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| Creator | BlazerTheWyvernWriter |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 34/80 |
| Rank | 11th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 5/10
You control a professor and students in a setup similar to Three Houses. However, Faust has made a deal with the devil and is constantly taking poison damage every turn. The chapter itself is a kill boss, but the boss cannot be reached until every switch on the map is hit. Although losing five of the students is a game over condition, I was never under any threat of losing one. Experience gain is extremely fast and combat was little trouble. A few spawns meant to hurry me along were left in the dust, and by the time they caught up my armour knight easily choked them in the top-left corner. Another negative involves dangerously high critical rates: those were the only things capable of threatening me. The healer is meant to grant a status giving crit avoid to mitigate this, but it’s bugged and does not function.
However, I did still largely enjoy myself. I did silly things with the thief who dealt damage when stealing (the game does not tell you this) and the switches provided a diversion from what would otherwise be a walk from A to B.
Presentation: 2/5
Almost all assets are stock SRPG Studio RTP. Notable changes include a title screen and changing the battle frame to be similar to SNES FE. Aside from that, there is nothing of any note, but nothing offensively bad either.
Story: 2/5
The premise is similar to Three Houses’: a professor and his students have been sent to investigate a nobleman accused of embezzlement. And so they set off for Fort Chalaphy, owned by House Baldr – names inspired by this contest, I see. Unlike 3H, Professor Faust has a demon inside of his head, who does not have his best interests at heart. The students chat amongst themselves before they attack the fort. Along the way, we see the nobleman panic as the Lopt Sect stand-ins search for a tome to resurrect a demon.
The ending reveals Faust has had prior dealings with this cult and his superior officer knows about it – the chapter ends with a suggestion it should be broken. The story itself is serviceable, but it loses marks for the occasional typo or dodgy piece of text formatting, along with jarring smiley faces appearing in text immediately after defeating the boss.
Total Score: 9/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 4/10
Freikugal is a simple kill boss map, but it requires multiple switches to access him. Every time you hit a switch, a cool little cultist miniboss spawns, and when you hit them all, the least threatening invincible reinforcements spawn at the start of the map. Lots of units have access to strong personal skills, like vantage and a staff buff, but it doesn’t feel like the gameplay was impacted by them that much. Only the thief, who could steal weapons to completely neutralize enemies, was relevant. Not even the passive 3 damage the lord took every turn affected me that much, since healing was so accessible. I liked playing around with the knight’s adjutant-like skill, but I misplayed and let him get killed by a mace targeted at the thief. Heartwrenching.
This map is slow. An abundant amount of one tile choke points and a lack of strong reinforcements let me trudge through the map for as long as I would like. I even missed a switch and had to waste several turns re-hitting it, and didn’t get punished much at all. The spawn locations of the minibosses, while cool in theory, are so predictable and controllable that I spawn blocked around half of them. I just didn’t find this map that fun.
Presentation: 1/5
Freikugel is made using a lot of SRPG Studio default assets. I’m not too familiar with the scene, but all of them look really nice! They do have that “old-school RPG maker” vibe that I appreciate a lot.
That’s not the reason it’s rated so low, though. I had a lot of bugs relating to full screen and looking at skill icons. For some reason, the game inconsistently bugged out and didn’t let me see skill descriptions for units. In addition, they only have 5 out of 6 weapons viewable on their stat screen. There were also some inconsistencies with chests and canter on units. This made checking fairly basic things a hassle, which detracted a point.
Story: 3/5
Freikugel takes a lot of its plot beats from FE3H, pretty proudly. A professor at an academy must deal with an ancient power to save their students and commit political violence on behalf of the academy. A lot of plot seeds were set in this chapter, which makes sense, as this is supposed to the first chapter in a bigger project. I think the threads they sowed here are pretty effective, and I’m curious about how it’ll go down in the future. It’s a fairly simple thing Freikugel did, but it gave just a little bit of attention to all the player units after the map was completed. It’s fun taking note of what units acted like, and how it showed in their gameplay performance.
