The Problem With Rout Maps
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 มิ.ย. 2024
- Rout is one of the most common objectives in Fire Emblem, but rout maps have a reputation for being boring and not fun. I take a look at the issues with rout maps, and which rout maps have overcome them to attempt to identify what makes a good rout map.
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Tbh for a lot of us the same is true: Every map is a rout map.
especially for me, i have OCD lol, if even one enemy is left alive it drives me nuts. Complete genocide or dont even bother, lets go.
I do this with every game. Every enemy from beginning to the end in linear games has to die. You can imagine how much infinitely spawning enemies annoys me. Idk if this means anything to anyone else, but when I was 14 I found out that the "The Southern Gate" level in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" does NOT have infinitely spawning enemies, despite how it would seem. It just takes like a half an hour to kill them all.
Yeah wouldn’t you kill every enemy that went near a unit anyway regardless of the map objective?
The other objectives only make the routing more challenging
yeah I like to expmaxx so I will usually route every map. Hell, I'll actively delay clearing maps if they have reinforcements in order to kill the reinforcements too
As a casual player, all maps are rout maps anyway. Leave no exp behind!!
Historically, a "rout" is not the complete extermination of a whole army, but is what happens when an army retreats in disorder and panic due to heavy losses, the commanders being killed, or other things breaking the soldiers' morale. Therefore, I think it would be appropriate to have rout maps in FE to be about killing a certain amount of enemies so that the enemy army loses courage and flees. This still carries the weight of a huge bloody battle with lots of casualities, without making the player hunt down enemies sitting around in a corner at the end. There could even be a point system where you win the map by getting enough point. You not only get a point for each individual enemy unit slain, but also receive bonuses for completing objectives such as killing bosses or conquering forts, or simply by defeating many enemies in a short time to encourage the player to be aggressive rather than overly careful. An example scenario for this could be that the two big armies of the good and evil sides are about to clash, and the Lord's army is trying to swing the battle in the good army's favour by ambushing the evil army from the side shortly before the big battle begins. Their goal is to suddenly bum rush and scatter the enemy troops, taking a big chunk out of their flank so the army becomes vulnerable when fighting the good army, but if you take too long to accomplish a rout, the enemy forces regain their baring and cut off the lord's escape route, causing a game over.
Oi mate... this is a really cool idea!
Radiant Dawn 3-E
So basically a survival map but instead of lasting a certain number of turns while the enemy rushes you, YOU'RE the one rushing them to get a set amount of kills before a certain number of turns expire.
I like it
RD 3-E honestly nailed this gimmick. So many armies allied against Daein, so much chaos.
I can see Rout maps from a gameplay point as the developer trying to give the player more XP so the next maps can ramp things up. I don’t know how much this really lines up with maps in the series but it can kinda feel like that sometimes with how many enemies are on the big rout maps.
Man I just had a great idea for a rout map. Your army is planning a surprise attack on the enemy castle so that you can get in before the gate closes but your army stumbles upon an enemy scouting force. You have to defeat every enemy as they try to reach escape points but some stronger enemies try to block you and buy time for their comrades to get word back to the castle of your attack.
That honestly does sound interesting. A panicky, short map where you have to outrun and block off the enemy who are running the other way. Some good terrain and flier placement could make that really tricky.
I think for the "Strong enemies slowing you down" either a cocky recruitable unit who tries to fight an army, or the boss of the map laying down his life to stall for his allies would work really well. Plop that boss right there in the middle and make him the complication, not the objective.
One of my least favorite things about Cog of Destiny is that most of the reinforcements are completely optional, since they only begin spawning if you move a unit into specific areas of the map. Only the armor knight/general reinforcements are unskippable AFAIK. The problem is that there's literally no indication that this is the case. If you avoid the areas directly to the west and north of the player's starting area, the map takes around half of the time it would otherwise.
