Board 8 > Gauging interest in a Fire Emblem ranking topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

I suppose being so obvious that people guess what it is but then talk themselves out of it is one way of making it hard to guess things, right?

The Bad

8. Fire Emblem (Blazing Sword) Chapter 26E/28H - Battle Before Dawn

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe7/hhm/ENG_cap28.htm

I think at first I actually liked Battle Before Dawn. Then as time went on, I started to dislike it. Then I began to utterly dread playing it. And now finally, it's worked its way down into the bottom ten. How low can it go? Can it make it all the way to number one?! Nah, nothing else can ever be *that* bad. Thankfully

So Battle Before Dawn is a rare case where being a fog of war map with a super strong siege tome boss hiding away isn't even the problem. The entire issue with this map is that you have two recruitable units, Nino and Jaffar, both of whom start off green and both of whom are prone to random fits of suicidal idiocy. Jaffar is the more notorious one, as depending on how much damage he takes and the position of enemies, he can do anything from stay roughly where he starts to charging into a swarm of enemies that have solid odds of killing him. He can also run away to heal himself, which opens up the path for enemies to get to Zephiel who you have to protect. Which is also annoying, but at least it might prevent the guy from growing up to be a shit villain.

While Jaffar usually gets all the flak, Nino can also get herself in trouble. She faces a crit rate from the Monk she spends the first few turns fighting, and while a crit won't kill her from full health it will still usually spell her doom on the next round of combat. Plus, when she gets low on health she'll usually stand still to heal, but every now and then she decides to just randomly run out into the hallway to her right instead. Into range of Ursula's Bolting. Ursula one shots her. And doubles her. With perfect accuracy. With Bolting. God damn it Nino. Why must you be a pain in the ass when you're not even worth the hassle? I mean sure I could just ignore her, but then I don't get Jaffar who...isn't really all that great but he can be nice to have I guess. Also miss out on 28x that way, which...okay I think I'm making the case to myself to just let these losers die <_<

The rest of the map is pretty much whatever besides the novelty of the mini-boss Maxime being a hilarious badass on Hector Hard Mode due to some sort of programming oversight that makes him way stronger than he should be. It's fog of war and that's something I almost never like, and it has a few stretches where very little happens, especially if you kill Ursula early and prevent the reinforcements, which can easily leave you with nothing to do for the final few turns. So it's basically the bad kind of defend/survive map, with the annoying fog of war mechanic, and NPC AI RNG shenanigans that can just ruin any given attempt outright regardless of your actions. Always fun to know you can lose for no damn reason. Hell, it hasn't even happened to me very often, just the idea of it is enough to make me hate playing this map.

Up next: Over to the good list we go to find a map where you fight the dude in charge of the army that did the thing and it turns out he's totally irrelevant (I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler...)

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Kenri posted...

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.

Haha, it's definitely Battle Before Dawn. I've tended to have decent Jaffar luck when I play it so I still think of it fondly but that description fits it so much. (Edit: Whoops beaten by the actual post.)

Also I didn't have a chance to really comment in-depth on it earlier but 3H Chapter 12: Admittedly, I may be slightly influenced that Crimson Flower was my first route so this was my first experience with that map but I feel like the drama/hype of the map is way higher on Crimson Flower when you're the attacker against a faction you've spent the entire game allied with. Plus moments like the Death Knight just warping in and Edelgard quickly assuring you it's all cool he's on your side now. Catherine can be pretty scary too! Not Death Knight crit scary but Thunderbrand is no joke. And she's someone who you absolutely can't recruit over to prevent that scenario from occurring like almost every other playable character.

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Panthera posted...

Up next: Over to the good list we go to find a map where you fight the dude in charge of the army that did the thing and it turns out he's totally irrelevant (I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler...)

Hrm. Fire Emblem likes to do this so there's a few that come to mind. I think FE9 Final arguably qualifies although that's kinda harsh to Ashnard! Could be Awakening's Valm finale since Walhart is 100% irrelevant lol. But I'm thinking it's a map I haven't played personally.

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Light and Dark from Geneology?

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Could also be FE8 Ephraim taking out Vigarde.

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Kenri posted...

Could also be FE8 Ephraim taking out Vigarde.

Ah, you're right! I tried to skim through FE8 maps in my head and he must have been too irrelevant!

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Some good guesses here, all of which I like to at least some extent and all of which would be reasonable fits for the hint I gave. And indeed, the correct answer was one of them!

The Good

15. Sacred Stones Chapter 14 (Ephraim route) - Father and Son

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe8/guiafe8/capituloeph14fe8.htm

One of the few times Sacred Stones decides to try putting up a fight, Father and Son is a very busy map with tons of treasure chests to collect, a thief to recruit (okay, okay, a Rogue to be technical) and a steady stream of enemies to deal with, all while trying to play around the range of some very nasty status staffs. Status staffs can be a bit of a hit and miss mechanic for me, sometimes they're fine, sometimes they're inconsequential, and sometimes they're just frustrating (looking at you, Cog of Destiny). On this map, they work, having enough range to be dangerous but leaving you with room to deal with them, and alongside the bow users in the side halls they make for a tricky approach to the doors leading deeper into the castle.

The whole process of getting through those doors safely is really the bulk of the challenge on this map. Once you do and the status staffs run out, it's pretty much all over but the clean up. The end of this map can get a bit dull if you're just waiting for chests to be collected...honestly when I stop to think about it this map doesn't really seem *that* great, but for whatever reason in practice I always find myself enjoying it. Maybe just for the change of pace it provides in an otherwise overly easy game?

