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


TGenzo
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Which maps do you think are unfair , too bland or just unpleasant all around? Feel free to mention any game you've played.

Yes , even Heroes.

Mine will have to be chapter 5 of Binding Blade. (Note that I've stressed some of these points off memory , so if you think I'm being biased or sound stupid , you're probably right.) There is nothing thrilling or engaging , the whole chapter is just guide your units around a wall and a mountain but be sure to put your sword users up front as bandits are 95% of the enemies here. The strategy aspect of usual FE6 maps that let your units multitask by having some buy items , visit villages , tank damage , take out easy targets like archers or stand on terrain so during the enemy phase , the enemy units will have a hard time fighting that unit. This is completely overshadowed by how much easier it is to just put Roy , Rutger , Alan and Lance infront and kick back as the bandits practically give them free exp , even on hard mode. 

This may be confusing to some but the last chapter of Sacred Stone really pissed me off. While it is satisfying to casually plow through waves of strong enemies with units you trained. Fighting Lyon was a bit too much of a pushover than anything else. It doesn't get better at the Demon King , he is so easy with the sacred twins , it's ridiculous. 

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Every map from Fates: Conquest from Chapter 17 to 20 is a strong contender in the obnoxious category for me. They rely on what I love to call "fake difficulty" in that the enemies are way too strong for you to handle because you can't realistically have trained and promoted half your army at that point, your pre-promotes only exist to lure you into a false sense of security, the enemies are dodgy as hell, double and one-round AND you have to fight the maps themselves on top of all that. To say nothing of Fates' wonky RNG making it's presence known with an entire orchestra backing it up on higher difficulty levels.  I appreciate a meaty challenge, but there is a fine line between a meaty challenge and f***ing me about and these four chapters pitch their tents firmly in the f***ing me about camp.
Dishonorable mention go to the Rip-Off Sully: The Second Advent Chapter and of course the Hallway of Death: I wish Conquest's writing was always this good Map. At least you can skip the latter by just offing the old, unfunny Lobster meme. But there is nothing to defend the former. Nothing. In my opinion, at the very least.

As far as flat-out boring maps go... most of Revelation and it's stupid gimmicks with over-reliance on the already flawed presence of the Dragon Veins is really, really dull and only exists to waste your time. (Yay, snow shovelling! /s)

The Ninja map from Birthright (Chapter 11, I believe) is one of the worst maps in the entire franchise, as is it's second rise in Revelation.
(Notice how most terrible Fates maps have a ton of Ninjas in them? It's almost like that class was a terrible idea to begin with... fancy that.)

I also really didn't like the Nino / Jaffar recruitment map in FE7 (I think the Chapter was called "Battle Before Dawn" or something). There's too much RNG involved in whether Jaffar will die or not before you can even do anything about it. And of course, there's the ever annoying Fog of War / Siege Tome combo that I am really, really happy they got rid of in future installments. 

That one Desert map from Radiant Dawn's part 4 can go eat crap, for all I care. That map is the reason I always give all available fliers and mages to Micaiah's group.
Desert maps in general aren't fun in the slightest. The only 'good' desert map is Chapter 9 in Awakening and even then, it's only because you recruit my favourite FE character in that map (/bias)

Dishonorable mention to any map with the objective of "protect the Green Units!" when said green units have some of the most retarded AI I have ever seen in a video game, second only to Pokémon Emerald's Wallace, who has a tendency to send out a Gyarados if you killed his Wailord with an Electric Type, which a Gyarados takes 4x damage from... when he also has a Pokémon that is completely immune to Electric attacks...
As Mangs put it: "I'M A G R E E N U N I T!"

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That Heroes map that's just a bunch of breakable walls. Horrid.

Also that boat map in SS. Y'know, that one.

And the Gaiden map that's just a open plain with a river and a bridge. What the fuck is that shit?

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Almost every map in Gaiden/SoV feels like a bland non-map. The exception is Nuibaba's mansion, which feels like a map poorly designed around a single bad mechanic and which feels almost designed to be cheesed by warp & rescue abuse. Shadows of Valentia in general is truly a terrible game, which cannot be saved by even its strong story and high production values. 

