I’m overall fine with time pulses , turnwheels , or any other fixations in gameplay since mistakes are often made but when a game LIES TO ME like in the three houses map THAT’S when I’m truly grateful for that.
The thing is that, for me as an not that young anymore fan near to my 30s, having a mechanic that allows me to rewind a mistake or a bad roll saving me from minutes to hours of my time is a thing that makes playing those games much more enjoyable.
@sicomaian95 I remember the hours I lost in awakening or fates because those games required you to reset the ds to reload a save file. It's was so annoying. Three houses really needed divine pulse because the game was sometimes just straight bullshit unfair on maddening.
I think they should just make it optional like casual/classic. (I know people will say just dont use it but it’s not the same, it feels way more rewarding when you dont even have the option).
Marianne doesn't need to be competent; leave her completely still. Maurice won't attack her and all the other monsters prioritize your other units on the right. It's kinda a drag but it's not unbearable in the slightest
@@morganreaverIf you attack any of the monsters close to Maurice, he will start attacking Marianne anyway, also there are Phantom Unit Snipers that will attack Marianne regardless if she moves of not
Petra's paralogue on maddening without stuff like new game + is horrible. having to race the clock, so many enemies all directions and hubert on some crack buffs. Edit: nvm he said this was the worst chapter in the video LMAO.
Tbh, Hunting By Daybreak is truly 3H's worst map, by being liable to cause softlocks due to its setup, especially on Maddening. The enemy force is completely overwhelming, and without any kind of prep-time since your last save and only 2 units to start, you're nearly devoid of options entirely. Then more units enter in pairs, isolated from the rest of your units, in an equally precarious situation. It is *so* difficult to get through without casualties, it can legitimately just end a playthrough if you saved at the last prompt.
Not to mention if you didn't actually use the units in your house, they're dead weight and guaranteed to die. On higher difficulties it can genuinely soft lock you.
Agreed. I can understand that map not being an issue on Hard difficulty, but even with all the advantage of NG+, if you didn't work on the units properly on Maddening or you don't have the right batallions, then you are guaranteed to softlock.
@@ChronosAnJill Honestly? I think it IS still a problem on Hard, just not anywhere as liable to softlock. It still represents a considerable difficulty spike, and I distinctly remember it giving me a lot of trouble on my first playthrough (Hard/Classic/Blue Lions). The map just feels terrible to play. Unless you've specifically set yourself up to deal with this map, it's super tedious to navigate with how easy it is to overexpose, so you gotta take everything slow, and the difficulty is immensely frontloaded, which also means the second half of the map is likely a bit of a snoozefest by comparison.
Church maddening was especially rough on this map. While Seteth is luckily pretty darn strong, even he struggled badly on this map, courtesy of being a flyer. MY Byleth wa sadly not very blessed and just barely hung on. I did use all pulses at the end and every class member besides Bernie had died. (Luckily, i only used church members + wolves anyways) But this one and maybe the tower of Miklan are the two worst maps in the game. Honorary Mention of Enbarr city,, mostly due to ambush Wyverns andFalco-knights with 50+ speed. wtf game??
@@laggalot1012 For as crazy as the difficulty spike is though, if you're playing on a more comfortable difficulty then it's a really cool map, with the gameplay reflecting the story pretty well since your students are supposed to come to your rescue
It is crazy how Arcadia FE6 is the singularity of all possible annoying FE design choices. Unit movement restriction? Check Fog of War with hidden enemies that outrange the fog even with a torch? Check Time limit that is required for the best ending? Check Literally the consensus worst unit in the series that you need to keep alive for the best ending? Check Hidden unique items that you have basically no chance of finding without a guide? Check Truly a miserable experience.
@@shellpoptheepicswordmaster755 And while I also believe that arcadia is fine once you actually have the information Needing to have the information in order for it not to be miserable Makes it a terrible map design wise
Sure but at that point you're in the mid game where you have all the parent units and if you go out of your way to do so, can start collecting the future child units which can very easily break the game in 2 when built correctly. Plus gold is actually farmable at that point since the reward money you get from ch. 11 onwards exceeds the price of reeking boxes so you can actually start profiting from training and kit out your army with the best available gear. The one he selected for the video is early game when you have far fewer resources and lower level units (one of which can't even fight at that point) so it's significantly harder.
@AGZhark The map with the dude who has Ragnell has so overwhelming numbers that I revert back to just using a juggernaut. Usually taking Nah who has sol and then pair her up with either Nowi or Tiki. Nothing on the map can really kill her with that combo. Fighting that map normally would just turn into turteling in a corner.
@@Manslayer-eo1nh That map was an absolute nightmare. I had to rely on Robin and Morgan to dodge and tank almost everything and I still lost. There’s no strategy at all. The enemy units just push you back to the edge of the map. I’ll name one even worse, the DLC map; Apotheosis. Tons of armored units who your strongest units do absolutely no damage to.
I DESPISE the elevator map with Sumeragi in Revelations. Operating the elevators, especially because not all of your units will fit in it, is infuriating, and they also make the map feel really cramped. I was frustrated to the point that I put it down and didn't pick it back up again for 4 years.
Another reason why Radiant Dawn's iteration of the great bridge is so much worse is that in path of radiance: you hit the pitfall, the character's turn ends and the stun is lifted, in Radiant Dawn however the stun is only lifted when the player phase returns and said stun turns all enemy attacks to 100% hit rate (or at least removes your avoid rate so their hit stat is pretty much unchanged) Point is in Path of Radiance if Mia falls into a pit she can still dodge the attacks and maybe even fight back, in Radiant dawn she does not fight back at all and cannot avoid attacks either making her a sitting duck which is not as bad for characters with good defensive stats but still a colossal pain in the ass and then we have the whole "here's multiple flying units YOU MUST BRING and if ANY of them die you lose the mission" and guess what this game looooooooooves to have a crap load of on the map to discourage the use of flyers? that's right, CROSSBOWS, wonderfull crossbows that oneshot twice over Sigrun & tanith and then the boss's better crossbow can oneshot Tibarn and the whole flyers can avoid easily does not avail much here as Crossbows have an insane amount of hit. And while the enemy's use of shine barriers to wall off the safe way for multiple turns is also annoying, it pails in comparison to the rest I've listed here. Also a boat of Ballistae but that's on both iterations and they do pretty much what they were intended to.
Also, while it's of much less import, finally getting to sock General Petrine in the face in Path of Radiance is at least a pretty satisfying reward for finally making it through the bridge. She gets built up all game as this crazy, scary threat, then you finally get to put her down after one of the worst chapters. It's a small consolation. I can't even remember the name, face, or class of the guy at the end of the bridge in Radiant Dawn. I just looked him up and I'm already forgetting him. One more crossbow snub from a chapter full of them.
I always make tibarn or any flying units I have to include sit in the bottom corner of the map away from all the action so I don’t have to deal with the crossbow units trying to oneshot all the winged goobers lol
It's enjoyable but not particularly interesting because it has Awakening syndrome and as such almost every map is just a flat open field, which isn't helped by the fact that enemies tend to do like in Genealogy and move in blocks of units, so essentially the strategy to beat the game is the same for most battles.
I agree. A lot of the gameplay mechanics overshadowed the bad map designs. I honestly did notice that most of the maps were wide fields with a few bushes and randomly scattered enemies but I was so engrossed in the storyline, the characters and the other mechanics (Mila's turnwheel, dungeon crawling, etc.) that it didn't hinder the fun in playing, at least for me
Honestly I'm not even sure what the retreat mechanic _is._ Sounds like enemies stay dead on retreat? A little goofy, but I didn't find it necessary on any of the maps. If it gets to the point where someone feels like they need it, I'm not sure why they can't just lower the difficulty That said I really didn't have a great time with the poison swamp 😭 The final map was also super grueling but at least that's kind of cool from a narrative standpoint, so I didn't mind too much
All the problems you mentioned with the ballistae map in 11 are exclusive to the remake, as they used the existing map design with the ballistae mechanics from later games. In the original game ballistae were just a variant of archer with enormous defense and lower mov, meaning they have 2 range and can be easily surrounded by mounted units and chipped away at. You also get a new unit with a weapon that's effective against them and can use him to blow through the center lane without ever worrying about the other two, though it's safer to clear all three. So it's not a problem with the map design at all, it's an issue with the map design and mechanics being out of sync.
Oh the most evil thing to me is the barrier mages and rescue priests too. Fe9 you're very tanky as well but in fe10 They put barrier mages that are legit there to make you unable to move past halfway because it's all pitfalls. Fe9 to its credit they have a vacant spot to discover before fights...but Fe10 is already claustrophobic... besides farrying with fliers...which slight pro is they give you 3. Here's how I would change fe10 remove pitfalls...secondly give both sides ballistae it's bs that they're always against you and I would add a fly area above the bridge not down though so fliers and the fly tiles above give extra movement done....lol
The wooden cavalry is unironically worse in the remake, because they changed how Ballisticians work to match later games in the series, without actually changing the enemy layout or map design.
It's kind of infamous for good reason, Reunion at Dawn in Three Houses takes my pick for worst map in game for a specific reason - it makes most restriction/challenge runs infuriatingly hard at higher difficulties. On Normal it'll bump your recruited units up to 20 so you can at least keep them alive, but for whatever reason this doesn't happen on higher difficulties. This map is the sole reason I play on Casual mode whenever I am doing a challenge, non-Black Eagle run. I just let everyone I'm not using fall so I can move on.
No but Reunion at Dawn is the absolute worst because it can literally soft lock maddening runs while preventing you from bringing your good units or doing any kind of preparation on a power bump map
My first playthrough was Silver Snow route, and so I focused on all the teachers and instructors with a few other non-Red House units, and not knowing this one was coming, whooo boy was it a less fun version of that route where, for whatever reason, if I recall, it's mostly me and Seteth doing all the work very slowly. I actually like the idea of this map just fine in concept, but oh man, even in practice, it's kinda annoying.
@@bifflechips-t5r I agree with you. Conceptually, and thematically, it's amazing. The somber music, the hardened appearances of your former students, and the way they slowly appear to help you out of a dire situation, all culminate in such a memorable map. But it all relies on you not being able to build up friendship fast enough with non-house members your first playthrough and thus mostly using your own house. Do anything but that and you get shafted.
Chapter 5 in 3h is extremely underhated. It's essentially a long empty spiral with far too few enemies or anything interactable. Twenty plus turns of not a damn thing happening. It's only fun in maddening at the very top part of the map, when all the enemies suddenly form a huge barricade, it's so intense and high stakes, but it's only like five turns.
Tbh i hated the elevator map in revelation way more than snow shoveling because shoveling was only boring while elevator was tedious in getting your units from place to place while playing around the really threatening enemies
Honestly, as much as Voice of a God is a tedious Revelation map, I never thought it was THAT bad. What other Fates map gives us THIS many permanent stat boosters? Sure it might be the Chapter's only saving grace in my eyes, but surely there's a worse map later on, especially in Valla.
My worst Fates map in Birthright has to be the one where you’re in a literal volcano. Had to solo the whole thing with Ryoma and Saizo supporting each other. In Conquest, it’s the literal first map you encounter the Hoshidans; Takumi, Obora, and Hinata.
@@TheWizardMus Honestly, that's pretty valid. And for me especially, that map pretty much shapes Mozu for me and helps patch her up to be a great unit. But it's not just Mozu, ANYONE can be patched up with those boosters, and you could even save them for later recruits.
@@TheWizardMusI can agree, with one small footnote. The Dark Mage with Mjolnir near the end is a serious dick move. But that's the only real gripe I have with it tbh.
I really hate the paralogue for Marianne. Apparently I was supposed to know that the giant scary boss monster that one rounds Marianne does not attack her and that trying to fly to rescue her would activate hidden fog of war wolves. It is really the emblem for me of how bad 3H’s map design is and how they used divine pulse as an excuse for bad design, as it was tricking you before maddening and its ambush spawn nonsense ever arrived.
It's even one of those bad design things that can be fixed if the pre-battle text mentioned that mechanic at all. Like just have Maurice tell Marriane to stay perfectly still and he'll be merciful to her.
Agreed though the worst map in 3h is easily softlock by daybreak. I really do not like a lot of the higher difficulties in Fe games (there are exceptions) as the enemies just receive inflated stats without any thought. A great example of this is shadow dragon hard 5 medeus. He is hard to damage and very hard to survive with his 30 speed as he will double everything expect swordmaster. This leads the optimal strategy to be warp manakete in, do damage, die, revive, warp, kill. Want to use the falchion well a speed capped marth gets doubled and dies so no.
I agree with many of your choices, but Thracia 24x has to be mentioned. It's only saving grace is that it's from a game that was never officially released, so you pretty much have to play on an emulator, so you might as well spam those save states. Without it, it would probably take THOUSANDS of tries until the location of every bullshit trap tile is burned into your memory. Also the following sentence must be said about Genealogy chapter 2: "I'm A gReEn UnIt!"
did you know that playing with save states actually makes clearing the game take longer. ive seen it time and time again. if you focus on being a perfectionist and never having anything bad happen to your gameplay, of course you would think 24x is bad. its not supposed to be fair. the story integration for that map is really second to none. theres is however, for people trying to master it tons of tricks you can employ to have a smooth ride for it. but allowing a unit to die on a first blind playthrough because they got hit by a warp tile is nothing to be ashamed of and certainly nothing to say its a bad map design. its one of the better ones in the series
@DoTtA1123 I agree on avoiding the perfectionist trap. It really becomes tempting to fix everything. But defending 24x is a wild take. Yes, the story-gameplay integration may be good, but most people don't want to play a game with "fuck you" as a theme. Personally, I don't like blatantly unfair mechanics even when they are deliberate. And, in 24x's case, it's terribly unfair. Being punished for just traversing the map, with no indication of which tiles warp your units, feels like shit. There are ways of saving warped units, yes, but the means are limited, and it's a long map and the warp tiles are spread all throughout. Because of that, it's more than just one unit you can potentially lose. Being the lategame, it's probably going to be your best units, who you need for the end. And the worst part is that it's undeserved. It wasn't bad tactics or preparation, just troll game design. People mostly agree that frustrating maps are bad, and 24x takes the cake. For me, it's far from a good map.
@@DoTtA1123 good story integration is no excuse for shitty game design choices. Look at Fates and Arthur. He's shown in cutscenes as having luck that is beyond horrible. Problem is, they also reinforced it with him having really low luck ingame, as well as a shitstain of a personal skill that cuts into his dodge (aka crit evade). Unsurprisingly, he's a liability on the battlefield and one of the worst Nohrian characters. Back to 24x, pretty much everything about it is terribly designed. It's one thing for a map to be hard, but 24x is more frustrating than legitimately difficult.