And of course, at the end you kill the emperor of the empire responsible for everything, only to find out he died a while ago and is just some random zombie propped up by the real villain. Kind of a fun little twist, and I'm not sure whose route gets the more anti-climatic boss. "Zombie puppet vs Creepy stalker guy" is some tough competition! It does serve to set up the much more dramatic Scorched Sand where you face off with Caellach and Valter though...and now that I think of it, I feel like I probably should have at least included that map on the honourable mentions

edit: Up next: More good times as we get a short and sweet map that didn't even exist at first

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Father and Son is a good one, but I'd probably put Scorched Sand ahead of it. Then again I like desert chapters more than most.

Carlyle is definitely the bigger anticlimax imho.

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Berkuts Final Battle? Or one of the New Mystery Prologues?
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Kenri posted...

Father and Son is a good one, but I'd probably put Scorched Sand ahead of it. Then again I like desert chapters more than most.

Carlyle is definitely the bigger anticlimax imho.

I think it's definitely the best desert chapter in the series...well, depending on how you define desert chapters. It doesn't actually require you to hang out in the desert all that much

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I've played through Sacred Stones a lot but the last couple times I've tried to play through it every time I get to Scorched Sand I just...lose interest and I dunno why. It's been awhile since I've played the GBA games though so maybe I should give it a go again.

xp1337 posted...

Also I didn't have a chance to really comment in-depth on it earlier but 3H Chapter 12: Admittedly, I may be slightly influenced that Crimson Flower was my first route so this was my first experience with that map but I feel like the drama/hype of the map is way higher on Crimson Flower when you're the attacker against a faction you've spent the entire game allied with. Plus moments like the Death Knight just warping in and Edelgard quickly assuring you it's all cool he's on your side now. Catherine can be pretty scary too! Not Death Knight crit scary but Thunderbrand is no joke. And she's someone who you absolutely can't recruit over to prevent that scenario from occurring like almost every other playable character.

I agree with this, CF 12 might be my favorite map from what Ive played of the series so far. I also found the fact that you have to fight Flayn to be kinda funny in a horrible way. And the tension in the second half is built even further when that Rhea sends Golems after you. I almost lost on my playthrough, because I rushed at Rhea to avoid killing Cyril and Cathrine.

Starting off the weekend with good things! Also clicking the link here will immediately spoil something, so...consider that.

The Good

14. New Mystery of the Emblem Prologue 8 - Assassination

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe12/guia/ENG_prologo-8.htm

This entry is kind of a summary of the whole New Mystery prologue, which is generally very well done with maps that are very short but require you to think them through carefully, at least on higher difficulties. The final prologue chapter is the longest of the bunch by far, and it can you longer than its small map would suggest because the enemies are dangerous and you have reinforcements to deal with for a short while. There's not a lot of enemies here in total, but they have a lot of overlapping ranges and several are aggressive right off the bat, leaving you under constant pressure, and the Silver Axe barbarian in the middle is too deadly for almost anyone to fight unless he's the only one that can attack.

This map is all about finding not just spots where only one enemy can attack from, which often are insufficient because the AI won't always let itself be baited that way, but also spots where one enemy attacking a unit blocks off the other enemy that would also be able to attack, which will trigger both to start moving into your range so you can kill them. You only have one healer and he barely heals anything, along with a few vulneraries (and a throne, I guess) so you have to stretch out your units HP to the limit in your effort to find guys that can actually take hits on enemy phase and counter with enough damage to set up a player phase kill.

Of special note is the boss, who hangs out near a pair of thieves in a group that will only move if you're in range of two of them. On higher difficulties it's effectively impossible to take a hit from the thief and the boss (even just taking a hit from the boss is beyond a lot of units), but if you bait both thieves at the edge of their ranges you can lure the whole group in while being out of range of the boss, allowing you to finish them all off on player phase while only needing one unit to survive a huge Elfire hit in the process of weakening the boss and letting you end the map. FE12 does a lot of this linked AI stuff, particularly on Lunatic, and while you don't need to understand its nuances to succeed at the game (this is actually a common misconception, there's always room to deal with things by just looking at the enemy ranges and finding where your units can't face enough hits to die), it can certainly help out and it's pretty interesting whenever you figure something out. And this situation is pretty much designed to tempt you into eventually baiting both thieves but not the boss, so you'll see that she moves anyway and learn that tricks like this really do work.

Overall, a short map made even shorter by the mid map save point that lets you replay only the second half if you mess up there, but a very tough and interesting one.

Up next: Back to the bad with an entry that combines a bunch of maps together to summarize why a couple stretches of a certain game can be rather annoying

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It's definitely something from Celica's side of Gaiden/Echoes, now... is it the swamp, desert, or boats?
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Hbthebattle posted...

It's definitely something from Celica's side of Gaiden/Echoes, now... is it the swamp, desert, or boats?

Most of the above (boat maps are good)!

The Bad

7. Gaiden/Echoes Celica Part 3/4 - Deserts and Swamps in general

No links because there's too many to bother with. If you're really curious, just imagine clicking on a character, seeing their movement range is really small, and feeling sad. Over and over and over again.

Combining a whole bunch of maps (though excluding Grieth's Citadel which is barely a desert and is also actually good) for the sake of simplicity, Celica spends the bulk of her journey traveling through movement restricting terrain that slows the game down to a crawl for everyone but the pegasus knight crew. And I guess Dread Fighters can handle the swamps okay, because what can't they handle, but that's about it. Not even the magic users get much freedom to move here.