Conquest Chapter 12 - I absolutely loathe it. I will never understand how this mission is one of the most well-liked in the game. I consider it a complete mess that does everything in its power to back the player into a corner, relies on fake difficulty through bad mechanics (like having entire groups of poison strike swap ninjas), and a turn limit on top of it all.

The bridge maps in the Tellius games - because trial and error pitfalls are fun, right?

Every desert map ever.

Edited by Etheus
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Literally the entirety of Genealogy. Massive slogs that contribute to the other various problems the game faces. It takes so long just to get from point A to point B, especially if you aren't a mounted unit and that also contributes to the game's horrible unit balance. FE7 Hector's Tale showed that you can do the whole "capture multiple castles" thing on a better and much smaller scale.

I haven't played it since i dropped the game early on but Thracia Ch.24x is super terrible. Everything i've seen of it looks bad.

Ch.21 of Binding Blade pisses me off because of how reinforcements are handled. They spawn when you reach certain points (you can bypass one of them by ferrying everyone over the first mountain range). Doesn't help that you need to beat the chapter in 30 turns or less to get access to Ch.21x (provided Ziess and Miledy are alive). Which, of course, is needed for the true ending. Ch.27 in Blazing Blade also has the "reinforcements spawn at certain points" problem except that map is a "rout" map. How fun. Funnily enough, both of those maps are in the same general location: near the Shrine of Seals.

Wolff's Fort in SoV was pretty bad. Actually, all desert maps are bad. The only one that isn't is Ch.15 in Sacred Stones. I don't know why i found that one desert map to be tolerable. Greith's Cidatel isn't too bad either but that's more of a castle map than a desert map.

1 hour ago, DragonFlames said:

Fates: Conquest from Chapter 17 to 20

Oh God, don't remind me. Ch.17 nearly made me throw my 3DS across the room after got right to Kotaro after an hour and the bastard dodges the attack that would've otherwise killed him and he returns the favor by killing one of my units. Because i always make an effort to keep everyone alive, i had to restart the map. Ch.19 wasn't hard, but it was tedious. Who thought it was a good idea to make enemy units that can be attacked but only sometimes. Ch.20 a.k.a Fuga's Wild Ride would've been a fun map without the wind. Ch.18 was actually pretty tame though. 

Conquest's Endgame is also pretty terrible. The real challenge comes from not the map itself but the fact that if you lose, you have to try again but from Ch.27. Like, why?

 

Edit: @Etheus uh, Conquest Ch.11 doesn't have a turn-limit. You sure you aren't thinking of Ch.10? Or 12?

Edited by Armagon
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Victims of War from SS is just SO annoying! I'm not really bothered by FoW or saving the civilians, but there are some enemies you cannot reliably handle at that point without Seth/RNG Abuse. In runs where I force myself not to use those (to give myself a challenge) I tend to make an exception for that awful map. There are others I dislike, but when I think of an annoying map, I think of Victims of War (the things I said above are about FE8 HM, as it's the only difficulty I play FE8 on).

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1. None that I can remember

2. Swamps, that is it btw. 

3. None that I can remember 

4. Most of the maps imo

5. Didn't play 

6. Just about every map

7. BBD and a lot of the end game 

8. End game was meh, like the last 3 chapters' were bad. 

9. didn't play

10. Didn't play 

11. None 

12. Bish please, this is game is too good for bad maps.

13. This game is too easy so all the maps were too easy

14. the whole game

15. Swamps, that is it. 

Heroes is a sin.

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The Ice breaking map in Revelations.  It's essentially a pseudo-fog of war that takes forever to get through if you want all the rewards.  I'm still baffle IS thought it was a good idea.

Almost all Awakening maps, with a few exceptions, are very, very boring.

Most of Lyn mode, while short, is boring to play but still recommended for the reward.

Chapter 4 of FE9 is the worst.  It's the one map I remember from that game well, and I remember it for being particularly dull in a game I find dull in general.  

Gaiden/SoV have a lot of maps that are just forests, or open plains with a bridge, etc.  The castles are better though.

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Chapter 3 of Mystery/New Mystery. Hi, Dracoknights with cryptic or otherwise tricky AI. Hi, long roundabout path around a lake. Hi, recruitable enemy who will harass you (and potentially kill himself) if you try to take a shortcut. And hi, houses that are consistently one tile beyond Marth's max movement range.

