Tips for "first" playthrough

[Charliecane]

Yeah, Mystery is the one with the infamous arena. I don't really bother with arenas, so I can't say much about it.

[koolkdd]

arena abusing in fe3 just takes 2 long but its pretyy much olny safe way To train ranged/dancers/magi without risking thier lives( all of thier lives)

[hyde]

Oh great. I never like having underlevelled characters. I guess I'll just level them up a bit, or at least until they're not underlevelled anymore.

Yeah, I kind of like Zerg rushing over my opponents. Although I can appreciate my units not being of godlike strength as well...

[SlippyToasterTrooper_UK]

Yeah, Mystery is the one with the infamous arena. I don't really bother with arenas, so I can't say much about it.

FE1 has no escape and FE3 has unfair opponent match ups...Thief vs. Armour, non-promoted vs. Hero who strikes first and will probably critical...

The GBA FEs may cheat in stats (breaking stat caps) but at least the match ups are somewhat fair.

[FE3_Player]

What the heck are you people talking about? FE3 has an extremely easy arena to abuse (FEDS didn't even fix how easy it is to abuse).  I have the actual FE3 cart (so no savestates) and I maxed most characters' levels in one playthrough because it was so simple.  All you have to do is study the pattern of price numbers and keep retrying until you are sure there's a decent matchup ahead.

The Promoted Set of units in the arena has dragons, but even then you can avoid those matchups and fight Barbarians/Beserkers instead.

FE1 has no escape and FE3 has unfair opponent match ups...Thief vs. Armour, non-promoted vs. Hero who strikes first and will probably critical...

It's only unfair if you don't tweak the price you get.

arena abusing in fe3 just takes 2 long but its pretyy much olny safe way To train ranged/dancers/magi without risking thier lives( all of thier lives)

All of those can be trained without arena, just gotta be careful how you distribute EXP.  Ranged and Mages can kill Dragon Knights for EXP, and Feena shouldn't be fighting anyway and always dancing, despite having a sword (by the time she gets 10-12 Str, she'll be level 20 and still not worth using as a combat unit).

[hyde]

Eh, I thought I read it somewhere so I assumed the arena was monstrously difficult. Even so, a lot can be fixed through savestates.

*Goes off to train a lagging Navarre*

[FE3_Player]

There used to be a misconception that FE3 was a deviously hard game, but FE3 Book 1 is extremely easy since enemy stats never level up.

In contrast, Book 2 is much more balanced with better enemy stats and variety, and has clever traps and level design, making it an overall better game than Book 1 (including the story!), but it's nothing that someone that has beaten FE7 can't handle.  Book 2 was definitely what they had in mind when making FE3.

Simply put, Book 1 got nerfed.... quite a bit.  Book 2 more than makes up for it, though, and is the biggest reason to get FE3 (that, and the Book 1 does make FE3 total over 40 chapters of gameplay so it's quite a value).

[hyde]

Ah, I see. Well, the reason I decided to play Book 1 even though I had finished FEDS was because of the story. I'm very impatient so waiting until the fifth of december is too long for me and I'd rather read it for myself than to read it in a FAQ or something.

Anyway, I want to play every FE at least once, just to see what the original games were like. Next are Book 2, FE2 and finally FE1, for completion's sake.

[Cold Popcorn]

It's usually very obvious if the opponent will be a Hero, as their wager is way above everything else (1000+). This arena can be very difficult, but will be much easier if you keep the an eye on the wagers and don't rely on the exit button instead.

With Book 2 you have to be really careful to pick up certain items (the orb shards), otherwise you could end up not being able to finish the game. It's much harder than Book 1 in general, but it's probably because of the sheer abundance of Dragons. The early part of the game is pretty cheap too, with powerful Dragon Knights in only the second chapter, and appearing regularly until the actual Dragons show up.

[camus the dark knight]

Next are Book 2, FE2 and finally FE1, for completion's sake.

My only problem with FE2 and FE1 is how slow the pace is >.< Especially 1.

Both are still great games though once you get over that (but that is the reason I haven't played either that much compared to other FEs).

As for commenting on book 2. You will find yourself doing a lot of running earlier in the game, racing towards the end of each chapter, at least until the chapter with Maric.

[hyde]

Well, I can agree with your take on FE2 (haven't played FE1 at all). I tried playing it a year or two ago but it just went too darn slow. Also, the system differing on many points made playing the game in Japanese quite a bit difficult. The reason FE games are relatively easy to play in Japanese is because they're so similar to each other in terms of gameplay. FE2 doesn't really have this D: