Most boring/obnoxious/badly-designed maps from any game?

[GreatKnightEcho]

Ch. 10 of Conquest makes me want to die.

[Sasori]

The most boring map to me is that fe12 map where you recruit mathis. They heavily encourage you to take a long detour which makes the entire map a slog to get through.

Conquest has great map design on the whole, but there are certain maps that are really bad. The infamous ninja cave, The final ryoma map,  endgame and every place where they used those dumb hexing rods are contenders for most obnoxious map.

[deskita]

Dead Man's Mire from Celica's part of Act 4 is obnoxious and a dreaded map for me.

The massive swamp slows the entire party down makes it take ages for turns to even start as I have to see the entire party get both damaged by an inconsequential amount and then get healed due to standing next to a saint or having a blessed weapon/ ring etc. (never make the mistake of using invoke here...)

There's also three cantors and some archers to top it all off which means that using flyers isn't impossible but certainly a lot more difficult.

The one saving grace is the hilarity of watching an enemy dread fighter or archer walk into the swamp and damage themself :D.

[Arthur97]

Echoes in general I found to be the biggest slog. Particular examples would be the mansion and the Duma map. Medusa plus the fact every landed hit does at least one damage makes for an unpleasant experience. 

[X-Naut]

On 2/14/2018 at 1:02 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

And I just booted up my 3DS's Ambassador copy of SS. I have an Eirika Chapter 9 file walking into Serafew's Shop, I see Restore for sale. The shops don't differ on the two routes, so Eph should be able to buy it too. Why I replayed C9 Eph like last month on an all foot soldier run, and I do remember buying one because it wasn't cheap. The fact they put the free Restore in a chest in that chapter was also remarkably annoying until I remembered F&S.

Her point is it's impolite to throw status staffs at the player without giving you Restore first. You can't buy Restore during Chapter 5 so it's easy to miss, there's little incentive to when status has been absent so far, and it's easy to lock yourself out of buying them by saving in the preparations menu.

[Shadow Mir]

On 2/13/2018 at 1:19 PM, ChickenBits said:

- Ninja hell(Chapter 25) from Conquest. Doesn't help that I played this on Lunatic. 3 range shurikens with debuffs and poison strike stacking was not fun at all. It's pure stress when you're trying to kill everyone for exp and the chests. Effie barely hanged on with 1 hp at a choke point and I had to be insanely careful with Xander.

I agree with this, but more for Ryoma being a pain in the butt. Especially if your Corrin is specialized in axes or bows. Then you're at a big disadvantage, as if you aren't hampered enough already.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Nobody]

Most of Radiant Dawn's chapters where the objective is either route or kill XX enemies specially if there are lots of allied units. Their phases take a FUCKING long time to pass, they're mostly boringly designed and are just a slog to play.

Worst ones are From Pain Awakening and Geoffrey's Charge, with the later being the worst map in any fire emblem game to me. Yeah, I'd take SoV's bad swamps over it, at least SoV is on a fast engine and doesn't have allies whose phase take a lot of time and don't affect the game's outcome in any way.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Nobody

[DragonFlames]

On 14.2.2018 at 2:35 PM, Armagon said:

I'm not gonna make an FE4 rant where it doesn't belong since everyone already knows my stance on the game but the thing about FE4's maps is that they contribute to a lot of the problems the game has from a gameplay standpoint. I'm gonna end it there though. I'll save my FE4 rants for another time.

Another reason why Conquest Ch.12 sucks is because the Dragon's Vein actually works against you. You don't want to blow up all of the pots and draw two more cards from your deck, because you either get blessed or fucked by the effects and then all of the enemies come crashing down on you. Conquest Ch.14 and Revelation Ch.13 also have Dragon Veins that work against you (but those maps aren't that bad even if you do activate them).

What, Ninjas? They are literally the equivalents of Thiefs, Assassins, Rouges, etc from previous games. The stat debuffs come from the Hidden Weapons that they use, not the Class itself. The Class itself is fine, just not the weapons.

Speaking of Ninjas though, the Ninja Village chapter in Birthright and Revelation sucks. It's the forest map with a bunch of spikes. You can use the Dragon Veins to get rid of the spikes.....but the spikes come back anyway so literally what's the point? And you can't disable them permanently like you could in Conquest Ch.17. Funny, every map that you fight Kotaro in is a pain in the ass.

Yes, but what does it DO?
Jokes aside, the pots that give you buffs are nice and if you want to beat the chapter within the time limit, you almost have no other choice than to break the pots using the Dragon Vein (at least when you can't think of another strategy, like me). At least you can position your units in such a way that the debuffs and ailments don't hit you when you trigger it. It's still a shitty map, though. 

I'm not really fond of the class itself, either, at least when they are your enemies, especially on Conquest, since it leaves you open to RNG-screwage due to low hit rates and if Fates likes one thing, it's screwing the RNG against you. Why must almost all Conquest units have bad Skill? It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

Yeah, I don't like those chapters, either. They're the epitome of everything negative in Fates' game / map design:
Spikes + Ninjas (= Poison Strike + debuffs) + wonky RNG + "unlucky" (= rigged) misses + "How many enemies can we put into one map?" The map = a very frustrated DragonFlames
I'd argue the Revelation version is even worse, since you have a bunch of G R E E N  U N I T S there, one of which can die on the first turn if you don't know what you're doing (and even if you do, Orochi is still a liability in that chapter more than anything else).
Though after all that pain, damn, if it doesn't feel good to finally put Kotaro in the trash can.

On 14.2.2018 at 7:15 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Ninjas are supposed to be underhanded bastards. They're not strong enough to win with pure power, so they do the "cheap things" like punji traps, Poison Strike, debuffs, and a Den of Doom (I wish there was a staff that healed stat debuffs though- the rate of 1 point restored per turn can be cripplingly slow). Of course, one's agility matters a lot more in FE than in reality, and it makes Ninjas rather hard to kill if you aren't a strong Axe/Bow user able to OHKO or OH+OS KO, or a -breaker/Dual Katana/Calamity Gate user.

As a player class, I don't think Ninjas are broken None of the initial three are that durable, and the low Mt of Daggers/Shurikens interferes with the goodness of natural 1-2 range. You'll need a good deal of Str stacking to ORKO physical units with one consistently. Poison Strike, debuffing, 1-2 Range, and being anti-Magic still gives them plenty of usefulness though.

I will agree that maps that are overwhelmingly one class or weapon type are a generally bad idea, not always, and having sections of maps that are mostly one thing is fine, like the CQ Izumo fight which is physical south to mostly magical north, or the Cheve fight that is mostly magic to the west and mostly physical to the east at the start. But the Kotaro chapters and the Kitsune Hamlet are rather bad in being monoclass or close to it. FE encourages unit variety, but those kinds of chapters work against it.

I know Ninjas are supposed to be cheap. That doesn't mean I can't hate them for it.
I also think their cheapness was implemented badly. I probably wouldn't have minded as much if, as you said, they were as broken as a player class as they are as enemies.
In fact, my stance on the Ninjas is that they're pretty useless when you have them, since Fates throws so many enemies at you, you ideally want to be able to kill every single one in one round of combat and them not being able to do that most of the time hampers their usefulness to me as every surviving enemy is potentially lethal damage to my army, especially on Birthright, where most of your units are of the Glass Cannon variety. Ninjas are kind of like the Counter skill back in Awakening: deadly in the enemies' hands, utterly useless when you have it. 
I like mono-class chapters so long as I can use the unit variety to combat them. The Kotaro chapters and Kitsune Hamlet discourage you from doing so, so most of your viable units for late game Conquest (especially sword users and mounts) are pretty much screwed, as they miss out on at least two whole chapters worth of experience that they could have needed.

My biggest problem with the Shuriken / Daggers as a weapon type, at least when the enemy uses them, is that they're too good compared to the others. Low Mt is negligible compared to: no penalty 1-2 range, massive stat debuffs, +2 Speed without any penalty whatsoever (at least on the Hoshidan variety).
Whereas Katanas only give you +1 Speed, but bog down you Defences by 1 each (which can be fatal in some situations), and Bows still can only attack at 2 range, the only 1-2 range ones can't double, have low Mt or bog down your Avoid by a lot, so you take lots and lots of damage if you get countered. And don't even get me started on Magic, which was gimped to hell in Fates. Comparatively low Hit, low Mt, at least the stat buffs from scrolls are nice, but you still have to deal with the fact that most of your natural mages are among the worst units in the game, i.e. Orochi, who is slow as hell and squishy to top it off, Nyx, who can't hit for crap and dies to a light breeze, Odin, who is both weak and slow, and Hayato, who is also really weak and also can't hit crap. And then there's Leo, who WOULD be fine, if his Speed and Skill weren't shit tier bad, like most of Conquest's units. 
In the face of so many overwhelming advantages the Shuriken / Dagger users have over the others, they didn't really need to nerf the other classes' 1-2 range options, like Kodachi, Javelins, Hand Axes etc. They balanced out one thing only to un-balance another (kind of like Pokémon, really).

