Any time there's a desert level in a Fire Emblem game, you know trouble is headed your way, because your movement on the desert is mega-slow. Paladins normally move 8 spaces, but on deserts it's 2 spaces. Magicians (Non-mounted of course—hope you trained some. And no, this doesn't include the Quirky Bard.) aren't affected by this, and neither are fliers, which the enemy army typically has a whole lot of.
Mainline Games
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem has Chapter 3, one of the most hated chapters in the series. At first, it looks pretty tricky◊, but straightforward: the objective is to reach the castle on the island in the middle of a lake, connected by a number of bridges (one of which is pretty close to the starting area if you have a bridgekey). There's a large number of dracoknights that rush your starting position, which by itself is a scary prospect, along with an additional squad that will charge you if you visit a specific shop. Once you've collected yourself, you organize your bowmen and mages, along with the incredibly strong newly-joined Palla, and manage to take out the dracoknights. Then you can head up the bridge, confront the band of cavaliers, and recruit Matthis from them and finish the chapter, right? Wrong. Matthis can only be recruited by Julian, who is a Thief recruited from a village. Which village? The one in the northeast corner of the map, on the exact opposite side from your starting position. Since you don't have Warp, and crossing the island provokes Matthis's cavalier squad into charging you, you have no easy way to reach other than having Marth march in a lap all the way around the map, which takes turn after turn of just walking the guy around through areas with no enemies or anything of interest in them. When going for full recruitment, even low-turncount runs of the chapter tend to take around seventeen turns! This results in the chapter being a nightmare for inexperienced or casual players due to being bumrushed early, and a relentless bore for hardcore players due to three-quarters of the experience being devoid of interest. It's not for no reason that it gets followed by Jagen's amazing"The Reason You Suck" Speech, aimed at the guy who put you up to this.
Chapter 2 can give you a lot of headaches. Namely, the condition of keeping those three NPC knights alive if you want the very valuable Knight Ring (it lets foot units move again after attacking, VERY useful for dancers!). And no, you can't get it again in the second half. Thing is, these NPCs have such poor AI that they tend to attack the enemy on sight and then get themselves killed, so you'll find yourself trying to reach for them to heal them WAY too many times to even count.
A close second is the final part of the last chapter in which you not only have to withstand a barrage of enemies, a powerful boss with a Holy Weapon and three Falcon Knights with Awareness and the Critical Skill but you also have to hurry over to Velthomer to take out Manfroy so you can get Julia back on your side! And you NEED her back on your side, because without her the Final Boss is pretty much impossible, since he has an (un)holy weapon that not only jacks his stats, but halves the attack power of anyone attacking him, and that's before the boss's defense is even factored. In other words, even your most powerful units will be lucky to do more than sneeze on him. The only way to negate this is with the holy light tome Naga, which can only be wielded by, you guessed it, Julia. Oh, and he has a long-range tome that lets him snipe your units from afar to boot, making even approaching him a risky proposition. So you need to hurry and kill Manfroy, while avoiding killing Julia, hurry Seliph back across the fucking map to snap her out of, schlep Julia right back across the map to get the tome, and then try to get to Julius without him sniping off your weaker units.
Thracia 776 is renowned for being Nintendo Hard, and there are many different levels in this game that would easily qualify as That One Level in normal Fire Emblem games.
Chapter 14 is a large defense map that has you staking out in the Tahra streets while the enemy army throws an enormous amount of reinforcements at you. They've got hordes of troops that will be relentlessly flooding the map, and have already set up four ballistae around the walls whose range basically covers 60% of the city – which can easily pick off any of your units at low HP, along with dealing extra damage to your fliers and therefore severely limiting their movement. And it gets worse: in the middle of the chapter, a legion of Thracian dracoknights show up as green units. Anyone who's played literally any other game in the series will see the green affiliation and assume these dracoknights are allied units... until they join in on the siege and start attacking your units too. There's also a house in the bottom left corner which will net you a unique weapon if visited by Dean, but it's guarded by a ballista with fifteen range (the longest range in the series) which will do effective damage against him since he's a flier. Alongside that ballista is the boss of the chapter, whose has maxed defenses along with the incredibly hard-hitting, flier-effective Tornado tome, and the Master Axe, which not only gives him weapon triangle advantage over Dean, but lets him double no matter what.
Chapter 14x is a Fog of War map involving escorting fleeing Tahrans through a mountain pass. Aside from the standard gripes of Fog of War in Thracia being pitch-black, meaning that the player can't even see the terrain ahead of them, the chapter also throws squads of Pegasus Knights who will fly in, capture the citizens, and run off back into the fog of war, often within the same turn. Naga help you if you don't have any Torches available to dispel the fog.
Chapter 16B. It's a map coated with forest, which slows down everyone's movement, albeit not as much as a desert map would. The obnoxious part about it are the invisible warp tiles, which will teleport the unit in question to a different spot on the map, often a spot behind where everyone else is. There is no indication whatsoever as to where these tiles are and there is no way to avoid them aside from trial and error or looking up a guide. To make things worse, this map is an Escape chapter, meaning that you have to bring all of your units to the end point before Leif in order to complete it – any units who are still on the map after Leif leaves are treated as captured and will not be seen until you break them out of prison in 21x. Not to mention the boss, Reincock, who will be turning your army against themselves with his Berserk staff while they slog through the warp tiles – and since status effects never go away by themselves, your only hope is that your Restore staff users haven't accidentally stepped on a warp tile and are still close by.
Chapter 17 on the east path (17A) will make you feel like you had gone with Honor Before Reason and wish you had been sneaky. The particular character in question is also in this chapter, and there's a bunch of Ballistas and Meteor Bishops around the castle to keep you from getting in quickly enough. What's that? You'll take your time and avoid the distance bastards until you wipe out everything else? No you will not. On turn 10 a certain High Priest will show up and give all enemies 30 HIT AND AVOID, while on the same turn, rewarping dark mages start to spawn. Then on turn 12, a squad of Thoron-wielding Mage Knights spawn where you started and every single one of them have dangerously high crit rates. Mind you, said High Priest will also pelt you with his Sleep staff and undo any damage you deal with his Fortify staff. Oh, and trying to run will force you straight into a squad of Horeslayer-wielding Green-Unit Pegasus Knights, led by a recruitable character. Poison itself is a nasty status effect here, averting Useless Useful Spell; it actually deals passable damage on each turn....or rather it would be JUST that if it didn't last indefinitely and the means for getting rid of it wasn't overly limited. It's so bad that MageKnight404 got upset having to deal with it and was relieved when the character finally left, and he has experienced Chapter 22.
Chapter 22. Lots of high-leveled enemies that all have a boosted 58% accuracy and avoid due to a combination of 19 leadership stars spread between three enemy bosses, status-inflicting staff users (in this game, long-range staffs can affect anyone on the map, and bad statuses do not wear off over time) and lots of ballistas with boosted range that are subject to the same accuracy/avoid boost that love to snipe your weaker characters off. Although it is very easy to simply cop out and use a Warp Staff to kill the boss and seize the castle on the first turn, one of the bosses, who has an army of very powerful soldiers protecting him, gives a very nice sword to someone if you have her talk to him. So, if you want that sword... godspeed, soldier. Specifically, upon any of your units making it halfway across the River Thracia, the first bridge will be cut and a squad of Thoron-using Mage Knights will rush you with their 20+ percent crit rates. These Mage Knights are led by an extremely strong Mage Knight who has a 20% chance to turn your attacks into No-Sells, who always gets to hit you twice before you hit him, can reliably force you into a second round of combat, can randomly hit you an extra time, reliably crits you on follow-up attacks and has a 25% chance to move again.
