Fire Emblem has some pretty terrible final levels
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2022
- Local man analyzes why the endgames for a lot of fe games are bad, particularly the one from the blue lions route of 3 houses.
Reploid's ltc: • FE12 H4 0% Growth rAAA...
Blue lions ltc: • Fire Emblem Three Hous...
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I’m gonna be that guy and tell you that “penultimate” means “second to last,” and you're just looking for “ultimate.”
Oops, my bad lol
@@5Points youre not alone
Penultimate just sounds cooler 😔
Hi zoran love your videos
@@5Points tbf Thracia has shown they are even worse at making penultimate levels.
One thing I really like is when Fire Emblem endgames are like 'okay, if you get here you deserve to beat the game, no matter how trash your party is. It will be very difficult, but it's possible.'
FE6 doesn't give you the real endgame unless you have the tools to handle it, and even a Roy on 0% growths with no statboosters can take the final boss with the right strategy -- staves, dancing, and supports.. FE7 gives you Athos, who can solo the map even if your party is a 0% growth with a bunch of scrubs.
The final boss, the fire Dragon is also miles ahead of Medeus and Idunn. If we ignore that you can cheese it with Luna, it finds the sweet spot where you can't one shot it in one turn, nor you need to only bring one guy that can hurt it. All your lords are given legendary weapons and the rest of the squad are given brand new, highest grade weapons as well, so in the end it's a team effort where everyone does their part to defeat the final obstacle
@@M4x_P0w3r a shame Hector is the only lord who doesn’t cripple himself by using his legendary weapon.
Eliwood needs capped speed and two body rings to double the dragon with the Durandal. The Sol Katti murders Lyn’s speed, making it harder for even her to double. Her damage is also a complete piss take, even with capped strength, which let’s be real here, won’t happen anytime soon with Lyn
@@kone7549Nah, a Lyn with capped speed can deal a lot of damage to the dragon and will double it.
And fe fates conquest endgame on lunatic is just ridiculous
11:15
Imagine getting a crit and STILL NOT KILLING INGRID FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GAIN A POINT IN STRENGTH!!!!
RNGanesha stomping on your dreams
XD
Strength Is the only thing I can complain about Ingrid. She saved my ass during the final chapter. Alert stance +, Sword avoid and the chalice of beginnings... She had 99-100% avoid. The only threat for her were some enemy units with some battalions that increased accuracy
bro just get her the strength boost from brigand or from anna's secret shop
6:46 playing the blue lions finally map makes you realize how accurate fallen edelgard in heroes is
At least when you play on Maddening. The map isn't that hard on normal and hard.
its not all that difficult on hard at all, I haven't seen it on maddening yet, but in hard and normal, edelgard has terrible hit rate, plus she can't attack the same character twice, and for some reason, she always went for dimitri on at least one of them, just keep your healers out of her range
@@krimsonkatt I spent about *three weeks* trying to beat it on Maddening. Literally nothing worked for me based on my builds. I eventually lowered the difficulty to Hard and I was trampling everyone. So frustrating.
@@MsRegPhalange It took me 4 hours of uninterrupted gameplay to beat it, at turn 97. I almost lost by turn count lmao. The worst thing are all the siege mages, because I didn't knew about the distant counter batallion at the time...
if they basically just ported her with no concern for balancing, why did they even bother nerfing veld, gharnef and the guy from fe8 that is called but not referred to as fomortiis? was it because their games weren't as profitable or something?
and on that note, why does flyon's blood tome tome work as a tome (closer to demon light than anything else he could have besides demon light, i'm not accepting some slightly darker naglfar bullshit) but have ravager's animation
I remember overpreparing so badly for Awakening's final boss,And then getting told that i shouldn't defeat the enemies and instead focus on defeating the main guy...Only to kill him in a single turn.
Same with the final boss of Sacred Stones,Ross just absolutely wrecked him.
Aether is op.
@@Alb410 Nah Gale Force
The final boss was Aversa’s paralogue
@@Sh1ranu1 priam's
My Ross dies to the final boss because I forgot to equip Garm. :/
I played Blue Lions maddening 0 death using only the Blue Lion house units so basically I had no warper. The final map was a NIGHTMARE and I had to retry again and again god only knows how many times before winning. Even defeating Edelgard was pure luck because if my Dimitri didn't crit with his 18% crit rate I would've lost the battle and without any warper reaching Edelgard takes years.
DUDE yeah my sylvain had a 36% to beat the map or have me reset. It all came down to luck and he did it but goddamn
Stride battalion?
@@disgustof-riley8338 too many long range enemy attackers and the way to reach the boss is filled with walls and narrow entrances and winding and blocked roads to reach there
Ah yes, the 97-turn nightmare, how could I ever forget.
@@bryanyap3888 distant counter batallion? (or chalice if you have dlc) it kinda trivializes most of the game as every siege mage gets one shotted by a trained dimitri without a crit
ngl I actually kinda like the last two chapters of FE6 because of how they work from a story perspective. Chapter 24's gimmick of Jahn telling you a new piece of information as a reward for clearing each individual segment of the map is way more interesting than having one giant exposition dump and while Idunn is a pathetically easy final boss, the choice to have Roy rehabilitate her instead of just killing her adds a lot to his character. They're not something I'd go out of my way to access if I played FE6 again but I still think they have their own unique charm.
Also, good video as always
Yeah I think it's good from a story and presentation perspective but the gameplay can get stale quickly if you don't like hallways
fe6's endgame in general was weird
zephiel as a final boss was kinda wimpy, but then they remembered that they forgot about idunn so they made her the final boss, but then they remembered that they also forgot about some purple haired prick so they made her a miniboss in boss's clothing, but then they remembered that they also also forgot to dump exposition so they got a manakete to do it in an admittedly pretty acceptable way, and by the time roy's boys finally got to fight the emo girl (who was easy, i wouldn't be surprised if she was rusty) i already developed trust issues and was expecting zephiel's racism to bring him back from the dead or something
it drags on for way longer than it should because there were still too many loose threads
also you had to drag a chicken around for idunn's fight, not sure what that's about
"i can fix her"
except she actually got fixed
I think that Azure moons final level is really good on normal and hard. But it’s unplayable on maddening
I’m sorry but your profile picture is FERDIGUN VON AEGIR
to be fair, most of three houses is unplayable on maddening
@@ihaveakirbyobessesion2617 nah, BL is a special type of hell on Maddening. 2 Meteor/Bolting units every turn that attack the same turn they show up. Only Maddening map that actually made me go wtf were they thinking
Agreed. I had to cheese the fuck out of it by using dimitris 96% crit build and the chalice of beginnings, which always lets you counterattack wherever you are. You can’t use it on edlegard but all those fucking mages u can
Ok this is just not true lol
yeah like a few people have said, i think they were trying to aim for most FE final bosses to be "victory laps" where your broken ass units just mop the floor with every enemy, and they wanted you to feel like your broken ass unit was SUPER broken, hence why some final maps feel as though the enemy has such a huge advantage over you. and in some cases, you destroy them, but in most, you get destroyed. I guess they just tunnel visioned way too hard on that
I really liked the Verdant Wind final map. But when compared to the others, it’s a little less? Idk AM and CF had so much crazy stuff going on that made VW so much more tame.
