Map ratings....

[davemon]

For those who've finished the campaign at least once, I'm wondering what others think of the maps? I found the following to be true at least for me:

- Most impressive looking map: Spy Academy. It's really a work of art, amazing; followed by Rubble & Ruin.

- Least impressive looking map (besides mission 9 epilogue): For me, it's Atlantic Wall.

- Most fun map to play: I love to play Liberation.

- Least fun map to play (again, other than mission 9 epilogue): I like all the maps, but would vote War Factory as the least among them. Not sure why, really.

[zSe3nByGh0S7z]

Sniper Elite 4 maps were way better, polished and traversable, also memoriable. SE 5 needs more fixing, patching etc.

[stdape2022]

I say
1 Occupied Residence
2 Spy Academy
3 Rubble and Ruin
4 Liberation
Also DLC Hitler is pretty Rubbish and Simple.
And also agree War Factory is the Worst other than the Pointless Mission 9

[🆂🆃🅸🅶🅶🅰]

Originally posted by zSe3nByGh0S7z:

Sniper Elite 4 maps were way better, polished and traversable, also memoriable. SE 5 needs more fixing, patching etc.

Bump ^ maps in se5 are none sense to much time spent on the Architectural Buildings , invisible walls no way.
Rubble and Ruin this is just a copy from SE2

[jankerson]

Spy Academy is a well done map and I enjoyed Liberation also.

[🆂🆃🅸🅶🅶🅰]

Originally posted by jankerson:

Spy Academy is a well done map and I enjoyed Liberation also.

It`s not that good really , just one big part of a town or what ever , to much running about trying to find useless crap, not open world play at all.

[Smokedice]

I liked that one mission where you snipe people

[6Taylor4]

Originally posted by Smokedice:

I liked that one mission where you snipe people

This is DEEP!

[SkacikPL]

Depends on what we're rating really, all of them seem to be more or less tailored for a WW2 stealth hitman styled game rather than open sniping galleries.

In either case they all seem to be way more closed off and split into distinct lanes with first level likely being worst offender with how entire areas of flat land are cut off from being traverseable via arbitrary placement of waist high walls.

For actual sneaking styled gameplay then probably spy academy is the best level, for sniping i don't really know - maybe Guernsey? Some other levels like second one are decent in-betweens.

[Struonger]

Least favorite - Atlantic Wall

Most replayed - Occupied Residence

Best looking - Liberation

Most interesting but not the best design - Festung Guernsey/Rubble and Ruin

Least played - War Factory

Most Challenging - Spy Academy

Most disappointed - Wolf Mountain

[davemon]

Great comments, thanks. Looks like so many varied opinions, that's the sign of a good mix. Stigga the reason I like Spy Academy map so much is that the Architecture is so detailed that it provides a more immersive experience for me. I agree there's a lot of maze running, but it's pretty detailed and beautiful.

[Lhynn]

>>> Least favorite - (1) Atlantic Wall, (2) War Factory. Uphill battle for a sniper = HUGE no-no. Urban combat with an overly complicated pathfinding, restrictive shooting angles and few approach options = poor design.

>>> Most replayed - Spy Academy. Best personal sniping-urban combat mix + fun factor

>>> Best looking - (1) Spy Academy, (2) Liberation, (3) Wolf Mountain. Awesome graphics and setup, open landscape for sniping, awesome lighting (no night missions in this list, hint hint wink wink...)

>>> Most interesting but not the best design - Rubble and Ruin. Part 1 in the city is great, especially the town hall area; Part 2 in the u-boat hangar is meh and boring.

>>> Least played - War Factory. Claustrophobic setup mentionned above turns me down completely. (Plus, feels heavily inspired from Sniper: Ghost Warrior Contacts' "Sibirskaya-7 Junction" final mission, i.e., some deja-vu).