Total Score: 8/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 4/10
You open up the path to the boss via a few switches along the way. All while handling the damage your lord takes every turn. Floating crit is constant and often means many of your frailer units are discouraged from seeing combat, encouraging a slow walk forward through the map with the few very strong units, namely those who could double. Where there’s a lack of much threat to be had beyond that low% chance your bulky units don’t care about while stuck next to the healer you have. Meanwhile Faust’s constant damage isn’t enough to encourage moving quicker with all the healing you have available.
There’s also a consistent lack of important information you’d need. Weight isn’t displayed despite a skill considering it, enemy AI is inconsistent even in their own groups, and a status two units inflict (prone) is described nowhere in game. Your thief can pick locks innately, but you aren’t told this. All while many of the skills don’t function besides the mounted mage with additional AS on enemy phase. Lastly is just a inconsistency on where thieves need to stand to pick chests versus where you need to stand to open them. There’s still fun to be had, of course, but much of this brings the game down.
Presentation: 2/5
It’s standard SRPG Studio RTP with a few changes UI wise, nothing glaring to note as it all looked pretty pleasing. The biggest gripe was the map track being rough on the ears after enough time.
Story: 2/5
Faust and his students are sent to bring in a nobleman accused of embezzling money. Without much greater context to the world it doesn’t have much hook, but works fine. Really, the biggest gripe beyond the sudden use of emoticons in one scene is that the end scenes reveal a much more interesting plot. One that I wish happened in seeing the incident that lead to the professor selling his soul to save his students. Rather than dealing with a cornered noble, as no character has much connection to anything happening.
Total Score: 8/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 5/10
A boss kill map with the minor twist that you have to flip switches scattered all over the map in order to enter the boss’s chamber. You’re given a pretty good variety of units that manage to distinguish themselves pretty well through their classes and weapon types, and the enemy is similarly varied, even including several mini bosses in the form of the cultists and the enemy armor knights. Navigating the map from start to finish is somewhat enjoyable, but it is rather easy with how strong the units and tools you have access to are. Your armor knight especially has the powerful ability to tank 3 attacks for adjacent allies by pressing Wait, which makes enemy phasing pretty easy, which is more than enough given that a lot of enemies are very passive and don’t rush you until you get in their range.
The main way enemies threaten you is with crit rates, which they have on almost all of your units and deal 2.5x damage. This made using the main character especially frustrating, as he had a condition that caused him to lose 3 health per turn, nearly causing me a game over because an enemy crit got him down to 3 HP (until he got an HP level and it raised him to 4). I tend to heavily dislike an overabundance of low percent crits, and that holds true here. There’s also a bunch of stuff that’s unexplained, like some of the abilities and status conditions (I have no idea what Prone does despite it being a thing that coverts have apparently), but I found that ignoring the unexplained stuff and just paying attention to the information that the battle screen showed me helped me have a pretty good time.
Presentation: 2/5
I haven’t particularly played much in the way of SRPG Studio games, but as far as I can tell most of the assets used are pretty vanilla. That said, they look good enough, and the music used is pretty catchy. My main critique is that there’s a bunch of icons that are clearly used to indicate something but don’t explain what they’re referring to. For example, when the cleric heals someone, an icon appears over the healed unit’s head, but I’m not sure what it signifies. Prone has an icon when it’s applied to an enemy, but the game doesn’t explain what it does. Some enemies have red circles over them, probably indicating that they do effective damage, but others have yellow circles and I’m not sure what those mean. Making sure information is clear in what it’s meant to convey is a big part of presentation, and this game sadly doesn’t really do that.
Story: 3/5
The officer’s academy sends a classroom to arrest a noble for tax evasion, and discover that he was working with an evil cult. The students only get a handful of lines each, but the lines they do have give you a good idea of each of their personalities, and they bounce off one another pretty well. The most interesting part of the story is Faust and his relation with the not-so-benevolent demon in his head, and the academy’s discovery of this curse planted in the ending cutscene. A lot of the plot beats are clearly inspired by Three Houses, but there’s enough different going on that gets me curious to see what happens next. It stands on its own well enough despite also being clearly a part of a larger whole, and I find that commendable.
Total Score: 10/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 17 |
| Presentation | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 7 |
| Story | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 10 |
| Total | 9 | 8 | 7 | 10 | 34 |