Those chapters actually pale in comparison to Chapter 24x, which is horrible on many different levels.
Just getting access to the chapter is a pain, due to the sheer amount of luck involved. In the previous chapter, you have to rescue children being pursued by those Dark Mages and carry the right child to a door who will unlock it, revealing a room with a chest that has the item required to unlock Chapter 24x, the problem with this task is that carrying another unit(even a child) cuts the unit's stats in half making attacking enemies very risky, the child who can unlock that door is totally random, this chapter is full of chapter-lasting Status Effects, and the children are far away from that room and you have to fight those Dark Mages for them. If one of them captures/kills the child you need, you are screwed.
The whole chapter consists of a never ending swarm of berserkers with ridiculous crit rates and always crit on retaliation and the mentioned Dark Mages with the stupid Poison-inflicting tomes. If that weren't bad enough, the map is full of invisible trap tiles a la 16B that warp any unit unlucky enough to cross it to an inescapable room full of said enemies and the only way to get them out is to use a Rescue Staff to bring them to the staff's user... The problem is that particular staff only has three charges and there only 2-3 of them in the entire game, and you've likely used them up at this point and/or are saving them for the final chapter. Mind you, there are also a group of Dark Mages that you hit you with Sleep, Berserk and Silence. As a kicker, this is an escape chapter like 16B, meaning your troops has to make it to the exit and leave before your Lord can, otherwise any units left behind will automatically be captured. And since 24x is AFTER the chapter you are able to break your captured units out of prison (Chapter 21x), anyone abandoned/captured here will be considered dead at this point.
Going through all this trouble gets you a few useless (at this point) items and the Crutch Character you lost earlier. Which means the only reason to even go there is if the player is doing a AAA or SSS Ranked Game.note Oh, and to avert the MASSIVE Player Punch of seeing said Crutch Characterbrainwashed into becoming one of the main enemies and having to kill her.
Chapter 14, Arcadia. You are forced to use Sophia—a level ONE Shaman who dies in one shot from just about everything—in this desert level, which just so happens to include Fog of War. And you need to keep her alive AND pass the level in 25 turns or you won't get the Bonus Level, which is needed for getting to the proper end of the game. Now, desert levels typically hide items in the sand. You find them by putting a Thief or high-luck-stat unit on the space where the item is (just barely evades Guide Dang It! by putting the items near bones on the map). In summation, you have to protect Sophia in Fog of War, worry about the time limit AND worry about finding all the items... AND one final item that only Sophia can find! The level is also laden with fliers that ignore the desert terrain penalties, Dragons that take multiple rounds to kill, prepromotes that force you to waste ludicrous amounts of time or risk dying to and prepromoted fliers that come out of nowhere and kill your units. There's also a Bishop with a Sleep spell who can freeze Sophia and make her helpless to just about anything. Oh, and just as an added "bonus" — you also have to bring Cecilia on this map. Apart from her stats being pitiful, she's a mounted magic user, and therefore gets hit by the same movement penalty that your cavaliers/paladins do. So you're stuck dragging around around at least one unit who's going to be moving across the map at a crawl.
Chapter 16, Retaking the Capital. There's a rather powerful enemy General who must be kept alive in order to unlock the Gaiden level. You might want to put him to sleep to get the bulk of your forces past him and leave one unit with high HP and dodge, stripped of their weapons and packing an Elixir or two, in his range to keep him busy. Also, mages/sages and bishops with Bolting/Purge.
Chapter 21: The Binding Blade. Let's see, we've got reinforcements arriving in groups of four, and as many as five of these groups arrive on certain turns early on. Most of these are Dragon Riders/Dragonlords, one of the toughest classes out there. It's also a really big level. Then once you get close to the boss, you've got another really powerful enemy character showing up, one that all indications thus far have shown might be recruitable. He isn't. He won't attack you, mercifully, but he and his units will get in your way if you decide not to engage them in battle. Luckily, reports that you have to leave him alive to get to the Gaiden Level aren't true. Then there's a boss whose HP breaks the usual cap and who also has insane strength and defense. Here's hoping your mages have either been loaded with Angelic Robes (which you can actually buy in the secret store in this game) or have developed high dodge rates. Oh, and don't bother staying near the start and waiting for the waves of reinforcements to come to you, or else you'll have trouble beating the level in 30 turns, which is required to get the Gaiden level—and remember, you need to get every Gaiden level to unlock the True Final Boss.
As a level pretty much copied from the previously-mentioned Arcadia from The Binding Blade, Living Legend isn't much better. If you just want to win, this isn’t that difficult. One requirement is to make sure Pent, who you can not directly control, doesn’t die. That may sound like the difficult part, but it isn’t, as Pent is really powerful and can easily defeat most of the enemy units, including the bosses. The other requirement is to defeat all the enemy units, which should not be difficult thanks to Pent. Unlike Arcadia, Fog of War doesn’t exist, unless you’re playing on Hector Hard mode, in which case it does exist and does make it harder, but you should be fine thanks to Pent. So... Why is this here? The answer is simple, trying to do anything else. For starters, you have the two bosses inspired by those in Arcadia, and one of them has a very valuable Guiding Ring (promotion item for magical units). Problem is, Pent. More precisely, he will kill the boss before you can obtain the Ring. Now you might be thinking, “wow, on Hector Hard there’s Fog of War, how difficult is getting the Guiding Ring on that mode?” Well don’t worry about that as it doesn’t exist on Hector Hard and is replaced with the white gem the other boss originally had. Instead of worrying about that on Hector Hard, you should worry the other issue with this chapter, getting the sidequest. The first requirement, recruiting Hawkeye, isn’t hard, though it is a case of Guide Dang It!, but the other requirement of getting a total of 700 exp or more is harder because of, again, Pent. He will most surely get most of the enemy units before you can, meaning you can’t get that 700 exp requirement. (If anything, he would probably hit the requirement on his lonesome, if he could even get exp.) You basically have to outdo Pent, and good luck with that in a desert chapter, which limits movement of all, with the exception of fliers and magic users, the latter of which just so happens to be what Pent is. This is particularly bad if you are on Hector Hard Mode, as mentioned earlier it has Fog of War, so it can be rather hard to plan in advance, unless you are really good at remembering where specific units are at, and can get there faster than the enemy can get to Pent. Oh, and if you’re thinking about sending to if your flier to get to Pent, that can only happen if they are overleveled enough to reach for Pent in time, if not, they WILL get shot down because the level includes several archers, who have high chances to crit on them. Really, Pent is an awesome character in-story and in-stats, but in this particular level he can completely trash your strategies. Overall, if you just stick to the main goal of the chapter and don’t care about the side quest and promotions, this chapter is fine, otherwise, you are in for a bad time.
