How Side Objectives Make Maps More Interesting
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- Опубликовано: 21 окт 2023
- Side Objectives are a big part of why I love so many of my favorite maps! I look at Side objectives, when I think they're good, and how some maps create great play experiences with them, or without them!
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I tend to play Fire Emblem with the mindset of "There are no Optional Objectives"
I do side quests in most games because the stories of nocs daily lives and their struggles is part of what makes the game world come to life for me.
When I think of good side objectives, I think of Paralogue 1 in Awakening, Chapter 10 villages in Conquest, defeating Jeddah for a Draco Shield in Echoes Celica act 4, getting the blessed lance in three houses chapter 7 (Gronder), and the villages in Engage chapter 19. Those last two don’t have the best rewards but they both have great story integration which is bonus points.
Me:(beats the boss early)
Event trigger:thank you for saving us. Keep the children safe and keeping the water supply clean. You are our hero
Me:.......wait who are you?
When Mansel gives you the light brand for protecting the green units after you warp skip chapter 19 fe8
@@actuallizard Marth:(covered in blood) see? My ways always work.
Kris:this is why I didn't want to be remembered by history
I'm surprised Path of Radiance and Radiance Dawn weren't mentioned because I love how is makes use of Bonus EXP to create these more interesting play experiences.
Almost every chapter gives more EXP the faster you complete it, giving you another considering on whether it's worth it to go out of your way for those chests and villages. Bonus EXP also tends to be your reward for keeping allies and green units alive. There's even several points in story where you wind up in battle with someone the protagonists don't want to hurt, and you're rewarded that EXP for doing your best to complete the map while leaving as many enemies alive as possible. Chapter 10 of PoR can become a full on stealth mission if you want!
And all of that is completely optional, and sometimes the math even works out such that you'd get more EXP from not bothering with the extra objectives. But man, it did a lot to get me to put some real consideration into every map.
One example of a map with good side objectives in Fire Emblem is in the romhack; Andaron Saga chapter 9: River Crossing. This is because you can try to get one (or both) of the special weapons you can get there. The simplest and most effective option is to have Jaheira or Shay just ferry Baudimon to the other side of the river, ignoring both of the bosses. But then you miss out on both the Gladiolus Lance and the Galeshot Bow, both incredibly useful items that, if you don't get here, you'll have to get in the endgame. But, even if you want to try to get them then you'll have to go real fast, cause one of the bosses leave and, slighly later one of the rewards gets taken off of the other boss.
Andaron Saga may be controversial to bring up due to its creator, but I can't lie, its really fun. Haven't completed the hack yet, but Chapter 17 just absolutely blew me away.
@@TuskyBaby what happened to its creator?
@@Seba20901some scandal a few years ago, idk the specifics but it lead to a rough relationship between him and other FE RUclipsrs.
Another Conquest chapter I personally love that doesn't really have traditional side objectives is chapter 23, Possessed.
It just presents you with a daunting line-up of enemies and allows you to tackle it in a wide range of ways. Sometimes I'll just ferry some units across with my fliers and take down the first ballista. From there I may not even bother with Hinata 😭, but I do usually go back for at least some exp.
There are some enemy reinforcements, but iirc they're trigger by proximity, not turn count. The freedom to take your time executing some wild scheme is honestly really appreciated, because the enemy's defenses are just so solid. One space out of place and your favorite unit will get dragged deep into enemy territory and surrounded by rallied up units with effective weaponry, all while being pelted from afar by 3 well placed ballistas. Its always a nail biter. Conquest maps are so good!
Also I wish we got to use stair tiles, like in Conquest, more often in the franchise.
To be fair to Thracia Ch 5, the chest might be designed around ranked runs, as you can't dilly-dally with turncount if you want the best ranking.
My favorite way of getting it is by sending Karin with a Chest Key. She can mount, since it's outside the castle, despite not getting her mount until the next chapter. Plus, she has more movement, and she can canto once she unlocks the chest.
I just threw Brighton at that chest, myself. Using one of the mounted units to grab it does speed the pace up, but either way, I'm also not a fan of how long it takes to get.
