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| Creator | cb1052 |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 54/80 |
| Rank | 5th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 7/10
Last Refuge is set up similar to the final chapters of FE5 and FE7, with many zombified enemies guarding the way to the final boss. In this case, the boss is completely invincible, with the only unit being able to harm him being an Est. This creates the main gimmick here: your other units may be able to handle the enemies, but without feeding the Est some kills, she won’t grow strong enough to face the boss. In the end, she reached level 14 before promoting. This resulted in a slow but safe boss fight with Physic Staff support.
The “morphs” were all highly dangerous, but smart use of petrification helped subdue the most dangerous of them. I did lose a unit in the winning run.
Overall, Last Refuge is well-designed and pressure is kept up for most of the map. However, the final boss fight was sluggish and killed the pace: perhaps I should have gotten a few more levels.
Presentation: 3/5
The character portraits were generally fine. The music used was decent, though I’ve never been particularly fond of battle music matching map music.
Most other graphical assets were vanilla. There were a few minor text errors with the goal being “defeat O’Neill” and Orson randomly appearing in the first sub-boss’s battle quote.
Story: 4/5
The story reminds me of Genealogy of the Holy War: an evil prince is threatening the world, and the only person who can stop him is his sister. However, she is weak and untrained, so the lord tries to fix that before the battle. The king is not happy, but the princess runs off anyway. However, the prince beats the army to the tower and summons many zombies.
The gameplay and story integrate nicely and justifies the Est’s weakness. Dialogue is generally smooth and free of typos. The chapter opens with quotes from every unit in the vein of a final chapter, and the lord has occasional battle quotes with the zombies.
The chapter ends with the princess killing the prince and returning home to her father. However, many had sought his exile and she was inclined to agree. She remained cordial, however. The Jugdral inspiration was clear here, and I am fond of Jugdral. I liked what I saw.
Total Score: 14/20
Judge 2: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 8/10
Last Refuge’s primary mechanic is Johanna, a trainee with ridiculous snowballing potential. Last Refuge asks you to train Johanna on this massive map to defeat the boss, a Gharnef stand-in. With her absurd scaling capacity, she turns from a meek, level 2 mage into a room-clearing monstrosity within one map! I especially appreciate the depth of her gameplay, having multiple weapons of varying range, strength, and accuracy, while also having several important items of note that need to be picked up from enemies.
What undercuts this unique setup is some pretty genius map design. Enemies are thrown at your army in small waves, both as reinforcements and as map-spawn enemies. Minibosses are sprinkled throughout, requiring multiple units to KO, and requiring you to make hard decisions to make sure your squishies are safe. Enemies aren’t pushovers, and without a strong Johanna, they necessitate multiple units and good matchups to take down. And after all this, you are given so many units that unless Johanna or Anton die, crucial mistakes can be played through. Quite effortlessly, actually. I lost a thief turn 2 of my winning run and didn’t look back.
The only formal complaint I have is that Johanna effectively is the lord. I don’t think having another game-over condition on Anton is necessary from a gameplay perspective.
Presentation: 4/5
Generally solid stuff all around. The mugs and map both look nice. I greatly appreciate the custom music and custom palettes for almost every unit. The minibosses all have the iconic Soulless color palette, which is a great touch. There were a couple of oversights, such as the non-cleared enemies when the map ends, and Eric suddenly transforming into Orson in his battle quote, but they’re small fry compared to the entire package.
Story: 2/5
The story in Last Refuge is largely a tribute to the endgame in most Fire Emblem games. You can see greater aspects of the story that were left unexplored for the sake of the tribute. I especially like how related units have combat dialogue with their respective miniboss, and asks you to think of where they may have come from. What I dislike about this is that there isn’t much focus to make this hack a compelling story otherwise. We know Agesilaos wants to take the King’s head, but not why he wants to do that, or even why it would be a bad thing (beyond death). Reading this kinda left me with a weird, empty feeling.