Yah. Honestly from what I remember it was the range and movement of these opponents that made it somewhat challenging, but after that it was all about group up to take out opponents. Not that intense at all.
Tbh my way of making it feel a bit more crazy and fun, is that only a unit with the crest of a dead lord is allowed to kill that Deadlord. Just makes the fight more interesting because then you have to pay attention to how you move your units around the map.
@@Hoovinoyse But what if they've fallen prior?
My personal favourite is the final map of Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.
With two groups to manage from each side of the map while facing of every type of enemies you have encountered during the game was already a great challenge but if you add the potential dialogues Sonya can have with her family members, it instantly turn into one of my favourite finale in any game I have played.
Ah yes, the map with swamp in the middle (reduce mov to 1) of the path you need to cross, with Moguls (enemies that are speedy, hit hard, and can multiply if you don’t kill them fast enough, and are flying so swamp doesn’t affect their mov), infinitely spawning witches (magic users that teleport to the farthest enemy unit, your backline usually, in a game where res is the lowest stat on average. Also they fly lol), Jedah (boss unit who’s immune to damage the first two attacks lol), three boss witches, and Duma chipping you every three or four turns.
Let’s not kid ourselves that Echoes had good maps since they straight up ripped them from its original game which means they kept most of the BS. Hilariously, it’s not even the worst map, but it was pretty annoying
I won’t deny tho that the music and having to use Alm to deliver the killing blow made this final map feel like an epic final map
@@Ritsu362 Pretty much this. Echoes maps sucked, but the game in general still felt great in moments like the actual fight with Duma. Echoes is basically the biggest "Style over substance" game in the series.
@@Yarharsuperpirate I kinda prefer Rudolph’s map. The music is so good on both, but at least Rudolph isn’t filled with too much bs. Duma’s map also has everyone giving a one-liner, which some being really badass. Twilight of the gods is also a classic, both the original and the Echoes version.
Even tho I mentioned all the gimmicks in Dumas map, it actually doesn’t feel as bad since you’d already dealt with all of that cheese in previous maps so it’s actually pretty manageable. But fuck the swamp tiles
Oh that level was painful
@@Ritsu362 All of the obstacles you've cited do not contradict the initial comment in any way, besides Duma's Upheavel. They are all challenges that are included through the entire game; if you've reached the final map you should've learned how to deal with them individually, and then it requires you to put that knowledge to test to clear them in tandem. If you like the sort of challenge that is presented throughout the game it's easily one of the most satisfying climaxes in the franchise. Your issue with "BS" seems to be entirely based around the fact that they just maintained the overall difficulty of the map, even though it is much easier to navigate thanks to the fact your units are generally on a whole other level of strength in Echoes when compared to Gaiden.
I still think radiant dawn has the best endgame of the series. It's my favorite.
I agree, though maybe it's a bit unfair since it's split into like 5 parts haha
I actually really liked the final level of Azure Moon, but I can see why people would find it frustrating and unfair
This was a really entertaining video, keep up the good work
It's definitely not frustrating or unfair on normal and hard mode. Only the ambush spawns on maddening make this map a nightmare if you're not prepared in advance.
@@l.n.3372 I would agrue Eldgard's lpmg range attacks are rather unfun. I couldn't use my mages because they were always at risk of death via a crit or where two shot so half of my team was forced back. But yes those ambush spawns suckkk
@@pizzahutkidman8806
On maddening mode, Hegemon Edelgard long ranged attacks are definitely a threat to mages, and healers. But I've never had a problem with them on hard mode. Her damage is lower on hard and her accuracy is much worse. But in maddening, any complaints about Hegemon Edelgard would be fair, because her stats have been hugely buffed in this mode.
@@l.n.3372 Agreed. On hard Edelgard's accuracy is garbage. Missed my units every time. You shouldn't judge an FE game's difficulty by the highest setting. Best to judge based on "hard mode" for FE8 onwards minus FE10, as that tends to be the "standard" mode as difficulty is concerned. Rating the difficulty of three houses by maddening mode would be like judging the difficulty of Shadow Dragon overall by the difficulty of Hard Mode 5 or Awakening by Lunatic+, which are both neigh impossible. If you're curious here is how difficulty evolved in the FE series:
FE1: No difficulty option. The switch port added Turn Rewind from FE15 and later, though this time it is unlimited but can only rewind turns, not actions.
FE2: No difficulty option. Contained a forced softlock if you screwed up enough.
FE3: No difficulty option, contained a bad ending in Book 2 if you didn't meet certain requirements.
FE4: No difficulty option.
FE5: No difficulty option, brutally difficult.
FE6: First game to have difficulty options. Normal mode which is the standard difficulty and hard mode which is much more challenging. Also contained a bad ending if you didn't meet certain requirements.
FE7: Contained 6 modes/difficulties. Lyn Normal, Lyn Hard, Eliwood Normal, Eliwood Hard, Hector Normal, and Hector Hard. Lyn Normal was the tutorial while Lyn Hard was just the tutorial maps without hand holding. Eliwood and Hector modes were the real game, with hard mode making the game harder and including terrain changes along with buffed stats. Eliwood and Hector stories were slightly different and we're from different perspectives, with Hector's story being slightly harder. Extra content plus a secret ending was locked behind Hector mode.
FE8: The first out of 3 games to have different difficulty in the western release than in the original JP release. In Japan the difficulties were normal, hard, and lunatic but in the US Lunatic Mode was removed and replaced with Easy Mode which added heavy handholding and tutorials for the entire game.
FE9: Similar to FE8, the difficulties were changed based on reigon. In JP there was Normal, Hard, and Maniac while in the US there was only Easy, Normal, and Hard.
FE10: Unlike FE8 and FE9, only the names of the difficulties were changed, not the actual content of them. In Japan there was normal, hard, and lunatic, while in the US release normal was "easy mode," hard was "normal mode," and lunatic was "hard mode."
FE11: Contained 2 difficulties, normal and hard. However, hard mode had multiple "levels," going from Hard 1 to Hard 5, Hard 5 bring one of the toughest challenges in the series.
FE12: A more traditional difficulty system was used, being Normal Hard and Lunatic like in earlier games. Like with the original FE3 there was a bad ending if certain requirements were not met. Introduced Casual Mode which removed permadeath.
FE13: There were 4 difficulties, Normal, Hard, Lunatic, and Lunatic+. Lunatic+ was only unlocked after beating the game once.
FE14: Contained Normal, Hard, and Lunatic as well as Casual, Classic, and the new Phoenix mode which made all your units invincible. Phoenix Mode never returned after this game.
