Board 8 > Gauging interest in a Fire Emblem ranking topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

Many years ago I did a topic ranking my favourite and least favourite chapters in the series. I think this was pre-Awakening, for an idea of how long ago this was. New games have come out and my thoughts have changed a fair bit (a previous favourite is now a legitimate contender for the least favourite list, although I don't think it quite makes it) so perhaps it's time to do it again. Currently I have it in mind to do write ups for my top twenty favourite and top ten least favourite chapters/maps/battles in the series, but I'm open to suggestions for some other stuff to rank along the way if there's interest. Of course, if there's no interest in any of this then I'm just wasting my time!

I've played all but one game in the main series, that one being the very first game itself (though I have played Shadow Dragon...in fact, it was the first one I ever played), though I haven't played the Three Houses DLC route (or any DLC content for any game, really). Fire Emblem is one of my favourite franchises and there's a lot I love (and hate!) from every era of it, so you can expect a fair bit of variety here. Not just going to rank all Awakening and onward stuff good and all old stuff bad or, conversely, have all my favourites be Kaga-era and all my least favourites be modern or anything like that.

So, do people want to hear what I have to say? Because if so...I'll get around to narrowing down the latter half of this list <_< and hopefully start sometime tomorrow.

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I'll always read an FE-focused ranking.

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NBIceman posted...

I'll always read an FE-focused ranking.

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I too would read.

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Alright then. I think I'll get started sometime tonight

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there's a fire emblem ranking topic on the board that gets a fair amount of posts already. I'm sure at least a few people would be interested.

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Interested

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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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Fire Emblem is a series of video games

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it certainly is!

Sorry! I can only comment on Awakening, Fates, and RD there but the first two are too forgettable for me (the maps in general, nothing against your picks specifically) so I really only remember Radiant Dawn's finale which is... okay. Just wouldn't be making the highlight list for my RD map compilation IMO.

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Tag!
I looked up RD's final battle since I forgot what it was like and, yeah, it's a pretty interesting one. Though I still prefer maps with a lot of enemies.

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Yeah the Awakening one is probably not going to stand out hugely to most people, it clicks for me because of the way I view Awakening's difficulty and how it bucks the trend (not necessarily by being hard, but just for requiring a different approach than the usual) but for people who don't share my thoughts there it's probably unremarkable beyond the novelty of getting some cool A rank weapons (unless you're a Genealogy fan...which I also am so that helps)

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Panthera posted...

Binding Blade Chapter 11A - The Hero of the West

I love this chapter. It would definitely make my list of favorites.

Not a fan of RD final boss though -- even in just the finale I liked a couple of other bosses more.

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What's more fun than really good chapters? Really bad chapters! Wait...no, that's not quite right. That's the opposite of right. But it's what's coming up next. This stuff wasn't quite bottom ten material, but that doesn't mean I'm about to let it off the hook...

(Dis)honourable Mentions: The Bad

Thracia 776 Chapter 12 - The Thieves of Dakia

A map consisting almost entirely of movement reducing forest tiles, mixed with Thracia fog of war which prevents you from seeing the actual terrain? Already a recipe for tedium. A recruitable boss who will use his Sleep staff on you...or not...based entirely on random chance instead of any sort of, I don't know, conscious pattern? Cool, no need to bother with map design, it's not important, just randomize it. We'll get that Sleep staff at full uses or broken based on RNG, it's fine. But the real problem is that the seize point is on the other side of a broken bridge that requires you to either bring a thief with a lockpick or steal/capture the bridge key from a single enemy on the map. On a fog of war map where you can't see this until you get close enough to it. Where enemies can run out of the fog and suicide. Like the guy with the key. Miss the key and didn't bring a thief? Warp or your pegasus knight are the only ways to complete the map. Didn't bring them? Tough luck. This map is literally intentionally designed to bait you into a soft lock. How fun!

Three Houses - Foreign Land and Sky

Breaking my usual "Game Chapter - Title" format with its cruel lack of a number, we have the paralogue unlocked by having both Petra and Bernadetta in your army post-timeskip. This map generally seems pretty good at first, a little on the simple side maybe but certainly not a problem. The problem is that when you come close to your objective of getting Petra to the bottom right corner of the map, a whole army of enemies (including some rather strong characters, depending on the route) will show up in various places and the objective completely changes. Meaning if Petra was the last unit you moved that turn, you get hit with one of the nastiest reinforcement ambush spawn gimmicks in the series. Not cool, game. Not cool. You're not going to get me to praise a game for lying to the player in this manner very often, if you ever will. It's a shame because this map is otherwise fairly fun besides the inevitable crawl through forests to kill the last few enemies.

