One level that really sticks out to me is 3H’s Hunting by Daybreak . I know Green talked about 5, but that map isn’t too bad because you can prepare for it without much issue, in the essence of learning where the spawn lines are, which IMO is the biggest problem of the map, as well as being able to use Catherine (who is a monster when recruited then) if you did the supports right.
Don’t forget you can access preps in 5 . Hunting by Daybreak, however, has no map based cheese (aside flying, but I digress), you don’t have access to preps, and only your in-house units show up. Also the map is notorious for how strong the enemies are, and that enemy density is absurd due to tight corridors. This chapter is also notorious for softlocks (happened to me with WYVERN Byleth on AM) and confirmed to me that Fortress Knight is the best class for this map (at least casually) because haha 27 base defense go BRRR.
Indeed. This goes double if you’re on Silver Snow… which was my first playthrough… and I had no Dancer for that either because ha ha I went in blind and I gave it to Edelgard.
I actually really love this chapter! Not generally a fan of those gameplay elements (fog, boss with bolting, green unit ai, etc.) but the chapter is a climatic point of the story. It’s a turning point for the relationship between Ursula, Nino, and Jaffar. And you finally can recruit some, and Jaffar’s super cool, even though on rare occasion he’ll just randomly die before you even get to him.
Gameplay wise, sure, it has a lot of flaws. But within the overall game, it’s a really cool chapter.
Everyone’s had the idea before - what if we had a chapter that was an 3P1C battle between 20 NPCs and 20 enemies? And then like… you can recruit some… and you can have somr influence on the battle… and it’d be 3p1c
I guess Battle Before Down shows us why IntSys doesn’t do a non-scripted larger scale NPC vs enemies battle.
Great to hear that some people really enjoy this chapter. The map has some interesting design choices that I tend to overlook because I don’t like most of the chapter. A mini boss could actually be kind of cool when done properly now that I think about it. If only some ideas had been executed better or some stupid stuff removed, the map would have been a lot better. Thanks for showing the other side to me
Conquest’s Chapter 17: Den of Betrayal (green unit saizo map)
I haven’t played Fates in a while, so I don’t remember the map too well, but I blocked this map out of my mind for a reason.
I find it slow and tedious, the enemies don’t get affected by the caltrops (not that I remember), and there are lots of dagger units to lower your stats to hell and beyond.
There’s also the map’s gimmick of having to raise and lower stones to move forward, and the green unit Saizo who gets himself killed with no effort whatsoever.
And then there’s the boss who is dagger unit himself who is protected by a few dagger units and some caltrops, just in case you wanted to have a fair fight with the boss.
I’m someone very tolerant with bad maps or frustrating ones and the only one I really despise that comes to my mind would be : Chapter 2 of FE16’s DLC Cindered Shadows “What Lies Beneath”. First of all this map reuses a map from the main campaign which by itself isn’t great. Nevermind, I was wrong on that one.
Second this map is way too big for the amount of enemies you are facing.
Lastly the map is based around waves, when you kill all the enemies or when X amount of turns passes a new batch of enemies will spawn from one of the corners. Since it is a rout map you need to either split your units which is unfavorable in the context of the DLC or move every single one of your units there. Also the Death Knight spawns after a while, at least thankfully he will attack everyone, allies and foes which makes him more manageable since you can’t fight him easily.
The chapter overall is an horrible experience since it’s just tedious. I can appreciate a frustrating map but not a tedious one. At least it doesn’t have fog of war.
I’ll just talk about the maps from my favorite game that I remember not liking.
Chapter 5: It’s just a bad map. You have two options of how to proceed, those being trying to brute force your way through the gates, which is a hellish task on HM, or going through the top part of the map, which is plagued by a shit ton of forests and the fact that the forts near and around there have bandit reinforcements.
Chapter 8: Honestly just tedious to play, not especially difficult at any point, it’s just so tedious to trudge through the twisting and turning hallways.
Chapter 14x: I’m one of those few people who enjoys/doesn’t hate chapter 14, but 14x is a pain in the ass to play through. It’s only saving grace imo is that it’s pretty much setting up the importance of warp skipping because if you don’t you’ll suffer through it. (I’m also salty about the few fe6 rebalances I played while bored that expressly altered the boss and units around him just so you can’t warp skip the shitty chapter and then proceed to do nothing about making the chapter any less of a slog)
Dis-honorable mention:
Chapter 7: It’s like the epitome of what I dislike about fe6’s early game on HM, and it’s even got green units, which I have a love-hate relationship, but I enjoy it well enough on NM.
Not because its bad, but rather because its simply not at all grand enough and on top of that after this chapter we are suddenly in bern stronghold. Which is more or less to say, if your gonna map a game or hack be grand, actually make it so throughout.
Haven’t played Echoes, but this Gaiden map was the worst time I’ve ever had playing a map in any vanilla game or romhack, and it’s not particularly close.