>>> Most Challenging - None of them really... But if I really had to choose, I'd go for Spy Academy. The map with the most enemies, and the one that offers the best overall challenge. If only all of the missions could have a similar target-rich environment...
Honorable mention however for the Secret Weapons' central dome, probably the most challenging area in the whole game once the alarm is triggered.

>>> Most disappointed - probably Wolf Mountain. I love the map design, but the mission feels too easy with a relatively weak number of troops to guard no other than the Leader of the Third Reich... Something should definitely be tweaked here. Not to mention the urgent need to fix Hitler's broken routine pattern which makes him freeze in a couple specific locations almost in every playthrough and requires players to "debug" his AI by triggering him to investigate voluntary alerts...)
(Dis)Honorable mentions: (1) Occupied Residence and (2) Festung Guernsey. O.R. is a lovely map, but it's unfortunately way too small. The residence itself is awesome, greatly detailed and should have been the ultimate goal of a much longer mission. As to F.G., I love the south side of the map, but the bunkers and trenches in the northern side are amongst the most boring and laziest designs in the series. My fun factor shrinks from 8/10 to 3/10 as soon as I move northward from the central residence farm of the Japanese delegation. So sad.

==============================

The tl;dr pattern emerging from the above list is that the best maps are those featuring the most open areas, with preferrably flat ground or downhill sniping locations, during daytime and with many enemies to engage. The worst maps are the most empty, dark & claustrophobic ones. Some maps clearly stand out by their design, unique atmosphere and rich gameplay (Spy Academy, Liberation); others are almost unanimously disliked (Atlantic Wall, War Factory); most others are average, with good points (atmosphere, setting...) tempered down by design flaws or necessary tweaks (Occupied Residence is too small, Festung Guernsey is unevenly fun across the different areas of the map, Secret Weapons feels too dark and leaves little room for different approaches despite an interesting diversity in objectives, Rubble and Ruin would have been much more fun without its 2nd mission half). Players generally prefer open ground and visibility to play with, something the game generally fails to provide.

If we add on top the most blatant bugs still pending a fix - we can jump certain stone walls and fences but not others exactly identical, trouble to traverse some 10cm-tall obstacles, weird hidden walls, some floating grass meshes, some ledges which we can't get down from/drop down from/climb onto...-, the severe lack of weapons (and the unexcusable removal of trip mines!!!), a really bad & dreadfully passive enemy AI even on its hardest setting, a forgettable skill tree that doesn't enhance Karl in any significant way, and a few debatable game design choices - no option to use weapons dropped by enemies for the rest of the mission if we feel like so, obligation to carry Panzerfausts and Flare guns in hand instead of putting them on the back/in the consumables wheel (!!), no specific marker key to designate priority targets to coop teammates, bizarre balancing tweaks to explosive weapons which require 4+ TNT to blow up a 222 (let alone a Tiger II) but only 1 satchel charge (which is made of... er... TNT) or only 2 armor-piercing sniper rounds (!!!), and so on -, all of this leaves with a bitter feeling of an unfinished game that will require a good handful more updates to polish and flesh out. Let's just hope this fleshing-out will eventually occur at some point as this game has much potential and deserves more love from the devs.

[Archangel138]

Favorite:

- Spy Academy
I'd rank this as my favorite SE map of all time. Great design, layout and pacing no matter if you go loud or stealth it.

Least favorite:

- War Factory
Not a terrible setting and the details are really nice, but I just find it too empty for what it is. If it were teeming with soldiers and mechanics, etc. I'd replay this one a lot more.

[stdape2022]

@ DAVEMON.. Hey buddy did you play Breakpoint, your name seems so Familiar.

[Tommy_Rebellion]

It's great to see what maps folk have enjoyed. Spy Academy for me is my favourite.

[jankerson]

Originally posted by Tommy_Rebellion:

It's great to see what maps folk have enjoyed. Spy Academy for me is my favourite.

If you play it smart and take your time you can take out more than 50 guys from the starting point.

That really cuts them down quite a bit.