Any Fog of War chapter in any game is met with groans of disgust, but Battle Before Dawn has a reputation for being particularly sucktastic, especially in hard mode. To elaborate: there are 3 different AI allies whom you need to rescue, and they are in the bottom left, center, and right. One is the prince, who at least has the sense to hide and use Elixirs. He's the only one required to survive this chapter (you get a Game Over if he dies), but the other two are required to survive and recruit in order to unlock a sidequest chapter. Said other two are Nino the wizard, who will get killed by any physical attack, and Jaffar, who, while quite competent, starts surrounded by enemy forces and can get killed by a couple bad RNG rolls. To top it all off, the boss will move to get you and has the long-range Bolting tome, which will kill weakened units or the aforementioned Nino and the prince. Even worse, there are two treasure rooms, each one holding fabulous treasure (one has a consumable item that permanently increases a unit's movement range by one, one has a staff that warps other units within range to near its user* this one is particularly painful, because it's the first and only one of such staff that you get in the game, and it would make rescuing the prince FAR easier if it were only obtainable earlier; get the prince within range, use it, and voila, you would save him on the first/second turn and another is an equippable item that removes a flying unit's crippling arrow weakness). However, the enemy starts much closer to those treasure rooms, and deploys their own thieves to steal the treasure for themselves. So, in addition to needing to defend all 3 Non Player Characters, you also have to fight flawlessly in order to get to the thieves (who will have stolen the treasures before you get there) and kill them to get the treasures before they escape off the map. To add an extra grain of salt into the wounds, in Hector's mode, the enemies sent to kill Jaffar all have Swordreavers (and some have Swordslayers, just for an extra "fuck you" to the gamer) which reverse the weapon triangle, putting Jaffar into a massive disadvantage at the beginning. Sometimes, you just have to restart because the game wanted him dead. Hope you got a flying unit/paladin at the ready! Nino at least can be recruited and sent to safety fast since you usually reach for her after clearing the path towards her with relative ease, but doing the same with Jaffar is pure torture. You also need to make Nino speak with Jaffar in order to unlock the sidequest mentioned earlier, and the only saving grace is that he is a neutral NPC, so he won't attack your characters. Also, regarding the prince and his Elixirs; he will not use them unless his health is below 50%. When he has 20 HP to start with. In other words, if a Fighter attacks him and only does, say 6 damage, it would be WORSE than if it nearly killed him, because he won't heal the damage back! if you don't have a healer with a Physic staff handy and relatively close, prepare to get shit-scared every time the little guy takes a hit. The final kicker, the last nail in the coffin for this horrid level, is a story-related one. From the previous game! (Granted, The Blazing Blade is actually a prequel, but to make players pissed off at the previous installment in a series with one level is no easy feat, and certainly not a respectable one.) You go through this hell to save the prince, and not only does he become the Big Bad of The Binding Blade, he also kills Hector (one of the men who helped to save his life in this particular level) during the events of that game. So much for this...
Night of Farewells is less difficult and more tedious due to the pathways that only open up in specific places every few turns, which would leave most of your units stranded in the middle of the water unless a Pirate or flier rescued them. Merlinus won't be able join in this chapter, meaning that if you want to loot all the items in the map, you have to make room for them by discarding other items your units hold. There's also plenty of status staves, ballistas and siege tomes to slow you down, making the map even more of a slog. And the reinforcements keep coming for a long time.
Cog of Destiny on Hector Hard Mode. The Normal version was already a large and lengthy The War Sequence map, but the HHM version replaces nearly every enemy with a magic user, making them a major threat to most of your physical units. The map is also filled with lots of annoying Valkyries who are hard to double with dreaded status staves such as Berserk and Sleep, but the worst has got to be the Luna Druids who are disturbingly accurate, always deal big damage due to ignoring resistance and always have crit against you, when a critcal WILL be a One-Hit Kill.
Chapter 6, Victims of War. Before the level starts, the level boss Novala decides to taunt Eirika by teleporting three random, defenseless civilians into the map, and putting them right near a den of giant spiders, which turns it into a Timed Mission as letting all of the civilians die leads to a Nonstandard Game Over. (And losing even one of them will screw you over getting an Orion's Bolt, which is needed to promote archers, for free.) Between the NPCs and the spiders is a fairly strong force of Grado soldiers (which can inflict some very painful damage on your still-squishy units). And the whole thing is covered by Fog of War. It's basically a combination of almost every single Scrappy Mechanic in the series. Not helping at all is the enemy outnumbering you a lot more than in the previous levels and being spread out all over; if anyone but Seth goes out on their own (like Vanessa the Pegasus Knight trying to get the civilians out of spider range...) they WILL get ganged up on and most likely die. This level is one of the best arguments the "It's OK to use Seth" camp has in its arsenal early on. And even with this, it won't be a cakewalk to have him reach for the boss: with the Fog of War around and how Novala is actually in an upper corner of the map, poor Seth will get ganged-up and die if you aren't careful.
Ephraim's Chapter 11, Phantom Ship. If you didn't grind in the Tower of Valni, is a nightmare, especially on Hard Mode. You have to fight your way through a ship full of enemies to get to L'Arachel before she's stupidly killed because she's a noncombatant at this point, while her bodyguard Dozla is running off attempting (and mostly failing) to hit enemies with his huge Battle Axe. You could send your fliers to rescue her, but the seas around you are swarming with flying enemies, including flying spell-casters that can nuke the otherwise hardy flier Cormag. And at this point, there is nobody in your army big enough to rescue Dozla. Adding to this is the small space in which to move and no space to hide, the boss that is way harder than any monster faced up to that point and averts the usual Stationary Boss by being a flier who will kill your weaker units if it can, and on top of all this we have Fog of War, meaning you can't see most of those flying enemies until it's too late.
Ephraim's Chapter 12, "Landing at Taizel", a giant level which you get thrust into immediately after "Phantom Ship" (no chance to level-grind) and has enemies all over the place. Also, in order to recruit Marisa, you have to use the newly-recruited Ewan, who has a movement range of 4 and gets owned in one hit by everything because he's a Trainee-class unit and a Squishy Wizard at that. The only way to properly make this recruitment is to lure her in with another unit, preferably unarmed because anything strong enough to stand up to her criticals would probably one-shot her due to her low HP. This requires careful planning to pick off any other enemies that are even remotely close.
Ephraim's Chapter 13, Fluorspar's Oath. The level is set up so that you have to corkscrew your units around a winding river. You could use your fliers to fly a few units across to save some time, but then they get put in the range of archers and Selena's long-range and very powerful Bolting tome. You can also try to use Pirate!Ross or Colm to rescue people and deposit them across the water, but both of them would be severely slowed down and likely doubled by most of the enemies. Just to make it more stressful, you have to reach two towns before the Pirates and Brigands get them.
Ephraim's Chapter 14, "Father and Son", which does hard the old-fashioned way: by being gigantic and filled with enemy reinforcements as well as chests that must be opened. And we're not counting the two Druids with really, really effective Berserk staves, that are almost guaranteed to make units with low Resistence go Ax-Crazy and attack whoever's on their reach— even those on your own side. And God forbid they crit one of your own party members. Ewwww, go stock on Restore staves and keep your staff-using units safe, you WILL need them. And then we have theboss.
Eirika's Chapter 14 can be quite annoying to deal with. It has a fairly large number of enemies, reinforcements that come at you from behind, and a priest near the throne room with a Berserk Staff. It also has a layout similar to Fluorspar's Oath to deal with on top of that. Oh, and the final kick at the player? The boss is a Swordmaster on a throne, so he'll take forever to hit and will probably double half your army unless you've been level grinding, and he can hit at range with his special Wind Sword to boot.
