Mount Dominance Ranking Part 2

A Tier: All of the games in this post are more mount dominant than the games listed in the previous post. These games provide enough useful infantry units that they're still not super mount dominant.  

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Fire Emblem 1



Fire Emblem 1 is a game that I originally believed to be mount dominant. I thought it over, and decided that based on the evidence I've seen it actually isn't super mount dominant.

 The best units in the game are your warpbots, Lena and Wendell, followed by Marth. Pantsless Marth is a legend. He's a juggernaut who will most likely be your designated boss killer. The Rapier in this game is comparable to Caeda's Wing Spear in Shadow Dragon. In other words, it's OP. There are other useful infantry units too like Merric, Boah, Julian, Navarre, Ogma, Maria and Jeorge. I've even seen Samson ranked highly. I used this tier list as a frame of reference.



I'm also currently replaying Fire Emblem 1 right now. My team is balanced between high movement units and infantry so I have no problems believing that Fire Emblem 1 is actually not very mount dominant.

Fire Emblem 3: Mystery of the Emblem



Fire Emblem 3 is a game where there aren't tons of powerful mounts, but the few that you do get are REALLY strong. Palla, Catria and Sirius really are in a class of their own. (Caeda and Minerva are also great in this game too) Most of them join early, start out powerful, and remain that way throughout the entire game.

To this game's credit though, you do have a bunch of worthwhile infantry units. Ogma, Navarre, Marth, Phina, Linde, Wendell, and your archers are all considered worth using in this game. There's plenty of enough infantry units that the game ultimately comes across as not very mount dominant, it's just that the few you do get are really good.

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Shadow Dragon


Shadow Dragon is kind of a hard game to rank when it comes to talking about mount dominance. It doesn't stand out in the same way as Fire Emblem 12, but I also don't hear very many complaints about this game being very mount dominant either. On the one hand, Caeda's very broken and she's a Pegasus Knight. On the other hand, Warpskip is a dominant strategy in this game, and your warpbots aren't mounted. Feel free to add anything about Shadow Dragon, since I'm less knowledgeable about this game. Everyone I've talked to who is more knowledgeable about this game didn't think it was all that mount dominant either. Feel free to add to this if I'm missing out on something.

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# 6: Radiant Dawn




Fun fact: Even tvtropes.org has a small section mentioning how mounted units got a nerf in this game in comparison to Path of Radiance: 

"Though several examples are still good, mounted units Astrid and Makalov have fallen a long way from their usefulness last game, defying the typical domination of mounted units in other games. Fiona is also noted to be one of the worst units of the game. Astrid and Makalov both have speed, but not enough power behind their attacks nor durability to survive many, and Fiona simply has incredibly low base stats that make her a liability unless mass amounts of effort are put in to correct this."

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn

The big problem with Radiant Dawn is that Jill and Haar are super busted. Titania is also pretty amazing, though not as gamebreaking as she was in Path of Radiance. 

Even taking Jill and Haar into account, Radiant Dawn has plenty of infantry units that are actually good.

• Ike: Ike got a massive upgrade from Path of Radiance, and he curbstomps anything that gets in his way in this game. He's powerful from start to finish.

• Your Trueblades: Trueblades (aka 3rd tier myrmidons) got a major buff in this game. Mia, Zihark and Lucia are all great. Radiant Dawn is one of the few games in the series where myrmidons are actually worth using.

• Sothe: So here's a crazy idea: Let's have the Jagen / Oifey of this game be a thief. We've never seen that before or after. This is the only game where a freaking thief carries your team as a combat unit for what's considered to be the hardest part of this game. That's a really big deal since most thieves are only valued for their utility, and not their combat.

• Boyd and Nolan: Boyd and Nolan are the best fighters in the series since Dagda and Orsin. Axes are considered to be the best weapon in the game, and both of these guys can actually hit things. Nolan has the Earth affinity helping him out, and Boyd has transfer bonuses to fall back on. 

I've seen people arguing that Nephenee is actually decent in this game. That's a refreshing contrast to her Path of Radiance counterpart. Plus, this game also gets points for having cavaliers that are actually not worth using like Astrid or Makalov. Even Kieran got nerfed in comparison to his Path of Radiance counterpart.

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# 7: Binding Blade

The last game in the A tier is Binding Blade. The reason why this game is ranked so high is because it gives almost as many high - top tier infantry units as flying / mounted ones. 