Fire Emblem Fates Conquest Chapter 19 - Kitsune Lair

Another map that's almost good, Kitsune Lair instead ruins itself with one of the worst gimmicks in Fates, and Fates does not lack for bad gimmicks. That being, of course, that on any given turn some of the kitsunes become immune to being attacked on player phase but are still free to move on enemy phase. I don't know if there's a pattern to it or not, I assume there probably is but I've never cared to figure it out. Just the concept annoys me too much to want to think about. It's such horribly lazy map design. Anything can be "hard" when you just have the enemies be arbitrarily invincible. To top it off the kitsunes have massive avoid, to the point that you're relying on some of the sketchiest hit rates you've ever been forced to deal with against non-boss enemies in the series. I'm glad you agree with me that Binding Blade is a good game there Conquest, but just because it was No Hit Emblem doesn't mean you need to be too.

Path of Radiance Chapter 23 - The Great Bridge/Radiant Dawn 3-11 - Just Cause

A two for one deal on today! For the low, low price of reading this topic, you too can fall in invisible holes everywhere you step! Who doesn't want to be punished for not using a guide to know where not to step? Sure, some of the traps on Pitfall Bridge are obvious once you're aware of the gimmick, but others are just kind of randomly strewn about. It's even worse in Radiant Dawn where falling in a hole paralyzes you until the next player phase, leaving you defenseless for enemy phase. Path of Radiance didn't pull that kind of shit, but it did come up with this whole concept in the first place and that's just as bad. This isn't the last time we'll be seeing multiple related maps thrown into one entry in this topic, fyi. In fact, it might not even be the last time we see invisible tiles that make sad times happen when you step on them...

Awakening Chapter 23 - Invisible Ties

This entry is on one chapter, but it's really a summary of a lot of the worst maps in Awakening. A big, boring empty room where you fight a bunch of dudes who run at you periodically, with nothing to set it apart. I know, I know, they probably want it to be carried by the story of your fight with Validar or something, but not only do chapters need to stand on their own in gameplay, but the story is...well, I liked Validar more when he was Manfroy, and Manfroy was like, the worst major villain of his own story. In the end, this is just a bland map with nothing interesting about it, kind of like a lot of Awakening maps. The game has some good maps to be sure, and we may very well see it appear on the Good List at some point, but an awful lot of the time it just has big open spaces where there's no strategy beyond "move invincible unit forward, end turn".

And with that, the almosts have left the building and we're going to be ready to get to the real lists soon! I'm thinking I'll do number 20 on the good list first, then number 10 on the bad list, then do two good, one bad, alternating until the end. That should end up with the number 1 spot on both lists coming up back to back.

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Panthera posted...

Three Houses - Foreign Land and Sky

Breaking my usual "Game Chapter - Title" format with its cruel lack of a number, we have the paralogue unlocked by having both Petra and Bernadetta in your army post-timeskip. This map generally seems pretty good at first, a little on the simple side maybe but certainly not a problem. The problem is that when you come close to your objective of getting Petra to the bottom right corner of the map, a whole army of enemies (including some rather strong characters, depending on the route) will show up in various places and the objective completely changes. Meaning if Petra was the last unit you moved that turn, you get hit with one of the nastiest reinforcement ambush spawn gimmicks in the series. Not cool, game. Not cool. You're not going to get me to praise a game for lying to the player in this manner very often, if you ever will. It's a shame because this map is otherwise fairly fun besides the inevitable crawl through forests to kill the last few enemies.

I'm okay with this but only because Divine Pulse is a thing. That would have been Grade A BS if you couldn't rewind time but you can so yeah it's a pain and I suppose depending on how you played it you might have to go back a fair bit to avoid it but it was okay IMO!

lol pitfalls. still think it's funny that you can cheese them by parking a flying unit on a pitfall tile and then having your ground units move through them since the pitfall can't trigger that way.

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I generally don't let the existence of Divine Pulse or the Turnwheel influence how much I like a map. If something is only tolerable because I can rewind to not actually deal with it, it's not a good idea.

Yeah if there's one redeeming feature of the pitfall bridge it's that you can do that trick with flying units. Or shove enemies into them. That's cool too. God I love Shove.

