Fire Emblem: Three Houses launched in July 2019 to critical acclaim, but one key criticism pervaded most people’s take on the game—even on Hard mode, Three Houses is far too easy. The difference between Normal and Hard is miniscule; the enemies on Hard have slightly better stats, so you have to be a bit more strategic—but that’s about it. On Normal, you can get away with leaving a weaker character vulnerable, forgetting about the arrival of reinforcements, or making any character into whatever class you desire—even if it doesn’t play to their strengths. Hard mode does make all this difficult to impossible, but in the grand scheme of the game, these are only slight differences.
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Switching from Normal to Hard requires minimal changes in gameplay. Once you adjust, you discover that playing on Hard is, frankly, not hard at all. This is coming from someone who struggled to complete Bravely Default 2 on Normal, so I can assure you that I am not some sort of strategic prodigy. Since most players agree that Three Houses’ complexity—or lack thereof—didn’t match up with what was advertised, Intelligent Systems and Nintendo brought us Maddening mode in an update just a couple months after the game’s launch.
And damn, did that shut us all up about the game being too easy.
While the difference between Normal and Hard is unremarkable, the contrast between Hard and Maddening is astronomical. One misstep and you can kiss at least one person on your team goodbye. Maddening renders your previous strategies useless, with enemies gaining new abilities as well as even higher stats—they can even walk straight through your army to target your weaker characters. Reinforcements can also move the same turn they appear on the map, bosses no longer remain stagnant, and significantly less experience points are available to earn throughout the game.
Maddening mode delivers exactly what it’s supposed to and more—it’s not just maddening, it’s infuriating. After struggling my way through the Black Eagles and Golden Deer routes, I discovered that the Blue Lions path is by far the most challenging. There are two reasons for this: a lack of mobility in the Reunion at Dawn chapter and the final boss, Hegemon Edelgard, in the Oath of the Dagger chapter. In Reunion at Dawn, you initially start with only Byleth and Dimitri on a map full of beefy assassins and archers. The Golden Deer route includes this map too, but Claude is riding a wyvern, giving him a wide range of movement that you can utilize strategically. While Byleth can be made into a Pegasus Knight for this map, Dimitri is restricted to the ground, rendering him unable to avoid most attacks.
In Oath of the Dagger, Hegemon Edelgard can hit people on your team for massive damage from all the way across the map, twice per turn. This makes trying to progress through the map horrendously difficult, as you must continuously heal two members of your party each turn, lest they die taking a second hit next time. Not to mention Hegemon Edelgard will target the weakest members of your team every turn, and she has a decent chance of one-shotting them via critical hit. In comparison to Rhea and Nemesis—the final bosses from the other two routes—Hegemon Edelgard brings an additional level of difficulty that requires far more strategy leading up to the final battle.
I’ve spent more than 1,000 hours playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and about half of them have been spent trying to finally finish the Blue Lions route on Maddening—mostly because I love Dimitri so damn much, but also because it’s so difficult. While I’ve ‘beaten’ Hegemon Edelgard before, I refuse to boast about my victory until she does not slaughter any character on my team. After all, does a battle really feel like a victory at the end if you’ve lost one of your closest friends? This is proving to be a more daunting task than I expected, but the high from silencing Hegemon Edelgard while protecting my beloved comrades will engulf all feelings of pride from defeating the final bosses in the other two routes.
Next: If There’s Going To Be A Fire Emblem Remake, It Should Be The Blazing Blade
