Fire Emblem: Three Houses Will Get A Super-Hard Mode In Free Update

Superhard is the ‘normal’ mode for Fire Emblem games, right?

At least to my experience...

Lunatic won't be in base game then? Ah well, it's getting added later so that's fine.

Figured something like this would be the case. 10 bucks says they'll add another, even harder mode after that. There are some people who are demi-gods at this series.

Good to hear! With Shadows of Valentia I had hoped there would be a greater difficulty level added, but there never was.

By Super Hard do they mean it will include permadeath, or will that be in the regular hard mode?

TL;DR Lunatic isn't included in the game from the beginning, so we gotta wait till later on to get any challenge out of Fire Emblem Three Houses.

Sigh.

Guess I'll try to gimp myself while playing hard mode so I can get a bit of challenge out of it. Still eagerly awaiting the game though.

Never played FE before but I will pick this one up for sure. Plus my backlog on Switch should be cleared pretty soon

@sikthvash the "super hard" mode is Lunatic mode, which was present in for example Awakening and Fates.

Essentially it's a mode that should've been in from the start, that they've delayed (probably because it wasn't ready).

Permadeath isn't a mode, it's the standard.

@Heavyarms55 as long as they don't make that "even harder" mode something like Awakening's Lunatic+...

I've beaten Lunatic+ 3 times in total, and it's so heavily rng-based that I can't even call it difficult. Essentially I soft-reset until a few scenarios don't occur that usually make certain maps unbeatable without cheating or grinding. Lunatic mode is nice though.

@Tsurii Cool! Thanks! Don't mind a challenge, but not so keen on permadeath, despite it being a main feature in the older games.

@Blizzia Thanks for the clarification. Yeh, I wasn't sure if they would be hiding it away in a 'classic' mode or difficulty option or something. The past few games have included a casual mode which dispenses with the permadeath feature. Maybe I should go back to how it's meant to be played and try harder heh

@sikthvash I do wonder if the casual mode is still present. While I would never use it (as it breaks the ironclad rule that makes Fire Emblem what it is: People die when they are killed - **Thanks Shinji**), I can appreciate its existence for people who purely want to experience the story...

Though normal mode is always so ridiculously easy I can't see anybody fail it even with permadeath on.

I would highly encourage you to always play with permadeath on. It's daunting at first, and you may feel intimidated and get nervous and worried that you'll make mistakes and get your units killed... But that's the entire point. If you can just have them Leeroy Jenkins into the enemy army every map without a care in the world for their safety, what excitement is there even?

To me, the excitement behind permadeath is that I become so invested in my units and immerse myself so much into the game that I'm essentially the commander of an actual army. And not just any army, MY army. My people. My friends and family. Each loss is a terrible blow, and a grief-stricken moment.

That's what makes it so addictive and exciting to play.

For me, anyway.

@Blizzia can totally understand that. I think my skills and patience have diminished somewhat with age, and like a lot of gamers, including myself, we've become complacent with the knowledge of 'I can just try again'. I'm just not sure I can say goodbye to all my Waifus after my mistakes sobs

@sikthvash Haha. Well there's always either the solution of restarting the map (aka not losing anybody but trying the entire map again) or, in Three Houses, the option of rewinding a few turns to fix your mistake.

@Blizzia Oh woh, well that's me sorted then! Ha!

In the case that I do end up liking the game this is definitely nice.

@Rhaoulos
If you have never played FE before, then play Awakening first. 3 Houses is so complicated, it will be too overwhelming for you.

@Blizzia What was going through my mind was the fact that online connected users end up sharing areas on the map where they have been killed or went through troubles. Perhaps they can analyse this data to fine tune the harder difficulty.

@Blizzia Yes, casual mode is there.

@Nathan Ah. Well, good for the casuals.

@alpacatears That sounds like a fun idea actually

@nintendolie honestly, that would just confuse him. There are so many new and different elements to Three Houses that the best thing is just playing it.

Meh, I'm straight, but that's awesome for those that like it hot. I'm too old now to get my blood pressure up lol

Eh. New FE games don't get harder in the way that better tactics is necessary to beat each battle. Instead, they get harder in the way that you have to cook better meals and upgrade your castle and have better romances and write better poetry and calculate the position of the moon better to beat each battle.

@Blizzia By playing Awakening, you learn how to play the strategy battle game. With 3 Houses, the battle is now a mini-game within a Persona type RPG.

@nintendolie It's not though. The battle is still the main meat. The mini-game is the persona-esque stuff.

@Blizzia You will spend 80% of the time playing a teacher simulator, 20% doing actual battle.

@nintendolie Yeah no.

This is gonna be the longest 24 hours of my life.

The great thing is being able to skip the character tweaking sections if they aren't your thing and just skip to the battles. I love to micromanage my characters stats so I'll happily put a lot of hours into this. Others won't want to, so at least they can streamline it and get right into the fighting

Nicccce super hard mode!

Should've made it into DLC.

@Heavyarms55 Shadow Dragon had about 7 difficulties. Let's see if we can get 8 in 3H.

@Joeynator3000 Well a patch is effectively DLC. It doesn't really make any difference what word you use. Either way, I'm glad they're doing it, the game is pretty easy so far and it's a game that deserves to be replayed a lot.

This is becoming a silly trend and really as bad as the "if-you-want-to-be-challenged-you-first-need-to-beat-this-game-three-times"-difficulty-shenanigans of some games.

I dunno ... Spider-Man and Days Gone did this as well, and it kinda stung. I waited with Days Gone, because I (rightfully as it turned out) assumed it massively boost the game's survivalist appeal, but with Spider-Man I had already reached Platinum (1st evah! ^^) when the "Ultimate" difficulty patch dropped.

I'll probably replay it someday on Ultimate, but by then I will game know the game inside and out, which will make up for any increased difficulty anyways

I have no idea how impossible this hard mode must be considering I find normal mode impossibly hard in the FE series!

I'm one of those filthy casuals that likes all the "cheat" stuff they've been adding since Awakening....I royally suck at the series!

Please give us a super high frame rate mode instead! Allow us to lower the resolution and whatever graphical features needed to get a nice and steady 60fps, please!

@Matroska I'm more of a quality over quantity guy myself, but having more options doesn't inherently hurt anything.

There is a difference between DLC and a patch though. DLC is generally optional, additional content, a patch is usually fixing something or adding something the developers always intended on being there but for whatever reason, was missing.

@60frames-please I feel like you're that character from an anime who only has one joke.

I mean, 60FPS is nice, but this game is turn based, so it really doesn't matter.

@Heavyarms55 There should be a 60 frames per second anime. I'd watch that, especially if there was a character named 60fps, please.
Yeah, it matters whenever there is movement. So to me it matters in all videogames. Moving the cursor around in Advance Wars feels nice because it's running at 60fps. Same with Wargroove and Into The Breach. It definitely matters more in fighting, racing, and side scrolling games. I've been playing Samus Returns on 3DS and it's awesome, but the 30fps visuals really suck compared to Metroid or Super Metroid which both run at 60fps (with some slowdown in the case of Metroid).

@60frames-please Man I am just laughing right now. I really can't tell if you are actually this serious about the issue or just really loyal to your gimmick. But kudos to you.

Honestly yeah in a perfect world everything would run at 60FPS, but then someone would be asking for 90 or 120FPS instead. 30FPS used to be the gold standard for most games years ago.

There is no such thing as a demi-god at Fire Emblem. Lunatic mode is about random chance and already involves save skumming to death. there is no need for a harder mode because even the best players struggle to get past the first few levels quickly.

@Heavyarms55 It's okay to be in the mystery : )
Am I a dogmatic 60fps fanatic, or a prankster making fun of 60fps fanatics? I know the truth! It should be easy to see that really I'm just strongly in favor of 60fps. I post about it all the time because that's the main improvement I want to see in games.
Anyways, yeah, 30fps was sort of the gold standard when polygons caught on with PS1, Saturn, and N64. wipEout blew me away while running at 30fps. But before that the standard was 60fps. I just want to get back to that being the standard with 3D games included. I mean Wipeout Fusion floored me with it's delicious 60fps racing. I felt the same way about numerous games on Dreamcast. The PS3 and Xbox 360 were kind of a step backwards. Those systems weren't really powerful enough for 720p or 1080p. They could've made like every game for those systems run at 60fps if they had stuck with 480p TV sets. I better stop here before I write another dissertation on frame rate and the history of videogames!

@60frames-please Could be my eyes, I just really don't literally see there being much benefit to 60 FPS vs 30 FPS. But my eyes kinda suck so maybe there is a level of detail that I just can't see so I don't know what I am missing.

@Heavyarms55 I don't know why some people notice it, some don't, and some like me really notice it. I know people can learn to notice it. I've shown games to people and told them what was 60 and what was 30 and they could see it. I've always thought 60fps looks like magic.

I have no idea of how people would be playing this in super hard/lunatic mode...I’d go mad! I’m no FE veteran, but I have played Awakening, all three Fates games and Echoes (the first in Normal/Casual, the other four in Normal/Classic once I got the hang of it), and I’m finding Normal/Classic mode in Three Houses tough as nails - far tougher than the other games I have played (even Conquest, which I believe was generally agreed to be a rather difficult FE game).

Am I just super-rusty after two years without playing SRPGs, or is anyone else finding this game harder than its predecessors? 😛