@@nigh_thereI mean it may be a wild take, but I'm tired of pretending like you have to be some sort of masochist to enjoy a map that had a really well thought out experience to it. That's all
@@DoTtA1123 But... why is a random warp maze "well thought out" or "good map design"? If there was some way - any way - to know where the warp tiles were, or there was some way out, then maybe, maybe you can say you're rewarding that player who figured it out. But to my knowledge there just isn't, other than "buy a strategy guide." Don't get me wrong, there are people who genuinely enjoy carefully mapping trap tiles in old-skool grid-based dungeon crawlers (your Wizardries, Etrian Odyssies, etc.), but even the rudest of those let you make progress and don't just kill you forever with no out other than reloading. If you let your best unit get teleported in 24x (with no way in-game at all to know which tiles are safe) and you don't have a Rescue to fix the situation, they aren't escaping and are basically dead. That's an insanely cruel punishment for... what? Not buying a strategy guide?
For me, the truly Worst Map of Awakening is Tiki's recruitment Paralogue (funny, seeing how Tiki herself is one of my favorite characters in the entire franchise). Simply put: Tiki is easy to kill and the enemies will outright ignore my units to go after her, it is also way too long of a chapter.
But you can deny the devs added one really funny thing that prevented you from cheesing the map, you're just short one deployment slot of fully boarding Tiki lol. But that said it is a boring map, the enemies are weak enough that you can one round them but strong enough just to one round Tiki, and it's very unforgiving considering if one enemy slipped guess that's a restart
you can move Tiki with the rescue staff. that map is ridiculously easy on lower difficulties and probably one of awakening’s more interesting maps on lunatic and lunatic+ people just forget that the rescue staff is buyable and e-rank because it’s so prized in other games, and it’s by far the best tool for almost everything awakening throws at you
It's been quite a while since I've played awakening, but from how I remember it, none of the maps were offensively bad, yet few of them were that good either. Most of them were okay, but forgettable.
For three houses you need to put chapter 13 Hunting by Daybreak, church route. Going in blind you rarely train seteth to the level required which is important because he's half your army starting off and he just cant compare to the other route's lords, and then when reinforcements arrive they're in the corners (with no way of knowing they'd spawn there) far away from help and 2/3 turns away from dying, especially if you benched some of your house's students as recruited students don't show at all (which is impossible to fix without restarting the whole route and training just your house's students). There's a reason some people prepare 1 or even 2 maps in advance for chapter 13. Softlock hell.
Engage skirmishes is the sole reason why I stopped playing it shortly after I cleared the main story, it’s so bad that I didn’t even have the drive to complete the xenologues
From the games I played, I largely agree on the maps being bad. Imo, my least favorite awakening map would be chapter 5, not only because wyverns are difficult to take down, especially this early in the game, but also reinforcements and trying to make it to ricken+maribelle in time to save them. And when you do, ricken is exactly 1 damage short of killing said wyverns...
Binding Blade is one of my favorite entries but yeah ch14 is among the most annoying in the series. This video doesn’t even mention that Cecilia joins in the worst possible chapter as a horseback unit However, because of the anima mages, it’s the ideal arena to level Sophia, which I often do for kicks
I'm kinda surprised for Thracia 776, 4x was chosen. I'd say 24x would probably be one of the most frustrating map of the game, with 17A and 18 (For its side objectives) also being frustrating
The only saving grace of 4x is that it's short. Turn 1 on 4x is the absolute extreme of "pick a god and pray" in this series in terms of complete lack of player agency in the result. Like if a unit in your front rank gets too many criticals, they will die and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it which is just an absurd outcome 24x is sadistically designed to play blind and without a guide, but at least once you've played it once you know what's going on and can look up a map for the warp tiles Edit: Also shoutout to chapter 5 for being a map that would normally be remembered as annoying, but everyone loves it cause the story beats are so good. Can't think of any other maps like that
@smokyprogg i remember just bunkering down in the jail cell and waiting it out in 4x since ced kills everyone up top super quick and its a good way to get exp for units like fergus. 24x however, couldnt do it without cheesing it via warp. Fuck that map
For engage, I would say that the worst chapter is 22, the one where you have to gather all the rings in map. It's just too slow, and reinforcements keep coming non stop, and you can't use the best mechanic in the game even if you get the rings.
Don't forget the three-lane snow map with the gusts that will force you back along with a turn limit. Or the utterly stupefying amount of reinforcements some maps have. Or Camilla's DLC map literally being Birthright Chapter 23.
@ebinku Reinforcements aren't a problem with that specific map. I just don't like the mechanics of it. It doesn't help that it's tied narratively to one of the dumbest parts of a story that is at baseline not very good to begin with.
I expected chapter 17 of Path of Radiance to be on the list, a chapter that was divided into 4 different map sections really overwhelmed me the first time I played it. I didn't expect that Ike and the others would chase Oliver into the deepest forest without any way to refill their weapons. Kieran and Mia were killed in the third part of the map because they ran out of weapons plus all the enemies ganged up on them mercilessly. Truly a dramatic strategic experience
In fairness, the game DOES warn you it's gonna be long and to bring ample supplies in this chapter through one of its base conversations. PoR likes to use those to give some insight into the coming map, so if you're willing to take the info at face-value (and by chapter 17, I think you can reasonably know to do so), you could have been prepared. It's fair game, in my opinion.
I personally think that the worst the chapter in three houses is the Mercedes Caspar paralogue simply because if you haven't invested into Caspar as one of your main units, it's straight up impossible. Caspar and Mercedes start out the other side of the map (a quite large map at that) with a monster right in front of them and reinforcements coming to kill them in a few turns. Mercedes is a great support unit with good offensive magic but is extremely frail and is not built for fighting solo. This means Caspar has to be strong enough to defend the both of them with no one expect Mercedes for support which is a very demanding task especially on harder difficulties and simply is not possible if you haven't actively used and trained him. Even speedrun tactics to get support to them as fast as possible won't bail you out since it's a rout all enemies mission meaning you can't end it on turn one which those tactics rely on as it leaves your units in vulnerable positions that will almost certainly get you killed on enemy phase. It's simply not possible if you haven't trained up Caspar. Also, fun fact, the dark knights on that map only have mire, a dark magic spell, yet they have the ability black magic range +1 on maddening which is completely useless on them as they have no black magic spells which I think just goes to show how little testing went into this map.
I did this map (admittedly on NG+) on Maddening without using Caspar past chapter 2. I went north as quickly as possible and used Constance to Rescue him asap. It was pretty close, but definitely doable. Honestly, i don't think i used a stride gambit for this map, which would have made it possible to rescue him a turn sooner anyways.
For me, what was flabbergasting was how they took two characters who don’t even have any affinity and gave them joint paralogues. Like Ferdinand and Lysithea and Leonie and Linhardt. Like, these characters have had no connection before now
@@thediabolicalraisin8953 i always had Caspar use Exhaustive Strike with a strong axe, guarantees that he can do decent damage to the boss even when unlevelled. That does require you to train him in Axes, but iirc he automatically levels that anyway if you leave him completely untouched so as long as you didn't specifically mess with his goals it should usually be fine
I was wondering what parameters for maps you’d consider in engage. For example, are we including only the base 26 chapters? Or are we allowing Emblem Battles? Maybe Xenologue and DLC maps are allowed? This is an important question because it undoubtedly changes what the worst map is. For example of the base 26, Chapter 13: Heroes of the oasis is the worst because it’s just slightly worse than other chapters, but if we include engage battles, suddenly we open ourselves up to Rematch in the Plains, The Sage Lord, and The Ancestor as possible worst map options. If we include Xenologue maps we open up Path to War, The Fell Heir, and in Maddening only Seven Bracelets(Purely from a difficulty perspective, honestly I don’t think I would consider it for worst).
The Poison Swamp Maps in Shadows of Valentia are the absolute worst, in a game that has no shortage of terrible map design. The fact that you have to move slowly across tiles that will damage your units, all while you have cantors summoning a never ending supply of enemy reinforcements just make for the least fun experience I have ever had in Fire Emblem. By the time I got to this point in the game, I was begging for the game to be over....
I think the worst map in FE12 is the fog of war gaiden map with ballistae, 2 vision fog of war with no torches is miserable and being attacked by enemies that you can’t see is obnoxious. The decision to put the Lote’s Shield on that map feels like a sadistic joke as your fliers were most likely obliterated by the time you reach the chest.
For me , I think my least favorite chapters are Awakening: Severa's paralogue. I don't really hate it but I didn't enjoy escorting her as a level 10 mercenary against of bunch of enemies that can one round her Conquest: Den of Betrayal for putting an incredibly evasive boss that can deal both phys and mag on a throne. Just hitting feels like a gamble and that chapter is fairly long so resetting feels awful. Revelation: Originally I'd have said the tedious Sumeragi one, but you reminded me that the ice chapter exists so I'm picking that one 3H: Probably Marianne's paralogue. It's very tedious with both the fog and forest, and you really have to crawl through so you don't risk aggroing too many monsters at once. Special mentions go to the first few real chapters on Maddening. Why do something interesting when you can just massively inflate the enemies' stats? Engage: I think I'd maybe go with Celica's paralogue. I like the concept of taking out summoners and fighting through strong dragon units to reach the boss, so it's kinda frustrating when she just warps to my army right next to the boat and practically invalidates the entire chapter. I have a similar issue with Ike and Corrin's paralogues, where the boss just gets bored of waiting after a few turns and ends up rushing straight for you, but they aren't as bad in that regard. Special mentions goes to the skirmishes. They were fine in Awakening, Fates, and 3H. How did they mess those up so bad in engage?
I personally really dislike the sombron chapter in engage. For one, it's easier if you don't target the dark emblems and just fight sombron directly, mitigating the entire gimmick. Sombron is also just there in the center at all times, meaning you can viably just target him and ignore others. I really feel like it drops almost all of engage's interesting mechanics and map design.
I don't know if you count DLC/Spotpass Chapters when making this video, but for Awakening, I would like to give a shout-out to "Paralogue 17: The Threat of Silence" (A.K.A. The paralogue where you can recruit Tiki). The main issue is that you not only have to deal with protecting Tiki in a pretty open map, there's also just the fact that you have to deal with a scarily and annoyingly smart A.I. Not only are ALL enemies on this map fast-moving fliers, if they see they can directly reach Tiki, even if it's not on this turn, they will just go straight towards her, ignoring and bypassing your own units. And if you try to surround your units around her instead, the enemies will instead just zero-in on the weakest unit blocking the way, and keep attacking them until they die, at which point they will go through that gap to go towards Tiki. And it's not like Tiki is super bulky to compensate the fact that it's very hard to stop her from being attacked. Since she doesn't have a Dragonstone, and she's busy meditating, she cannot turn into a dragon, making it easy for her to go down once multiple enemies manages to reach her. It's such a huge pain, it's pretty much my least favorite map in the series.
Chapter 2 Awakening on Lunatic is a big challenge for the fact that it’s the breaking point of all the maps that came before it. Getting Virion’s Elixir to a unit that needs it and having enough left to tank hits will change the map from being really damn hard to genuinely infuriating. I’ve beat the map without the Elixir, and it just feels a whole lot worse than playing your cards right and properly trading it the map before.
See, I want to say that I don't particularly dislike any of Shadows of Valentia's maps... But then I remember that Desert Stronghold singlehandedly convinced me to always recruit all of the DLC characters with Celica's army specifically, literally _just_ because having more available units gives you more deployment slots and on that map specifically it lets you put a few people _much_ closer to the fortress's entrance, which cuts down on the tedium enormously. With Genealogy, honestly I think Disturbance in Agustria is a good map; it does an excellent job of encouraging the player to hurry with effectively timed objectives, while the "backtracking" eases the player into the idea of splitting up their army (sending only one's cavalry north to attack Anphony allows one's infantry, who couldn't hope to keep pace, to instead hang back and engage Mackily after they drop their neutrality). Rather, I feel like Door of Destiny is the worst map, specifically for the huge stretch of desert between Lubeck and Phinora where basically your entire army is hindered (and also the enemy makeup for this section consists entirely of dragon knights and siege tomes). And in Blazing Blade, Battle Before Dawn is a wonderfully tough and interesting map... on Eliwood mode. But the Hector mode variant can go right to hell, and it's entirely because of the Fighters hanging out near Jaffar who had their weapons switched to Swordreavers, which gives them distressingly good odds of smashing one of your side objectives to paste before his feeble green-unit brain can think to retreat and heal up (and certainly long before you, the player, can do a damn thing to influence the outcome in any way). In comparison, Night of Farewells doesn't telegraph its gimmick very well, but I still find it much easier to manage _that_ gimmick (especially as the paths are nice enough not to change until the end of the enemy phase), compared to the map where you can do literally everything right and still fail for reasons beyond your control.
Fire emblem isn’t designed for perfectionist. I think so much of what is seen as annoying mechanics or unfair mechanics are the games playing into the horrors of war. People die. It doesn’t really make sense that every person in your army would make it to the end. This is what sets fire emblem apart. Pitfalls in the fe9 bridge, warp tiles in Thracia, and Kitsune in conquest lead to truly surprising and memorable moments. They may be sad, but it makes Fire Emblem so special.
The worst map in radiant dawn is without a doubt 2-1, the nephenee brom map. All the volunteers have random ai. All enemies have random stats that can vary enough to matter. All enemies have random biorhythm. Both nephenee and brom have incredibly shaky hit rates. Nephenee's effectiveness fluctuates considerably depending on her level ups. The map is two busy for two units to handle quickly. There are poison enemies. There are a fair number of 2 range enemies dispite the player not starting with any 2 range options of there own. The starting inventory for your units are atrocious, brom with his weak iron axe and nephenee with her heavy inaccurate steel greatlance. The chapter is a complete rng mess and generally a slog to play through. 3-11 is actually a pretty fun map. There aren't actually that many pitfalls and their placement this time are pretty obvious. The game also gives you a bunch of flying units like tanith and sigrun to cover the pitfalls and cross quickly.
21:30 it does synergize with Ike's ability actually, jut not his combat ability. The ability it does show off is his ability to instantly break walls in one hit. So...yeah underwhelming as hell. But technically it's showing off what he can do.
As you said, the gameplay in Engage's main story is mostly well done. The only map I really don't like is the endgame map, which is a slog to get through as getting the shield down is annoying enough, but then you have infinite respawning enemies outside the map and spawners within the map, on top of it being a big map, it slows things to a bleeding craw.
Is no one gonna mention Seven Bracelets, the final map of Engages Dlc Fell Xenolog? Endless spawning annoying wyverns, a boss thats way to strong and the map getting destroyed over time
Surely for Conquest, one of the honorable mentions HAD to be Winds of Change. The impact the wind would have sending ALL of your infantry units into a barrage of enemy soldiers was nothing short of infuriating as it had the same issues as Night of Farewells but instead of water that can be slowly traversed, we're unfortunately blessed with literally impassable AIR. This just made the map so unbearably slow and stress-inducing to clear.
