The Worst Designed Map In The Series

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 minute ago, Nobody said:

Because it’s really, really boring. There’s no challenge, there’s no comlexity, and ot’s extremely slow. You don’t have to strategize. All you have to do is move Geoffrey to the boss and seize, while enduring the sluggish enemy and ally turns. The map is extremely trivial, there are basically no side objectives other than getting that speedwing (which is on an unit that will simply suicide on Geoffrey lol), there’s no risk of death, there’s no need to come up with anything more complex than moving Geoffrey forwards, waiting (LITERALLY) 5 minutes until it’s your turn again,  then moving Geoffrey forwards, then waiting 5 minutes again, moving Geoffrey’s forwards, waiting 5 turns again, checking if the speedwing guy was killed, parking Geoffrey in front of the boss, waiting 5 minutes again and seizing.

it’s literally as entertaining as watching paint dry.

Being challenging is a good thing. Geoffrey’s Charge being so easy and trivial adds to how absolutely awful it is.

Lost in your blind hate for the chapter, you failed to notice any of my points on 4-3. It can be just as easy, is even slower, and has worse map design overall.

Also, turn off the Allied units, you don't really need them at all. Viola, five minutes saved.

Like LMC, I pity you. Don't respond, since as I can see, there is little point in either of us continuing this argument.

[Nobody]

3 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Lost in your blind hate for the chapter, you failed to notice any of my points on 4-3. It can be just as easy, is even slower, and has worse map design overall.

Also, turn off the Allied units, you don't really need them at all. Viola, five minutes saved.

Like LMC, I pity you. Don't respond, since as I can see, there is little point in either of us continuing this argument.

I noticed your points, i just disagree that 4-3 is worse than 2-3. You can’t say “i don’t get x” and then try to dismiss it saying it’s “blind hate” on something. And seriously, piting me because I dislike a fire emblem chapter? lol what

i think 4-3 is less worse for the simply fact that the enemy density is lower and there are more playable characters. I don’t think it’s good. In fact I think it’s really bad, like a lot of Radiant Dawn’s maps. I just think that, what you see as “creative” when it comes to Geoffrey’s Charge is what makes it so awful. Trying to make something different but making it worse nets no points for me.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 minutes ago, Nobody said:

I noticed your points, i just disagree that 4-3 is worse than 2-3. You can’t say “i don’t get x” and then try to dismiss it saying it’s “blind hate” on something. And seriously, piting me because I dislike a fire emblem chapter? lol what

i think 4-3 is less worse for the simply fact that the enemy density is lower and there are more playable characters. I don’t think it’s good. In fact I think it’s really bad, like a lot of Radiant Dawn’s maps. I just think that, what you see as “creative” when it comes to Geoffrey’s Charge is what makes it so awful. Trying to make something different but making it worse nets no points for me.

Well if you had actually addressed why you consider 4-3 less bad in the prior post, as you did here, I might have been less judgmental. Your rather exaggerated wording of dislike for Geoffrey's Charge also suggested such vehemence as to be blind hate.

The pity wasn't so much for the FE chapter, as it was in what it may say about your overall character. But this is a silly game forum, why should I try to give a little moral advice and character judgements here? Maybe to political pundits who rave with hate to the non-radical and non-violent opposition I should be so, but why on a gaming forum of all places? I acknowledge I am in the wrong for being too serious here. My apologies.

[Jotari]

28 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I don't see why Geoffrey's Charge is attracting so much dislike. Pick 2-1 or 2-2 if you want a really meh Part 2 battle.

And none of these are the worse RD has. 4-3: Distortions is much worse I'd say. It's a flat 100% desert rout map with reinforcements everywhere. Yes you have Naesala (who has no 1-2 range), Sigrun (who is fairly weak), probably Tanith and Nealuchi (also weak), also Haar and or Jill if you had the foresight, and the BK show up. But Geoffrey's Charge isn't difficult either outside of a little hairiness right in front of the door to the boss. And 4-3 will certainly take much longer, owing to the sands in part, also owing to all the wonderful treasures you want to obtain from the sands, plus Stefan and his Vague Katti- that takes time to get, on top of being a rout. Geoffrey's Charge had some creativity to it, Distortions has none, neither does any of all the Part 4 routs really.