FE15: Normal and Hard mode only, no Lunatic. First game to feature Turn Rewind.
FE16: Base game included only Normal and Hard with turn rewind. Updates added in Maddening Mode with was a renamed Lunatic Mode and a DLC sidestory which was significantly harder than the main game.
@@krimsonkatt
Most FE games and tier lists are made on the hardest difficulty in games where hard mode IS the hardest difficulty. So, things like Binding Blade, etc would be ranked on hard over normal when it only has hard and normal. But separate lists exist for normal too.
Maddening is different because 3H hard mode is not considered anywhere near a true hard mode. Compare Conquest hard to 3H hard mode, and 3H hard mode feels like a normal mode, and 3H normal mode feels like easy mode. That's why it's silly to judge things like Hegemon Edelgard in hard vs her in maddening. She's a minor inconvenience in hard mode. But a legitimate boss threat in maddening.
While Three Houses has the awful Azure Moon and Silver Snow final maps, it also has the Verdant Wind final map, which is phenomenal in my opinion. If only the 10 Elites had unique face portraits it’d be a 10/10
Yeah I agree, I actually quite like the golden deer finale, great ost and fun map gimmick without being too much. I haven't played silver snow but from would I've heard the miracle spam is out of this world.
It's not as bad as azure moon's since there isn't infinite reinforcement (well, there are, but you can permanently halt them very soon by completing a side objective) but miracle spam is still annoying asf
Oh god, Frenzied Rhea brings back memories of my Only Mage Hard Mode SS Run... not even on Classic, and still my team got wiped within the first 6 turns
Silver snow's is nowhere near as bad, still sucks tho
That maps definitely the best final map in 3H. Also I like the Deadlords so of course I like this one
I'd argue Radiant Dawn had a pretty good end game...minus the fact the final boss can regain all their hp if you finish them off with anyone but Ike
My favourite final level from any fire emblem is probably the final chapter of radiant dawn. Most fire emblem final bosses are just big enemy with big stats, but the final boss of radiant dawn actually forces you to think about positioning and how to use each unit to take full advantage of the dragons abilities, terrain bonuses and the herons multi-dances in order to take out the auras efficiency while keeping everyone alive, as opposed to something like the demon king from fe8 which is just “gang up on the boss with legendary weapons”. The only part about it I don’t like is how you have to land the final hit with Ike. I wish they had gone with something like fe6 where if you land the final hit with your lord you get the true ending or something, but it’s a small issue in overall, especially compared to most final levels.
I'm pretty sure that you need to kill idunn with Roy and keep Fae alive to get the true ending and it has to be with the binding blade so yeah I think fe6 did do that
Ashera is so cool! Say it loud!
I was surprised at how good it actually was to play revisiting FE10. Though tbh I felt that way for the game as a whole by the end
My main problem with 3H is that there's no middle difficulty between Hard and Maddening. Hard is way TOO EASY. In all routes. To the point I have beaten several runs between all playthroughs with barely any characters at all or just Byleth. Hard mode is way too easy like to even call it "the normal difficulty". Maybe sometimes your units double less and require more speed, but that's about it. You see yourself doubling less with steel weapons but that's about it.
And then there's Maddening difficulty. which is an extremely ridiculous jump from hard mode no matter how you see it. Especially at the start. Just the start of a Maddening run alone is already enough to make me not want to play one. Was Maddening difficulty even play tested at all? The jumps in stats are tremendous, the reinforcements move in the same turn, including Death knight. Something that should of been in hard mode. And lots of times, I didn't feel like Maddening mode was satisfactory to play. It just felt like it was way harder because it was simply supposed to. And this is coming from someone who tried to play Lunatic+ runs.
If in a game like this one I see myself sometimes having to use a little bugs and glitches like gaining infinite xp through dancers, the infinite months glitch or the overflow bug with Renown at the altar just to even have a slip of a chance starting timeskip, then I don't think it's a well done difficulty. Of course, I'm not a great player and I can just try to always strategize with the same battalions and builds and more. But if I need to constantly be following CZcams guides to even be able to beat a map without major casualtys trying for hours then as a player, I just don't want to. It doesn't feel fun. Or rewarding. Maddening AM Hegemon Edelgard felt immensely frustrating. But that's it. I didn't feel a real satisfaction worth for it.
In 3H, you either play super easily in hard mode or you stop enjoying the game at times in maddening difficulty. There's no real I'm between. You can choose Casual instead of classic and New game plus but that's about it. I think a lot of players would of gotten a better experience with 3H and it's final boss maps with a better suited difficulty. Not just me.
I both disagree and agree with you. The first 3 chapters are admittedly too hard as well as the first timeskip level though admittedly it's nice once you know how to tackle it. The final level I actually had an issue with in this game was the Church route.
So there are a few guidelines to make maddening really fun and rewarding and ill leave them below if you want to beat maddening.
BUT while I love maddening I have to agree with you on the difficulty spike. Hard should have been a bit more challenging but I would keep maddening where it is. They should have added a better tutorial to give you the right tools to beat the game and then the players strategy would determine if you beat the game. Also this game is guilty of lots of suprise ambushes.
In maddening there are a lot of untold rules like:
1. Everyone but mages must have a secondary bow weapon regardless of class.
2. Never use seminars and never use rest. Start every month with explore and battle at the end of the month and ideally alternate but in terms of three week months just explore once and battle twice.
3. Have at least one person be an assasin as a 'dodge tank' (ashe, petra, bernie, claude, felix, yuri) and have them win the dance competition and give them the sword avoid ability and personally I never use the dancer class.
4. Have at least one 'tank tank' which I will say the untold champion is surprisingly my least liked character, Ignatz. Make him a fortress knight and feed him all the talismans and with his natural high dex and resistance stats he makes a very competent total tank for both def and res all while being accurate.
5.Use rings and not shields unless they're a special shield like felix's or Ferdinand's.
6. Give everyone a battalion of some sort and do quests to unlock really good battalions.
7. Always recruite Lorenz for his relic staff and either use Lorenz as a mage or give it to one of your mages.
8. Master classes are like side-grades to advance classes. I typically avoid the classes with horses because horse mobility isn't good in this game and classes with horses typically give you lower stats in favor of extra mobility which I said isn't good with horses in this game due to stairs and terrain. Also keep your sword people in advanced. Only Master classes worth while are Falcon Knight, Wyvern Lord, Dark Knight (horse but it's saved by lorenz mage staff), war master, and gremory. Other than those keep everyone in advanced classes and they'll be better off.
At the end of my maddening game I typically have: 15 people (3 adjutants w/ blocking): 3 flyers, 1 or 2 archers(if using 2 archers keep one at sniper for the class combat art hunters volley and maybe one as bow knight or another sniper), 1 fortress knight (tank tank), 1 assasin (dodge tank), 1 or 2 brawlers, 2 mages, 1 healer (it helps if mages can heal too) and maybe either a sword master or an ax wielding war master making sure to use its combat art.
