LogFAQs > #934714099

The Good

16. Awakening Chapter 21 - Five Gemstones

Sadly I can't find a good picture for this one, so I'll instead link to a Spanish guide that contains one (this sounds like the set up for a meme or something but this is legit a great site for information on specific chapters even if you can't read the language, and it does have English translations for many of the earlier games)

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe13/guia/capitulo-21.htm

So Five Gemstones is a map that I feel like I've seen a lot of people dislike. The enemies are actually pretty competent (this is where I feel Robin stops feeling totally invincible on Lunatic, though s/he's still obviously great), consisting of a lot of assassins and swordmasters, two of the hardest enemy types to both kill (due to their high speed making doubling out of reach for many units) and survive against (due to their high accuracy resulting in you getting hit a lot), berserkers who are easier to kill and less accurate but hit super hard, and of course, Sorcerors, including the always fun guys with Mire, Awakening's resident siege tome. Speaking of, Mire Sorcerors show up as reinforcements on the staircases outside the building where you can't hit them. Just to, you know, encourage you to hurry it up. In all honesty the Mire guys aren't that threatening because Mire can't be forged and late game enemies rely on forged weapons for power and accuracy, so they can't hurt your good units much, but they are dangerous to your weaker and/or support units.

If you play it straight forward, you have to advance through tough enemies and Mire while running from reinforcements and more Mire until you can make it down to kill the boss. But it seems like there's another way, doesn't it? Of course there is. With judicious use of the Rescue staff (making these infinitely buyable on the world map for cheap was an "interesting" decision), dancing and the almighty Galeforce, you can teleport a pair of 8 move Galeforce units through the wall south of the starting point and have them Galeforce boost their way right up to the boss, killing him on turn 1 (or 2 or 3 if you don't want to/can't quite pull off the super fast method). Honestly this is probably the most fun cheesy quick strategy in all of Fire Emblem. You have to be pretty careful about planning out exactly which units are going to move where to set it up, and there's just something so amusing about ignoring this entire big fancy ambush the enemy planned out by just crossing the entire length of the map instantly and winning before they can even do anything.

It's not a factor in my ranking of the map but I feel like pointing out anyway that I really like the scene that follows this chapter. I'm not too fond of Awakening's story in general, but this particular moment really works for me.

Up next: Positivity falls to the wayside as we visit a well regarded game in the series to find a map that loves to have things go wrong before you can even try to influence them

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Meow!