Chapter 15, Scorched Sand. Half of the level is made up of desert tiles, which make any non-flying mounted unit essentially useless and any armored unit even MORE so. And as for all other units, save for magic ones they get slowed down substantially, making the level just drag on for hours on end. Good thing this map offers obscenely good items to break up the monotony. Want to get them? Better check the strategy guide! And at the end of it all, you face That One Boss, who is way too likely to kill off even your best units. And there's actually two bosses. Which of them was meant when they were referred to as That One Boss? Why, both of them. Both bosses can be made easier by stealing their special items; Valter in particular is greatly weakened if you steal his Fili Shield, the item that protects him from bow attacks. Due to the general weakness of your two thief units, though, you'd damn well better get them out of there before the enemy turn, or they'll likely be crushed.
Chapter 15. Not only do you have a desert that slows down everyone except mages, flying units, and thieves; the map is full of Laguz shapeshifters, who are among the most powerful units in the game when transformed...but unable to attack when not transformed. This would be a blessing if not for the fact that you're rewarded for not killing them, even though they're making every effort to kill you. Add in that on top of the usual hidden treasures, there's also a hidden unit that can only be recruited by sending one of two units to a specific square, and if you send any other unit to that square first, he'll leave... (though at least you'll still get the Vague Katti if you send the wrong unit there.) If you don't mind forgoing the bonus experience for sparing the enemies, though, it's actually a pretty good place to level units up, both because the laguz give out just as much experience when they're not transformed as they do when they are and because the boss is immobile and lacks a ranged attack, allowing anyone with a ranged attack to grind for experience off of him without fear of counterattack. And given that Chapter 14 is a Fog of War chapter and Chapter 17 is, well, see below, this could also qualify as a Breather Level.
Chapter 17. First off, it's a four-part chapter with four different mission objectives—the first part is a Rout map, the second is a Seize, the third is a Survive (10 turns), and the last is a Defeat Boss. Much of it takes place in a swamp, which gives out even heftier movement penalties than a desert and only your fliers, rather than both fliers and magic-users like in the desert, are unhindered. The first part is relatively easy—not too much of the swampy terrain, and aside from one promoted unit with a Killer weapon, there's nothing too tough. Part two is where the swamp starts, but any unit can take the mission objective and it's not actually at the opposite end of the map (the short way goes through a lot of swamp, prompting you to take the long way around), so with a strong flier or two you can get through it quickly. Then things start getting really challenging. In between part 2 and part 3, Ike encounters an NPC in distress, and rescues her—which means that for the remainder of the chapter, he's permanently forced to carry her with him, cutting his speed and skill in half. (Better hope he's damn close to level 20, because he won't be doing much fighting anymore and he automatically promotes following the chapter.) Finally, part 4 throws a mage with a long-distance tome at you near the starting position, with trees protecting him from your units as he's able to get close enough (fliers can go after him, of course, as can an archer with a longbow). And once you go past a certain line—a line that you'd have to send someone over very early if you want to take out the mage with the Meteor tome? Four allied NPCs show up halfway across the map from your starting position and in the midst of the enemies' starting formation, one of whom is powerful enough to kill just about everything—and rob you of all of their dropped items—while another one is completely defenseless and will likely get killed if not rescued quickly. Your best bet to keep them from doing too much damage is to rescue all four of them as well...leaving you with five units who are going to be more or less useless in combat. It doubles as a Marathon Level. To add to your worries, if you can get past all of the previously mentioned challenges, there's still the matter of running out of weapons and healing items. And you can't save in between parts, either. Mess up even once and you're back to part one.
Chapter 23 is incredibly frustrating. Pitfall traps and enemy ballistae to take out your fliers. The latter is made at least marginally more palatable by the fact that dragon-riders no longer count as fliers for the purpose of determining weaknesses, but is turned back around by the many enemies using Shine Barriers to block the only path available to ground-bound units (other than being carried over by a flier) for a number of turns. You know, ground-bound units like Ike, who has to capture the boss's position to end the chapter?
Chapter 1-5 in hard mode falls squarely under this for one simple reason: Jill. Also known as your "ally", who you have no control over, and who will grant you a Nonstandard Game Over if she dies...with A.I. that seems completely suicidal. And she starts a good distance ahead of your team, so even if you rush your entire army straight to her position, she'll still get a guaranteed chance to screw you over.
Chapter 3-8 takes place in a volcano while spitting fire that deals 10 damage to each unit. The good news is that it can hit enemies, the bad news is that it can kill your characters. Oh.Joy.
Remember Chapter 23 of Path of Radiance (mentioned above)? It's back as Chapter 3-11, and the only meaningful difference is that you're going in the other direction. Oh, and this time you have to prevent Tibarn from either stealing all of your kills or getting shot and killed by a stray crossbow bolt. At least he's a partner unit so you can tell him to stay in the back lines.
In Chapter 3-13, you have to play as under-leveled characters fighting against a nearly endless wave of laguz. Especially egregious because Ike, the best unit in the game to which everything falls in two hits, is the enemy boss. You have to rely upon mostly brain-dead ally units to do the dirty work for you, and only one of them, (the one referred to by fans as the "3-13 Archer") actually puts up a fight. There were several joke topics on GameFAQs about how "3-13 Archer" was the best character in the game. The only redeeming factor (somewhat) is the Awesome Musicplaying in that chapter. Don't forget that Soren might have a Blizzard tome by now, which not only allows him to attack from half the map away and probably kill anyone who isn't being rescued, but waste a really good tome on units that you don't want to kill.
Chapter 4-3 doesn't have quite this much luck. Sure, it's probably the least bad of the Fire Emblem desert levels (which, given how bad they always seem to be, isn't saying much)... but then try playing it your first time through without a guide. You won't realize that Sothe and Volke's ultimate weapon and the Dragonfoe scroll (both of which are EXTREMELY helpful in Endgame) are buried here, much less where. You won't know to send Micaiah to the far east (which is quite counterintuitive, by the way) to get Stefan. You won't know that you need to keep the boss from being the last enemy you kill because there's a Laguz Gem (also EXTREMELY helpful in Endgame) buried at his position. And you won't know that you have to hurry to gather kills before the Black Knight shows up and annihilates all the enemies in his path. Yeah, in case you didn't get the message, that level is a MASSIVEGuide Dang It!.
Chapter 4-5: the one with hordes of feral laguz coming at you, swamp that lowers movement rate everywhere, and a boss that would summon four more enemies every single turn, and, if you got close to him, would teleport away. At least it's a mage boss.
The third battle of part 4's endgame. You have to fight dozens of dragons to make your way to the very powerful king of Goldoa. Their brute force and numbers makes up for their terrible strategy and poor luck, and they feature both physical and magic attacks. Unless you use the battle save (unavailable in Hard and less than fully honorable at any difficulty), one mistake can cost hours of work.
Prologue 8. Prologue 8 has Katarina as the boss, and due to the way resistance works in this game, her attacks will do tremendous amounts of damage to you, if they don't just outright kill you. She, unlike many early-game bosses, can and will move to attack people in range.
Chapter 6X. It's a small map filled to the brim with Fighters, and on top of that there's Caesar and Radd, who you actually have to keep alive so that they'll join you later. However, they won't hesitate to attack your best units and die trying. At least Radd is fast enough to avoid being hit twice.
Chapter 11. A big desert map filled with Wyverns. Wanna know what's so bad about Wyverns? Well, you know how desert maps severely lower the movement of just about all your units? Well, imagine if the enemy had a unit that not only ignored the penalty, but had a larger movement range than anything on your side AND hit like a, well, dragon to boot? Yep, that's Wyverns, and they're not even bosses, they're the map's basic Mooks! Oh, and they're fast enough to avoid being doubled by most of your party, and lord have mercy if they actually double you... And on Lunatic Mode, their breath has increased range.
