Thoughts on Map Design and Quality Across Games

[Interdimensional Observer]

I hear plenty of discussion of people criticizing SoV, Awakening and FE4 as having poor map design and praising Conquest's. While I get what Conquest did right and Awakening and FE4 did wrong, I'd be interested in hearing general opinions on map design in FE as a whole. What each individual game did right, did wrong. Where the rest of the series ranks. What FE has consistently done right and wrong. Suggestions on how things could be better.

 

First, I would like to say that each game does have some decent maps, and maps with potential- if potential that wasn’t actually capitalized on. Likewise, each game has a few drudges.

Second, when comparing them let’s set aside player juggernauting with things like Sigurd, Seth, a PoR BEXP dump, Nostanking FE13, grinding, etc. if possible to some extent. 

Third, what role should difficulty play in this? Everything is easy on the lowest setting where multiple are available. But the highest- is that too brutal? Does it ever help map design? I think it hurts F13, but maybe it helps FE12?

 

Now onto my analysis on a game by game basis from those I've played:

SD: A remake very first game, design isn’t atrocious, but it isn’t brilliant either as a result. SD adds mechanics not present in the original FE1, for better or for worse, possibly worse insofar as difficulty is concerned on the lower difficulties (and of course the Weapon Triangle's integration was unneeded- after Chapter 9 Axes don't exist). The higher difficulties might help a little?

SoV: Some obvious slogs (swamps and sands), lots of repetition of maps, maps are crudely simple in design and random dungeon battles don't even really count as maps. I’ve heard some call the maps subtle genius- but whether this was intentional or not, who knows? The fixed indoor battles- Berkut 3, the Duma Tower fights, I think they were some of the better ones in this game. Other times I felt that on Hard, too often it was just Mire spam that made maps difficult. Throw some Bows in to annoy your Pegs.

FE7: Well some of the maps are too easy, no doubt about that, and Battle Before Dawn is a little RNG dependent, if not for Zephiel then for Jaffar. Yet Ranked or partly Ranked (the difference being whether one plays for EXP or not) is a good challenge. Personally speaking, it might be one of the games with better map design.

SS: Possibly a step down from FE7, but still better than 1/2 at least. Overall, I’d call Ephraim’s route stronger, the only weak link being Landing at Taizel. But Eirika still has Revolt at Carcino and Hamill Canyon for good chapters. And after the split, Last Hope was kinda good defense chapter.

PoR: The design isn’t bad here, but how good is the question. Maybe worse than 7 but better than SS?

RD: Well the Part system giveth good and giveth bad with the fixed teams. The bad being 2-1. The maps do nail the thematics though. I’m ignoring any slowness of animations here (which is largely fixed after a first playthrough). Part 1 is great and tight with its map design. Part 2 is very poor (C1), great (2-F), and serviceable with everything else. Part 3, I think it’s average-ish, not as good as P1 overall, but not bad (and River Crossing a is huge favorite of mine, so is 3-13). Part 4 is bland as poorly made plotless routs until 4-5 and Final, where things get a bit better. Overall? RD is divisive, with high highs and low lows, just as in plot as in map design.

Awakening: I’d want to say the Gangrel Arc was good, the Valm a decline, and the Grimleal a bottoming out, which is kinda how the plot works out. But plot and gameplay don’t actually align here. The Gangrel Arc is probably the best in map design outside of C2 Lunatic/+. Valm might be worse than Grimleal overall though. I mean the Mila Tree and Yen’fay’s lava duel are awful, and if not as bad as Validar’s flat open map of atrocity, at least the Grimleal Arc gives us that pseudo-escape chapter with the spawning Mires on the other side of the walls.

Fates: CQ is quite possibly among the best FE for map design. Not perfect, no FE is. The maps are gimmicky, but I think the gimmicks are for the most part done better than not. BR eschews gimmicks for the most part, but fills it in with weaklings in the midgame, and overwhelming enemy numbers in the late, not the best of ideas either. Rev uses gimmicks, and not as well as CQ does.

 

Overall ranking for me for what I’ve played. From worst to best:

Rev<FE13<SD<SoV<BR<SS<PoR<RD<FE7<CQ.

[Slumber]

FE1/11: Just about as basic as it can get, which isn't necessarily bad, given that it's the first game in the franchise. The remake could have done a lot to spruce up the designs, but it didn't, which drags this down for me.

FE2/15: Really baffling. Even as somebody who really enjoyed SoV and places it at the top of the 3DS games, the map design are the BIGGEST issue with the game. Things are either incredibly basic, or downright annoying/infuriating. SoV did a lot to make these maps more colorful and memorable, but they still have the issues that the original had. They're just nicer to look at.