NG+ makes Maddening actually a more reasonable challenge, because you can give the game the finger back by just having units start with QR and like Vantage-Wrath Dimitri.
Honestly, I think maddening was primarily intended to be played with New game+, and if you wanted to torture yourself you'd get a different menu as a reward.
Honestly, Maddening isn't all that difficult. The problem is is that it basically plays like a completely different game to Hard and Normal. Maddening would've been a reasonable jump in difficulty if it explained anything about its mechanics to you.
I didn't discover Vengeance, vanwrath, point blank volley, how strong grappler was, linked attacks, guard adjutants being busted, etc etc until long after I quit playing this game. The best tools... aren't explained. It's very funny.
I completely agree, I don't think this game was playtested at all.
@@Petpinetree777 If you have to take advantage of "untold rules" just to get by in a difficulty/game, then it's not well designed.
There's a reason why games like the soulsborne series are so well coveted. Their difficulty is high, but at no point does it feel unfair, and every tool given to you, is useable in some way, all within the confines of the game, zero need to follow player made rules to survive.
@@Sintagon I do agree in that it's a different game. Some characters completely change.
*Vantage Wrath Vengeance Bernie with Guard adjutant gang*
Since let's be honest, no one on earth is going to use Cyril and Dedue for Vengeance. Let alone train them in lances to begin with. Don't remember if they get Vantage Batallion either, Dedue is useless for a chunk of AM anyways and when he comes back it's really hard to use him on some of those last maps. Bernie's kit and weapon strengths are overall very nice for maddening and she's available on all routes. She's easier to set up earlier for Vantage builds, as she has both Bow and Lances to do it. Bows on maddening are a must anyway.
I think part of the reason FE endgames are unsatisfying has to do with scaling. One of the most enjoyable aspects of Fire Emblem is developing your team of companions and gradually seeing your roster become more powerful as the game progresses. However, this is very difficult to balance. As the player unlocks more options, skills, and items, a skillful player can generally outscale the enemy units, and in many games, assemble some pretty broken stuff. In the early game, enemies typically pose a reasonable challenge and there is a good dramatic tension because the player has to use their resources efficiently to survive. However, by the endgame, the player will have overpowered units and it becomes increasingly impossible to challenge the player without simply making it unfair. So endgames either end up being disappointingly trivial (you don't want the player to lose at the narrative climax of the game) or frustratingly hard (enemies that are stupidly broken to actually pose a challenge). One of the weaker aspects of the series for sure but by no means a unique problem to Fire Emblem.
I’m assuming that you were talking about Azure Moon on Maddening cause I played on hard classic and definitely didn’t feel pressured that much by Edelgard or feel like I needed Battalion Vantage Wrath. Didn’t even know about that combo when I first played lol. Though tbh it’s still a pretty bullshit map.
I do wonder how you feel about FE3’s final map though. Since it’s just a room there,would you use the last two maps?
Tbh Fire Emblem may not be good at making final levels most of the time. But even so I like a lot of them and theyre satisfying enough for me cause Fire Emblem is great making them feel epic even if they’re not good. So I’m interested in seeing what you think about FE4’s final map. The most satisfying Fire Emblem map for me period.
Also Meet The Deadlords should be a spin off
Edelgard wasn't really an issue for me either, but the thing is on Maddening you're sh*ting bricks when two of your less evasive units get low on health and she starts chucking boulders. You can only pick a god and pray to rng at that point, and is likely why Dedue's Defense is so absurdly high.
On Maddening you're going to see that chaos an awful lot along with all that bs you're familiar with amplified, so you'll need find ways to take advantage of her aggro mechanic.
I agree with the Thracia final level. I also really like the FE11 final level, even if the spawns are a bit bogus along side the fact that it can be warp skipped easily.
I actually don't mind the fe11 spawns besides the ballisticians
I've recently completed yet another regular conquest run and this time around i did faced the endgame without rescuechain strats, and it does make me wonder if the chapter would've been received better if you didn't had to replay CH27 everytime you want to take another shot at it, because while it is a considerable difficulty spike, it does make a great job and putting general game knowledge to the test, with overlapping ranges from the enfeeble maids (and the use of silence to counterplay them), encouragement to play at a decent pace without being as unforgiving as FE12's endgame and the importance of reclassing and skill gathering becomes more relevant here than ever since it is a point where raw stats alone won't cut it.
Yeah I'd probably try something other than rescue strats if it wasn't such a hassle.
I agree that Blue Lions endgame is absolutely stupid on maddening, but there is little more I despise then Silver Snow's endgame it has it all:
1: Several White beasts that can one round most trained units and can fly with 1-2 range
2: The start of the battle that has all units surrounded by pretty serious enemies including the annoying white beasts
3: Several enemies that take forever to kill because of multiple health bars, of note are the golems with like 1-3 range and immunity to magic with their shield up, and require a very particular strategy to not loose units killing them.
4: Miracle - the worst enemy ability ever and this map is chalk full of enemies rocking this ability, all the white beast carry it and the boss carries it for 3 of her 4 health bars. Miracle is terrible since it all comes down to luck, even with strats like wrath and vantage units and on maddening, the luck stats on enemies is obnoxiously high so attacks must be done with the assumption that a miracle proc will activate.
4: The boss - while she lacks the stupid range of Edelgard, Rhea manages to become more annoying in multiple ways. First by requiring all white beast be killed and prevented from spawning since she will be fully healed otherwise. Second, once the stronghold is taken she goes into a second phase which boosts all her stats and make her use her AOE all the time so units cannot attack close together. And the worst part of all: her abilities. On top of getting vantage, Rhea also gets miracle combined with a luck stat of 51 in second form, miracle is almost certainly going to proc when taking her down.
Obviously all of this doesn't make it impossible, I've done it several times, but it really forces the player to play in a very specific manner and does not do a good job notifying them of such a challenge in enough time unless they know beforehand.
Apologies for the rant, I've been thinking on it for a while, very impressive video though I love hearing about other FE games!
as someone who was badly prepared for AM’s final map on my most recent try - dimitri couldn’t kill, my vanwrath dedue had bad hitrates, no good dodge tank - plus, i was doing a “no upgrading divine pulse” challenge - i loved the final map. it took an obscene amount of tries but honestly it was super strategic and really rewarding to complete. finishing that map might just have been the most fun i’ve ever had in fe3h, and one of my fondest memories in gaming.
Tbh, I didn't find the blue lions final map too bad on Hard Mode - but Maddening Mode was sooo not playtested at all before release lol.
You know Revelations is bad almost everyone knows that but the endgame was pretty solid in my opinion.
The gimmicks mean you’ll never reach it
I find that a lot of final levels in FE games are either really overtuned or really undertuned in difficulty. Even the ones I would consider good don't entirely escape this issue, such as Veld being a wimp despite the chapter itself being a great way to end Thracia.