UGH, don't remind me of that one, I got through lunatic on that map and it's a colossal pain in the ass, the only silver lining to it is how I cheesed Hayato, for context he was built in such a way that I could not beat him without losing units but he does not move and is optional, then I realized I have one unit that could destroy him my Kumagera (capturable boss) who had both countermagic and counter (his class learns counter and he came with the magical one) I just parked him in melee range and waited for Hayato to attack cuz his dmg was half of his own full HP so you can guess how that went. (insert mirror coat joke here)
I don’t have any unfavourable memories of Nuibabas Abode…mainly because the first thing I did was reading her weapon and then deciding imma warp rescue Alm in to assassinate her (I dubbed it Alm Boomerang because I kinda overused it at that point) before I do anything else
I haven't played the Archanea (Well, I've played the SD remake a little bit, but not enough to comment) or the Jugdral games, but for most of the rest I agree with these picks. The few I do disagree with though: Path of Radiance: I don't have the same hatred for the Great Bridge that everyone else does. The pitfalls and ballistae are annoying going in blind, but I find it thematic and interesting enough that it ends up not bothering me. Instead I'd vote for Chapter 25: Strange Lands. When I played the game blind back when it was still relatively new, (And I was rather young) that chapter caused the most resets for me due to the damn boulders and their pathing not feeling intuitive. Also the common issue of small pathways that comes up in the other games. Radiant Dawn: Same with PoR that I don't hate the bridge that much, and much like how you get Haar in PoR Ike gets Ragnell back this chapter, which is awesome. (There is also bias here since Ike is my favorite lord and RD is my favorite game) Instead I'd go with Chapter 3-6: A Reason to Fight. Swamp, Fog of War, and your units are almost certainly outclassed unless you really focused down on 2-3 units or you've played the game several times and really know how to min-max it, and even then there's risk involved. The Black Knight's inclusion is cool thematically, which I enjoy on that front, but it also feels like a slap in the face in hindsight because it feels like the developers knew this map would be unfair otherwise and threw you a bone, much like how the NA version gives the DB Prf weapons to help even the playing field for Part 3. I'd also consider at least mentioning 3-8: Incandescent Glow here for just being incredibly boring, but that might just be me. Awakening: For basically the same reasons you stated for your choice with Chapter 2, I'd instead throw Chapter 5: The Exalt and the King here. While I love the idea of a rescue mission, good fucking luck keeping a Troubadour and a Mage alive when they're in enemy territory on higher difficulties. I still feel like I missed something obvious because this was hell for me on Lunatic and came down to getting lucky with evasion.
I will say, when it comes to Revelation, I kinda find Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride worse than Snow Shoveling. Snow Shoveling is more boring than anything else, but Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride is frustrating to manage without getting your army split, especially since Corrin is just about the only useful unit you'll have at that point. And for 3H, I do appreciate the issue of a map lying to you, but I'll never be able to forgive the game for Reunion at Dawn after playing on Maddening. Altogether too many Poison Strike archers you can't really do anything about except tank.
Nice video, I don’t agree with everything but I respect your arguments. The one I’ll argue back on is: if you’re going to say ch2 for Awakening because of Lunatic mode, then you HAVE to put ch13 for 3h. It is criminally nasty on a blind run, especially in Blue Lions. Add on top the unbelievable removal of the prep screen and the requirement to have to skip multiple cutscenes every time you reload your save.
This is only an issue on the first playthrough if on maddening tho, and you'd normally only do it on maddening after having played it before to learn the game first
@@TommySkywalker11 my experience was that I did Golden Deer first on Hard and then Blue Lions on maddening. So I knew what was going to happen but I didn’t know how much stronger the Maddening enemies would be. Also, same logic for Awakening. Once you know how to do walk-on-water strats in prologue and give Frederick the Bronze Sword or whatever, Chapter 2 is manageable
@@jhTheMan99 except chp2 in awakening still requires specific positioning and a very heavy dose of good rng even knowing the correct strategy to use HBD coming midgame also means you can do a lot to prepare for it
Its been too long since I have played anything other than 3 Houses and Engage for me to remember specific maps that I had issues with so I'm just gonna answer for those 2. 3H- I think it was a paralog mission for Ashe. I remember being surrounded in fog of war and enemies came at you from all over the place. It was a nightmare trying to position your units because even units that you thought were safe randomly die. Engage- I don't remember which chapter it was, but my least favorite mission is the one where you get Corrin's emblem ring. You have to slog through ruins that are filled to the brim with Miasma tiles that give your enemies +20 def/+20 res and make you lose 20 def and 20 res if you stand on them. All you have to deal with miasma tiles is Corrin's ice which is probably the worst one since it can't remove miasma from a tile that an enemy is already standing on.
Nah hunting by daybreak is by far fe3h worst map. At least with petras paralouge you can CHOOSE which units to bring along and its optional so you can save it for later or not do it at all... But hunting by daybreak will literally END your run if you dont have a good build that and it forces you to being every unit from your house and if you haven't been using them they will die to any of the enemies in 1 round
first playthrough i did as much as i could to recruit all the people i could from other houses, then that map came around and it was like 5 units who were built trying to survive while Byleth and Edelgard speedran the rest of the map
IMO Kitsune Lair isn't that bad if you know what you're up against. I understand why people finding it annoying but there are significantly more difficult maps in Conquest. My vote for "worst" map in Conquest is Night Breaks Through. The enemies are very strong and their formations are full of overlapping mixed damage types and debilitating status staves. You'll get overwhelmed by the infinite reinforcements if you advance slowly. If you want to beat the chapter on Lunatic without any deaths, it's vital you plan your Endgame strategy well in advance. Rescue and Silence are both major helps, so you'll want to acquire and save your uses of those staffs for this chapter. You'll also need at least 1 powerful unit who can kill Takumi and a couple juggernauts if you're not going to Rescue skip. I think this chapter makes for an interesting challenge but I could easily see an unprepared player getting soft locked at the very end of the game, which would be incredibly frustrating.
Considering it was my first time playing it you hit it right on the head. Even fighting Garon was extremely hard, I didn't beat it because I kept getting swarmed and dying and I had to turn it to Phoenix just to be able to beat it. And just when I thought I was safe...T A K U M I. I basically was forced to keep on Phoenix that I actually wanted to beat the story it was unfortunate but that shows the difficulty of conquest tbh. It was truly my first fire emblem moment
The other thing about the snow shoveling level that's so bad is the fact that there's a mage at the end that has a crit tome. You have to know that ahead of time to not be caught out by it, and make sure you have a unit that can survive in case they get crit by him. Usually you want to hit the snow with a weaker unit to make sure that the rest of you very limited units can actually kill the potential enemy in the snow, but you still really want to try to level some of them up especially since you would have just recruited Hayato. It's just extremely unfair to the player and a huge time sink. Especially since you already did a very similarly drawn out level where you're in the dark and have to worry about enemies coming out of nowhere.
For SoV, I wanna know people's thoughts on that one map on Celica's route that had a building with VERY narrow paths, gargoyles and earthquakes, not only getting to attack with 1 tile of space is horrible, you have to deal with healing everyone after the tremors, I don't know about others but it took me ages, I was thanking God after Celica got a crit on a boss For 3H I obviously have to bring up Marianne's paralogue, kinda surprised it wasn't here, it can be horrible or a cakewalk depending on what route you take, if you circle around the forest, you barely see enemies, if you go to the forest directly though, you get swarmed very quickly, and I'm not even mentioning Marianne herself
12:17 I decided for the first time ever to play FE on hard mode in Sacred Stones. It was also the first time I've played the level since I'd only did Eirika's route. This stage made me never want to play hard mode again.
As a self proclaimed Thracia expert I have two qualms 1. I wouldn't ever consider "saving Asbel" to be an objective of hero of the wind since he could die before you can possibly do anything about it (very VERY rare) and the dialogue implies that Asbel and Ced don't necessarily have to be traveling together at that point, Asbel is the one who went looking for Leif and Ced running into Karin are unrelated even if Karin happens to be with Leif, it's the reason Leif doesn't have a convo with Ced in that chapter, canonically they likely didn't meet/have a chance to talk in that chapter. 2. Not picking Forest of Darkness as the worst map let alone giving it a mention.
I have no idea how many times I had to restart the Ghost Ship map. L’Arachel kept dying. I had to take a few days of mental rest, and I was 7, imagine the frustration🥲🥲🥲
For 3H I would've said either Hunting By Daybreak because of the enemies and how you can get screwed over, or Marianne's paralogue due to the sheer number of monster units and how you can get screwed over wuickly especially if Marianne isn't built up enough. Also for SoV I would definitely say Nuibaba's map is the worst one for not only the map design, but also for Medusa. I hate spells/attacks that instantly reduce your HP to 1. Bohr X in 3H was kinda similar but it was still managable, but not Nuibaba/Medusa.
alright so for blazing blade it does actually tell you to hurry up and that the path will dissapear in the augury fortune teller, and if you just stall for enough turns the path does come back permanently
Good to know that me struggling with Camilla chapter wasn't just me being a noob. It would have been worse if I didn't have like four healers on my team by then (Priestess Sakura, Falco Knight Hinoka, Felicia and Izana). I also found it extremely annoying that I actually did want to spare Arthur and Effie since they weren't doing anything wrong, just a misunderstanding. But noooooo, I couldn't get to them in time before they decided to rush on me and die by existing next to me
@@bearerofbadnews1375 Yeah. Three Houses did it better in having the DLC as separated from the main story. At least you can play the Xenologues in a different difficulty, but still... You have to play all 6 Chapters anyway.
In 3H, considering DLC, I'd choose the map of Anna's paralogue. After timeskip, when you only have basic units, they put bow knights which have 8 movement and 4 range
15:15 "It's probably a tad too easy" Nagapedia says about the third (or fourth depending on if you count the prologue to the prologue) chapter in the game... Gee, it's almost as if the very beginning of the game is intentionally meant to be easy... Unless you're a certified Lunatic and play on the aforementioned difficulty or the HARDER version of it...
Idk. I feel like Chapter 13 Engage is one of the few good fog of war maps. Being able to move at your own pace along with the enemies being preoccupied with beacons means you don’t have to worry about being overwhelmed or surprised by a powerful enemy showing up out of nowhere. It’s also around where you get some of Engage’s best units (Pan siblings, Merrin, Kagetsu) and Ike’s ring which are massive boons considering how weakened your army became a few chapters prior. Chapter 25 on the other hand is just bad. Tight corridors, 2x2 Luna dragons and the boss’s beams, makes playing it a slog to get through. But if you don’t rush, you get swarmed by the worst part of late-game Engage’s map design: reinforcement spam! Even on Hard, it’s not fun and was the first map in the series I felt like I had to warp-skip in order to beat. Chapter 19’s also not the best with all the miasma tiles everywhere, but the ambush villages are pretty funny at least.
Heavy disagree regarding Sacred Stones. I always found the Phantom Ship to be incredibly fun. Challenging, but fun. And we're still talking about Sacred Stones. Even on hard, this map is not difficult enough to actually be painful or annoying. The map goes out of its way to make you feel ambushed and unprepared, which quite honestly is a good thing because it's a refreshing change of pace in this game. If I had to choose a worst map here, I'd probably say 5x. Switching to Ephraim's point of view is a cool thing for the story, but the map itself is a slog to play. It's essentially one long hallway with no time-sensitive side-objectives, and there's no real danger present because Ephraim is an immortal demigod, and you've got Orson if that shouldn't be enough for you. Of course, 5x isn't the only painfully easy long hallway without time-sensitive side-objectives in this game, but it's the least fun out of all of them, because you don't even get to bring your own characters and instead have to play with one demigod and three cavaliers, which might just be the most boring squad composition I could think of.
I disagree with the pick for 3 Houses. Sure, Bernie and Petra sucks, but at least when you know it you can prepare for it. One you always have to slug through is Familiar Scenery, chapter 2 of the game, especially on Maddening since the enemies are overbuffed compared to your wheenies of high schoolers, and so you have 2 (or 3 if you picked the Blue Lions since Dedue is an absolute unit that makes this map a bit more bearable) units able to actually do stuff, Byleth and your house leader. And even then, for the Golden Deers, I hope that you've grinded Claude's bow rank to C to get close counter, because otherwise, he's just not that great. Also you only get Divine Pulse at the end of said chapter, making it more infuriating when you loose someone because you have to reset the whole map, reslogg through it all over again, turtling and turtling and turtling- I think that I've made my thoughs on this map clear. Tower of Black Winds, aka chapter 5, is also awful and suffers from similar problems, but at least you can have recruited Catherine and gotted some good level ups on your wheenie high schoolers, making it slightly more manageable when you know what you're doing.
Bow range+ maps are non-interactive and antithetical to strategy. The games don't give you any natural way to fight back that isn't agonizingly slow and repetitive
...I am going to be honest? chapter 2 maddening is braindead easy once you identify who can hit the 16 prot threshhold which BTW, it's leonie on GD and Dedue on BL black eagles has this map the hardest by far as a result chapter 3 on the other hand...it still pisses me off on GD, really, because if leonie does not get a couple of defense level ups before hand, it's a piece of shit still even with a lot of planning also no, you get divine pulse at the start of the chapter
I think I'm going to agree with you on that one dude. Chapter 13 of Fire Emblem engaged is rather very troublesome and it kind of makes very little sense. Also Marianne's paralogue the forgotten hero is absolutely daunting, because it is a complete fog of war map sadly Marianne is surrounded by hidden monsters in the fog that even she can't see without a torch.
It’s interesting. I usually have Constance in my party so this prologue almost always turns into Marianne walk 4 spaces ish and then rescue then turtle with three torches. I imagine this map is significantly harder/more daunting without the rescue and especially if you don’t have Marianne trained.
Engage's chapter 25 is the worst by far. Cramped spaces, absurd reinforcements that becomes even more massive passed a certain point, separated groups, Lumera using lasers to hit you from afar, big wyverns protecting her and the absolute worst of it? This map is already horrendous in Normal but Hard and Maddening becomes next to impossible if you don't have perfect units since the enemy units are all tanking 2 to 3 attacks each.
In FE1 i used ballistas to very slowly deal with some of the enemy ballistas did not know what to do otherwise, that chapter did want me to quit the game forever but i did beat it at some point In FE6 the Murdock chapter i used to rescue Roy because the wyverns dealt so much damage to him, just for his rescuer to die almost every time. It also has a turn limit of 30 after which the now failed bonus chapter boss joins which is interesting. With the FE6 Desert chapter has also the surprise berserker bosses who can just crit you With FE8, i had Dozla just being awful most times, taking lots of damage and doing badly in fighting back In FE 3 houses i had a few times that Claude was in range of Byleth, and would double and kill Byleth while everything else was kinda easy. So did not expect Claude to be that strong, and thanks to his mount i could not flee and had to restart One map in 3 Houses has a bunch of green units you must protect, and i had few times they would just all die really fast failing the map. Which is kinda annoyingbut the map is fine. Also the last Jeralt maphad Jeralt run to other way once and the monster kept killing him so had to restart that chapter once
You say that Agustrian Disturbance is the worst map in FE4 and I strongly have to disagree mainly because it’s an unfair assessment. looking at how the map is set up it’s obvious that you’ll have to seize Anphony and backtrack to Mackily and Agusty to finish the map however the game gives you not only the return ring in the same chapter but also the return staff in the previous chapter as well as the warp staff opening your movement options considerably. By the second chapter the player is well aware that only Sigurd can take castles and would most certainly take note of all the hints pointing at him having the return ring, Ethlyn returning him to the home castle or even Aideen or Deirdre warping him back to Heirhein for a straight line to Mackily. It just seems a bit unfair to say the map is bad, tedious or boring when it’s designed in such a blatant way
@@SweaterPuppys if you ask me, you're trying to make excuses for bad map design. Sure, Return can bring Sigurd back, but what about, oh, EVERYONE ELSE??? You expect me to use Return on everyone??
