Today i would like to two talk about two Souls of the forest maps I absolutely adore. Ch10 and 11, Hollow kingdom and Maze of gold. Well the builder screenshots of the maps i took are a little odd looking with regards to players and displaying reinforcements but these two maps are just straight up some of my favorite fire emblem gameplay. Hollow kingdom, the first picture has the player start in the bottom right and you have to seize at the throne.
Simple enough, but the throne room is chock full of scary enemies, along with a siege sage in the far side of the room and several 3-5 bow snipers to pepper you over the wall. Now, the approach i took initially my first run was forgoing the wall and just snaking around the whole thing picking it apart slowly, which is a fairly punishing experience being peppered by long range and taking on the tough merc and hero squad along side that. Now my second run, I was a bit braver and more knowledge about the games so I used a devil axe to break that wall on the throne room. Then using my canto+ cavs they killed the siege sage and positioned the massive prepromote general to soak up damage from the merc squad after they had started to move down. While my thieves headed south to get the chest room. What this map does for me so well is how largely player controlled the tempo of it is. You can take the long route and soak up siege for a bit or go ham and try to break through the formation straight on. The initial part of the map has a valk moving boss with a paladin squad that is note worthy, we also get the Barrier blade in this first formation. An unbreakable sword that halves damage received, which is a great tool to use in this map with scary enemies and ranged threats.
Now, Maze of Gold . The map that broke me on lunatic reverse, only to fill me with satisfaction once I " got it". In this split deploy you typically want your A team on the left with Rakel and a mobile squad on the right with Beryl.
You are immediately beset with a siege anima mage on the left side you really wanna kill turn 1. The snipers throughout the map have 3-5 bows that really pack a punch combined with the hordes of enemies in the narrow corridors. The left has an anti mage hero and a wyvern lord coming at you fast and scary. all the while a valuable thief is running from you asap. Now on the left you can see a general, he is stationary with a droppable the Shieldbearer. Which is basically the barrier blade on crack, 1-3 decent might, halves damage received and +5 to speed and defense. You really want to kill him as soon as possible so you can put that shieldbearer to use with either your lance paladin/cav or your general. Usually you take this out on turn 2 or 3 in my experience, and can use it well on the backhalf of the map. The hero and wyvern lord formation is really quite scary and its fun taking them down. using a sage to kill the wyvern but rescuing them out so they dont get instantly murdered by the mage effective sword the hero has. While the right side wants to move quickly and kill the snipers that are throughout the middle section. Killing them will relieve alot of pressure from your left hand squad. The right side has some funny enemies like a devil axe cav, which the devil axe in sotf is basically a 16 use mega stat increase hand axe. So you need a tanky swordie, say someone with the barrier blade to duke it out with them. At turn 10 bolting mages appear from all the stairs, if that wasnt an incentive to go fast idk what is. Both of these maps typically take me under 10 turns but both are absolutely filled with decision making and tight calls.
On replays i always adore getting to this section of the game, Overall i think the highlights are that Hollow kingdom really shows how open a maps design can be, in terms of progression through it and maze of gold is quite linear it takes tight corridors and combines it with sotfs ranged tools to make you really think on how to fight your way through. Both are an absolute blast in different ways