Opinion on 3H's Maddening difficulty? and if you like it how do you play it?
I spent a lot of time playing this game. I would play it over and over again before Engage came out. But when I played Engage I realized how much I hated 3H's maddening design. I've played a lot of Engage Maddening, but my favorite game to replay again and again is Fates Conquest Lunatic. I love the tight map design and careful ennemy placement to make every encounter feel like a threat that you have the tools to walk out off alive if you play your cards properly. And I feel like 3H Maddening is not that at all. When I played it (I admit, relatively briefly and in ng+), I felt like it was just high stats and annoying skills. Not skills like in conquest where the skills make the ennemy formation feel like a puzzle, but skills that say "you're stronger now" like the breaker skills that cause me to have 60 hit chance max if I use the wrong weapon (just an example, I like the weapon triangle overall, but if you decided it wasn't in the game why can't I spam axe users if I want to).
Here's my problem: I'm starting to miss 3H, but whenever I want to start a new playthrough (in Hard), it feels like "walk forward and wait: the Game" because I play in ng+ to test fun builds... except I can't come up with 10 fun and off meta builds with each playthrough so I have some units with a proper build. And sometimes even the off meta builds are strong enough to walk forward and wait too (I tried war cleric Constance recently intending to use the magic fists but she can one round everything with training gauntlets+ and is tankier than most of my frontlane units).
So I'm considering Retrying Maddening, but I was wondering if some of you had advice on how to enjoy it. I don't want to suffer when it's not really my favorite experience gameplay-wise in the franchise, so I'll use ng+, but last time I tried it my units that I could get skills and weapon rank for were onerounding every ennemies on early maps and units that I had not used before were getting one rounded by every ennemy on the early maps, which felt pretty bad.
Those that enjoy Maddening ng+, can you tell me how you use your renown and what you like about it?