I'd say that the games with the fairest challenge of an endgame (and therefore, are the best) are Echoes and Blazing Blade. They both have really tough enemies and you could totally lose units if you make mistakes, but neither of them feel unfair or force you to trivialize them, and the final bosses won't one-round units like Medeus or get one-rounded like Idunn. I would have put PoR here too if Maniac Mode didn't exist.
Ultimately, endgames that are too easy like Binding Blade or Sacred Stones feel underwhelming due to a lack of challenge, and endgames like Shadow Dragon or Blue Lions feel underwhelming due to forcing you to use cheese strats because they're borderline impossible to play "legit"
Good video!
Though I think I'd really like to see you unpack the Why for these games having poor endgames.
In my opinion, fire emblem Late Game tends to generally have worse designed chapters, but then Thracia is an example in the other direction.
I think Stat caps play a sneaky role in giving the designers more insight into "What can we expect the player to have" when it comes to later levels. Thracia is a game with so many tools that aren't related to your stats, so the designers can create more fun and rewarding challenges that don't hinge on you having a 55 STR Dimitri by endgame. Three houses gives the player the widest pool of units and weapon types and build options but that means the devs have no idea what "the player" truly has by chapter 23, so you get a map that's generically challenging and doesn't tickle your creative gamer brain. Would love to see more on this topic
Good video I had some trouble with the final battle of azure moon but I got through it after like 1 attempt. Surprisingly, edelgards throw move did 0 damage to half my units so yeah lol.
I don't know what changes 12 made to the framework of 3 as I've not played New Mystery, but original 3's final chapter I felt was excellent. Yes, you only have two turns before the earth dragons start spawning in - but the Fire Emblem will banish them at the start of every player phase. They are ambush spawns, so you have to survive them every enemy phase, but this isn't hard to do. You also have the all-powerful Again/Anew staff which gives EVERYONE except the caster a second action on the same turn, and if you bring Feena you can dance the caster and do it a second and even third time if needed, though I'm sure 12 nerfed that. Either way, you have all the tools at your disposal to control the situation... at least, again, in the original version on FE3.
In 12 more than just earth dragons spawn in so the banishing effect of the binding shield is pretty much nullified, and the again staff can only target one unit
@@5Points thanks new mystery, once again you prove you don't understand what made original mystery a great game. lol
Cool video as always. Good analysis and a good review of the history of the series!
Lots of good design lessons to be learned from your analysis.
Blue lions end game is just edelgard on a throne with a sniper rifle
I really never found the blue lions ending that hard. I've always found Edelgard to be highly inaccurate and she didn't one round a single on of my units that I can remember.
"The fact that Thracia's final map is good proves that IS is capable of doing good final maps."
Counter argument: If after 15+ games they only have one or two exceptional final maps are they really capable of doing so or did they just get lucky instead?
Kaga left after fe 5 so that also has something to do with it
As someone with one of, if not, the longest three houses series on the platform, I can definitely attest to the absurdities that game likes to throw at its player...
Though I didn’t actually struggle as much with the final chapters as much as I did a couple paralogues and some key story missions, the worst likely being Maddening/Classic Battle of Gronder Field and the Sleeping Sand Legend... Maddening on those maps really felt like how much crap can we throw at the player...
I remember the Battle of Gronder Field, put my tankier units forward, keep the weaker ones behind. Surprise, Sylvain is an out of nowhere ambush spawn from behind who’s just killed some of my units. Next attempt, put some of my tankiest units forward and behind, frail ones stay in the middle, get pranked Sylvain has Pass for whatever dumb reason (which is the exclusive budding talent of Bernadetta...) so he just waltzes past my wall and casually shreds my frailer units. Another go, this time I fill up every possible tile he could pass into (Awakening Lunatic+/Classic strats) so I can force him to fight Claude who only had a smidge of health, and has Vantage, Wrath, Defiant Crit, Close Counter, to act first and have a 100% crit rate and with his super stronk bow of Failnaught. I think Sylvain lived with like 1HP if I recall...
I swear Three Houses has caused me more pain than I care to admit...
the final map of azure moon was torture for me I spent 2 hours on the map repeating and testing all the time luckily I had many divine pulses but here it is simply torture 1. you have to kill the broken mages 2. get rid of the edelgard elite troop 3. put a unit on the door to avoid reinforcements 4. pray to the one above that edelgard does not critical hit, you Although the map was entertaining and more so with the music for a new FE player, this map is a crime even more than the FE7 one
IMO, I think that Divine Pulse does give enough leeway for Edelgard's unlimited range thing to not be that bad, you just gotta be more patient than you are in other maps.
Although the only other final maps I've played are Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind so idk.
I feel like radiant dawn's final map is kinda slept on. It plays out like a puzzle with how to position all of your units when fighting the auras.
The issue with Blue Lion's final stage goes beyond being unfair. With the dreaded split paths and choke point corridors on top of absurd amount of enemy units and reinforcement, *it simply doesn't feel like a final showdown.* Instead, it's just another indoor castle map where a boss lazily snipes you from the throne room while you have to wade through mooks and avoid artillery. It's beyond tedious and rob me of any sense of final battle. By the point that I finally get into the throne room, I no longer care if Edelgard has become a Hegamon superdemon monster or whatever, I just want to mow her down and get it over with.
Then you've got that one asshole with Bohr on the right side of the map. At least on Normal, the left side is relatively safe since there isn't anything with Bohr (to my knowledge).
Can't really speak for higher difficulties though.
I actually gave up on my azure moon maddening run at endgame. Didn't help that I somehow missed the dancer competition so I have no dancer :)
Also lunatic conquest endgame is SO STRESSFUL
Honestly my big “fuck this final map” was The final map of crimson flower cuz even though a lot of my units were fliers, the Ambush spawn Falcon knights one rounded anybody who just happened to be in range and they came way to quick for me to be able to kill things in front of me while dealing with the hell in back of me.
Never did finish in on maddening and I don’t think I ever will.
Those FK were SO ANNOYING OMGGG
the ambush spawn fliers only appear once you defeat ashe and gilbert and then again once you go past the stairs to get to the level that Rhea is on, which by that point you should be completely out of the ambush range, it’s stupid tedious and annoying to do though, quite like the rest of three houses mechanics lol
@@ebongatseabong202 no???
I’ve tried my hand at turtiling that map and they always came at around turn 3 and is the sole reason I refuse to touch that rpute
@@The_Pyromaniac_MageWolf even if you don’t think I’m right, you can always look it up on the wiki : )
I actually had to change the game's difficulty to causal after trying for hours to combat the fliers. I'd get a good chunk into it and then the falcon knights would come in at all sides with their huge range and take my units out. It was so frustrating.
I liked your video! I def agree that fire emblem has had some very…interesting final maps lol. Hope to see more from you in the future!
