Fire Emblem 4: Small number of enemies makes the game easy to beat.

[Spatha]

Is it just me or the number of enemies per map in Fire Emblem 4 is rather small?

For a game with maps that could fit 3 or 4 chapters of a normal FE game, the amount of enemies that they throw against you is dissapointing.

This is in heavy contrast to the normal FE games.

In FE Thracia, one map usually has 12-20+ enemies plus reinforcements.

In FE Holy War, one castle only has 8-14 units and no reinforcements. They are divided into:

Offensive army: Squads of enemies outside or leaving the enemy castle that either react whenever one of your units is in attack range or they immediately move towards your main castle to attack.

Defensive Army: Units surrounding the castle and protecting the one inside the castle. Sometimes they are blocking the way and you have to kill them first before getting to the boss.

With no reinforcements and the fact the enemy army is divided. The Player could easily destroy the offensive army and could easily outmanuever the defensive army.

It doesn't help that the enemy usually has crappy equipment when compared to the normal FE enemies packing a variety arsenal of weapons.

What does everyone think?

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Spatha

[CatManThree]

Depends on the specific wave of enemies or the specific map. FE4 is designed around your army fighting off waves or squads of enemies in skirmishes throughout the map. Sometimes these skirmishes have less enemies than they should, but that's not always the case.

[Slumber]

I don't know if anyone has ever considered FE4 particularly hard. If anything, the difficulty of the game comes from some unexpected things that happened when you get too comfortable with the difficulty of the game, if that makes any sense.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Slumber

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

3 hours ago, Spatha said:

Is it just me or the number of enemies per map in Fire Emblem 4 is rather small?

it depends.

sometimes, if you don't reach some specific objectives in a given amount of turns, reinforcements can eventually show up from a castle, but then again it's all based on the map/enemy you're fighting.

for example, if you don't engage the enemies of the castle in front of Deirdre's forest after a certain amount of turns, another wave of brigands will show up and come at you.

or, if you let Hannibal go back to his castle, he'll then come back with another wave of knights.

 

i believe the amount of "default" enemies on the maps overall it's alright, especially if we factor in the terrain type for tactical reasons, and how much time it takes to complete a map.

it's not that there's few enemies around, it's that the situation can turn from good to bad pretty quickly if you're not careful enough, mainly due to surprise attacks on castles or an ambush.

[CatManThree]

8 minutes ago, Fenreir said:

it depends.

sometimes, if you don't reach some specific objectives in a given amount of turns, reinforcements can eventually show up from a castle, but then again it's all based on the map/enemy you're fighting.

for example, if you don't engage the enemies of the castle in front of Deirdre's forest after a certain amount of turns, another wave of brigands will show up and come at you.

or, if you let Hannibal go back to his castle, he'll then come back with another wave of knights.

Its not just Hannibal that does that. Every "commander" enemy will do this if most of their soldiers are killed. 

[DarthR0xas]

3 hours ago, Spatha said:

With no reinforcements

Not true, there are quite a few situations in which reinforcements come out. The major one I'm remembering is Chapter 7, where at least two, probably three squads of enemies keep coming out to attack Leonster. They aren't really hard, but FE4 in general doesn't derive difficulty from the enemies specifically. It's the situations where you handle these enemies that force you to think on your feet. You start surrounded by enemies, or split into two parties each guarding a castle. The challenge comes from strategicly maneuvering around these situations

[Tetragrammaton]

7 hours ago, Spatha said:

Is it just me or the number of enemies per map in Fire Emblem 4 is rather small?

For a game with maps that could fit 3 or 4 chapters of a normal FE game, the amount of enemies that they throw against you is dissapointing.

This is in heavy contrast to the normal FE games.

In FE Thracia, one map usually has 12-20+ enemies plus reinforcements.

In FE Holy War, one castle only has 8-14 units and no reinforcements. They are divided into:

Offensive army: Squads of enemies outside or leaving the enemy castle that either react whenever one of your units is in attack range or they immediately move towards your main castle to attack.

Defensive Army: Units surrounding the castle and protecting the one inside the castle. Sometimes they are blocking the way and you have to kill them first before getting to the boss.

With no reinforcements and the fact the enemy army is divided. The Player could easily destroy the offensive army and could easily outmanuever the defensive army.

It doesn't help that the enemy usually has crappy equipment when compared to the normal FE enemies packing a variety arsenal of weapons.

What does everyone think?

 

Yes, the number is small. You can only have maximum of 48 red units in 1 map, the game will crash if there are more than 48.

[Flee Fleet!]

On 12/18/2018 at 11:39 PM, Slumber said:

I don't know if anyone has ever considered FE4 particularly hard. If anything, the difficulty of the game comes from some unexpected things that happened when you get too comfortable with the difficulty of the game, if that makes any sense.

Agreed. Enemies aren't particularly that strong (with some exceptions like certain bosses, of course), but the unexpected moments can cause a panic, like how Eldigan's squad and later dragon knights appear after seizing the first castle in chapter 3.

--------------

Personally speaking, never really thought the amount of enemies were smaller compared to other FE games. I guess that has to do with the fact that enemies appear in squads and groups often, which I feel make them seem much larger in number than they really are, and a lot of the time they seem to surround you ( e.g.there's about three different classes of enemies approaching the home castle from all sides in chapter 3). The fact that the player doesn't really have a large army either might also be the reason why I felt the enemy number is larger than it appears to be.