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Chapters 3 and 5 from FE6 are awful and have consistently put me off of playing the game. Once I finally decided to push on I ended up liking the game a fair amount, but those two are both really boring.

Chapter 22 of FE7 HHM is a drag. I don't know why I dislike it so much, but I do.

FE4's prologue is boring after the first time you play the game because it's such a joke to play.

Another FE6 map I don't care for is 16x. It isn't a badly designed chapter like 3 and 5 but it isn't a very fun one to play because berserk is obnoxious even if you're ready for it.

A lot of Ephraim's route in FE8 is boring to me. I think because I heard people hype it up as the "hard route" I was expecting more but it's not really hard and just kind of there. The map design is good, though, except chapter 12 which is even more boring. (Eirika's route is more fun fight me)

Nearly every map in the Grimleal arc in Awakening is a bore. I don't even remember the chapter numbers, but the map before you fight Grima is easily the worst contender. "Move forward and bad guys fall down" does not make for compelling tactical gameplay.

The snow map in revelations (you know the one).

Chapter 11 of Conquest feels like a huge step backward after 10. It isn't necessarily bad but it's not very good either.

Iago's chapter in Birthright goes on forever and ever because of the reinforcements being nearly endless.

FE12's prologues are dogshit terrible and should have been skip-able.

I can't think of any maps I really disliked in FE11...

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Chapter 22, FE12/3 book 2. Chapter 21 is a pretty good map with multiple things to do (get the Starlight from Michalis, recruit him in FE12, final arena and statbooster secret shop), and 24 is a really good final map in my eyes (read, unlike half the other final maps in the series, it has more to it than "spend 2 turns pummeling the final boss" and is actually quite challenging). I can also give 23 a pass, despite it being rather bland (dragons and Sorcerers, dragons and Sorcerers), because Gharnef and the Aum had to be taken care of somehow, and if you're like me and don't like the chapter, it's extremely easy to warpskip.

However, chapter 22 just shouldn't exist. It has no importance to the plot at all (if I recall correctly, both the opening and the ending of the chapter are "Lord Marth, more stairs!"), it cannot be warpskipped because the throne is inside a locked room, it's even more boring than chapter 23 (dragons and more dragons, with the occasional siege tome Sorcerer. At least in chapter 23, the narrow hallways made it harder to reach the Sorcerers before they could nuke your units, and there were multiple Sorcerers standing close to one another. Here, they are on their own and within Paladin range) and the only side objective is getting the treasure (the only new unit, Nagi, recruits herself at the beginning of the chapter), which, by the way, is painfully uninteresting (effective weaponery against dragons, if I'm not mistaken. Having the regalia and all the remaining effective weapons from the earlier dragon arc, these are just not worth the trouble). It's not even good for getting some experience, because it comes so late into the game! It's simply an unavoidable waste of time, and the main reason I usually skip 23. After the borefest that is 22, I just don't feel like going through 23.

It's not quite as horrendous as FE6's chapter 24, but that one had a semblance of an excuse for its existance in Jahn's exposition. This one's the definition of "filler". And bad one, at that.

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...I'm sure there's a few more I could think of I stopped and thought about things from each game that really piss me off. But there's one that stands heads-and-shoulders above the rest and just immediately pops into my head as this is the least fun I have ever had playing fire emblem.


...and that's the stupid fuck-off "Ice Bomb" map from Revelations. Where the entire map is just you digging through snow to reach small groups of enemies that you chip out of the ice one-at-a-time.

Revelations in general was a clusterfuck of boring and barely playable maps, with gimmicks that felt like no one tested them before release and that detracted from rather than added to the gameplay. With nothing else going on in otherwise mindless, repetitive, straightforward maps except the detracting gimmick. (i.e. Moving Platforms. Blue Room / Red Room. Pick the Door.) 

But that Ice Map takes the cake. 

Drop the ice...keep the same map...make houses visitable for loot + add thieves trying to sac them instead of making everything droppable off of enemies you have to dig out...give some of the enemies aggressive AI to pressure you...throw in some reinforcements to trap you in a pincer as you advance.