Chapter 19 is pretty annoying too, with its long streams of brutally tough reinforcements. (Which on Lunatic Mode all carry uber forged weapons.) Not only that, but there's four characters you have to recruit, and they form a chain (the first recruits the second, the second recruits the third and so on), meaning they all have to trek across the map. Did I mention they all have crap stats and die in a few hits to the reinforcements? Apart from the first, these units all have to be recruited from the enemy, and despite supposedly being enemy subcommanders they're all inexplicably much weaker than their own Mooks, who will, naturally, gleefully cut them to pieces the second they defect.
Chapter 6 is probably the first real wake-up call in the game, especially for inexperienced players, as it is the first map to really give you many different things to juggle instead of just telling you to kill everything. For the most part, the chapters before this have you fighting a handful of enemies in areas like open fields and courtyards. This chapter on the other hand has you dealing with an invasion on the Ylissian royal palace, which is the first map to truly bottleneck your units, with far more enemies than the stages before it. While this chapter is listed as a simple "rout the enemy" map, in practice it also doubles as a defense map, as you have two non-recruitable neutral units, and Emmeryn's death will result in a Game Over. On top of all that, there's a recruitable enemy Thief unit that can only be recruited by talking to him specifically with Chrom, and who is very easy to kill by accident.
Chapter 9 is the point where the game more or less stops messing around. Never mind the fact that the whole level is one giant Player Punch, this is the prime contender of the Wake-Up Call Level of Fire Emblem. First off, all of the units are packing Steel weapons and El-level tomes before they're even available for purchase, which means your squishiest units will be downed in two hits. Secondly, it's a map that's on a desert, where ALL desert levels in Fire Emblem period are a That One Level. So aside from being slowed down to a crawl, you'll also have to deal with Steel Axe-wielding Wyvern Knights, and they WILL hurt like a bitch. Thirdly, you have two units needing recruitment; while one isn't so bad, the other character you need recruiting is pure torture. He's named Libra, and he'll gladly go charging into enemy territory. While he can handle himself pretty well* He starts off as a War Monk, a promoted class., the units he's up against are Steel-wielding lance and bowmen, so they will wear him down quickly, and you better have your flyers reach him in time. It gets even worse: halfway through the map, you'll have a whole cadre of Wyvern Knights charge you from the flank and - unless you scramble defensive formations beforehand - you will be losing a unit from the surprise attack. After being put through all this torture, you are "rewarded" with Emmeryn's Heroic Suicide, which serves as one-last "fuck you" to the player.
Chapter 17 splits up your party and has you fighting through a fort. This is the part of the game where, on higher difficulties, every single enemy is carrying around a forged weapon, too. The boss has a Fortify staff that she will use if the enemies around her get so much as a scratch. Later in the chapter, you appear to get NPC reinforcements... that are then swayed to the enemy side. It can be a dick move if you're not expecting it.
In Chapter 18, there's little room to maneuver, and the floor starts giving out more and more as the chapter progresses, meaning that you'll take damage if you're on it. There are chests here, and if you don't get to them before the floor gives way, they're lost.
The final chapter can be really difficult as well if you're trying for a no-death run. It may not look like it at first but the fact that Grima summons four enemies each turn really makes things tricky, and they often come packed with Killer weapons. Especially since the battlefield basically has no obstructions, allowing the enemies to flank you and pick off your slower units. And because of Grima's Dragonskin ability and ridiculously high health, he will most likely take a few turns to take down unless if you attack him with Chrom's Exalted Falchion, which by that point a good number of your army will most likely be killed.
Paralogue 6, the one where you can recruit Severa, a female mercenary and daughter to a playable character (Cordelia). Unlike most characters who can be recruited throughout the series, she doesn't immediately join the cast when spoken to, she has to be escorted through a fortress, which is heavily armed with enemies who can so much as swat her like a fly. What's worse is that her AI has the common sense of a blind ostrich, and will outright turn over to the enemy side if the NPC she has to talk to is accidentally killed. note (There's a trick to make this easier, however: stocking up on Rescue staves and using them on her whenever she walks too far into the enemies' clutches. Plus the NPC she has to speak to doesn't move or attack the cast, so he'll stay put until Severa talks to him.)
Paralogue 16 can be a pain as well because of the stage featuring a rather annoying mechanic where the walls magically break and fix themselves periodically. Aside from the locked doors one can only progress by going through them when they are down (and the player's likely to reach one just as it fixes itself). Worse, most enemies have ranged weapons and two of them have the Mire tome which have a very large range.
Paralogue 17: The Threat of Silence (Tiki's recruitment chapter) is ridiculous for the simple reason that your enemies will utterly ignore your units and rush straight for Tiki. Your only real option is to form a box around her one space away from her... which leaves you with two characters inside who can't do much because enemies will bunch up at the corners of the box. Sure, with the right strategy, it's workable, but it's frustrating as all hell. On higher difficulties, you can expect to try again and again as your opponents get lucky hits from abilities and crits while you frantically try to heal with the two units inside or what healers you can push together on the outside. Unless you have a surplus of Physic staves, it's very annoying to deal with.
The Wellspring of Truth (Paralogue 22) might be the most dickish level the Fire Emblem series has ever conceived. You face exact copies of your characters. Including skills and stats. In other words, if you have Lethality or Astra, your opponent can now defeat you in one turn. Same goes for skills like Counter, which makes it a losing proposition to fight up close. This means that you're required to change or set up your characters' skill pools so you don't screw yourself accidentally. On top of that, all stat boosts that you have on your characters are transferred over as well, including characters you used the Boots item on to increase their range beyond the class-specific cap. The only exception to this is weapon-granted stat increases, because the enemy units have different weapons than you. Unfortunately, their weapons are still typically top-tier equipment that are forged on higher difficulties. And if you bring in fewer characters than the cap to try and make it easier? Nope. The game spawns multiple copies of your characters to fill the roster. This level is the bane of no-death runs on any difficulty. Even the stage design itself works against you, as the only way to win is to defeat all enemy units, and the stage bottlenecks you into three hallways that still require two characters to impede, which means your opponents have equal opportunity to you to use their distance weapons. Unlike nearly every other stage in the game, this one forces absolute parity between yourself and the opponent. Finally, the enemy units will always have the initiative because, as if everything else wasn't bad enough, you have an AI ally to deal with that, like most, suffers from Artificial Stupidity and has a clone of their own to add to the "fun". There is ONE way to make this chapter easier, and it's to bring in weak fodder characters and gamble that your strong characters will be strong enough and quick enough to beat your AI ally's duplicate before you get wrecked or your ally dies, and that only really works with SpotPass characters. And even then, the chapter can still easily turn into an exercise in frustration as the AI charges headfirst into death or if the enemy chases after your strong characters from the start.
Paralogue 23: The Radiant Hero may be the single most difficult non-DLC chapter in the game. Good news, you get access to 30 units, the most of any chapter. Bad news? You have 50 enemies to deal with, and all of them are max level with top-tier equipment. As if that wasn't bad enough, the boss character is Priam, who not only has the legendary Ragnell (which grants a +5 defense boost and is a 15 MT, 70% Hit Rate sword that can attack from 2 spaces away), but also has all three melee weapon breaker skills plus Sol and Luna. Even worse? You don't get to just plan out a strategy and pick them apart step-by-step. The entire enemy formation, Priam included, charges you in a Zerg Rush that feels more like standing in the path of an avalanche. If you're trying to make it through all stages without losing anyone on Classic mode... good freakin' luck. Even on Normal, it's very hard to avoid losing at least one unit. At least if you survive this hellhole, that son of a bitch Priam joins you with the same stats he had as a boss.
