in a player + enemy phase + player phase situation (w/ hand axe equipped for first player phase), Rutger has an opproximately 98% chance of killing him. I do believe that you mentioned that you have to get Lucky against bosses on thrones (specifically Henning), Mr. I’m not exaggerating? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Henning is good design for a boss, but he’s hardly material for the reason FE6 Hard Mode is terrible - for which he was your main cited reason, was he not? I’d hardly consider him Gazzak territory, since the most reliable strategy for him is like a 25% crit and a Devil Axe that has about a 25% chance to backfire.

More to the point, don’t point to Henning to bitch about FE6’s hard mode. He’s annoying, but unless you have the 2011 mindset of never promoting early, he’s not a big deal. I will say that I have my problems w/ FE6 Hard mode, but I wouldn’t say any of it is enough to make me think it’s terrible, and even if I thought it did, I wouldn’t go out of my way to pick fights with people who like it. Which is 100% what you did.

You're wasting your breath. Mir won't actually listen to you, regardless as to what you say. You're post detailing the inarguable odds is proof enough of that.

On the whole I agree with Shoblongoo, more bosses that are powerful, but manageable is a good thing. This convo has convinced me to double down and give Henning Durrandal in my hack >:)

[Mandokarla]

On 8/8/2018 at 1:57 PM, Shoblongoo said:

BAD, BECAUSE HIGHER DIFFICULTY IS ACHIEVED AT THE EXPENSE OF FUN GAMEPLAY

Radiant Dawn =  Who thought it was a good idea to remove weapon triangle and range-check??? Make the game harder by buffing the enemies or by nerfing top tier units if you think its too easy--don't remove elements of gameplay. 

 

You can still manually select enemies, it's not exactly all that big of a deal. I just beat the game for the first time, and my first run was on max difficulty -- didn't really notice the weapon triangle removal much, and I definitely didn't find the removal of general range check to matter...at all. 

I agree with you on Awakening Lunatic/Lunatic+, those modes are active bullshit, and they aren't rewarding. 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Mandokarla said:

You can still manually select enemies, it's not exactly all that big of a deal. I just beat the game for the first time, and my first run was on max difficulty -- didn't really notice the weapon triangle removal much, and I definitely didn't find the removal of general range check to matter...at all. 

I agree with you on Awakening Lunatic/Lunatic+, those modes are active bullshit, and they aren't rewarding. 

That's almost the worst thing about the range removal. It doesn't actually affect gameplay or anything since you can check and count like the good old NES days. Makes its removal more obnoxious than actually paradigm changing. The weapon triangle I can understand, as that's more often a boon for the player so removing it should make things more difficult (if a little simpler and less interesting), but removing range just adds tedium.

Edited August 10, 2018 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

On 8/9/2018 at 10:01 PM, Aut said:

Alright, first of all, Gazzak is probably the best of the first three bosses in Hard 5, just because there’s a decently viable way to take him out quickly, unlike the other two. Second, Henning can definitely go down fairly quickly if you put in some actual strategy to the fight, even without a promoted Rutger. You can have two people attack w/ the same killing edge in a turn (have someone who can bait out the hand axe trade then rescue), and slowly whittle him down. Obviously this isn’t optimal, but it’s kinda hard to complain about it when the optimal strategy is always viable. Although w/ a trained Rutger (average 14/1), Henning isn’t putting up much of a fight, since in a player + enemy phase + player phase situation (w/ hand axe equipped for first player phase), Rutger has an opproximately 98% chance of killing him. I do believe that you mentioned that you have to get Lucky against bosses on thrones (specifically Henning), Mr. I’m not exaggerating? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Henning is good design for a boss, but he’s hardly material for the reason FE6 Hard Mode is terrible - for which he was your main cited reason, was he not? I’d hardly consider him Gazzak territory, since the most reliable strategy for him is like a 25% crit and a Devil Axe that has about a 25% chance to backfire.