Personally, i would've consodered the NES counterpart of Shadow Dragon considered, because a lot of the rules are so different. The NES wooden cavalry is a joke because ballistae have 2-range, while Clash in Macedon can be an absolute nightmare since battle preparations are virtually nonexistent. This is in turn means your squishy units may end up in vulnerable positions without it even being your fault.
Actually, reaching Nino before she dies is easy. She is only attacked by weak monks and her RES is high enough that she will take negligible damage for a few turns. She will only die, if you aren't actually using rescue with a paladin or similiar high movement unit to bring one of the lords to Nino. Lyn is the easiest to bring to her due to her lower CON. Jaffar and Zephiel are the ones that are problematic sometimes.
The map that comes to mind for me from 3 Houses is Miklan’s boss fight. Having to go around the tower on foot with so many units, sometimes not encountering an enemy for 3 - 5 turns is so boring, and dreadful game design. I do play on the easiest mode so maybe there’s more enemies at higher difficulty levels.
The penultimate map of Awakening currently holds the title of my least favorite map in the series of the games I’ve played. The near infinite reinforcements on Hard+ make it so that you need to rush through before you get overwhelmed. Combine that with the fact that my first Awakening run was extremely scuffed, and that map scarred me forever.
Thinking Shadows of Valentia is hard is insane The map designs are kinda boring, but it's _not_ a game where you have to cheese a particular strategy to win maps, at least for most of the game
I don’t think Hero on the Wind is that bad, aside from the first couple turns being kinda janky. I nominate 24x, The Loptyrian Altar as the worst, with Thracia fog, cramped corridors, Eyvel as a side objective to prevent warp skipping, an entire room of mages with +20 magic/res, and a bunch of unmarked tiles that instantly warp one of your units to the FUCK room to be summarily executed
Keeping Saizo is very annoying but the map itself isn't very hard and is kind of easy for conquest standards. Still screw Saizo no wonder it rhymes with Kaizo.
You not saying the worst map in Awakening is the Mila Tree? Where you're confined to narrow walkways while the enemy gets lots of ambush spawn flying reingorcements whwill kill all your squishy units. Things you complained about in two other maps on this list? Mind you,Awakening doesn't have many good maps,but that one stands out as the worst. Also, the Petra paralogue was one of the best maps in Three Houses. It's one of two maps that have terrain that make you turn your brain on. 99% of the maps are just flat land with maybe some stairs to slow your horses.
I've had a lasting grudge against Battle Before Dawn ever since my first playthrough, when Jaffar died before I could reach him, on two consecutive attempts, on *Eliwood Normal*.
I would argue conquest’s worst map is chapter 10 against takumi simply because of how early it is compared to the kitsune map since it’s easier to prepare for the kitsune map after plowing through half the game at that point, plus Benny and Effie are WALLS if you just throw them out there
You have a point about how early it is, but Ch. 10 is tactically challenging in the rewarding way. Maps with major movement impediments like swamps, deserts, or the kitsune forest, are just slogs without similar payoff.
Alot of these maps get significantly easier with hindsight. For example, Leon absolutely creams the desert maps with a forged killer bow and just a little bit of help in the speed department. It becomes way faster with the right tools. That's honestly echoes in a nutshell though, lol
Gonna get crucified for this one, but i think FE6 Ch14 is the best desert map in the series with one big caviat - only when you aren't going in blind. The map is brutal blind, but if you know how to prepare and strategize around what the chapter asks of you, it's a fair challenge that gives you the option to choose how much treasure you want to loot and a lenient turn limit that still forces you to not turtle. At the very least all the gaiden chapters in FE6 are way more painful to play, those are the true travesty of game design in that entry. Also no mention of FE10 Ch1-9? Like easy bottom 5 map in the series, biggest omission imo
My ranking (only goes from FE6 onwards) FE6: Toss up between Chapter 14x and 16x, both Gaiden Chapters are annoying to deal with. Chapter 14x has disappearing platforms that are honestly more unpredictable compared to the ones in Night of Farewells in FE7. 16x is almost worse because of the Heavenly Arrows that consistently deal chip damage to you if they strike you. Although they can hit the enemy, they rarely do, and it forces you to constantly space out your units, which turns the map into an intricate slog. Also, the enemies have Purge, Silence, Berserk, all the comforts of home in this chapter. FE7: I have 3 maps here. 1. Chapter 15 - Eliwood's army rescues Lyn's army from Laus' forces. But man is this map a slog to get through because of the trees. Just overly tedious and boring. 2. Chapter 24B - If you go through Four Fanged Offense to fight Linus, then you're in the clear. You're in a town area, good number of reinforcements to train off of, and there's no Fog of War. On the Lloyd map, however, you get none of these, and instead you have a Fog of War map, that is somewhat spaced out, and you have to fight Lloyd who is way more dangerous to fight now compared to later. Luckily you can avoid this as long as the combined total of your umpromoted lords equals 50 or higher. So basically all of them need to be level 17 or higher which is a perfectly reasonable requirement given the amount of enemy density on FE7s maps. 3. Battle Before Dawn - On Eliwood Mode, this map isn't as bad as I remember. Playing it on Hector Mode is a nightmare, as enemies with Sword-effective weaponry are everywhere and the AI for these green units is awful. Without at least two good high movement units, it's very likely you won't be able to make it to Zephiel before he gets crapped on. FE8: Honestly don't remember Ghost Ship being that hard, but that's probably because I just had Ephraim solo it or something. Naw the real annoyance is the Grado Castle one where you have to fight through a bunch of long range spells and Bowman to reach Rennac before he steals all the loot and runs off with the Secret Card. FE9: It's either Blood Runs Red, Chapter 11, or Entrusted, Chapter 19. In Chapter 11, the premise is overall simple. Just reach the boat. However, if you want to get Zihark and also avoid killing the Vigilantes, then you have to strategically move Lethe around to recruit him. But if you're too slow, the Black Knight will come out of hiding and kill both Lethe and Zihark off before you can do a thing about it. Even if you don't care to lose them, Zihark does have a Killing Edge, which is a very useful weapon to just have on standby. In Chapter 19, You have to skirt around Naesala's movement range while dodging Ballistae and other Ravens. And the boss basically requires two units in order to finish off. And if you don't kill him, Naesala WILL KILL you on his turn. FE10: I don't really think any of the RD maps are that bad. Probably the weakest one is Silent World, the first Tibarn map in Part 4. Just seems like a slog. Always puts me to sleep just halfway through it. FE11: Chapter 22, The Macedonian Aerie. This one is honestly a struggle without properly trained units or a Warp staff. If you don't have either, you're in big trouble. Around Turn 5, Macedon Castle will spurt out reinforcements that keep coming wave after wave, and if you cannot keep up and contain them, they will overrun you. FE12: I don't remember the specific chapter name or number, but it's the one where you have to use Roshea to recruit Vyland to recruit Sedgar to recruit Wolf. A cool recruitment tactic, but would've been better as a side gimmick and not one that's used as a chapter gimmick. The Wolfguard aren't even good units in this game so you almost have no reason to recruit any of them. Aside from that, this map is also reused from FE11, so it limits originality. FE13: Obviously Paralogue 3 just for having terrible AI. The villagers run into everything. You can obviously just come back to this mission later, but the rewards you get are the most infuriating part. They give you two E rank weapons for saving all of them, and the Seraph Robe for only saving one of them. Fates: I'm putting them all together here because while the concept is shared between them, the map layout is different for one of them. Any map involving the Mokushujin Ninjas can suck my balls. Worst maps in the games by a wide margin. Echoes: Surprisingly, I'm going with the Siege of Zofia Castle. It gives you the option of taking down Desaix, who carries a droppable Dracoshield, but you practically have to goad Slayde away, then lineup your best attackers to attack Desaix. That is too much work for a Dracoshield. And while you can just finish Slayde and end the map, the fact that this is an option when most of your units are barely tier 2 is insulting. 3H: Not very happy with 3H. People give crap to Echoes for having bad map design, but they at least have an excuse being a remake of an older game. 3H has no such excuse having such meek chapter design. Magdred Way, Conand Tower, Marianne's Paralogue, Claude's Paralogue, the fact that multiple units have Paralogues that overlap on certain maps (Marianne & Petra, Dedue and Manuela). Honestly too many unoriginal and uninspired maps. But Marianne's Paralogue is the worst by far. Fog of War, Beasts, and just overall not a fun time. Only benefit is the Blutgang which is really just a more poweful melee Levin Sword. Engage: Probably any of the Solm maps not including the Palace Invasion by Hortensia (that one is actually solid).
I love Desert Stronghold it manages to make a map where the odds are stacked against you which isn’t just a swarm of enemies that can ambush you or kill your weak units
Desert stronghold be like. Here have two brand new fliers right before a desert. Sounds good so far. Then we get hit with, here is a map that is 95% sand and you are attacking a fort in the middle of it, filled to the brim with archers. Oh whats that Valbar facetanking? Nope hes gotta walk one square a turn across the desert.
While I can understand only covering the latest "remake" of a game, it should be stressed that for many of the games the remakes shook up mechnanics and map design enough to radically change how some maps can be perceived in games. Most notably, the Ballista in Shadow Dragon? The Famicom version is not NEARLY that bad, as they have the same range as basic archers in that, which is a fundamental change to the gameplay balanace. Monshou no Nazo, meanwhile, has map quality sway heavily thanks to forced dismounting on indoor maps. You think "Chosen by Fate" is frustrating in DS Shadow Dragon? Imagine now your Paladins and Pegasus Knights being useless, your only Gradivius candidate is Lorenz, and Tiki can no longer hurt Medeus. I think "Abducted Princess" should have gotten a mention here, too, VERY annoying design, forcing you to run around the perimeter of a mountain you can't pass through. The shop ambush gimmick is dumb, and needing to slowly poke at Wyvern Knights with Palla one turn at a time is annoying as heck. On top of that, to recruit Matthis you have to send your vulnerable thief over to the enemy front lines, in a game where said thief's one OTHER use is an annoying endgame gimmick..
I kind of wish you would have included the SNES version of Chapter 11 in FE3 just as a brief mention. The chapter is slow in the DS remake, but the SNES version is even slower due to the games somewhat sluggish game speed. My least favorite chapter has to be 24x in Thracia 776. Lord have mercy. It has: Fog of war, small corridors, trap warps, Hel tomes, berserkers with wrath skill, and status ailments that don't go away with time. The entire purpose of the chapter is to rescue Eyvel. While that may be important story wise she is well outclassed and isn't even worth taking to the final chapter. And if you do want to recruit her, you must be ready for the unknown stuff. Silence will make it so she can't be recruited at all and that usual happens the very next turn after curing her from stone. You can't cure neutral units, so you lose. This is a case of a chapter just being too hard in a game that is already tough as nails. You'll probably avoid this chapter anyways since you have to intentionally trigger it.
Huh I kinda figured Solo for Path of Radiance being the worst. You got an annoying amount of Priests in the way that are hiding the bandits, shoving them being the nice thing to do for bonus experience and a staff if they all live. A couple that you can't get to will be spamming Silence. A thief will eventually show up to steal treasure along with other reinforcements throughout.
It's funny that quite a few of these were brought back as the maps featured in Engage. lol. Some of these maps I disagree with but others I wholeheartedly agree with. I never had any issues with the bridge map in PoR and RD. They are mildly annoying, but nothing too bad. I think most desert maps really suck and I was glad to see they FINALLY changed the way they work in Engage. The desert map in Engage was actually pretty fun and I wouldn't have minded a second one. I remember unlocking the water temple map in FE7 as a kid. God I hated it. That's a really rough 1-2 punch of maps. And in FE6, the map you highlighted, something else you forgot to mention is they keep spawning in wyverns turn after turn. I had a weak unit lagging behind but figured it wasn't a big deal. Until they spawned in wyverns that got to him before I could save him. I think I also had some bad RNG since the unit didn't dodge any attacks.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m overall fine with time pulses , turnwheels , or any other fixations in gameplay since mistakes are often made but when a game LIES TO ME like in the three houses map THAT’S when I’m truly grateful for that.
It is an anti frustration device that I think is needed for really long maps.
Or you get that bs moment where an enemy has a 1% chance to crit and nails it killing my Jade in engage.
The thing is that, for me as an not that young anymore fan near to my 30s, having a mechanic that allows me to rewind a mistake or a bad roll saving me from minutes to hours of my time is a thing that makes playing those games much more enjoyable.
@sicomaian95 I remember the hours I lost in awakening or fates because those games required you to reset the ds to reload a save file. It's was so annoying.
Three houses really needed divine pulse because the game was sometimes just straight bullshit unfair on maddening.
I think they should just make it optional like casual/classic. (I know people will say just dont use it but it’s not the same, it feels way more rewarding when you dont even have the option).
You have not tried Marianne’s paralogue with a bad Marianne
Marianne doesn't need to be competent; leave her completely still. Maurice won't attack her and all the other monsters prioritize your other units on the right. It's kinda a drag but it's not unbearable in the slightest
@@morganreaverIf you attack any of the monsters close to Maurice, he will start attacking Marianne anyway, also there are Phantom Unit Snipers that will attack Marianne regardless if she moves of not
Petra's paralogue on maddening without stuff like new game + is horrible. having to race the clock, so many enemies all directions and hubert on some crack buffs.
Edit: nvm he said this was the worst chapter in the video LMAO.
Marianne not bad. You bad for not training up best girl
@@lsrrr3857 I agree, but her defenses are paper thin
Tbh, Hunting By Daybreak is truly 3H's worst map, by being liable to cause softlocks due to its setup, especially on Maddening. The enemy force is completely overwhelming, and without any kind of prep-time since your last save and only 2 units to start, you're nearly devoid of options entirely. Then more units enter in pairs, isolated from the rest of your units, in an equally precarious situation. It is *so* difficult to get through without casualties, it can legitimately just end a playthrough if you saved at the last prompt.
Not to mention if you didn't actually use the units in your house, they're dead weight and guaranteed to die. On higher difficulties it can genuinely soft lock you.
Agreed. I can understand that map not being an issue on Hard difficulty, but even with all the advantage of NG+, if you didn't work on the units properly on Maddening or you don't have the right batallions, then you are guaranteed to softlock.
@@ChronosAnJill Honestly? I think it IS still a problem on Hard, just not anywhere as liable to softlock. It still represents a considerable difficulty spike, and I distinctly remember it giving me a lot of trouble on my first playthrough (Hard/Classic/Blue Lions).
The map just feels terrible to play. Unless you've specifically set yourself up to deal with this map, it's super tedious to navigate with how easy it is to overexpose, so you gotta take everything slow, and the difficulty is immensely frontloaded, which also means the second half of the map is likely a bit of a snoozefest by comparison.
