Chapter 5 Gaiden - Mountain Hunt
The main objective of this map is to either defeat or capture the enemies on the right hand side of the map and then escape. These enemies will either be injured or crippled. Crippled enemies often have very limited movement, can't fight, or perform other actions such as using healing items. Injured enemies can be crippled if you deal enough damage to them.
There are invisible enemies on the mountains near the injured and crippled enemies. There's also a boss and some assassins off to the left, and a treasure chest in the corner. There are yellow units on the top right corner that might help these enemies, if you don't kill / capture enough of them in time. It's pretty easy to get to these enemies first, so it's not a big deal. The treasure chest is never threatened, so that isn't much of a positive for the map. It's an okay map, overall.
Overall Rating: Decent
Chapter 5 Gaiden: Lumiere
The easiest way to sum up this map is this: Mediocre and underwhelming. The main objective is to free the npcs in the bottom dungeon, and then help them escape to the top right dock. The path forward is very linear, and once again the treasure chest at the top is unthreatened. The only interesting part of the map are the enemy reinforcements that show up behind the player. This sounds a lot more interesting than it is. There's plenty of time to react to these reinforcements, and you can still play relatively slow while killing them.
Overall Rating: Below Average
Chapter 6
The main objective here is to let at least 3 NPCs escape, and then to escape afterward. At the beginning of the chapter, there's a mage named Enid who has to talk to these NPCs. After she talks to them, they will move toward the to the bottom right hand tile to escape. There's also another mage named Perceval who will show up in the bottom left hand corner that she can recruit. There's an NPC at the top right corner near a shop that has to be talked to more than once. If you do, he gives you a nice, valuable forgeable item.
What's neat is that the map forces Enid to go in multiple different directions, and there are usually three different areas from which enemies can attack the player. This requires the player to split their army up into three, and defend these enemies from three different sides. Unfortunately, there's a glaring problem: The enemy density at the beginning of the map is really low. There are very few enemies at the beginning of the map, which makes the beginning and middle parts of the map rather slow. The first half of the map can be a bit too easy, since the enemies will be relatively easy to kill.
Thankfully, the map gets more intense toward the end as more enemies show up. Once that happens, the map becomes a lot more fun to play. Here, you have to play fast in order to get your entire army to escape. This is when the player actually has to turn their brain on.
Overall Rating: Decent
Chapter 6 Gaiden - Phantom Corps
This map is a snooze fest. It's an open field with no side objectives. The main objective is to kill or capture the boss. The boss is an armored unit with "Magicbane", a skill that forces magic users to re-roll their accuracy with a maximum accuracy of 33 %. Basically it makes magic users miss hitting him. This makes him marginally more difficult to defeat, but not that much harder. The only remotely interesting part about this map is that enemy reinforcements spawn at various points in time. Even then, they don't really impact the way that this map is meant to be played. How lame.
Overall Rating: Fail
Chapter 6 Gaiden - Food Supply
This gaiden chapter is better than the previous one. At the start of the map, there are enemies that will run away from you, who are carrying food. These enemies will drop food after you kill them. After the map is finished, you get paid more money for each bag of food that you bring back.* These enemies start out at a relatively far distance from the player, and will to try to escape off the map, so the player does have to move with some speed, if they want to get all the dropped food.
*(Don't quote me on that. I could be wrong. If anyone is more knowledgeable about how this works, feel free to comment on this)
The boss on the throne will run away after being attacked once. Since he's on the wanted list, you'll want to either kill or capture him. It's more fun to try and figure out how to kill / capture him. There's an extra side objective that can make the map more challenging in a fun way: The yellow units on the cliff.
If the player leaves them alone, they won't do anything. However, if the player chooses to come near them, they will attack. They're all really tough to kill, which makes the map a bit more fun if the player goes for this side objective. The main benefits are high amounts of experience, since the yellow units are all high level enemies. I believe one of them drops something, although I'm not 100 % sure. The map is not half bad, and has enough to it to keep it entertaining for what's supposed to be a fairly short gaiden chapter.
Overall Rating: Decent
Chapter 7
Despite what this picture may suggest, this is actually a Fog of War map. The main objective is to rescue this NPC called Vester, and then escort him and the other captured NPCs to an escape point on the left-hand side of the map. There are two doors that need to be broken down, in addition to a tanky armored boss, a bunch of archers, and several armored spear wielding enemies. Oh, and you need to get Vester to the escape point (while having all your units) escape by 24 turns. The turn limit is relatively forgiving, but considering everything that you have to do, that turn limit can sneak up on you, if you're not actively moving forward every turn.
Even after dealing with the enemies on the fort, you still have to deal with all the enemies near the escape point. Interestingly enough, this requires the player to split their army up into two different groups. There are several houses throughout the map that will give the player stuff. One of them is really off to the side, which requires some strategizing on the player's part to make sure that whoever goes to that house can still escape in time. Oh, and there are enemies that will try to attack the player from behind too. Overall, this map is exciting, and I've enjoyed playing it in every playthrough.
Overall Rating: Excellent
- Excellent: 6
- Pretty Good: 1
- Decent: 5
- Meh: 2
- Below Average: 2
- Fail: 3
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