Erm, if you happen to be referring to Silver Lance Jagen, which I think you are because I can't think of much else (about the only other thing is hope to score a lot of hits with bow and javelin chip), I would point out that that has a chance of failure (of the critical hit kill kind, and some of us here do NOT take it well when we are so close to winning and have to restart because the one character who could hope to do anything took a critical hit and died). And that's one of my biggest pet peeves with bosses - having only one strategy that works when trying to use said strategy is a game of Russian roulette where in the worst case, I have to restart. By the by, the Killing Edge + Devil Axe strategy strategy you mentioned is for Hyman/Reynard. And no, Henning isn't the main reason why I despise FE6 hard mode - that, once again, goes squarely to how unfair the early game is (granted, the early game is generally the hardest part of most FE games, but FE6 takes it to another level), especially chapter 4 and chapter 7. He sure does not help, though... Sure, a trained Rutger is good against him, but not much else is. Fishing for killing edge critical hits with anyone else, well, has one main thing that can go wrong, that being that non-critical hits are far more common than criticals. You might as well be relying on something that's about as reliable as a Scald burn...

Edited August 11, 2018 by Shadow Mir

[DiogoJorge]

FE7 Hector Hard mode is challenging and a propely balanced difficulty mode, enjoyable as a result.

 

FE11 and FE12 H4-5 and Lunatic modes are too stat based  to be proper harder modes and not fun.

Edited August 11, 2018 by DiogoJorge

[Michelaar]

FE7 Hector hard mode is fun and challenging, while still enjoyable.

 

FE10 hard mode is the dumbest thing I have ever seen.

[Rapier]

On 04/08/2018 at 10:08 AM, Jules said:

The worst hard mode is easily 13's lunatic (+) because it's just fake difficulty. Giving enemies skills with a 100% activation rate the player hasn't access to them is just an artifical way to make a game challenging. At the end you reset till the enemies have less terrifying skills. 

This, basically.

Also, I'd go for FE11 and FE12's harder modes (except Lunatic and above) as the ones I have the most fun with.

[Aut]

7 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Erm, if you happen to be referring to Silver Lance Jagen, which I think you are because I can't think of much else (about the only other thing is hope to score a lot of hits with bow and javelin chip), I would point out that that has a chance of failure (of the critical hit kill kind, and some of us here do NOT take it well when we are so close to winning and have to restart because the one character who could hope to do anything took a critical hit and died). And that's one of my biggest pet peeves with bosses - having only one strategy that works when trying to use said strategy is a game of Russian roulette where in the worst case, I have to restart. By the by, the Killing Edge + Devil Axe strategy strategy you mentioned is for Hyman/Reynard. And no, Henning isn't the main reason why I despise FE6 hard mode - that, once again, goes squarely to how unfair the early game is (granted, the early game is generally the hardest part of most FE games, but FE6 takes it to another level), especially chapter 4 and chapter 7. He sure does not help, though... Sure, a trained Rutger is good against him, but not much else is. Fishing for killing edge critical hits with anyone else, well, has one main thing that can go wrong, that being that non-critical hits are far more common than criticals. You might as well be relying on something that's about as reliable as a Scald burn...

Alright, I admit that I made a mistake there, I meant Hyman. I assumed you were talking about Hyman, just because he was the one I found most comparable to Henning, and I didn’t bother to check. My bad, (although context should’ve told you that I messed up the names, not literally everything else, but whatever). However, I would have to disagree with you on earlygame being unfair, considering for tough chapters you have the tools to deal with them. Marcus can put in a lot of work to make Chapter 4 and 7 easier (so can Zealot for Ch. 7). And the other chapters are really not bad at all if you use Marcus. Both Ch. 4 and Ch. 7 are still tough, but you can mitigate luck by using your resources well (although I will admit that I have gotten very frustrated when I miss important attacks in those maps). But I’d hardly classify any of the rest of the early game as hard, most of them go down easily with Marcus.

Anyways, on Henning, you do have other options for dealing with him, although they are less efficient.15/1 Dieck, with a killing edge and some support (I.E. other units attacking him), has roughly a 60% chance of killing Henning in 5 rounds, and a 75% chance in 7 rounds. You can also do some tricks to attack 3 times with the killing edge in a turn (a turn being player phase + enemy phase in this case). If he has his steel blade equiped, Marcus has 40% chance (true hit) to do 9 damage to him with the Silver Lance at base without fear of being doubled or crit. You have ways to mitigate the RNG w/ Henning without using Rutger, although, like I said, Rutger is obviously the best option.

[Dunal]

Conquest and FE7 has objectively the better designed hard modes IMO. Mostly because it actually feels like the game's design/balance was made with their harder modes in mind. I don't get that vibe from other FEs (from FE6's hard mode bonuses to certain units, or most of FE12's cast having considerably awful bases for what you're up against etc...).