Fe12 nightmare horseman recruitment chain is too much planning for my smooth brain and i love it
CQ Chapter 16 is probably my favourite chapter in fates. Everything about it incentivises fast, aggressive play to get as much gold as possible, but the 4 soldiers needed to reveal Shura being behind many enemies means simple boss skips aren’t as possible. The enemies are divided in a way that allows units to be used for what they are specifically good at, further adding to the need for players to split up, but the physical/magic divide on the left and the 1/2-range locks on the right encourage good positioning beyond just sending one designated counter to each corner of the map (which I feel is how Ch18 ends up). It’s also positioned in the game so that it’s at the point where promotions are just starting to be reached by most, and the first map with a solid amount of promoted enemies, so it feels like the first point where that new power level is unlocked, and can be tested out against stronger enemies. It’s like Rev Ch18 in that way, which too aims to demonstrate the power of all the royals as they activate all the dragon veins, except the CQ roster is actually balanced and not just thrown in with bases from other routes
They should feel like a nice bonus without being a task that is too annoying to do.
But way better than "escort missions"
So they should have no stakes at all?
One of my favorite of a map full of side quests is chapter 14 from thracia, you can recruit homer, you can visit the arena if are low in funds but it's risky, you can visit althena with dean to get the dragon lance but you need to send good units with him to avoid the baron with tornado kill him, you can visit the house at the south to get the nosferatu tome for linoan or she would be stuck with fire tomes, can visit the house in the city to unlock the only gaiden chapter that don't have a recruitable character meaning that if you want the best rank with lower turns you can skip it but the map gives you a lot of stamina drinks
I wish more maps had multiple bosses. FE Engage chapter 17 is my favorite level in the series cause you're fighting on multiple fronts, but you can't just skip or ignore one of the fronts.
Although I suppose since ignoring griss isn't an option, its not really a side objective. I just think it's a fun win condition
An odd one but to me skills in fates is a good side objective. Specifically in if i have plans for my charcters i often have to put them in classes with sats that dont fit a character or that have bad weapon ranks. A good example of this is training master of arms ophelia or skill sniping rallies with any rally bot
What I really enjoyed about my first time playing fe8 is that I found myself sending Seth on semi solo missions to recruit units or rescue towns while I had to figure out how to take on the main forces of the map with my much squishier and weaker units until they could regroup. I felt it balanced out how absurdly powerful Seth was in the fact that he couldnt be everywhere you needed him at once
tbh id like to have multiple fail conditions like defend + capture + turn limit
Great video! I love maps that have a lot of side objectives. Many of my favorite maps in the series are ones that have a lot going on at all times. They keep the player on their toes and constantly alert and thinking about every possible outcome. That said, the slower and more straightforward maps still have a place in the games. I think they can give the player a nice break, especially when those particular chapters take place directly before or after some of the most complex chapters.
I always think of how Thieves work in Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 whenever I think of side objectives. You could say stealing Gold and managing Gold in Genealogy and Stealing and Capture Baiting in Thracia aren't side objectives, as they are prevalent for as long as the game offers you a thief (which is most of the game on both occasions), but the way they interact with OTHER side objectives and even have entire maps dedicated to them is what mixes them in with side objectives for me and thus makes them my favourites.
There's just something about Dew and Aideen's castle escape in Chapter 1 of Genealogy that is always fun to me, as you have the choice of sticking around and fighting, but risking Dew's safety, or running away and giving up all that gold. This goes for all Dew combat opportunities, and turns fighting armies and getting villages into something quite interesting. Do you want Dew to sweep that up and redistribute it later, but risk death, while protecting and waiting for him during other map objectives? Or do you want to just feed him whatever you can? What about villages? It's an interesting dilemma.
Thracia does such a good job setting up it's tone as a desperate struggle where every fighter on the field is scrappy and underprepared, to the point you have to capture and grab weapons from your enemies, as shopping is expensive and not as handy as most other games. This makes using a cheapskate like Lifis or an underdog like Lara super fun, as they both play into this tone super well while encouraging you to indulge in the randomness of Thracia with Con growths and their capability to circumvent combat by stealing people's weapons and items off of them, and grab unique valuables without capturing. Add this to the Perne chapter where you can promote Lara into a Dancer and have a lot of side objectives, and the story-gameplay integration is immaculate. I wish more FE games did things like these. It makes Thieves into a whole different beast that I highly respect.
I appreciate recent games like Engage giving Thieves like Yunaka unique traits and gimmicks mostly exclusively associated with them, such as poison stacking and Fog terrain. I hope they continue or revisit things like these, as they make side objectives and the whole game a grand puzzle irresistible to my brain, and one that you can also ignore or underutilize without feeling too punished (at least, the way Genealogy and Thracia are balanced).
