So, I'm a major XCOM fanatic. Have over 600 hours into it, beat it on Impossible with several Second Wave options. I bought Fire Emblem because of Patrick's praise and saying how much more complex or depth it has than XCOM and if you're a fan of XCOM you should try it.

After playing it, I feel that recommendation is one of the worst I've ever followed up on. The game is nothing like XCOM. There is no randomness as far as I can tell and the entire battlefield seems to be the exact same on retry's (presumably upon starting a new game as well). I've done a few missions and kept losing a lot of people and restarted. This is how I eventually figured out what moves I needed to make to win, but then I can make those exact moves for that mission and as far as I can tell it just causes me to win every time; unlike the entire point of XCOM, it being a random affair and needing to make the best decision you can on the fly. Not to mention the meta-game is absent.

So, being annoyed and not having fun, I stopped playing. But now, I want to give the game another go by looking at it as its own game and not a game similar to XCOM. It may have been that expectation that made me not like it.

But then, how do I play this game? If I retry a mission enough times it seems I eventually figure out what the optimal moves are, but I'm not having a ton of fun with that specific type of trial and error. I'm assuming it's possible to finish missions first try, but I'm missing something into how to go about doing that.

It seems my characters do very low amounts of damage. I need 2-3 guys to take out one enemy. They only need 2 sometimes 3 to take one of my guys out, but it seems I'm mostly outnumbered. I haven't found a way to protect my people. If they are in range, they will get hit. But they need to be in range eventually or else I can't take anyone out. In the end, it seems like whatever move I make, on the first counter of the enemy turn they can take out at least one of my guys.

Like I said, I've found ways to completely avoid this, but that's by just analyzing my failure and enemy movement and retrying. I don't really want to do that. Does anyone understand what I'm talking about? Any tips to how I should play this game? I'm probably just missing something, but I can't really see what it is.

I don't even really understand what you are saying. Are you playing on Lunatic? I recommend not playing on Lunatic on your first try, Lunatic requires some pretty Fire Emblem-specific strategery. You should try playing on Hard (or Classic? Whatever the one down from Lunatic is), it will make a lot more sense to you.

I found both Xcom and Fire Emblem to be very overrated. There's very little strategy involved past figuring out what works and then repeating that. Increasing the difficulty just makes it worse because you're forced even more to stick to the super passive let the enemy come to you playstyle. Both games are great until about halfway where you've figured out the ideal way to approach every situation. It's really bad in Fire Emblem because at this point your group becomes overpowered and the second half of the game is super boring.

The redeeming quality of Fire Emblem is that most of the support conversations are fantastic.

It's true that Fire Emblem isn't a very 'random' game. That's what I like about it, though. All the information is surfaced at all times, so there's no reason to ever die if you're paying attention to what's going on (not to say I don't ever mess up and die anyway, haha).

The game's practically Chess in that way. I think it's especially analogous when I consider how vital unit placement is in Fire Emblem. You want to make sure your pieces are in places where they're not vulnerable, often in tight formations with other pieces so there's the least amount of directions they can be attacked from, and so on. So yeah, think about it less like a dice-rolling game and more like Chess?

Of course there's the whole other layer of managing your units and making sure they're well-equipped and leveled, or making sure no one falls too far behind. I'm not sure if that's where your problem lies though. Do you use the Pair Up command very much? When you're in situations where you feel like the enemies are just straight-up overpowering you, that helps make up the difference. Another basic tip is to remember it's okay to be on the defensive sometimes. You can get into trouble if you attack something, it counters, and your character is left wounded for the enemy's turn. Let them come to you instead. Make good use of choke-points, defensive terrain... yadda yadda.

It definitely doesn't have to be a 'trial and error' game. Any death in Fire Emblem is foreseeable (with the exception, perhaps, of a surprise wave of reinforcements, though there are general rules to avoiding those too). Remember though... you don't have to restart. You could always let the permadeath be permadeath, and maybe you'd have fun playing that way. Or maybe just turn off permadeath entirely if that's not your thing.

