There's no need to go that far, IIRC XCOM soldiers are generic and random while Fire Emblem characters are well defined and have actual stories, and they're in limited supply, so the death of a character is not only related to that character's features in terms of gameplay but there's also some emotional attachment involved. Still, FE:A classic mode is designed with the idea of permadeath as a real permanent death, even if the saving occurs only a the end of the battle.
None of them, in fact I said that to me it's okay to reset if a character to whom I'm particularly attached dies, but not every single time it happens. Not restarting is similar to miss a new recruit, you end up having a soldier in less in your army, but that's not big deal because there's plenty of them, and having to suffer permanent consequences is a good reminder to act more cautiously next time.
Still longer and more annoying than a simple "restart battle" option. It's a fact that it's not there, and the only rational consequence is that it should not be there.
All this frustration comes from the preconception that you should necessarily keep all the characters alive or you're doing it wrong, but that's just misguided.
You can use them all, sure. What's your point?
The fact that they added a casual mode after 11 titles and the fact that after 12 titles there's still no simple "restart battle" option seem to me clear and crystalline indicators that restarting a battle after the death of a character, whoever he/she is, is not the intended way to play the game.
Bad assumption. Developers include or don't include various features in all kinds of games. Not every omission and inclusion is due to gameplay design decision. Advance Wars (same developers) doesn't have a restart option either. What's their rationale there? In some instances, it might just boil down to their framework never having supported this option and it isn't worth the resources to implement it.
My point is that this:
is false. Each character has different base stats, class trees, and supports. You COULD use less than half, but you COULD use everyone and not fall behind in levels for the main campaign. The player is not locked into a fixed amount of the cast, making the rest useless.
It still does.
I never told you to play with death turned on. You're new to the series (probably). And you're playing it on hard / classic. That's crazy. You're crazy. Stop being crazy.
Advance Wars is a different game with no permadeath, the rationale is that winning a battle with heavy losses or winning it flawlessly doesn't have permanent consequences like in Fire Emblem, so in Advance Wars you're better off trying to still win the battle even if you lose some units in the first turns.
Of course you could, but to my experience using all the characters translates in an average level too low to proceed on the main campaign without grinding, or to save some possible recruits in time without being completely obliterated. I got from the game the idea that you should choose your fighting characters, and not alternate them between the battles: you can still train every character with all the battles outside the main story, but if you just want to concentrate on story battles it's very unlikely that you'll end up using all the available character consistently.
So you are arbitrarily breaking the arbitrary restriction that you are arguing for in this thread, then chastising those who break your arbitrary restriction in a different way (including the way the developers themselves break your arbitrary restriction)?
No, that's not my point: I stated it in my posts.
Gah ok I don't want you to give away the spoiler, but basically permadeath only applies to male characters? Well that's just sexist
None of that, I'm not creating any arbitrary restriction: actually, being forced to reset every time a character dies is an arbitrary restriction in a game that gives you the possibility of going on even if some characters are not there anymore (with story changing consequences). What I'm doing is suggesting OP that he should not be concerned with characters dying, he should go on, and not reset every time for each single character, and I'm saying that a game where all of this is possible is a game specifically designed that way, but you still get to reload your save like in every game (with a few exceptions) when you want to improve your last performance. Is it so hard to understand?
To tackle the actual OP's problem - still considering that a character's death is not always a reason to reset, just try to win the battle and move on - try to couple your high DEF characters with the low DEF ones, use the low DEF in primary position and after the first hit swap the positions, so they will be safe, then retreat and cure. Also, never ever give enemies the chance to do multiple attacks on a character that cannot tank, stay always at the limit of enemies range and retreat frequently to draw the enemies in advantageous positions.
Permadeath on, but easy or normal difficulty. Character die in a sense they are unusable for the rest of the game, but some are still in the story having "withdrawn" and are still alive for story purposes.
Absolutely agree, and glad to read that someone else is getting the point of Fire Emblem and the reason why it was designed that way.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your argument. First off, I'm not suggesting restarting every time a character dies; I never have. My argument is that permadeath is meaningful and additive to the gameplay experience even if you choose to restart after a character dies (or even if you do so every single time a character dies). The reasons for that belief have been covered at least a dozen times in this thread so there's no point in stating them again.
This is exactly it, amen.
I agree, I never wrote that restarting a battle when a character dies means playing the game wrong. In fact, I did it a lot of time, for example when Vaike died due to silly battle rules. Also, I agree that permadeath is still meaningful even if you restart every single time, but restarting every single time is not the way the game is designed: if it was, actually, the game should present you the option to restart the battle at every character's death. Considering all this, OP should try to win the battle even with a loss or two, he will eventually encounter plenty of characters to fulfill his army.
Agreed, it's part of what makes Fire Emblem special. Reminds me of all the times I had to do that to get through Radiant Dawn just on normal.
Excatly this. I've pulled off some crazy strategies based on some quite involved mental math to avoid any death and they're by far my best FE memories.
Too bad they axed canto and shoveAnd light magic
Right, there's no proof for your claim or for mine. So for you to make your assumption and present it as fact is disingenious. Furthermore, here's an interview where Kouhei Maeda. director of FE13 and a part of Intelligent Systems since FE6, states that he's always resets on deaths.
So I don't know why people (not only you) keep saying permadeath + no resets is how the devs intended the game to be played. If that was the case, there should be an autosave every time a character dies, don't you think?
I played the game on hard at the pace of 2-3 missions per day. My only "grinding" was the randoms, streetpasses, and -logues along the way. I had more than 3/4 of the entire cast at a level where a good combination of classes could beat any story map with some effort. Your anedoctal experience versus mine. Once again, you cannot make broad, sweeping statements like that and present it to people (especially newcomers to the series) as fact.