There's no indication because they don't want the player to know about that. It's designed in such a way so that enemies only start appearing when you have units in the relevant areas to fight them, not so the player can skip them. It's a cool speedrun trick, but those enemies aren't meant to be "optional."
Vision Quest has a couple of route maps i really like. 1-7x has a timer and splits your army in half so you have to fight on 2 fronts while also rushing for 3 time sensitive treasure chests and dealing with an aggressive boss. 3-5 does a similar thing where there's a time limit and villages to visit, but with the added complication of an enemy ballista keeping your flier in check, so you need to spread your forces out in order to route it before the turn limit expires
I love how informative you manage to be over the course of 10-20 minutes. TH-cam videos are often something I will put on in the background while working on something else, but when I'm watching your videos I often find myself dropping whatever I'm working on to give it my full attention.
I oversee a west-marches style Fire Emblem tabletop game for a pretty large group of people, and videos like this one and your video on bows in the series have given me a lot of food for thought regarding map and enemy design. Excellent work!
Thank you for the discussion. I'm going to disagree about rout maps. One example you brought up was Ch 15 Sacred Stones were there might be some "straggler" enemies remaining on the map after you defeat both bosses. I think that is a symptom of sub par map/enemy design (having straggler enemies in the first place) rather than a fault of the Rout objective. Even if we do change the objective to defeat boss, it doesn't make much sense (looking from the perspective of a map designer) to keep those straggler enemies on the map if they are not actually doing anything. Those enemies should be removed, changed so that they trigger and move towards the player at some point, or moved to a different location on the map.
II think it is probably because of a difference in playstyles. but to me rout maps are the most satisfying map objective as the map is all clear at the end. In a franchise that is well known for growing your units and gaining xp, it always feels weird ending a map while there are enemies still remaining on the map (at least those enemies you can gain XP from - I love what Engage did with Void Curse). I like how rout does a good job at preventing the player from completing maps too quickly. To me, being able to Warp Skip a defeat boss map is a much bigger issue in map design than say a rout map without "time pressure."
Somewhat of a tangent - I loathe the term time pressure in Fire Emblem discussions. It is always trotted out as some inherently good design/objective that can automatically improve every map. There are plenty of good maps without time pressure and likewise bad maps with time pressure. It doesn't need to be on every map. Some maps can (and should) have a slower pace, even at the highest difficulty settings.
I just don't think the rout objective adds anything to Scorched sands. In a version of the map with no stragglers, where the enemies are all en route to the bosses, the map wouldn't really play out any differently than if it were kill bosses.
My goal here isn't for maps to be quick, it's for them to be engaging. I don't think it's a problem if a map takes 1 turn or 10 as long as all the turns are fun. Big rout maps like village of silence tend to be a high amount of turns with few of them being interesting.
It's not that time pressure improves every map. It's that if there's no time pressure on a map, it needs to be designed in a way that prevents you from fighting one enemy at a time.
Village of Silence needs time pressure or a larger redesign because without it there's nothing incentivizing you not to take on enemies one or two at a time, which is effective, but I think pretty boring.
Maps can have a slower pace and be fine (chapter 4 of thracia does have time pressure, but it's slow paced but brilliant), but maps need ways to encourage players to take risks, outside of the occasional map that's designed more to be a victory lap than a challenge.
Really good maps often reward fast play while still allowing for a slower pace. Distant blade has 2 villages for you to grab that encourage a faster pace, but if you'd rather play in a risk averse manner, you can just miss the second village.
There is one reason for making the desert Map route. There are hidden items in the sand and having to go out of the way to get stragglers increases a players odds of randomly finding these items. At least, that's what I think their reasoning is
@@actuallizard I mean, it's a desert map with a lot of hidden treasure. The stragglers were probably intentional for if you don't have a Thief/Rouge or promoted too many units into classes that don't handle sand well. Also, if you go for all the treasure, you literally cover every corner of the map naturally, so picking off all stragglers is pretty easy to achieve organically before beating both bosses.