Church maddening was especially rough on this map. While Seteth is luckily pretty darn strong, even he struggled badly on this map, courtesy of being a flyer. MY Byleth wa sadly not very blessed and just barely hung on. I did use all pulses at the end and every class member besides Bernie had died. (Luckily, i only used church members + wolves anyways) But this one and maybe the tower of Miklan are the two worst maps in the game. Honorary Mention of Enbarr city,, mostly due to ambush Wyverns andFalco-knights with 50+ speed. wtf game??
@@laggalot1012
For as crazy as the difficulty spike is though, if you're playing on a more comfortable difficulty then it's a really cool map, with the gameplay reflecting the story pretty well since your students are supposed to come to your rescue
It is crazy how Arcadia FE6 is the singularity of all possible annoying FE design choices.
Unit movement restriction? Check
Fog of War with hidden enemies that outrange the fog even with a torch? Check
Time limit that is required for the best ending? Check
Literally the consensus worst unit in the series that you need to keep alive for the best ending? Check
Hidden unique items that you have basically no chance of finding without a guide? Check
Truly a miserable experience.
The fact that they did a fog of war map in a desert is already a terrible combo to begine with
On a first play through. On a second one it's quite fun tbh
@@shellpoptheepicswordmaster755 And while I also believe that arcadia is fine once you actually have the information
Needing to have the information in order for it not to be miserable
Makes it a terrible map design wise
Average Binding Blade map. Makes sense that they’re not localized games
@@AGZharkbetter than most three houses maps and even awakening
For Awakening, I'd argue the Mila Tree is the worst.
Relatively narrow paths + flier reinforcements that can appear from any of the non-top side
Sure but at that point you're in the mid game where you have all the parent units and if you go out of your way to do so, can start collecting the future child units which can very easily break the game in 2 when built correctly. Plus gold is actually farmable at that point since the reward money you get from ch. 11 onwards exceeds the price of reeking boxes so you can actually start profiting from training and kit out your army with the best available gear. The one he selected for the video is early game when you have far fewer resources and lower level units (one of which can't even fight at that point) so it's significantly harder.
@@dustinvance243if you're playing on anything over normal mode, reeking boxes are extremely expensive (almost 10 times as expensive).
Mine has to be the paralogue map where you encounter Aversa, and the one where you enounter Walhart.
The final boss map is awful too.
@AGZhark The map with the dude who has Ragnell has so overwhelming numbers that I revert back to just using a juggernaut. Usually taking Nah who has sol and then pair her up with either Nowi or Tiki. Nothing on the map can really kill her with that combo.
Fighting that map normally would just turn into turteling in a corner.
@@Manslayer-eo1nh That map was an absolute nightmare. I had to rely on Robin and Morgan to dodge and tank almost everything and I still lost. There’s no strategy at all. The enemy units just push you back to the edge of the map.
I’ll name one even worse, the DLC map; Apotheosis. Tons of armored units who your strongest units do absolutely no damage to.
No mention of the Engage DLC maps? Specifically the one where Alear is trapped and has to dodge tank for most of the map?
I DESPISE the elevator map with Sumeragi in Revelations. Operating the elevators, especially because not all of your units will fit in it, is infuriating, and they also make the map feel really cramped. I was frustrated to the point that I put it down and didn't pick it back up again for 4 years.
Another reason why Radiant Dawn's iteration of the great bridge is so much worse is that in path of radiance: you hit the pitfall, the character's turn ends and the stun is lifted, in Radiant Dawn however the stun is only lifted when the player phase returns and said stun turns all enemy attacks to 100% hit rate (or at least removes your avoid rate so their hit stat is pretty much unchanged) Point is in Path of Radiance if Mia falls into a pit she can still dodge the attacks and maybe even fight back, in Radiant dawn she does not fight back at all and cannot avoid attacks either making her a sitting duck which is not as bad for characters with good defensive stats but still a colossal pain in the ass and then we have the whole "here's multiple flying units YOU MUST BRING and if ANY of them die you lose the mission" and guess what this game looooooooooves to have a crap load of on the map to discourage the use of flyers? that's right, CROSSBOWS, wonderfull crossbows that oneshot twice over Sigrun & tanith and then the boss's better crossbow can oneshot Tibarn and the whole flyers can avoid easily does not avail much here as Crossbows have an insane amount of hit. And while the enemy's use of shine barriers to wall off the safe way for multiple turns is also annoying, it pails in comparison to the rest I've listed here. Also a boat of Ballistae but that's on both iterations and they do pretty much what they were intended to.
Also, while it's of much less import, finally getting to sock General Petrine in the face in Path of Radiance is at least a pretty satisfying reward for finally making it through the bridge. She gets built up all game as this crazy, scary threat, then you finally get to put her down after one of the worst chapters. It's a small consolation.
I can't even remember the name, face, or class of the guy at the end of the bridge in Radiant Dawn. I just looked him up and I'm already forgetting him. One more crossbow snub from a chapter full of them.
I always make tibarn or any flying units I have to include sit in the bottom corner of the map away from all the action so I don’t have to deal with the crossbow units trying to oneshot all the winged goobers lol
tbh in echoes i never even knew or needed the retreat mechanic, i personally think the gameplay of echoes is overhated, i enjoyed it when i played it
The gameplay is cool but the maps SUCKS.
It's enjoyable but not particularly interesting because it has Awakening syndrome and as such almost every map is just a flat open field, which isn't helped by the fact that enemies tend to do like in Genealogy and move in blocks of units, so essentially the strategy to beat the game is the same for most battles.
I agree. A lot of the gameplay mechanics overshadowed the bad map designs. I honestly did notice that most of the maps were wide fields with a few bushes and randomly scattered enemies but I was so engrossed in the storyline, the characters and the other mechanics (Mila's turnwheel, dungeon crawling, etc.) that it didn't hinder the fun in playing, at least for me
Didn't know retreat was a mechanic you could abuse
Honestly I'm not even sure what the retreat mechanic _is._ Sounds like enemies stay dead on retreat? A little goofy, but I didn't find it necessary on any of the maps. If it gets to the point where someone feels like they need it, I'm not sure why they can't just lower the difficulty
That said I really didn't have a great time with the poison swamp 😭
The final map was also super grueling but at least that's kind of cool from a narrative standpoint, so I didn't mind too much
All the problems you mentioned with the ballistae map in 11 are exclusive to the remake, as they used the existing map design with the ballistae mechanics from later games. In the original game ballistae were just a variant of archer with enormous defense and lower mov, meaning they have 2 range and can be easily surrounded by mounted units and chipped away at. You also get a new unit with a weapon that's effective against them and can use him to blow through the center lane without ever worrying about the other two, though it's safer to clear all three. So it's not a problem with the map design at all, it's an issue with the map design and mechanics being out of sync.
Oh the most evil thing to me is the barrier mages and rescue priests too. Fe9 you're very tanky as well but in fe10
They put barrier mages that are legit there to make you unable to move past halfway because it's all pitfalls. Fe9 to its credit they have a vacant spot to discover before fights...but Fe10 is already claustrophobic... besides farrying with fliers...which slight pro is they give you 3.
Here's how I would change fe10 remove pitfalls...secondly give both sides ballistae it's bs that they're always against you and I would add a fly area above the bridge not down though so fliers and the fly tiles above give extra movement done....lol
The wooden cavalry is unironically worse in the remake, because they changed how Ballisticians work to match later games in the series, without actually changing the enemy layout or map design.
It's kind of infamous for good reason, Reunion at Dawn in Three Houses takes my pick for worst map in game for a specific reason - it makes most restriction/challenge runs infuriatingly hard at higher difficulties. On Normal it'll bump your recruited units up to 20 so you can at least keep them alive, but for whatever reason this doesn't happen on higher difficulties. This map is the sole reason I play on Casual mode whenever I am doing a challenge, non-Black Eagle run. I just let everyone I'm not using fall so I can move on.
Yeah I feel like level 20 makes sense for in story, since it's been 5 years, they're probably going to get SOME battle experience right?
No but Reunion at Dawn is the absolute worst because it can literally soft lock maddening runs while preventing you from bringing your good units or doing any kind of preparation on a power bump map
My first playthrough was Silver Snow route, and so I focused on all the teachers and instructors with a few other non-Red House units, and not knowing this one was coming, whooo boy was it a less fun version of that route where, for whatever reason, if I recall, it's mostly me and Seteth doing all the work very slowly. I actually like the idea of this map just fine in concept, but oh man, even in practice, it's kinda annoying.
@@bifflechips-t5r I agree with you. Conceptually, and thematically, it's amazing. The somber music, the hardened appearances of your former students, and the way they slowly appear to help you out of a dire situation, all culminate in such a memorable map. But it all relies on you not being able to build up friendship fast enough with non-house members your first playthrough and thus mostly using your own house. Do anything but that and you get shafted.
For real… I adore 3 Houses but Reunion at Dawn was an absolute slog to get through 😭
Chapter 5 in 3h is extremely underhated. It's essentially a long empty spiral with far too few enemies or anything interactable. Twenty plus turns of not a damn thing happening. It's only fun in maddening at the very top part of the map, when all the enemies suddenly form a huge barricade, it's so intense and high stakes, but it's only like five turns.
It's a boring and tedious map, but not too hard, just super long and boring
Spiral maps aren't fun, just ask fe5 and 6
this map with a bunch of 4 mov units is just dreadful
I can see what you mean. I didn't hate it but if we're talking worst maps of 3H it's definitely up there.
The ambush reinforcements with pass 😭😭😭😭😭😭
Shadows of valentia becomes way more enjoyable if you treat it like a JRPG and not an SRPG
It’s still my favorite FE game. XD
I'm a hardcore SoV defender, but nothing can stop some of those later poison floor maps from being unenjoyable 😭😔
@@QuokkaWaka Based take ngl. XD
@@QuokkaWakaSummons and Sages completely trivialize these maps lol
@MrXtr1how exactly do summons and sages break swamp maps? Dread fighters, killer bow Leon, and falcoknights are what make these maps bearable.
Tbh i hated the elevator map in revelation way more than snow shoveling because shoveling was only boring while elevator was tedious in getting your units from place to place while playing around the really threatening enemies
Honestly, as much as Voice of a God is a tedious Revelation map, I never thought it was THAT bad. What other Fates map gives us THIS many permanent stat boosters? Sure it might be the Chapter's only saving grace in my eyes, but surely there's a worse map later on, especially in Valla.
Yeah no, compared to other lategame Rev maps, the snow shoveling map fees FUN in comparison.
My worst Fates map in Birthright has to be the one where you’re in a literal volcano. Had to solo the whole thing with Ryoma and Saizo supporting each other.
In Conquest, it’s the literal first map you encounter the Hoshidans; Takumi, Obora, and Hinata.
I personally really like the snow shoveling map because it's a fog of war map without annoying jumpscare kills
@@TheWizardMus Honestly, that's pretty valid. And for me especially, that map pretty much shapes Mozu for me and helps patch her up to be a great unit. But it's not just Mozu, ANYONE can be patched up with those boosters, and you could even save them for later recruits.
@@TheWizardMusI can agree, with one small footnote. The Dark Mage with Mjolnir near the end is a serious dick move. But that's the only real gripe I have with it tbh.
I really hate the paralogue for Marianne. Apparently I was supposed to know that the giant scary boss monster that one rounds Marianne does not attack her and that trying to fly to rescue her would activate hidden fog of war wolves. It is really the emblem for me of how bad 3H’s map design is and how they used divine pulse as an excuse for bad design, as it was tricking you before maddening and its ambush spawn nonsense ever arrived.
Falcom Knight Marianne ftw
Oh that pain 😪
It was hard at first for me but on later replays it gets easier each time
It's even one of those bad design things that can be fixed if the pre-battle text mentioned that mechanic at all. Like just have Maurice tell Marriane to stay perfectly still and he'll be merciful to her.
Agreed though the worst map in 3h is easily softlock by daybreak. I really do not like a lot of the higher difficulties in Fe games (there are exceptions) as the enemies just receive inflated stats without any thought. A great example of this is shadow dragon hard 5 medeus. He is hard to damage and very hard to survive with his 30 speed as he will double everything expect swordmaster. This leads the optimal strategy to be warp manakete in, do damage, die, revive, warp, kill. Want to use the falchion well a speed capped marth gets doubled and dies so no.
I agree with many of your choices, but Thracia 24x has to be mentioned. It's only saving grace is that it's from a game that was never officially released, so you pretty much have to play on an emulator, so you might as well spam those save states. Without it, it would probably take THOUSANDS of tries until the location of every bullshit trap tile is burned into your memory.
Also the following sentence must be said about Genealogy chapter 2: "I'm A gReEn UnIt!"
did you know that playing with save states actually makes clearing the game take longer. ive seen it time and time again. if you focus on being a perfectionist and never having anything bad happen to your gameplay, of course you would think 24x is bad. its not supposed to be fair. the story integration for that map is really second to none. theres is however, for people trying to master it tons of tricks you can employ to have a smooth ride for it. but allowing a unit to die on a first blind playthrough because they got hit by a warp tile is nothing to be ashamed of and certainly nothing to say its a bad map design. its one of the better ones in the series
@DoTtA1123 I agree on avoiding the perfectionist trap. It really becomes tempting to fix everything.
But defending 24x is a wild take. Yes, the story-gameplay integration may be good, but most people don't want to play a game with "fuck you" as a theme. Personally, I don't like blatantly unfair mechanics even when they are deliberate. And, in 24x's case, it's terribly unfair. Being punished for just traversing the map, with no indication of which tiles warp your units, feels like shit. There are ways of saving warped units, yes, but the means are limited, and it's a long map and the warp tiles are spread all throughout.
Because of that, it's more than just one unit you can potentially lose. Being the lategame, it's probably going to be your best units, who you need for the end. And the worst part is that it's undeserved. It wasn't bad tactics or preparation, just troll game design.
People mostly agree that frustrating maps are bad, and 24x takes the cake. For me, it's far from a good map.
@@DoTtA1123 good story integration is no excuse for shitty game design choices. Look at Fates and Arthur. He's shown in cutscenes as having luck that is beyond horrible. Problem is, they also reinforced it with him having really low luck ingame, as well as a shitstain of a personal skill that cuts into his dodge (aka crit evade). Unsurprisingly, he's a liability on the battlefield and one of the worst Nohrian characters. Back to 24x, pretty much everything about it is terribly designed. It's one thing for a map to be hard, but 24x is more frustrating than legitimately difficult.
@@nigh_thereI mean it may be a wild take, but I'm tired of pretending like you have to be some sort of masochist to enjoy a map that had a really well thought out experience to it. That's all
@@DoTtA1123 But... why is a random warp maze "well thought out" or "good map design"? If there was some way - any way - to know where the warp tiles were, or there was some way out, then maybe, maybe you can say you're rewarding that player who figured it out. But to my knowledge there just isn't, other than "buy a strategy guide." Don't get me wrong, there are people who genuinely enjoy carefully mapping trap tiles in old-skool grid-based dungeon crawlers (your Wizardries, Etrian Odyssies, etc.), but even the rudest of those let you make progress and don't just kill you forever with no out other than reloading. If you let your best unit get teleported in 24x (with no way in-game at all to know which tiles are safe) and you don't have a Rescue to fix the situation, they aren't escaping and are basically dead. That's an insanely cruel punishment for... what? Not buying a strategy guide?