@zevvion: Fire Emblem is a tactics game that is very RPG intensive, meaning you're going to have to pay as much attention to character stats, equipment, skills, and support bonuses as you do to placement.

Here are a few combat formulas that you should commit to memory:

(Str/Mag + Weapon Mt) - Enemy Def/Res = Damage

If Attacker Spd is Defender Spd +5, double attack.

The Weapon triangle (Sword>Axe>Spear>Sword) affects weapon accuracy, not damage or crit rate, and gives a bonus of +20 hit, iirc.

Critical hits = 3x damage.

Understanding the above forms the basis for all decision making in the game. While you can easily brute force your way through the entire game on normal, and most of it on hard, playing it on Lunatic and Lunatic+ will require you to treat each scenario as a combat puzzle more than anything else. There is very little random about it outside of unexpected critical hits. The character level-up half has more RNG to it than anything else as every single character has their own different growth rate, which is added on top of different growth rates belonging to each class.

You can find the growth rates chart for Awakening here.

As a result, while all characters should stray fairly close to their "average", the Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones run during AGDQ 2014 was completely derailed when one of the paladins had such poor Str growth, there was an 8% chance of it happening.

Awakening gets around this by letting you demote/reclass characters, thus getting around the usual 40 level limit almost all other Fire Emblem games have on potential character stats. However, that also comes at a cost as every class change adds +10 levels to a character's hidden total level, and thus results in less exp gained from killing enemies. (Not that significant until you've reclassed 3/4+ times.)

Fire emblem isn't supposed to be random aside from the percentage based crits and hit/miss. You build up your favorite characters and figure out how to win the battle scenario in every chapter. It's much more character focused since you can watch interactions between characters and marry them off as you increase their support ranks. How you build each character up and what class you make them as they level is very important. It's much more of a punishment to lose a favorite character than it is to lose a soldier in xcom. (in my opinion at least, I'm sure people who have lost fully decked out squads all at once would say otherwise) If you want to have fun with it, I'd suggest embracing the story and the characters instead of trying to think of it as a tactical gameplay challenge that is always going to throw something new at you.

That being said if you're having problems doing damage, pair up your characters, get new weapons, or increase their speed stat for double attacks.

@zevvion: Unless you're playing on Lunatic, you shouldn't be losing story missions very often at all. There's no AoE, so keep units clustered together whenever possible for support bonuses. Pair up weaker units, which often results in a much more resilient pair than either unit individually.

That's literally the only advice I think is necessary, aside from obvious stuff like don't leave healers/archers/mages in range of a zillion enemy melee dudes, check enemy attack and movement range often, etc.

OK, to start with, Fire Emblem and X-Com fall within the same basic genre conventions but they are two very different games beyond that.

Fire Emblem isn't about memorization, it's about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the characters you're using and then positioning them in a way that capitalizes on those strengths as much as possible while minimizing the impact their weaknesses might have. So, for instance, you don't want to place Pegasuses near archers or people with wind magic, you don't want to place people with axes near people with swords, etc.

Go look up the Fire Emblem weapon triangle, you'll need it. Also, there's a button shortcut for switching between the simple and complex interfaces, though I forgot where it was. Find it and make liberal use of it.

...well, all right, there is a certain memorization element to it, but it's memorizing the game's rules and mechanics, not memorizing the levels. The latter certainly helps but if you play well, you won't have to memorize levels to get through them in good condition.

EDIT: Unless you've got the difficulty turned all the way up. Play on normal.

Also, like others have said, this game is definitely a lot more character focused. Do not ignore supports. Do not ignore pairing up characters. Those are two major components of the game.

There is a randomness factor to this game but it's not much. It's certainly not as crazy as it is in X-Com, which I'm very thankful for. Part of the reason I can't get into X-Com is the sheer dependence on randomness that game has. It's not tense, it's aggravating and unsatisfying for me.

You press attack, then you press heal.

Each class has 2 skills your character can learn and once you learn them as soon as you can you should switch to another, unless you've got 5 skills you like and want to keep them the class they are.

