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| Creator | Frog |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 67/80 |
| Rank | =1st |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 8/10
The Pen does not concern itself with traditional experience gain. Rather, each of your units has four different forms they can access. Their past forms are weak, but can level up, while their future forms are strong, but level down! Their present forms are a balance between the two, while when danced, they take their rewritten forms, which behave differently again. Usage of each of these forms is vital to success. The goal is to defeat every boss on the map – these bosses are all very dangerous. I usually tried to stay in past form whenever I could to gain levels: merely getting into combat is sufficient to level. I won on my second attempt (normal mode) by the slimmest of margins: my final unit was almost dead when she dealt the final blow to the last boss.
Mistakes are punishing and rushing forward mindlessly will result in death, but you have plenty of tools to handle these enemies.
Presentation: 5/5
Each form of each character (aside from the constant that is Morbius) has a different portrait, and each character’s story has a set of CGs complimenting them. These help set the scene and sell the premise that this is a battle of stories. The music is also good and changes as the chapter proceeds along. The last map theme did cut off after healing, but this is a minor issue in comparison to everything else here.
Story: 4/5
As they say, the pen is mightier than the sword. So our hero is an author ready to partake in a clash of literacy. Unfortunately for him, his creations don’t seem to be particularly effective and is on a losing streak. Fortunately, he has an assistant ready to help him on the battlefield. And so, with misplaced confidence, they enter the pen. Both players spin their yarns in different ways – our hero tells tragic tales with vivid illustrations, while his opponent instead opts for textual descriptions, leaving the finer details to the imagination. However, these tragedies don’t appeal to the assistant, who rewrites the tales into having more comedic endings instead, much to the author’s chagrin.
When victory arrives, author and editor part ways. Character endings then roll for player, enemy, and NPC alike, which I enjoyed reading. Overall, I wouldn’t call the premise especially complicated, but it was fun and nicely self-contained.
Total Score: 17/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 7/10
The Pen is an incredibly complex hack featuring transforming characters, multi-stage bosses, limited-use super tools, transforming dancers, and a whole lot of custom-made ASM to tie it all together. What is its biggest strength, its immense breadth of strategy only spread across 6 units, is also its biggest flaw. The Pen is tough. Even on its normal difficulty, The Pen is immensely punishing to players who spend practically any amount of time regrouping, since the bosses scale with how long you take to get to them, and they scale fast. It’s not a crime to be hard, but it did put me off a bit after my three… four… five failed attempts…
Besides my skill issue, it’s still immensely captivating. Your six units have so many unique tools to take on any task that each turn feels like an optimization problem. Activating their future form, which lowers their precious stats, feels climactic and epic. This is especially true with Morbius, who cannot revert back. The chronological place in each storybook character’s story impacts their stats and inventory, which makes all the overhead a lot easier. It certainly takes some getting used to, but the gameplay loop here is absolutely top-notch.
My biggest issue with this hack is just how hard it is, so I’ll mention some more reasonable things I disliked. With how fast-paced it is, the 60-hit pistol, the 40-crit shine tome on Morbius, and all the enemy crit weapons feel out of place. Most future forms have different growth distributions than their past forms, which makes their debuffs feel disproportionately punishing, namely on Sintel and her strength degrowth. She feels under-tuned, since her primary weapon in future form lowers her HP, in addition to all the super harsh future form degrowths she gets. I’m not sure how you would fix it, but I also don’t like how you’re unable to view rewritten form stats if you haven’t danced for them in that turn.
Presentation: 5/5
The presentation here is top-notch on all accounts. Good music (which changes mid-map), cool portraits and battle palettes, cool map, cool cutscene eventing… All of the custom code is seamlessly integrated with the gameplay with no bugs I can find. Obvious additional credit should be given to the story CGs, which are made in some goanimate-like software. They don’t feel too out of place, since the requant sands their details and makes them more abstract, which is a really sick art direction.
Story: 4/5
Who would have guessed the storytelling submission tells a good story? It’s not very complex, an underdog in a magical tournament finally gets an upset, but the characterization and setting are incredibly cool. I could see a full-sized game taking place in The Pen (the tournament) it’s such a unique and versatile setting. It’s not just squandered potential, even in this short story, they explore how these different combatants feel about the grander scheme of the tournament. It’s cool stuff.
