As a strategy RPG series nearing 20 entries, Fire Emblem has a lot of maps. And since I’ve played all of these games, god help me, I thought I would be most equipped to talk about the best of the best throughout the franchise. Each Fire Emblem game brings its own mechanics and concepts to the table, but not all of them can make the most of them.
So, we want to talk about the ones that take advantage of their available systems and couple them with the story to develop them into the best experiences for the player. Maps that are not only fun and challenging but also immersive, putting you in the shoes of the heroes and furthering the narrative.
Fire Emblem Thracia 776 doesn’t open up nicely for young Lief. Between close friends being kidnapped and fighting off pirates, he’s thrust into quite the opening act. Then, he finds out about the ‘child hunts.’ The empire is kidnapping kids and sending them to the capital for ambiguous purposes. The important point is that they don’t generally come back. So, while nearing the Gate of Cerebus, Lief discovers they have some kids and fights to rescue them. It doesn’t end well. Raydrik, the Duke of Munster, subservient to the empire, shows up with Lief’s friend Nanna in hand and forces a surrender—everyone else’s freedom in exchange for Lief and Evyel.
Which brings us to chapter 4-
The Dungeon – Chapter 4, Thracia 776
Lief is stuck in the dungeons alongside some other prisoners, Karin and Fergus. Meanwhile, across the hall is your thief, Lifis, who intended to sell out Lief to the empire but didn’t even get that far before being imprisoned. None of you are armed. It’s not looking hot.
The Magi then broke in, rebel forces fighting back against the empire. Suddenly, you might have yourself a way out.
There are several goals in chapter 4. It’s an escape map, which means your primary goal is escaping. But since you’re locked up, you’ll need to actually get out first. The three magi come armed with weapons and, just as importantly, keys. These keys will be able to get your units out of prison but also let you bust into vaults with chests to get your stuff back. Additionally, Lifis now has a shared goal with Lief, allowing you to use him and the Magi thief Lara to raid the chests together.
Of course, it won’t be so simple because there’s an infinite number of reinforcement guards spawning after you now, who will eventually be overwhelming. And there are other prisoners, innocent civilians, you can save. You don’t have to save them, but you must try, right?
Once the civilians have escaped to the side, you can make a break for it up north, but behind the door is a final challenge. You’ll have to blitz your way to the escape point while fending off the enemies ahead of you and those storming behind you.
Hero on the Wind – Chapter 4x, Thracia 776
This map has a fog of war; for a casual player, it would be their second experience with the mechanic (it was invented in this game). It would be an issue unless you recruited Dalsin in that last chapter. He comes with a torch to reveal the trap of 8 powerful units directly in front of you while reinforcements chase you from the side and below.
This is the hardest part of the stage. No, really, while this is another escape map with children you can rescue, once you’ve figured out this tricky wall of armor knights and mages, you’re rewarded by the rest of the map, which is the most straightforward thing imaginable.
This map features Ced and Asbel, two units with three previous Magi fighters who joined your army. They can lay waste to the top half of the map by themselves.
Asbel is a recruitable mage, an old friend of Lief, and they can catch up and join forces. Karin can also talk to Ced, revealing she had been out-tracking him to bring him home. But Ced is the leader of the Magi. He can’t just go home to royal duties when he’s leading people who desperately need it; back home, he is managing comparatively fine without him.
He’ll give you a scroll that blocks critical hits and alters stat growths, allowing you to min-max your stats.
He also joins your team (temporarily) for the rest of this map. Sitting there with the legendary Forseti tome, with infinite durability and giving him +20 speed and +10 skill, this man is invincible and will clear out so many enemies for you. The fact that this map starts extremely tricky makes that back half much more enjoyable when you begin steamrolling. Giving that scroll to Asbel will even put his speed growth to over 100%, guaranteeing a start-up at every single level.
Mother and Daughter – Chapter 5, Thracia 776
Mother and Daughter is the immediate follow-up to either chapter 4 or 4x and gives you Evyel back in control. She and Nanna have been placed in an Arena as Raydrik wants to get some entertainment to impress his boss, the administrator of the Loptyr cult in the Munster region, Veld. They need to fight off powerful foes while the rest of your team begins in the bottom middle of the map, making a desperate push to go north and rescue them.
This map is infamous for having loads of variations that made fan translations absolutely nightmarish. If Nanna and Evyel can survive against their enemies, Raydrik will send out Mareeta, Evyel’s foster daughter, whom the shadow sword has corrupted.
They cannot kill each other. Raydrik will notice this and that Mareeta might overthrow the sword’s capabilities. Veld steps in, turning Evyel to stone. Evyel can also be almost entirely taken out in advance, and Veld will turn her to stone as a trophy. If you manage to get Lief up in time, Raydrik will be mortified by this and panic, with Veld stepping in.