For me, the truly Worst Map of Awakening is Tiki's recruitment Paralogue (funny, seeing how Tiki herself is one of my favorite characters in the entire franchise). Simply put: Tiki is easy to kill and the enemies will outright ignore my units to go after her, it is also way too long of a chapter.
But you can deny the devs added one really funny thing that prevented you from cheesing the map, you're just short one deployment slot of fully boarding Tiki lol.
But that said it is a boring map, the enemies are weak enough that you can one round them but strong enough just to one round Tiki, and it's very unforgiving considering if one enemy slipped guess that's a restart
you can move Tiki with the rescue staff. that map is ridiculously easy on lower difficulties and probably one of awakening’s more interesting maps on lunatic and lunatic+
people just forget that the rescue staff is buyable and e-rank because it’s so prized in other games, and it’s by far the best tool for almost everything awakening throws at you
@@SuperEljafru Yeah, guess what I didn't have there?
@@toumabyakuya 1280 gold and… anyone with E rank staves?
rescue staves are buyable, infinitely, after chapter 12 bud
@@SuperEljafru Yeah, but I always sold them because I never saw any use for them.
Struggling to call a map bad in Awakening? It was infamous for its wide, plains-like designs, lol
It's been quite a while since I've played awakening, but from how I remember it, none of the maps were offensively bad, yet few of them were that good either. Most of them were okay, but forgettable.
Not Hunting at Daybreak? That has units you need to train specifically throughout the game if you want them to survive.
For three houses you need to put chapter 13 Hunting by Daybreak, church route. Going in blind you rarely train seteth to the level required which is important because he's half your army starting off and he just cant compare to the other route's lords, and then when reinforcements arrive they're in the corners (with no way of knowing they'd spawn there) far away from help and 2/3 turns away from dying, especially if you benched some of your house's students as recruited students don't show at all (which is impossible to fix without restarting the whole route and training just your house's students). There's a reason some people prepare 1 or even 2 maps in advance for chapter 13. Softlock hell.
Engage skirmishes is the sole reason why I stopped playing it shortly after I cleared the main story, it’s so bad that I didn’t even have the drive to complete the xenologues
I had no idea people had this much of a problem with skirmishes. I found them extremely fun
From the games I played, I largely agree on the maps being bad. Imo, my least favorite awakening map would be chapter 5, not only because wyverns are difficult to take down, especially this early in the game, but also reinforcements and trying to make it to ricken+maribelle in time to save them. And when you do, ricken is exactly 1 damage short of killing said wyverns...
Binding Blade is one of my favorite entries but yeah ch14 is among the most annoying in the series. This video doesn’t even mention that Cecilia joins in the worst possible chapter as a horseback unit
However, because of the anima mages, it’s the ideal arena to level Sophia, which I often do for kicks
I'm kinda surprised for Thracia 776, 4x was chosen. I'd say 24x would probably be one of the most frustrating map of the game, with 17A and 18 (For its side objectives) also being frustrating
The only saving grace of 4x is that it's short. Turn 1 on 4x is the absolute extreme of "pick a god and pray" in this series in terms of complete lack of player agency in the result. Like if a unit in your front rank gets too many criticals, they will die and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it which is just an absurd outcome
24x is sadistically designed to play blind and without a guide, but at least once you've played it once you know what's going on and can look up a map for the warp tiles
Edit: Also shoutout to chapter 5 for being a map that would normally be remembered as annoying, but everyone loves it cause the story beats are so good. Can't think of any other maps like that
@smokyprogg i remember just bunkering down in the jail cell and waiting it out in 4x since ced kills everyone up top super quick and its a good way to get exp for units like fergus. 24x however, couldnt do it without cheesing it via warp. Fuck that map
For engage, I would say that the worst chapter is 22, the one where you have to gather all the rings in map. It's just too slow, and reinforcements keep coming non stop, and you can't use the best mechanic in the game even if you get the rings.
100% basically the only map in engage that I don't enjoy
Don't forget the three-lane snow map with the gusts that will force you back along with a turn limit.
Or the utterly stupefying amount of reinforcements some maps have.
Or Camilla's DLC map literally being Birthright Chapter 23.
@@Hailinel I like the three lane snow map, it's a good challenge, you need to go fast, and I don't even think it has that many reinforcements.
@ebinku Reinforcements aren't a problem with that specific map. I just don't like the mechanics of it. It doesn't help that it's tied narratively to one of the dumbest parts of a story that is at baseline not very good to begin with.
@@Hailinel huh? The snow map is literally a non issue so long as you have the Obstruct staff and/or Corrin
I expected chapter 17 of Path of Radiance to be on the list, a chapter that was divided into 4 different map sections really overwhelmed me the first time I played it. I didn't expect that Ike and the others would chase Oliver into the deepest forest without any way to refill their weapons. Kieran and Mia were killed in the third part of the map because they ran out of weapons plus all the enemies ganged up on them mercilessly. Truly a dramatic strategic experience
Sounds really fun.
Worst map for me in PoR is the 2nd to last one with the dragons
In fairness, the game DOES warn you it's gonna be long and to bring ample supplies in this chapter through one of its base conversations. PoR likes to use those to give some insight into the coming map, so if you're willing to take the info at face-value (and by chapter 17, I think you can reasonably know to do so), you could have been prepared. It's fair game, in my opinion.
I personally think that the worst the chapter in three houses is the Mercedes Caspar paralogue simply because if you haven't invested into Caspar as one of your main units, it's straight up impossible. Caspar and Mercedes start out the other side of the map (a quite large map at that) with a monster right in front of them and reinforcements coming to kill them in a few turns. Mercedes is a great support unit with good offensive magic but is extremely frail and is not built for fighting solo. This means Caspar has to be strong enough to defend the both of them with no one expect Mercedes for support which is a very demanding task especially on harder difficulties and simply is not possible if you haven't actively used and trained him. Even speedrun tactics to get support to them as fast as possible won't bail you out since it's a rout all enemies mission meaning you can't end it on turn one which those tactics rely on as it leaves your units in vulnerable positions that will almost certainly get you killed on enemy phase. It's simply not possible if you haven't trained up Caspar.
Also, fun fact, the dark knights on that map only have mire, a dark magic spell, yet they have the ability black magic range +1 on maddening which is completely useless on them as they have no black magic spells which I think just goes to show how little testing went into this map.
I did this map (admittedly on NG+) on Maddening without using Caspar past chapter 2. I went north as quickly as possible and used Constance to Rescue him asap. It was pretty close, but definitely doable. Honestly, i don't think i used a stride gambit for this map, which would have made it possible to rescue him a turn sooner anyways.
For me, what was flabbergasting was how they took two characters who don’t even have any affinity and gave them joint paralogues. Like Ferdinand and Lysithea and Leonie and Linhardt. Like, these characters have had no connection before now
It gets WORSE, as you have to kill the boss with Caspar to get the reward.
@@thediabolicalraisin8953 i always had Caspar use Exhaustive Strike with a strong axe, guarantees that he can do decent damage to the boss even when unlevelled. That does require you to train him in Axes, but iirc he automatically levels that anyway if you leave him completely untouched so as long as you didn't specifically mess with his goals it should usually be fine
@mehmemeh5285 Yeah.....but you're fighting the Death Knight, who is pretty damn tough to anyone who isn't Lysithea.
Can you do a video on the Best Chapters in Fire Emblem games please?
I was wondering what parameters for maps you’d consider in engage. For example, are we including only the base 26 chapters? Or are we allowing Emblem Battles? Maybe Xenologue and DLC maps are allowed?
This is an important question because it undoubtedly changes what the worst map is. For example of the base 26, Chapter 13: Heroes of the oasis is the worst because it’s just slightly worse than other chapters, but if we include engage battles, suddenly we open ourselves up to Rematch in the Plains, The Sage Lord, and The Ancestor as possible worst map options. If we include Xenologue maps we open up Path to War, The Fell Heir, and in Maddening only Seven Bracelets(Purely from a difficulty perspective, honestly I don’t think I would consider it for worst).
The Poison Swamp Maps in Shadows of Valentia are the absolute worst, in a game that has no shortage of terrible map design. The fact that you have to move slowly across tiles that will damage your units, all while you have cantors summoning a never ending supply of enemy reinforcements just make for the least fun experience I have ever had in Fire Emblem. By the time I got to this point in the game, I was begging for the game to be over....
I think the worst map in FE12 is the fog of war gaiden map with ballistae, 2 vision fog of war with no torches is miserable and being attacked by enemies that you can’t see is obnoxious. The decision to put the Lote’s Shield on that map feels like a sadistic joke as your fliers were most likely obliterated by the time you reach the chest.
For me , I think my least favorite chapters are
Awakening: Severa's paralogue. I don't really hate it but I didn't enjoy escorting her as a level 10 mercenary against of bunch of enemies that can one round her
Conquest: Den of Betrayal for putting an incredibly evasive boss that can deal both phys and mag on a throne. Just hitting feels like a gamble and that chapter is fairly long so resetting feels awful.
Revelation: Originally I'd have said the tedious Sumeragi one, but you reminded me that the ice chapter exists so I'm picking that one
3H: Probably Marianne's paralogue. It's very tedious with both the fog and forest, and you really have to crawl through so you don't risk aggroing too many monsters at once. Special mentions go to the first few real chapters on Maddening. Why do something interesting when you can just massively inflate the enemies' stats?
Engage: I think I'd maybe go with Celica's paralogue. I like the concept of taking out summoners and fighting through strong dragon units to reach the boss, so it's kinda frustrating when she just warps to my army right next to the boat and practically invalidates the entire chapter. I have a similar issue with Ike and Corrin's paralogues, where the boss just gets bored of waiting after a few turns and ends up rushing straight for you, but they aren't as bad in that regard. Special mentions goes to the skirmishes. They were fine in Awakening, Fates, and 3H. How did they mess those up so bad in engage?
I personally really dislike the sombron chapter in engage. For one, it's easier if you don't target the dark emblems and just fight sombron directly, mitigating the entire gimmick. Sombron is also just there in the center at all times, meaning you can viably just target him and ignore others. I really feel like it drops almost all of engage's interesting mechanics and map design.
I remember doing it the "intended" way on maddening and it took me 4 hours of just circling around Sombron while dealing with the fliers...
I don't know if you count DLC/Spotpass Chapters when making this video, but for Awakening, I would like to give a shout-out to "Paralogue 17: The Threat of Silence" (A.K.A. The paralogue where you can recruit Tiki). The main issue is that you not only have to deal with protecting Tiki in a pretty open map, there's also just the fact that you have to deal with a scarily and annoyingly smart A.I. Not only are ALL enemies on this map fast-moving fliers, if they see they can directly reach Tiki, even if it's not on this turn, they will just go straight towards her, ignoring and bypassing your own units. And if you try to surround your units around her instead, the enemies will instead just zero-in on the weakest unit blocking the way, and keep attacking them until they die, at which point they will go through that gap to go towards Tiki.
And it's not like Tiki is super bulky to compensate the fact that it's very hard to stop her from being attacked. Since she doesn't have a Dragonstone, and she's busy meditating, she cannot turn into a dragon, making it easy for her to go down once multiple enemies manages to reach her. It's such a huge pain, it's pretty much my least favorite map in the series.
It genuinely made me nearly punch a hole into my 3DS.
Been 2 years and I vividly remember the formation I did, when I saw spreading people to kill enemies early didn't work I formed a damn wall
Chapter 2 Awakening on Lunatic is a big challenge for the fact that it’s the breaking point of all the maps that came before it. Getting Virion’s Elixir to a unit that needs it and having enough left to tank hits will change the map from being really damn hard to genuinely infuriating. I’ve beat the map without the Elixir, and it just feels a whole lot worse than playing your cards right and properly trading it the map before.
See, I want to say that I don't particularly dislike any of Shadows of Valentia's maps... But then I remember that Desert Stronghold singlehandedly convinced me to always recruit all of the DLC characters with Celica's army specifically, literally _just_ because having more available units gives you more deployment slots and on that map specifically it lets you put a few people _much_ closer to the fortress's entrance, which cuts down on the tedium enormously.
With Genealogy, honestly I think Disturbance in Agustria is a good map; it does an excellent job of encouraging the player to hurry with effectively timed objectives, while the "backtracking" eases the player into the idea of splitting up their army (sending only one's cavalry north to attack Anphony allows one's infantry, who couldn't hope to keep pace, to instead hang back and engage Mackily after they drop their neutrality). Rather, I feel like Door of Destiny is the worst map, specifically for the huge stretch of desert between Lubeck and Phinora where basically your entire army is hindered (and also the enemy makeup for this section consists entirely of dragon knights and siege tomes).
And in Blazing Blade, Battle Before Dawn is a wonderfully tough and interesting map... on Eliwood mode. But the Hector mode variant can go right to hell, and it's entirely because of the Fighters hanging out near Jaffar who had their weapons switched to Swordreavers, which gives them distressingly good odds of smashing one of your side objectives to paste before his feeble green-unit brain can think to retreat and heal up (and certainly long before you, the player, can do a damn thing to influence the outcome in any way). In comparison, Night of Farewells doesn't telegraph its gimmick very well, but I still find it much easier to manage _that_ gimmick (especially as the paths are nice enough not to change until the end of the enemy phase), compared to the map where you can do literally everything right and still fail for reasons beyond your control.
Fire emblem isn’t designed for perfectionist. I think so much of what is seen as annoying mechanics or unfair mechanics are the games playing into the horrors of war. People die. It doesn’t really make sense that every person in your army would make it to the end. This is what sets fire emblem apart. Pitfalls in the fe9 bridge, warp tiles in Thracia, and Kitsune in conquest lead to truly surprising and memorable moments. They may be sad, but it makes Fire Emblem so special.
The worst map in radiant dawn is without a doubt 2-1, the nephenee brom map. All the volunteers have random ai. All enemies have random stats that can vary enough to matter. All enemies have random biorhythm. Both nephenee and brom have incredibly shaky hit rates. Nephenee's effectiveness fluctuates considerably depending on her level ups. The map is two busy for two units to handle quickly. There are poison enemies. There are a fair number of 2 range enemies dispite the player not starting with any 2 range options of there own. The starting inventory for your units are atrocious, brom with his weak iron axe and nephenee with her heavy inaccurate steel greatlance. The chapter is a complete rng mess and generally a slog to play through.
3-11 is actually a pretty fun map. There aren't actually that many pitfalls and their placement this time are pretty obvious. The game also gives you a bunch of flying units like tanith and sigrun to cover the pitfalls and cross quickly.
21:30 it does synergize with Ike's ability actually, jut not his combat ability. The ability it does show off is his ability to instantly break walls in one hit. So...yeah underwhelming as hell. But technically it's showing off what he can do.