FE3/12: Probably the first step FE took to making slightly more interesting/involved maps. It's a step in the right direction, but still not the best.

FE4: Semi-controversial opinion, I really like FE4's maps. As much as a bunch of people will bitch and moan about how it impacts the pace of the game, I place 80% of that on how IS balanced the gameplay, rather than how they designed the maps. With FE4 being the grandest, most epic Fire Emblem they've ever, the fact that you're literally playing across the entire map of Jugdral does a lot to push the atmosphere/tone of the game. You're not just playing through tiny battlefields outside of castles, you're playing across entire countries each country. Ultimately, this does mean you're playing through a lot of open plains, but the game presents these massive, open plains WAAAAAAY better than any other game that is filled with a bunch of plains maps. The gameplay balance does end up making a lot of these maps feel like chores, however, but I have to say that I like what they did with the maps themselves.

FE5: Why thank you for giving me more opportunities to talk about how great FE5 is... *ahem*, sorry, I get ahead of myself sometimes. Anyway, FE5 has a lot of very good maps, and like a lot of FE5, many of them are designed to fit the tone of the story and Leif's journey. The escape maps are harrowing and designed to make you proceed with caution. The maps where you have to defend(Including chapter 14, my favorite map/chapter in the franchise) a point feel like they're structured to really put you on the defense, and overreaching during these maps WILL lead to casualties or defeat on your side. Even the rout/kill maps are generally designed so you can't just bumrush the chapters. The map designs change it up often enough for you to never get tired, and they're the biggest step up in quality from the last traditional FE(That being FE3 in this case). Even the final chapter, which feels like a prototype of Light from FE7, arguably does a better job of what these two maps try to do... however... warp tiles...

FE6: And now we have probably the biggest step back in the franchise. It's another way that FE6 feels like it's just aping what the Archanea games did. In a lot of ways, it's not even as interesting as FE3/12. The most interesting designs are the Gaiden chapters, which generally aren't very well-designed maps in their own right. There are a lot of maps that feel like they were designed just to waste time, too. While FE5 had some winding maps, it was generally to make specific map objectives harder to achieve. FE6 has a lot of long, winding maps, and they exist solely to make the trek to the boss/throne slower, since that is once again the only objective type. The jump the the GBA didn't do them many favors, either, since their first foray into this style ended up making everything look like it was coated with florescent paint. Now, as much shit as I just talked, there are a few solid maps in here, and it's still far(Well, not really) from the worst out there.

FE7: Refined a lot of the problems FE6 had, and as a result had a lot of well-designed, memorable maps. Not much to say here beyond the game being above average all around in this regard, and the re-inclusion of varied objectives complement the map design a lot better.

FE8: Very middling, very unremarkable. Some good, some bad, most just bland and forgettable. In a unique twist, it's not the lack of objective designs that makes a lot of these so forgettable, it's the fact that you spend so much of the game fighting faceless, generic monsters in meaningless conflicts, which felt a lot more egregious than it did in FE2/15. FE8's biggest problems with map design/quality are unique to FE8, so... it's got that.

FE9: FE has started to establish a patter of ups and downs with map design, FE9 is another step up. The jump to the GC was a lot kinder to FE9 than the jump to the GBA was to FE6. FE9, in a lot of ways, is a proper follow-up to the SNES games, and following that the map designs feel like a follow up to FE5's. I don't think the quality is as high, but it is overall about on par with FE7, but grander in scope, and with more going on. And even though I'm not a huge fan of the design of the final map, I will say that it's one of the most unique final maps in the franchise, and it still works as a final map.

FE10: Overall a small step-up from FE9. There's more going on, the maps are a bit more intricately designed, and the addition of height adds a lot to how the maps feel, and in many ways it works. However, despite all of these things, FE10's maps often feel a bit too big. And while this is a grand, epic game like FE4, it never feels like these big maps are in favor of the tone of the game like with FE4. There are also a handful of maps that are just a chore, mostly in the Crimea chapters.

FE13: The second biggest step back in the franchise. The maps of Awakening are visually interesting, but the maps are all just flat, open areas. There may be a few obstacles here and there, but they're rarely ever too much in the way, and once again, the removal of varied objective designs ends up making all of the maps feel very samey. I remember the visual styles of the maps rather than how the maps actually played, which is not a good thing. Prime example is the Mila Tree. Beautiful style, but the game does jackshit with it, it's just another flat, open map. It's almost more frustrating than if they were just visually bland maps.

FE14: Oh boy.