One more time Rev just stays winning
I like that you take the perspective of a player who plays the game for the first time into perspective. I remember playing Radiant Dawn for the first time and packing all my favorite units into the endgame slots. The game gives you a warning that you should give the characters your best weapons so I packed their inventory full because I figured I wouldn't be able to do so once I started endgame. Well lo and behold, you can only use the weapon currently equipped during the whole endgame! Something I did not know, so I had quite a few duds on my team but was too thick-headed to restart the whole endgame.
It took me forever to beat endgame and honestly, the struggle kinda ruined it for me. Replaying the game I would surely make sure to equip the right weapons, lol.
I disagree that FE6's final chapter discourages movement tech. Indeed, I'd argue that it encourages it. Because it's a hallway, moving your units forward one at a time will make your slower units fall behind by 2 squares every turn, and rescuing can fix that. It also lets you pick Roy up off a throne to keep moving forward. It's not *necessary* per say, but it is encouraged.
Edit: Another thing to note is that IIRC Edelgard ALWAYS goes for Dimitri with at least one of her attacks, so while she has two attacks, it's not as though she can gang up on one of your units by herself.
I’ve only seen the azure moon one and the only issue I personally see about it is how the boss can hit you from across the map.
I don't really remember how the battle played out, but I definitely never used battalion skills or any kind of warp cheese for the blue lions final chapter. I'm pretty sure I just kept squishy units out of her range until she stopped her bombardment and then killed all the other units on the map before going after her.
I actually like the Blue Lions ending. But Crimson Flowers ending is one I absolutely adore
6:25 The music. I played this map on Hard as a second playthrough because I didn’t think I was ready for Maddening yet, so I didn’t find it annoying at all, it was a nice step up in challenge from the previous maps, and a great conclusion. It helps when Edelgard always targets Dimitri and has a 4% hit rate.
Ok just finished my first run of blue lions and my god...I thought I was the only one that thought the final map sucked. I used all 10 (11?) dragon pulses and even though my team was OP af swarms of mages with meteor would kick Dimitri's ass & kill him from 20 spaces away. Until Ashe could reach, my team was essentially screwed and out in the open and eventually I gave up and let Annette, Ingrid and Shamir (WHO WAS SO TERRIBLE BTW, WORST UNIT EVER USED) die and said fuck it bc i wanted to get it over with and Dimitri killed Edelgard with a brave lance in like four turns with Dorothea physicing. That was honestly the worst map I have ever done, wasn't fun at all and most of all WHAT WAS THAT ENDING? cute proposal and Dimitri's dialogue was everything but WHAT WAS THAT ENDING?????? it felt underwhelming. not sure why..
I really hate final boss maps that are basically impossible without cheesing (new mystery, conquest, etc) because they actively punish you for not being prepared and not having a precise plan. It softlocks players and essentially forces them to restart the game (unless they have a save file from enough chapters beforehand to prepare or something)
As much as I absolutely hated playing the rest of the route, Revelations has a legitimately good ending.
Rev is a horridly gimmicky mess to begin with, but had two factors:
1- Divide and Conquer
2- Always check your flanks
This is demonstrated well given that the final boss has you splitting up your army to destroy the boss' arms to bring down the head, while you're also being ran down by an oddly fair amount of Enemies as the fight goes on.
Bonus points to both the frankly mesmerizing map design (that shit looks awesome) and the Child DLC that has Matthew Mercer's singing
Let's not forget that wars has some pretty terrible final levels as well, I.E. hard final mission in AW2, and the final mission of dual strike In general.
Final mission of AW 1 is worse than all of them lol
@@mysmallnoman I think we're talking about advance champain rivals here, right?
@@chaseweber6823 eh, even the " the final battle " is bad, especially on AC
i saw that evil edelgard in the thumbnail and i was like, 'again!? always with thart!!"
There’s no other map I had to use Sothis pulse more than once except for the final Blue Lions map. I though it was weird that out of nowhere there was like groups of 6 units next to each other in every room with Edelgard always trying to snipe you. Thank god my Dimitri was a dodge tank. And I could rewind a bunch of times to fudge the numbers. Very annoying for sure
For me, the Blue Lions route final boss wasn't really a challenge for me, probably because I somehow got a bunch of dexterity on my units and for one, Edelgard could barely hit me, and also most other units couldn't. However, it still provided a challenge and I lost quite a few units doing so.
Yeah, Blue Lions final map was total bs. Not that it wasn't fun for me.
Also you don't really need Warp to do well. Silence and Ward Arrow keep the siege Mages at bay from my experience. They are also from out of house units...
And for Edelgard, her rocks are very inaccurate so use Evasive Battalions for your squishier units. You can also put Seiros Shield and some defensive Batallions on Mercedes and have her make full use of Live to Serve. My Mercedes was literally tanking Edegard's rocks on Maddening with a nearly 50/50 chance to miss, tanky Bishop Mercedes is good! She only needs to be able to survive one hit and she's set.
For my playthrough of Azure Moon’s final map I just slapped retribution and the battalion that negates all ranged attacks on Byleth and prayed. Also for me, Edelgard couldn’t one shot any of my units without critting, as long as they had a good shield. Still dumb though.
I kinda liked that you had to make use of shields in the last map of all places haha
OK, I need to know....how did you get that translated version of genealogy? I can't get it on an emulator, so I'm just curious!
That Deepercutt reference was beautiful...
Notice how FE4 isn’t on here because a full scale war spanning across the entirety of Grandbell as a culmination of your journey across Jugdral is badass and structurally appropriate
For the FE12 endgame map, while I agree that a new player wouldn't know to save their items for the endgame in order to clear the map, a new player probably isn't playing FE12 on one of the highest modes for the first time anyway.
Though, I did wish you talked about all of the final maps though, a lot of them aren't the best, but I feel FE2 and FE4 had good final maps, and ones like FE1 can be a beacon of some discussion.
I didn't really like echoes' final map because it took me 10000 years to get to duma because Jedah's eyeballs and the swamp were blocking me lol
The last map in azure moon requires cheese or patience. It took me 60 turns and two attempts (both of which were ~2 hours) to finally beat the map without warp or crit cheese. At least seeing the yellow title screen was super satisfying
FE6 final is really well designed, i think. It forces you to make use of the legendary weapons that you are guaranteed to have (at least at the start of ch. 23), and pushes you to move quickly using high move units (a use for the buyable boots that recontectualizes the importance of money and loot throughtout the entire game!!), rescue dropping, and maybe even high level staves. Does it go on for a bit too long? Maybe a bit, but the zero-sum type gameplay is a really fun idea for a game that already has a fitting "traditional" final few chapters with 21 & 22
For your new mystery analysis you state only marth can kill medeus but nagi and tiki have effectiveness on medeus. Nice video nonetheless
No they don't, they are only effective against FE11 Medeus
Looking back at it, I have no idea how I beat the final map of Blue Lions on my first try, on my very first blind playthrough. Though I do remember my RNG blessed Felix pretty much soloing the entire left side, and then me sneaking into the throne room while leaving few guys behind to stall.
