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| Creator | RNGSOMEONE |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 19/80 |
| Rank | Disqualified |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 0/10, DISQUALIFIED
Chapter is unwinnable by legitimate means.
The player is thrown into the late game of a hypothetical Fire Emblem rom hack. A full army has been built up, and a staggering 27 units may be deployed. The chapter itself has a massive map with high initial enemy density and very inconsistent reinforcements. The initial enemies are reasonable, but after the first wave, they soon become ridiculous. North of the first wave lie extremely durable cavalry, whose range I generally avoided at all costs. Many of the villages contained a trap of some sort, between the houses exploding or enemies spawning upon visiting them. As a result, I generally avoided visiting them where possible, but if I ignored the bomb villages, I would have to navigate narrow one-tile wide corridors. One particularly cruel trap involved cutting off the single-tile corridor for just waiting on a house, without ever visiting it.
It took me several attempts to reach turn 5 and I had resigned myself to save state usage, only to cross an invisible line that loaded in the second half of the map’s enemies. These included two snipers with door keys near the boss. They ran up to the doors, used the keys, and nothing happened. I stopped playing at that point – how was I meant to get to the boss room if the tile change was broken?
Even if the chapter was winnable the score would be low: one attempt was ended by an enemy Lethality activation and skill spam is highly prevelant.
Presentation: 1/5
The character portraits and map design are serviceable. However, the music remixes are quite poor. The battle theme was especially bad, with the melody appearing to be out of tune with its backing track, forcing me to turn off animations to avoid listening to it. This costs the entry a point.
Story: 2/5
The story begins with a lengthy recap of a fairly typical Fire Emblem story. It does a good job of making me feel like I’ve been dropped into a hack: a large army has been assembled, unit weapons have been worn down to varying degrees, and several units have supports to read. In fact, I had to check to see if I wasn’t actually dropped into a full hack in FEBuilder…
The opening plot summary was very lengthy, explaining 21 chapters of non-existent hack with little relevance to this chapter. However, I can’t review the rest of the story in earnest as I couldn’t finish the submission.
Total Score: 3/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 0/10
Chronicles of Varna is defined by bloat, so to contrast, I will keep it brief. This chapter has an enormous amount of mental overhead, from units to skills, traps, minibosses, and alternate endings that seemingly activate at random opportunities. There is so much content on display here that makes it almost impossible to digest as a player, and when attempted, is not fun. For reference, battle preps took me two hours on my first go around, and another hour on my second attempt on normal difficulty. The best thing I can say about it is that it genuinely feels like you’re dropped into a late-game hack, which absolutely is the author’s intent, but it’s not really a compliment. More of a statement.
Oh, and the doors are broken, and it’s impossible to attack Hindenburg. You cannot complete the chapter without abusing glitches. This disqualifies this submission, but I wouldn’t have rated the gameplay highly anyway.
Presentation: 3/5
Lots of effort was put into the introductory cutscene, condensing the entirety of a 22-chapter epic into just a couple of minutes. The cutscenes are pretty dynamic otherwise, using map movement to show important events, or keeping a static background when necessary. I greatly appreciate the shifting music in cutscenes that made the tone dynamic too. The map is a bit ugly and cumbersome, due to how many tiles are blocked off, and it comes across as sloppy. The music choices are also grating at times, like the battle theme. Finally, every single unit has battle palettes, as far as I can tell. Even their pre-promoted and promoted versions. I think these attributes even the score out to a 3.
Story: 3/5
While the cutscene chapter of the intro was a bit meandering, there is some genuinely good character moments in the following cutscenes. Even with the small amount of dialogue they had, Dietrich, Hindenburg, Mel, and Edwin were all characterized very well. There are even fully written support conversations on the map that flesh out the minor characters, like Ibrahim, Corsette, and Aria. It’s all handled pretty competently. The only obtainable ending didn’t feel like it wrapped much up, though. It is only one chapter in a larger hack, though…
Total Score: 6/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 0/10
Winnable solely through a glitch.
The game starts you off with a real doozy, over 100 items in convoy, 26 deploy, and almost double that to pick to decide and deploy, all of which have their own skillsets. Some of which can even promote, with their own post-promo learned skills. This in of itself creates an immense amount of overhead for the player before it even starts. Even once you get into it though, most unpromoted foes are equal to your best units and promoted/boss units dwarf most of yours.
The map itself is massive, and the sheer surge to leadership stars encourages stacking up for added reliability. Progressing through the map is largely a matter of chipping away at powerful enemies with S ranks and the gotoh’s super-rapier in one tile hallways while what few bulky units you have tank individual hits. With even more enemies coming in as reinforcements all the while, and anyone you ignore eventually coming to rush you down. As well, sometimes player units will also just straight up disappear off the map.
Overall, I finished it in one attempt. Though it went on for much longer than a map feasibly should. As well, I only won because of a bug accidentally leading me to the good ending outside of the final boss room. If not for that, I would’ve been locked out from the door not opening at all.
Presentation: 2/5
The variety of mugs from the repo all look good, though there is a lack of unity. While the fact everyone in the cast has very nice battle palettes is nothing short of commendable and impressive in terms of effort, especially for the timeframe. Unfortunately other aspects bog things down quite a bit. The map itself has a few confusing looking clusters of buildings. With all the houses strewn about not being very pleasing to look at alongside tiling errors for the city streets. Plus, the music for player phase when outside of combat is incredibly hard to listen to. With some constant screeching throughout the time I had it on.
Story: 3/5
It presents a sprawling tale about the journey to this point with a somewhat standard FE mood towards it all. With a good hint in the air towards what truly happened before it becomes apparent. With most everything in the intro past the summary being a decent read with a nice overworld-esque framing. Most characters had a quickly established voice to them and the supports gave some characters in your list some desired development. Though after the intro, the writing felt a little weaker overall. The biggest issue comes from how much irrelevant information and Proper Nouning the lead in does, as much of it felt like it could be slimmed down without losing much. Especially with how much time the whole explanation takes.
Total Score: 5/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 0/10
So, I was informed well in advance that this map is unwinnable without hacking the game due to broken doors that can’t open the way to the final boss. That said, I took one look at this map and was greeted with around 40 playable units, 26 deployment slots, the largest Kaga block of enemies known to man, and 5 billion skills. Taking the map’s bugged nature into account, I apologize to the developer, but I am invoking my right to refuse to play the map. I hope this doesn’t discourage you from entering future contests or working on larger projects. We all get better with time and practice.
Presentation: 2/5
There’s some nice and not-so-nice things on display here. There’s a bunch of unique characters on display and they all have portraits and even battle palettes, which is nice. The maps look pretty mediocre, though, with a lot of empty space and very vanilla palettes. Also, the map used in the opening cutscene was pretty low quality. The music is similarly hit and miss, with a couple good songs and a few that hurt my ears (the battle theme, in particular). Could be better, could be worse.
Story: 3/5
The opening cutscene is pretty cool. You basically get to watch what’s more or less a summary of an entire Fire Emblem game play out as you approach the finale. I also quite like the part of the story that happens after this summary, with all the major characters getting pretty nice characterization regarding the buildup to the final battle and what their plans for its aftermath are. I was also told there’s support conversations for the other characters and multiple endings, so I do admire the effort the developer put into the writing, even if I wasn’t able to see all of it.
Total Score: 5/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Presentation | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 8 |
| Story | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 11 |
| Total | 3 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 19 |