What makes these maps really bad is that by and large the game doesn't even really *do* anything with the terrain penalties (except maybe on that swamp with the guy who summons dracozombies). Something like (New) Mystery's second desert map uses the gigantic range of wyverns to keep you on your toes, Scorched Sand from Sacred Stones (boy this map is coming up a lot!) uses the desert to make it difficult to get from one side of the map to the other but leaves you room to play normally once you get there, Genealogy's Door of Destiny uses it to funnel you through siege tome central and lets you figure out how to handle them. Desert maps can be hit and miss but at least a lot of them *try* to be interesting by using the terrain to create distinct challenges. Here? With the exception of the optional fight against Sonia that no one does because everyone wants to recruit her for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, these maps don't even do that, they just consist of normal Fire Emblem played at a snail's pace.

In fact, several of them actually play in your favour, with the desert making it much easier to prevent enemies from slipping past your front liners, which on a route that has a few front liners and a ton of mages, is quite convenient. And of course the eternally good Palla and Catria can wander around freely for the most part. I guess the closest it comes to trying to create a unique challenge is the infamous fort full of archers, which is certainly unique and memorable, but sadly also tedious beyond belief to deal with. I like this game quite a lot, but man oh man does Celica's route get the short end of the stick. I appreciate that Echoes tried to be faithful to the original game so you could get the authentic Gaiden experience (try playing Gaiden and dealing with these maps with an ancient interface and every animation being slower...or better yet, try not ever doing that. Trust me) but there's times where I'd sacrifice a little authenticity if it means actually having fun.

Up next: The good list continues with an epic battle that may or may not actually feature many enemies and whose seemingly important boss lives in the shadow of a shop nearby

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FE6 Chapter 21 and its illustrious Boots Shop, I presume
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Yeah, it's gotta be that one.
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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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Doing the next write up before anyone can guess is one way of not having anyone guess correctly, I suppose.

The Good

12. Genealogy Chapter 3 - Eldigan the Lionheart

https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Chapter_3.png

A recurring issue in Genealogy is the sheer size of the maps limiting the ability of non-mounted units to actually contribute. Fire Emblem has always had trouble balancing mounted units, in the sense that it usually doesn't even bother and just lets them be the best forever with at most a slap on the wrist like "if you cap stats, which you won't, you might only do 50 damage instead of 54 to a 40 HP enemy", but even by Fire Emblem standards this game loves its mounted units. As the first game in the series to include the canto mechanic (the strongest version of it to ever exist, in fact), you could argue this is the game that truly established Horse Emblem as a thing.

Why do I say all this? Because chapter 3 is the single map that most deviates from the trend. While horses still reign supreme here as always, there's plenty of room for foot units to actually get involved in more than just poking at the occasional bandit. You start the chapter with a small cavalry squad coming from the left, some armor knights to the right and your actual objective up north (plus some mages in the forest), meaning you'll want to split up to deal with everything at once, and even the main objective is close enough and has a tough enough clump of durable armors backed by hard-to-enemy-phase bow knights guarding it to give time for the infantry to get at least a little bit involved. From there you shift gears to the west, meaning any foot units who hung around the starting area can be in position to deal with the always tricky push towards Silvail castle. And then you head up north to fight through pirates, which is a bit backwards from how Fire Emblem does things (usually you fight the bandits first, *then* the rulers...) but again means that any infantry left by the first castle are ready to get some action.

So the variety of units you can get involved is already nice, but this chapter has more to it than just that. This is a case where the size of the map really contributes to the gameplay rather than taking away from it, as you always feel like you have things going on all over the place to deal with. Beyond just the standard enemies there's also villages to save from pirates, several of which offer some very nice rewards beyond just the usual money (the Restore staff and the +3 strength village are must haves), and the standard enemies themselves feature some fun parts as well. The first clump to the north is tough to get through quickly and then has another wall of durable enemies right behind it, the Cross Knights abuse their mobility and 1-2 range to be a major threat, and you get your first taste of flying enemies here. They're pretty easy to deal with and can be avoided entirely, but it's a neat prelude to chapter 4 where you'll be seeing some more.

Also of note here is the final three characters that join you for the first generation, in particular Claude and the eternally unpronounceable Taillte (I know someone will tell me how it's supposed to be pronounced, but I swear every time someone does that, they tell me something different...). Their join situation is quite unusual, an unarmed staff user with Fortify hanging out with a fragile, low level mage, and their nearest ally is a sniper that takes ages to get to them. And these three have to fight through...I haven't counted, but my rough estimate is about seventeen thousand god damn pirates! Of course, the trick is that your new sniper friend Bridget is fairly durable and has great offense, and Taillte has the Wrath + Thoron combo that will allow her to OHKO anything she touches when below half health, so if you keep Taillte out of range when she's hurt and let her get hurt when she's at full HP to set up Wrath, you can chew through the entire group with just these three if you really want, though you'll undoubtedly want to send some people their way regardless for conversations and to warp them home for the arena. It's a pretty cool little scenario, quite easy once you catch on but fun nonetheless.

Another fun part is that this is your last chance to play around with Cuan, Finn and Ethlyn before they head back home before the next chapter. They're three of your best units and it's always sad to see them go, so might as well enjoy them while you still can. This map also marks a major turning part in the story, though that's not really being factored in here. It does make the otherwise kind of anti-climatic pirate fight feel more like a needed breather in between big moments, and less like a let down, though. Oh, and while it's not quite the Boots shop, you do get the Leg Ring here. +3 move is always a joy, and combined with FE4 road tiles a good mounted unit (if only you had one of those as your main character...oh right, you do) can cross utterly hilarious distances that even Binding Blade never allows for.