Birthright Chapter 21: Burning Falls has an incredibly obnoxious gimmick. You need to use Dragon Veins to form bridges across rivers of lava to advance. The problem is, the Dragon Veins come in pairs, and choosing the wrong Dragon Vein will cause the ground under your feet to turn to lava, slowing your units and inflicting damage on them every turn. Nothing indicates which vein you're supposed to use. Making matters worse is that the map is swarming with Stoneborn, who have high defense and an absolutely moronic 1-5 range on their attacks. This means they can both hit you from five tiles away, denying you your counter, but can also counter your attacks, even in melee. They also ignore the weapon triangle, leaving them with no real weakness except magic, and your casters likely don't have defense high enough to survive more than one hit from them. A painful slog all-around.
Conquest Chapter 10: Unhappy Reunion, the defend map at the port. This map is infamous for being one of the most difficult in the entire series. The player has to hold out for 11 turns and defend four green tiles near the starting position. If a single enemy steps on there, then that is game over. The map has a lot of choke points to defend against the oncoming enemies, but there are also houses that provide an incentive to break formation and visit for items, even if it means putting a unit at risk. In previous games in the series, defend maps usually end up with about most of the enemies being defeated near the end, giving a few turns of leeway. That is not the case here, as the player is under siege every single turn and the enemies refuse to give in at any point, while more reinforcements come pretty much every turn. And on Turn 7, things take a turn for the worse. Takumi activates a Dragon Vein and the water in the harbor is drained, which would remove the choke points that the player has set up. The enemies can now walk around and get to the defend point more easily. While this can be prevented by defeating Takumi first, this would require a unit to possibly be in more danger from oncoming units, plus Takumi himself will take a beating before going down. On harder difficulties, enemies have skills that can really screw the player over, like Oni Savages having Lunge to bring them closer to the defend point and displace the player's units out of formation, while Hinata and Oboro have Mov +1 to help them get closer. The map can get really hectic, especially towards the end, and will truly test the player's skill and strategy. It may be difficult, but despite that (or because of it), this map is also considered to be a fan favorite.
Conquest Chapter 17: Den of Betrayal, also known as the ninja cave, or Ninja Hell, and for good reasons. It is a Marathon Level made of narrow corridors that lead to several open areas, most of which have spikes that will injure the player's units if they are standing on them. Only units with Locktouch can disarm these spikes. Saizo is on the map as an ally NPC and he can also help disarm the traps. He's not invincible however, and ensuring that he survives will yield a Speedwing, providing an incentive to keep him alive. What further complicates this map are the Dragon Veins, which will alter the map's layout completely. Some walls will fall, while others will rise, opening up some paths and closing others. The usage of these Dragon Veins need to be planned carefully as the player's units could potentially be blocked off if not placed properly. To make matters worse, most of the enemies on the map are Ninjas, some of them being the promoted Master Ninjas. With their high Avoid, their ability to poison and debuff, and their ability to attack through walls, they prove to be quite a pain to deal with. Automatons and Mechanists can also debuff, while Swordmasters and Samurai also have high Avoid to contend with. Finally, the boss is Kotaro, who boasts a ridiculous amount of Avoid, boosted further by terrain, while the terrain of his boss room will be completely detrimental to the player's units.
Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake Echoes: Shadows of Valentia have some annoying chapters as well.
Grieth's Citadel. The level starts out with some desert tiles and this is the merciful bit. The level features long corridors with snipers on either side ready to pick you off, a Cantor that summons Bonewalkers and witches capable of teleporting. Then there is Greith himself; as a Dread Fighter he is fast, powerful, bulky and can move very far. The units you are controlling meanwhile are very frail.
The Sluice Gate is a pain. The boss of this map, Tatarrah, is controlling a mage called Delthea. You are told the best thing to do is to not kill her but to kill Tatarrah first. The problem is Delthea has the ability to teleport and when she does so is determined by the AI. The map is linear which makes it difficult to avoid her should she teleport right next you and she is very frail so almost any attack will kill her.
Dolth Keep is a pain to get through. For starters, the majority of the map is a swamp that heavily hinders the movement of your non-flier units while also dealing 5 damage at the start of your turn to any units you have there. While this map doesn't have that many enemies, the ones it does have are mostly ranged units that will chip away at your units without a chance to retaliate while you're already dealing with the swamp. The only entrance to the keep itself is a single-tile-wide corridor at the far right of the map with no ground near it, meaning you have to slowly funnel your units in all the while taking damage from enemy units and the swamp. Oh, did we also mention that the boss of the map, Dolth, can summon Necrodragons?
Fear Mountain would not normally be a difficult map. However, its boss is capable of summoning witches. Since witches can teleport and this ability is controlled by the A.I. Roulette, it is highly likely a unit could be killed because a witch chose that moment to teleport next to them and attack. It also marks the first time third tier units show up as regular enemies.
Duma Gate. You start off fighting several Witches (who, as stated above, can pick off your weaker units thanks to teleporting). Then you get to the gate itself: a set of single file corridors, while being ambushed by Cantors, Arcanists, Fiends, and Dread Fighters. Lastly, you get to the boss, who has a skill that lets him drain around half the health of all your units every few turns regardless of range. Easily one of the hardest fights on Celica’s route.
Nuibaba's Abode might be the worst level in the game. It involves infiltrating a manor, but getting in via the front of the map means only moving one square to enter, where you will be promptly killed or seriously injured by all the enemies. The alternative is to go round the back of the map, where the main entrance is, using a narrow passage. However this means every enemy (which includes powerful spellcasters and Dread Fighters) can just Zerg Rush you. And as if to make this level even worse, there is a Cantor summoning Gargoyles every turn and the boss has the powerful Medusa spell with impressive range.
Felix's paralogue, True Chivalry. You have to defend villagers from attacking bandits, which wouldn't be so hard were it not for Rodrigue giving them an order to retreat. This will cause all of them to run towards a specific spot on the edge of the map, in spite of the route there teeming with enemies and the spot itself having a Mage parked on it. While it's not required for all of them to live, you lose access to Felix's personal Hero's Relic if even one of them dies, making the chapter a frustrating exercise in micromanagement. It's also likely for it to unlock before you've had any of your students learn Physic, which can render it flat out impossible to save everyone given how far away some of the villagers start.
Petra's paralogue, Foreign Land and Sky, is frustrating as the game outright lies to you about the objective and spawns a new boss and reinforcements when it looks like you're about to win. Which boss you face depends on your route, and both are terrible. On Crimson Flower, you face Catherine, a Lightning Bruiser with a legendary weapon. On any other you have to deal with Hubert, who has Meteor (a spell he can't normally learn) and will likely snipe one of your injured units with it the turn he spawns.
Chapter 13 on non-Crimson Flower routes. You will have to fight bandits with only Byleth and your Lord or Seteth. You receive reinforcements, but they come in waves at the various corners of the map, and only consist of students from your house, which can present problems if you've mainly relied on students outside of your house. There is also no opportunity to grind between the last battle and this one, or even do any pre-battle preparations, which can potentially lead unprepared players to end up being softlocked if they didn't make an alternative save. As a final bit of frustration, once you beat the boss, he tries to flee, leading to a defeat if he escapes.
