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Yeah I guess that was pretty obvious

The Good

13. Binding Blade Chapter 21 - The Binding Blade

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe6/guiafe6/ENG_cap21.htm

A map that is generally seen as a ridiculously huge battle against an absurdly large number of enemies, chapter 21 can also be surprisingly empty if you play it right. A look at that map shows a lot of specific zones that trigger reinforcements, and if you avoid ending a turn in them, you completely bypass those reinforcements ever showing up. I'm actually a little conflicted about this mechanic because while it's a lot of fun once you know about it, it's also totally hidden from the player, giving you no indication whatsoever that your movement is what triggered new enemies showing up (FE7 reuses this concept with enemies appearing on player phase, tipping you off to the fact that they showed up because of your positioning). Thankfully, this map doesn't really try to sucker punch you, with the reinforcements showing up far enough away to ensure you'll usually have some warning, so I'm okay with it here.

Anyone who has played Binding Blade knows its enemies are a cut above what the other GBA games have to offer, and the combat you do find yourself getting into here will not be easy, as you have to take on the infamous FE6 god mode wyvern riders/lords in pretty large numbers, among other nasty foes (the sages in particular are no joke). The first few turns tend to consist of pushing slightly forward only to have to fall back a bit as the wyvern swarms approach and you need to figure out how to handle them. Even the best combat units can't handle too many of these guys at once on enemy phase, but it's easy to get overwhelmed with too many enemies to kill on one player phase, so you need to strike a balance of softening up/killing as many as possible to cut down the player phase load, and you want to be quick about it because you'll have groups approaching you from three different angles, ready to sandwich you to death if you're too slow about finishing off any one of them.

Once you get through the first wave, you'll either be taking on the reinforcement swarms or bypassing them entirely with flight and the power of rescue. Either way can be fun, though I tend to prefer the latter. It's easier sure, but also more interesting to me. You can't bypass the last reinforcement zone without Warp though, and it's pretty hard to find anyone that can safely handle the boss area on their own. The knights have Horseslayers to threaten the usually invincible Perceval, the sage is nasty as always and Murdock is far from a pushover, being impossible to ORKO without crits even with an armorslayer. So even if you skip through much of the map, you can't completely trivialize the end without relying on RNG, which is fine by me.

Of course, talking about this map wouldn't be complete without discussing what makes it truly unique. There's a secret shop up in the mountains that sells every stat booster in the game, among other things, and secret shops in this game do not have limits on their inventory the way they do in some others. And by every stat booster, I mean it includes Boots. This is why you save up money in Binding Blade. This is why you don't promote units unnecessarily so you can sell more promotion items. This is why you deploy Merlinus on this map just to sell anything you don't need for the last few maps, all in the name of Boots. Over the course of the next few maps (thanks, not being able to use items in the preps menu...) you can build up to having an army of 10-14 move units. 14 move with canto is one of the most amazing things in the world, and honestly the Binding Blade endgame feels as if it was balanced around the idea of you having this kind of stuff, especially the dreadfully slow final chapter. Boots are love, Boots are life.

Up next: A great map with room for all kinds of units to find ways to contribute, even ones who usually struggle to do so, and a bit of a strange inversion of the usual order of enemy progression in Fire Emblem

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Meow!