My favourite side objectives is beating enemies that are way more powerful relative to the point of the game they appear in - Desaix in act 1 of Gaiden/Echoes or Xander and Garon in ch12 of Birthright. With Desaix it's tricky to keep him blocked so he doesn't attack your frailer units, while at the same time making sure Slayde can attack someone that won't kill him. With Garon i took every possible resource available at his point, got Felicia and Sakura standing near for reduced damage, Oboro and Rinkah took a hit to seal defense/res, while Orochi and Takumi filled with tonics were the damage dealers (Orochi needed shield gage, while Takumi with all the bonuses would survive on 1hp). It took like 50 turns but Garon eventually fell. Shame it was so anticlimactic, you don't get Dracoshield and the end of the chapter cutscene still assumes Corrin is on the run, even if you routed the whole map.
I would mention Galzus in ch6 of Thracia, but not only you don't get anything for killing him, it also prevents you from recruiting him later so there's no point. I guess capturing him for master sword is an option, but the probability of that happening is astronomically low.
Holy cow that is some dedication on the Garon kill. Even Xander just bulldozed my otherwise relatively OP army (this was on Lunatic mind).
Blood Runs Red or something like that in PoR when the Black Knight shows up is almost perfect with it's side objectives. Zihark, villages, not killing all of the mercenaries that are racist, and then the Black Knight is a scary timer to get all of that done and clear the map. On the other hand, Jill shows up on the corner of the map after a number of turns & I tried recruiting her (on my first playthrough) with Ike, and ended up killing her because I couldn't talk to her. I wish they did not have her on the map to confuse the player, seeing as she shows up in the next map to be recruited easily, but you cannot know that on your first playthrough.
When its villages or villagers, I always go for them because I'd feel bad if they die.
big agree. its much more fun when theres a reason to split up your army because a Wall of Units and turtling makes every map pretty easy
Awesome, subbed
Great concise video on the topic! I can't say a "favorite" comes to mind, but I will say that I typically enjoy ones that many players don't find particularly rewarding. For example, I remember talk of the village with the Recover staff in Engage Ch 16 being a bit silly. Under the context of my own challenges though, I already have someone vaguely in the area to rout the enemies in the north, and it's an interesting but reasonable challenge to visit it before the rest of my army is done with Mauvier and Marni. Not that this speaks to how well designed it is for the purpose of being interesting to a wider audience, but it at least works well for me.
Fe6 Ch 11A (maybe 10B too) is probably the king of side objectives i think there are 4-5 of them in that map alone. The boss and the seize point is easier to get to than the side objective. It's a bit strange that it's such a one of map. They don't make map like that again even in it's own game.
You could make arguments for Chapter 7 and 16 too I suppose, but there isn't as much of a time-pressure in getting the villages aside from having to deal with the cracked Cavalier reinforcements in the former.
I honestly find that map a bit overrated. Mostly because you're so reliant on how green units and incredibly weak enemy Pegasus Knights choose to move around. Tbh I kind of prefer how chapter 15 handles guarding green units.
Personally, I find 11A a shining example of how side objectives don't make a good map. There is just way too much that can (and will) go wrong. Like relying on green units to not be stupid, for example.
Gonna have to agree with the feeling that 11A is awful. There's so much stuff that can and will go wrong. Keeping Klein's squad is a pain, keeping Thea's squad is less of a pain, but still a pain, getting to the villages is also annoying as fuck, even if less than these other two problems. There's also the matter of their random movement, and Echidna's squad tilt me.
There's also another issue which is that the map pretty much forces you to use strong/mobile units to actually manage things in a reasonable manner. Though, this last criticism is kind of hypocritical coming from me, since I love Distant Blade as Seth and Vanessa are pretty much mandatory picks if you want to reach the side objectives in a reasonable manner.
Love the video! I personally feel like older FE games side objectives is more related to inventory or character recruitment while modern FE (Conquest and onwards) have more obstacles to reach the objectives. I liked the examples you used for Conquest and Engage, those are some of my favorite chapters. I prefer side objectives that makes the win condition harder, so it's better to deal with it than ignore it. They are optional, but it will make your life easier if you deal with it. The side objective can also be related to the defeat condition, such as defense chapters where if an enemy reach the checkpoint, it's game over.
😂
Kaga thought about this and made almost every map in Vestaria Saga to have side objectives.
I think an interesting point of comparison is looking at how the Super Robot Wars series handles side objectives. The side objectives themselves are frequently some form of time limit (clear the map within X turns, defeat all reinforcements with Y turns of their arrival, etc), but can also include things like defeating the boss with a specific unit, defeating a unit that normally retreats when their HP drops below a certain threshold, etc.