And of course, this is Genealogy so you have good music to listen to. Even the worst map themes in this game (in my opinion, chapter 8 and the already mentioned chapter 1) are still enjoyable, and this one is probably in the upper half.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJNxaoZXI90

Up next: You can end a game with an epic battle or a tricky challenge or some emotional payoff to the story...or you can bore the player to death, I guess. That works too.

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A lot of Final maps are bad... so I'll guess maybe FE6?
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There's actually only two or three final maps I would consider bad, and one of them I'm actually kind of torn on (or rather, I'm not a fan of it for reasons that have nothing to do with the map design itself and everything to do with the game mechanics being dumb...and also a bit of dialogue but that's neither here nor there). Most are decent and there's a few I really like (like Radiant Dawn, hence why it made my honourable mentions). Just saying, you might find yourself disagreeing with my good list at some point <_<

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I'm with HB, I'm guessing FE6's Throne-a-palooza followed by Roy stomping Idunn.

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Alright yeah this one was obvious

The Bad

6. Binding Blade Chapter 24/Final - The Truth Behind the Legend/Beyond the Darkness

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe6/guiafe6/ENG_cap24.htm
https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe6/guiafe6/ENG_cap25.htm

The boss of chapter 24 being named Jahn/Yahn turned out to be a very prophetic choice, because this map will put you to sleep. Get it? Yawn? Well it amuses me at least.

Welcome to Corridor Emblem, where you march down endless hallways to identical rooms forever! With the power of the mighty Boots shop it's possible to at least get some enjoyment out of trying to speed up the process here, but that's hidden away in a secret shop. Without a bunch of horses with boots on each hoof, this is a mind numbingly tedious slog. You fight nothing but Manaketes, pretty much all positioned in the exact same pattern, who have no 2 range options and thus can be chipped down easily, and who are also, you know, weak to every god damn legendary weapon that you needed to keep intact to unlock the last few chapters of this game anyway. So you should have plenty of tools to utterly annihilate them. They're also easy to double, and while earlier in the game they hit insanely hard, their attack power hasn't scaled up as much as your durability, making it entirely possible for you to have units that can survive two hits...which is literally all you ever need.

So, the enemies aren't all that hard to kill, and it's kind of awkward given how much the game wants to hype up the dragons as a big threat to have them get mowed down like chumps. Sure, you have legendary weapons and all but it's still an odd choice. Which means the biggest challenge here, beyond staying awake, is just walking. Look at all those long boring corridors! Ironically this can be a tough map to clear as fast as possible due to how meticulously you have to plan out your rescues, dances and uses of any remaining Warp/Rescue staff charges, but while I like that kind of stuff, I don't like it when it's literally just crossing empty space.

The Truth Behind the Legend feels like it wasn't even intended to be enjoyable (especially without the Boots shop helping out) and instead just be a vehicle for story dumps, which is a pretty terrible idea. Especially since the story here isn't even compelling. I won't go into too much detail, but it's basically just an exposition dump that tries to reveal the truth about something the game has never given any reason to really care about. In general I find Binding Blade's story to be dull and hard to get any sort of emotional investment in, so this really falls extra flat for me.

And then we move on to the actual final final chapter since it's such a short extension. Everyone knows about the more famous of the two most pitiful final bosses in Fire Emblem history. I'm not sure which is a bigger joke, but Idun is certainly not an impressive opponent despite her durability, being unable to even counter at 2 range when Roy has a 1-2 range sword that has 54 effective might against her. She's not *quite* as farcical as people tend to say (you hear claims of how he can ORKO her at base level sometimes, which is absurd - he neither doubles nor 2HKOs at base level plus promotion bonuses. It takes IIRC 16 strength to 2HKO and 20 speed to double) but still goes down easy, especially since she's just in a big room with barely anything in it so you have nothing getting in your way. I know she's probably not supposed to be a big threat for story purposes, but again, since I don't care about the story in this game it really doesn't work for me. In the end, Binding Blade goes out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Up next: Back to the good list! A recurring theme from earlier on the list makes its return on a map that does not feature what you'd expect from where it takes place

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Panthera posted...

Oh, and while it's not quite the Boots shop, you do get the Leg Ring here. +3 move is always a joy, and combined with FE4 road tiles a good mounted unit (if only you had one of those as your main character...oh right, you do) can cross utterly hilarious distances that even Binding Blade never allows for.

By that you mean, give the Leg Ring to Ayra (or whichever favored foot-soldier) so you can pretend she has a horse, right?

Panthera posted...

Especially since the story here isn't even compelling. I won't go into too much detail, but it's basically just an exposition dump that tries to reveal the truth about something the game has never given any reason to really care about. In general I find Binding Blade's story to be dull and hard to get any sort of emotional investment in, so this really falls extra flat for me.

I liked FE6's story when it was about politics, but the dragon stuff was a serious bore. And unfortunately dragon stuff is all the final chapter has going for it.

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Kenri posted...

By that you mean, give the Leg Ring to Ayra (or whichever favored foot-soldier) so you can pretend she has a horse, right?

I mean, I do want to get it to a foot unit eventually. But he needs to inherit it from his father first! Then when he gets his horse he can hand it off to the dancer so she can keep up with all the horses...

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It's way more efficient to let Sigurd have the ring because of how far he has to backtrack sometimes. Ayra has good combat but gen 1 enemies are weak enough that even people like Alec and Naoise have no issues killing with just a bit of investment
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With this entry, we're officially halfway through both lists.