I decided to count up all the mounted / flying units that are B tier or higher and then contrast them with all the infantry units that are B tier or higher. I counted 14 flying and mounted units that are "B tier" or higher while counting 11 "B tier" or higher infantry units:

• Marcus, Allen, Lance, Thany, Clarine, Sue, Zealot, Noah, Shin, Tate, Miledy, Percival, Cecilia, Zeis,

• Dieck, Rutger, Saul, Asthol, Klein, Lalum, Elphin, Echidna, Igrene, Niime, Yodel

This game almost gives you almost as many great infantry units as mounted units. Almost. It still skews more favorably toward higher movement characters, but not as much as one would think. This game is far more favorable to infantry units than the 10 other games in the series that are ranked as being more mount dominant than this one. 

This game also has plenty of useful characters that would traditionally be considered low tier in other games. Rutger, your early joining myrmidon, carries your team and is the designated boss killer for a huge chunk of the game. That's practically unheard of for a myrmidon to do that. Both of your mercenaries are great. Oh, and is that two Snipers being considered useful? How many games do you see where prepromoted, unmounted bow users are considered actually good? Yodel, your late joining staff user, is also considered worthwhile. Late joining staffbots aren't generally considered useful in many of the modern games where they appear. so that's another positive for the game. 

I've even listed FE 6 Bartre as being underrated, and you could consider him fairly useful here too. The fact that an axe user is considered at least halfway good is another point in favor of this game. 

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The next "tier" that will be appearing will have this description:

"These games definitively favor mounted units and fliers. There's only a relative handful of infantry units that hold these games back from being absolute bottom tier."

Mount Dominance Ranking Part 1

So I thought it would be fun to rank how mount dominant each Fire Emblem game is. For those of you who don't know, the most efficient units in most Fire Emblem games tend to be either horseback units, or fliers. The thing is, not all Fire Emblem games are equally mount dominant. So I thought it would be fun to talk about which Fire Emblem games are the most / least mount dominant. There are some Fire Emblem games that I'm less sure about when it comes to my knowledge of the game so I'm open to having my mind changed. At the very least, I hope this elicits an interesting discussion. 

Without further ado, let's begin with the least mount dominant games in the series. The least mount dominant game is:




Thracia 776

The best unit in the game is Safy, a Warp bot. Staff utility is so amazing that a lot of your staff wielding characters are going to be some variation of "great unit and worth using". That's about 6 different infantry units I'm counting 6 infantry units that are automatically great right there (Safy, Salem, Tina, Sara, Sleuf, Linoan). 


In addition to your staff bots, your other worthwhile infantry units are:

    - Asvel: Boss killer of the game. Amazing combat unit.

    - Dagda: Still the best unmounted axe unit in the series. His base stats are amazing.

    - Leif: Great support utility. It's generally considered optimal to give him tons of stat boosters too.

    - Orsin: Pugi Axe says hi.

    - Lara: A thief that eventually becomes a dancer.

    - Lifis / Perne:  Thief utility is a lot of fun in this game. And helpful too.

    

      To be fair, there probably are other awesome infantry units that I'm forgetting, but that ends up proving my point. The infantry units can keep up with your higher movement characters. Thracia also has the indoor mechanic, which means that there will be maps where your higher movement characters have to dismount, and thus have lower movement. These higher movement characters will also be forced to switch to swords, which is a weapon that most of them will have a lower weapon rank in, which further hurts their usefulness. 

The # 2 Spot Goes to.....

Fire Emblem 12

When it comes to the topic of mount dominance, most FE 12 fans are usually in agreement that FE 12 does a very good job avoiding mount dominance. Here's a quote I found on Fire Emblem reddit that sums up why Fire Emblem 12 is ranked this high up:

“Stat caps in fe 12 do actually matter in contrast to most games. For instance, draco knights only have a cap of 23 spd, which means that they won't be able to double enemy units later into the game depending on what difficulty you're on. This creates what is arguably the best "class balance" in the series in which most classes have a desirable niche or role. Classes with higher caps (particularly in spd or weapon rank) will become more favorable to reclass to once the game progresses and you're actually hitting stat caps. This prevents the game from being completely mount dominant as compared to games like gba and tellius.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/718jm5/what_makes_new_mystery_of_the_emblem_better_or/


For most Fire Emblem games with reclass, the general impression I get is that you should promote / reclass all or most of your units into flyer classes and then just make your team mostly fliers / mounts. It never works in the opposite direction for those games where you should reclass characters in higher movement classes to characters in classes with lower movement.