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Kitsune Lair too low

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At least the worst of Kitsune Lair is over pretty quickly, then it's just straightforward, dull clean up. Which isn't great mind you but compared to some of the shitters in the bottom ten it's something.

Some random trivia about the lists (all of these ignore the honourable mentions)

• There are three games represented on the bottom ten list that do not also show up on the top twenty list.
• There are six games represented on the top twenty list that do not also show up on the bottom ten list. Only one of them is in my top three favourite games in the series, surprisingly.
• Only one game is not represented at all (this actually includes the honourable mention)
• The most appearances on both lists combined by any given game is four, by three games
• Four games appear only once between the two lists. Two on the good list, two on the bad.

Not sure if that's of interest to anyone (or if I counted right...I think I did but I'm saying this now in case anyone actually fact checks me later...and if anyone does, what are you doing with your life man) but hey, why not.

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Panthera posted...

I liked Validar more when he was Manfroy, and Manfroy was like, the worst major villain of his own story.

Possibly a hot take but Manfroy was also better when he was Gharnef!

I have no idea which Awakening chapter Invisible Ties is, which is telling for a game I've played twice. But yeah Awakening as a whole really deserves to be on the Worst Maps list. It has some good ones but man did they love just giving you open fields to mash stat blocks together in.

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Kenri posted...

Possibly a hot take but Manfroy was also better when he was Gharnef!

I don't know if this is a hot take or not, I don't really see a lot of people who genuinely like Manfroy. I'm probably a bigger fan of him than most people I've seen give opinions, and my opinion of him is neutral at best. I think Gharnef actually skates by without enough scrutiny. He doesn't really have a goal or motive beyond "is the villain" and his plans don't really add up (he's literally invincible but apparently wanted Marth to kill off potential threats to him instead of doing it himself? He holds onto Falchion supposedly for leverage against Medeus but then tries to kill Marth, AKA the only person that can actually use Falchion?). The games he appears in are light enough on story for it to not really matter much but he really feels more like a plot device that just kind of does whatever generic evil deed is necessary for any given scene to work than an actual character.

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He holds onto Falchion supposedly for leverage against Medeus but then tries to kill Marth, AKA the only person that can actually use Falchion?

In his defense, Gharnef has Elice imprisoned and knows where to find Aum. He does not need to keep Marth alive in order to maintain him as a potential threat.

Edit: For the record I'm pretty sure that the Kitsune Lair pattern is just "enemies alternate every turn".
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MalcolmMasher posted...

He holds onto Falchion supposedly for leverage against Medeus but then tries to kill Marth, AKA the only person that can actually use Falchion?

In his defense, Gharnef has Elice imprisoned and knows where to find Aum. He does not need to keep Marth alive in order to maintain him as a potential threat.

I mean, maybe, but killing Marth and then reviving him after directly explaining his plans to the guy seems a rather dubious strategy, especially considering this is a guy established in universe to have some sort of weirdo hypnosis mind control powers that pop up for one chapter.

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Panthera posted...

he's literally invincible but apparently wanted Marth to kill off potential threats to him instead of doing it himself?

To be fair in New Mystery he gets completely embarrassed by Michalis so maybe the Marth plan was justified.

Panthera posted...

The games he appears in are light enough on story for it to not really matter much but he really feels more like a plot device that just kind of does whatever generic evil deed is necessary for any given scene to work than an actual character.

100% true but I give him a lot of credit for being an intimidating villain at least. The rest of the scheming evil wizards that followed just come off as cowardly little snakes that are harder to track down than to kill. Gharnef is actually a really big threat and him showing up before you have Starlight is a definite "oh shit" moment.

And then the thing I spoilered tagged happens and it takes some of that respect away, but oh well.

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I'll never quite get that bit you spoiled. Dude. Gharnef. You have Imhulu. You are LITERALLY INVINCIBLE. How do you not just bitchslap anyone that looks at you funny? I can understand Medeus being a threat, it takes the entire Fire Emblem to seal the Earth Dragons and even that doesn't outright banish Medeus on its own, and Imhulu is only made from the Darksphere which is 1/5th of the Fire Emblem, so Medeus being too much for Imhulu makes sense, but why did you ever need to worry about Camus and Michalis? Shouldn't you have been, I don't know, trying to kill off Merric or Linde or Wendell or something...?

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It just became a new day, so what better way to start it than to rank something good?

The Good Stuff

20. Sacred Stones Chapter 19 - Last Hope

Starting off the list with a bit of an odd choice. I normally find defense maps to be very hit and miss because while in theory they can be dramatic and exciting and all, in practice they often devolve into just sitting around being bored while nothing happens (a certain defense chapter I used to love nearly made the dishonourable mentions for this very reason...). I think this one pulls it off nicely for a few reasons though, most notably the fact that you don't actually have to defend much if you don't want to.

Last Hope is a fog of war map, which usually is not a good thing in my mind, but it appears late enough in the game for you to have plenty of durable units that don't need to fear the darkness, and plenty of staff users to Torch things up to help you see, so it ends up working out. You can't see everything coming long in advance, but you can usually see the things that you need to worry about on any given turn, making the darkness more of a tension building atmospheric touch than the nuisance it usually is. You've got a ton of treasure chests to potentially collect as well, encouraging you to spread out the rather huge number of units you're allowed to deploy here. I believe there's also some brave weapons droppable by enemies here, though I'm not sure because I usually don't stick around long on this map.

Oh, right. This Defend/Survive map? Yeah it ends if you kill the boss. Riev is...uh...some generic bad guy? I've played this game like five times and honestly I still don't know why he's evil beyond that he's angry he got excommunicated for being evil or something like that. Whatever. Point is, he's hanging out just outside the southern doors and if you cut a path through the enemies or use the always potent Warp staff, you can take him out and bring a swift end to the map. Sounds anti-climatic, but honestly I love stuff like this as long as it's not totally trivial (like Shadow Dragon/Thracia infinite range Warp letting you warp skip on turn 1 with zero effort). You can stick around and play out the big epic siege, and it's pretty fun because unlike most Sacred Stones maps, the enemies here are actually strong enough to put up a fight, and you do have dudes coming at you from every angle. Or you can just peace out as soon as you've got what you need from the chests.

Speaking of the chests, it's pretty funny to have a bunch of them (and a secret shop!) in one of the absolute last chapters of the game. I imagine they probably tempt a lot of people into going for them no matter what, but in practice I don't find you get anything necessary from them. Even the Speedwing is largely superfluous at a time when your team is already strong enough for endgame. It's always fun to collect treasure, sure, but sometimes it's not even needed, and this map I think is really the one that made me start thinking of collecting items in terms of whether I really want them instead of just "it exists, must have!" like I used to. When you decide you're going to just warp-kill Riev within the first three turns, you have no choice but to ditch some stuff. I think the fact that this is the first map I ever really tried to approach from a standpoint of "how can I complete this as quickly as possible while grabbing only stuff that doesn't cost me?" might be part of why I like it so much. I don't always play fast by any means, nor am I super good at it or anything like that, but I think learning to start appreciating faster strategies has been important to my ability to enjoy Fire Emblem as much as I do.

All in all, a pretty fun map that you can play slow or fast and have it be good either way.

Up next: We start off the bad side of the list with a map from maybe my favourite game in the series that always makes me say "God damn can I get through this shit already?!"

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The problem with most defend maps is that normally they are really easy to either end immediately like this one or Elincia's Gambit, or you end up doing a load of nothing for 10 turns like in many FE7 maps
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Good choice on Last Hope. I always have fun trying to cut a swathe through the flood of enemies to Riev on the last couple turns.

Panthera posted...

Up next: We start off the bad side of the list with a map from maybe my favourite game in the series that always makes me say "God damn can I get through this shit already?!"

Gotta be FE4 Spirit Forest.

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Hmm I don't know how hard would it be, but adding a picture of the ranked map might be a nice addition to jog up our memories.

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Kenri posted...

Panthera posted...

Up next: We start off the bad side of the list with a map from maybe my favourite game in the series that always makes me say "God damn can I get through this s*** already?!"

Gotta be FE4 Spirit Forest.

Yeah, either that or Crisis in Agustria.
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Hbthebattle posted...

The problem with most defend maps is that normally they are really easy to either end immediately like this one or Elincia's Gambit, or you end up doing a load of nothing for 10 turns like in many FE7 maps

This is a message from Lord Nergal. "When you kill me, you'll be very bored". This is a message from Lord Nergal. "When you kill me, you'll be very bored". This is a message from Lord Nergal...

Raka_Putra posted...

Hmm I don't know how hard would it be, but adding a picture of the ranked map might be a nice addition to jog up our memories.

You know I actually planned on this, then the first picture of Last Hope I tried didn't upload to GameFAQs properly so I gave up <_< I guess I will make an effort to actually get it right from now on! At the very least I can probably find a link even if GameFAQs doesn't want to embed it for whatever reason.

Speaking of

https://ibb.co/PcFXdhc

Mewtwo59 posted...

Yeah, either that or Crisis in Agustria.

I've always found the Great Augustrian Backtracking to be less of a slog than most people seem to.

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Anyway, time to talk the bad stuff. I'm sure this entry will come as a complete and utter surprise to everyone. No one could have ever figured out my amazingly cryptic (yet perfectly sensible) hint.

<_<

The Bad

10. Genealogy Chapter 1 - Girl of the Spirit Forest

https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Chapter_1.png

After a prologue that is the best first chapter in the series, Genealogy decides to change things up and throw its worst chapter at you. Girl of the Spirit Forest is actually decent at first, it's too big for its own good but that's Genealogy in a nutshell and there's always stuff to do for the first two castles. If it stayed like that it would be a perfectly adequate map. Unfortunately, it doesn't, and the last third is where things get ugly.

The titular spirit forest is...well, look at the map (after you seize the second castle the impenetrable thickets open up a path for you to pass through, so you don't have to walk through those tiles, which is good because you can't). A huge stretch of forest that reduces the vast majority of your army to a mere 2 tiles of movement, with only a few lucky units managing to get 3 instead. And you have to actually fight and pull off a potentially tricky recruitment during this! The axe guys who come after you here are pretty easy to deal with, but future ally Jamke is lethal to ever step in range of, what with his great offensive stats, Adept, Accost and Killer Bow. Luckily he won't attack Adean, but he has an extra tile of movement compared to her and the regular guys won't be so kind, so you often find yourself having to back off slightly just to talk to him safely. Because backing up so there's even more moving through the forest to do is totally fun.

The worst of it is over once you finally, finally, FINALLY crawl through the spirit forest, but even then the final army of this chapter can be a bit frustrating. You once again have a million forest tiles to contend with, though at least this time you can go around them, and you're fighting almost exclusively bow users that few of your units can counter effectively. Ranged attacker swarms are tricky early in Genealogy because you don't really have many tools to fight them yet, so this can turn into yet another slog if you're not very careful about throwing your new buddy Jamke into the fray in a way that maximizes the number of his own people that he can kill...and you get lucky with all his skills actually going off, of course.

This map is also where our hero Sigurd meets his future wife Deirdre, beginning the greatest romance story in all history with an amazingly well written series of conversations across this map and yeah you knew I was just fucking with you here. I don't really factor story aspects into rating chapters much unless it's something that makes the map better, but it's nice to point out that this already tedious forest slows you down even more to watch a love story that's basically a Fates/Awakening S rank conversation that doesn't even have the C-A supports backing it up. And considering I'm not a big fan of those S rank conversations overall...yeah

Even musically I've always found chapter 1 somewhat underwhelming. It's map theme is decent, but doesn't match up to some of the other killer tracks in the game. Which might be controversial since I think people tend to like this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3-33JROIn4

On the plus side it does mark the last time we get to hear the Verdane army theme AKA the best enemy phase theme in Fire Emblem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWOY1VJc6A4

And that's about it. A map that starts off well enough to avoid being any lower on this list, but devolve into too much tedium to stay off it entirely. Genealogy is known for dragging its feet at times, but what sets this one apart to me is that there's just nothing else going on. Usually you at least have units on their way to multiple places or some people to arena with or conversations to get or something. This time, besides using Warp/Return a couple times to send the new recruits to the arena once you're finished and that one bizarrely cryptic event with Lex, there's just flat out nothing happening.

UP NEXT: We return to the good side of things with...another defend map...wait, no, not quite

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Panthera posted...

UP NEXT: We return to the good side of things with...another defend map...wait, no, not quite

Could be 3H Chapter 12 (non-Crimson Flower route) but tbqh it's a way more hype map on Crimson Flower.

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There's a few maps in the series that could be described that way to be honest. In fact, I could reuse that exact preview later on if I'm lazy!

To address the spoiler part there...I've only played the Crimson Flower version once, and not on Maddening since I actually haven't played since before Maddening came out, but I found that it ended up feeling like it had a fair bit of dead space at the end where I was just walking up to Rhea with little happening. I liked it, but not as much as the other version, or chapter 14

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Time to talk good stuff for a bit! And I may need to start making my previews a little harder to guess...