The Good

11. Fire Emblem (Blazing Sword) Chapter 17E/18H - Pirate Ship

https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/17.png

A defend map that can be ended early by killing the boss? Haven't talked about one of those for like, a day. And you definitely don't find yourself fighting pirates on this pirate ship. Because they're good guy pirates. Apparently? Actually not that weird, since a pirate is pretty much just anyone who breaks the law out on the sea, so Fargus and co. could easily just be involved in transporting Elibe's equivalent of marijuana around...okay this digression is getting silly.

The first turn or two of this map can be fairly tricky. You need to deal with the pegasus knights from the left (in a way that doesn't kill the one with an Elysian Whip you can steal!) and hopefully deal with the army of dudes that will come up the middle of the boat at you. With a mixture of shamans to hit your physical units hard, archers to poke away at everything and mercenaries/myrmidons to be tough to kill thanks to being hard to double, not to mention more pegasus knights who will show up to be minor nuisances (thank god FE7 pegasus knights are wimps and not the terrors they are in Three Houses...), you have a fair bit to think about, though once you can clear out the center it gets a fair bit easier since you can choke the bridge to the right boat easily enough and the reinforcements don't start coming in large numbers until later on.

Of course, getting the center under control is just the start, since you still need to go kill the boss. Let's be real, you could wait for the 10 or 11 turns or whatever it is, but you're not going to do that, are you? That's boring. It's so much more fun to run down there and nuke that dude...after getting Matthew down there to steal his Guiding Ring, of course. The promotion item to steal makes what would otherwise be very simple (send Marcus, win) into...well it's still not hard or anything but it does require you to pay more attention, and possibly dedicate an extra character or two to keeping the path safe, and on a map that doesn't have a ton of deployment slots it can be a little tricky to spare the manpower. Of course, if you wait too long you'll just have more enemies to deal with making it much more difficult, so you just have to make a point of getting it done nice and early.

Overall a short and simple but fun map. The one thing about it I don't like is that the boss has Luna, because of course he does. Luna is by and large overrated as a tool in the players hands (it's good for the final chapter, otherwise only very rarely of value) but for the enemy it's a real bitch because a crit will kill anyone, and the tome has 20 god damn crit on it for some reason to go along with its 90 hit. Feels weird to end this entry on a negative note but I can't just not point out that Luna having 20 crit is stupid.

Up next: We enter the top ten by entering a major city that seems not to like the idea of being conquered

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Thracia C14?
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Hbthebattle posted...

Thracia C14?

In the first post, when I said "a previous favourite is now a legitimate contender for the least favourite list, although I don't think it quite makes it"?

This is what I was referring to.

Why can this map be won for free with literally no risk by just standing around because the developers didn't even consider what would happen if you actually tried to defend on the first ever defend map?

You don't even miss out on any rewards unless you want to!

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Siege of Enbarr?

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Mewtwo59 posted...

Siege of Enbarr?

Indeed!

The Good

10. Three Houses Chapter 21(AM)/Chapter 18(SS)/Chapter 19(VW) - Our Chosen Paths/The Chaos of War

Okay that makes for a long and confusing title, especially since two of them are the same down to the name but have different numbers. And like my earlier chapter 12 entry, I can't find a good picture for this one so you'll just have to use your imagination. Chances are everyone reading this has played at least one version of this map anyway.

On any route except Crimson Flower, you will eventually come to the point of launching an attack on Enbarr, the imperial capital. In Azure Moon you're just attacking head on, in the other two routes you're apparently sneaking at least partway in. Whatever the case may be, it will result in slightly different starting locations and enemy compositions but the same overall experience, so I'll be talking about the two versions collectively here.

The layout of the city makes for a pretty cool map, with the western side being fairly wide open but with some movement hindering terrain thrown around to impede you or serve as an avoid boost, while the eastern side is winding streets. Much of the map is covered by long range attacks, whether in the form of siege weapons or siege magic, that will be a constant threat to any frailer units in their range, giving you an incentive to rush for them and take them out as quickly as possible. Anywhere you go will have enemies threatening you from multiple sides, so you'll have to be careful to keep tabs on all of them so you don't bite off more than you can chew, and you especially need to fear the flying demonic beasts who can travel over the river and buildings freely. You'll also have to deal with some reinforcements popping up to harass you from behind, which can really create a problem if you're in the midst of dealing with a group of enemies or your old friend the crit machine...er, Death Knight.

The final stretch of the map can either be a tricky conventional advance through strong enemies while Hubert pelts you with his super strong Bolting from behind a convenient building that you're forced to go around to get to him, or you can use the Warp staff! Er, Warp spell. In general this map, being large and full of awkward terrain, really rewards you for using your movement tools like Warp, Rescue, flying units and the like. You can cross a lot of ground quickly in Three Houses, but this battle can't be won off a single Warp alone, so you have to look for the right time to use your resources to their fullest, something I'm always a fan of.

More than anything this battle really captures the feeling of a chaotic battle in the city streets (fitting for the name of the chapter on two routes, I suppose). It's particularly strong on Azure Moon where it's the lead in to the final battle, but it still works just fine on the other two as well. I haven't played Three Houses since completing all four routes within the first month or so of its release (meaning I have actually yet to experience this battle on Maddening), but I've been meaning to go back to it recently...and doing this write up might just motivate me to do so.

Up next: The bottom five kicks off with a map that doesn't respect your time as it demonstrates why a certain concept does not work well in Fire Emblem gameplay. I suspect this may prove to be the most controversial entry on the list, especially if I talk about the story element at work here...

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Siege of Enbarr is a great one. I like how it gives you a lot of options of approaching the map.