The script has so many alterations and changes depending on how you act and perform during this section. Critically, Evyel will be lost regardless. Nanna and Lief will be without their foster mother, Mareeta is still in the clutches of the empire, and they still have to escape Munster Castle. It would be best if you cycled around this map, dealing with archers, mages, and even stray powerhouses with a long-distance meteor or physic to heal up units you couldn’t take out.
You can save Nanna, which will ease up the number of luminaries you’ll need to steal from enemies. This allows you more time to keep track of your spacing after the more hellish maps with infinite reinforcements. You’ll also likely discover that Lifis, despite having low resistance, will have enough strength to rip tomes directly out of the hands of mages, turning them into free punching bags for experience and letting you pass tomes over to Asbel. They could be buddies.
Fire Emblem games allow exciting map design and challenges while telling unique stories. Having the maps be in entirely different biomes with several scenes between them and a story that is ‘now you should go here’ isn’t taking advantage of the medium.
The Munster escape sequence takes place from chapters 4 to 7 of the game, with each one of Thracia 776’s maps setting these maps up and leading from one into the next directly. This means they feel tight and cohesive and that your actions and successes are part of a more remarkable story than they would otherwise be all segmented apart.
Conquest’s ‘Unhappy Reunion’ is a fine map for being a defense map in which you are encouraged to play offensively. But to claim it’s one of the best with this argument as proof betrays a minimal experience with Fire Emblem.
Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, for example, do this many times throughout their stories, allowing defense maps to be played in various ways and unique dialogue for your decisions while tying into an overarching story. Fates famously does not do this and has a story that is constantly criticized.
The Munster Escape sequence lacks a defense map; those come later, but you get many more options that reward you both narratively for your efforts. As I hope to have shown you in these previous and oncoming maps, you can tie interesting map objectives to essential story beats. I believe the opening act of Thracia 776 is the best in Fire Emblem. It sets a fantastic tone for the story while pushing you through maps that teach you everything you need to know without ever being ‘a tutorial’.
The Escape – Chapter 6, Thracia 776
I hope you don’t think that it’s the end just because they’ve made it out of the castle. They have the immediate area to leave, and Raydrik’s men are after you. August, the tactician, was out here too, planning your rescue, but it seems that wasn’t needed.
Thracia 776 has a mounting mechanic; characters can’t use their mounts indoors and are forcibly dismounted on an indoor map. I guess the implication here is that characters like Brighton and Fergus nabbed a horse on the way out of the castle. It works; who doesn’t like the image of the ragtag group of heroes stealing a horse or two from the villains? Karin’s mount, on the other hand, a pegasus named Hermes, has been circling the area, waiting for Karin to appear. This presents you with two main paths.
You can charge through the main city area, taking down soldiers on your way, or you can go around the city, using Hermes to fly over the castle gates. If you saved green allies units on the previous maps, you’d be able to start getting some rewards for your efforts. Of course, those rewards will require you to fly into the city, requiring some planning to ensure your couple of units aren’t swarmed. It’s a whole collection of pros and cons.
It doesn’t end here, though, because if you had to cut your losses and missed out on chapter 4x, Ced will appear on this map. Ced and the Magi will reinforce your escape and hold off enemy units for a while. Meanwhile, Raydrik will send in the extremely powerful mercenary Galzus if you start taking too long. The only way to kill him is to line up Ced against him. And you may not even want to risk that. It’s another race.
I like to fly everyone over the top wall, leave it unlocked to give myself some breathing room, and then panic into the city for extra rewards. This is a prolonged method, but taking your time to make it work becomes satisfying if it does, after all. You could speed it up by unlocking the door and letting enemies come with you into the first half, but then you need to make sure you can handle them.
What’s your play to escape?
Shield of Thracia – Chapter 7, Thracia 776
The final map of the Munster escape sequence is this: the Shield of Thracia. The shield refers to General Hannibal, who resides in Castle Meath, south of Munster. With our party on the loose and Raydrik desperate to stop them, Lief seeks to take refuge with Hannibal, as Raydrik’s men would be intruding on his territory, and ensuing political conflicts may backfire horribly.
This map is one more escape map, a dash straight down between the mountains with a horde of bandits. If you charge straight down, you’ll be pincered between the bandits and Raydrik’s men, who may overwhelm you. You can, however, dismount and cut through the forest, which will take some time and pit you against a separate group of powerful bandits, but you’ll be hidden from the constant reinforcements, allowing you to slip through the sides.
Finn, Lief’s influential foster father, and Safy, party members from the first few maps, are also heading to meet with Lief. This gives you a separate series of options. You can use Safy to recruit one of the bandits, which means you might want to bring the two of them up to meet Lief at the mountain pass or take the bandits early. It would be a bit tricky, but Finn does have the brave lance, which makes it surprisingly viable.
Once the gang has made it to Meath, you have reunited with your other party members, successfully escaped Munster, and the first act of Thracia 776 is over! And now, it’s time to figure out how to launch a counter-offensive.
Maybe we can talk about that in another piece. It won’t be a joke piece that time.