As you said, the gameplay in Engage's main story is mostly well done. The only map I really don't like is the endgame map, which is a slog to get through as getting the shield down is annoying enough, but then you have infinite respawning enemies outside the map and spawners within the map, on top of it being a big map, it slows things to a bleeding craw.
Is no one gonna mention Seven Bracelets, the final map of Engages Dlc Fell Xenolog?
Endless spawning annoying wyverns, a boss thats way to strong and the map getting destroyed over time
My favourite chapter in Engage. It's so hard, but so fun
I can't believe Fuga's Wild Ride wasn't rated the worst chapter in Fates.
Other than that I agree with all your picks.
Surely for Conquest, one of the honorable mentions HAD to be Winds of Change. The impact the wind would have sending ALL of your infantry units into a barrage of enemy soldiers was nothing short of infuriating as it had the same issues as Night of Farewells but instead of water that can be slowly traversed, we're unfortunately blessed with literally impassable AIR. This just made the map so unbearably slow and stress-inducing to clear.
UGH, don't remind me of that one, I got through lunatic on that map and it's a colossal pain in the ass, the only silver lining to it is how I cheesed Hayato, for context he was built in such a way that I could not beat him without losing units but he does not move and is optional, then I realized I have one unit that could destroy him my Kumagera (capturable boss) who had both countermagic and counter (his class learns counter and he came with the magical one) I just parked him in melee range and waited for Hayato to attack cuz his dmg was half of his own full HP so you can guess how that went. (insert mirror coat joke here)
Anna's prologue from 3 houses still give me PTSD, those reinforcement bow knights are just too cheap.
I don’t have any unfavourable memories of Nuibabas Abode…mainly because the first thing I did was reading her weapon and then deciding imma warp rescue Alm in to assassinate her (I dubbed it Alm Boomerang because I kinda overused it at that point) before I do anything else
I haven't played the Archanea (Well, I've played the SD remake a little bit, but not enough to comment) or the Jugdral games, but for most of the rest I agree with these picks. The few I do disagree with though:
Path of Radiance: I don't have the same hatred for the Great Bridge that everyone else does. The pitfalls and ballistae are annoying going in blind, but I find it thematic and interesting enough that it ends up not bothering me. Instead I'd vote for Chapter 25: Strange Lands. When I played the game blind back when it was still relatively new, (And I was rather young) that chapter caused the most resets for me due to the damn boulders and their pathing not feeling intuitive. Also the common issue of small pathways that comes up in the other games.
Radiant Dawn: Same with PoR that I don't hate the bridge that much, and much like how you get Haar in PoR Ike gets Ragnell back this chapter, which is awesome. (There is also bias here since Ike is my favorite lord and RD is my favorite game) Instead I'd go with Chapter 3-6: A Reason to Fight. Swamp, Fog of War, and your units are almost certainly outclassed unless you really focused down on 2-3 units or you've played the game several times and really know how to min-max it, and even then there's risk involved. The Black Knight's inclusion is cool thematically, which I enjoy on that front, but it also feels like a slap in the face in hindsight because it feels like the developers knew this map would be unfair otherwise and threw you a bone, much like how the NA version gives the DB Prf weapons to help even the playing field for Part 3. I'd also consider at least mentioning 3-8: Incandescent Glow here for just being incredibly boring, but that might just be me.
Awakening: For basically the same reasons you stated for your choice with Chapter 2, I'd instead throw Chapter 5: The Exalt and the King here. While I love the idea of a rescue mission, good fucking luck keeping a Troubadour and a Mage alive when they're in enemy territory on higher difficulties. I still feel like I missed something obvious because this was hell for me on Lunatic and came down to getting lucky with evasion.
I will say, when it comes to Revelation, I kinda find Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride worse than Snow Shoveling. Snow Shoveling is more boring than anything else, but Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride is frustrating to manage without getting your army split, especially since Corrin is just about the only useful unit you'll have at that point. And for 3H, I do appreciate the issue of a map lying to you, but I'll never be able to forgive the game for Reunion at Dawn after playing on Maddening. Altogether too many Poison Strike archers you can't really do anything about except tank.
Nice video, I don’t agree with everything but I respect your arguments. The one I’ll argue back on is: if you’re going to say ch2 for Awakening because of Lunatic mode, then you HAVE to put ch13 for 3h. It is criminally nasty on a blind run, especially in Blue Lions. Add on top the unbelievable removal of the prep screen and the requirement to have to skip multiple cutscenes every time you reload your save.
This is only an issue on the first playthrough if on maddening tho, and you'd normally only do it on maddening after having played it before to learn the game first
Oh well
@@TommySkywalker11 my experience was that I did Golden Deer first on Hard and then Blue Lions on maddening. So I knew what was going to happen but I didn’t know how much stronger the Maddening enemies would be. Also, same logic for Awakening. Once you know how to do walk-on-water strats in prologue and give Frederick the Bronze Sword or whatever, Chapter 2 is manageable
@@jhTheMan99 except chp2 in awakening still requires specific positioning and a very heavy dose of good rng even knowing the correct strategy to use
HBD coming midgame also means you can do a lot to prepare for it
Its been too long since I have played anything other than 3 Houses and Engage for me to remember specific maps that I had issues with so I'm just gonna answer for those 2.
3H- I think it was a paralog mission for Ashe. I remember being surrounded in fog of war and enemies came at you from all over the place. It was a nightmare trying to position your units because even units that you thought were safe randomly die.
Engage- I don't remember which chapter it was, but my least favorite mission is the one where you get Corrin's emblem ring. You have to slog through ruins that are filled to the brim with Miasma tiles that give your enemies +20 def/+20 res and make you lose 20 def and 20 res if you stand on them. All you have to deal with miasma tiles is Corrin's ice which is probably the worst one since it can't remove miasma from a tile that an enemy is already standing on.
Nah hunting by daybreak is by far fe3h worst map. At least with petras paralouge you can CHOOSE which units to bring along and its optional so you can save it for later or not do it at all... But hunting by daybreak will literally END your run if you dont have a good build that and it forces you to being every unit from your house and if you haven't been using them they will die to any of the enemies in 1 round
No
@@DoTtA1123 yes
first playthrough i did as much as i could to recruit all the people i could from other houses, then that map came around and it was like 5 units who were built trying to survive while Byleth and Edelgard speedran the rest of the map
IMO Kitsune Lair isn't that bad if you know what you're up against. I understand why people finding it annoying but there are significantly more difficult maps in Conquest.
My vote for "worst" map in Conquest is Night Breaks Through. The enemies are very strong and their formations are full of overlapping mixed damage types and debilitating status staves. You'll get overwhelmed by the infinite reinforcements if you advance slowly. If you want to beat the chapter on Lunatic without any deaths, it's vital you plan your Endgame strategy well in advance. Rescue and Silence are both major helps, so you'll want to acquire and save your uses of those staffs for this chapter. You'll also need at least 1 powerful unit who can kill Takumi and a couple juggernauts if you're not going to Rescue skip. I think this chapter makes for an interesting challenge but I could easily see an unprepared player getting soft locked at the very end of the game, which would be incredibly frustrating.
Considering it was my first time playing it you hit it right on the head. Even fighting Garon was extremely hard, I didn't beat it because I kept getting swarmed and dying and I had to turn it to Phoenix just to be able to beat it. And just when I thought I was safe...T A K U M I. I basically was forced to keep on Phoenix that I actually wanted to beat the story it was unfortunate but that shows the difficulty of conquest tbh. It was truly my first fire emblem moment
The other thing about the snow shoveling level that's so bad is the fact that there's a mage at the end that has a crit tome. You have to know that ahead of time to not be caught out by it, and make sure you have a unit that can survive in case they get crit by him. Usually you want to hit the snow with a weaker unit to make sure that the rest of you very limited units can actually kill the potential enemy in the snow, but you still really want to try to level some of them up especially since you would have just recruited Hayato. It's just extremely unfair to the player and a huge time sink. Especially since you already did a very similarly drawn out level where you're in the dark and have to worry about enemies coming out of nowhere.
For SoV, I wanna know people's thoughts on that one map on Celica's route that had a building with VERY narrow paths, gargoyles and earthquakes, not only getting to attack with 1 tile of space is horrible, you have to deal with healing everyone after the tremors, I don't know about others but it took me ages, I was thanking God after Celica got a crit on a boss
For 3H I obviously have to bring up Marianne's paralogue, kinda surprised it wasn't here, it can be horrible or a cakewalk depending on what route you take, if you circle around the forest, you barely see enemies, if you go to the forest directly though, you get swarmed very quickly, and I'm not even mentioning Marianne herself
Village of silence is worse than phantom ship IMO.
There are two types of people. "Phantom Ship is the worst map because it's too hard." And "Phantom Ship is the best map because it's too hard."
12:17
I decided for the first time ever to play FE on hard mode in Sacred Stones. It was also the first time I've played the level since I'd only did Eirika's route. This stage made me never want to play hard mode again.
As a self proclaimed Thracia expert I have two qualms
1. I wouldn't ever consider "saving Asbel" to be an objective of hero of the wind since he could die before you can possibly do anything about it (very VERY rare) and the dialogue implies that Asbel and Ced don't necessarily have to be traveling together at that point, Asbel is the one who went looking for Leif and Ced running into Karin are unrelated even if Karin happens to be with Leif, it's the reason Leif doesn't have a convo with Ced in that chapter, canonically they likely didn't meet/have a chance to talk in that chapter.
2. Not picking Forest of Darkness as the worst map let alone giving it a mention.
I have no idea how many times I had to restart the Ghost Ship map. L’Arachel kept dying. I had to take a few days of mental rest, and I was 7, imagine the frustration🥲🥲🥲
For 3H I would've said either Hunting By Daybreak because of the enemies and how you can get screwed over, or Marianne's paralogue due to the sheer number of monster units and how you can get screwed over wuickly especially if Marianne isn't built up enough. Also for SoV I would definitely say Nuibaba's map is the worst one for not only the map design, but also for Medusa. I hate spells/attacks that instantly reduce your HP to 1. Bohr X in 3H was kinda similar but it was still managable, but not Nuibaba/Medusa.
alright so for blazing blade it does actually tell you to hurry up and that the path will dissapear in the augury fortune teller, and if you just stall for enough turns the path does come back permanently
Good to know that me struggling with Camilla chapter wasn't just me being a noob. It would have been worse if I didn't have like four healers on my team by then (Priestess Sakura, Falco Knight Hinoka, Felicia and Izana). I also found it extremely annoying that I actually did want to spare Arthur and Effie since they weren't doing anything wrong, just a misunderstanding. But noooooo, I couldn't get to them in time before they decided to rush on me and die by existing next to me
Honestly, any Chapter in the Engage Xenologue is worst than the Chapter of the main game.
Also the real stinger if you want the three winds, Rafal, and Nel you have to go through those Fell Xenologue chapters every play through.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 Yeah. Three Houses did it better in having the DLC as separated from the main story.
At least you can play the Xenologues in a different difficulty, but still... You have to play all 6 Chapters anyway.
In 3H, considering DLC, I'd choose the map of Anna's paralogue. After timeskip, when you only have basic units, they put bow knights which have 8 movement and 4 range
I have picked up Revelation SO many times to play, only to realize I'm on the stupid snow map and then not touch it again for 40 years.
15:15 "It's probably a tad too easy" Nagapedia says about the third (or fourth depending on if you count the prologue to the prologue) chapter in the game...
Gee, it's almost as if the very beginning of the game is intentionally meant to be easy... Unless you're a certified Lunatic and play on the aforementioned difficulty or the HARDER version of it...
Idk. I feel like Chapter 13 Engage is one of the few good fog of war maps. Being able to move at your own pace along with the enemies being preoccupied with beacons means you don’t have to worry about being overwhelmed or surprised by a powerful enemy showing up out of nowhere. It’s also around where you get some of Engage’s best units (Pan siblings, Merrin, Kagetsu) and Ike’s ring which are massive boons considering how weakened your army became a few chapters prior.
Chapter 25 on the other hand is just bad. Tight corridors, 2x2 Luna dragons and the boss’s beams, makes playing it a slog to get through. But if you don’t rush, you get swarmed by the worst part of late-game Engage’s map design: reinforcement spam! Even on Hard, it’s not fun and was the first map in the series I felt like I had to warp-skip in order to beat.
Chapter 19’s also not the best with all the miasma tiles everywhere, but the ambush villages are pretty funny at least.
Honestly, I think Chapter 19 in SS is probably the worst ever. The game just says: "Fuck it." And just chucks late game enemies in FoW. It blows.
Heavy disagree regarding Sacred Stones. I always found the Phantom Ship to be incredibly fun. Challenging, but fun. And we're still talking about Sacred Stones. Even on hard, this map is not difficult enough to actually be painful or annoying.
The map goes out of its way to make you feel ambushed and unprepared, which quite honestly is a good thing because it's a refreshing change of pace in this game.
If I had to choose a worst map here, I'd probably say 5x. Switching to Ephraim's point of view is a cool thing for the story, but the map itself is a slog to play. It's essentially one long hallway with no time-sensitive side-objectives, and there's no real danger present because Ephraim is an immortal demigod, and you've got Orson if that shouldn't be enough for you.
Of course, 5x isn't the only painfully easy long hallway without time-sensitive side-objectives in this game, but it's the least fun out of all of them, because you don't even get to bring your own characters and instead have to play with one demigod and three cavaliers, which might just be the most boring squad composition I could think of.
aint NO way bro struggled with echoes, say sike right now
I disagree with the pick for 3 Houses. Sure, Bernie and Petra sucks, but at least when you know it you can prepare for it. One you always have to slug through is Familiar Scenery, chapter 2 of the game, especially on Maddening since the enemies are overbuffed compared to your wheenies of high schoolers, and so you have 2 (or 3 if you picked the Blue Lions since Dedue is an absolute unit that makes this map a bit more bearable) units able to actually do stuff, Byleth and your house leader. And even then, for the Golden Deers, I hope that you've grinded Claude's bow rank to C to get close counter, because otherwise, he's just not that great. Also you only get Divine Pulse at the end of said chapter, making it more infuriating when you loose someone because you have to reset the whole map, reslogg through it all over again, turtling and turtling and turtling- I think that I've made my thoughs on this map clear. Tower of Black Winds, aka chapter 5, is also awful and suffers from similar problems, but at least you can have recruited Catherine and gotted some good level ups on your wheenie high schoolers, making it slightly more manageable when you know what you're doing.
Bow range+ maps are non-interactive and antithetical to strategy. The games don't give you any natural way to fight back that isn't agonizingly slow and repetitive
...I am going to be honest? chapter 2 maddening is braindead easy once you identify who can hit the 16 prot threshhold
which BTW, it's leonie on GD and Dedue on BL
black eagles has this map the hardest by far as a result
chapter 3 on the other hand...it still pisses me off on GD, really, because if leonie does not get a couple of defense level ups before hand, it's a piece of shit still even with a lot of planning
also no, you get divine pulse at the start of the chapter
Severa’s paralogue is a pain if you’re unprepared or you don’t know what to do
I think I'm going to agree with you on that one dude. Chapter 13 of Fire Emblem engaged is rather very troublesome and it kind of makes very little sense. Also Marianne's paralogue the forgotten hero is absolutely daunting, because it is a complete fog of war map sadly Marianne is surrounded by hidden monsters in the fog that even she can't see without a torch.