Conquest takes a lot of pages out of FE5's books with map/objective design, and it ends up being far and away one of the best designed FEs in the series in this regard. Defend chapters are relentless and designed very well in this regard. Kill/seize maps are designed to not just give you the win like a lot of FEs do, and they test you in a lot of creative ways. However, Conquest isn't all perfect, as there are quite a few annoying map gimmicks that plague every version of Fates, and Dragon Veins never feel like they complement the maps in meaningful ways.

Birthright is a very middle of the pack FE. It takes the interesting visuals of Awakening, and actually does stuff with the maps and objectives. It feels like the game Awakening should have been, which isn't actually a very high bar. Once again, plagued by Fates' lame map gimmicks and Dragon Veins.

Fates runs the gamut. If Conquest is near the top in map/objective design, and BR is near the middle, then it goes without saying, that Rev would be at the bottom. The maps themselves aren't necessarily a whole lot worse than Birthright, but it cranks up the map gimmicks to 11, and it's damn near insufferable. It's such a chore to play through... just... ugh.

If I rate Fates as a whole:

5>10>9>7>4>14>3>8>6=13>2>1

If I separate the Fates routes:

5>CQ>10>9>7>4>BR>3>8>6=13>2>1>>>>Rev

Edited January 6, 2018 by Slumber

[Nobody]

I won't go in depth into this, but I'll post my opinions on each game map design, while only explaining what is probably the most controversial one:

4: The focus of the game isn't on strategy or positioning. Considering what the game did and how the maps tie to the narrative, I like them. Comparing those maps to the rest of the series is like comparing apples to oranges.

5: Really great. I don't mind what people consider "gimmicks". There are some "dick moves" if you don't know what you're doing, but they're not that hard to deal with and don't detract from the overall really good maps. 

6: Good maps as well. Not as great as Thracia, but then again, what is? answer: Conquest

7: The Fire Emblem subreddit HATES this games' maps, but I quite like them. While not overly complex and full of defend maps, I find them super fun to play with A exception (fuck you genesis). So yeah, I really like this game's maps.

8: Great maps as well. Not much to add.

9: This game's maps are good, but I find this entire game very basic. Like, too "vanilla". The few times it tries to be more complex (like the bridge, the cliff and the priests) it ends up not making much difference and only slowing you down, due to how braindeadly easy this game is and how non-threatening its enemies are. Anyway, maps are still good.

11: I love this game's maps. Nothing much complex, but IMO they shine on H5 if you don't decided to warp skip them (and even then, there's early game). Positioning is important and there's nothing annoying about them at all. I just love this game.

12: A step back compared to 11. Many maps are re-used, with you starting on different positions. Then you have the paralogues, which are small but sort of annoying, and then you have some new maps which are kind of bad, like the stupid mountains (chapter 3?).

13: HSAHAHAHA. AWFUL. JUST AWFUL. Park Robin on a fortress and watch the enemies cross open fields to reach you. Okay, there are some decent ones like 5,6, the one with the valkyrie boss and the one with the bunch of mire sorcerers.

14: Conquest is amazing, Birthright is boring and too simple, Revelation is bad. 

15: Crap. People know why they're bad and I don't feel like writting much about it.

Now comes, my unpopular opinion:

10: Bad maps. Part 1 is good, but even then there is a big stinker in One Survives. Part 2 has literally the worst map Fire Emblem has ever seen in Geoffrey's Charge, a simple, trivial and EXTREMELY boring map that only tests your patience and that is almost literally impossible to lose even on hard unless you decide to use a crap unit that you don't need to. There's no map design, just 6.02e23 weak enemies blocking your way, and many allied units to make it pass ultra slowly. The rest of part 2 is nothing to write home about either: the prologue is boring, Nephenee's and Brom's join chapter is awful, the chapter with Lucia is okay-ish. Elincia's Gambit is a good map, but is extremely overrated and doesn't compare to stuff like Conquest's 10 or Thracia's 20. You see, Elincia and Haar can kill the boss on turn two EASILY. It's not a defend chapter, it's a kill boss one. Even if you want to defend, choking points when you have Haar and all other units is nothing complex. Part 3 is once again okay, but nothing spetacular. It's susceptible to Juggernauting. Then you have another stinker, From Pain Awakening, which is like Awakening's late game (but even worse, due to how fucking slow FE10's engine is compared to awakening's fast one), with barely any map design, just a lot of enemies spread through the map that you have to kill, with a bunch of allied units to make the chapter, once again, go by extremely slowly, making it a drag to play. Part 4 is also infamously bad, being known for being a rout-fest full of reinforcements.

