Play on normal first and save hard for a replay, so that you have room to move upwards.

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>>4010993
Thanks.

>>4010990
Hard is similar in difficulty to the rest of the series. It is fine for first playthrough. The Japanese version has an exclusive harder mode called Maniac. So treat Hard as normal.

Technically it's impossible to lose in normal mode since the game tells you the movement range of all enemies and predicts the outcome of battle between units. It's just a matter of how autistic you are checking everything before committing to your turn.
IIRC the only thing that happens in hard mode is the enemies are tougher and reinforcements suddenly appear in the map that you won't be able to know about unless you already played the game before.

I thought hard for us was normal for the japanes.

>>4010990
I remember Normal was decently challenging as a kid. Hard mode isn't ballbusting but it might be too unforgiving for your first FE game ever.
>>4011041
You are wrong.
The difficulty choices in FE9 are Easy, Normal and Difficult. Normal and Difficult are the Japanese Normal and Hard modes. Easy is a custom easymode difficulty. Maniac mode is dummied out.

>>4010990
if you wanna play hard SRPG/vst/, play Yggdra Union.
... and Rances.

>>4010990
normal is fine for a first FE, and 9 is a good intro. The difficulty other people have or don't have with the game doesn't mean much to someone just starting out who isn't already familiar with FE mechanics.
I'd recommend you turn battle animations off after the first few maps, they're incredibly slow

>>4011137
>Yggdra Union
the difficulty primarily comes from how obstuse and underexplained the systems are. meh.
>Rance
H-RPG? Meh.

>>4011149
you never tried.

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>>4011146
You weren't wrong. I just finished the pirate fight and it boooy it could've been much shorter without the animations. Don't get me wrong I think they're neat but got old fast.

>>4011354
Other FE games are a lot faster and show battle statistics during fights. Path of Radiance is just super slow for some reason.

>>4010990
Normal difficulty will put you to sleep

>>4011160
I have tried Yggdra.
Rance is similar to Brigandine.
Nothing special.

>>4010990
Assuming you are playing the English version then I recommend normal then play hard for a second playthrough.