"IS is capable." Was. Perhaps no longer
Blue Lions and Silver Snow competing to be the shittiest final map in the series:
I think the 3 Houses one would be more passable if there was only one route in that game. If there was, then you could make the argument that Maddening mode is for people that have played the game before, so if you aren't prepared for the final level that's on you. But because there's 4 routes, there's a lot of good reason to up the ante to Maddening for the other routes (and if you wanted to play every route on the hardest difficulty, there's not much reason to play every route on hard and then again on maddening).
Also, from a personal level, BL Ch. 22 on hard isn't truly unreasonable. BL was the route I played first, and despite being royally screwed over both from lack of knowledge (amusingly I had Lysithea, but I didn't know she had warp so I never bothered to raise her white magic much because I recruited her really late and was trying to focus on learning the black magic stuff) and unluckiness (my Byleth had 22 speed at lvl 43 and the other stats weren't much better), I still was able to pull through while playing the game in a very straightforward manner. Edelgard siege sniping is only a major issue for mages, and fortunately the innate healer for BL learns Fortify, which at beginning levels of 3H mastery is fairly nice to have (it's a pretty terrible spell once you start managing unit hp though because of all the low hp effects in the game).
I'm a little surprised Fates Conquest wasn't mentioned for the low hanging fruit that it is, a lot of problems of the BL map are also present in the Conquest Endgame to a greater degree. In BL, you can't go back to the monastery without repeating the previous chapter, but CQ is like "how about you can't even save before the Endgame?" Siege tomes are certainly scary, but how about debuffs any time you get close to the enemies (who can then swiftly murder the tankiest of units. Edelgard can hit two of your units if they're in range, but Takumi can go for everyone all at once. The once consolation is that the skip strategy is significantly easier in CQ and requires fewer resources, but also the resources you'd typically need for skip strategies in 3 Houses are also resources that you'd typically gather anyway (BL has access to 2 separate Dance of the Goddess gambits; 1 buyable, 3 separate Retribution gambits; 2 buyable, a buyable Impregnable Wall gambit, and 2 Blessing gambits; 1 buyable). It might be the case that the game should've highlighted some of these powerful options to the player, but the point is that these options are readily available to the point where you can literally buy them on the final map and use them immediately. There's only so much you can blame the game for a player not analyzing what resources they have available to them (though due to the sheer amount of options, piecing together how broken these things actually are is easier said than done).
All this to say that a hypothetical player could conceivably realize that the chapter is very difficult and therefore decide to look through the options they have available to them in the hopes they might find something that they're not taking advantage of.
Finally, even if you take full advantage of the game's systems, playing CQ Endgame without a skip is very, very difficult and will often require immense planning (did I mention you can't save on the preps screen), whereas the 3 Houses broken unit builds can easily trivialize even BL endgame. Who cares about the siege tomes if you have perfect avoidance/always attack first and are using retribution so you kill them as they attack? Who cares about Edelgard hunting your units when you can easily protect your squishier ones with Impregnable Wall/Blessing?
Honestly, even if there were only 3 routes I think 3H would be less exhausting to do all the routes for.
Got too burnt out for my Silver Snow playthrough because White Clouds just feels so long.
I actually like the blue lines final map a lot. I used the Dimitri Vantage Warth build on a new game maddening playthrough. Near the end of the game I was at the point where I would just one turn warp skip all the maps with Dimitri and lysythia. I like that the final map is designed to counter the vantage wrath strategy. The monsters on the map can't be killed with one hit. So you are forced to use all your units to slowly move through the map. It's good to have a challenging final map. Makes the game a lot more interesting and memorable.
I think the best final map of three houses is against nemesis. Its hard but beatable on a first try. You have to fight against units that have the same weapons as you do which makes them a lot stronger than most other units, so they actually are a threat. The swamp that can really hurt you is easily deactivated and even the fight against nemesis is good. He isnt busted, and you can use gambits if needed
Yeah. I remember when Orochimaru used edo tensei to fight the blazing sword trio and their friends only to get flashback filler when they fight old friends. Then after the defeat of Orochimaru by Canas Luna rasengan, Kaguya decided to appears out of nowhere ...? Did i mix something here?
I've played Azure Moon about 5 times, including one on maddening, and I have to strongly disagree with your assessment of Oath of the Dagger. Quite frankly, it's an outright phenomenal map marred by maddening making reinforcements ambush spawns. I really don't think it's fair to lay all this at the feet of Oath of the Dagger though, ESPECIALLY when it's not the worst offender of this in the very same game. Silver Snow is a tedious slog of a map even on hard, and maddening only makes every issue so much worse.
Oh yes, SS endgame is WAY worse, because SS Rhea is bs, the White Beasts are bs and literally everyone and their grandmother having and outright one in three chance to not die thanks to miracle and 30+ luck. Not to mention it being a slap in the face both in terms of story and gameplay and literally just having the worst and least satisfying ending of any route.
Chapter 22 of FE6 I think definitely deserves a mention. While not the final chapter of the true ending, it IS the final chapter of the bad ending and is truly a test of everything you've learned. Status staves, lots of strong promoted units, two split groups to control that meet up in the middle, a large map for you to use things like Warp and rescue strats but still plenty of walls to navigate around and at the end you get the kill the boss that's been the face of the enemy for the entire game.
To be fair to FE6, I think everything after Zephiel's battle was basically the stragglers of Bern's soldiers along with some newly formed dragons. If anything, considering the unlock requirements for this section of the game, I'd probably consider this part as the epilouge and Chapter 22 as the endgame for a lot of casual players. (Ik the game says differently, but eh)
I don't rememebr a lot from my experience playing Bindng Blade so I can't really give a measure for how good this chapter is as an endgame level, but I do like how it starts as two separate squads before uniting into one against the King of Berm himself.
In revelation snow i literally lacked the damage to win past the second health bar even if I had everyone I could attack I want really good at the game and was sort of just having fun without thinking about it that much but still on normal it should atleast be possible to beat the game
just finished FE8 again for funsies and goddamn have I NEVER had a good time with Formortiss. he's either a huge meat wall if you got bad level ups or he just folds in turn 1 if you have 3 mounted units who can reach him from their starting zones. The Sacred Twins are such a bad mechanic because the Devs clearly couldn't account for if people used the Tower or not and just gave you 10 "i win" buttons
What's the song at the start of the Mega Man segment?
Even on my first play through of FE3H, I knew how invaluable an Impregnable Wall gambit is
That’s a you problem for not reading / strategizing in a strategy game
The main complaint is clearly with the maddening version too, which is 1. SUPPOSED to be bullshit hard and 2. if youre playing maddening, you should have a clear grasp of the games mechanics.