[Ronnie]

Awakening: Pretty to look at but the majority of maps are still flat in terms of travel. I still enjoyed quite a lot of the maps though. Mila Tree, volcano, the ones with the army of sorcerers.

Birthright: Pretty good designed maps that I enjoyed playing and others I found tedious. Ninja village and Camilla being the tedious ones.

Conquest: Same as Birthright except more gimmicky and even more tedious. Wind currents, fliers, Iago, etc. It felt like playing a game of hot potato.

Can't speak for Sacred Stones or Echoes since I barely touched them.

[Reality]

 I made a wallpost recently.

Anyway  - I rate FE6-FE8 on their Hard mode only. FE9-10 on Hard mode only. FE11  I rank on all difficulties for the sake of demonstration, FE12 on R-2 mode only. FE 13 on  Lunatic Plus only,  FE14 on Lunatic only, and FE15 on Hard mode only.

I cannot stand a poorly made Normal mode. To me, it seems WRONG that stuff like the GBA Normal modes exist, because FE is supposed to be the archtypical SRPG, but they play like the Kirby / Dragon Quest of SRPGs, and feel like they are designed to be introductory games to the genre rather than representative of how the genre normally operates. They are obviously designed to feel nice to play through but breezing through them is an experience that tends get old faster than playing hard difficulties.  Whether a game is "fun" or "well designed" are two different questions.

Games like Radiant Dawn and Conquest don't destroy their quality to quite the extent that the GBA and Shadow Dragon do, but by the time I played them I refused to even START on normal mode, and only played it second afterwards. 

FE1 - Terrible

FE2 - Terrible 

FE3 - Terrible, but introduces protection. Also if you play BOTH book 1 and book 2 you have awkwardness reviisting same locations and having almost unchanged map flow although maps are not literally the same. Finally the game's heavy slowdown makes it much slower to get through than FE1 despite the low difficulty being comparable. 

FE4 - UBER terrible. In FE2, you at least will still be incentivzsed to split enemy groups up, and can have unit deaths occur for positional mistakes. 

FE5 - The maps are really good, but I do feel like the (overlooked here and on the subreddit) overly generous experience distribution holds them back a bit, even when not intentionally power gaming.

FE6 - Mediocre - Hard mode starts interesting, but by C11 you are mostly over the hump and have to get to the boring part of the game. Game is too afraid to make ALL generic enemies promoted until C22 which is absurd.

FE7 - Mediocre - I like a lot of individual maps but you spend most of the time just beating on enemy formations.

FE8 - Mediocre - If people are invoking "good map design but bad stat distribution can be used" then FE8 is a lot better than people think. On hard mode,  there are a couple situations to dissuade seperating Cavaliers from the party, such as the enemy mages in Grado Keep (granted it's just a pure-water away from being another Seth solo) It also attempts to reward the use of archers more than FE6/FE7/FE9 (through walls in the likes of Eirakia C14).

FE9 - Mediocre - Probbably worse than all 3 GBA games. FE9 Maniac mode (even JP maniac mode) is easier than SS Hard Mode. Most maps are standard, and the "puzzle maps" like the priest chapter, the climb the rock face chapter, and the bridge chapter are kind of disappointing, as unlike negotiating the overlapping ballista in FE5 for instance, doing them "properly" is mostly just a case of convience or BEXP, instead of seriously affecting your ability to pass the chapter. 

FE10 - Part 1 and Non- GM maps in Part 3 are the highlight. The rest of the game is kind of an extended victory lap/power trip. The engine makes it difficult to want to replay.

FE11  Normal to- H1 - Terrible - like in the original, any unit, including marth, the starting cavs, and caeda, will quickly achieve near infinite survivablity and gurnateed one rounds on everything, so eventually only movement ranges and marth matter. 

FE11 - H2 to H3 - above average - you have to pay some attention to enemy range in relation to your units range. However you don't really need to be adaptive to the enemy strategy in many cases and can force them to do what you want without as much effort / planning as you should require

FE11 - H4 to H5 - Great

FE12 - Great

FE13 - Lunatic+ - mediocre - Lunatic + is interesting from a pre-planning standpoint, but not especially interesting from your on-the-fly positioning standpoint, to the point that getting too complacent is  actually one of the biggest dangers. It still requires a lot more brainwork to handle than FE6-9, and the initial maps are quite fun to deal with. which is kind of a theme considering FE6 and FE10.  If you can bring yourself to look at it more as a puzzle challenge instead of a strategy challenge it becomes one of the best games in the series easily.

FE14 Birthright - above average - It's overlooked that the player characters have the low HP base/growths on Birthright's Lunatic mode, and although map design isn't particularly intelligent, the balance just creates room where positiong will mater.