This post is going to inevitably spoil some Three Houses stuff. I'll try to minimize it and spoiler tag the big stuff, but it's unavoidable to an extent unless I make this entire post an ugly black blob, so consider yourself warned.

The Good

19. Three Houses Chapter 12 - To War

Unfortunately but unsurprisingly I can't find a good picture of the full map here, so...yeah. It's the last one before the timeskip. If you've played Three Houses, you know it. Unless you've only played Crimson Flower in which case you did this one in reverse, but I don't like that version quite as much (see above post)

A large scale "defense" map whose objective is actually to kill the boss, so you can't just sit around at the start. You'll have to push forward, which is good since that's a lot more fun anyway. To War does a really good job of giving you the sense that you're fighting an epic battle with all the NPC allies who are hanging around the start helping fight the initial wave of enemies. They're capable enough to contribute a little and the distraction they provide to enemies is very helpful, but they don't come close to getting the job done on their own. They're not FE7 Pent by any means. Just the right balance between NPCs being helpful and NPCs not undermining your own contributions to the map.

The layout of the map has a bunch of gaps in the walls, including some breakable ones, that create three main paths you can go down on your way to the boss. You're expected to go down the outside paths to cut off enemy reinforcements, which is kind of a neat mechanic to make official (you seize a certain point to stop them, unlike the usual FE "stand in square X to block enemy Y from spawning" shenanigans), although that right hand path can be a real bitch if you don't have an answer to your old pal critical hit machine...er, I mean Death Knight. While you're working on that with some units you can also push your way through the middle, which is easier said than done when it has a bunch of pegasus knights in your way in the game that decided enemy pegasus knights needed to be injected with steroids.

The big appeal of this map is definitely the overall sense of drama it conveys (even if you somehow missed the marketing revealing the timeskip, you'll still get the feeling this is a big turning point in the story) but the gameplay lives up to the hype fairly well by giving you a lot of paths and enemies to deal with along the way. Three Houses map design can be a little bland at times, but this one they hit right out of the park. It gets a shorter write up than what most chapters in this topic will get not because of a lack of interest but because I'm less familiar with it than most of the others so it's a bit harder to talk about at length. Great chapter and a great way to end the first half of the game.

Up next: The good times continue with a map not unlike one that has already been mentioned somewhere in this topic

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Tag

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The trend of "defend" maps continues, apparently. I didn't realize this was a thing when I actually made the list.

The Good

18. Fire Emblem (Blazing Sword) Chapter 21E/22H - Kinship's Bond

https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/21.png

Much like Last Hope, we find ourselves in a defense map that can be ended early by killing the boss. And in this case you're very heavily encouraged to do it in order to get the droppable Knight's Crest he holds. Kinship's Bond has quite a bit to do beyond just what's obvious from a picture of the map. The treasure chests get rushed quickly by enemy thieves, there are two recruitable characters on this map in Heath and Rath that you need to talk to (in addition to Isadora who joins at the start), and there's even a secret shop hidden away in the upper left for people who are brilliant experts at Fire Emblem and can thus intuitively deduce that that peculiar looking tile is in fact your source of Physic and Barrier staffs despite there being no reason for it to be the case. By which I mean look it up somewhere.

The enemy layout might be a bit different between Eliwood mode and Hector mode, but I don't recall since it's been an eternity since I played anything other than Hector Hard Mode so I'll be sticking to what I know from there. You've got a clusterfuck of everything in the world coming up the middle at you early on, wyverns and cavaliers on the left, wyverns and fighters on the right, and the path to random boss dude Eubans in the bottom right is covered by ballistas as well. There's also a million reinforcements on this map to keep up a pretty steady stream of enemies for you to fight. This map is also memorable for having a kind of odd gimmick where most of the physical units use -reaver weapons, inverting and doubling the weapon triangle. This can actually make it a lot easier because if you use the right weapon type, you get absurd bonuses (+2 damage dealt, +30 hit/avoid, -2 damage received? Yeesh), but it's certainly a change of pace and there's just enough enemy types mixed in to occasionally bait you into screwing it up.

