Fire Emblem Final Map Ranking Part 2

 Next on the list are the final maps that are okay: Holy War, Gaiden, Echoes, & The Verdant Wind route of Three Houses.

Holy War

What makes Holy War's final chapter stand out is that it's basically designed like an ordinary map of Holy War. Normally this would be a negative, given Holy War's controversial map design, but here it actually makes it better than the many maps in the "These Suck" tier. Each castle has its own army, and tries to do something differently. In Edda, you have a wall of status staves and ballistic siege tomes, Dozel throws a two-pronged attack of axe knights, Friege throws armored magic users, a mini boss like Hilda, and tries to attack you from behind with a bunch of bow knights.

Then you have to deal with some surprisingly powerful Pegasus Knights with Runeswords and Awareness, and then you kill Manfroy to free Julia so that she can get the awesomely powerful Book of Naga to kill Julius with. You also have to deal with Arion, who will try to capture your castle from behind, which is pretty fun.

It's a much more involved map than many of the ones on this list, which is why it's given a mid tier rank. However, it still plays like a normal Holy War map, for better or for worse. I appreciate the fact that you can't skip it, and that the focus is more on getting closer to the final boss, rather than on fighting the final boss themselves. It could be better, but it could also be so much worse. 

Gaiden / Echoes

Another example of a game with bad map design having an okay final chapter. Both maps have a lot of empty space between the player units and the enemies they need to kill, which is a typical element of Gaiden / Echoes map design. Once again, the enemies here are more or less the kind of enemies the player has had to deal with on their way here. The swamp section between them both can help bog down the pace of the chapter, since it will reduce the movement of most of your troops.  

Verdant Wind's Final Map

Despite what the tier list might suggest, Verdant Wind's final map actually goes in the mid tier, rather than the "bullshit" tier. Tier list maker didn't have an icon for all of the routes in Three Houses and since most of them suck, Verdant Wind was treated as the oddball. This map is a boss rush to get to Nemesis, but at the very least the player is required to kill the 10 Elites before they can get to Nemesis. That being said, it does lose a lot of points for being a simple swamp with enemies strewn about in a haphazard way. At least it's better than the final map of all the other routes.