To some, Chapter 11. You lose the Emblems (unless you have the DLC Emblem Bracelets, which remain with you throughout the game) and have to deal with the Corrupted using them against you, the Emblems being switched around on the enemies throughout the battle: Celica closing in and hitting you from a far range, Micaiah freezing you from a distance, Leif lessening the damage on whoever has him as well as equipping whichever weapon your units would have a disadvantage against so you can’t Break them, Roy making sure you can’t one-round an enemy, Marth dealing an extra hit and Sigurd ensuring an enemy will catch up to you. All of that and you also lose the ability to rewind time, preventing you from undoing the loss of a unit on Classic and forcing you to restart if Alear is defeated. Avoiding losing units can be difficult on Classic, especially if the Corrupted with Emblem Micaiah uses a Freeze staff on one of your units in the rear, enabling the Corrupted to catch up while they’re a sitting duck. There’s also the fact that you’re stuck with the same units you used in the last battle, which can be quite problematic if you don’t have a suitable team for this Chapter. You do get the Draconic Time Crystal back, as well as Emblem Lyn and Emblem Lucina after Ivy's Heel–Face Turn, but they won't allow you to rewind past the turn where you get them, on top of her and her retainers appearing at the last leg of the stage when you’ve likely dealt with much of the Corrupted already. To make matters worse, the Four Hounds then start closing in on you, only giving you a few turns to escape. And lastly, the enemy is wise to place Roy and Leif on the two Corrupted blocking the Escape panel to ensure you won’t get away too easily.
Chapter 13 is only the game's second Fog of War map and is a huge step up from the first. It's a very big area with fliers harrying you from the northeast lake (dousing its torches on the way), cluttered debris to break through to reach villages quickly, and cleverly hidden Snipers and Mages that can easily kill units if you don't properly scout for them. You also face two multi-health bar bosses at the same time, and both will rush you down once you get in range of either. It doesn't help that you're introduced to Emblem Ike here, who teaches you that you can use him to break obstacles, causing some players to waste their first Engage to do so due to thinking it's necessary for Demolish to work (it's a Sync Skill, meaning it's active even when not Engaged).
Chapter 15 is an escape map that introduces miasma, which subtracts a whopping 20 from your units' Defense and Resistance if they stand in it and grants that same bonus to any enemies who stand in it. The map is a winding indoor maze, with you being unable to see into rooms until you open the doors, which, combined with the enemy having the terrain advantage, makes proceeding to the exit rather difficult. Not helping is this map introducing Corrin, but locking her to Seadall, potentially the worst character to have her for this particular situation. (The tutorial advises you to clear miasma using her Dragon Vein, but the Qi Adept Dragon Vein will replace the miasma with ice pillars that'll block you just as much as the enemy, and Seadall has to forgo dancing to use it)
Chapter 16. The rising tides make the map a slog to traverse if the player doesn't have a lot of fliers or Rescue Staves, and frequent reinforcements from the forts encourages rapid movement. Receding tides can end up trapping units with reinforcements or even the two bosses if you're not careful. It's also the first map with Corrupted Wyrms and their massive defenses and long ranged fixed-damage attacks.
Chapter 19. Much of the map is covered in miasma. You can clear out the miasma with the cannons, but their range is limited, so you'll inevitably have to lure out Marni and Mauvier while hoping they don't bring too many of their allies along. This doesn't get any better during skirmishes on the same map as you start smack dab in the middle of the most miasma-dense portion of the map meaning high avoid units and units with on-map effects like Ike's Great Aether or Roy's Blazing Lion are outright required. Skirmishes, especially on higher difficulties, are immensely enemy-dense too, meaning you will have to gamble putting one of your own units on a miasma square or target an enemy being buffed by one.
Chapter 20. While Griss is surprisingly easy once you get to him, the problem is getting to him. Not only is the level dark, but an enemy staff user has Entrap, which allows him to pull your units to his location, which will likely result in that unit's death when the enemies attack. Griss can also do hit and run attacks with Ragnarok Warp until he gets tired of it and teleports to the throne, where he's guarded by many strong enemies.
Chapter 21. Evil Veyle is one of the easier bosses in the game, but the sheer amount of enemies make this chapter a brutal one to get through. You'll first need to get through several generals, snipers, paladins, and bow knights, with two corrupted wyrms near your starting location and one blocking the path forward. Once Zephia and her wyvern knights start moving, a bunch of wyvern knights will spawn right behind you, and when combined with the reinforcements on the left and right sides of the map, they can easily close in on your units. There's also a high priest with an Entrap staff near the boss to beware of. After you enter combat with the boss or one of the enemy units on the big protection tile, every enemy that spawned as a reinforcement will respawn simultaneously. At that point, rushing down the boss is a must before you're overwhelmed.
Chapter 24. The map is divided into three paths, running west to east, with the boss in the middle of the east one. The boss can trigger avalanches, knocking units in the lanes backwards, and while that would seem like a mere annoyance, you only have 15 or 20 turns to defeat the boss. It definitely doesn't help that there are many reinforcements, and at the end of each lane, there's a ballista manned by a Corrupted.
Leif's paralogue, in true fashion like the map its inspired by (minus a Saias and Reinhardt stand-in* There is a Saias stand-in, but he's a monk with only slightly higher stats than everyone else and a couple lives; no 10 leadership stars. You're also not likely to fight him because the Reinhardt stand-in is Leif himself.), is downright nasty to get through without any casualties. The enemies aren't especially difficult, but the map is covered with ballistae to carpet nearly every tile on the way through the bridge and low defense units going down to a cheap shot is a very real risk. There's no way across other than either using the bridge or throwing a flying unit through a nearly a suicidal charge to cross the river and almost get shot down immediately. They'll also pick off any mages and healers that you might use for the armored knights. This is all in time with a thief at the bottom of the map from where you start who will attempt to cross the bridge and escape, if you're not willing to rush in. A small saving grace is that the ballistae are map objects instead of actual units, and of the three ballistae closest to your starting position, only one of them is manned by a Sniper, so as long as you kill any enemy Snipers near ballistae, they are no longer a threat to your team. As for the boss, Leif himself still possesses his Engage attack that can easily destroy any weakened unit that fights him or put a healthy unit in range of dying to more ballista fire and like in Thracia, the first bridge will get destroyed once most of your army has crossed it.
Eirika's Paralogue's main gimmick is large groups of Heroes who will gang up and wear even your tankiest units down with Chain Attacks, and thinning their numbers is harder than it looks since they're deceptively durable. There's also plenty of mages spread around to zone out armored units, a lot of Freeze staves in Eirika's group, flier reinforcements from the sides, time pressure in the form of two Thieves, and two Wyrms you have to deal with at the very start. Speaking of deceptively durable, Eirika herself is tough to take down as she has 3 health bars, balanced defensive stats, and the Blue Skies skill lowering damage taken. Her Twin Strike is also a serious threat.
Alear's Paralogue seems like a standard "defeat the boss before he escapes" map, and a relatively easy one at that. However, once the boss dies, a wave of reinforcements immediately appears, which can be a nasty surprise to first-time players, especially if they neglected to kill the other starting enemies and/or defeated the boss near the end of the Player Phase. To make matters worse, you must complete this map if you want the Pact Ring so Alear can have a paired ending.
Fell Xenologue Chapter 5. You start with Alear, your Player Character trapped in the center and being bombarded by ranged attackers, while Nel is under attack from her brother Nil, and you lose if either one dies. Naturally, that puts a lot of pressure on you to try to save them as quickly as possible, but if you try to cheese the map in order to do so, the game will punish you with, among other things, enemy reinforcements. As a result, the difficulty of this map caused many people to Rage Quit, or at least turn the difficulty down from Maddening.