So if you read the write up on Last Hope, you can probably figure out why I like this one. "Defend" map with a bunch of side objectives that can be treated as a defensive battle or a rush to the boss to end it quickly. Except in this case the boss kill is a fair bit more complicated than "walk left for two or three turns, Warp, win" which makes it more interesting. Trying to take Eubans out quick isn't always easy with how many dudes he has covering him, not to mention he's a Paladin who actually moves around. While you can use this to bait him earlier, it also means you have to watch out for him catching you off guard with his huge attack range. Makes for a very fun map overall.

Up next: We return to the bad side of things with a map that has less respect for your time than even the worst of Genealogy...and given how tedious the spirit forest is, that's saying something

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Snow shoveling map from Revelation?
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Hbthebattle posted...

Snow shoveling map from Revelation?

That map is an absolute atrocity and also not up next on this list

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The Bad

9. (New) Mystery of the Emblem Chapter 3 - Abducted Princess

https://ibb.co/jrt1g02

Before there was the spirit forest, there was the endless, eternal march around a mountain, undertaken by Marth and anyone that felt like following him. This map starts off reasonably fun, with some dracoknights to the north you need to clear out, and the overpowered Palla showing up near the top of the map to fight some random cavalier reinforcements and a thief that wants to destroy the village where you recruit Julian. There's also the dracoknights on the mountain and their very peculiar linked AI to deal with. Unfortunately, after you take care of that, you probably still have like eight more turns of Marth walking around.

If you haven't played Marths games or their remakes, you might not know this, but Marth is actually a huge drama queen and he gets mad when people other than him visit villages, so everyone coddles him by refusing to do it. Well, he's the only unit who can visit villages in these games. The explanation is purely conjecture on my part. And you need to get up to the top right to recruit Julian, your first thief. Doesn't look so bad, right? After all the first village at the start has a bridge key you can use to just cut through the middle with no issue. And sometimes that is indeed the case...but not if you want full recruitment. Because the always useless and awful Matthis is hanging out in the middle and he will inevitably suicide into you if you let him, and the only way to recruit him is, of course, to talk to him with Julian. So if you want full recruitment, you have to walk alllllll the way around.

And while you, you get to...do nothing. Seriously. Even those dracoknights on the mountain won't actually bother you unless you go out of your way to fight them due to their AI only going aggressive when you get close enough or visit the armory near the boss. You do want to fight them of course because one drops a Master Seal, but that won't take very long, especially not in the original (in the remake on Lunatic difficulty it's a bit more of an undertaking, much like everything on Lunatic). So hooray, you get one or two turns where one or two units get to fight, and then it's back to Marth just marching along all along the outskirts of the map.

This is unbelievably tedious, and the fact that they included the bridge at all just makes it worse. It's like they knew how idiotic this map was, gave you the tools to skip it, then punished you for doing it by denying you full recruitment (even though Matthis has a Javelin he'll randomly attack at 1 range sometimes and get himself killed. This moron just can't do anything right). It doesn't even have the excuse Genealogy has that lets it partially escape criticism on this front of trying to make it feel like you're traveling huge distances across entire countries. You're just walking around a lake in a game where maps usually don't feel particularly "huge" in scope. I have a hard time believing this chapter was even intended to be a worthwhile experience.

Up next: Back to good times with a map that can be finished in an instant, or one of the most brutal challenges in the entire series

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Panthera posted...

Up next: Back to good times with a map that can be finished in an instant, or one of the most brutal challenges in the entire series

this could be a lot of maps given warp shenanigans

I know Thracia is supposed to have some mean maps but I've never played it but my guess down for a map there. Don't know if I'd consider any of the games I've played (FE7-onwards; minus Shadow Dragon) to really have a map that would qualify.

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I never see anything from Genealogy and wow. That map looks huge.

Panthera posted...

there's just enough enemy types mixed in to occasionally bait you into screwing it up.

Ah, I remember getting screwed before I noticed what's up with them. Fun times.

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xp1337 posted...

this could be a lot of maps given warp shenanigans

I know Thracia is supposed to have some mean maps but I've never played it but my guess down for a map there. Don't know if I'd consider any of the games I've played (FE7-onwards; minus Shadow Dragon) to really have a map that would qualify.

Thracia's difficulty is really overrated in my mind. It can be super stupid for blind players, but once you know the things the entire challenge is balanced around you knowing, it's only got a few tough spots. Most of the maps you want to warp skip in it are more tedious than hard (the exception being chapter 22 which is just an RNG fest due to enemies having +30 hit/avoid unless you do some shenanigans, and if you're doing warp shenanigans you might as well just one turn the whole thing. Why did I not put that map in my bottom ten again...)