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Let's get negative! This will spoil Path of Radiance (albeit stuff that I'm sure everyone knows, but still, you've been warned)

The Bad

5. Path of Radiance Chapter 27 - Moment of Fate

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe9/guia/cap27.htm

Hard to get a good picture for this given it's a two parter where the first part is quite large. I imagine people know it pretty well anyway, especially the part that really counts.

The first part of the map is pretty much irrelevant to be honest, it's just a generic Path of Radiance map. It's fine enough in a vacuum but like everything in Path of Radiance it's dragged down by the horribly slow animations. Even map animations in this game take forever compared to other entries, and there's no way to skip those. So that sucks, but it's not the end of the world and on its own it wouldn't matter. This is hardly the worst example of it anyway.

The important part, of course, is the big, "epic" final showdown between Ike and the Black Knight, which proves to be a treatise on how to not to design a Fire Emblem game. You know how Fire Emblem is usually this kind of strategy game thingy where you look at the situation and try to decide what to do? Well, fuck that. Here's a (mostly) one on one where there's nothing to think about. You and the Burger King just take turns bashing each other, with the only strategic consideration being if you've read online that BK can't activate Luna at 2 range (which is pretty bizarre considering your units can do it if I'm not mistaken). So in other words, without information the game doesn't provide, there's nothing to even think about here. I mean, I guess there's the decision of when to heal or not, but that's simple to the point that it's not really a decision, it's just "will you try to win, or will you kill yourself for lulz?" I suppose you could also argue that what to do with Mist when the enemies go after her is also a decision...which tells you something about how much this falls flat when Ike's big "epic" duel is overshadowed by his little sisters efforts to handle generic dudes.

The biggest issues here are A) that if you lose, you have to replay the entire chapter, and B) the heavy RNG/foreknowledge reliant nature of the fight. The first part is obvious in why it's stupid, and this is where the lengthy PoR animations *do* get very frustrating. Thankfully you can just choose to run away if you want, but if the defense of the Burger King encounter has to be "you can choose to not bother with the thing the story desperately wants you to believe is vitally important to Ike", it's clearly not very well executed.

The second part is that if you don't know to drop one of the incredibly rare and missable Occult Scrolls on Ike (or Wrath, but that has issues of its own, notably that it generally forces you to stay in death range of Luna to use), you're entirely reliant on having pretty much all of your attacks hit while Mist is able to survive and keep Ike healed enough to let him attack every turn. Ike's accuracy will usually be pretty good, sure, but even at level 20 on average it's not perfect, hovering around 90ish, with biorhythm potentially ruining things. This is also dependent on you having trained Mist enough for her to survive the generics and heal Ike enough, so have fun if you were "foolish" enough to not just magically know that this seemingly unimpressive unit would become vitally important to resolving a major plot point via gameplay. With skills involved you're less reliant on Mist, but you still need the RNG to cooperate, and of course if your Ike didn't level up well enough, or if you didn't use him much (not unreasonable at all in a game that, like many, is not friendly to sword locked foot units) you can be unavoidably fucked.

This writeups mostly don't focus on story but since this battle is entirely built around resolving this whole Ike vs Black Knight plot it's unavoidable here. The game has spent all this time hyping up the BK as a big deal that Ike will eventually have to fight to get his revenge, which is why the "just run away bro" options rings hollow when it basically means that in the story, Ike is admitting he sucks and the Burger King is just too cool for him and there's never any resolution.

The problem is...the Black Knight is a terrible, boring villain who is impossible to take seriously. He's either a generic evil dude or just a generic generic dude, depending on the scene. His entire hype falls apart when you realize he's pretty much a chump relying on his invincible armor to carry him. He might seem cool when he beats Greil in a stiff and awkward cutscene where Greil apparently forgets he can move halfway through, but then you realize his mission was to acquire the medallion, and he failed to even do that because he heard Caineghis coming and ran away. Like, as soon as someone that can bypass his armor and actually fight him is on the way, he immediately runs instead of trying to achieve his goal. When he goes after Leanne he waits until Tibarn is out of the way. Hell, if you run from the fight he gets wrecked by Nasir! His presentation kind of works at first, but when you really think about it, this dude is a loser who can't do anything on his own, his biggest achievement being killing a crippled guy while being invincible due to powers not his own (sure he tried to hand Ragnell to Greil, but without the explanation of why it was important the whole thing rings hollow). And when he's such a dull, non-entity of a character, the fact that he can't even fulfill his purpose of seeming like a threat is pretty pathetic.

I think this fight proves one thing above all else - this kind of "epic" one on one (sort of) duel does not work in Fire Emblem. You either end up with furious people patiently waiting twenty turns for their revenge (which is a good chapter, don't get me wrong, but that part deserves to be a much bigger meme than it is), or you end up with this piece of shit.

Up next: Back to the good list as we don't actually defend, sort of

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https://i.imgur.com/0KGkfUc.png
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Panthera posted...

Hell, if you run from the fight he gets wrecked by Nasir!

LMAO I never knew this

Yeah, it's a pretty bad chapter, the duel part of it at least. It even makes Bartre vs. Karla look more reasonable because if you fail to prepare for that all you miss out on is a crappy cameo character, it doesn't derail an entire subplot.

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It'd be better if Soren would come along if he has an A support with Ike. That way you could get the ridiculous avoid boost from the support, plus you have another chance at a properly leveled healer. Titania would make sense too, but she'd be mostly useless there.

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Radiant Dawn spoilers
RD retcons it to not being their final battle anyways.
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Panthera posted...

Back to the good list as we don't actually defend, sort of

RD 2-E... if you play it the way I do. >_>

all defend maps i take as a personal challenge to make it a rout map

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Kenri posted...

