Fire Emblem Final Map Ranking Part 3

And now we've gotten to the part where the final maps are bad. Because of how many of them there are, I'm going to try to summarize the issues that make them so bad:

• Making the final chapter a simple boss rush against a final boss that's comically weak: Idounn, Fomortiis, Ashnard, FE 3 Medeus, Garon, and Grima are all weak final bosses that can be defeated rather easily. The accompanying maps is basically just "get your unit to this weak boss and kill them" except getting to said boss usually doesn't take that much work or effort to get there. Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 doesn't even have enemies present during the Player Phase (except for Medeus).

• Fire Emblem 12's final map isn't a joke on the higher difficulties, but it can feel like a slog fighting through really powerful enemies if you don't employ some kind of Rescue shenanigan strategies. Medeus is definitely not a joke in 12, but it feels like you have to proc a critical hit or two, because otherwise he'll take a while to kill. All the same, it's a bad idea. 

•  Shadow Dragon is a whole two tiers below FE 1 due to the fact that higher difficulties require suicide-revival strategies revolving around Tiki. Yeah, Marth isn't even a major factor in fighting Medeus despite the fact that the entire game builds up to him doing exactly that! Plus, when people bring up Shadow Dragon's final map on the highest difficulty, ambush spawn ballista always seem to make it into the conversation. That's a recipe for disaster and fury right there.

The Bullshit Final Maps

• Three Houses Maddening Mode - Azure Moon, Crimson Flower, Silver Snow: Azure Moon, Crimson Flower, and Silver Snow's final maps on Maddening involve ludicrous stat inflation, bs skills on enemies like Miracle and Amyr being an axe that has its own version of Galeforce called "Raging Storm" that can be used up to 6 times in Crimson Flower. Does anybody actually like the Maddening mode of these maps? That's a real question too. The Fire Emblem fandom disagrees on a lot, but it seems like most people came together to agree that these maps on Maddening were straight up trash.

• Conquest 

 Conquest Fans: "Conquest has a tough, but fair difficulty."

Also Conquest Fans: "Conquest Lunatic Endgame is bullshit!"

It's strange how Conquest is lauded as being a "fair" difficulty, and yet many of the fans of this game will also say that Conquest Lunatic Endgame is bullshit without seeing the contradiction. Out of curiosity, has anyone beaten the final map of Conquest Lunatic without rescue cheesing or using a Vantage Sorcerer build? I'm curious to see if that's possible, because as of now those are the only two strategies I can think of that actually work toward beating this map.

And that's the main problem: Conquest Lunatic Endgame makes normal play either impossible, or close to it. Like Birthright and Revelation, you can't save on this map so if you restart, you have to replay the previous map which is a monumentally dumb decision. Quite a few enemies have Inevitable End combined with the Enfeeble staff, Staff Savant, and Hidden Weapons so your characters get debuffed into oblivion. By Turn 5 the enemies on the map will have you locked down in a pincer formation, which further makes the map extremely unfun to deal with. A well designed endgame map shouldn't require strategies this specific to beat it. 

In Summation: These maps suck mostly because the final bosses are poorly designed, and these levels rely way too much on fighting said final boss. As mentioned before, the best designed final chapters are the ones that focus less on the final boss, and more on how to get to said final boss.