Chapter 20
Another defense chapter. Oh boy. According to Ronaldo you can beat this chapter pretty easily by standing behind the doors. There are armor knights on the top right corner that one has to deal with. There are also multiple entrances for enemies to show up in which can make the chapter more difficult. Killing Barat is an extra objective which at least spices the chapter up a little bit but there’s no rush since even if you don’t kill him super quick he’ll eventually come to you. If you manage to kill Barat enemies will flee from you Turn 14 even if they can kill you.
Overall Rating: Below Average
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Chapter 21
This map is different. You have two routes with which to approach the boss and a bunch of ballista to deal with. There’s a church on the right side of the map that Linoan can promote in. Since Linoan is a good unit who’s worth using the player does have an incentive to go over there. Assuming that the player doesn’t use warp, it will be tricky to maneuver over there. In addition to the boss having a ballistic siege tome there will be even more ballista surrounding him and another bishop with a ballistic siege tome. Oh and there’s a sleep staff wielding enemy too. In other words, positioning matters a lot in this chapter.
This chapter has plenty of enemy reinforcements. From turns 2 - 7 enemy soldiers show up on those fortresses near the ballista. Showing up on Turn 2 tends to be a bit too early and can incentivize turtling. The fact that these reinforcements will continue to show up until Chapter 7, in addition to having Dark Mages appear from turns 7 - 10, can either further incentivize turtling or it can cause the player to play faster. There’s also the steady stream of cavalier reinforcements that approach from the far right which can either be a nightmare (if you approach the map from the right) or it can potentially incentivize turtling if you’re on the left side it could incentivize turtling.
I’m still not sure whether I should count the presence of the enemy reinforcements as a positive, or as a negative. At the very least this element could have been handled better, but there’s a part of me that believes that they’re not poorly handled. I guess it’s somewhere in between?
Overall Rating: Decent
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Chapter 21x
In my opinion this is the best designed gaiden chapter in the game. You have two methods of approaching the chapter since the player’s army starts from two different directions. This chapter handled enemy reinforcements better than the previous one by extending the length from which reinforcements show up. For example, when enemy soldiers show up at the stairs in the bottom of the map they now show up for 20 turns. If you’re super slow dark mages with rewarp staves will show up and make the player’s life miserable. There are also the addition of mercenaries who show up near the boss. In general, these enemies do a pretty good job at incentivizing faster play on the player’s part.
In this chapter the number of captured allies becomes a side objective and how long this side objective takes depends on how many allies were captured. This reminds me of the side objective in Chapter 4 revolving around the player’s captured weapons and items. This chapter becomes a lot easier for players who plan ahead, but the fact that the gaiden chapter requires long term planning to begin with is a good thing. There’s also the fact that you have bishops with long range ballistic siege tomes who can make approaching the boss more difficult. All in all, this chapter has all the makings of a well designed map.
Overall Rating: Excellent
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Chapter 22
Ah, the infamous Chapter 22. This is a chapter that begins with both Cyas and the boss using status staves against the player. As I’ve explained in my analysis of chapter 12 and 12x I’m not a fan of the boss with infinite range status staves. The reason being that the only real way of dealing with it is with warp. Since these map design analysis posts operate under the assumption that no warp will be used (due to how incredibly game breaking it is) we’re left to assume that the only real means of dealing with these status staves are with using up a bunch of restore staves.
A bigger issue with this map is the intense boost in avoid and accuracy given to enemy mooks. According to fireemblemwod there are a grand total of 19 leadership stars handed out by bosses. Not all of them affect every single enemy. However, they all will be affected at least by a good chunk of them. Most of the boosts come from Cyas’s 10 leadership stars. This can make fighting enemies feel like a bigger RNG fest than necessary which is a bad thing.
I used to think the ballista at the bottom of the map encouraged turtling since they’re powerful and accurate, combined with the status staff bombardment from enemy bosses. However, I recently saw a suggestion for a strategy for dealing with ballista that didn’t involve waiting said ballista out and draining them so I’m conceding this point. This means that the presence of the ballista can be a double edged sword. Either you wait them out with a tanky unit or you pull off some cool staff strategies and finish them off.
Once the player moves past the red line shown in the map the bridge to the left magically disappears. This is an interesting design choice because it forces the player to move forward although it’s still possible to chokepoint Reinhardt’s troops so it’s a little dubious how much of a turtle disincentive this is. Reinhardt is really strong, which is a major plus and his troops aren’t easy to deal with either. The two routes in this map aren’t significant enough to count since they don’t present a significant enough choice to matter (you’re still going to approach the boss the same way and the only reason to go through the path on the bottom is because of the house. Then you move in the same direction you were going to move anyway).