FE14 Conquest  Great - It's not particularly Fire Emblem Like gameplay, but as an SRPG it is superb. 

FE14 Revelations - mediocre. Still a clear league above FE6-FE9. 

FE15 - Terrible, but no longer tedious, so a definite improvement over FE2

Edited January 6, 2018 by Reality

[Armagon]

Only the game i've played to completion will be on this list

• FE3/12: Some solid map design and it worked. Nothing too special. Sometimes though, reinforcements came way too early and just didn't stop.
• FE4: Absolutely atrocious map design and it's one of the many things that make FE4 a bad game. All it does is turn mounted units into Gods and turn most infantry units into detriments. By the time the foot units catch up to the mounted units, that part of the battle is over. The only thing i liked was the conquering multiple castles thing.
• FE6: Standard map design, not as solid as FE3 though. FE6 had some really bad maps like Ch.14x but other than that, it was fine.
• FE7: Pretty similar to FE6, actually. Nothing too special but it had it's own terrible water temple. Oh, and Hector's Tale showed that you can do the "conquer multiple castles" thing without having to make the maps unnecessarily huge and atrocious.
• FE8: Ephraim's route had the better maps while Erikia's route had the easier ones. Not much i can say.
• FE13: I'll take open fields with no strategy for 500. 
• FE14 Birthright: Basically a better version of Awakening.
• FE14 Conquest: The best maps the series has to offer. Tough but fair maps, except for a few terrible ones, like Ninja Death Trap, Kitsune Mountain, and Fuga's Wild Ride.
• FE14 Revelation: Unpopular opinion, i wasn't really bothered by most of the gimmicks tbh. The bad part comes in the unit balancing though, and Revelation's maps honestly weren't that hard. Still much better than any of FE4's maps though.
• FE15: Simple maps, there is valid criticism to be had in how most maps just repeat themselves. However, given how the battles aren't chapters themselves, it makes sense why they are simple. Most maps don't last that long either, unless there's Cantor spam. Could've used some variety but there was great work in the terrain, since it actually mattered. 

[X-Naut]

While most people point to maps in games like Awakening and Echoes for having too little terrain, I think a lot of Archanea maps have the opposite problem: there is too much terrain. Specifically, there are a lot of outdoor maps that spam mountain or water tiles, although a few Book 2 maps (i.e. Chapters 2 and 7) are oversaturated with crossable terrain instead. While some terrain is healthy to make use of fliers' niches, it becomes suffocating for grounded units in such large quantities.

[Interdimensional Observer]

6 hours ago, Nobody said:

10: Bad maps. Part 1 is good, but even then there is a big stinker in One Survives.

Ah 1-9. See Deltre's LP for a terrible terrible case of what can happen with that chapter. His Micaiah got like 3 Speed procs over the course of her entire existence, and not having 10-12 Speed for 1-9 on Micaiah enough to avoid being doubled, makes this chapter very very very hard. Since the AI will prioritize an unarmed BK over 2RKOable Micaiah, but 1RKOable Micaiah is preferable to an unarmed BK (although you don't have to use the sit between two trees and the edge of the screen strat). Really, if something like that ever comes again, the enemies have to be built around the worse case scenario on the MC's stats, and or they need to have fixed promotion gains.

The rest of your criticism- well admittedly Elincia's Gambit is a joke insofar as defending goes. It, like From Pain, Awakening and Geoffrey's Charge, are admittedly cases of prioritizing story over gameplay in RD's map design (EG less than the other two). FP, A has Micaiah's army crumbling and forced out of defensive fortifications thanks to how 3-13 went at the end, plus things on the Laguz Alliance side have taken a turn for the worse since 3-12 and a little light is giving off a big "WARNING!" sign. Geoffrey's Charge- Ludveck intentionally left behind his weaker troops in Felirae and sacrificed them while he went for the royal jugular as Geoffrey was distracted, that they're so puny makes sense. This doesn't excuse P4 though, where the main plot is very thin through the drudge of 4-P to 4-4 (and 4-5 isn't much thicker), nor does it fully excuse the prior chapters mentioned either.

 

7 hours ago, Slumber said:

FE8: Very middling, very unremarkable. Some good, some bad, most just bland and forgettable. In a unique twist, it's not the lack of objective designs that makes a lot of these so forgettable, it's the fact that you spend so much of the game fighting faceless, generic monsters in meaningless conflicts, which felt a lot more egregious than it did in FE2/15. FE8's biggest problems with map design/quality are unique to FE8, so... it's got that.