 This is where 12 separates itself, because you actually have a reason to reclass your higher movement characters into lower movement classes. The fact that Swordmasters and Snipers can unironically become your team composition near the end of the game is pretty rare and pretty neat. 

The # 3 Spot Goes to.....

Gaiden / Echoes
These games get a lot right when it comes to avoiding mount dominance. For starters, your villagers all get the option to promote into cavaliers, and yet it's usually not the most optimal choice. If this were a mount dominant game the easy answer would be "make them all cavaliers because higher movement is OP." Instead the best option is to make at least one of them a mercenary. The funny thing is that Cavalier usually isn't the second best option for most of the villagers either. The only villager you could say this for is maybe Kliff, but I've seen ltc players argue against Cavalier!Kliff so even that's up for debate, depending on who you talk to. Faye even has the option to become a Pegasus Knight and she's still better off as a Cleric instead.

Now to be fair, Palla and Catria dominate Celica's Route once they show up, so you'd think that would prevent this game from being this high up. The thing here is that:

 (a) They're limited to one route 

(b) Palla and Catria don't show up until Act 3, so you have to to play a good amount of the game without them.

(c) There are still plenty of great infantry units who can contribute to the game even when Palla and Catria there. Saber, Kamui, Genny and Leon are prime examples of this.



Alm's Route is significantly less mount dominant than Celica's. The best units in his route are infantry units. Examples include whichever villager becomes a Mercenary, Alm himself and Silque. 

 Mathilda and Clive are useful, but far from game breaking. Flight utility isn't even that useful in Alm's Route either, which is why Clair doesn't make it super high in Echoes tier lists. It's actually pretty impressive to see an early joining Pegasus Knight not be ranked super highly due to how rare it is. For all the crap that the gameplay in Echoes / Gaiden gets, this is an area where it's unusual gameplay does really well in.
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These are the games I would put in the "S tier" of mount dominant Fire Emblem games. They provide you lots of reasons to use infantry units and a significant percentage of the best units in the game are unmounted. 

The next tier is going to be the "A tier". These games will be more mount dominant than these three, but they still provide enough useful infantry units that are worth using. 

The Final Binding Blade Map Design Reviews: B Route and Ilia Route

Chapter 10B


The easiest way for me to describe this map would be: Not as good as 11A, but still a decent map in its own right. 

The main difference between this map and 11A is that Klein and his men are positioned behind the player, rather than in front of them. I don't play very fast, and even I had to go backward in order to recruit Klein. The good news here is that it's at least easier to recruit him here than in 11A. 

The map puts pressure on the villages, but not very much. By the time that Gonzales and the brigands show up it's very feasible that you'd already have one of your characters up there to get to the house. Thea and her Pegasus Knight squad will most likely show up closer to the player in this version of the map which means that they're a little more threatening here.

Chapter 10B Ranking: Decent

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Chapter 11B


I like this map just a little bit more than 10A. For starters, the pirate forts are closer to the village, making them more threatening. The map also has green units appear to the north, who all like to run head long toward a group of enemies. You have to at least send a couple of characters over there in order to save the NPCs. To the map's credit, you do get an Energy Ring if you successfully save them all, so you do have an incentive to actually save the NPCs. 

Bartre appears a little too late and on the opposite side of the map, which can be a pain if you want to recruit him. The map has enemy reinforcements spawning out of the castle if you play too slowly, so that works as an incentive to beat the boss faster. Bartre showing up and the castle reinforcements could be better, but overall this map's positives slightly outweigh it's negatives.

Chapter 11B Ranking: Decent

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Chapter 17A


This is another map in Binding Blade that both encourages and discourages turtling. On the one hand, the route to the right takes forever in order to get to the throne. On the other hand, the more direct route takes time in order to show up (Turn 6 to be precise). If you try to take the ocean route, there will be plenty of enemies from the opposite side of the map that will try to charge you, which encourages turtling even further. 

To it's credit, once you start approaching the throne, there will be lots of enemy reinforcements showing up from the forts. True, you will be able to stop some of the reinforcements, but not all of them since there are forts all throughout the map so you will get some kind of incentive to move forward faster. 

Chapter 17A Ranking: Decent

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Chapter 18A


This is another map that's...fine. This is fine. You get three villages that the map will try to threaten with brigands. The map could have done more to threaten them, but as it stands you do have to play marginally faster with this approach so I guess it counts. Eventually the map will continue to throw more Pegasus Knights at the player, which will really encourage the player to move faster. 