...There. You have a playable map now...

This is such a good example of what NOT to do when you're designing a map. If you're going to use a gimmick, use it as an enhancement for good map design. Not as a substitute. 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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-Almost every Gaiden chapter in Binding Blade. Most of them have some really obnoxious gimmicks (Read: Every one of them except 8x, which compensates by instead having a boss that's just plain unfair).

-Chapter 14 from the same game. Desert maps and Fog of war maps are annoying. What's the best way to make a really bad map? Incorporate both of them into the same map, of course! Oh, and let's add a time limit because screw you. And did I mention the part where you get two characters that are practically useless, one of whom must survive to access the gaiden (Hint: It's the one who joins drearily underleveled)?

-Chapter 8 in Binding Blade. It's a long, winding map with a PITA boss at the end.

-Battle Before Dawn. Especially in HHM. Nothing like being able to lose before you can have made any move that could prevent that, right?

-Night of Farewells. Disappearing bridges are no fun. And for that matter, neither is having an underleveled mage as a mandatory deployment.

-Winds of Rebellion in Radiant Dawn. You only get two units to work with (with another joining in later), and one of them is encumbered by her weapon unless you've proceeded to max her out in a completely different game.

-Chapter 3-10 in Radiant Dawn. Let's make the NPC who must survive a flier, and make the boss area, which she tends to head right towards, mind you, infested with archers. To quote Rhajat: "Yay..."

-Chapter 3 in Shadow Dragon. Have fun dealing with a boss that's really blooming unfair for that early stage in the game!

-Chapter 1 in SD on H5. The boss takes forever to grind down unless you risk automatically losing.

-Chapter 13 in Shadow Dragon. Having to deal with a map where literally almost every enemy is a long range attacker is really, REALLY unfun. For added "fun", after a certain point, you mostly can't attack one enemy without putting yourself in the range of several others.

-Literally the entirety of Genealogy. The giant maps are a huge slog to play through and contribute to, or even worsen, the other problems the game has.

-Chapter 24x in Thracia. Fog of war, traps, and it's an escape map.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
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FE10: 2-1 because of giving Nephenee a wrong weapon. It's luckbased to get all the villages and Heather. If you miss, Neph will be fucked. The first turns are the worst.

FE7: The one where you have to keep Zephiel alive. It's hard to reach Zephiel in time and Jaffar likes to kill himself.

FE6: Chapter 7 because of the tons of enemies you have to take out. Some of them have 1-2 range weapons while others are bulky and hit hard. Even the draco knights can't be ORKO'ed. 

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 dislike most of FE13's and Echoes's maps, but I only mentioned chapters which caused me frustration.

 

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1 hour ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Every one of them except 8x, which compensates by instead having a boss that's just plain unfair).

Wait what? Can you clarify? Because Ch.8x's boss is easy. Literally just throw a Rutger or Dieck at him.

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Pale Flower of Darkness in FE7 is my most hated map in that game. The snow mechanics are awful making the chapter drag on. It's a defeat all, with way too many reinforcements making the chapter drag on. Unlocking all the doors to kill all the enemies makes the chapter drag on.

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54 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Wait what? Can you clarify? Because Ch.8x's boss is easy. Literally just throw a Rutger or Dieck at him.

His stats are insane for that early point in the game (16 speed, as well as 14 defense thanks to throne bonuses. That's right, this bastard is only slightly less tanky than the General boss from the last chapter, except the General had a weakness. Henning doesn't). Rutger's low luck puts him at risk of a fatal critical hit (Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is NOT something I'd want to do), and Dieck probably wouldn't do any better.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
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27 minutes ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

His stats are insane for that early point in the game (16 speed, as well as 14 defense thanks to throne bonuses. That's right, this bastard is only slightly less tanky than the General boss from the last chapter, except the General had a weakness. Henning doesn't). Rutger's low luck puts him at risk of a fatal critical hit (Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is NOT something I'd want to do), and Dieck probably wouldn't do any better.

Henning still isn't that hard though. A promoted Dieck can take him on relatively easy, especially if he's got a Killing Edge. Rutger also works but i just prefer having Dieck since i usually promote him first.

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