What adds an extra layer of complexity, beyond just changing how you approach the map, is that for every side objective you complete you gain a Skill Point (or SR Point depending on the translation). The game keeps track of how many Skill points you have compared to how many you could have gotten at that point in the game, and uses that to dynamically scale the difficulty of the game. If the player is struggling to complete the side objectives, the game will pump the brakes and ease off the difficulty; if the player is earning most/all of the Skill Points the game goes "okay, you clearly know what you're doing, so there's no need to pull any punches" and ramps up the difficulty to give the player more of a challenge. In some entries, your Skill Point total also affects what units you can acquire or even what ending you get.
SRW in general has a bunch of really interesting mechanics. Not all of them would necessarily be compatible with how FE games are typically structured, but they have some really novel design ideas that I think would interesting to explore within the context of Fire Emblem (I think the Suborder system would work great in FE, for example).
Totally agree. There's also often additional side objectives in many of the newer games that even go beyond the battle masteries. Like there will be a listed Battle Mastery which gives you a unique condition to clear in order to get the basic reward for that chapter, and then there's often also a 'hidden' objective which will give you something else extra if you do it during the map. These are often not specified by the game, so it usually involves playing the game with the wiki open, but I enjoyed going through a run of games like V, X, and T while trying to get the optional objectives in each map in addition to the Battle Masteries. Also the way they work with scaling difficulty is genius -- the more Battle Masteries you collect, the more likely you are to scale up to Hard Mode. I've always thought this was a great way to manage difficulty in a game (although you can definitely make the argument that it's better to allow the player to choose their own difficulty)
Anyway, as a fellow Super Robot Wars lover, it was nice to find this comment in the wild 😹
Best games for side objectives is path of radiance and fe7 with bonus exp and giaden unlocks
I really like Lillina's recruitment as a side objective. Either you cheese the archer over the wall (which I for sure did not think of the first several timez I cleared the map) or Lillina shuffles around just barely out of range. And then you talk to her with Roy to get a Thunder Tome that he was just... carrying on him lol. Its two different side objectives essentially, and there is a time limit because Cath or the other thief will just unlock her room and put her endanger.
Its technically on the way to the boss but it super encourages you to move the first half of that map very fast
Hi LIzard!
What's the purpose of clearing maps early? Doesn't grinding for kills and experience make your units more powerful?
It's usually a self-challenge and a way to keep things concise if you're recording, or just to get through more of the game faster. Some people even just do it so they can have a better challenge later. It all depends on your playstyle. A lot of people will go straight for the goalpost even if you give them a lot of sidequests and pretty distractions along the way for many reasons. But those are the ones I think of the most when clearing quickly or early.
Inherently, nothing beyond avoiding additional opportunities for mistakes (unless the enemies are total chumps, more combat is often more chances for things to go wrong). But I personally find more enjoyment in the games when they encourage me to play a bit more proactively, which usually results in faster clears than more conservative play.
Some maps create incentives for you to clear them early, like the conquest boat, or Engage Ch25 with its reinforcements.
Beyond personal enjoyment and incentives provided by the map though, people should play at the pace they want. That's why I like side objectives, they reward you for being proactive, but they don't demand that you do so if you don't like playing that way.
that's why berwick saga is awesome
Not just Fire Emblem.
Been playing other RPGs with side objectives and they massively spice up otherwise bland maps. Hell in the highly acclaimed BG3, the only encounter I really remember was the one with the witch. What made that encounter memorable was the hostage situation.
I think it’s cool how almost every single map in CQ has a side objective. Only chapter 6,7,19,21(sort of),23,24, and endgame DON’T have side objectives. This is why I say that CQ is often as hard as you make it.
Skipping recruitable characters on your first playthrough on purpose. Yes, I’ve uh never done that. *nervous chuckle*
May not be too related but I was thinking about that Engage map where we first get Sigurd and Celica rings. If Chloe and Louis were actually green units that need to be recruited instead of becoming blue units at the beginning of the map, then there immediately is an incentive to hurry and save them. That in itself is like a side objective in my opinion as we now have Green units to save while trying to complete the map objective. But of course, that never happened so its all just wishful thinking.
Otherwise, even simple things like getting one or two chests in a map makes a map much more interesting for me as I now have to take the chests into account as I move and position my units.
I love Conquest's maps but Sakura is ruined by the fact that you can ignore the gimmick entirely during the map prep by pairing up all your units to one side, and the dragon veins arent nearly as helpful as having all your units focused together so there's really no tactical reason you would want to play the map as intended.