Part of me wanted to make this sort of think piece post on how much I wish FE had more variety in their villain groups like in FE7, but something else dawned on me-I really miss memorable one map bosses.
FE7 had that in spades with the Black Fang, but there was a bunch of memorable one map shit heels in Tellius. I think the last time we really had this was in FE Awakening. The biggest stand out being Mustafa who would go on to get a Fire Emblem Heroes unit.
But in Fates, Three Houses, and Engage? Not so much. Fates was sad because clearly Kozaki was trying to make the capturable characters memorable in their design. But many are locked in paralogues, not the main story.
Three Houses has plenty of generic map generals. Part of it is most likely due to expecting you to not recruit ever kid so the weight if fighting these grown up students be a big maps. But if you’re replaying on New Game+ it’s easy to avoid that. I guess Metodey was the best they had for one offs, but he was no Mustafa.
Engage tries to avoid the pitfalls of having one underdeveloped boss for a map by instead making four villains you fight multiple times to establish them as characters and threats. But that had the issue that a lot of their fights blend into each other and I know quite a few who were fighting the same four guys.
Hoping for the next FE they bring back more fun one off villains.