 

I commented to you on this before once (and if I remember right, you said you haven't played SS in a while), and I don't want to beat a dead horse since I doubt I can change you opinion, so I'll stop myself with this one last time. But monsters aren't that common. Lute and Artur's joining chapter, a lone Bael threatening hostages a few fights later, two fights on Eirika's, two fights on Ephraim's (one is somewhat interestingly a mix of monsters and humans), then the Gorgon nest, and lastly the final two chapters. 

I once thought Slayer was godly and hence Moulder and Artur it would be stupid to make them (and even Natasha) their non-Bishop choice. But really, for the main story, monsters appear in relatively few chapters. If you grind or do Creature Campaign, you will be fighting purely monsters (barring the rare Thief in Valni/Lagdou). But that is optional and shouldn't detract that much from the main campaign where it's overwhelming Grado's very human forces you're putting down.

One of the story monster chapters is the Phantom Ship- which nobody can really forget (said chapter does have near zero plot). I'm not sure if its because it's difficult due to good map design, or just obnoxious in its reinforcements like the Hans and Iago round 2 battles (C24 and 25) on BR, plus Fog of War. I'm attempting the chapter on an Infantry only run- I could probably bear it with some Pure Waters popped, but gosh the enemies come on hard and fast and from everywhere. You can't board the enemy ship until the start of Turn 3, and the Deathgoyle boss appears at the end of Turn 4 and on the next turn already begins to move along with all surviving Mogalls in the north and south (like 8 to 10 total). The map is too small for really anyone to be completely safe. Admittedly if I permitted myself Duessel and Seth this would be heckuva lot easier, or maybe if I fielded just Berserker Ross, Ephraim, and probably Gilliam- everyone else being too much of hassle to keep alive.

But as I said, the plot is near nonexistent for this fight, so you're right on this front. Eirika's monster battles and Ephraim's human-monster mix Landing at Taizel are all plot trash too (the first monster fight is spared only because it introduces you to monsters). Eirika deserves 1/20th of a point for attempting to world build with Caer Pelyn during her monster fights- but in the vast dearth Magvel has of world building, it does nothing (plus it partly builds on dragons- something Magvel didn't need because of how poorly they were handled). The Gorgons in the Gorgon egg fight (which is basically a free levels for mounties map since the eggs are harmless and rich in EXprotein, yet you have to rush to them or else they become very harmful) don't matter, but the events that happen afterwards, to which the Gorgons are irrelevant, certainly do matter a lot. And the final two chapters are in the abode of the Demon King- if there was time when monsters were justified, it's here.

 

On a more positive note for SS, Turning Traitor I think can enter the echelons of good map design. Surviving with Duessel alive isn't an issue because Duessel is a great big tank, but if you want the Knight Crest for keeping his Cav trio alive, and if you want to recruit Cormag and haven't trained Tana, you have to work fast. Ephraim moving his full movement every turn will get you to Duessel just in time to recruit Cormag on the next turn, and since Cormag can fly, has good stats and a Killer Lance- he can kill one of your units pretty easy. The two Fleet units- seaborne Ballistae- can put a dent into your Pegs and squishies, the former being the only ones able to reach them in the first place. Because the map is rather small, the Fleets can be hard to completely avoid- as is the case with Cormag. The pirates threaten Duessel's trio well enough, and the moving Mercenary reinforcements from the southeast are stubbornly durable since nobody can double them. And the Cav reinforcements in the northeast are sufficient for threatening your backside. 

[Slumber]

21 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I commented to you on this before once (and if I remember right, you said you haven't played SS in a while), and I don't want to beat a dead horse since I doubt I can change you opinion, so I'll stop myself with this one last time. But monsters aren't that common. Lute and Artur's joining chapter, a lone Bael threatening hostages a few fights later, two fights on Eirika's, two fights on Ephraim's (one is somewhat interestingly a mix of monsters and humans), then the Gorgon nest, and lastly the final two chapters.

That's 7 chapters(Excluding the early game Bael chapter, since that one does have a human boss) of a game that's effectively 27 chapters long.

That's more than 1/4 of the main story being meaningless fights that have no memorable bosses/boss dialogue, few meaningful exchanges between the protagonists and the antagonists, and no real story context. They're chapters that exist purely to pad out the game, and they do nothing to serve the maps they take place in.

Edited January 7, 2018 by Slumber

[Pixelman]

I always find it interesting that Phantom Ship is considered a hard chapter. I only deploy Duessel, Seth, and Ephraim and they seem to get the job done reasonably well thanks to their high stats.

Anyways, I was going to do a very big effort post but I realized I haven't played a Fire Emblem game since forever. As such, I'll try to rate them based on what I remember:

3/12>6>CQ>1/11>7>8>13>BR>Rev=2/15

I've never completed 4 and 5. I've never played 9 or 10.