When your dudes have reached level 10 for their base class or level 15 for their upgrade class use a master seal or second seal to switch to a new class and learn more skills. Base classes learn the first skill at level 1 and second at level 10, and upgrade classes learn skills at levels 5 and 15. Upgraded classes are also stronger, so this should help make your units more resilient.

Also always pair units up with another, pretty much. Again this makes them tougher.

Maybe I am missing something else, but I really don't think so. The problem is that enemy units aren't isolated. They move in groups. 2 of them can take out any one of my units with the exception of a couple. I need 2 at the very least, often 3 units to take one of them out.

To put it bluntly, I cannot destroy enough enemy units to completely negate them attacking me on the next turn. When they attack, someone dies. But perhaps there are some buffs I am missing? I am not pairing people up at all, because the few times I did, I found it to be pointless. One guy gets a very very minor buff (that doesn't seem to help keep him alive or do significantly more damage) while I 'waste' the attack option of the other by doing so.

But hearing all of you talk, I'm confident I'm just missing something rather simple but crucial.

Step 1: Get Donnel

Step 2: Level Donnel up into a god of death

Step 3: Murder everything and win game

Also, if this is your first Fire Emblem game start on classic and normal. Learn how the game functions, it's mechanics, and the best strategies. Marry off all the women (S rank support), they give you children that can give you some unique skill and class sets, although it is usually unnecessary if you play the game below Lunatic difficulty.

If you like the support system and the kids, you have a bit of replayability by combining parents to give you unique combinations, i.e. having a general with tomebreaker, giving attack-skillless units strong skills like Sol and Astra, etc.

@zevvion: Pairing units is absolutely essential. The stronger their support relationship, the greater the buff and chance at a team attack.

Have you gotten to the point where you can upgrade any of your units with a master seal? If so, do so.

Plus you can always use or find choke points to prevent too many enemies from taking a whack at your units. That's kind of a key element.

And a chance that the partner will shield the main unit from taking damage. I had some struggles in the early game, also felt the units were a bit underpowered, but as soon as I started pairing up all my guys shit got a lot more manageable. Then once I figure out that I should've been using master seals way ealier than I had it got even more manageable.

The game also seems to be designed so that you have to be a lot more defensive up front than I was used to, having played other Fire Emblem games.

Fuck. No.

If you're new to the series? Sure. Go ahead. Don't listen to this moon king.

Knock that off. Here's a maxim almost all tactics games go by: a few tough guys are far more valuable than many wimpy ones.

You must be joking. If someone is new to Fire Emblem and they jump into it on Hard, they're going to fucking hate it unless they're masochists.

Like others have said, pair up units. That "minor buff" winds up becoming pretty good later in the game. Know who to put where. Group units together. This is not an easy game, it requires you to pay attention to stats, strengths, weaknesses, who you're fighting, where you're positioning guys, what enemies can get to people when they're positioned, etc.

We're telling you exactly what you're missing. Enemy units don't need to be isolated for you to win, the game would be insanely easy if that were the case.

See my last post. Addendum: BAPTISM BY FIRE. *mad cackling*

@zevvion: I had a similar problem when I first started where I felt like one person got ganged up on and died no matter what I did each turn. I'm not sure how far you are into the game, but my problem came about half way through when all of the children's recruitment prologues open up. Those get much harder than the story missions available at the time. I found out I simply wasn't leveling my guys correctly. You have to take advantage of master seals and second seals otherwise your stats fall too far behind the enemies. So make sure you're doing that at appropriate times. Switching classes after you've learned the two abilities for your current one is generally the way to go.

Also, you MUST pair up your units. It seems insignificant at first, but it becomes ridiculously good once you have S class support pairs. I've had entire maps where one pair never got touched because they would constantly shield each other from every attacker. Likewise when they attack there is a ridiculously good chance that the support will attack after the main character attacks. The stat bonuses are good as well if you pay attention. Pairing up someone speedy with a slow tanky character can mean the difference between the tank having multiple attacks against an enemy or likewise the speedy guy not getting one shot by whatever he/she attacks.