@@Shalakor I just don't think the desert items are a reason why Scorched Sands needs to be rout. That we might get the stragglers organically is a reason rout isn't as bad here as it could be on other maps, but rout isn't adding any fun or function here over kill bosses.
@@actuallizard Thematically, you're repelling an assault, still in progress, on Jehanna. Also probably to prevent you from ditching the large attack force in the grassy part of the map. Also to make it a bit more needed to rejoin your group with the other Lord's group. Also because it needed to fit starting from two different perspectives. Also to theoretically give some exp to the returning other Lord and their companions. Also because the previous map was capture the throne on both routes, and so is the map that follows (and you already mentioned that and boss kill being effectively the same). Also, one of the main enemies that doesn't move without being provoked can drop a Dragon Axe, but only if you approach him at his max attack range to bait out the hand axe, so its part of the treasure hunt and obviously intentional as it's a potential tool against a map boss.
Rout only doesn't make sense if considering the map by itself instead of its placement in the flow of the game. It still has stakes and challenge, but is also partially a breather map once the heat dies down. Potentially hunting the last stragglers isn't likely to be fun or interesting, but it's a rather minor inconvenience since the majority of the map plays out better by forcing you to shoulder the onslaught. Much preferable to the slow slog scenario. It's a miracle that it's a fun GBA desert map in the first place! Even the final wave of reinforcements has a last minor piece of loot to steal and comes in a larger mixed unit wave that's actually threatening. The reinforcements only run long enough to be a part of the natural map flow instead of a punishment for taking too long at finishing (can punish you for not joining your forces together soon enough, though). It's basically a defend map with your own new units being the objective and no totally reliable choke points, but also no upper time limit.
I get that the community views rout maps as the least common denominator/default objective that we get sick of, but I do enjoy them especially when it makes sense narratively. Most maps being rout maps I don't think of, but when I'm put on Grondr field with three giant armies coming at each other and we must kill everyone else to survive, a rout map makes sense and helps build the narrative/stakes of the fight.
Your video helped me realize why I love the Enemy Phase and why I'm more of an Enemy Phase player. If I can potentially get rid of tons of enemies during Enemy Phase, then I have less to worry about during Player Phase as well as a lot of control in what I can do.
That's why archer are the best class in the series
I recently realized I'm an enemy phase enthusiast as well, mostly because Generals and armor units tend to be in my top 3 strongest/most useful units in almost *every FE game I play*. Joining the online community to find out Generals and armor units are despised and often thought of as the weakest unit type just blows my mind, I literally would not be able to play the game without relying on an armor unit to control the map without being at a constant of dying in enemy phase
Here is an idea. Have it be a rout, but when the boss takes a dirt nap the rest of the army hightails it. You still have time to stop them, but if you let them go they pop up as forces in a later map. Gives you options depending on your type of play.
That's a pretty cool solution to the problem but it'd absolutely be a bitch to code
It could just be, if more than X enemies survived on Y mission, X enemies appear as ambush in later map @@Designated_loser
I think rout maps are a necessary evil. If every map is Seize, you just warp your lord to the end of the map. It is a way for the developers to ensure that you, actually play the map they made.
I love that you mentioned chapter 12 of Engage because that's probably my favorite rout map in the series. Sand is reworked in a way that's actually engaging and promotes mindfulness, and because you're moving fast the map quietly incentivizes defeating all the enemies before the reinforcements spawn.
Planning a pathway that lets you get that sweet, sweet turn 3 clear is peak Fire Emblem to me
I'll admit, I had to reset that map in my first playthrough because I didn't get what they were talking about with sand. I was prepared for typical slow to move through stuff, and I got like half my guys stuck in it.
Was a lot better and more fun on the second run though.
At times a advantage of a rout map is it simply not being a kill boss/seize map depending on how skippable it is. Rout maps enforce having to deal with enemy masses with no cheap way out and an army that can deal with it. It’s a general issue with tactical games that securing the main objective efficiently doesn’t translate in neutralizing the general map obstacles in a narratively sensible way. Valkyria Chronicles is very infamous for that.