The terrain is also a major factor in this map, and not for the better. The trees and forest tiles generally slow down any non-flier unit which almost makes it function like the desert gimmick. Thankfully, Niime will freeze the river which is super helpful and helps to make this map play a smidge faster. 

Chapter 18A Ranking: Decent

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Chapter 19A


This map is boring. The path to the throne is a little too linear and uneventful. It hides behind a Fog of War gimmick while trying to throw Pegasus Knights, Ballista and Status Staves at you. The Fog of War prevents you from being able to tell if thieves threaten the village or not, so you never really feel the pressure to move forward. That's pretty much all there is to this map.

Chapter 19A Ranking: Meh

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Chapter 20A


Chapter 20A gets my vote for being the "Best Designed Map in the Ilia Route". It gives you two routes to approach the map from, and an incentive to approach both routes. It provides a ton of enemy reinforcements, which will come at you in waves from behind if you're not prepared.

This map also has Juno and a bunch of NPCs, which you have to find a way to deal with. It's a fun side objective, and keep in mind that if you dilly dally, the enemies will open that up and try to kill them. You're also given treasures that are heavily guarded too as an extra fun side objective. It even threatens the treasures with either Cath or with enemy thieves too.

Chapter 20A Ranking: Excellent
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Chapter 20Ax






This map is pretty boring. It does nothing to punish turtling, the enemies are uninteresting, and it seems like the best way to approach the map is straight ahead. Trying to break through gaps is the only remotely interesting part of the chapter, and it's nothing to write home about.

Chapter 20Ax Ranking: Meh
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Final Map Design Tally

Positive: 20

Excellent: 7

Pretty Good: 5

Decent: 8

Negative: 18

Meh: 9

Below Average: 4

Fail: 5

Total Score: 52 %.

52 % of Binding Blade's maps have been rated "Decent" or higher. I'll write another post sometime in the future where I'll go into greater depth and detail about Binding Blade's map design. For now, the Map Ranking Hierarchy is: # 1: Thracia 776 (60 %)

# 2: Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 (54 %) # 3: Fire Emblem 12 (53 %)

# 4: Binding Blade (52 %) Conquest: (40 - 42 % depending on whether you count the shared chapters or not)

Binding Blade Map Design Reviews Chapters 20x - Final Chapter

Chapter 20x
Yippee. Another Gaiden map. Let's get this out of the way. My biggest problem with this map is the "fake throne" gimmick. If you don't have Roy seize the right throne you're rewarded with enemy reinforcements that you then have to fight off. Based on what I've seen from ltc players, it seems to me like you have to rig the RNG in order to seize the correct throne. That doesn't sound like good design to me. 

Outside of that, I'm also not a fan of the fact that enemy bosses on the throne seem to have really high avoid. Maybe I just need to "get gud" but my Rutger had maxed Skill of 29 by this point in the game and I still couldn't manage higher than a low 50 % hit rate. It turned the map into an RNG fest where you're hoping that the RNG is merciful to you. Not a fan of that design choice either. I can't really think of any positives that this map has to offer so...

Chapter 20x Ranking: Fail
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Chapter 21 


This map simultaneously encourages and discourages turtling. All the enemies at the beginning of the chapter rushing toward the player tends to grind the pacing of the map to a halt since you're most likely going to fight them. Later on in the map enemy reinforcements will appear once you approach the throne. This approach succeeds at getting the player to play faster so in the end, I'd say this map succeeds more than it fails at getting the player to play faster. 

One extra note that I love about this chapter is the secret shop. It's a really neat design decision to have a secret shop that has all the stat boosters you can buy because it incentivizes the player to save up their money in order to buy a ton of stat boosters so that they can just go ham on the final chapters. At least, that's what I've done in the past and it's a lot of fun. It's a smart way of getting the player to actually think about how to spend their money. 

Chapter 21 Ranking: Decent

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Chapter 21x



I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I really liked Chapter 21x a lot. Maybe it was because I brought along two thieves with me, but I could see the enemy reinforcements moving up behind me, which caused me to actually move faster since I didn't want to deal with them. In other words, the map had a turtle disincentive. This is something most gaiden chapters in Binding Blade don't have. It also has two routes to approach the throne from, which makes it more interesting to play.