Edited February 20, 2018 by DragonFlames

[LarryT736]

For me, FEH, Story 1-5.  Just plain boring map imo.

[Shadow Mir]

On 2/20/2018 at 3:41 AM, DragonFlames said:

Yes, but what does it DO?
Jokes aside, the pots that give you buffs are nice and if you want to beat the chapter within the time limit, you almost have no other choice than to break the pots using the Dragon Vein (at least when you can't think of another strategy, like me). At least you can position your units in such a way that the debuffs and ailments don't hit you when you trigger it. It's still a shitty map, though. 

I'm not really fond of the class itself, either, at least when they are your enemies, especially on Conquest, since it leaves you open to RNG-screwage due to low hit rates and if Fates likes one thing, it's screwing the RNG against you. Why must almost all Conquest units have bad Skill? It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

Yeah, I don't like those chapters, either. They're the epitome of everything negative in Fates' game / map design:
Spikes + Ninjas (= Poison Strike + debuffs) + wonky RNG + "unlucky" (= rigged) misses + "How many enemies can we put into one map?" The map = a very frustrated DragonFlames
I'd argue the Revelation version is even worse, since you have a bunch of G R E E N  U N I T S there, one of which can die on the first turn if you don't know what you're doing (and even if you do, Orochi is still a liability in that chapter more than anything else).
Though after all that pain, damn, if it doesn't feel good to finally put Kotaro in the trash can.

I know Ninjas are supposed to be cheap. That doesn't mean I can't hate them for it.
I also think their cheapness was implemented badly. I probably wouldn't have minded as much if, as you said, they were as broken as a player class as they are as enemies.
In fact, my stance on the Ninjas is that they're pretty useless when you have them, since Fates throws so many enemies at you, you ideally want to be able to kill every single one in one round of combat and them not being able to do that most of the time hampers their usefulness to me as every surviving enemy is potentially lethal damage to my army, especially on Birthright, where most of your units are of the Glass Cannon variety. Ninjas are kind of like the Counter skill back in Awakening: deadly in the enemies' hands, utterly useless when you have it. 
I like mono-class chapters so long as I can use the unit variety to combat them. The Kotaro chapters and Kitsune Hamlet discourage you from doing so, so most of your viable units for late game Conquest (especially sword users and mounts) are pretty much screwed, as they miss out on at least two whole chapters worth of experience that they could have needed.

My biggest problem with the Shuriken / Daggers as a weapon type, at least when the enemy uses them, is that they're too good compared to the others. Low Mt is negligible compared to: no penalty 1-2 range, massive stat debuffs, +2 Speed without any penalty whatsoever (at least on the Hoshidan variety).
Whereas Katanas only give you +1 Speed, but bog down you Defences by 1 each (which can be fatal in some situations), and Bows still can only attack at 2 range, the only 1-2 range ones can't double, have low Mt or bog down your Avoid by a lot, so you take lots and lots of damage if you get countered. And don't even get me started on Magic, which was gimped to hell in Fates. Comparatively low Hit, low Mt, at least the stat buffs from scrolls are nice, but you still have to deal with the fact that most of your natural mages are among the worst units in the game, i.e. Orochi, who is slow as hell and squishy to top it off, Nyx, who can't hit for crap and dies to a light breeze, Odin, who is both weak and slow, and Hayato, who is also really weak and also can't hit crap. And then there's Leo, who WOULD be fine, if his Speed and Skill weren't shit tier bad, like most of Conquest's units. 
In the face of so many overwhelming advantages the Shuriken / Dagger users have over the others, they didn't really need to nerf the other classes' 1-2 range options, like Kodachi, Javelins, Hand Axes etc. They balanced out one thing only to un-balance another (kind of like Pokémon, really).

The worst thing about ninjas imo is that most of the units that would have an advantage over them are lame unit wise (the axe infantry in Fates are honestly among the worst I've ever seen, and Niles isn't exactly a stellar unit either...).

[Moblin Major General]

FE12 Chapter 11- First off, it's a desert map. Second, Wyverns can go fuck themselves. Third, you need to have trained Caeda if you want to have full recruitment. Not that that's hard, but Caeda won't survive the Wyvern span if untrained. Also, I think there is a Star shard in this map. I don't like the Star Shards because you cannot get the Binding Shield without them.