All point of refinement still apply though. I personally would wish a kill boss + % of enemy army killed objective existed. Or a ranking/bonus exp system to give a incentive to bother with a certain amount of domination. So(having to bother with) an epic battle with the rank and file is ensured without the awkwardness of having to flush out Every Last One Of Them including that too little to late squad of mounted enemies spawning in a long abandoned far corner of the map the turn you’re about to kill the one enemy healer that eluded you.
Maybe an actual "rout" objective where the ennemies have morale and retreat if it reaches zero and everytime you kill an ennemy their morale is reduced by the level of the ennemy killed (with bosses giving extra to incentivize/force killing them, and maybe having specific side objectives that affect ennemy morale (and give bexp to compensate losing kills or items at least) ), that way it becomes more about choosing what part of the map you are best equipped to deal with.
Maybe fighting a swarm of weak ennemies is easier but you're using your weapons more, or fighting stronger ennemies but you're taking risks or using higher quality weapons. But either way it avoids the problem of just needing to cleanup everything. There is a lot of things you could do with that concept and it avoids the major issues of rout map and kill boss maps while having advantages from both.
Considering I recently played Scorched Sands via draft run, I did question why the map was rout to begin with, considering the number of enemies that dont move unless your in their range (looking at you Dragon Axe Berserker). To me, rout maps feel like they serve the purpose of allowing you to train your units since you have no choice but to interact with all the enemies which is probably why they tend to not be engaging and just mindless chill maps. Putting time based objectives can help make them fun but can devolve to just using your already good combat units to clear these instead of training weaker units due to the difficulty of doing so, which to some can be a negative. Engage Chpt 12 I feel almost hits the right spot in terms of training, map objective and design with loss of the previous rings + new ones gained & learn to use, marks the 1st appearance of promoted enemies and the quicksand gimmick makes you consider your movement on whether its worth to take the Mov penalty or not. The only issues I have with are the Wolf Knights have stats that even your promoted units can have trouble with and the low deployment slots creates competition on a map that should be a breather after the previous one. The quick clear to avoid the reinforcements also gives it flavor on replays.
Such a good vibe and always appreciate the commentary on these games
The most memorable rout map for me is "From Pain, Awakening" from Radiant Dawn. From a story perspective, this map needed to be an epic battle on a massive battlefield. The game tells you that your objective is to rout the enemy, but as soon as 80 units die the god of chaos awakens and the map ends. It doesn't matter if those units are yours, allies or enemies.
This plot twist on the battle felt really cool when I experienced it the first time, and it has some replay value too. You can try to protect as many of your allies as possible and prevent them from getting kills to try to get experience, or you can try to get them killed and end the map quicker.
CQ has two rout maps I find extremely interesting.
1st is chapter 7, the first proper cq map with the bunch of faceless. Surrounded by mighty enemies and with only a handful of units, this map is deceitfully easy. This map pretty much teaches the player objectives can be solved in a variety of ways. The player can either skillfully set dual strikes to beat the Faceless in a single enemy turn or close close choke points in a panic, if they feel too exposed. Either way, a win is a win. I feel the faux turn limit that is the aggressive change in ai is very important to teach that, even when stalling the enemy is not an option, there's still cheap ways to beat the chapter.
2nd is the castle, as in My Castle! A rather unorthodox map layout and objective, combining rout and protect tile. And the invasions hide some secrets in plain sight!
1st, they actually have side objectives. After beating each invasion, the player is rewarded with Dragon Vein Points to use in thier castle to build and upgrade buildings. What many people don't know, is the amount received depends on how many buildings are still standing at the end of the invasion, with a max of 3, decreasing with each loss.
2nd, the map buffs the player units. Some buildings buff combat stats, attack dealt and receive are obviously the most important, but there's also evasion, which coupled with tailor made defensive terrain, can make evasion tanking viable, which is a rarity in CQ. These buffs are such a power trip, I used to tackle these maps with almost skittish fear, since the enemies are have particularly insane builds, but they became almost liberating with their buffs, they're playgrounds where almost any unit can achieve amazing feats!