With that said, worst is going to be Awakening if you're discussing Lunatic (although its hard mode itself is too easy to break due to the game's mechanics -- there's never a middle ground when it comes to this game's difficulty... which is probably why Lunatic feels like the developer's desperation attempt to make the game difficult in the first place. Between pair-up mechanics and the EXP formula, there is never going to be a middle ground).

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Aut said:

Alright, I admit that I made a mistake there, I meant Hyman. I assumed you were talking about Hyman, just because he was the one I found most comparable to Henning, and I didn’t bother to check. My bad, (although context should’ve told you that I messed up the names, not literally everything else, but whatever). However, I would have to disagree with you on earlygame being unfair, considering for tough chapters you have the tools to deal with them. Marcus can put in a lot of work to make Chapter 4 and 7 easier (so can Zealot for Ch. 7). And the other chapters are really not bad at all if you use Marcus. Both Ch. 4 and Ch. 7 are still tough, but you can mitigate luck by using your resources well (although I will admit that I have gotten very frustrated when I miss important attacks in those maps). But I’d hardly classify any of the rest of the early game as hard, most of them go down easily with Marcus.

Anyways, on Henning, you do have other options for dealing with him, although they are less efficient.15/1 Dieck, with a killing edge and some support (I.E. other units attacking him), has roughly a 60% chance of killing Henning in 5 rounds, and a 75% chance in 7 rounds. You can also do some tricks to attack 3 times with the killing edge in a turn (a turn being player phase + enemy phase in this case). If he has his steel blade equiped, Marcus has 40% chance (true hit) to do 9 damage to him with the Silver Lance at base without fear of being doubled or crit. You have ways to mitigate the RNG w/ Henning without using Rutger, although, like I said, Rutger is obviously the best option.

Sure, Hyman is bullshit, but at the same time Gazzak stood out just for being the first boss in the game. If the first boss is that much of a barrier to entry, I dare say that's a massive red flag that we have a poorly designed difficulty on our hands (or at the very least, one I know I'm gonna dislike)... Who actually likes having to hope the one unit who can actually damage the boss doesn't get critted and die? Anyone?

Well, the issue is that the non-Rutger alternatives are dramatically less efficient, which means more grappling with the RNG - Dieck can't double, and thus I'm once again forced to rely on the crit chance, which I find less reliable than a Scald burn after miss chances are taken into account, to get anything done. Marcus... well, you know things are bad when I'm praying a 40% goes my way. And this brings to mind another complaint - Character Select Forcing.

[ping]

The only thing that the RNG decides when killing Henning is the amount of turns it takes to bring him down. Even without SM!Rutger (and even without any promoted units at all), you just have to flip coins until you have enough heads. You're fielding 10 units, so it's no problem to attack him 3x per player phase from 2 range and then rescue/drop everyone out of the way so that he doesn't switch to is Hand Axe. At no point is the player forced to take a lethal risk. Henning is not a luck-based fight. You don't have to "pray" that a 40% hits, you just have to repeat until it does.

Riveting gameplay? Hardly, but it's honestly your own fault if you don't use the resources that the game is readily giving to you - i.e. Rutger (or Dieck, although he's obviously not as good) and a Hero Crest. Fire Emblem is a strategy game, after all, and really, it's not a fault if "make good use of your resources" is part of the requirements to beat harder difficulty modes. I wouldn't complain that I'm "forced" to build libraries and universities to win a Civ game, or that I have to build up my military if I'm starting between Monty, Attila, and Genghis Khan. And I don't complain if some FE units are better than others - perfect balance is not automatically a good thing.

FE6 HM does have some issues in its unit roster, but it's not on the upper end of viability. While some of the good units are very good, the only unit that is almost (and not even quite) forced to use is Marcus in chapter one. All other high-tier units, while making the game harder if you don't use them, are never necessary to beat any map. Sure, you're in a world of pain if you choose not to use any good units, but again - "make good use of your resources" is something that a strategy game is allowed to demand.

The bigger problem with FE6's unit balancing is that quite a few units are literally never useful and trying to make use of them will never really pay off. Other than the few units that I actually consider borderline unusable (Wendy, Sophia), there's a few candidates such as Hugh, Yuno, or Ogier who can be used without too much hassle (well, in Yuno's case, "used" means "be a air taxi"), but have practically nothing that makes fielding them better than any unit that's actually good.