3 is my personal favorite. I appreciate side objectives such as obtaining all the star shards, for example. Also I really dig the 90s aesthetic.

Edited January 7, 2018 by Pixelman

[ping]

Some random thoughts about how a good map can look first:

• While playing, I want to have a sense of advancement. In most cases, that means I want to get noticably closer to the objective every turn, instead of choking a point for 10 turns, or walk for like 10 turns without any enemy confrontation. Desert maps tend to be rather bad in that regard, as are a few maps in FE12 (chapter 3, for example, where Marth has to take a looong hike around the entire map in order to recruit Julian and Matthis).
• As somewhat of an exception, if a chapter is supposed to feel like I'm fighting against a insurmountable foe, don't give me a map in which I'm able to rout the enemy. At the same time, don't give the option to just choke a few points for an entire chapter. Make sure that the challenges change over the course of the fight. The worst offender I can think of is chapter 8 (Despair and Hope) in PoR, which is (late reinforcements aside) completely trivial to rout well before the turn limit.
• If there are no battle saves, I do not like if a chapter suddenly becomes difficult after 10 turns of boredom that I will have to go through again if I fail. It's even worse if the difficulty jump includes a "gotcha" moment, i.e. nasty ambush spawns that you can only protect against if you know where and when they spawn. I do not like chapter 22 in Binding Blade in this regard, since it's pretty tame before you open the door through the throne room (at least it is to be expected that Zephiel isn't completely unprotected). FE12 would be a major offender if it wasn't for its save points, too - I'm thinking about the lava map with its wyvern reinforcements, or the ice map with the trap when you move onto the central island. There's a solution for both of them if you know that they're there (body-block the forts and one-round the boss with Marth in seizing range, respectively), but you will lose a unit if they catch you unaware.
• If you introduce a gimmick, make i count. It really doesn't add to the gameplay if you have to break through 19376 walls on the way to the throne (I'm talking about that Gaiden map in FE6, for the record)

Personally, I enjoy FE6's map design the most, at least outside of some of the Gaiden chapters. They're typically relatively front-heavy in their difficulty, and even though the maps are pretty large, I don't really remember having to walk through 20 turns of nothing at any point. FE9 might have been great, too, if the enemies weren't such a joke, but that's obviously just speculation on my part.

[Shadow Mir]

Over the course of the series:

FE1/SD: Doesn't do too much wrong, but doesn't do too much right either.

FE2/SoV: Okay. I honestly find the complaints this game gets on the map design front to be blown waaaaaaay out of proportion. There are some bad maps, but those are in the minority.

FE3/12. Generally solid, though there are some maps that tend to stick out like a sore thumb in terms of design (like chapter 3).

FE4. The absolute worst map design in the series overall because the maps are just bloated (and that's one problem out of many the game has going against it). It basically inflates the usefulness of mounts drastically, while infantry units can't possibly hope to get much of anything done. Also heavy on backtracking and terrain abuse (last segment of chapter 1, anyone?), which doesn't help. Chapters 2, 4, and 7 in particular are really really bad.

FE5: Has the single most poorly designed map in the entire series (chapter 24x). Not much else of note.

FE6: Has a lot of big maps, though in general, it's not as bad as in FE4. However, some maps are just terrible (e.g. chapter 14), and the gimmicky gaiden chapters don't help.

FE7: Okay map design, though it has its problem children as well (go straight to hell, Night of Farewells, do not pass GO, and do not collect 200 dollars).

FE8: Overall middling.

FE9: Pretty good overall.

FE10: A mixed bag overall.

FE13: Another game where I generally find the map design complaints overblown. 

FE14: Birthright is okay. Conquest is good. Revelation is okay (I wasn't really bothered by most of the gimmicks, in fact; I'm more bothered by the slow pace of the first few maps than antyhing else).

[Jotari]

I'm one of the people that proclaimed Gaiden to have subtle brilliancde in its map. But I'll modify that statement, Gaiden doesn't have maps. It has arenas. Stick any of these maps into another game and they would be atrocious (oh hey, they did do that with Fear Mountain in Fates. It was...bit forgettable. Worked well enough for a defense map in Heroes though). But the maps in Gaiden are designed with the gameplay of Gaiden in mind and for that reason they suit it well. Aside from the bogs. They need some kind of alternate route. And duplicated maps in general are no fun.

