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| Creator | Augenis |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 51/80 |
| Rank | 6th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 6/10
As the title implies, it’s Star Wars. Gone is the medieval fantasy, and in its place are clone troopers and droids. Your army is composed of two Jedi and several troopers: the latter are completely expendable. The main gameplay gimmick involves the broad variety of ranges among both sides of the conflict. The Jedis only have one range, but are immune to the droids.
Legally-distinct Eirika is given an opportunity to learn a skill at the start of the chapter: I got Death Blow and Crit Up on the winning run, but you can also pick Shove or Canto. The chapter itself I barely won on my first attempt: not-Lyon unexpectedly moved, which allowed not-Eirika to one-shot him with a crit. I split up and got most of my troopers killed, but using the dragon vein and charging up the left with everyone would likely result in a much cleaner victory.
When skipping the cutscene before skill selection, the black screen remains and you end up picking a skill blind – this and a class roll crash were the only bugs I noticed.
Overall, there are interesting ideas here, but I somehow managed to fluke my way through with surprisingly little trouble. I wonder – was Lyon meant to move?
Presentation: 3/5
The alien portraits looked sufficiently alien, the changed map sprites look nice, and the map is well-made. Plenty of Star Wars music is used as appropriate too. Animations are completely disabled, but map animations are present in compensation. A few CGs are dotted around the chapter too, which are always nice to see.
Story: 3/5
I’ve never watched a Star Wars, though I know of most of the famous things, so I’ve probably missed a lot of references.
The Sith and Jedi are at each other’s throats, and general not-Seth has been sent to retrieve the Fire Emblem. He thinks little of his own superiors and doesn’t keep them informed. Meanwhile, an enemy has occupied the allegedly empty planet the Fire Emblem was located on, and so a battle ensued.
There’s one talk on the map between Eirika and a clone trooper, which helped establish things are not going well in the Republic. It’s also revealed in battle conversations that Seth and Lyon have history together.
Upon killing Lyon, Eirika finds the Fire Emblem, made by the dragons. The force tells Seth to get out, and then Palpatine executes Order 66…
Overall, the story is servicable. It establishes bad things are happening, and it does the job it’s meant to do.
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 6/10
ASWS is a simple kill boss map with a whole bunch of ranged units. What I found most appealing about the gameplay loop is the discrepancy in power from your army to the enemy. Droids are frail like paper, weak like paper, and extremely plentiful. It’s very fun to barrel through the rabble, especially when a lot of your army threatens them at range. At the same time, your two Jedi can tear through almost anyone on the player phase, and face-tank projectiles on the enemy phase. Non-droid enemies are usually a big deal, making the combat have more variety than shredding through goombas, and it gets decently tough. I also appreciate the ranged units you have, alongside the super strong tools you have like a 5-use warp staff and a 7-range effective weapon.
The key flaw with this map is that there’s a whole bunch to do… But I just ended up walking upward to the boss. The two [s]dragon[/s] Force Veins clear through enough terrain to make the map a walk down the hall and to the right. It’s a little too simple for my tastes.
Presentation: 4/5
This hack carves its own identity with all of the custom assets! Lots of custom CGs are scattered all over each cutscene, lots of custom map sprites, lots of custom music, lots of custom items… I loved the ship interior map, I’m a sucker for non-vanilla map tilesets. I wish there were a couple of futuristic tiles on the combat map, though. The general roughness of some of the assets and lack of battle animations prevents me from rating the presentation higher, unfortunately.
Story: 3/5
The only Star Wars content I’ve consumed is the original trilogy, so I didn’t know much going into this hack. I was worried I wouldn’t understand what was going on, but the choice to have one of those iconic Star Wars opening scrolls in FEGBA was incredibly smart. I had a dumb smile on my face reading that, and it set the tone for the quality throughout the hack. I enjoyed the simple relationship that Arica and Se’het had going on, and I liked how it tied in with the gameplay, choosing what to train on the ship. The ending did leave me a little confused, just what Se’het saw in his visions, but I imagine that’s also left intentionally vague. Overall, solid stuff.