FE9 Bishop map- much more annoying than FE12 Chapter 10, because they can at least attack.

FE7 16x- unlike 17x, the Black Fang group doesn't move until you trigger Fargus to signal the attack. If you don't pull the pirates, you'll be way overwhelmed by strong enemies.

Just some other maps besides the usual suspects.

[DragonFlames]

4 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

The worst thing about ninjas imo is that most of the units that would have an advantage over them are lame unit wise (the axe infantry in Fates are honestly among the worst I've ever seen, and Niles isn't exactly a stellar unit either...).

Yup, that, too.
My best strategy for fighting Ninjas on Conquest consisted of either A) have Beruka equip a Hand Axe and hope her Strength is high enough to one-shot the f***ers on counters or B) kill them on player face with Mozu, since these two are the only units on Conquest with a decent enough Skill stat and a weapon triangle advantage to not get screwed over by "unlucky" (= rigged) misses.
Needless to say, both of these strategies were unreliable at best and non-viable at worst, especially when the RNG wasn't kind to the two of them. And if that was the case, I had to just throw my units out there and hope they don't die. I swear, I only ever made it through any Ninja chapter with pure luck. 

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Hylian Air Force said:

FE9 Bishop map- much more annoying than FE12 Chapter 10, because they can at least attack.

Only some of them can attack, and the ones that do are pretty weak.

58 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Yup, that, too.
My best strategy for fighting Ninjas on Conquest consisted of either A) have Beruka equip a Hand Axe and hope her Strength is high enough to one-shot the f***ers on counters or B) kill them on player face with Mozu, since these two are the only units on Conquest with a decent enough Skill stat and a weapon triangle advantage to not get screwed over by "unlucky" (= rigged) misses.
Needless to say, both of these strategies were unreliable at best and non-viable at worst, especially when the RNG wasn't kind to the two of them. And if that was the case, I had to just throw my units out there and hope they don't die. I swear, I only ever made it through any Ninja chapter with pure luck. 

Yeah - Arthur's critical bait, Charlotte misses often and takes hits like a chump, and Rinkah has good defense and little else (and her piss poor HP compromises her defense). I don't see any of them as being useful for anything other than pair up bots, which is tantamount to saying they'll serve my army better by warming the bench.

[DragonFlames]

1 minute ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Yeah - Arthur's critical bait, Charlotte misses often and takes hits like a chump, and Rinkah has good defense and little else (and her piss poor HP compromises her defense). I don't see any of them as being useful for anything other than pair up bots, which is tantamount to saying they'll serve my army better by warming the bench.

Agreed.
The only thing Rinkah is good for is giving Oni Savage to Azama and Mitama for the Counter / Countermagic combo to troll people in PvP or vistors to My Castle and little else. Though if you have a Hammer from the My Castle rewards, she makes a semi-decent Knight killer, at the very least.
Though for normal, no-grind playthroughs, these aren't really selling points, to be honest.

[Zkitty8]

Chapter 14 in Binding Blade is annoying if you don't want to lose anyone because:

• a lot of your units are really slow when there's a time limit to unlock the gaiden chapter
• fog of war so you can't see the enemies coming
• the enemies are pretty strong and a lot of them aren't slowed down by the desert terrain
• you have to use Sophia (who is really weak at this point in the game)
• some enemies use status staves on you
• the bandit leaders have strong weapons and a good chance of getting a critical hit
• I never even beat it, my FE6 rom broke because it got tired of the level too I guess

[Garlyle]

Agree, Chapter 14 in Binding Blade can be a huge source of frustration/high reset count/i want to kill sophia myself kind of map, but at least it's not the worst looking map in the game.

In fact, Binding Blade Chapter 13 is probably the weirdest looking map design. First, take a look:

First, look at the bridge on the top, then look at the building, now look at the bridge again. This bridge is so huge, there's 5 castles can fit on to that one. Or 2 villages on each bridges at the bottom. There have been a couple of bridges in the game, all of them are pretty much normal and much smaller than this. When I look on this one, I'm starting to wonder why they even built a bridge this big, that's a lot of material and work, they could've build a lot of pyramids from that many stones. And wouldn't it be more efficient to transport with ships instead of building a bridge this big?

I mean the more I think about it, it just look really stupid.

[henrymidfields]

All the Awakening maps were really boring - it was enough to stop playing during my second lap.

