What makes a final map good?

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

For FE maps in general, one of the things that I enjoy the most is having multiple side objectives to pursue. It's more fun for me to try to come up with a plan to recuit a unit and open some treasure chests and keep some NPCs alive and meet a turn limit and kill an enemy commander than it is to plan for only killing the enemy commander. Side objectives don't really work well in final maps, though, because there isn't really any incentive to accomplish them. For the rest of the game, they can give rewards, like items, unit recruitment, bonus xp, whatever, but in the final map, you're typically past the point where that matters.

Outside of some sort of raking system or different endings based on how you complete the final level, I'm not really sure what the solution for that is. Maybe they could give instant bonuses that would help signifcantly in the final map itself? Like, what if in Path of Radiance, you didn't get the laguz royal automatically, but only through a side objective? Then maybe some other side objective could give a blessing to another unit of your choice so they could damage Ashnard, and maybe another one that would give you Urvan that could also be used to damage Ashnard, and so on? Would something like that work?

That's pretty much what Genealogy of the Holy War does. Only instead of it helping you beat the boss it trivalizes it, and without not the boss is a long ass slog. So it does muddle the line between main objective and side objective.