Will I need a guide open for 90% of this game?

[Fiona Kaenbyou]

So I grabbed this game during the summer sale and I am thinking of finally getting around to it, but I'm intimidated by the sheer complexity. I tried playing it back in the GBA days and didn't make it past map 7-8 or something before getting stonewalled. I understand that the lower difficulties make things a bit more bearable on that front, but also that there's still a lot of arcane nonsense like secret items on unmarked tiles at certain times of day and a secret final battle that requires you to be playing on Hard mode anyway.

Basically, will I have a poor experience if I don't look up stuff like hidden item locations or which cards I should be prioritising? If so, is there any sort of community-preferred guide for this sort of thing? And regarding the hard-only bonus fight, does it have any plot significance or is it just fluff?

[Annonith]

For hard you pretty much have to have guide open and prepare for heavy savescumming. Every item matters as morale do not recover naturally or on level ups.
Hard mode only fight is a reference to other Dept. Heaven games particularly Riviera. As far as I understand it is non-cannon ending so feel free to skip.
Easy and normal are much more manageable with morale recovery. Also if you fail any mission and retry you generally keep the accumulated experience and levels so you can eventually bruteforce your way through, althou retrying even once blocks you from obtaining couple powerful items.
If you don't care about 100% - and you shouldn't as it is torture - play on a lower difficulty.

[Fiona Kaenbyou]

What do the difficulty levels actually change, specifically? I haven't been able to find any solid answers on this, other than that items have infinite uses on Easy mode.

[Annonith]

Don't know much about normal as I played mostly on Easy and Hard.
All I know is:
- Infinite items on easy, turn-limited items on Normal and Hard
- Morale recovery on level ups and when unit does not participate in combat on Easy. Nothing on Hard, the only way to recover morale is to waste items
This might be just a placebo effect but
- I think cards gain power quicker on Easy than on Hard
- better item drop chance on Easy
- lower chance for enemy unit to critical hit you on Easy (or it might me turned off completely)

[MODCA]

Originally posted by Annonith:

Don't know much about normal as I played mostly on Easy and Hard.
All I know is:
- Infinite items on easy, turn-limited items on Normal and Hard
- Morale recovery on level ups and when unit does not participate in combat on Easy. Nothing on Hard, the only way to recover morale is to waste items
This might be just a placebo effect but
- I think cards gain power quicker on Easy than on Hard
- better item drop chance on Easy
- lower chance for enemy unit to critical hit you on Easy (or it might me turned off completely)

Item drops do not happen at random. If the unit that kills a boss or enemy holding an item has the same or greater LUK than the opponent, the enemy will drop their item.

Anyway yeah, if you want to have an easier time, consult a guide for item locations. This game does have some pretty specific requirements to get a lot of the field items.

[Fiona Kaenbyou]

Are there any particular changes to the Steam version compared to the GBA/PSP releases, or am I okay with just using a guide for one of those versions? I saw mentions that the stat-up items got nerfed in PC (+two small stars instead of all the way to the next big star) so I wanted to double check that.

[Annonith]

There is a guide for Steam version on GameFAQs just use that one
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/930490-yggdra-union-well-never-fight-alone/faqs/46178

[K.O.]

If you aim to finish the game, that is pretty easy.

However, getting all items in 2-times-game-play is quite challenging.
A full walkthrough is suggested. Many guideline website in Japanese.

[Fiona Kaenbyou]

so I've made it to BF16 on normal without any resets and with just about all the quick bonuses on MVP, but for the life of me I have no clue how to deal with the start of this map. I had to rush the ending of BF15 because Aegina's super buff army was going to steamroll me between the High bonus and Revolution, but that just means Emilia gets a free round of Gravity Chaos guaranteed against Yggdra at the start of 16.

Stuff like this is where the game's difficulty really goes beyond 'hard' and feels legit unfair. I've been desperately avoiding taking losses as much as possible because I know morale recovery is really harsh. I tried giving up on a map I couldn't get MVP on to farm some XP/Card Power but the card power bonus gets cut in half every time you restart a map so it quickly became not worth the effort. Especially since I understand there's a bunch of strong items I only get if I get through the game without any retries.

It doesn't help that the guide I've been following seems to assume I'm playing a completionist Hard mode run and suggests things like picking fights with the buffed Baldus and Aegina armies in Chapter 3, which I absolutely do not have the skill to pull off in any way.

I'm half wondering if I should just restart the run on Easy mode. I'm too stressed about items running out to ever use them which obviously makes things harder, but it feels like this is a game where you need to know exactly what's coming if you want to stand a chance. I have zero idea how people managed to play this on GBA without save states because I'm getting destroyed.

EDIT: I ended up pushing through and accepting I'm gonna take some hits now and then. Just finished 17 thanks to Nietzsche landing a very funny critical on Gulcasa. :V

[MODCA]

BF 17 is infamous for being extremely punishing since it introduces the big bad guy. Ofc the game won't make things easy.
The key strategy to make things slightly less brutal is apply Curse with Gravity Chaos to as many units in a single union attack. Curse is a godsend against powerhouses like Gulcasa and Aegina.
Other strategies include having Durant fight on the bottom side of the map where there is road terrain. Equipping items like the Boss Bandana (if you got it) makes activating Gravity Chaos much easier than having to solely rely on Milanor.
None of this matters if you got through it anyway. Hope you don't give up. Game can be very punishing if you don't know what's ahead. And you're right. The gba version is even more brutal and unforgiving.

[Annonith]

Originally posted by Fiona Kaenbyou:

Are there any particular changes to the Steam version compared to the GBA/PSP releases

Oh yeah I forgot to mention - there are some accessibility options to make the game easier in this version BTW.
If you read the manual you can disable crits for both you and the enemy making battles bit more predictable. probably not worth it once you start to have units with tons of luck but it's there. Additionally you can set so the card bar will be full at the beginning of each round so you can fire your card effect immediately or use it for additional attack power.