Just finished it this morning on Hard/Classic. Black Eagles Empire route. There was a couple of fights that caused me difficulty, but nothing really insurmountable. Marianne's paralogue for instance was pretty tough.
I had to concentrate and used Divine Pulse fairly liberally, but in the final battle for instance I beat it on turn 14 with only 3 uses of pulse (annoying critical hits from those stupid guardian things, one bad position in range of a flying unit.). I'd heard it was a real stumbling block but the final enemy was downed in 2 turns with no danger to anyone. Bit of a let down aha. The most challenging section I would say is probably right before the jump, and then right after it.
I didn't feel like previous Hard modes where you would constantly turtle and shield weaker units with stronger ones - mostly because of the enemy telegraphs. Previous games you had to be very risk averse because you didn't know which unit an in-range enemy might go for. In Three Houses you can see easily and take steps to mitigate it with the rest of your units. Having 10 on the field all the time also makes it easier. If you accidentally put someone at risk of death, you have 9 other moves, combat actions and gambits like stride to combine to rescue them. In older games that unit would just be dead and you'd restart the map.
I had a couple of units that were essentially invincible, and I hadn't classed at all optimally. Nobody could really hit Petra at all, every hit attempt on her was about 20%. Edelgard just took no damage from anything other than chip damage on magic, same with Ferdinand. And enemies wouldn't even attack some of my magic units because it would mean one shot death for them.
With proper optimisation it would have been even easier. I only had 1 flying unit the whole game, although it seems like it's balanced around you having quite a few. Wyvern riders looked really strong but I never got one. Actually any map with flying units was where I had to concentrate the most, that's where it felt most like the old Fire Emblem difficulty, because they could one shot most of my characters.
I think most of the sense of it being easier comes from Divine Pulse. Being able to just rewind turns instead of restarting a whole battle was an incredible difference in terms of hours played. If I had to restart every battle where a unit died probably it would have taken me 30% longer or more. Pretty thankful for that honestly, since I clocked in at 72 hours on the counter.
Most satisfying moment was probably the penultimate map, really made me appreciate divine pulse as a mechanic in this sort of game. That map in general was really well designed, but I had a good experience on it too:
Without any flying units I had to really stretch to be able to take out the north east general/monsters and also get to Rhea's spot in time for her to appear. I only sent 4 units her way, and ended up getting a crit kill on her with Dorothea first time, but had left Felix open for the guardian to kill on the next turn. Ended up rewinding about 6 times to get the right combination of attacks and positioning in order to take her out with the units that I sent, without needing a lucky crit. The fact that she takes so little damage, counters from anywhere, and has heal on attack meant there was no margin for error. It was like a puzzle putting together the movement and attack order of my 4 units to actually see her away. Of course when I finally got it Dorothea did a crit finish with her attack, even though it wasn't needed. Thanks.
Without Divine Pulse I'd have just restarted the map and sent everyone over there for an easy steamroll. As it was I had to figure out the best way to still get through with non-optimum units, which was fun.
Overall the difficulty felt pitched really nicely for me playing through first time. I had to concentrate and make smart decisions, so it felt satisfying to win, like an actual tactical victory. There was always danger but there was always a way to mitigate it too. Can't imagine how much worse it would have been playing on Normal and steamrolling. Glad they added in a nightmare difficulty for the replayability, I don't think I'd bother playing again on Hard mode.
Might do a casual normal run through of one of the other houses just to see the story now. Are they wildly different than the Black Eagles route? Or is it mostly just a palette swap?
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