[Shadow Mir]

38 minutes ago, ping said:

The only thing that the RNG decides when killing Henning is the amount of turns it takes to bring him down. Even without SM!Rutger (and even without any promoted units at all), you just have to flip coins until you have enough heads. You're fielding 10 units, so it's no problem to attack him 3x per player phase from 2 range and then rescue/drop everyone out of the way so that he doesn't switch to is Hand Axe. At no point is the player forced to take a lethal risk. Henning is not a luck-based fight. You don't have to "pray" that a 40% hits, you just have to repeat until it does.

Riveting gameplay? Hardly, but it's honestly your own fault if you don't use the resources that the game is readily giving to you - i.e. Rutger (or Dieck, although he's obviously not as good) and a Hero Crest. Fire Emblem is a strategy game, after all, and really, it's not a fault if "make good use of your resources" is part of the requirements to beat harder difficulty modes. I wouldn't complain that I'm "forced" to build libraries and universities to win a Civ game, or that I have to build up my military if I'm starting between Monty, Attila, and Genghis Khan. And I don't complain if some FE units are better than others - perfect balance is not automatically a good thing.

FE6 HM does have some issues in its unit roster, but it's not on the upper end of viability. While some of the good units are very good, the only unit that is almost (and not even quite) forced to use is Marcus in chapter one. All other high-tier units, while making the game harder if you don't use them, are never necessary to beat any map. Sure, you're in a world of pain if you choose not to use any good units, but again - "make good use of your resources" is something that a strategy game is allowed to demand.

The bigger problem with FE6's unit balancing is that quite a few units are literally never useful and trying to make use of them will never really pay off. Other than the few units that I actually consider borderline unusable (Wendy, Sophia), there's a few candidates such as Hugh, Yuno, or Ogier who can be used without too much hassle (well, in Yuno's case, "used" means "be a air taxi"), but have practically nothing that makes fielding them better than any unit that's actually good.

I dunno about you, but if I really wanted that kind of stuff, I wouldn't be playing Fire Emblem - I'd go to a casino instead. Anyway, most of the ranged attacks either are with inaccurate weapons or are from units that won't be able to do much of anything to the guy...

I consider the fact that it's not riveting gameplay to be a bad thing, because I so hate being bored. If I start getting bored, I might abandon the game as a lost cause.

Fair point.

 

Edited August 11, 2018 by Shadow Mir

[ping]

I don't think "casino" is the comparison you're looking for - unless there's a casino around where it's literally impossible to lose and the worst outcome is that your inevitable win is delayed for another round.

And thing is, this flip-coins-'til-you-win scenario only occurs if you play suboptimally by promoting neither Deke nor Rutger, since the latter in particular makes this bossfight fairly tolerable. If you bait him into attacking with his Hand Axe, 15/1 Rutger (14 Str, 22 Skl, 21 Spd, 8 Lck) deals 8 damage per "normal" hit, has 73 disp. hit (85.69 true) and doubles (Henning has 16 AS with the HA). His crit chance is 64%, so it's very likely that he'll two-round, and the only help he needs is someone to bait the HA attack and a rescue/drop out of Henning's range after the first turn (to avoid that he switches to the Blade).

Henning is a problem (or rather an inconvenience, honestly), promoted Rutger is the solution. If you don't use him, be it by choice or because you don't recognize the value of early promotion, the game becomes harder / more tedious. It's a meaningful choice because the worse one will be punished - and I think that's better than PoR HM's "just use whoever, lol".

I should add that I don't want to say that PoR has a worse unit balancing that BB, though. PoR mostly achieves what it tries to do - make every unit viable at worst for their entire existence. BB seems to have another aim (Marcus was obviously never intended to slay Jahn), but as I said in my previous post, some of the lower-tier units (and not only the joke tier characters )are superfluous. Usable, but superfluous. I will however say that I much prefer FE6's ambition, which is to give every unit a unique role in terms of gameplay. For example, horribly though he might be, even Wade has a small role in the earlygame - chip damage against lance users, or even just a backup if one of your other units misses - so I'm actually OK with him as a unit. But a unit like Ogier, who is basically just "recruit, take his armourslayer, bench, forget"? Meh.