Three houses is an interesting case of an opposite problem
Maps that are designed to be challenging as rout maps but they're boss kill so most of the challenge is thrown out and the majority of the map is never used
Yeah Kill boss and seize can definitely have the opposite problem where it's too easy to skip the whole thing. A lot Shadow Dragon maps also suffer from this issue. (doesn't help that you have 8 million warps in that game)
Awakening: "What is wrong with route the enemy maps?"
I think a few now and then are fine but holy hell they don't need to be nearly the whole game (Awakening and Birthright)
A big reason I really love PoR is because the Bonus XP missions really elevate even maps like route maps by putting that time count on maps. You always need to be aiming for a pretty fast run to get the max bonus XP and you don't feel punished for not killing reinforcements and grinding XP because Bonus XP is basically better in the sense it can go to your favorite character not just who can get the kills.
Yeah, bonus exp was great, I'd love for it to return at some point. I liked how it gave incentives to do certain things but didn't force you to, if you decided the bexp wasn't that important to you.
@@actuallizard it was also suchva great tool to get you roleplaying. Ike doesn't want to kill any laguz the bonus xp encourages you to not do it. Ike wants to sneak around get bonus XP for doing it.
Also Bxp made it so you could easily get units to a level of viability without babysitting them.
my only problem with bexp is that they don’t tell you what causes you to gain bexp until the second playthrough, and only after you finish the map
@@davey_rulez7301the other issue is you can use it to snowball already leveled units. This can be fixed by putting some level cap either based on your highest unit level or by story progression
I'm surprised you didn't mention Awakening chapter 10 ("Don't speak her name" map) but good video anyway ! Keep up the good work
part of the issue is the player figures out the strat way faster than the gameplay plays out after you know what to do so a lot of it feels tedious.
Another way to fix these kinds of maps is to have enemies eith drops, who leave after a certain amount of turns.
Its essentially the same trick as having a village being attacked by bandits
I like rout maps simply because no one starts yapping about their goddamn annoying warp skipping. Because seizing a gate doesn't suddenly neutralize all enemies, weirdly enough. Killing generals has impact, of course, but it probably doesn't cause every enemy to run away either. Because that flier you sent in the middle of 12 enemies that happened to one round the boss is realistically a very, very dead flier.
I’m the kinda sicko who loves the Radiant Dawn part 4 route maps. I like having to plan out how to finish those maps before the absolutely disgusting amount of reinforcements spawn in. It makes for an interesting challenge, and realistically given the amount of juggernauts you’ll have by part 4(Haar, Jill, Ike, Titania, and the Laguz Royals) there’s not much else that would be a challenge.
My favorite rout map is conquest 10
I'm partial to fe7 chapter 15
As a casual player (I mostly play Hard/Classic or Normal/Classic), I like maps that allow me to control when I end the map. Kill commander maps (WITH STATIONARY COMMANDERS) and capture maps are the dream
my first FE game was SoV, and have to say. I was really suprised when I went back to older games. Ended up really loving the more diverse map objectives. Especially defend maps have won a place in my heart, cuz if they're good, they're *fantastic.* The worst objective is without a doubt "survive" though. What if we made a defend map but removed the part that actually makes defend maps interesting. Yeah let me just sit here and watch Vaida from a distance while Florina goes shopping. Cool gameplay.
SoV is technically one of those older games. It only has two/three maps not present in the original game.
Those maps are the best maps with the best of them being Nuibaba.
