Fire Emblem: Casual or Classic

[pokedude729]

I'm just wondering, do you guys play Fire Emblem on Casual or Classic mode?


I'm a 'filthy casual' who plays, well, casual myself.

 

[okaimii]

If I played in classic mode, I wouldn't even get through half the game and lose all my units.

 

[Mars Adept]

Casual, I want to play one of the older games but the difficulty is preventing me from doing so.

Then again, I didn't even finish Awakening. lol

 

[Mega_Cabbage]

I played casual in FE: Awakening, but I started playing classic with FE: Path of Radiance, and I'm doing pretty well on it. I haven't gotten anyone killed yet after the first ten chapters.

 

[Saylor]

Casual. I definitely would not last long if I tried classic.

 

[Azura]

Classic, I'm just use to playing like that from the older games. If I lose a unit though, I restart the chapter.

 

[Damniel]

Classic, best way to play in my opinion.

 

[N e s s]

While casual isn't stressful, classic seems to be the traditional way of playing.

 

[JCnator]

I was never a fan of the Classic mode to begin with. The permadeath mechanic that supposedly set the franchise apart from many other turn-based strategy RPGs in terms of gameplay comes with too much stake for the less experienced players to deal with. I was aware of it since the arrival of the GBA installments, but never properly played them due of this newcomer-intimidating and seemingly-redundant feature.

Any chapter could become more difficult whenever a unit faints during a battle, as you no longer have access to whatever they had over the others. If that happened early in that map, it would hinder the odds of winning said chapter. And that's already enough to reconsider your strategies.

Permadeath not only applies the usual drawbacks of your typical turn-based SRPGs, but also render it unusable for the rest of the game. I believe that most Fire Emblem games have a finite amount of units, in which losing enough amount of them has a frightening potential to render that save file unwinnable as a result. Imagine you've spent many hours and all of sudden, you're unable to progress the story further at all because your army isn't strong enough. You'd literally have to start a game from the very beginning. Since these games can take a long while to beat, it can be a big deal breaker, unless if savestates can be used for games that only features Classic mode. I might even as well consider permadeath as a bad video game design in that regard.

The solution to avoid these drawbacks? Do a soft-reset whenever a unit dies, but that would completely trivialize the permadeath feature, as if it only causes a minor inconvenience of wasting many seconds or longer before finally loading the save file and get back to where you were. Casual mode eliminates all of the aforementioned issues, by removing the permadeath mechanic. The added benefit of saving anytime in a middle of chapter is a huge boon for players who couldn't sit through an entire chapter before they have to power off their gaming device. Therefore, I wouldn't mind if Classic mode no longer appears in subsequent games, but then there are Fire Emblem purists who would prove me that it should stay. Until Intelligent Systems do something more interesting with the permadeath mechanic (e.g. storyline being significantly affected after a death of an important character, adaptive difficulty balancing based on how your army is set up), I will always play Casual mode for games that support it and judiciously use savestates for those that don't whenever possible. There's no point for me to use Classic mode, as there's practically zero incentive to beat the game with this mode enabled.

 

[AkatsukiYoshi]

I always play Classic because it involves strategy to win without losing any units. I always restart a level if a unit dies though. You can just charge in without fear in casual, but I feel it defeats the purpose of this war RPG.

 

[Soigne]

I only play Casual, I wouldn't last very long if I played Classic. I suppose that speaks volumes on my strategy skills, but I'm just too big of a wimp to even consider losing a unit for good.

 

[DarkDesertFox]

I really just play for the story. I'm all for strategy and everything, but I'm not a die hard Fire Emblem fan to really bother trying classic mode. I haven't even beaten Awakening yet because I got too lazy. I don't understand the people who play classic that shut off their game if their unit dies. That kind of defeats the purpose of the mode...

 

[piichinu]

classic since my units never die anyway

 

[Shimmer]

Casual. I couldn't be bothered to try really hard.

 

[Tao]

Classic.

Casual mode kills the challenge. It's easy to just bum rush an entire map with little thought put into it if I know there's no consequence to losses. I guess it's fine for people who just want to see the story though.

Classic with soft resets on death defeats the purpose of playing classic. Just go casual.

 

[Tao]

Classic.

Casual mode kills the challenge. It's easy to just bum rush an entire map with little thought put into it if I know there's no consequence to losses, especially since you can take massive risks and 'sacrifice' units as part of a strategy which you couldn't do in the regular mode. I guess it's fine for people who just want to see the story though.

Classic with soft resets on death defeats the purpose of playing classic. Just go casual.

 

[bloomwaker]

Awakening was my first FE game, so I played Casual first to familiarize myself with the mechanics. That and I'm very impatient about consuming the story and wanted to bulldoze through the first time. I'll probably do the same with Fates.

All of my current files are Lunatic Classic, though, and I'll be starting a Lunatic+ file soon.

 

[Matt0106]

I started off with Casual the first time I played since Awakening was the first game in the series I played, but I literally started like two days ago on Hard-Classic, and even though I lost Vaike, who honestly, I didn't give a crap about, I really enjoy it, because unlike Casual, I walk into every chapter thinking "Who will I lose this time?", but that just makes it better (Plus I just grind for EXP using the Bonus Box teams and DON'T JUDGE ME xD). But really, I prefer Casual a bit more because I like to make sure I don't lose any good units of mine.

 

[bloomwaker]

I do the soft resets on Classic and no one can stop me.

It's my way of challenging myself to get better. I don't care if I'm near the end of the map, if I lose someone, it's time to start over and do better.

 

[Kapriznyy]

I play casual on my first playthrough, then classic on the rest. Or if it's a speed run or something (to get supports or whatever) I'll run casual on those. I like the challenge that classic presents, but sometimes it's just... absolute murder.