Finally, if you're getting overwhelmed by enemies attacking one character, pay attention to their movement/attack range, and take advantage of chokes. A lot of the maps have enemies that won't even move until you get within their initial range, so you can control who comes at you and when if you don't just rush in. Pay attention to who you use to pull an enemy, and don't be afraid to move your mages or archer in first if it means they get the first distant shot off for a kill. Berserker class enemies were a real bitch for me until I started sniping them with my ranged characters and avoided melee'ing them altogether. The few maps that I remember all of the enemies rushing in on me had some form of choke to work with instead. You'll know these when you see them usually and they're few and far between. The rest you can completely control who comes at you and when.

Again, pair units (if they have a support relationship that can be increased). There's a small chance it will negate all damage to a paired unit, you get + chance to hit, avoid, and crit once supports are higher, and some stats are transferred to the paired unit (putting Frederick onto a unit will give that unit Fred's main stats, so he'll give a strength and def boost and a few other things in small amounts). I'm pretty sure much of the early game is balanced around you making use of the pairing mechanic.

Streetpass fights and random Risen fights on the map are different, but on story missions, I really can't think of many times where all the units just rush you as soon as the mission starts. The boss is usually stationary, and many units never move until you enter their attack range.

On hard it sure seems like enemies wait a set number of turns then charge at you. Even bosses. Certain bosses anyway. They seem to come in waves, so every turn a new group starts charging at you.

But yeah, before their turn to charge they stay away unless you wander into their attack range.

It's generally just good advice to always keep the enemy's attack range in mind, particularly when it comes to maneuvering units in the vicinity of enemies capable of directly exploiting their weakness (i.e.: Keeping flying units away from archers until they can get in melee range and smoke them.)

Which is pairing. You gotta do it. The more people fight together, the bigger the buffs get. They can even attack as a pair. I like to pair the tank with the healer, the tank is so tough my healer will never die, and she gives him pretty big boosts to attack and defence.

Double fools together. While those bonuses aren't all that much early on, one or two points of speed might be the difference between double attacking someone or not. Play defensively. Break the game by downloading the DLC grinding map.

I know this is like the third time I've posted here, but if you think the AI just kamikazes into you on story missions, just wait until the Risen/Streetpass fights that appear on the world map where they ACTUALLY just descend upon your weakest unit immediately because there is no special AI scripting on those, they just rush at you immediately, regardless of fairness. The story missions are MUCH less rush down and more forgiving by comparison.

You think Normal Classic is bad? Try Normal Casual.

Yeah, I'm a filthy casual who played the game on the easiest setting possible.

I am playing on Hard, but that's not the problem. If I keep doing poorly, that just means I'm doing something wrong. I'd much prefer to find out what that is than dumb down the difficulty. I do not enjoy playing easy games in certain genre's and this is one of them.

I am hearing the pairing up a lot. I will give it another shot. But I felt that when I was doing so, my guy would get like +10 hit chance or +10 defense or something; both of which didn't seem to make any difference. I usually hit anyway and the extra defense isn't enough to take an additional blow. Meanwhile, the guy he's paired up with can't be used to attack with. I believe you guys that it will be more useful later in the game, but I'm kind of searching for something that is useful right now.

Could it be that I am missing some stats and rules? I can't exactly remember, but I pretty much paired up whoever. Are the buffs greater if you pair certain classes? I read all the in-game guide tutorials; I'm pretty sure it didn't say what pairs would increase which stats. It only said to pair up people who have a better supporting relationship through conversations. I've been doing all of those.

I'll give it another try later today.

@zevvion: I'd recommend checking out some resources for basic tips and tricks to playing it. It does help to have some experience with strategy games like this, but if you give it some of your time, I think you'll get it. :)

Here are two lists of quick tips that might be useful:

Tips 1
Tips 2

@zevvion: Stat gains during a pair-up are influenced by the character's stats, class, and support ranking. But beyond all that, the biggest value of pair-up is that it makes one of your characters impossible to attack. If there are too many enemies in range for you to end the turn safely, give up some damage to hide your more vulnerable characters inside of your units with strong defense.