Part 1 is the tightest in map design for RD. Part 2 has some nuisances, but the battle scenarios are largely creative. Part 3 is less creative as it goes on, but is still good, with much less nuisances than Part 2. Part 4 is the nadir of RD map design pre-Tower, and even in the Tower is poor. That is how I see it.

 

Not hard when the alternative to a Haar skip is loading up Neph, Brom and some others with EXP. Sure there aren't a ton of options to do this with owing to RD's Part system playing with availabilities, but I do like the real viable choice between the quick boss kill and the slow EXP defend. The only issue with the map is defending the lone point is a joke, it's a timed rout more than an actual defend.

 

Chill! Save your hate for something other than a little video game. I pity individuals who let themselves be devoured by such venom spent on such petty things in life. What good is it? Why love to hate so much? Dislike is fine, just save your hate for the real injustices of the world- keep things in perspective. I try to, despite my occasional stinging criticisms.

As nobody pointed out, the fact that Geoffrey's Charge is so easy that makes it badly designed. Although I'm a little more forgiving in that case as it supports the narrative by being easy, and it does give a bonus incentive to not kill enemies. It's also a sieze mao with a boss that moves, which can be a nice surprise.

[ping]

The bloated EP is a big part of why I really dislike Geoffrey's Charge. I don't mind an easy map once in a while, but if it's an easy map that is slow enough to allow me to fetch a cup of coffee, make me a sandwich and still be back before the enemy phase ends... That's not good, especially since I try to limit my caffeine consume. It wouldn't be that bad (albeit still not a well-designed map) if the developers had thought of the Skip EP feature one game earlier.

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Not hard when the alternative to a Haar skip is loading up Neph, Brom and some others with EXP. Sure there aren't a ton of options to do this with owing to RD's Part system playing with availabilities, but I do like the real viable choice between the quick boss kill and the slow EXP defend. The only issue with the map is defending the lone point is a joke, it's a timed rout more than an actual defend.

I can agree - it's just that I wished that it wasn't so trivial to just skip an entire map. It's similar to when I replayed FE11 on a higher difficulty - whenever I had to reset the game after I got the Warp staff, I got that voice in the back in my head going, "You know that you don't have to find a solution to this problem, right?" I know that this is more of a personal problem, but I'd still prefer if the quickest clear of a chapter was more of a high risk/high reward kinda thing.

Edited July 8, 2018 by ping

[Kruggov]

6 hours ago, Nobody said:

Geoffrey’s Charge

Ok, I also don't get why it gets so much hate. I cleared the chapter without using ally units (Direct to corner pls), and not abusing Geoffrey. End result - a TON of exp for pretty much everyone, and a noticable lack of hate for the map.

[Lost Impact]

There's worse maps than Geoffrey's Charge in Radiant Dawn imo. For a start, 3-P? That has was more NPCs that you can't put on hold. There's also Oliver's map with the ridiculous respawning units. Fun

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Kruggov said:

Ok, I also don't get why it gets so much hate. I cleared the chapter without using ally units (Direct to corner pls), and not abusing Geoffrey. End result - a TON of exp for pretty much everyone, and a noticable lack of hate for the map.

NPCs: "Okay guys, the rank and file Crimian knights need a win after our performance in that last war. Everyone's counting on us, let's show these bastards what we're made of."

Geoffrey: "Hey you guys, go wait in that corner. Kay thanks."

NPCs: "But, but sir, we've left the castle completely undefended to come here."

Geoffrey: "No worries, I've already soloed the map."

NPCs: "Will we at least get to be in the next chapter?"

Geoffrey: "Hmmm. No."

NPCs: :(

[SavageVolug]

My least favorite map when it comes to Radiant Dawn is either the big Desert Map in Part 4 (but who doesn't dislike the desert maps?) and the Tower maps. The first one is pretty good and I like fighting Deghnesia but the maps themselves are bland in my opinion.

Worst map overall though? That is difficult to say, the ones that come to mind the most are the Wind Tribe map from Fates (the one with Wind Blowing), the Ice Map (from Revelations where you fight Zola) the Cherry Blossom Map (where you fight Hinoka, this is more an issue of I really dislike that map's gimmick than the map itself) and The Moving Rooms map (Blades Drawn chapter where you fight king Summeragi). A lot of the Valla maps I dislike but in most cases having some good fliers speeds up those maps in question.

