Berwick Saga Map Design Review Part 1: Analyzing The First Chapter of the Game

 Yesterday I beat Berwick Saga for the second time. I think I have a good enough idea of how the game plays where I can start reviewing the map design. So here we go...

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 of Berwick Saga gets my vote for being the best designed first chapter of the Fire Emblem / Fire Emblem adjacent games. Instead of getting to play with only three units or less, you get a total of nine units to start out with. This increases the number of potential strategies and ways to play the game.

What separates this map from the other first chapters is that this map has two different turtle disincentives. The first comes from the fact that your healer Izerna and your fighter, Dean, start out at the opposite end of the map. Since Berwick Saga uses hexagons instead of squares for its grid, there are six potential spaces from which to attack someone at 1 range. This means that protecting your healer is significantly harder to do. If you want to keep your healer alive, you need to send some troops over to her fast. Fun fact, there's another route at the top of the map where you can send your troops around to get to your healer on the other side.

Another turtle disincentive comes in the form of two enemies that drop 1,000 gold each if they die. These enemies will try to run away from you, and will permanently leave the map if you let them. So that makes for two turtle disincentives on the first chapter of the game! That's incredible!

Near the start of the map is a tanky mini boss named Bernard that will be preventing you from moving toward the middle of the map. It takes a little bit of time to kill him and you'll definitely need Ward, the Jagen of the group, to finish him off. There's also a fun side objective near the boss in the form of a village with a question mark. Any unit who enters there will participate in a pre-scripted battle where your character will win, and they'll be rewarded with a neat little item. 

To finish off, I'd like to quote the Berwick Saga map design thread on reddit:

So, to recap. On the first freaking map of the game we have:

• Multiple bosses.
• Good map layout with 2 avenues of approach.
• Good checkpoint abuse by the enemy forces.
• 2 "timed" side objectives (one including recruitable characters) that use everything at a player's disposal.

Thank you based Kaga.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/3ft275/berwick_saga_map_design_thread_chapter_1/

Berwick Saga's first chapter gets a 10 / 10. 

Rating: Excellent!