I do generally agree that FE3H is absolutely terrible at explaining some mechanics though. It was my first FE game and i didnt know about gambits until legitimately 3 quarters through the game.
@@hunbi1875To be fair, I didn’t even realize gambits gave you stat buffs / penalties until my 3rd play through
I don't remember having too much trouble fighting edelgard, but to fair I don't remember anything from blue lions. I think I just let byleth take her out, since they also have infinite counterattack range
Fire Emblem: I sleep Megaman jumps in: REAL SHIT
i'm so confused. why is there a swordmaster lilina using the binding blade
Or nomad trooper Clarine doing x4 with a silver bow
I really like Radiant Dawn's endgame, which forces you to think about the positioning of your units to better survive, take advantage of abilities and dances, etc. I'm also a fan of FE4's endgame, solely because your units are so overpowered that a single unit can clear out entire armies, but the bosses and dead lords are an actual challenge.
Three Houses is just sad as you are forced to kill former students
I just finished Blue Lions story line yesterday in hard-classic. It was hard. Very hard. I beat it in the first try, but holy fudge. I five head it hard.
9:20 did you know that the deadlords will straight up open the doors themselves.
I feel like your section about Azure Moon is hurt by failing to specify that you're talking only about Maddening difficulty, which is absolutely not meant to be anyone's first playthrough and on normal or hard mode the map is totally fine, a little harder than the previous endgame chapters but nothing too bad. Yeah it's definitely unfair BS on maddening but since you talked about a new or unprepared player's experiences in the previous segment... idk, I think it's kind of a known fact that Maddening is full of BS they didn't balance properly. You make it sound like the average first time Blue Lions player will get screwed over by the endgame which just isn't true.
You mentioned dread lords but didn't mention the endgame of golden deer where you fight the 10 elite and nemesis. Which is the best final level in a Fire emblem game
Let's compare these to the final hallway in Xenoblade 2. The final hallways has a switch puzzle, 2 chests, a collection point, and 8 enemies, all which are similar to the final boss and act as summoned enemies in that fight. There's then a heart-to-heart where the characters give each other a pep talk. You THEN have a really good cutscene before the (admittedly difficult on non-Easy difficulties, thanks siren buster) final boss, who's a GIANT ROBOT piloted by the main villain.
Conquest, Thracia and Awakening most likely have the best final maps, with Grima (the map and the boss) being my favourite. Grima successfully encourages you to use the lesson you've learned, rush the final boss, without killing you outright (if you're not within their range, the reinforcements won't rush you, they're coded to protect grima). CQ uses everything, dragon veins, rushing, rallies, dual strikes, and map gimmicks, to ensure that you're challended. Takumi's also terrifying.
It needs to be said: Thracia is very mid for a Fire Emblem game. There's just too much bullshit to in it.
what's your opinion on FE 10 (Radiant Dawn)'s endgame? Good? Bad? Neither?
Having watched this video now, holy crap how did I manage to do the Blue Lions final level on my first playthrough, completely blind, on hard mode?
I think he was referring to Maddening. It's not too bad on Normal and Hard since Edelgard rarely has more than a 30% hit rate, but Maddening is a bigger spike in difficulty than the Mila Tree.
Also, the final bit of fe4 sorta blows. Even a maxed out seliph has to take a long, long time to chip away at julius and uless youd been leveling Julia (which you might not have considering how similar she is to the deeply useless Dierdre) you dont really have an out to the situation other than having Seliph and like maaaabye Faval or Ced take potshots until they roll enough hits in a row
what also feels wierd about the blue lions endgame is something that comes with the fact that three houses has routes
both golden deer and silver snow have to also storm the edelgard palace, granted there the map isnt quite as bs unless maddening pulls that stuff too, and the boss only has 1 bar, but its still sad seeing blue lions not even getting a unique final map.
compared with golden deer, who have a pretty alright endgame, and no double chapter for it either.
I think the first part of AM's final map is really good, the lions are heavy hitters and the first part is all about finding openings and devastating the squishy units within dangerous formations
The reinforcements on the second half are stupid though, you need divine pulse and a way to block them on both sides at the same time
Also, I hope you play vestaria saga one day, the final map is ridiculously crazy and my favorite on all fe-like games
Please share the music used
Okay, so...as far as FE12 goes, that one's not so bad. At least, it wasn't when I played it. I had enough dragon-killing weapons stocked up, they weren't particularly problematic, beyond there being a lot of them. It took me a couple of tries even still, since some of the characters you have to use to recruit the Priestesses aren't very...good. But by Fire Emblem standards, 12's last map is, in my opinion, one of the better ones. I won't deny that's not saying very much, though, because yeah, Fire Emblem has a propensity towards bad or boring last maps.
I'm also gonna step in here and say that while Blue Lions Endgame is crushing...you also have Divine Pulse. You don't really need to rig the RNG, and the story surrounding the level is really solid. I speak of Hard mode, ftr, because after attempting Awakening Lunatic I decided never to touch that setting on any other FE. But yeah, I thought it was actually pretty _good_ as far as FE Endgames go - Dimitri was certainly a lynchpin but I barely touched Battalions across all the House routes and was fine. An example of a _bad_ Endgame is FE6 or FE7 (rather, part 2 of FE7's), where you just plop down the borken unit in front of the boss and let them do all the work until the game says you win. FE4 is similar, though it does at least have an actual map for you to do before it comes to that.
I do need to get around to continuing FE5 at some point but man that game is _punishing_ if you don't metagame it. Also the whole "teleport your party members into a hole" tile gimmick is basically just "look up a guide fuckface" back in the 1990s.
I think Genealogy has a pretty good final map, with the exception of the ungodly amounts of status staff spam (which very few units can resist since status staves are auto hit if the users magic is higher than the target's resistance and those enemy bishops have 21 magic).
And the one warper you can recruit super duper early, Hapi, ...is DLC. Maybe not necessary to mention that, but it would rub salt in the wound of the no native warper wound. Also, again, the other warper who is like to be equal in Mag as Lysithea is, AGAIN, Hapi. PFFF
I agree there are plenty of bad final levels in the Fire Emblem franchise, but I'd also argue there are some really good ones as well. Like, Radiant Dawn's endgame is one of my favorite endgames period (like, to any video game). I also highly enjoyed the final map of Echoes, as well as the final maps of Crimson Flower, Verdant Wind and Azure Moon. The latter in particular is brutally hard on Maddening, which made it a very memorable and fun experience for me.
I will say that Fates has some really good final maps gameplay-wise, but they are sadly dragged down by the absolutely awful writing.
Echoes' final map is great. Apart from Jedah's existence (aka him and the mogalls) and that one Medusa guy (who isn't even that problematic from when i've played through it), it's a genuinely fun end to an amazing game.
Also, don't sleep on Dread Fighter Atlas. Slap a Brave Sword on him and watch heads roll, he's really fun to use. That, or I just got lucky with his levels.
3:47 I see Medeus with that noice 69 health points.