LMAO I never knew this

Yeah, it's a pretty bad chapter, the duel part of it at least. It even makes Bartre vs. Karla look more reasonable because if you fail to prepare for that all you miss out on is a crappy cameo character, it doesn't derail an entire subplot.

As silly as Bartre/Karla is, at least it happens pretty much right away so you're not losing much time if you have to try again. Karla's join situation is less frustrating than the level 5 Warrior Bartre requirement, or her pathetic bases.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Radiant Dawn spoilers
RD retcons it to not being their final battle anyways.

Yeah...and from what I hear the original script had a horribly stupid justification for it, to the point that the English localization changed it to something that wasn't total ass.

xp1337 posted...

RD 2-E... if you play it the way I do. >_>

all defend maps i take as a personal challenge to make it a rout map

I approach defend maps in all kinds of ways. Sometimes I try to rout them, sometimes I try to end them fast when that can be done, sometimes I look for silly ways to trivialize them.

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When you defend someone, but it's rout, but you defend anyway, what do you get?

The Good

9. Awakening Chapter 6 - Foreseer

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe13/guia/capitulo-6.htm

A rout chapter that plays more like a defense map than pretty much any actual defend map. Okay technically we're defending Emmeryn but has anyone ever had the slightest risk of her getting attacked? I know I haven't. On normal it's a joke like everything else, on hard it puts up a bit of a fight if you don't know how to break Awakening, and on Lunatic it's a pretty tricky map overall that sees the fact that you probably have two really good combat units at this point (Robin and Frederick) and gives you three separate approach directions for enemies and asks you what you'll do about it. I'll be primarily talking about Lunatic here, with maybe a bit applying to Hard, while Normal and Lunatic+ go ignored because I don't care about either.

The enemies come at you in several waves and are tough enough to kill for most of your units that if you try to sit back, you'll almost certainly get overwhelmed, especially since only one of the three paths has a 1 tile choke point and the left side has a wall for enemy dark mages to snipe over (or for you to snipe over, if you're smart). You have to adopt the "aggressive turtling" tactic here of moving forward to engage on enemy phase as much as safely possible, then either killing off the enemies in range on player phase or retreating to do it again and hopefully be able to finish them all off next time around. With three fronts of combat and only two healers your health can get stretched thin, encouraging you to abuse the overpowered beyond belief pair up mechanic to its full effect not just to swap the lead unit in a combat pair around but also for movement - walking up to someone, pairing with them, then having them move back allows you to escape situations where you'd otherwise be in range of an enemy that can kill you.

On Lunatic I don't think I've ever managed to turn this into a rush to the boss, instead I always end up meeting Validar on his way up, which goes to show how well planned out this map really feels. You have a steady stream of enemies coming, but they won't overwhelm you with unreasonable numbers unless you let them, and Validar will start rushing you quick enough to be a threat, but not so fast that you can't realistically be ready for him.

It's kind of funny, really. Defend maps in Fire Emblem so often turn into just moving combat units out and murdering everything for the lulz, and Awakening is the most encouraging game in the series of "move invincible unit forward, end turn" style strategies, and yet it somehow manages to pull off a great defend map without even being an actual defend map, while other games with more consistently good map design so often fail.

Up next: A dramatic showdown with a very easy yet overwhelmingly powerful antagonist

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CQ Final?
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Gotta be Genealogy final, Julius is crazy OP but Julia is a hard counter and destroys him.

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Hbthebattle posted...

CQ Final?

Even if the first part can be fairly quick once you figure out how, I still refuse to tolerate the lack of a save before the second part <_< I've also never really thought of Takumi as "very easy" since while he's not the most lethal boss by any means, it's hard to get more than one unit in range to fight him and the thresholds for ORKOing him are very high without crit/skill activations, which you don't want to rely on when you have to replay two maps just to get another shot at him

Kenri posted...

Gotta be Genealogy final, Julius is crazy OP but Julia is a hard counter and destroys him.

Definitely fits the description, but that's not it

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I just realized this entry breaks the usual formatting due to its lack of a proper chapter name, or even number. So I'll have to improvise a tad. The final battle from this game tends to get people using the name of its music as a substitute chapter title, so I think I'll do the same thing here.

The Good

8. Gaiden/Echoes Part 4 Final - Lord of a Dead Empire

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe15/guia/4-9-Alm.htm

Closing out part 4 of Gaiden/Echoes (henceforth referred to just as Echoes) is the battle against Emperor Rudolf. A snow castle courtyard awaits in front of you, the walls manned by bow knights and arcanists who will pelt you with ranged attacks as you enter (this is a bit different between normal and hard difficulty, as this map has its enemy placements changed rather noticeably from the original game when played on Echoes hard mode, but to some extent it holds true regardless) and a whole host of other mounted units and barons (Echoes' version of promoted armor knights, essentially) prepare to meet you head on. And at the back or up on the wall, depending on difficulty (on the wall in normal, on the other side of the courtyard on hard to make it harder to warp someone to him immediately) is Rudolf himself.

There may never have been an enemy boss who outclasses your units as hard as Rudolf. He has capped HP and as much defense as a previous Baron boss, while also having the speed of a Dread Fighter (the fastest generic class in the game) and as much or more strength as anything you've seen (though his choice of an Angel Ring instead of a weapon holds his damage per hit to slightly lower than some of his allies). And he does all this as Gold Knight, fully willing to take advantage of his huge movement range! Even Alm in the remake, with growths buffed compared to the original, is hard pressed to muster the stats that it would take to handle Rudolf's Gaiden/normal mode stats conventionally.