Total Score: 16/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 7/10
It’s a frantic balancing act of using your different forms to keep yourself afloat against a sea of strong foes. All while trying to kill four powerful bosses, three of which will only get stronger the longer they’re left alive. You get quite a few very strong tools, and an added one on the first time your bard refreshes a unit (turning them into a new form for a turn). It’s fun seeing where you can make plays for “past” units to level, and where you need “future” units to fight and lose those stats. When you get into the swing of things, it’s a very fun time working through the different bosses and knowing just when to go all out with the numbers and powerful tools you’ve accumulated.
The biggest problem is it’s difficulty, especially going in, the game is very tight. Tight enough that missing one 80% (which I found a few times to be my best/only answer) can spell out a loss, alongside group AI making some seemingly safe pulls far less so without a way to know besides it happening. All while the intended difficulty for everyone but the dev (Normal) are incidentally signposted towards the other mode, instead. All of which do detract from the experience, but when the hurdle is gotten over, it feels really good to overcome it all.
Presentation: 5/5
The presentation can’t really be understated. Every summon has four different mug variants, all of which work very well. The use of edited Wildermyth CGs worked incredibly well for the different stories being told, and it really amplifies the gimmick just that bit more.
Story: 4/5
It’s an interesting premise with some fun banter, nothing earthshaking but highly enjoyable, with some great touches like the different descriptions for every unit state. The end sequence as a whole had some very funny surprises to end the whole thing off on, it’s a very fun time. As well, Morbius is also still here.
Total Score: 16/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 9/10
From the moment the map starts. The Pen sets itself apart with its core structure; you have 4 combat units among your arsenal, each wildly different from the last, and also from themselves, as they have access to 3 different forms representing them at various stages of their lives, gaining and losing access to different tools in different forms as well as levelling up, down or not at all after combat. You also have a bard who can temporarily rewrite any of the units into a different form and give them an extra turn, and the lore master, who has a rescue staff. With this arsenal you must take on 4 dangerous bosses, most of which are slowly getting stronger over time.
Put simply, the map is very satisfying to tackle with a lot of different viable strategies. Since the bosses progressively power up, you can opt to rush them down before they hit their peak, or you can play slowly, using the past forms to gain stats off peons and then go all out with the future forms against the bosses. The map doesn’t sacrifice any of the core of Fire Emblem in trying to make its gimmicks work; I was constantly analyzing enemy inventories and positions, taking care to consider how much I could extend and which form I would need to use to minimize risk while reaping as much benefit from the past forms whenever I can.
My only major critique is that it almost seems too recommended to turtle at times. There’s a smattering of enemies running around with crit weapons, and if you don’t have the specific unit who’s best able to tank it face them on enemy phase, you’re basically zoned out of an entire area of the map (60 crit Aura farmer my behated), an obstacle that is best minimized by keeping everyone close together. On Normal mode, the option of the Hoplon Guard exists to fight guys like that, but on Hard mode I can imagine that it becomes considerably more restrictive as to who can go where. Still, that doesn’t take away too much from a map that’s this creative and fun.
Presentation: 5/5
The Pen does more than simply looking good, though it certainly does have a wide variety of wonderful portraits, animations and music choices; it also actively uses the engine’s visual capabilities to enhance the experience. The way each of the major characters on both sides are introduced, with the MC’s characters all having wonderfully crafted CGs and having their tales written out like an actual storybook, whereas the opponent’s creations are merely given a brief description with a text box, show the creator using the capabilities of base FE8 to reflect each of the parties’ approaches to character writing. Did I mention that all the aspects surrounding it also look good? Too bad the wyverns have horse movement sounds, or I would’ve broken convention and given this a 6/5, but I’m afraid that minor catastrophic error will require the hack to settle for a perfect score instead.
Story: 4/5
An arena where writers make their OCs beat each other to death in a Fire Emblem map is just the right amount of goofy while still being immensely intriguing. The stories told to accompany each of the unique playable characters are captivating in their own right, as is the dynamic between the author and his assistant as the latter stupefies the former with his rewrites. I would be very interested in a full game that not only works with the arena concept but also around the various characters’ tales; it feels like the starting point of a web of great potential.
Total Score: 18/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 8 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 31 |
| Presentation | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
| Story | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 16 |
| Total | 17 | 16 | 16 | 18 | 67 |