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| Creator | squidaccus |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 43/80 |
| Rank | 8th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 7/10
The chapter is a simple one: it’s a kill boss chapter, and you’ve four units; all of whom are mounted. These units work nicely with each other and all of them pull their weight, with the 1-2 range short bow nomad being the strongest. There are no skills, crit rates below 10% are zeroed out, and accuracy was high across the board: this results in a reliable experience. It took me two attempts to finish: my sword cavalier got swarmed the first time around. Enemies come at you when as you move through the map, which moves at a brisk pace. The map does have a 13-turn time limit, but I was under no threat of timing out and I finished on turn 10.
Overall, it was a simple but fun chapter, and it wouldn’t be out of place as the first chapter of a full length romhack.
Presentation: 3/5
The most impressive thing I’ve seen here is the battle frame, which looks good – the flashing battle stats are a particularly nice touch. Other graphics look good, and “TLP minimugs” are in use for the portraits. The forest tiles were a bit repetitive, but otherwise the map looks well. The music sounds well as well. Nothing major to complain about here.
Story: 2/5
The story features a trio waiting for a fellow soldier to arrive. Meanwhile, enemy soldiers had destroyed a village for some reason, while an O’Neill edit stayed around to look for survivors. Upon encountering the destroyed village, our heroes meet the soldier having charged head-first into battle. It’s implied the O’Neill parody with his lines all adjusted destroyed the village on somebody’s orders, but this isn’t resolved and on victory everyone wonders if every dragon knight is as noisy as our one before going home.
Finally, I get a thumbs up CG as a prize for victory. The story felt like an excuse plot at times and not a focus, but there were no typos or text overflows.
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 4/10
The Rider’s Trial is a quick and simple prologue map for a larger project. It kinda wears this title proudly, having only 4 units for the entire map. I struggle to find much to say about it, other than that the units feel pretty weak because of the number of enemies there are. My successful run had the wyvern ferry a couple of units along the eastern-most portion of the fence to kill the boss, which didn’t feel too intended as a strategy? I ended up killing most non-essential blue units, but the readme said they retreated anyway.
This map isn’t meant to be a standalone chapter, despite being submitted to a contest for it, so henceforth I’ll critique it as such. This chapter doesn’t have much to hook a player into your game, mainly gameplay-wise. I wouldn’t ask for crazy skills or anything, this hack is distinctly trying to avoid that, but it just seems kind of bland. All of the items given were steel, most of the units felt pretty standard, and the map feels pretty linear. I hope the full release could improve upon this, or prove me wrong altogether.
Presentation: 3/5
The graphics on this hack feel pretty standout. I appreciate all of the custom portraits and the muted pastel color scheme they’ve all got (I think that’s the right term). The music feels a little too loud, but I like the variety and energy it brought to most scenes. It feels like the background of the first cutscene was changed to look more in line with the portraits, which I really liked. I wish the other CGs were changed similarly.
Story: 2/5
This story has a pretty simple premise: bandits attack a town, we gotta stop them. I would have appreciated a little more context, such as why we’re chasing after Alyne, or what’s in the town that we needed, but it didn’t touch on that. More could be explained in the full game, but for now, it’s pretty barren.
Total Score: 9/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 6/10
You’ve got four units, three on horses and one on a wyvern, all of which must kill a boss in 13 turns. All of them are pretty useful and high accuracy helped to keep matters reliable. The first two turns are pretty tight, and definitely ask you to assess each statspread to best handle the foes that’ll come baring down at you. Though it felt once you got past that initial hurdle, it got very easy without much incentive to keep the pace going forward besides the very lax time limit. As well, you can really feel the chapter being held back a bit as a prologue to something else, since the rub of everyone being mounted doesn’t really come up in gameplay beyond keeping the wyvern away from bows. So it ends up feeling like a solid, fairly standard “chapter 1 brigand” type of map.
Presentation: 3/5
The mugs are super on point, everyone looks pretty expressive and has a great look to them, Duncan’s tired eyes and shit eating grin is especially awesome. The track playing is catchy and appropriately high-energy. Though the map itself feels a little rough with terrain placement, the destroyed village looks solid.
Story: 2/5
The intro works well enough and gets everyone’s personalities in on screen for what it more or less within the scope of the game a bit of a bandit chapter. Though it does feel like the cast could’ve had a bossquote or two to work out the character voices a little more. Narratively, it does very much feel like a first chapter of a hack, which leads itself to not having much meat on it’s bones.
Total Score: 11/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 6/10
Four mounted units, 3 horses and a wyvern, must defeat a boss within 13 turns. It’s a very vanilla experience, with no skills or wacky features present, just being a game of numbers against numbers like a vanilla GBA entry. The fundamentals are executed pretty well, with the enemies being spaced out well enough that you’re seeing action almost every turn, and having to make decisions about who to send after which target to ensure everyone takes the most efficient engagements.
My main critiques are twofold: the first is the imbalance in weapon distribution, as the bow cav gets access to a Short Bow, Iron Bow and Steel Bow to pick from, while the sword cav and the lance wyvern are only stuck with their singular starting weapon and thus don’t have that extra dimension of choice, which would’ve made them a bit more fun to use. The second is that this map feels like a prologue to a game that would go on to use the features this map has to design maps that are more complex and interesting. In that sense, while this map is still a pleasant appetizer, it could’ve instead been a main course that had a similar taste, but was more filling.
Presentation: 3/5
The graphical quality is solid all-around, with a particularly impressive set of portraits for the playable characters; they’re well-made and tell you enough to get a read on their personalities before they utter a single word. The map itself looks decent, but doesn’t really stand out besides the neat looking destroyed village. That said, the musical choices complemented it well, and made for an enjoyable experience.
Story: 2/5
The story wouldn’t feel terribly out of place in most openings to other FE games; bandits attack a village, supposedly on someone’s orders, and the heroes come to stop them. It’s a tried and true setup, and the characters involved are fine, but it leaves a lot to be desired, acting more as a prologue for a longer story than as its own standalone.
Total Score: 11/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 7 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 23 |
| Presentation | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Story | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 8 |
| Total | 12 | 9 | 11 | 11 | 43 |