In so far as the other games go, I think most of them are a pretty mixed bag. When I think of Binding Blade, I remember the titular Chapter 21 first, and I think that maps amazing. If forces forward progression with a time limit to get the Gaiden (albeit an unseen one you need to know about before hand), sends waves of enemies at you, many of which are weak but still need to be handled in an appropriate way to stop your units from being too weak to fight the actual powerful enemies. A mid chapter wyvern ambush from the center of the map, that manages to be panic inducing but still well within your limits to deal with. And then a really powerful boss that's very threatening to combat. Normally something like that is a wall that becomes a slog to get through, but with the time limit it forces you to deal with him in a way that doesn't involve slowly chipping him down. You probably need to get multiple units on him which means you can't juse recuse ferry one fighter over there and cheese the map.

Sorry, got a bit off topic descibing that map. The orignal point I was making, when I think of Binding Blade, I think of that map. But then, I also think of multiple maps that are just a slog to get through, particularly but not entirely limited to, the Gaidens. But then it has some other great maps too. I can say the same for most of the games in the series. Conquest is another one that I find highly variable. Overall, I'd probably say Thracia has the best map design, the last Gaiden chapter aside. I find New Mystery of the Emblem pretty uncreative without how it reuses so many maps from Shadow Dragon (bit more forgivable in the original since it was a 2 in one game, but I don't find loyalty to the original to be a good enough excuse in the remake).

Edited January 8, 2018 by Jotari

[edgelordweeaboo]

SoV: Kinda simplistic map design, kinda repetitive, but not terrible

FE3/12: Pretty simplistic, not much to say.

FE4: I liked the map design in it but it's not really that comparable to other games because the way maps work in this game is pretty different. I think the maps did a pretty solid job of fitting the story but some parts were kind of a drag to go through like the ending forest part in the Verdane map.

FE5: There's some dumb shit in here but I think the map design was done pretty well in a lot of maps. I think the maps did a really good job of fitting the story. I also liked the maps having different objectives and some of them having side objectives which added a bit more depth to a couple of the maps.

FE6: Hit or miss, some maps were good, some maps were bad

FE7: Really solid map design

FE8: Decent map design

FE9: It was okay but nothing more for the most part and a lot of it was kinda forgettable for me

FE10: Also hit or miss, had some awful maps and some pretty decent maps

FE13: It was decent

FE14 BR: It was decent

FE14 CQ: Great map design, some dumb shit but overall really good

FE14 RV: There are some fucking awful maps here that are painful to play through and some decent maps

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

FE1/11: I am perhaps too harsh on Shadow Dragon in some regards. While I genuinely feel that SD's complete lack of personality, objective variety, and story make it a bad game, I will acknowledge that its map design is actually solid.

FE2/15: Absolute garbage. Most maps in Gaiden are unmemorable generic arenas rather than actual maps. Those few that do stand out are often based around a single gimmick. It says a lot that one of the only memorable chapters, Nuibaba's Abode, was memorable because of terrible gimmick mechanics that essentially force the player to rely on Warp and Rescue cheese.

FE3/12: Haven't played. No comment.

FE4: I personally like FE4 a lot (primarily because of its writing), but its maps are overly large. Aside from throwing off movement balance, large, time intensive maps aren't compatible with a series in which a single mistake or unlucky RNG can potentially permanently kill a unit.

FE5: No comment. Haven't played.

FE6: Generally decent, in so far as the chapters I have played. However, reinforcements should not be able to move on the same turn they appear; that's just bafflingly bad design which essentially adds trial and error gameplay where it doesn't belong.

FE7: Pretty solid. I view the game as great, if somewhat overrated. I certainly understand why it is as loved as it is.

FE8: The human maps are among my favorites, and comprise a majority of the game. The monster maps are boring slogs that thankfully make a minority of the experience.

FE9: My favorite game in the series in all regards. Granted it could have used an additional difficulty setting, but the maps themselves were varied, memorable, and seamlessly integrated the story into the gameplay. I'm willing to look past a few stinkers (like the typical desert map, the bridge battle, and the mountain climb).

FE10: A mixed bag. Act 1 is generally terrible. Act 2 is okay. Acts 3-5 are generally among my favorite FE chapters. I'm of the rare opinion that Elincia's Gambit is a great map, but then, I tend to love defence maps more than any other objective.

FE13: Starts with an amazing first act and generally goes downhill from there. Still, the hate this game gets baffles me. It's certainly never as bland as SoV or as gimmicky as Fates.

FE14: A case study in difficult and good not necessarily being one and the same. The maps themselves are generally solid, but the way the game essentially forces challenge by means of excessive gimmicks and poor enemy design (looking at you, entire groups of position swapping, poison inflicting ninjas) is quite frankly unacceptable.