To bring everything back together, I still think this map has major issues even when I take the bias I had against it during my first playthrough out of the equation. The turtle disincentives are dubious at best due to the concentration of powerful enemies and infinite range status staves. Reinhardt is a challenging boss which is a good thing and the houses at least give the player some legit goodies, but it lacks two meaningful methods of approaching it. I find the negatives to outweigh the positives here.
Overall Rating: Below Average
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Chapter 23
This chapter has some odd design choices. The player begins with Cyas and NPC's stranded in enemy territory. As far as I’m aware there’s no benefit to keeping the NPC’s alive which leaves me wondering why the player should care about what happens to them. There’s an army of wyvern knights that appear on Turn 2, but they will only attack under certain circumstances like if Sety kills the boss or when the player gets near to them. If neither circumstance occurs they just leave. At the very least they force the player to be more careful in where they position their units.
There’s a thief that shows up within moving range of the villages on Turn 3. Two of the three houses provide lackluster goodies (a Vulnerary and Holy Water. Really?) but one of them does provide a physic so there is at least one reason to go over there and try to stop him. Dark Mages pop up all over the map in a wide variety of places. They’re annoying to say the least but they can poison the player’s units. They stop showing on Turn 10, but by that point there’s so many of them that the player will still be encouraged to move forward faster.
The map loses points for only having one method of approach though. The map provides the player with a tradeoff between Cyas and Sety. There’s an interesting debate to be had about which character is more useful but it makes the map more strategic in nature and it plays a role in how the player deals with the boss.
Overall Rating: Decent
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Chapter 24
This map has problems. For starters the player’s army is split into 3 routes and none of the routes connect with each other, meaning that unless the player uses Warp or Rescue their army remains permanently divided for the entire map. The side objective requires a male NPC character to unlock a door. Which NPC unit? Who knows? The game never tells the player which one it is. Why does it have to be a boy? Because...reasons. It drags the quality of the map down in my opinion.
The right side contains some annoying dark mages with status staves that can screw the player over unless the player is able to deal with them. To the map’s credit it does make pretty good use of enemy reinforcements and how long they stay. Galzus and his mercenary army can be a pain, but Galzus can be recruited by Mareeta so there’s that. Reiderick is an easy boss to deal with, which is disappointing.
Overall Rating: Meh
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Chapter 24x
Worst designed map in the game. Heck, it’s one of the worst designed maps in the series. The main problem with this map are the warp tiles. The game gives no hints about where they are and if the player lands on a tile their unit is warped to a room with no escape. That unit is locked in without any means of escape next to two dark mages, a level 20 sniper and a level 20 mercenary. Yikes! What’s worse is that this is an escape chapter so if you beat the chapter with that unit still down there that character gets left behind for the final chapter. I should point out that there are ways of dealing with these warp tiles, but the game isn’t going to tell you any of that. This ends up reeking of the Guide Dang It! trope.
What also sucks is that these Dark Mages will warp powerful enemies to any spot in the map. The only real way to beat this chapter is with a high amount of staves at your side. There’s only one route to approaching the boss too which doesn’t do this chapter any favors. Oh and did I mention that this map uses Fog of War too? That makes spotting the warp tiles that much more difficult.
In short, either staff cheese this level or you’re in for a real nightmare.
Overall Rating: Fail
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Final Chapter
Truth be told, this chapter might just get my vote for “Best Designed Final Chapter in the Series”. It has everything one could want from a good map. The map forces the player in different directions since they have to deal with all of the enemies in each of the separate rooms. There are 6 mini-bosses who are very strong, but fair. They all have powerful weapons and have to be dealt with carefully. The player must have one unit on each of the squares in order to open up the main room and advance. This is a brilliant design choice because it’s an anti-lowmanning measure.
The chapter dishes out a near endless stream of powerful enemy reinforcements. These guys are annoying and can make the player’s life miserable. In order to get them to stop spawning the player will have to open up the door, which means that they’re going to have to beat the chapter faster. In other words, the enemy reinforcements succeed as turtle disincentives. There are two routes to approaching the throne room which is nice. Veld may be a disappointing final boss, but to be fair most final bosses in Fire Emblem are actually not that strong. Plus the meat of this chapter comes from the effort it takes just to get to this point.
Overall Rating: Excellent
Final Thoughts: Thracia 776’s map design is pretty darn good. The earlygame is fantastic and every section of the game has at least one great map. Most maps require actual thinking and effort and a lot of care was taken into getting the player to play better.
There are unfortunate missteps of course, every Fire Emblem game has them. What separates Thracia from most other games is that the number of decent to great maps is definitely higher than the number of not so good maps. I’ve taken a look a good number of Fire Emblem games and so far Thracia 776 is looking to take the title for “Best Map Design In the Series”.
Let’s tally up the map design totals:
Excellent: 11
Pretty Good: 3
Decent: 7
Meh: 4
Below Average: 4
Fail: 6
21 / 35 maps were decently designed or better.
Thracia’s Overall Map Design Score: 60 %
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