Total Score: 14/20
Judge 3: Fringus
Gameplay: 7/10
Its central gimmick is pretty good, power-level the low leveled Est in the final map to defeat an otherwise unkillable boss. She’s got a variety of things that help her snowball (most notably galeforce and an incredibly powerful prf), but with frail enough bulk that it never feels like you can just have her hold forward. To support her, there’s a variety trained units, all with powerful kits and stats to their name. In design it’s very much similar to FE7’s Light. Small waves of very powerful enemies that come out from closed off areas.
It’s very fun at first to weaken down enemies enough for her to chain kills together each turn, then seeing her be fully capable to nuking guys all by herself. Compared to something like Light, though, not all the minibosses have to be killed and the split gets rendered pretty superflous. As by the time the other side comes for you, your Est is very well likely online. Alongside the map having some pacing problems when it comes to starting and ending. With the brawl between the two drawing itself a bit too long, even with the good chunk of training I gave her at 20/3 total. All in all, it’s very fun with some very neat new tools to play around with, but its pace does stumble at points.
Presentation: 3/5
Visually everythings pretty great, mugs, music and maps are all pretty pleasant. Stuff like the minibosses having that morph-like palette goes a long way. Though there were some notable issues like a few text errors, one of the first bosses having Orson’s mug in his quote, and units not clearing on mapend (which definitely made the endscene a little odd.)
Story: 3/5
The story sets up and justifies its gimmick pretty well (heck, the reason the Est is so cracked given in the intro even gets pointed out in her bossquote). Plus, quite a few characters have quotes with the different minibosses, and it really helps you feel like a full game did play out in the background. It’s nothing complex, but it’s a fun read.
Total Score: 13/20
Judge 4: Electric Serge
Gameplay: 7/10
Echoing the endgame of FE7, Last Refuge plays out like a final map where you have to withstand an onslaught of several bosses before going on to face not-Nergal in a climactic showdown. The catch, however, is that the only way to deal heavy damage to this final boss is using the Evil-Slaying Tome of Destiny, which can only be used by a level 2 unpromoted coughing baby. As such, the player must spend the time before the final boss approaches you to feed her dozens of undead corpses so that she can mature into a hydrogen bomb and make her evil brother explode.
The map plays pretty well into this gimmick; the mage has access to Galeforce and is surrounded by a cadre of endgame-ready forces + a dancer to help her get as many a kill as she needs to become strong enough to kill the final boss, and enemies come at you in smaller waves so that you don’t feel like you’re wasting too much experience. There’s nary an easier way to shoot dopamine into my veins than watching number go up, from watching the coughing baby start to hit double digit damage, to watching her hit rates stabilize, to watching her consistently double, and Last Refuge scratches that itch and then some.
If I had to offer some critiques, the map differs from Light in that not all the minibosses need to be killed to open the way to the final boss, which kinda gives you less of an incentive to avoid turtling since you can just bulldoze the enemies as they come while the final boss slowly waddles over. The map is also paced kinda poorly at the end, with a good chunk of enemies in the top not doing anything unless provoked and letting not-Nergal walk right into the hydrogen bomb with no backup. Keeping the door to his room locked until the other minibosses went down would probably have gone a long way to arranging enemy AI in such a way that they could support their leader and create a more challenging formation, even if the map we did get was still pretty neat.
Presentation: 3/5
Barring a couple of errors, such as a few text mistakes, a boss quote showing the wrong portrait, and the ending scene having a warrior inside my walls, the game looks quite solid. There’s a bevy of high quality custom portraits in play, and I especially liked the blue-grayish skin on the mini-bosses. The map and the music are also great.
Story: 3/5
The pre-chapter dialogue mostly serves the purpose of justifying the map’s gimmick, and it does that fairly well, though I have to ponder the sequence of events that would lead to Anton only now fetching the one person who can kill the evil wizard right before they end up encountering him. Oh well. There’s a couple of unique boss quotes here and there to make the minibosses feel more like old friends whose corpses have been desecrated to try and hinder the heroes emotionally, which is pretty neat.
Total Score: 13/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Bandana | Fringus | Serge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 29 |
| Presentation | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 13 |
| Story | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Total | 14 | 14 | 13 | 13 | 54 |