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| Creator | Wheaton_508 |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 43/80 |
| Rank | 7th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 5/10
Vallicia in Ruin starts the player with three units. Two of them can fight, while the third can buff. Though it appears there are multiple paths to take, it is soon made obvious which one is correct when a fourth unit appears a few turns in. The objective is to escape, and all units must escape alive. During my first few attempts I tried to go all the way right, but I ended up getting swarmed and losing units. Instead, I basically zig-zagged my way down the map, trying to fight the smallest enemy groups at a time.
Despite being an escape map, the pace ended up becoming quite leisurely. Only one remotely dangerous group of reinforcements appeared, and I took the time to hold them off in a one-tile chokepoint. In some regards, the chapter felt more like a puzzle game than a tactics one, yet at the same time it felt like I had broken the puzzle and did something unanticipated. By the time the emperor arrived on turn 20, my path to the escape tile was clear and I was in no danger.
It’s worth noting the escape point is only shown in the opening cutscene, and after that, there is no further reminder of where exactly the escape point is.
Presentation: 2/5
The map and music are both fine. What costs this entry presentation points are the various leftover pieces of text from the original FE8. The enemy faction has no proper help text, only displaying the placeholder fallback, and the boss class reuses the Pontifex class description. As well, the original opening cutscene was not disabled.
Story: 3/5
The storyline takes its cues from a mixture of Jugdral and FE8. An emperor is sweeping his way across the continent, and the good queen must make her last stand. Knowing she stands little chance of victory, she has a knight take her children away to safety. However, many enemies block the way, and they must fight their way out. The children do not understand what is going on at all. The map itself does have a few talk conversations, which is nice to see.
Upon victory, the “Jeigan” sacrifices herself so the royal children escape. The opening and ending cutscenes are nicely evented, with the ending sequence of “Fin” bringing “Leaf” to safety being well done. The story itself ends foreshadowing a future campaign in the future, but this chapter serves as a decent self-contained prologue.
Total Score: 10/20
Judge 2: Frog
Gameplay: 5/10
This chapter opens with a very classic Fire Emblem premise: the protagonists’ castle is under siege by a sudden assault from the neighboring evil kingdom, and the good queen sends her two (very young) children and their retainers to flee before dying off-screen. The map follows their flight from the castle, implemented as a pretty large escape map with winding hallways. It also contains escort mission elements: the princess is so young as to be unable to fight and dies in two hits (thanks to Miracle), and the older prince isn’t much better despite wielding a sword. Your only other combatants are the Jagen – which faces little trouble in this map but cannot rescue both children – and a mediocre cavalier. All of these units are Game Over conditions.
Personally, I found the map flow to be pretty inconsistent. It felt much larger than it needed to be, and I escaped while ignoring most enemies. In the first part, I had essentially no trouble whatsoever, fighting only one or two solitary enemies at a time with ease. Nevertheless, I then triggered a pretty rough group AI and got surrounded by enemies, and would’ve definitely Game Overed if not for a lucky 67% miss. In the final part, I turtled and slowly chipped away at one general blocking the exit while staying out of range of as many enemies as possible, as to not trigger another group charge. The evil king spawns as an anti-turtling reinforcement near the end, yet he arrives so late (turn 20!) as to be inconsequential. While I appreciate the thought behind the unit skills, they barely affected my playthrough. Overall, I found the map to be pretty inoffensive but also unremarkable.
Presentation: 4/5
I really really loved the eventing here and all the cutscene maps!! It added a ton to an otherwise standard fare story. All the maps looked good and the portraits worked well enough, even if the young lords appeared to be recolors. I also enjoyed the music and appreciated that all player units had custom battle palettes. Not getting experience at all was nice QoL too. The vanilla stat screen with the red stat names did feel out of place, though.
Story: 3/5
As mentioned before, the premise of the chapter is really nothing new – however, the execution was pretty good. The writing was nice and some parts – like the eventing-filled narration segments – definitely stood out to me. Unfortunately, it feels very much like the prologue to a longer story with very little sauce – while I know this is the intended purpose of the chapter, it’s pretty lackluster as a standalone story.
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 3: Struedelmuffin
Gameplay: 5/10
Vallicia in Ruin presents you with very few units to work with. While you technically have 4 in total, 2 of them are more or less just escort objectives not intended for combat. You are instead reliant on your mounted units to deliver these two units to an escape point. While this works pretty well narratively with the queen’s servants trying to save her remaining family, it leads to fairly bland gameplay with little strategy involved beyond just defending your two weak units. The map feels too large for how simple the gameplay is, and the turn-based pressure doesn’t really start coming into play until far too late to create an interesting escape dynamic. Most of the combats also just involved me tanking with the great knight, which wasn’t particularly exciting. I think this map was overall very middle of the road, with nothing standing out as exceptionally enjoyable or unenjoyable.
Presentation: 4/5
The eventing in this entry is quite good, and I liked the unique cutscene maps a lot. The portraits are solid, the music is fitting, and the narration segments are a treat. That being said, while the presentation is definitely Vallicia in Ruin’s strongest aspect, it does still leave some things to be desired. Namely I noticed some minor issues with vanilla placeholders still being leftover from FE8, such as with snippets of R text and, more egregiously, the opening cutscene. Otherwise some top notch presentation here.
Story: 3/5
We follow alongside a queen’s defiant final moments as her kingdom is invaded and conquered by your typical, evil bad guy empire. Her loyal knights must now see her children to safety by trying to escape the castle through the invading forces as the queen makes her final stand. It’s a story that’s been told in some way or another across Fire Emblem countless times, but the writing (and eventing) itself is solid enough to carry an otherwise somewhat tired premise. My biggest complaint would be that this chapter does not make much of an effort to feel self-contained and winds up leaving you unsatisfied with its open ended conclusion.
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 4: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 2/10
Vallicia in Ruin is a low unit hack in which your units are shockingly weak for the number of enemies on the map. You have four units total, and two of them aren’t really meant to be combat units, one with incredibly low stats and one without weapons. This leaves most of the actual objective-work to your cavaliers, leading to a map with an incredibly slow pace. This is compounded by the lack of actual health given to your units, encouraging you to attack the entire physical-only enemy roster with your high defense Great Knight to minimize damage. It’s so slow, in fact, that the GTFO reinforcement celerity general spawns in on turn twenty, and I still had loads of units to clear through. I didn’t even have the option of barrelling through, since units have so little bulk and offense and healing. It’s not fun, and I feel that a cursory playtest would reveal these issues almost immediately.
Presentation: 4/5
There are some great cutscenes and cutscene maps inside here! Units barrel through hordes of reds and get surrounded by them, there’s loads of unique cutscene maps, it’s all sick. That’s the main selling point, but the more minor stuff is spot on. It goes without saying that it’s a stable entry with no bugs or presentation errors. I also like the portraits and map selected for this chapter.
Story: 3/5
You are the remnants of the Queen’s personal royal guard, sent on the mission to deliver her child (and some other rugrat) to safety. It’s told competently. This is the first part of a larger story, I imagine.
Total Score: 9/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Frog | Struedel | Bandana | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 5 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 17 |
| Presentation | 2 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 13 |
| Story | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 13 |
| Total | 10 | 12 | 12 | 9 | 43 |