[DragonFlames]

Blind love is just as bad as blind hate, by the way.

Anyhow, speaking of Radiant Dawn. My least favourite map in that game has to be the endgame of Part 1. If you play it normally and don't use Nailah or the Black Knight (though why wouldn't you?), it takes freaking forever to get anywhere (turn count inflation in Revelation had a predecessor, as it turns out). If you play it my way, that is, give Nailah Pass and the skill that doesn't give you any penalties when you're rescuing someone, have her transform, pick up Micaiah and make a beeline for the throne, it just feels cheap.
So, Part 1 Endgame is either cheap or almost unbearably slow. Take your pick.

Then again, most of the Scrub Brigade chapters are next to unbearable on harder difficulties because of crappy most of your units are.

But none of the worst chapters in Radiant Dawn come close to the worst in Fates in terms of worst-ness (is that even word? Well, it is now...), that's for damn sure.

Edited July 8, 2018 by DragonFlames

[Shadow Mir]

@Nobody Knowing your opinion on Geoffrey's Charge, I would ask your opinion on FE4's maps. Because they're every bit as slow and boring as that one is, if not even more so, thanks to individual enemy army turns.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

5 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Blind love is just as bad as blind hate, by the way.

Praise praise praise often invites its opposite- bash bash bash, which spawns more praise praise praise. The result is a glut of praise and hate in an ever turbulent cycle that never ceases until the game fades away from immediate popularity and memory.

Moderation, as bland as it is, and formalized analyses both positive and negative, as boring and drawn out as they are, are to me superior to dealing with all the polar tumult that exists in the absence of moderation.

5 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

So, Part 1 Endgame is either cheap or almost unbearably slow. Take your pick.

Or you take a middle path and just use the BK or someone durable with Pass to kill the cliff guards, once they're gone, the easier way to proceed is clear, unless your name is Fiona, then you need to take the long way of the stairs. Once you're in the lower-midsection of the map and have slain the Thieves, you can proceed at your own pace without needing to resort to the broken units.

Rarely is a map just two extremes, there is very often a middle ground in how you approach it.

 

16 hours ago, Jotari said:

As nobody pointed out, the fact that Geoffrey's Charge is so easy that makes it badly designed. Although I'm a little more forgiving in that case as it supports the narrative by being easy, and it does give a bonus incentive to not kill enemies. It's also a sieze mao with a boss that moves, which can be a nice surprise.

An easy map I can do quickly is fairly painless at least. A poorly designed hard map or tediously slow easy map, like 4-3, is worse for me.

And I agree, the narrative supports the map design here, which whilst not always a perfect excuse for poor map designs, works fine here.

[Shadow Mir]

24 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

An easy map I can do quickly is fairly painless at least. A poorly designed hard map or tediously slow easy map, like 4-3, is worse for me.

Speaking of which, whilst I stated that all of FE4's maps tend to be the latter, I would say the absolute worst are chapter 2 and chapter 7 - the former has a massive amount of backtracking, and the latter is a desert, which would be bad enough, but with the map design of FE4 heavily favoring mounted units, which tend to have it the worst in deserts... yeah. Chapter 4 also looks pretty bad, from what I've seen, as well as the last segment of chapter 1 (because slogging through forests is always fun, right?).

[NinjaMonkey]

On ‎07‎/‎07‎/‎2018 at 2:51 PM, MagicCanonBalls said:

This reminds me of Radiant Dawn Part 3. Elincia suicide into bow unit, hawk laguz tried to fight bow boss in that bridge map and worst of all block my path.

Those are yellow units - you can order them to stay at the beginning of the bridge.

[Shadow Mir]

On 7/7/2018 at 9:10 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Chill! Save your hate for something other than a little video game. I pity individuals who let themselves be devoured by such venom spent on such petty things in life. What good is it? Why love to hate so much? Dislike is fine, just save your hate for the real injustices of the world- keep things in perspective. I try to, despite my occasional stinging criticisms.

I would, if my heart and mind weren't in a dark place, and I hadn't descended into madness... I would say why, but it'd be going off topic. All I can say is that it is because I consider games Serious Business.