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Panthera posted...

Up next: Back to good times with a map that can be finished in an instant, or one of the most brutal challenges in the entire series

CQ 25?
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Good to know I can avoid having my list predicted so long as I give clues so uselessly vague that they can be applied to more maps than I'm going to talk about in this topic. Might need to calibrate my hint giving a little...

The Good

17. Shadow Dragon Final - Chosen By Fate

https://ibb.co/nQwKYP2

First off let me just say that I really love that this game takes the time to point out in the narration that Marth's army split its forces up to storm the castle but Medeus was expecting this, thus explaining why your team starts spread out in an awkward way. A certain game that doesn't bother to let you adjust your deployment order without looking up a guide on how to do it could have benefited from thinking about these things...

Anyway. I know Shadow Dragon is a contentious entry in the series for a variety of reasons that don't need to be rehashed here, but for me, it's a game I'll always have time for. It was the first Fire Emblem game I ever played, and I liked it enough to get hooked on the series. It may be pretty basic in a lot of ways and shows the age of the original at times (notably with how it replicates the enemy composition of the original even though weapon triangle being a thing now makes that a huge balance issue, AKA it makes swords kind of shit) but its maps are mostly pretty fun and I love the forging mechanic it has, even if it is a huge game breaker. And its H5 difficulty is one of the best challenges the series has to offer, and it's this difficulty I'll mainly be thinking of during this write up.

This brings us to the final chapter. You can, of course, warp skip it, although it's not trivial to do without sacrifices unless you reset until you get a crit because Medeus tends to kill anything that he attacks. You can also do some hilarious crit strats with ballisticians to get the boss kill fairly early, though this requires a very expensive forge. If you don't want to do either of these things...oh dear. This map is full of some of the nastiest enemies the series has to offer. In terms of raw stats they may not stand out compared to the high stat games like Awakening or Three Houses, but Shadow Dragon has pretty low growth rates and no late game units with dominant bases (think Laguz royals in Radiant Dawn) to carry you, so you're up against enemies who approach their caps in some stats wielding nasty shit like forged brave weapons with few units that can survive exposure to more than one enemy at a time. Then there's the Swarm Bishops covering large chunks of the map, and perhaps worst of all, the forged Pachyderm Ballisticians. Who even show up as reinforcement! 3-10 range with 40 attack is utterly terrifying relative to your units, and is something you pretty much need to deal with immediately.

Did I mention there's a lot of reinforcements over the course of the map? Because there are. Have fun!

If you choose to play Chosen By Fate the "conventional" way it's utterly insane. You have essentially no leeway on anything and have to make every single move you make as calculated as possible or you'll get someone killed. This might just be the hardest map in all of Fire Emblem if played without some sort of early boss kill strategy. I have to appreciate it for that, especially since Shadow Dragons mechanics lend itself to fun challenges - hit rates are high for both you and the enemy, making it easy to predict the outcome of every round of combat, and there's very little in the way of the kind of trickery or gimmicks that the games with skills can offer. It's just a straight forward Fire Emblem map with brutal enemies you have to deal with. Well, I say "have to" but as noted multiple times, you *can* always cheese it, which I actually don't mind! This map not being cheeseable would honestly be a bad thing, it's such a difficulty spike that it might be unreasonable to expect someone to have to deal with it if they didn't want to.

And on a more general note, I really enjoy the atmosphere of this map. The much darker colour scheme than any of the other indoor maps and slow, sinister music really make it feel like a dramatic final battle, and a fitting end to a game I always enjoy playing.

Up next: A map that can throw some nasty shit at you or be beaten on turn 1...though the process to do so is far from simple!

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I love Shadow Dragon.

very underrated game.


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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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Panthera posted...

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

This seems like it's describing Battle Before Dawn but I dunno if that makes a bottom 10, so I'll say... uh... Raise the Standard from FE10 maybe.

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I didn't know which chapter Raise the Standard was until I looked it up (I swear, Genealogy and Blazing Sword are the only games I actually know more than one or two chapters from) just now <_<

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I only remember it because it's Fiona's introduction and she definitely does not meet, much less raise, any standards.

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She raises the standard in the "worst cavalier" competition! Matthis, Vyland, those guys in Thracia that don't even have dialogue...all stand in awe of her achievements

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