@@thorscape3879I've been playing Echoes for the first time this year, and I have to say the worst part about it is the maps. I get that it's a remake of Gaiden, so there's not much they could do about it, but holy hell there are some garbage maps lol
I wish the games had more Escape maps in the way of Thracia because those maps really encourage the player to get everyone moving on top of the fear of leaving someone behind because you sent the lord character too quickly
Thracia escape is amazing. I thought engage ch 10 was going to be escape all at first, and that would have been awesome.
i really like POR's early escape map where each units escaping grant BEXP so you have incentive to do it, in general BEXP can give additional side objectives aside from villages and stuff it's great, I wish we would see this mechanic a bit more
Village of silence moment
*flashback to fox map*
Replaying awakening on hard has made me very sick with reinforcements that can move as they spawn. The Tiki paralogue that sends reinforcements that ignore your units to get to tiki, the first boss in part 1 with Gangrel calling endless reinforcements unless you kill him first, it made me shift my playstyle since i played Three Houses before this and made the instant action reinforcements lose that instant action.
I've never understood why route maps have stationary bosses. There's literally no reason for them to just stand there.
Also I used to be one of those players that would spend a ton of extra turns on seize or kill boss maps in order to rout every enemy but I feel like recently I've grown out of that. PoR Chapter 26 is much less headache inducing when 3 or 4 turn clearing it with Savior Marcia and Ike, rather than trying to take out the way too many enemies.
This make sense , look at movies, the super villain is the last to joining the fight, he send his soldiers first , have you watch power Rangers? Fire emblem follow this logic, the boss wait for you to come challenge him , while he is sit on the throne or inside a castle.
What about the single best set of rout maps in the series - part 4 of RD. I love when reinforcements spawn on the other side of the map and when I shift my army there, another set spawns on the side shifted from. Or how about Siegbert's paralogue in Fates? Rout with infinite reinforcements is absolutely sublime to play,
Seriously though, rout isn't that bad if the map is interesting, but more often than not the map would benefit from alternate objective.
There are other types of maps??
lol when he said emblematic
No chapter epitomizes the “reinforcements that spawn all the way at the start and make the map longer but not necessarily more challenging” problem more than chapter 4-4 of Radiant Dawn. If you don’t finish the map before the end of turn 10, a sea of reinforcements start spawning at the bottom of the map for the next 5 turns. Since you have Ragnell Ike they aren’t challenging at all, just an annoyance. I find that clearing the map on turn 10 is very difficult because there’s 3 chest rooms with enemies inside them, 2 of which are very far from the start, and there’s this bishop with a sleep staff that hinders your movement with low-resistance units (or in other words, Ike).
Another thing with rout maps is how they work with Fog of War. Having to hunt down stragglers at the end of a rout map is annoying as it is, but having to hunt down stragglers that can be hidden anywhere on the map is even worse.
I think the reason it is like that is because they want to encourage you to dump exp for Ike so he is all big and strong for the end game since he is required to beat the game
2:41 Heh. "Emblematic." Heh.
Unlrelated but i've been playing engage with Halberdier Alear and it rules, can double for 40 damage and +3 killer lance gives like 50% crit rate.
my last playthrough had everyone reclass into Halberdier and it was really fun but having only 1/3 of the triangle and no magic sure was harder than I thought
Best outfit though imo.
Who taught toffee's turnfloor algorithm?
I don't mind Route and Defense map, as they don't punish you for using slow units.
Where "modern FE" doubles down on the high mobility meta.
Radiant Dawn and Earlier titles often had a few defensive maps in the game design which I found the most fun.
There are Route maps, and there are maps I turn into a Route.
It's not a rout map, but the penultimate battle in Crimson Flower is for me the best example of a map that feels miserable to play and I totally agree with that choice, given the story
I can only comment on the GBA emblems but I think in 6 and 7 specifically they kinda use rout maps to ensure you have a certain amount of xp
My introduction to FE7, and indeed the series, was my friend being hard stuck on Cog with only a level 20 marcus, 3 single digit level lords and very little else to work with, dead pent+louise, no hawkeye, they did have harken I think so I'm pretty sure it was beatable lol but still, they decided to replay the game rather than try to continue and that started the cult of MARCUS BAD in our school
With Scorched Sands in particular, I wonder if the GBA engine can even support “kill two bosses” as an objective. If not, I could see why rout would be the next best option
I've always liked cog of destiny, though it has always been odd to me that it has a throne that isnt seizable. I don't think it would be all that different if it were a seize or kill boss map, since linus/lloyd is usually the last unit i kill anyway. So i think the issues that people have with it are mostly unrelated to the map objective.