 

Edited July 9, 2018 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Strullemia]

Between 4-3 and Geofrey's Charge I much prefer the later. While GC isn't an interesting map in the slightest it is at least easy enough to complete and doesn't take that much time.

4-3 made me temporarily drop the game in my first run because of how slow it was. It's a desert map where the BK and Naesala were the only units that could push through while the others needed to stick together to be able to survive the wyvern knight reinforcements. 

[MagicCanonBalls]

17 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Those are yellow units - you can order them to stay at the beginning of the bridge.

Yeah I didn't realized that. I always forget that I can order yellow and other blue units around. Especially with Ike since he was reaching level 20 so i just let him hang around the back.

[UNLEASH IT]

18 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

Speaking of which, whilst I stated that all of FE4's maps tend to be the latter, I would say the absolute worst are chapter 2 and chapter 7 - the former has a massive amount of backtracking, and the latter is a desert, which would be bad enough, but with the map design of FE4 heavily favoring mounted units, which tend to have it the worst in deserts... yeah. Chapter 4 also looks pretty bad, from what I've seen, as well as the last segment of chapter 1 (because slogging through forests is always fun, right?).

I have to disagree with you on that one. The desert only occupies the upper half of the map and once you clear that part, it's pretty much a standard fare, linear map, like most of the maps in Gen 2. Chapters 3 and 4 are worse imo, since they have even more backtracking than chapter 2.

Quote

 

Between 4-3 and Geofrey's Charge I much prefer the later. While GC isn't an interesting map in the slightest it is at least easy enough to complete and doesn't take that much time.

4-3 made me temporarily drop the game in my first run because of how slow it was. It's a desert map where the BK and Naesala were the only units that could push through while the others needed to stick together to be able to survive the wyvern knight reinforcements. 

 

I have to say that RD kinda dicks you over here by forcing you to split up your army. 

Edited July 9, 2018 by UNLEASH IT

[Lost Impact]

4-3 isn't an issue if you prepare and send Jill/Haar/Marcia/Tanith. Not to mention Laguz can move freely, so Skrimir can defeat lots of enemies. Honestly the map only drags on if you're trying to get all hidden treasures by foot and shoving, Dragonfoe, Baselard, White Gem and Laguz Gem are all useful (even if you don't plan on bringing any laguz to the endgame you can sell it) but you can just give Sigrun or someone Savior and carry Sothe around to the treasure locations.

[X-Naut]

It's harsh on a first playthrough if you go in blind, since there's no indication as to what the maps on each route will be like.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, UNLEASH IT said:

I have to disagree with you on that one. The desert only occupies the upper half of the map and once you clear that part, it's pretty much a standard fare, linear map, like most of the maps in Gen 2. Chapters 3 and 4 are worse imo, since they have even more backtracking than chapter 2.

Fair enough.

[Sage of the Mist]

Any fog of war chapter, since they are an unfair bullshit mechanic that only artificially inflates the difficulty of the stage. In a game series where  being aware of your surroundings is pivotal to your armies survival, I cannot understand why they decided to add a feature that throws that out the window and asks you to blindly move your units across enemy infested territory  and inevitably have a squishy get jumped by five enemies all at once. and cause a reset.

Dishonorable mentions go to "Arcadia" (Chapter 14 FE 6)  for being both a FoW and a desert map meaning you progress at a slugs pace if you don't want to get units killed, not to mention the turn requirement to get the gaiden chapter. Finally as someone who has a soft spot for Sophia and actually attempts to use her, this map isn't doing her viability any favors.

 

Edit: Pretty much all of Genealogy for its extreme favoritism for horses meaning if your not mounted, or have some special niche you're getting benched, which kind cuts the roster down quite a bit.

 

 

 

Edited July 9, 2018 by Sage of the Mist
Added more info and fixed spelling error

[Jerry Kuma]

On 7/6/2018 at 3:59 PM, NinjaMonkey said:

Inigo's Paralogue gets my vote.

 Inigo's paralogue chapter is pretty badly designed, yea. But it's not really offensive. It's just turtling the chapter. While the random riders are sort of stupid, they can easily be dealt with using wind magic, bows, and a unit who can take hits or is a dodge tank. So basically, what you usually need for the second half of Awakening's story chapters anyways. It's sort of slow and boring (considering that enemies are all crunched together) but at least it encourages some sort of planning.