Chapter 14 in Binding Blade wouldn't be so bad if they didn't put freaking Cecilia on that map! At least I find Sophia easier to justify story-wise, but Roy really needs to ban Cecilia's ass from deployment in that chapter.

[Jotari]

I basically made a thread once complaining about half of Conquest's maps. But I think the reward for most obnoxious has to go to the last Garden Mao of Thracia. That one is such an absolute troll that it wraps right around to being masochistically amusing in its dickishness. I don't think I'll ever go to the trouble of saving Evyle again.

On 05/03/2018 at 9:15 AM, Garlyle said:

Agree, Chapter 14 in Binding Blade can be a huge source of frustration/high reset count/i want to kill sophia myself kind of map, but at least it's not the worst looking map in the game.

In fact, Binding Blade Chapter 13 is probably the weirdest looking map design. First, take a look:

First, look at the bridge on the top, then look at the building, now look at the bridge again. This bridge is so huge, there's 5 castles can fit on to that one. Or 2 villages on each bridges at the bottom. There have been a couple of bridges in the game, all of them are pretty much normal and much smaller than this. When I look on this one, I'm starting to wonder why they even built a bridge this big, that's a lot of material and work, they could've build a lot of pyramids from that many stones. And wouldn't it be more efficient to transport with ships instead of building a bridge this big?

I mean the more I think about it, it just look really stupid.

Yeah, but working under the logic that you can fit several villages on the bridge also means you need to accept that a single person can trample a village. In other words, Fire Emblem maps aren't necessarily set to scale.

On 05/03/2018 at 9:15 AM, Garlyle said:

 

Edited March 7, 2018 by Jotari

[Garlyle]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Yeah, but working under the logic that you can fit several villages on the bridge also means you need to accept that a single person can trample a village. In other words, Fire Emblem maps aren't necessarily set to scale.

I didn't talk about the characters, those are obviously upscaled so we can see them better on the map. Bridges, villages and other stuff are all part of the map design, which are most of the time look very consistent, but in this level it's just bad design.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Garlyle said:

I didn't talk about the characters, those are obviously upscaled so we can see them better on the map. Bridges, villages and other stuff are all part of the map design, which are most of the time look very consistent, but in this level it's just bad design.

Yeah, but the bridges are only that big because they need to be that big to fit two characters on them for the gameplay.

[UNLEASH IT]

1.  Most of Echoes Maps
2. Chapters 2,3 and 4 from FE4
3. Chapters 12, 18, 19, 24x from Thracia 776
4. Most of RD's latter half
5. Anri's Way/Arcadia
6. Ice maps in Revelation

That's about it. Conquest's chapters are needlessly gimmicky at times, but I found some enjoyment from them, which is something I can't say for the above.

 

Edited March 7, 2018 by UNLEASH IT

[Shadow Mir]

-Eirika route chapters 11 and 12. Shout out to uninteresting filler chapters that have nothing to do with the main story!

-Chapter 20 in Conquest. Seal skills everywhere means that you get punished if you can't one-round the enemies, or if the game decides to invoke Murphy's Law on you. Yay... There is the matter of the wind to deal with, as well.

[edgelordweeaboo]

the fucking ninja chapter from conquest is the worst shit ever. 

also about half of revelation. the ship chapter has caused me to just quit a couple runs because i don't want to play through that boring ass map and it's not like there's even much to look forward to either, it's just more gimmicky tedious maps for most the game. 

I also really hate chapter 20Ax of FE6, it's like chapter 16x all over again except with walls you have to break through as well all while being in range of two berserk staves for like half the map. it's tedious and sometimes frustrating as hell if you fuck up or just don't have multiple restore staves

FE9 chapter 25 is also a huge slog to go through

On 2/13/2018 at 11:39 AM, Formersfuser said:

FE5: 4x because of FoW + powerful enemies in a large number very close to you + NPC you have to keep alive to have the ticket to take out future bosses easily

i don't think 4x is even that bad, the bullshit part is on like turns 1-2 so it's not that bad if you have to reset, from there i don't think that chapter is too difficult. i hate 14x way more

 

 

 

 

[Jotari]

I think 4x from Thracia is really cool.  It sort of simulates an ally scuffle with the very small map and fog of war that makes it hard to pinpoint what's happening. Not something we've really seen in the series before.

[DisobeyedCargo]

Part 12: temple of Mila:

 

FUCK THIS MAP

Edited May 20, 2018 by DisobeyedCargo