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waltzoidSo, as promised, I powered my way through Scarlet Blaze a second time, but with all of the units I recruited starting out in the mid-40s to do it again on Hard difficulty and fill out the support conversations I didn't get the first time. The "recommended level" curve for the Hard versions of levels is steeper than the ones for Easy and Normal. It looks like for every level increase between maps on Normal, the Hard mode versions go up by two. By the end of the game, the enemy levels top out in the low 100's, and I sure as hell wasn't going to do that much grinding.
Keeping all of my bonuses from New Game+ came with the added benefit of a fully-upgraded base camp, so I can spend more time training and unlocking new skills for my generals. I even stumbled upon "innate abilities", which work almost like Budding Talents from Three Houses where you train a skill outside of the given unit's area of expertise to learn a new spell or ability. The first two I got were "Nullify Magic" for Edelgard (which allows her to no-sell all magic damage after training her as a Gremory), and "Gather" for Monica (which clusters enemies in front of her whenever she starts an attack combo, allowing her to blast them all at once with high-damage area-of-effect spells like Aura and Hades; I got this one by training her as a Trickster). I have a feeling these skills are going to be essential to surviving the game on Maddening difficulty, so I'm teaching as many of these skills as I can to my party members while I have them.
Despite the enemy levels starting to outstrip mine by Chapter 12 or so, I still managed to get through and earn S-ranks by upgrading, "reforging", and "unleashing" my best weapons at the blacksmith, which I'd mostly ignored in favor of finding and using the most powerful weapon drops. Even with levels in the high 60's while the enemy had triple digits, going into battle with +30 forged weapons was enough to close the power gap (though I still got knocked around a lot by the final boss).
After completing my second Scarlet Blaze run, I chose to do Golden Wildfire next because I'd recruited most of their members in SB anyway, meaning I didn't have to focus on leveling them up or grinding for their supports. And you know what that means!
Keeping all of my bonuses from New Game+ came with the added benefit of a fully-upgraded base camp, so I can spend more time training and unlocking new skills for my generals. I even stumbled upon "innate abilities", which work almost like Budding Talents from Three Houses where you train a skill outside of the given unit's area of expertise to learn a new spell or ability. The first two I got were "Nullify Magic" for Edelgard (which allows her to no-sell all magic damage after training her as a Gremory), and "Gather" for Monica (which clusters enemies in front of her whenever she starts an attack combo, allowing her to blast them all at once with high-damage area-of-effect spells like Aura and Hades; I got this one by training her as a Trickster). I have a feeling these skills are going to be essential to surviving the game on Maddening difficulty, so I'm teaching as many of these skills as I can to my party members while I have them.
Despite the enemy levels starting to outstrip mine by Chapter 12 or so, I still managed to get through and earn S-ranks by upgrading, "reforging", and "unleashing" my best weapons at the blacksmith, which I'd mostly ignored in favor of finding and using the most powerful weapon drops. Even with levels in the high 60's while the enemy had triple digits, going into battle with +30 forged weapons was enough to close the power gap (though I still got knocked around a lot by the final boss).
After completing my second Scarlet Blaze run, I chose to do Golden Wildfire next because I'd recruited most of their members in SB anyway, meaning I didn't have to focus on leveling them up or grinding for their supports. And you know what that means!
- The part about Golden Wildfire being about defending against Almyran invaders is sorta right, but sorta also isn't (and given some pretty heavy spoilers about Claude, raised a lot of eyebrows pre-release). The Almyran invasion danger only makes up a few missions in Part I, with the rest having the Alliance fight Imperial soldiers like usual. I fought almost all of the Empire's generals in Part I except for Edelgard, Hubert, and Dorothea. Acheron was his usual nuisance self, turning against the Alliance on the Great Bridge of Myrddin, but I don't think the Empire cared or even noticed that he switched sides...or died. Meh. Sometimes you press your luck, and sometimes you hit four Whammies in a row.
- The only Imperial casualty this go-round was Ladislava, who died covering Ferdinand's retreat in Chapter 6, just as Ingrid did to cover Dimitri in Chapter 8 of Scarlet Blaze. (At least Randolph and Ladislava get to survive all the way to the end of their route if you do everything right; they both got such a raw deal in Three Houses).
- Hilda's big brother Holst doesn't show up until midway through the Chapter 5 mission, and he's got this ability that doubles his attack speed and makes all of his attacks shock enemies for extra damage when you send them flying. While I got rid of his Wingthresher sword after recruiting him, I still bring him along when I'm dealing with flying enemies out of habit. The game only lets you use three active characters for Chapter 5, and that's when he comes into play. It pulls the same trick again in Chapter 7 because Holst is the key to Claude's gambit to slow the advance of Count Bergliez, the strongest man in the Empire. There's even a cool cutscene that shows the two of them fighting it out before the Alliance is ordered to retreat due to the impending rematch with Shahid.
- Speaking of that battle, he wasn't kidding when he said he was going to gather the largest Almyran army Fódlan's ever seen. The first battle against him had an S-rank requirement of 600 KO's, but the rematch in Chapter 8 requires 1,500! And just when it looks like he's about to flee the battlefield, he sends a bunch of reinforcements to rush the allied base all at once. Claude looked apprehensive about having to kill his brother (Disney villain smirk and all), but it had to be done. Now the Alliance (or rather, the Leicester Federation, as the Five Great Lords decide that requiring a 100% consensus on every major issue before acting doesn't work as well when a war is going on) can refocuses its energy on preparing for another dust-up with the Empire...or not. It sounds like Count Bergliez, Count Hevring, Edelgard, and Monica feel like they'd be better off spending their resources on the Kingdom and Church instead of trying to break the stalemate with Leicester. Let's see how this shakes out from Claude's point of view.
