LogFAQs > #934657547

Looks like I'll start on this a little earlier than originally intended. Going to be alternating between the top twenty and bottom lists as I go along, but first up, some honourable mentions, starting with the good...Note: Some chapter titles may be a bit weird for the games without official localization, depends on which translation I'm finding since I don't remember the names of most chapters off the top of my head

Honourable Mentions: The Good

Binding Blade Chapter 11A - The Hero of the West

Chapter 11A has almost everything you could want. Big map with a million side objectives, always something going on, multiple new characters to recruit...You're encouraged to make good use of rescuing and your new dancer to visit all the houses before they get wrecked, recruit the new units and protect their buddies so you can get rewarded, and of course there's a lot of pretty durable enemies you need to figure out how to chew through along the way. This would normally make the top twenty, and probably pretty high up too...but unfortunately, it has some obnoxious random shit. Our wonderful new potential friends Klein and Thea/Tate have a random chance to not actually move on any given turn even though their allies will. This stops you from being able to talk to them without having to kill their mooks for safety, but those mooks have to survive the map to get rewards. And Echidna the Hero shows up and fights axe dudes with an axe and can, with bad luck, die before your turn even comes up. Having to replay the whole map or sacrifice a unit or promotion item because of this RNG crap is horrible and drags down an otherwise wonderful chapter.

Awakening Chapter 22 - An Ill Presage (boy "ill" looks bad capitalized...)

I'll admit this is a weird one, a lot of open space where you fight a handful of super strong enemies. The whole thing is a reference to Genealogy's final battle, and in fact gave that final group of enemies their now official localized name "Deadlords". I'm always up for Genealogy references, but really I like this map for one reason...the enemies don't suck! Awakening is very up and down in quality, and one big problem it has is that even on Lunatic, you spend huge chunks of the game essentially invincible because you can break the difficulty curve so hard past the early game. A map where you have to plan out how to take down a small number of very powerful enemies is a very refreshing change of pace. Latter half of the map is a bit of a letdown though.

Fire Emblem Fates Conquest Chapter 21 - Eternal Stairway

A neat gimmick in a game full of gimmicks (the entirety of Fates, not just Conquest), the stairway is a map where movement and player phase offense are basically all that matter as you rush up a mountain fighting through Faceless and their infinite reinforcements. On higher difficulties the enemies come with -breaker skills to protect them from specific weapon types, and you have to deal with the monstrously strong 1-5 range Stoneborn covering parts of the map, with your one saving grace being the dragon veins that let you freeze the enemies in place for a turn. Flight, dancing, Shelter, using pair up to transport lower move characters...all the movement shenanigans you can do are required to speed through this one. The one thing that holds it back is that it's probably a bit unfair for people who don't have many high move units leveled up, an issue I never encounter since I favour mounted classes.

(New) Mystery of the Emblem Chapter 20 - Dark Emperor

For the second time in any many games Marth has to fight his way through the palace of Archanea to liberate it, only this time it's the not actually final battle. While the map can look a tad empty at first, you have reinforcements coming from behind you soon enough. This is a neat use of the reinforcement mechanic, since they spawn far enough back that you won't get ambushed by them, but they still end up putting a lot of pressure on you and showing why the map has the empty stretches it does - you need the buffer to avoid getting caught between the cavalry swarm and the maps existing enemies, notably that random earth dragon (why is this guy here and why does no one care...?). And of course, at the end you get to give the Starsphere to a unit of your choice who can take on your former ally and totally the (not) final boss and (not) main villain, Emperor Hardin and listen to his killer boss theme. Lot of fun and on the higher difficulties of the remake, it's no joke.

Radiant Dawn 4-F-5 - Rebirth

The final battle of Radiant Dawn is a tough one to talk about without spoilers, both story-wise and in terms of gameplay, so this will be a short write up. It's a boss fight that functions unlike anything else in Fire Emblem, with the closest analogue being certain things in Three Houses. You need to make good use of your strongest combat units and maximize the abilities of your support units just to get at the real boss, then actually get the kill...or rather, set up the kill for a specific unit, which is kind of annoying. At the time it was made this was by far the most complex boss fight in the series, and it still holds up as a very interesting challenge.

Okay then, that's the honourable mention list! Those write ups ended up being waaaayyy longer than I was planning on, which may bode well or ill for the future...Up next we'll pivot away from the good to the bad with the dishonourable mentions, the maps that don't quite make the bottom ten list but deserve their fair share of scorn nonetheless.

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Meow!