Chapter 6
Now this is an escape chapter! Chapter 6 gives you two routes to escape from. It gives you the route to the far right and the route by the doors. The map is augmented by Karin’s ability to rescue someone and fly over the walls. If you rescued the NPCs in Chapter 4x then this map is the payoff for that. The houses all provide wonderful goodies for the player that make visiting them worth it. Visiting the houses will come with a price though. It not only slows the player down, but it also means that the enemy army has more time to catch up to the player. This provides the player with a cost-benefit analysis that everyone who’s played Thracia will have surely had to figure out. Enemy reinforcements show up behind the player so if you take too long you will suffer the consequences. On Turn 15 Galzus will show up and will wreck you if you’re foolish enough to get in his way. In short, this map has everything a great map should have.
Overall Rating: Excellent
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Chapter 7
This map provides two routes to approach it, however the left route has so many enemies that you’ll probably avoid it and head down the center. The enemy unit density will most likely consist of only Shiva’s group and the reinforcements that show up behind the player. Speaking of that there’s a little trick where you can put one of your units in a certain spot (it’s the spot that the WoD map says is when Eisenhow is supposed to show up) and you can limit the number of enemy reinforcements that come at you. Instead of having 3 cavaliers charge at you it’ll be just one.
Keep in mind that this doesn’t prevent the other enemy reinforcements from showing up like the mages and bishop that are supposed to appear on turns 6, 7, 11 & 12 or the soldiers and armor knights on turns 8 - 12. On Turn 13 the boss shows up. So basically the map still has turtle disincentives. In the midst of the swordmaster group the player has to deal with is a recruitable unit named Shiva. In order to recruit Shiva you have to talk to him with Safy who is near the bottom of the map. This is trickier than it sounds since you have to avoid killing Shiva while also managing to get Safy to where he’s at. It’s a good kind of tricky that forces the player to actually think and since Shiva is a worthwhile unit all the effort put into recruiting him will pay off.
Overall Rating: Pretty Good
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Chapter 8
This is a really simple map. It has three things going for it:
- Marty. Marty McFly is back and you have to re-recruit him. It’s not a huge deal but it at least adds something to the map
- The thieves and hunters coming down the mountain side threatening the houses
- The gaiden chapter objective. In order to get to the next gaiden chapter you have to capture the boss without releasing him before he becomes a Wyvern Rider on Turn 16. This is easier said than done and it succeeds at making the map a little more challenging.
So yeah, it’s a small and simple chapter, but it succeeds at what it wants to accomplish.
Overall Rating: Decent
Chapter 8x
Here lies an underrated map. It has two routes at the beginning of the chapter that lead toward the boss and the player has to hurry up and save Dagdar and Tanya. Because of the fact that Dagdar can only cover one spot Tanya isn’t completely safe meaning that the player will have to play faster in order to save her. There’s also a thief who tries to get the treasures in the map too which further incentivizes the player to play faster. The treasures are worth getting which means that the effort taken to get them pays off. Gomez, the boss of the chapter, is really strong which adds an extra element of challenge to the map. My only nitpick is that the holy water treasure is placed weird, but it’s really not that big of a deal.
Overall Rating: Excellent
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Chapter 9
This map is pretty interesting for an escape chapter. There’s a pretty direct route to the escape tile, but there are forest and mountain tiles which prevent make said route more difficult to travel. Then there’s the southern route toward the bishop, his armor knights and the wyverns. You’d think that nobody would ever choose this route but there are legitimate incentives to go down there. For one thing the bishop has a physic staff, a meteor and wind tome. Those are all some sweet goodies to obtain should the bishop happen to get captured. There’s a Stamina bag in the house by the bishop, which is an awesome item. The shop next to the house has purchasable stamina bags, which are expensive, but worth it.
The army in the south acts as a turtle disincentive. They will be traveling north toward Selphina’s group. If the player doesn’t arrive in time Selphina’s group will be overrun.
Overall Rating: Excellent
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Chapter 10
Welcome to “Ballista Land”, the greatest place to satisfy your urge to shoot something down with a ballista. It’s terrifying for everyone else, but hey that’s the point. “Ballista Land” offers differing choices in the routes one can take to approach the map. You can move north of the mountain to get the rescue staff. The northern route lets the player avoid most enemies, except for the ballista and the Bolting bishop. The middle route involves the most enemies. You have to destroy a large section of armor knights while being inside the range of potentially four different ballista. Then there’s the bottom route where there’s a village that gives the player a ward staff. It’s a bit difficult to get there due to the terrain and the fact that there’s a broken bridge that needs to be repaired. The payoff though is that this route has the least ballista that the player would have to deal with.
Both villages are threatened by thieves so the player will have to play faster in order to get to them. Both thieves have rapiers and stamina drinks so capturing them is worth it. The terrain and ballista make positioning incredibly important which is always a good thing for a strategy game.
Overall Rating: Excellent
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Chapter 11
I’ve never been the biggest fan of this map. There’s only one route to take and it’s through a narrow hallway. There’s a gaiden chapter and it’s requirement is that the player beat in less than 30 turns which is way too lenient. Heck you could easily beat this chapter in less than 20 turns.
Then there’s the ballista, which in my opinion negatively impact the map. If you don’t see the ballista coming they can feel like a cheap shot that came out of the blue. If you do see them coming they can act as a turtle incentive since you can take your sweet time preparing for them by killing off the armor knights and getting your army into place to prepare for them. Once they’re there they do count as a turtle disincentive since you’re going to want to get as far away from them as possible.
The torch staff you get as the treasure off to the side is worth it since the gaiden chapter is a fog of war map, but it’s a bit off to the side and the player has to go out of their way to get it. The boss of this map flees the next turn after you hit him, which is a bit of a disappointment.
Overall Rating: Below Average
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Final Thoughts: From a map design perspective this is quite arguably the best section of the game. This section gives the player great map after great map. The escape chapters are wonderful and almost all of the chapters reviewed in this post are free of bs.
Thracia’s Map Rating Score So Far:
Excellent - 5
Pretty Good - 4
Decent - 3
Meh - 1
Below Average - 1
Fail - 0
The two last pics of this article does not show up on my side :/
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