Being a Fire Emblem game in all but name, TearRing Saga has its fair share.
The first, and by far the most annoying, is Map 16: Dark Beasts. A huge map already filled with Opuses to begin with, things rapidly go From Bad to Worse. Opuses can multiply. Let that sink in: Every. Single. Enemy. On. The. Map can potentially become two. Oh, and the boss is a Mook Maker. That's a lot of enemies. They're weak and fragile, but have high speed due to their 'weapon' (actually themself) having no weight, so they dodge often and are hard to double. As the map progresses, the enemy count can easily reach the seventies and beyond. So how do you win? Well, there's the thing: even if you somehow manage to kill everything (which will probably take about three hours), the chapter won't end. Turns out the actual victory condition is to open all the chests. Most of which are either in the middle of a swamp that slows you down and saps your HP, and hidden behind invisible pathsthrough walls. Oh, and only two characters on your team can actually open chests, and only one of them is forced into the chapter! You'll need to set aside a lot of free time just to get through this monstrosity.
While more rewarding in the long run, going the B route of Chapter 25 and 26 is an excersise in patience. First, in Map 25, you have to sieze the lower castle. The one that happens to be at the edge of a desert. It's also guarded by the Condor Squad, a.k.a That OneWolfpack Boss, four Dragon Knights who get such a big support bonus from eachother they each have a base critical rate of 50%at minumum. Even worse, if you want to recruit the single most Guide Dang It!-y character in the game, you need to defeat one of the squad with a specific one of your characters. Naturally, he just happens to be in the class affected by the desert the worst. If you get through that, you are "rewarded" with Chapter 26b, which involves, among other things:
Enemy Mooks who can steal your weapons permenantly if they so much as scratch you.
Enemy crossbowmen sniping you from the other side of a locked room you can't even think about opening until the damage is long since done. Some of them can hit you four times in a row before you can even counterattack.
Hostages to rescue that turn out to be bandits Disguised in Drag. More of a mild annoyaance than anything, but it still seems like a dick move considering the rest of the crap the chapter puts you through.
A very powerful Swordmaster guarding the throne room, and a boss with a weapon with 80% Critical!!
Then there's Chapter 34: Total War. All that needs to be said is it has reinforcements that spawn early, very close to you, and never stop coming. And its boss is pretty much That One Boss too.
The chapter right after isn't exactly a breather either. You have to take down Julius, a Dragon Knight boss with massive stats and a powerful lance that drains HP. It gets a little easier on the third turn, when a bunch of NPC rebels pour out of the arena. Good news: Julius will probably break his lance fighting them. Bad news: They have the Mug skill, which lowers the Hit and Evasion off all units within three spaces of them, including yours! This makes taking down Julius even harder than it should be. Thanks for the "help".
Game Mods
Some of the Game Mods have their own difficult chapters:
FE Girls:
Chapter 6. Similar to its real-game counterpart, but there's no fog, no giant spiders, and you only have to survive for 12 turns. However, you still have to defend the helpless citizens, who are now stranded on a pier and the first one will die on the third turn if you aren't going full tilt towards them. The enemies will flood this area, too, citizens or no. On top of this, ZEPHIEL of all people is here, and, starting on the eighth turn, HE MOVES! He'll reach the island with the pier, too, so if you stopped after rescuing the citizens, thinking you're safe, you're DEAD wrong. You actually have to start retreating, citizens in tow, unless you want to see the stragglers get slaughtered where they stand. Good lord.
Chapter 13 somehow manages to be even worse than Chapter 13-Ephraim in regular FE8. There's three different bosses, one of them actually appears behind you and will start chasing you, and the map is very large. And you get two new characters, one of which is a Dancer and the other one, while capable of fighting, is very hard to keep alive with all the enemies around. While one of the bosses can be swayed to your side, said boss is very aggressive, carries a Bolting tome, and moves. It's not unlikely to see her kill Lyn, the very person who recruits her. She's also the Lord. And you know what that means...
Take the original Scorched Sand, make it larger, thrust not one, but twoSquishy Wizards into the party and you have Chapter 15. Also, there are level 21 and higher enemies.
Chapter 20 is just plain evil, thanks to the Wyvern Riders and Wyvern Lords. They'll swarm your position from the get-go, and you'll need to contain them quickly before they overwhelm you, which is far easier said than done. You get three new characters, two of whom are painfully underleveled and quite fragile (the third is a powerful Paladin, and you'll need him to survive). On top of that, the map is huge, forcing your army through a narrow path full of forest tiles which slow your movement speed down, and it's filled with tough enemies which can pose a serious threat to you. Oh, and the boss is painful too, a level 10 Wyvern Lord with good stats and a very powerful Sylmeria lance. His weakness to arrows doesn't help much - you only have one bow user at this point, he's not stellar, and the boss is sitting on a gate which helps him dodge most of your attacks. You do have Aircalibur available for your mages, one of whom is good and one who's amazing, so you'd think that would be the perfect choice. Surprise! Sylmeria has the same effect as a Delphi Shield. And to add insult to injury, a character you recruit in a village at the beginning of the map knows why you're being attacked by these Wyvern Riders and could possibly prevent the whole thing, but for some reason, he just doesn't see fit to tell your army's leader what's going on.
Chapter 25 is the beginning of the hack's infamous Difficulty Spike. The generic Mooks go from having generally inferior stats to your units to having equal stats or even being outright stronger than them. Though this is the standard for the rest of the game, Chapter 25 is particularly heinous for being the first map with such difficult enemies being the norm. Add this to a map filled with overlapping enemy ranges – meaning that you'll rarely be taking damage from one enemy at a time – and you have a recipe for many a lost unit. The boss, General Lanmark, has incredibly high stats compared to what you've seen already, especially his defenses, meaning that he'll be a pain to kill. In addition, you'll need to divide your forces to take on this chapter since the map has three main routes, weakening your group's overall power even more... and you can't take it slow and carefully either, since Chapter 25x can only be unlocked by completing this chapter in a certain number of turns.
◊, but straightforward: the objective is to reach the castle on the island in the middle of a lake, connected by a number of bridges (one of which is pretty close to the starting area if you have a bridgekey). There's a large number of dracoknights that rush your starting position, which by itself is a scary prospect, along with an additional squad that will charge you if you visit a specific shop. Once you've collected yourself, you organize your bowmen and mages, along with the incredibly strong newly-joined Palla, and manage to take out the dracoknights. Then you can head up the bridge, confront the band of cavaliers, and recruit Matthis from them and finish the chapter, right? Wrong. Matthis can only be recruited by Julian, who is a Thief recruited from a village. Which village? The one in the northeast corner of the map, on the exact opposite side from your starting position. Since you don't have Warp, and crossing the island provokes Matthis's cavalier squad into charging you, you have no easy way to reach other than having Marth march in a lap all the way around the map, which takes turn after turn of just walking the guy around through areas with no enemies or anything of interest in them. When going for full recruitment, even low-turncount runs of the chapter tend to take around seventeen turns! This results in the chapter being a nightmare for inexperienced or casual players due to being bumrushed early, and a relentless bore for hardcore players due to three-quarters of the experience being devoid of interest. It's not for no reason that it gets followed by Jagen's amazing "The Reason You Suck" Speech, aimed at the guy who put you up to this.