• Move your guys and girls around the map.
• Pair them up in awesome combos.
• Group your guys and girls up so they always get buffs when attacking/attacked.
• Attack with weapons that are strong against weapons that they are strong against.

@zevvion: Oh, and on top of what StarvingGamer said, it can also be useful for helping slower units get across a map. It isn't an essential thing to do early on, and I honestly didn't do it much until later into the game. But it's important if you're playing on Hard. It honestly sounds like you should be playing Normal instead of Hard, as you don't have a lot of experience with this type of game(and screw those hardcore players that think Hard is the only way), but if you really want to do it, you're gonna have to catch up on how to think about battles. A lot of which is positioning and timely use of abilities.

Good luck!

@random45:

*deadly death glares*

@video_game_king: How do you feel about people who played on Hard Casual?

@believer258:

They confuse me.

Don't tell me there are Lunatic+ Casual people out there.

Well, you confuse everybody.

I got tired of resetting my 3DS every time someone died. Like the OP, this was my first Fire Emblem and the mechanics didn't really take hold before I was tired of it. I finally did beat it on Hard-Casual and then restarted it on Normal Classic after "getting" the mechanics and gameplay ideas. Hard-Casual wound up just being a grindfest, anyway, which was because I needed the supports (and a good podcast game). I can't imagine Lunatic-Casual being anything but an even bigger grindfest that I don't want to mess with.

I have experience with turn based strategy games. I think I just have a hard time voicing the problem I was having. I only got one answer to the actual problem I was having and I picked that up from a side-point someone was making in this thread. Which is to basically draw the enemy out and play defensively, not aggressively. I've played a couple missions since my last post and this one and have been having a lot of success with it so far. This way it makes only a couple of enemies able to attack me, while the others will not be able to close the distance, which keeps everyone alive and allows me to attack over two turns instead of trying to kill everyone in one turn.

So far, it seems my issue is resolved with that. I'll see how it goes later.

By the way, I do not think that playing on a lower difficulty ever makes sense if you're trying to learn to play a game and see it for what it is. I found that a lot of games just 'allow you to win' on Normal. Whereas you fail often on Hard, but learn the mechanics of the game better because you are thinking about what you did wrong. On Normal you can usually just do it wrong and they'll let you continue anyway. Don't know if that's the case for this game, just talking in general. I know it's true for XCOM. Played that game on Normal the first time and had to abandon 99% of my strategy when I first attempted Classic. But it also increased how much fun I was having with that game.

I just prefer it when a game doesn't let me get away with bad play. It just increases the amount of fun I have and passion I'll develop for that game. Unless I'm playing a game for the story or whatever else.

I still think you should've played Normal...for starters Fire Emblem is a VERY difficult game and I can't imagine having a lot of fun just jumping into hard. Also normal is still hard, and not forgiving. It will not make you bad at the game.

I won't add anything further than what's been said already, but let me say this. Play on the mode where you're characters don't permanently die (Casual). I know that's heresy for die hard fans, but I've had a much better time not worrying whether or not my characters will die forever and simply focusing on the tactical and rpg mechanics. I know that may not be exactly what you're having a problem with, but I thought I'd throw that out there.

This seems like something that should have been self-evident, especially for someone who started this thread talking about their extreme level of XCOM fandom.

@starvinggamer: Well, no. You're not going to survive XCOM on Impossible if you let guys take shots at you. Taking everyone out before they can retaliate is the general philosophy, which is the opposite of how I'm playing Fire Emblem right now (which seems to work).

Well, in tactics games like Fire Emblem, blitzkrieg tactics rarely ever work and are more or less guaranteed to result in losses on your side. But regardless, I'm not sure why you expected your XCOM play style to translate straight into Fire Emblem.

I enjoyed XCOM, but fell in love with Awakening (both are my first 'serious' experiences in this genre).

You've solved your issue: you're playing too aggressively. The most important thing about defensively positioning yourself is that it allows you to carefully manage your relationship developments and their bonuses. While initial relationship bonuses are nothing notable, later developments are basically game-breaking. The more they fight next to each other - the more their relationship develops - the more they'll fight better together.

You start seeing double counter-attacks (if a guy attacks one of your side-by-side relationships, both units will retaliate and probably kill him). You start seeing much higher chances to block 100% of the damage made against a character.

The game is also an RPG. You seem to struggling with this idea. You can log in each day and do daily battles to get a leg up on your upcoming main missions. There is certainly a metagame here, and it's important to learn the intricacies at play.

@zevvion So the lesson you were missing was "be careful, and don't run forward, aggroing a multitude of enemy units at once"? How did you possibly play XCOM on Impossible without being keenly aware of that concept? Both games encourage you to keep engagements as small as possible. That's actually one of the few strategies that applies equally well to both games.

When I trigger a group in XCOM, I can move in to kill them immediately if I use my skills properly. If I let them linger for a turn, it gets increasingly dangerous. Not always of course, but it's often the best course of action. So far, that doesn't work for me in Fire Emblem, because I cannot reliably kill enough aggressors so that they cannot kill anyone on their turn. I'm obviously not that far in, but so far it seems that letting them linger a turn is preferable to trying to wipe them out immediately.

@hailinel I'm not sure why I thought that either. Perhaps I was just rusted shut in my way of thinking. Also, hearing Patrick compare it to XCOM swayed my expectations. Obviously I made a mistake though.

I'm glad you figured out your issue; though, the fact that you didn't already approach it like that still makes me think you should have gone with Normal. That's basically a trope of the Japanese strategy game genre(and I'd say it applies a bit in XCOM, as well). Normal Classic on the game is not like Normal Casual. Normal Classic would mean you'd still probably be restarting with failures. You'd still be punished for messing up. It would just not overwhelm you with so many enemies, especially early on when you're learning how to think about battles.

Anyway, since you're already getting back into it, keep on doing what you're doing. Just saying, this issue likely wouldn't have arisen if you had started on Normal. Well, good luck with it. Have fun! :D

While I think playing on Hard is going to be a lot tougher for you in the beginning, it will probably end up working out better for you in the long run I suppose. Normal becomes way too easy eventually. This game is amazing, but it has some serious difficulty problems, I've had a lot of trouble finding a happy middle ground between rocking the enemies asses and having mine handed to me.

Part of the fun in fire emblem is building up units into kiling machines. At least for me thats what I enjoy about it. Ill use frederick as an example.He is a front line unit but even he can get overwhelmed if not trained properly. I noticed that he van get pavise from the general class and aigis from tha paladin branch. these two skills when combined make him almost unkillable throw in quick burn from the wyverm lord and luna which he already comes with makes him a super beast front line unit. your going to have to spend some time grinding. once you reach a certain chapter your going to have access to reeking boxe. What it does is summon risen to gthe map use these to level up your units. Just focus on the ones you like you dont have to level all of thm up. Pro tip bring two healets to every skirmish you never know when you going to need that extra healing.

Actually, it is crazy easy for me right now. Ever since I used a master seal on my guy, I feel the game almost broke as far as difficulty is concerned. I also got two S rank relationships around that time. I'm not sure how far into the game I am, this is my first Fire Emblem. I defeated the first major boss and progressed several missions beyond that. It's impossible to lose at this point, I feel like. I take virtually no damage; usually 2-6 on guys that have 40+ health and that's if I take damage. 40% of the time they miss my guys, 50% of the time all the damage is blocked either by my main or the partner. I also one hit-kill most of the enemies with any unit at this point. Everyone is advanced class except for the Taguel and dragon-girl.

It's pretty crazy how quickly the difficulty turned around from challenging to laughable. But then, I have no idea how far in I am. Maybe I'm only a third way in and the difficulty will spike again?