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| Creator | kdports |
| Engine | Lex Talionis |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 48/80 |
| Rank | =3rd |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 7/10
The main gameplay feature in Tactical Transitioning is unit gender. Enemy men will only attack men, and enemy women will only attack women. Skills are provided to switch between the two for your tactical advantage. The chapter itself is an escape map: you seemingly have nine turns to escape the map. This turn limit is tight, and leaves almost no margin for error. At first you
control two units, but this number soon increases to five. Stats have also been greatly simplified: only strength, magic, speed, and defence exist, and nothing actually uses that magic stat. Healing is also extremely limited: the only source of it is by killing enemies. Hence, the main dilemma is do you fight the enemies, or try to walk past them? Most generic enemies are
men, but the most dangerous enemies on the map are women. There is no lord, and loss is only on a party wipe. I was fully prepared to time out and only have one unit escape the map alive, except the time limit turned into a joke and received an extension. I happily escaped with the rest of my units turn 10, which eases the time pressure significantly and allows for a bit of wiggle room. Not too much: the stalkers are vicious.
Overall, Tactical Transitioning was short and simple, and I enjoyed myself playing it.
Presentation: 4/5
The main complements I have here is the fact that the character portraits change depending on what gender the unit is at that moment in time. Aside from that, there is only one music track, with a lot of uncanny silence during the opening and credits. The map itself is also nice.
Story: 2/5
To say there’s an excuse plot is generous: it sets itself up as a fanfiction for another Fire Emblem fan game, except there is no dialogue whatsoever.
What gives this entry a score beyond 1 is the occasional piece of slapstick humour that occurs every few turns, which did get me to laugh. That poor music player.
Total Score: 13/20
Judge 2: Frog
Gameplay: 6/10
This is mostly a pure gameplay hack revolving around one central mechanic: each player units has one (binary) gender, while every enemy can only target one gender. These genders are not static, though – you can change them during your turns using two skills and an item. Enemies are pretty monogamous in their targeting – with most only targeting male units except for one group near the end and two incredibly powerful Stalkers chasing women – letting you bypass entire Enemy Phases (or most of the map, really) without getting attacked once using correct gendering. It’s a time-limited escape map, and no unit is a Game Over condition – the only loss condition is a party wipe.
During my first (and second, and third) attempt, I tried abusing this mechanic to its fullest, keeping my entire party female before turning them all male for the final stretch. This strategy almost worked except for one fatal flaws: an enemy with a Net Bow (inflicting freeze) attacked male units despite supposedly targeting only female ones. This honestly annoyed me quite a bit and might be a bug, but the worst of it came when I barely managed to escape with one unit during the final turn – only for my last (and only other) remaining unit to die on Enemy Phase, causing a Game Over anyway. My second and third attempts went even worse, with no unit escaping.
On my final attempt, I stayed true to myself and kept everyone female for (almost) the entire map, and it went much better – with everyone escaping and no casualties. I feel like this was the intended solution, which was honestly a bit of a letdown since the central transitioning mechanic barely mattered in it.
Despite it all, I still really enjoyed this map! It had a very cool gimmick, excellent pacing, and didn’t overstay its welcome – even factoring in the multiple resets. I would’ve scored this much higher if not for that one lying Net Bow user.
Presentation: 3/5
I really liked all the custom UI here – especially the status screen! The gender icons were cool too and helped a ton, and even the minimug box and battle screen are customised. Units didn’t have custom palettes however, and the thief used myrmidon animations for some reason. The portraits changing based on their gender was awesome as well, but they looked a bit off – especially their skin tones. The music was good, but there was only one track in the entire game.
Story: 3/5
I’ll admit that I haven’t played Fate of the Fallen, but really enjoyed this regardless! It was very silly and managed to make me laugh multiple times, and the writing felt really endearing to me. Shoutouts to the midmap events, they were great. While it’s obviously an excuse plot, it was a very fun one at that!
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 3: Struedelmuffin
Gameplay: 6/10
There is a very interesting idea here, where your units can switch between male and female and only be targeted by certain enemies depending on the gender your unit currently is. You can use this mechanic to manipulate the enemy AI and bypass a lot of combat scenarios in order to make a safe path to the escape point at the end. While I think this idea is very fun and innovative, the biggest flaws come in the form of the map itself. It is a simple escape map with a turn count timer where your goal is to have each unit make it to the escape point. However, nearly all enemies target male units and it becomes abundantly clear early on that the best strategy is to keep your army female and avoid combat altogether. It seems that the “Stalker” enemies were intended to solve this strategy by dealing extremely high damage to female units, but in reality it just isn’t that hard to avoid them and move forward with an all female army for most of the chapter. Still, the gameplay is fun, the map pacing is solid, and I had a good time with this project.
Presentation: 4/5
The presentation is awesome here, with a custom UI and descriptions that clarify the mechanics well. The biggest sell is definitely in the portraits though, which have unique appearances depending on which gender form each unit is in. The map itself also looks nice and shows clear effort. Only a few errors with unit palettes/anims and the somewhat repetitive audio hold this back from a 5/5.
Story: 3/5
There really isn’t much story here, which is honestly fine for what this hack is. Since there’s very little traditional storytelling here, there’s not much to evaluate for this category beyond the map convos. That being said, the map convos are fun and humorous, which I think is all that was needed for a project that is primarily intended to show off it’s unique gameplay mechanics.
Total Score: 13/20
Judge 4: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 6/10
Tactical Transitioning revolves around a new mechanic added, gender. All players and all enemies are assigned a gender, and enemies can only attack their specific gender on enemy phase. You’re given a few items and skills to swap the genders of both you and your enemies, so that your rather anemic army of 5 will be able to pick and choose its gender-based matchups. The mechanic as a whole reminds me a lot of Ikaruga, and it’s pretty cool! There’s even some mechanics in play to push you towards interacting with the swapping mechanic, like the “stalker”-type enemies, and auto-swapping skills like “maleforce” (my personal favorite).
I have no complaints about this system as a whole, but the map and enemy design could absolutely use a bit of tuning. This map is overwhelmingly populated by men, meaning that aside from a few individual enemies, you can do what the mechanics disincentivized, and turn into girls and run away. This type of mechanic is begging for some interspersed groups of men and women, so you can pick and choose battles in the midst of the map, but that’s not the case here. Since this map is over so fast, there’s not a lot of reason to engage with any of the silly skills, and that makes me very sad.
Presentation: 3/5
Solid stuff all around. The map is pretty, portraits are nice. I especially like how player characters have their portrait swapped depending on what gender they are. I like the gender icons hovering over units, but I think having different icons for players and enemies can get a bit confusing.
Story: 1/5
No story, lol. Even if I grade this on text alone, some tutorials are sorely lacking. Things like how the escape point functions, or even a cursory explanation of the game’s primary gimmick are missing. I wouldn’t mind a little pop-up box every once in a while.
Total Score: 10/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Frog | Struedel | Bandana | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 25 |
| Presentation | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 14 |
| Story | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 9 |
| Total | 13 | 12 | 13 | 10 | 48 |