Chapter 2-1: In Pursuit of Thieves
Of the first few chapters in the early part of Berwick Saga, this is easily one of the worst designed. I tried to find a better picture of this map, but this is the best I could do. As it shows, The map is a little too straightforward:
1) Go to through the narrow part of the map and kill the relatively easy enemies.
2) Unlock the doors to get horses in your inventory (yes, that is a thing you can do in Berwick Saga) and the treasure.
3) Rush the enemies near the throne, kill the boss, and seize.
There are no turtle disincentives, the enemies are fairly easy in this chapter, and the treasures are never really threatened. There's not much else to say about this map. It's low key and pretty boring.
Overall Rating: Below Average
Chapter 2 - 2: Combat Training
This gaiden chapter is fairly interesting. It has a couple of neat side objectives that spice things up, and it rewards fast gameplay. Those interesting side objectives are:
1) There's an enemy that drops a rare Repair Stone. Instead of having Hammerene staves, this game has repair stones which will replenish weapon uses. There are roughly 2 - 3 of those in the game and this is one of them. That enemy leaves fast so you have to hustle to get it.
2) There's a second enemy near the top of the map that's carrying arrows over to a ballista. If that enemy succeeds, then the ballista will have actual weapons to fire at the player. For obvious reasons, we want to stop this enemy from delivering those arrows.
Enemy reinforcements will also show up right behind the player, which creates even more incentive to move fast. So yeah, this map knows how to make the player move fast. The one problem that I have with this map is that once you're able to complete the side objectives, the map quickly loses steam. After a couple of turns, you can complete the map at your leisure. Still, I think it's noteworthy for those first few turns.
Overall Rating: Decent
Chapter 3: The Three Bishops
Chapter 3 gets my vote for being the best designed map in the game. I realize that having that title designated for a map this early into the game implies that the maps in the later part of the game suck. This could be further from the truth. There are a lot of well-designed maps that are fun to play. This map, however, is on another level.
The main goal of this map is to escort three NPC bishops to a seize point on the opposite side of the map. A map design thread on reddit summed up how the three NPCs act on this map:
A couple of things about the priests:
- You can't control them and they will not wait for you. They will always try to move forward, except if there as enemy in the way or if your units are blocking specific tiles.
- Each priest will take a complete different path. Do you see the white tiles? These are "road" terrain and each priest will follow one of the routes.
- The priests are indeed very fragile. Also, each one must stop at a certain point for special events along the way.
- All 3 carry healing magic and heal your units under some circumstances.
Source:
So yeah. They will move in 3 different directions, and in order to keep up with them, you have to move pretty fast.
This map reminds me of Conquest Chapter 17, where you have to protect Saizo, who is an NPC that will continue to move forward. Funnily enough, Berwick Saga came out about 10 years before Fates did, so technically Conquest came up with a similar idea to what Berwick Saga did here. Personally I think this map's execution is better since there's no Dragon Vein to trap these NPCs. You have to move forward, and there's no way to trivialize this aspect of the map.
The central path is near water, where pirates will walk on it and try to swarm the bishop. Each bishop will visit a house halfway through their route. These visits will trigger unavoidable events. One of these events reduces that bishop's HP by 15. If you don't want the bishop to die, you'll have to make sure that his HP is higher than that, which puts even more pressure on the player. Another house is guarded by a stupidly powerful boss named Chaos. The best way to deal with Chaos is to bring Faye, who will talk to Chaos, and a prescripted event will ensue.
The overall effect is that the player has to put a ton of thought and effort behind who goes where, and how they're going to beat the level. The boss also spams a skill called War Cry, which stacks the damage that he deals and his hit rate. Despite being at the seize point, said boss will move out of his spot to attack your units. Those War Cry stat stacks are scary, so be warned.
In case all of that wasn't enough, this map is chock full of side objectives! There are 4 citizen requests that can net you extra money and items in addition to two different houses that also give you stuff on opposite ends of the map. There's a recruitable character and a mini-boss that shows up behind the player. Killing that mini-boss is tough. Like, he has a knife that gives him an automatic 80 % crit rate. No, I'm not exaggerating or being hyperbolic. It's literally 80 %. He also runs away off the map super fast, so you only have a couple of turns to kill him. That being said, killing this mini-boss results in the player gaining extra money, which makes it worth it.
Then there are enemies that drop various amounts of money on the top left corner on the map, that act as their own fun side objective. Oh, and the pirate fort also contains treasure for your pirate, Axel, to take.
In conclusion, this map is beautiful! It's tough, it requires huge amounts of planning and forethought, and there's pretty much something for everyone in your army to do. It's only tough during your first playthrough. On subsequent playthroughs, it gets easier as you learn how to handle the obstacles thrown at you. It definitely feels rewarding to both play and beat this level. Easily one of my all-time favorite maps to play from a Fire Emblem inspired game. It's up there with the Manster Arc and escape maps in Thracia 776.
Overall Rating: Excellent!!!
Berwick Saga's Map Design Tally So Far
- Excellent: 4
- Pretty Good: 0
- Decent: 1
- Meh: 1
- Below Average: 1
- Fail: 0
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