 The only problem I have with this map is the gimmick where an enemy could randomly pop out of a treasure. It's a dumb gimmick that adds nothing to the strategy of the overall map. That being said, at least it's completely avoidable since it only activates if you go after the treasures. 

This map is easily the best designed Gaiden chapter I've recently played so far in Binding Blade. The positives really do outweigh the negatives.

Chapter 21x Ranking: Excellent

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Chapter 22


This chapter requires the player to split up in two different directions in order to reach the squares on opposite sides of the map. This makes playing the map more interesting as you have to decide how to split up your teams. Once Roy reaches the gate you get enemies from your former starting positions approaching you from behind. These enemies really excel at putting pressure on the player, even if they're starting from a distance.

 There are ambush spawns that show up right next to the player that are a total cheap shot. To be fair, you can have characters sit on those tiles to prevent enemies from spawning, but it's not good design if enemy reinforcements can be easily prevented like that. Fortunately, the turtle disincentives on this map are still a net positive, because there are enough enemies that will put pressure on the player.

It's fairly common to have enemies use either Nosferatu or Brave Weapons, which makes them far more dangerous, and thus make playing the game more interesting. Once again, having a variety of status staves makes the map more interesting and having Manaketes in the throne room works as an obstacle to getting to Zephiel. 

One nitpick I have about this level is that the only way to approach this map is from the right, so whoever's on the left has to go all the way around to the opposite side in order to approach Zephiel. 

Chapter 22 Ranking: Pretty Good

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Chapter 23


This map strikes me as mediocre. It does nothing to encourage the player to play faster, in fact having a bunch of charging wyverns encourages the player to play more slowly. The two routes could be more interesting on paper, but the fact that there are so many enemies near the throne (a good number of them wielding status staves too) means that the player is probably just going to approach more slowly. Karel...exists I guess? His recruitment doesn't add much to the game, let alone the chapter. Not much else to talk about due to how bland and boring this map is.

Chapter 23 Ranking: Meh

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Chapter 24

On paper, this map shouldn't work. The enemies are literally all the same type, Manaketes, and it's an enemy type where there's a lot of effective weapons that can deal extra damage to them. Plus this enemy type doesn't have range. So in theory, this map should suck right? 

Well, actually it does work. In fact, it works out very well. For starters, Manaketes on Hard Mode are capable to killing most of your enemies in 2 hits, which means that they're super powerful and not to be trifled with. To add to that, most of your ranged weaponry (emphasis on the word most) won't do that much damage against them so you can't trivialize Manaketes as easily as you'd think. By this point in the game you should have gotten all the Legendary Weapons, many of whom you would have had for a while now. This map's existence sort of requires the player to actively hold back and save up on the uses of their Regalia. You actually have to conserve your Legendary Weapons, which is rare for a Fire Emblem title to do.

This chapter is also AMAZING at putting pressure on the player. Thanks to how powerful Manaketes are, once you start seeing them show up behind the player and chase them, you know just how ominous and threatening that can be. And this chapter will pump out Manakete reinforcements turn after turn and they will not stop until they've caught up to you. Combine that with the fact that Manaketes are usually pretty durable (which means that killing them off in order to get to the throne is a little more challenging than one might think) and you've got yourself an interesting puzzle to solve. 

In essence, Binding Blade Chapter 24 succeeded where Conquest Chapter 19 (aka the kitsune level which I call the "Furry Genocide" chapter) failed. 

Chapter 24 Ranking: Excellent

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Final Chapter


This map doesn't really have any . It's an open map with nothing interesting to offer the player. Idunn is notorious for not being very difficult to defeat. One oddity about her is her lack of 1 - 2 range. In a game that consistently gives bosses 1 - 2 range, it's pretty strange that the final boss cannot counterattack ranged weaponry.  The only other thing to talk about is how the map will spawn Manaketes at you, which isn't good design. This map has no positives as far as I'm concerned which means that it's ranking is:

Final Chapter Ranking: Fail

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*Friendly Reminder:* This is not the final map ranking for Binding Blade. I still need to do the map rankings for the following chapters:

• 10B
• 11B
• The entire Ilia route (which is 5 chapters long)

That's a whopping 7 chapters. That's enough to potentially boost the map ranking overall for this game. Until then, here's the current ranking:

Binding Blade Map Design Totals So Far

Excellent: 6

Pretty Good: 5

Decent: 4

Meh: 7

Below Average: 4

Fail: 5