A more noticeably problematic fe7 rout map for me is False Friends, since the pegasus knights can fly to an unreachable island and stall on a fort for several turns.
I didn't even realize Scorched Sand was a rout map. I feel like that makes it a good route map. If you miss an enemy its just free xp and free desert rewards I guess. But FE8 is an easy game so it makes sense there'd be free rewards
i am engaging with this video
SoV route maps are generally manageable because archers have absurd range to bait units and Warp exists.
Wait, do you guys not just kill everybody even if it's just a seize map?
I usually end up routing anyways lmao
Surprised you didn't mentioned RD 3-F, though, "technically" it's not a rout map, but that's also what makes it memorable, the curveball
I think the issue could be fixed by making most rout maps "kill X enemies where X is not the total enemy count" something like RD 3-6 and 12
I think a map has to be very narratively justified to have a total rout objective and most don't meet it.
Just beat Engage Chapter 12 in 2 turns, then there won't be any reinforcements. It's not particularly difficult for most team comps. But idk, I find it too easy to be interesting. Probably a necessary breather map after the 10/11 sequence, but definitely not a highlight for me.
What you said about rout maps w/ turn-based reinforcements that punish you for sticking around is a big reason why I'm personally not bothered at all about most of Birthright's rout maps. They can be pretty devastating when they do spawn, they can deadlock your army for a couple turns with back-to-back reinforcements. But at the same time, it's a huge incentive to play fast and aggressive in something like Chapter 10, 22, and 23 which feeds perfectly into how I like to play.
I think, without creating or bringing back new systems like Bonus EXP which creates a ton of ways to create new subrle objectives, I think most route maps need to be "Route in X turns" or, as you said, have valuable villages under threat or strong groups of enemies converging on you.
Tl;dr: The missing aspect of most route maps is a sense of continuous pressure within the turns given.
the pact ring paralogue in fire emblem engage is also a very good rout map, if you kill the first boss before getting rid of all the enemies, it is incredbly brutal, and it's fairly hectic and forces you to be proactive even if you leave the first boss for last. The only thing is, it doesn't really make sense for that particular map to be so difficult, I swear in my first time around it felt like getting married in real life would be easier, but then again, engage's story never really makes sense anyway
I've been playing through Fire Emblem 7 and I got a lot of relief hearing you say Cog of Destiny is infamous. I just finished the map today, I'm doing a (mostly) blind playthrough while also leaving units dead and this map was the most difficult map for me so far. I'm just glad knowing this map didn't just suck because I was missing units, it just sucked in general!
In theory I like your point on the map fitting the story's current theme but in practice I spent a lot of time on this map that could've been used to progress the story further so for me it doesn't work. I finished it on my third attempt and I am not fast when it comes to playing Fire Emblem so I spent a minimum of 4 hours in total combined attempts and probably a lot more than that in actuality (this is an open invite to call me bad btw).
Yeah i hate large rout maps. Sure it basically makes you have a training arc not just rush the boss it can be fun.
I also dont like the repeat maps in 3 houses. They made replays so difficult to play as everything felt repetitive really making it show the story was what they focused on. And that sucks as the paralouge maps are well made
I've always seen Radiant Dawn as having good rout maps. They all convey the state of the story well, and 1-8, 3-1 and 3-10 do a good job of basically forcing against parking-the-bus play in their other objectives and items.
1st comment! Love your videos!
rout maps are lame, you throw your OP 1-2 range guy at a bunch of scrubs and hit end turn, and then there is a tedious mop up phase. everything wrong with the maps with enemies design