[Blanche Jacquestopus]

9 hours ago, ping said:

I should add that I don't want to say that PoR has a worse unit balancing that BB, though. PoR mostly achieves what it tries to do - make every unit viable at worst for their entire existence. BB seems to have another aim (Marcus was obviously never intended to slay Jahn), but as I said in my previous post, some of the lower-tier units (and not only the joke tier characters )are superfluous. Usable, but superfluous. I will however say that I much prefer FE6's ambition, which is to give every unit a unique role in terms of gameplay. For example, horribly though he might be, even Wade has a small role in the earlygame - chip damage against lance users, or even just a backup if one of your other units misses - so I'm actually OK with him as a unit. But a unit like Ogier, who is basically just "recruit, take his armourslayer, bench, forget"? Meh.

Well that's an optimistic way to look at BB's balance. I can see the appeal of that ambition (assuming they weren't just failing miserably at making everyone viable), but I definitely prefer the PoR approach more. When unit choice has a clear right and wrong answer it's not so much a choice as a test. For me at least, that takes a lot of the fun out of it. 

Anyway, like everyone's said Awakening's Lunatic+ is way over the top. Nothing fun about resetting until the random super skills are placed in such a way that you have a >0% chance of winning. And RD's changes are awful. Removing the weapon triangle but keeping biorhythms is an awful choice as far as strategy goes and nixing those little enemy range displays just pits you against your own patience more than the actual map. 

FE12 might be the one that bugs me the most though, specifically all the chapters the remake added. I get that they were trying to play to the DS' small screen size by making the maps small, but mashing that into a system that was made for much bigger maps really doesn't work. Pretty much every unit can get to any other unit in one turn and it feels like there's barely any room for strategy. It sucks on all difficulties but harder ones just make it worse. I can't confirm if this is actually true, but I've heard that, on Maniac mode and above, there are certain class/stat combos for the avatar that make the prologue provably unwinnable. 

[XIII Hearts]

My thoughts on the various Hard Modes:

 

FE 6: It will certainly provide a challenge but what sucks is that it invalidates a lot of playable units because the Hard Mode bonuses for the recruitable enemy units like Rutger, Miledy, and Percival makes them much more viable units than nearly anyone who starts out as a blue unit.

 

FE 7 HHM:  This is a mode where the beginning is challenging and the endgame is challenging, but the majority of the game feels dull and easy.  There are some challenges to be found in the middle, like in Genesis and Cog of Destiny, but everything else falls flat.  I attribute this to the fact that the enemies don't scale nearly as well to your units throughout the game, the use of unpromoted enemies throughout the late-game where all of your units are promoted, and the horrible enemy Speed cap leaving a lot of enemies to be doubled by your slowest unit (If you can bring Wallace to the final map and have him kill the Fire Dragon, like I did once, then there is definitely a problem with this game's difficulty).

 

FE 8:  Hard Mode?  What Hard Mode?  Maybe it's different in the Japanese version, but going by the American version, this game is not challenging at all.  Weak AF monsters combined with promoted units that are somehow weaker than their base classes, and you have a recipe for one of the easiest Fire Emblem experiences to have ever come out of IS (well until Fates Phoenix Mode became a thing).

 

FE 9 Maniac Mode: One thing Path of Radiance is criticized for is that even on Hard Mode all enemies are incredibly weak compared to your units and even when promoted enemies start showing up, they suffer FE 7 syndrome in where most of them are weaker than non-promoted enemies and will pose no threat to any of your front-line units. Maniac Mode fixes this by drastically upping the quality of all enemies to the point that you have to actually strategize how you need to go about the chapter instead of just, "Send one strong unit to murder the entire enemy army." On the other hand, Path of Radiance is also criticized for being a slog to play through because of the slow animations and large maps. Maniac Mode unfortunately only makes this worse as not only are enemies more bothersome to deal with thanks to how bulky they are in Maniac Mode, the enemy count is turned up to 11. A lot of late game maps start with over 50 - 60 initial enemies (keep in mind that these enemies can actually keep up with your units) and more reinforcements appear on Maniac Mode, leaving some maps to have an enemy count nearing the triple digits (by the end of the game I had over 10 units with over 100 battle wins), so maps tend to get clogged up real fast. A couple times I was forced to hide in a corner of the map until I thinned out the enemies enough to finally advance. Making the issue worst is that after chapter 18, nearly every map features multiple Sages with siege tomes, and a lot have overlapping range. Your front-line units usually don't have much Resistance, so if you try to rush forward like in Hard Mode, the most likely outcome is that unit dying to two siege tomes. If you want to play safely, you'll want to bait out the siege tomes with someone who can take a hit(most likely a Sage like Soren) until all the siege tomes are gone. Needless to say that maps tend to last A LOT longer on Maniac Mode compared to Hard Mode. The only good thing about this is that there are so many enemies that a lot of your units can actually reach level 20 so you can enjoy some more transfer bonuses if you decide to play Radiant Dawn. In short, Maniac Mode is more mentally involved because enemies are an actual threat while at the same time can become a chore to play due to enemies taking longer to die on top of throwing all the enemies at the world at you.