It’s interesting. I usually have Constance in my party so this prologue almost always turns into Marianne walk 4 spaces ish and then rescue then turtle with three torches. I imagine this map is significantly harder/more daunting without the rescue and especially if you don’t have Marianne trained.
Engage's chapter 25 is the worst by far. Cramped spaces, absurd reinforcements that becomes even more massive passed a certain point, separated groups, Lumera using lasers to hit you from afar, big wyverns protecting her and the absolute worst of it? This map is already horrendous in Normal but Hard and Maddening becomes next to impossible if you don't have perfect units since the enemy units are all tanking 2 to 3 attacks each.
Great video. If you haven't already, I'd love to see a best map video in the future.
I'm curious about the best maps too.
In FE1 i used ballistas to very slowly deal with some of the enemy ballistas did not know what to do otherwise, that chapter did want me to quit the game forever but i did beat it at some point
In FE6 the Murdock chapter i used to rescue Roy because the wyverns dealt so much damage to him, just for his rescuer to die almost every time. It also has a turn limit of 30 after which the now failed bonus chapter boss joins which is interesting.
With the FE6 Desert chapter has also the surprise berserker bosses who can just crit you
With FE8, i had Dozla just being awful most times, taking lots of damage and doing badly in fighting back
In FE 3 houses i had a few times that Claude was in range of Byleth, and would double and kill Byleth while everything else was kinda easy. So did not expect Claude to be that strong, and thanks to his mount i could not flee and had to restart
One map in 3 Houses has a bunch of green units you must protect, and i had few times they would just all die really fast failing the map. Which is kinda annoyingbut the map is fine. Also the last Jeralt maphad Jeralt run to other way once and the monster kept killing him so had to restart that chapter once
You say that Agustrian Disturbance is the worst map in FE4 and I strongly have to disagree mainly because it’s an unfair assessment.
looking at how the map is set up it’s obvious that you’ll have to seize Anphony and backtrack to Mackily and Agusty to finish the map however the game gives you not only the return ring in the same chapter but also the return staff in the previous chapter as well as the warp staff opening your movement options considerably.
By the second chapter the player is well aware that only Sigurd can take castles and would most certainly take note of all the hints pointing at him having the return ring, Ethlyn returning him to the home castle or even Aideen or Deirdre warping him back to Heirhein for a straight line to Mackily. It just seems a bit unfair to say the map is bad, tedious or boring when it’s designed in such a blatant way
@@SweaterPuppys if you ask me, you're trying to make excuses for bad map design. Sure, Return can bring Sigurd back, but what about, oh, EVERYONE ELSE??? You expect me to use Return on everyone??
Personally, i would've consodered the NES counterpart of Shadow Dragon considered, because a lot of the rules are so different.
The NES wooden cavalry is a joke because ballistae have 2-range, while Clash in Macedon can be an absolute nightmare since battle preparations are virtually nonexistent. This is in turn means your squishy units may end up in vulnerable positions without it even being your fault.
Actually, reaching Nino before she dies is easy. She is only attacked by weak monks and her RES is high enough that she will take negligible damage for a few turns. She will only die, if you aren't actually using rescue with a paladin or similiar high movement unit to bring one of the lords to Nino. Lyn is the easiest to bring to her due to her lower CON.
Jaffar and Zephiel are the ones that are problematic sometimes.
The map that comes to mind for me from 3 Houses is Miklan’s boss fight. Having to go around the tower on foot with so many units, sometimes not encountering an enemy for 3 - 5 turns is so boring, and dreadful game design. I do play on the easiest mode so maybe there’s more enemies at higher difficulty levels.
The penultimate map of Awakening currently holds the title of my least favorite map in the series of the games I’ve played. The near infinite reinforcements on Hard+ make it so that you need to rush through before you get overwhelmed. Combine that with the fact that my first Awakening run was extremely scuffed, and that map scarred me forever.
Thinking Shadows of Valentia is hard is insane
The map designs are kinda boring, but it's _not_ a game where you have to cheese a particular strategy to win maps, at least for most of the game
Based on people I know who used to play... FoW[Fog of War] maps...
I don’t think Hero on the Wind is that bad, aside from the first couple turns being kinda janky.
I nominate 24x, The Loptyrian Altar as the worst, with Thracia fog, cramped corridors, Eyvel as a side objective to prevent warp skipping, an entire room of mages with +20 magic/res, and a bunch of unmarked tiles that instantly warp one of your units to the FUCK room to be summarily executed
I have no idea why the ninja hell from Conquest hasn't been mentioned at all, that map haunts my nightmares
Keeping Saizo is very annoying but the map itself isn't very hard and is kind of easy for conquest standards. Still screw Saizo no wonder it rhymes with Kaizo.
You not saying the worst map in Awakening is the Mila Tree? Where you're confined to narrow walkways while the enemy gets lots of ambush spawn flying reingorcements whwill kill all your squishy units. Things you complained about in two other maps on this list?
Mind you,Awakening doesn't have many good maps,but that one stands out as the worst.
Also, the Petra paralogue was one of the best maps in Three Houses. It's one of two maps that have terrain that make you turn your brain on. 99% of the maps are just flat land with maybe some stairs to slow your horses.
I've had a lasting grudge against Battle Before Dawn ever since my first playthrough, when Jaffar died before I could reach him, on two consecutive attempts, on *Eliwood Normal*.
I would argue conquest’s worst map is chapter 10 against takumi simply because of how early it is compared to the kitsune map since it’s easier to prepare for the kitsune map after plowing through half the game at that point, plus Benny and Effie are WALLS if you just throw them out there
You have a point about how early it is, but Ch. 10 is tactically challenging in the rewarding way. Maps with major movement impediments like swamps, deserts, or the kitsune forest, are just slogs without similar payoff.
Alot of these maps get significantly easier with hindsight. For example, Leon absolutely creams the desert maps with a forged killer bow and just a little bit of help in the speed department. It becomes way faster with the right tools. That's honestly echoes in a nutshell though, lol
Gonna get crucified for this one, but i think FE6 Ch14 is the best desert map in the series with one big caviat - only when you aren't going in blind. The map is brutal blind, but if you know how to prepare and strategize around what the chapter asks of you, it's a fair challenge that gives you the option to choose how much treasure you want to loot and a lenient turn limit that still forces you to not turtle. At the very least all the gaiden chapters in FE6 are way more painful to play, those are the true travesty of game design in that entry.
Also no mention of FE10 Ch1-9? Like easy bottom 5 map in the series, biggest omission imo
My ranking (only goes from FE6 onwards)
FE6: Toss up between Chapter 14x and 16x, both Gaiden Chapters are annoying to deal with. Chapter 14x has disappearing platforms that are honestly more unpredictable compared to the ones in Night of Farewells in FE7.
16x is almost worse because of the Heavenly Arrows that consistently deal chip damage to you if they strike you. Although they can hit the enemy, they rarely do, and it forces you to constantly space out your units, which turns the map into an intricate slog. Also, the enemies have Purge, Silence, Berserk, all the comforts of home in this chapter.
FE7: I have 3 maps here.
1. Chapter 15 - Eliwood's army rescues Lyn's army from Laus' forces. But man is this map a slog to get through because of the trees. Just overly tedious and boring.
2. Chapter 24B - If you go through Four Fanged Offense to fight Linus, then you're in the clear. You're in a town area, good number of reinforcements to train off of, and there's no Fog of War. On the Lloyd map, however, you get none of these, and instead you have a Fog of War map, that is somewhat spaced out, and you have to fight Lloyd who is way more dangerous to fight now compared to later. Luckily you can avoid this as long as the combined total of your umpromoted lords equals 50 or higher. So basically all of them need to be level 17 or higher which is a perfectly reasonable requirement given the amount of enemy density on FE7s maps.
3. Battle Before Dawn - On Eliwood Mode, this map isn't as bad as I remember. Playing it on Hector Mode is a nightmare, as enemies with Sword-effective weaponry are everywhere and the AI for these green units is awful. Without at least two good high movement units, it's very likely you won't be able to make it to Zephiel before he gets crapped on.
FE8: Honestly don't remember Ghost Ship being that hard, but that's probably because I just had Ephraim solo it or something.
Naw the real annoyance is the Grado Castle one where you have to fight through a bunch of long range spells and Bowman to reach Rennac before he steals all the loot and runs off with the Secret Card.
FE9: It's either Blood Runs Red, Chapter 11, or Entrusted, Chapter 19.
In Chapter 11, the premise is overall simple. Just reach the boat. However, if you want to get Zihark and also avoid killing the Vigilantes, then you have to strategically move Lethe around to recruit him. But if you're too slow, the Black Knight will come out of hiding and kill both Lethe and Zihark off before you can do a thing about it. Even if you don't care to lose them, Zihark does have a Killing Edge, which is a very useful weapon to just have on standby.
In Chapter 19, You have to skirt around Naesala's movement range while dodging Ballistae and other Ravens. And the boss basically requires two units in order to finish off. And if you don't kill him, Naesala WILL KILL you on his turn.
FE10: I don't really think any of the RD maps are that bad. Probably the weakest one is Silent World, the first Tibarn map in Part 4. Just seems like a slog. Always puts me to sleep just halfway through it.
FE11: Chapter 22, The Macedonian Aerie. This one is honestly a struggle without properly trained units or a Warp staff. If you don't have either, you're in big trouble. Around Turn 5, Macedon Castle will spurt out reinforcements that keep coming wave after wave, and if you cannot keep up and contain them, they will overrun you.
FE12: I don't remember the specific chapter name or number, but it's the one where you have to use Roshea to recruit Vyland to recruit Sedgar to recruit Wolf. A cool recruitment tactic, but would've been better as a side gimmick and not one that's used as a chapter gimmick. The Wolfguard aren't even good units in this game so you almost have no reason to recruit any of them. Aside from that, this map is also reused from FE11, so it limits originality.
FE13: Obviously Paralogue 3 just for having terrible AI. The villagers run into everything. You can obviously just come back to this mission later, but the rewards you get are the most infuriating part. They give you two E rank weapons for saving all of them, and the Seraph Robe for only saving one of them.
Fates: I'm putting them all together here because while the concept is shared between them, the map layout is different for one of them. Any map involving the Mokushujin Ninjas can suck my balls. Worst maps in the games by a wide margin.
Echoes: Surprisingly, I'm going with the Siege of Zofia Castle. It gives you the option of taking down Desaix, who carries a droppable Dracoshield, but you practically have to goad Slayde away, then lineup your best attackers to attack Desaix. That is too much work for a Dracoshield. And while you can just finish Slayde and end the map, the fact that this is an option when most of your units are barely tier 2 is insulting.
3H: Not very happy with 3H. People give crap to Echoes for having bad map design, but they at least have an excuse being a remake of an older game. 3H has no such excuse having such meek chapter design. Magdred Way, Conand Tower, Marianne's Paralogue, Claude's Paralogue, the fact that multiple units have Paralogues that overlap on certain maps (Marianne & Petra, Dedue and Manuela). Honestly too many unoriginal and uninspired maps. But Marianne's Paralogue is the worst by far. Fog of War, Beasts, and just overall not a fun time. Only benefit is the Blutgang which is really just a more poweful melee Levin Sword.
Engage: Probably any of the Solm maps not including the Palace Invasion by Hortensia (that one is actually solid).
I love Desert Stronghold it manages to make a map where the odds are stacked against you which isn’t just a swarm of enemies that can ambush you or kill your weak units
For Awakening, I think my least favorite map is Nah's recruitment paralogue. Obnoxious shifting walls, powerful enemies, just a truly awful map.
Desert stronghold be like. Here have two brand new fliers right before a desert. Sounds good so far. Then we get hit with, here is a map that is 95% sand and you are attacking a fort in the middle of it, filled to the brim with archers. Oh whats that Valbar facetanking? Nope hes gotta walk one square a turn across the desert.
While I can understand only covering the latest "remake" of a game, it should be stressed that for many of the games the remakes shook up mechnanics and map design enough to radically change how some maps can be perceived in games.
Most notably, the Ballista in Shadow Dragon? The Famicom version is not NEARLY that bad, as they have the same range as basic archers in that, which is a fundamental change to the gameplay balanace.
Monshou no Nazo, meanwhile, has map quality sway heavily thanks to forced dismounting on indoor maps. You think "Chosen by Fate" is frustrating in DS Shadow Dragon? Imagine now your Paladins and Pegasus Knights being useless, your only Gradivius candidate is Lorenz, and Tiki can no longer hurt Medeus.
I think "Abducted Princess" should have gotten a mention here, too, VERY annoying design, forcing you to run around the perimeter of a mountain you can't pass through. The shop ambush gimmick is dumb, and needing to slowly poke at Wyvern Knights with Palla one turn at a time is annoying as heck. On top of that, to recruit Matthis you have to send your vulnerable thief over to the enemy front lines, in a game where said thief's one OTHER use is an annoying endgame gimmick..
I kind of wish you would have included the SNES version of Chapter 11 in FE3 just as a brief mention. The chapter is slow in the DS remake, but the SNES version is even slower due to the games somewhat sluggish game speed.
My least favorite chapter has to be 24x in Thracia 776. Lord have mercy. It has: Fog of war, small corridors, trap warps, Hel tomes, berserkers with wrath skill, and status ailments that don't go away with time. The entire purpose of the chapter is to rescue Eyvel. While that may be important story wise she is well outclassed and isn't even worth taking to the final chapter. And if you do want to recruit her, you must be ready for the unknown stuff. Silence will make it so she can't be recruited at all and that usual happens the very next turn after curing her from stone. You can't cure neutral units, so you lose. This is a case of a chapter just being too hard in a game that is already tough as nails. You'll probably avoid this chapter anyways since you have to intentionally trigger it.
Huh I kinda figured Solo for Path of Radiance being the worst. You got an annoying amount of Priests in the way that are hiding the bandits, shoving them being the nice thing to do for bonus experience and a staff if they all live. A couple that you can't get to will be spamming Silence. A thief will eventually show up to steal treasure along with other reinforcements throughout.
It's funny that quite a few of these were brought back as the maps featured in Engage. lol. Some of these maps I disagree with but others I wholeheartedly agree with. I never had any issues with the bridge map in PoR and RD. They are mildly annoying, but nothing too bad. I think most desert maps really suck and I was glad to see they FINALLY changed the way they work in Engage. The desert map in Engage was actually pretty fun and I wouldn't have minded a second one. I remember unlocking the water temple map in FE7 as a kid. God I hated it. That's a really rough 1-2 punch of maps. And in FE6, the map you highlighted, something else you forgot to mention is they keep spawning in wyverns turn after turn. I had a weak unit lagging behind but figured it wasn't a big deal. Until they spawned in wyverns that got to him before I could save him. I think I also had some bad RNG since the unit didn't dodge any attacks.