Total Score: 13/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 5/10
It’s a simple objective, kill the boss with your two Jedis and your variety of troopers, preceeded by a intro that lets you pick up one of three skills. With the central idea being that your Jedi are practically immune to Droid ranged attacks, but cannot feasibly counter them. While the non-droid melee units should threaten them enough for your troopers to handle them and any other threats the two aren’t dealing with. Unfortunately though the melee foes aren’t strong enough to facilitate this. So, it proved much easier, and quicker to take all the consumables, hold forward with the two, healing when needed, then nuking the boss. Though, the troopers do have some fun tools in their pockets to toy around with.
As well, the not-dragon-veins were a fun addition in concept, but often felt superflous and a bit too out of the way compared to just rushing the objective. It ultimately just felt like the map needed more encouragement to really push for playing with the mechanics it was setting forward.
Presentation: 4/5
Overall, it looks pretty great, everything feels appropriately like Star Wars, especially the mugs and trooper/droid map anims doing a great job rapidly telling you whos who. The addition of CGs was a very pleasant touch to the whole thing, and the map itself looks nice as well. Though, the title screen music is pretty dischordant, especially if you linger on it for a small bit.
Story: 3/5
As someone with very little knowledge of Star Wars, I found this really accessible to pick up and understand. Arica and Se’het felt effective as characters, and the boss convos the two had with Lii’on worked great at showing them off a little more. I also really enjoyed the little divergence in the ending based on if the troopers lived or died. Though, I found the cut to a game over a little jarring.
It also got a pretty good grin outta me, seeing all the fe8 names being changed around, especially with the Leon equivalent still using the necromancer animations.
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 7/10
You’re facing down an army of droids and melee enemies with your set of clone troopers and 2 Jedi and have to take down the enemy commander. Due to the setting, there’s a notable emphasis on ranged combat, and despite the clone troopers being expendable, I wanted to keep them around so I could keep making use of each of their unique arsenals, like the Jet Packs that were pseudo-Warps or the super long range rifles that I could get greedy with to attempt to pick off faraway foes.
The 2 Jedi, meanwhile, were strong melee combatants with an immunity to the droids’ blasters at the cost of taking hefty damage from melee foes. They’re also the only units who can use Force Veins to directly alter the map itself, such as materializing a land bridge or blowing up factories that spawn reinforcements. I also quite like the added bit of replayability that came from Arica choosing a unique training that gives her one of 3 boosts for the map. I picked the one that gave her Canto+ and extra move, letting me do some fun hit and runs.
There’s quite a lot to do on this map with all the Force Veins, but you can also choose to ignore them and just rush up to the boss. I don’t find this a super huge issue, as the map gives plenty of room for the player to explore it as they please, so if you wanna, say, take down the factory on the right, you can go and do just that, even if you don’t have much reason to. The boss moving was unexpected, given his position, and something I feel could have warranted a message at some point during the map even if the jumpscare could have been avoided by checking his range. The map is still solid even with these flaws, but there’s room to push it to greater heights.
Presentation: 4/5
The plethora of custom Star Wars-themed assets really helps sell the game’s premise even further. All of the unique map sprites and portraits are very cool, and the tileset on the ship before the map proper was very unique and well-made. There’s even a few story CGs present and music taken straight from the franchise.
The lack of animations is a bit sad in a vacuum, but honestly I feel like it kinda benefits the experience, because Star Wars is known for its bombastic large scale battles and fast-paced Lightsaber duels, and repeatedly cutting in to a small sequence where 2 guys take turns shooting at each other once would probably dampen that a little, so keeping the action to the overworld improves and better sells the pace the series typically goes for. I do wish the combat map proper was a bit more custom though, visually appealing as it does look with the tileset used.
Story: 3/5
My exposure to Star Wars is mostly from memes, but I thought this story was still enjoyable for what it is and fits in pretty nicely with the source material. A small FE8-themed squadron goes to a remote planet to search for a relic known as the Fire Emblem that will supposedly help them fight back against the Sith. Somehow it went over my head while playing that the 2 Jedi were based on Eirika and Seth despite reading the names of all the Clone Troopers and noticing the references there, which I guess is a testament to how believable it could’ve been as a small side story to the actual overall plot that I do know of. I also like how it ends with Palpatine executing Order 66 and the Jedi seemingly perishing, giving the story sort of a flourish of events that were lost to history, which is interesting even if the buried story was fairly simple.
Total Score: 14/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 6 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 24 |
| Presentation | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 11 |
| Story | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Total | 12 | 13 | 12 | 14 | 51 |