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| Creator | ThyAnarchists |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 20/80 |
| Rank | 15th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 1/10
The Last Stand is set on a very large map, with the player encouraged to hold a fort in the middle. However, there is no reason to hold this fort. The boss is weak to the lord’s PRF, and even though he one-shots him on a counter, other units are able to soften him up for the kill. Afterwards, I placed a general and paladin in a two-tile choke point, gave them vulneraries and a pure water, and ended turn until turn 15. Units spawned in the bottom-left corner, but I just ignored them.
I also managed to crash the game moving the berserker near the top of the map, with the crashes being inconsistent – I got one stepping on a peak tile. Overall, I had no reason to interact with the chapter’s gimmick, and ending turn ten times, only pausing to use vulneraries and fight off one wave of snipers.
Presentation: 1/5
The character portraits were character creator creations, lacking frames. These ones had the appearance of ghosts instead of clay soldiers, but they still do not look good. Everything else is vanilla, including the use of Distant Roads as the map theme.
Story: 1/5
It’s mentioned that the intro was removed as it was “too buggy to fix” in the readme. This results in the in-game premise being reduced to “the enemy king is on the battlefield, let’s end this war”, barely removed from excuse plot. The chapter then ended anti-climatically, with the enemy king being a fake and killing the lord. Ultimately the stalemate continued.
Overall what little text there was was okay, but it didn’t really catch my attention.
Total Score: 3/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 1/10
The Last Stand is a pretty boring defense map lasting 15 turns. Enemies lumber at you at a lethargic pace as you stand very still and slaughter the few that enter your radius of death. There are a lot of strange decisions that don’t impact the gameplay, due to the general lack of difficulty here. Units have a lot of skills stacked on them, enemies have stealables that don’t amount to much, there’s a commander in which killing does absolutely nothing, etc. By standing very still, and generally attacking the enemy units, you will survive and win. This map wasn’t thought out very much, and it shows. I won’t dwell on it too much, since the readme self-admits to being rushed, but it’s not very fun.
Presentation: 1/5
This hack has a lot of vanilla assets, with the big standout being the portraits. All of them are made via the Java character creator, which is fine, but needed a bit of a more careful hand in order to integrate in this hack. They distinctly lack any talking frames, blinking frames, or non-bitcrushed mini-mugs, which stands out. Vanilla music is pretty lame, especially with how plentiful public music assets are for FEGBA. In the midst, I managed to eke out a crash with the Berserker moving onto a seemingly random tile. The biggest positive I have to say is that all characters have their own battle palettes, which are used for an interesting visual gag on Bastian.
Story: 2/5
The story here is genuinely interesting in concept, but otherwise let down by the lackluster presentation in-hack. In the game, we are only shown the battle and outcome of said battle, but there’s this exciting setup of countries destined to war with each other. Just at the very end, King Edwin gives a glimpse of how the greater world feels about this pointless war from the perspective of someone perpetuating said pointless war. I would love to hear more about the greater implications of the war from more figureheads and everymen, but it didn’t happen here, and it likely couldn’t happen in such a short time span. Story potential isn’t a story, but I wanted to be a bit positive after how negative I was in this review.
Total Score: 4/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 3/10
Handle a final stand outside of the foe’s capital, capturing for any weapons and tools you can get to help you stave off the tide for . It’s a very fun concept but quite a bit holds it back. The map for one is just too big, and it very much feels like the expectation was to hold the line at the fort you start in. But the way the other cluster of units appear rapidly encourages running off to a corner, where most reinforcements cannot reach. If it was all condensed, and more foes started off ON the map, it would go a long way towards discouraging a currently very non-interactive way of play. That, or really just some objective to protect to keep the player needing to be engaged for the runtime. Weapon uses are also plentiful enough that that once you capture one or two foes, you’re mostly set weapon wise.
It also has a somewhat edited skillsys implemented, these in general range from not too useful to excessively powerful (provoke invalidates quite a few threats), with one unit having a guaranteed hit skill and multiple +hit skills on top. There’s some inconsistency in what skills an enemy class will have as well, due to being a learnlist. As well, druids in general wrongly have points into strength instead of magic. Still, for a first hack, it is a commendable effort, being an idea that really just needs more refinement.
Presentation: 1/5
The mugs, while character creator, largely look alright, alongside the battle palettes being mostly pretty pleasing to look up. The map feels a little barren with a fair few tiling errors. The biggest issue is the track used for the map (Distant Roads) is really jarring with the intended tone and really takes me out of it.
Story: 2/5
The current king of Glend finds himself and his few remaining allies surrounded outside the enemy’s capital. It’s a very brisk intro that needed a little more context that’s otherwise left within the manual. In general it’s really brought down by the feeling of a last stand not being there. Though the use of the stock Eirika death quote as an actual narratively fitting thing was a pretty pleasant surprise.
Total Score: 6/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 3/10
This is a very unremarkable 15 turn survive map where you’re surrounded on all sides by enemies that aren’t particularly threatening. Skillsys is present, but it’s mostly superfluous, as your units are so much stronger on average than the enemy that you don’t need to rely on factoring those skills into your combat calculations, even on the highest difficulty, and are typically only factoring in stuff like the sniper’s extra bow range and the general’s extra move if they’re in range of a mounted unit. Promoted generics also have a couple skills, some of which are annoying proc skills like Great Shield and the boss’s Luna, but those either don’t make enough of a difference or can be played around with the tools you have.
The hack also encourages you to use Capture and Steal to take enemy items and use them to your advantage, though this is also not particularly necessary. I question the logic behind handing out several Warps and a Fortify on the right side of the map, while your only staffer is all the way on the other side and has 0 magic (a byproduct of SkillSys’s strength/magic split that wasn’t corrected). The game also misleads you a little; the boss of the map is the king of the enemy empire, and the game lets you know to try killing him if you have an opportunity, but nothing special really comes of it.
Presentation: 2/5
Most of the assets are vanilla, with the only exception being the portraits. You can tell they came from the character creator given their ashen gray skin tones and, more notably, their lack of eye or mouth frames. As such, some of the splices look somewhat scuffed, but there are a few interesting looking ones in there such as the rogue and the general, and none of them are so bad that it heavily dampens the experience. The map also looks somewhat fine, though I did notice some wonky tiling on the mountains.
Story: 2/5
Two countries are at war and you play as one side caught in an ambush by the other. You hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive, but it turns out you were actually fighting a decoy force, and the enemy’s main force arrives and strikes down your lord. Then the war goes into a stalemate and the lord’s brother takes over. There’s a couple of typos here and there and there’s not much writing in here to begin with, but it justifies the events of the map and doesn’t do anything super egregiously bad, so I guess it gets brownie points.
Total Score: 7/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 8 |
| Presentation | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Story | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 7 |
| Total | 3 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 20 |