Of course, there is a trick to dealing with him. He will never attack Alm, allowing your strongest unit free reign to attack him, assuming he can survive the onslaught of other nearby enemies. This trick doesn't really undermine his credibility as a threat since you still need to deal with his troops to make it safe, and god forbid you let anyone enter his range unintentionally. Instead it just contributes to the wonderful atmosphere of this battle, aided immensely in the remake by the new snowy look of Rigel Castle and, of course, the stellar new soundtrack. I'm usually not as fond of video game music with vocals as most people are, but Lord of a Dead Empire blew me away the moment I heard it and the tone it sets, energetic and triumphant mixed with a hint of sorrow, works wonders.

(I would advise against reading the comment section on this if you don't want to be spoiled)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrfutC6DDq8

This battle can be quite difficult, and requires you to abuse every tool at your disposal to really master it - huge bow and possibly magic range to take down enemies safely, things like Warp (and Rescue in the remake) to move around and possibly go for Rudolf quickly (might as well leave some of his soldiers alive to surrender like he wants, right?), the various items you can carry to amp up a given units power immensely (especially in the original where some of these things were downright busted), etc. It absolutely nails every aspect of its presentation to perfection. Combined, it makes for perhaps *the* Fire Emblem battle most deserving to be described with the often overused term "epic". When Echoes was announced I was hoping this already great battle from Gaiden would get a bit of special treatment to make it even better, and holy shit did it ever.

Up next: Too much excitement, got to take a break, and what a way to do so! We revisit a concept from earlier on the worst list, except this time it adds a stupid new gimmick and removes the part where anything fucking happens

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Echoes is the FE I've played most recently but I have like... zero memories of it. I vaguely remember that fight being a good one though.

Panthera posted...

Up next: Too much excitement, got to take a break, and what a way to do so! We revisit a concept from earlier on the worst list, except this time it adds a stupid new gimmick and removes the part where anything fucking happens

FE7 Battle Preparations would fit that but it's pretty inoffensive IMO.

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Was the spirit forest too much for you? Well, meet one of the reasons no one ever takes the B route in Thracia (poor B routes, no one takes it in Thracia, no one takes it in Binding Blade's western isles, I think later on Sacae is also the B route and it seems like most people don't go there either...will B ever be the best?)

The Bad

4. Thracia 776 Chapter 16B - The Dark Forest

https://www.fireemblemwod.com/fe5/guia/ENG_cap16b.htm

If that looks like a bit of a clusterfuck, it's because this map helpfully explains where the bullshit is.

We've already seen a dark forest from Thracia on the dishonourable mentions list. This forest, despite the name, is not nearly as dark, and yet it manages to be so much worse. Look at that map. Just look at that fucking map! It's just a gigantic ass forest. Your movement is cut down on practically the entire thing. And to top it off, the darker tiles are thickets which you can't walk through, further restricting your movement. The guide posted highlights them to make them easier to see, but in the actual game? They do look different. A little. Not nearly as different as they should though, which can make for some awkward moments where you realize you can't go where you wanted because the game demands you strain your eyes just to play it. And remember, I'm speaking from the experience of playing via methods that are, of course, perfectly legitimate (<_<). Imagine having to look across the room to a TV to tell the difference between the forest tiles and the "forest tile with the brightness turned down 5%" tiles. Probably not fun.

Then that brings us to the issue of the enemies, or lack thereof. Seriously. I know this is supposed to be the super secret back door path through the spooky forest or whatever, but is there really no one out there but a handful of dudes and some reinforcements? There's barely anything to even do on this god damn map. At least Girl of the Spirit Forest had some enemies in it! I guess the enemies that do exist are more impressive than the usual Thracia scrublord fodder, consisting of promoted enemies with nice weaponry, but they're so spread out and so few that it doesn't matter. The only real "threat" is the boss and his Berserk staff. That he has I believe a 20% chance of actually using? What is this game's fixation on forest chapters where the bosses have totally random AI on their status staffs instead of, I don't know, having literally any sort of actual thought put into them? Sometimes he can be a problem, but on average you can just delete him without giving a shit.

Of course, the "highlight" of the map is the warp tiles. These things are...well, Thracia isn't widely played enough for them to be infamous, but they should be. Step on a specific tile that looks identical to any other, and you too can be teleported to another place on the map. Amusingly enough this map at least tries to demonstrate this concept, since the dark mages will use the warp tile near their starting point to teleport over to you, so at least that one you're warned about. The other four though? Nope. Just random patches of forest that send you backwards so you can crawl through the forest of tedium again. I do not understand the point of this. It's neither challenging nor entertaining. It exists solely to annoy you and make you feel like you wasted your time playing this game. And they reuse the damn things later on in the game too!

This map is basically a Revelation style gimmick, except in Revelation the gimmicks are usually creative, or at least unique, even when they're complete shit. This one? The gimmick is just "haha it's really boring haha walk through the woods again loser". You can't even warp skip without losing units because it's an escape map, and in Thracia any unit who is left on the map when Leif escapes is captured, so you have to drag your entire army all the way past (again, the spirit forest never did this to me...)

Up next: Let's talk about how to start something off on the right foot

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You already spoiled this, right? Its the FE4 prologue.
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Hbthebattle posted...

You already spoiled this, right? Its the FE4 prologue.

I...well I mean it could be something that starts off a story arc or a plot point or like...uh...

<_<

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Also, Ephraim route is a B Route that people actually like, right?
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Hbthebattle posted...

Also, Ephraim route is a B Route that people actually like, right?

Oh, yeah I guess it is. We might have to rename this topic "Panthera DESTROYED by FACTS and LOGIC" if you keep this up!

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