>>716440484
Maybe ironman is mentally taxing for an actual hard difficulty with demanding thresholds and thin error margins like FE12 H4+ or Awakening L+, but people think ironmanning Conquest is hard (for the relevant example) and it just isn't.
I can't even remember the last time I've lost units in 10, 11, 12, 13 for instance. I didn't during the relay, either. So for chapters like that - entire dead zones - where I'm confident in my ability, what am I supposed to do to keep the challenge interesting? Just...play the game normally?

And then riskier chapters like 19, 20, and 26 can be risk-mitigated by practicing vanilla, overly cautious protocols that I'm already familiar with, it's still not interesting. It's commonly said that ironman is difficult on a blind run, but that isn't what a challenge run is. A challenge run is supposed to make the game challenging once you're already familiar with it. Ironman can only be hard if you don't know how to play. Guys like Zoran are not interested in answering the question "Can I beat the game without resetting?", because it's genuinely trivial to those in the know.

I will say ironman can be hard as an *addition* to a challenge. Like an ironman LTC is insane and almost contradictory and stupid. But there you go.