 

FE 10 HM:  This is a weird one for me:  Throughout Parts 1 and 2, sometimes the enemies provide healthy challenges and obstacles to overcome, sometimes they feel overwhelming, and sometimes they are complete pushovers.  When you hit Part 3 and get the Greil Mercenaries, the game goes from one end of the difficulty spectrum to the other with no middle ground.  Ike's squad are OP compared to the enemies you face, and then when you take control of the Dawn Brigade, the game becomes hard again because they are so weak at this point in the game.  Once you start to get third tier units, then the difficulty falls flat on its face throughout Part 4.  You will have these awesome third tier units just mowing down entire legions of second tier enemies tin Part 4 (or even earlier if you got third tiers in Part 3) with only a select few bosses being third tier units, and hardly anything can kill them.  I think the culprit is that all third tiers have innate Mastery Skills that, when activated, will 99% of the time spell certain death. and all of these have an RNG factor to them.  Now it would be unfair for regular enemies to have access to these skills and slaughter one of your units because the RNG didn't go your way, but making a new second tier enemy type (The Disciples of Order) who are large in number but still easy to take out wasn't the best solution.  Why not make it like FE 9 where you need a special item to learn a Mastery Skill?  That way we can challenge ourselves in Part 4 by fighting third tier enemies?  Also, the unit balancing is HORRIBLE, making some units completely obsolete when they join (Ex: Fiona and Meg).

 

FE 11:  It's been so long that I don't remember what the Hard Modes were like, so no comment.

 

FE 12:  The highest I played was Maniac Mode, and boy did it give me a run for my money.  The enemies are numerous, strong, and tricky to figure out.  They scale well with your units, meaning that you will always find yourself being consistently challenged.  I haven't tried Lunatic yet, but it's on my list once I do more research on how the enemy AI works.  From watching Deltre's playthrough of FE 12 Reverse Lunatic, how well you do on Lunatic and above will be based on how well you understand the enemy AI, how they move, who do they prioritizing attacking, etc.

 

Awakening:  There is no middle ground with this game.  It's either a complete pushover (Normal, Hard), or the most unfair bullshit you have seen(Lunatic, Lunatic+).  It's incredibly easy to break this game with things like Pair-Up, Reclassing, Nosferatu-tanking, and Child units on Normal and Hard, but on anything higher, the only way you'll have fun with the game then is to go out of your way to break the game, since enemy stats are ridiculous and on Lunatic+, they are given the most supreme Bullshit Skills like Luna+, which is Luna but with a 100% activation rate.

 

Birthright Lunatic:  Barring the Camilla chapter, way too easy to be called a proper Lunatic Mode

 

Conquest Lunatic:  One of the better designed Lunatic modes I've played, but what irked me towards the end is that regular enemies start to show up with skills that are impossible to learn in their class line.  I'm fine with bosses having unique skills since they are supposed to be the big threat of a chapter, and Takumi would be a joke if he didn't have Point Blank, but then there are Generals with Counter and Countermagic, making them incredibly irritating to deal with, Ninjas with Grizzly Wound and Poison Slash, meaning they will always take 40% of your health unless you kill them in one go, Snipers with Lunge arranged in just a way to lunge you right into the waiting arms of a powerful enemy, and my most hated enemy only skill, Inevitable End.  This makes it so that debuffs stack, and they are always place on enemies that have multiple seal skills like Seal Strength and Seal Defense.  Needless to say I HATE the last third of Conquest.

 

Revelations Lunatic:  The difficulty was okay, but everything else about Revelations was bad.  Bad map design, annoying and/or useless gimmicks, Radiant Dawn levels of improper unit balancing, and a horrible story makes it something I don't find myself revisiting unless I do something to mix it up.

 

Shadows of Valentia HM:  I enjoyed this one.  The enemies scaled up nicely with your units, not being too overbearing but not too weak, your units are rarely overpowered, and enemies don't crumple like tissue paper when you fight them.  I will agree that the map design was mostly awful, but I've found a lot of joy in Shadows of Valentia that I always keep coming back to it.