The only exception that comes to mind is that Female Myrmidon squad in Chapter 4.

[Tetragrammaton]

8 hours ago, Flee Fleet! said:

Agreed. Enemies aren't particularly that strong (with some exceptions like certain bosses, of course), but the unexpected moments can cause a panic, like how Eldigan's squad and later dragon knights appear after seizing the first castle in chapter 3.

--------------

Personally speaking, never really thought the amount of enemies were smaller compared to other FE games. I guess that has to do with the fact that enemies appear in squads and groups often, which I feel make them seem much larger in number than they really are, and a lot of the time they seem to surround you ( e.g.there's about three different classes of enemies approaching the home castle from all sides in chapter 3). The fact that the player doesn't really have a large army either might also be the reason why I felt the enemy number is larger than it appears to be.

The only exception that comes to mind is that Female Myrmidon squad in Chapter 4.

Actually, I think the game should throw more enemies at you if it is not because of the technical limit.

For example, in the Final Chapter, the Freege castle should has at least 2 squads, 1 to attack you and 1 to defend the castle. And the Jungby should also has 2 squads attack from 2 directions, 1 heading to Freege, and 1 heading straight to Chalphy.

[Spatha]

8 hours ago, Flee Fleet! said:

Agreed. Enemies aren't particularly that strong (with some exceptions like certain bosses, of course), but the unexpected moments can cause a panic, like how Eldigan's squad and later dragon knights appear after seizing the first castle in chapter 3.

--------------

Personally speaking, never really thought the amount of enemies were smaller compared to other FE games. I guess that has to do with the fact that enemies appear in squads and groups often, which I feel make them seem much larger in number than they really are, and a lot of the time they seem to surround you ( e.g.there's about three different classes of enemies approaching the home castle from all sides in chapter 3). The fact that the player doesn't really have a large army either might also be the reason why I felt the enemy number is larger than it appears to be.

The only exception that comes to mind is that Female Myrmidon squad in Chapter 4.

The problem is that once the gsme throws this unexpected curveball at, that's it.

At first, the player is caught off guard but in later playthrough, you could easily off set that by sending all of your units to prepare ahead of that curveball and once that is done, Sigurd kills the boss, triggers the next enemy and there, the difficulty is gone.

It doesn't help that the enemy only has 1 attack squad ready and they are defenseless once you kill them all, despite the fact if you let the enemy commander live after killing everyone in the squad, they are available to gather more forces if they retreat back to the enemy castle.

It also doesn't help that in the 2nd gen, almost everyone has a holy weapon capable of wiping out packs of weak enemies and only the bosses and subbosses are able to stand against them.

It's why I like Chapter 3 and Chapter 9.

 

[Flee Fleet!]

4 hours ago, hanhnn said:

Actually, I think the game should throw more enemies at you if it is not because of the technical limit.

For example, in the Final Chapter, the Freege castle should has at least 2 squads, 1 to attack you and 1 to defend the castle. And the Jungby should also has 2 squads attack from 2 directions, 1 heading to Freege, and 1 heading straight to Chalphy.

Yeah I agree. It'll make things more difficult and interesting at least.

 

3 hours ago, Spatha said:

The problem is that once the gsme throws this unexpected curveball at, that's it.

At first, the player is caught off guard but in later playthrough, you could easily off set that by sending all of your units to prepare ahead of that curveball and once that is done, Sigurd kills the boss, triggers the next enemy and there, the difficulty is gone.

Yeah I should have mentioned this in my first post. Once you know what's going to happen, the difficulty decreases because you're prepared for it. 

Of course, RNG and poor strategies can still make things difficult, but it shouldn't be a big problem once you get the hang of things.

 

3 hours ago, Spatha said:

It doesn't help that the enemy only has 1 attack squad ready and they are defenseless once you kill them all, despite the fact if you let the enemy commander live after killing everyone in the squad, they are available to gather more forces if they retreat back to the enemy castle

Honestly I can't remember a single moment in the game where the enemy commander survived and got to bring reinforcements, except when I intentionally let them get reinforcements (such as in Hannibal's case). So its pretty easy for players to avoid this imo.

[Spatha]

The only thing that's difficult in this game is that certain scenarios force you to make the most turn-efficient actions as possible or else you fail or miss any goodies available.

For instance, In Ch.1, you have to not only save Aideen and Dew from a squad of bandits but to try and recruit Ayra without killing her or her killing one of your units. To do that, you have kill Kinbois and his squad while avoiding Ayra and try to kill the guards at Genoa Castle and conquer it.

 

.It's even worse in Ch.2. To save the forest villages, you have to kill Elliot and his squad before they can kill one of the Paladins protecting Raquesis and by extension her, kill Philip and a wall of armors with a ballista and a bishop with Physic.

And then you have to get past another wall of armors and try to kill Boldor and conquer the castle.

I love the game but I can't deny really tedious to play.

1 hour ago, Flee Fleet! said:

Honestly I can't remember a single moment in the game where the enemy commander survived and got to bring reinforcements, except when I intentionally let them get reinforcements (such as in Hannibal's case). So its pretty easy for players to avoid this imo.

Indeed, 

It would be far more interesting if an enemy castle has one last attack squad up it's sleeve if you manage to get near the castle, just so you can't rush in and expect to win.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Spatha