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| Creator | TritraSerpifeu |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 26/80 |
| Rank | 12th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 4/10
Unioncast has the player in control of an army whose defining characteristic is their inability to actually fight. With one exception, they can only use staves. The objective is to seize the gate, on the opposite side of a large map with many different bridges. In addition to the typical staves, these bridges can be destroyed with a staff too. With the only offence possible being in the form of status staves, I simply pushed forward, slept and silenced what I could, and I soon reached the boss. The question “how to kill the boss” soon resolved itself, as she ran off her gate. From there, I rescued the lord past the enemy pile up and seized in five turns.
Overall, the chapter was fairly unremarkable. I had no reason to visit two thirds of the map, and the map was over almost as soon as it started.
Presentation: 2/5
Overall, presentation was fairly unremarkable. Various F2U assets were dotted
around for the characters and classes. The map itself was a bit rough, and the
rivers themselves didn’t properly flow. The music was fine.
Story: 1/5
The story is little more than an excuse plot: an army has decided to seize a castle for some random reason, in what appeared to be a storm of in-jokes I do not understand. When the castle is seized, the boss is amazed we won, before asking to join the party. There isn’t any more to say.
Total Score: 7/20
Judge 2: Frog
Gameplay: 4/10
Unioncast stars an eccentric group of staff users – plus one polearm wielder – dead set on sieging a castle to prove the value of staves. As such, only one of your units can attack, with the rest relegated to various supporting roles. Most of your staves have vanilla effects (healing, wrapping, and inflicting status effects), with the exception of one new set of water-themed staves designed to destroy bridges. The map itself is very large and open (except for some bridges waiting to be destroyed) with relatively few enemies scattered around.
On my first attempt, I played relatively slowly, getting used to all my units and trying to give them all something to do. This quickly led me to getting swarmed, however – there is a huge amount of reinforcements in this map, and only one unit can (sometimes) defeat foes. I tried warp skipping to the seize point, but it was way too little too late, and the main character (a slime) promptly died.
On my second attempt, I set out on warp skipping the map from the very beginning, using essentially only the flier and the slime (plus the lancer as a berserk-inflicting bait for the boss). This went much more smoothly and I finished the chapter with relatively little trouble.
This was a bit difficult to rate, as the bridge-destroying gimmick was pretty cool, and I’ll admit that warp skipping a map is kinda fun. On the other hand, half the units felt pointless, and the map itself was pretty messy. The amount of reinforcements compared to the initial enemy density was also disproportionate, and especially punishing for unprepared players.
Presentation: 2/5
I liked the music here, and the map palette was nice. The rest was pretty unremarkable though. Some portraits also looked a bit scuffed, and the status screen was vanilla with unnecessary growth colours.
Story: 1/5
The story here is incredibly simplistic, and serves mostly as filler. A lot of characters are introduced and backstory implied, but none of it appears relevant to the chapter. There were also many typos present throughout the game – the consistently incorrect spelling of staves, the subject of this entry, felt especially grating.
Total Score: 7/20
Judge 3: Struedelmuffin
Gameplay: 4/10
While the idea behind Unioncast is interesting, the gameplay unfortunately leaves a lot to be desired. Your army being entirely reliant on staves, bar one mediocre combat unit, is a fun and creative idea, but the overwhelming reinforcements result in turn to turn gameplay that is often more confusing/stressful than it is enjoyable. This is not helped either by the awkward map design, with rivers and terrain (particularly forests) feeling somewhat randomly placed and resulting in a lot of unsatisfying player phase turns. Also, the “lord” unit required to seize is a slime that is extremely fragile and has terrain data that causes it to be unable to traverse any tiles besides rivers efficiently, which I felt further exacerbated my frustrations with the awkward feeling player phase turns. Despite its flaws, however, I want to give credit to the novel idea of relying on staves almost entirely, and I especially liked the staves that could permanently destroy bridges. I believe this is a project with great potential that could be expanded upon much more in the future.
Presentation: 2/5
There is not much to say for the presentation, aside from the map lacking a fair bit of polish and having some noticeable errors like the river tiles not being used correctly. It is evident that some amount of effort was put into the presentation, but it feels as if it took a backseat to the gameplay mechanics.
Story: 1/5
Similar to presentation, the story is very barebones and mostly nonsensical, referential humor that I could not follow along with at all. Essentially, your units attack a castle using only staves (for a reason I didn’t entirely understand) and there is a zombie with spears that is also there…for some reason or another. When the chapter ends, the enemy commander seems to be happy that you won and tries to join your party, but I still didn’t really understand what was going on by the time it was over.
Total Score: 7/20
Judge 4: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 3/10
Unioncast is a chapter where your main modus of interacting with it is via staves. Most of the cool ones have infinite durability, with the standard FE smorgasbord of Sleep, Silence, Warp, Rescue, plus a few “torrential” staves, which permanently destroy bridges. Neat! Additional enemy reinforcements flanking and assaulting your front encourage you to run to the boss as fast as possible, since your lack of “enemy removal” means they tend to ball up.
I think the enemies and map design tilt the balance toward more frustration than fun. Your (undisclosed, by the way) win-condition, the slime, is incredibly frail and dies in one or two hits. It doesn’t have much to do, beyond breaking bridges and warping units away for cadence (since reinforcements are so aggressive, it’s almost necessary). Its movement is also listed as 8, but since it has an increased movement cost on plains, it has deceptively low movement. What should be simple movement calculations done correctly by every other unit is a chore for them. The quickest route to the boss involves a brutal mandatory forest patch, followed by a single-tile chokepoint (which will likely be attacked by enemies you are incapable of moving out of the way). I think the rather sloppy map is a result of using that one map generator tool, which I can’t name off the top of my head. In spite of your cast being so small, there’s a shocking number of empty turns where units can’t contribute, namely the D-rank staffer, who has neither the ranks nor the PRFs to contribute. There’s a certain layer of abrasion to this game’s presentation that genuinely does make the gameplay experience worse, like the random, useless skills/weapon ranks on players, or the lack of clarity on win/lose conditions, or the enormous, sprawling map that, in truth, is a singular, 3 tile wide tunnel.
The main thesis is that this map feels like a first draft, rather than something crafted and tested to be the best. And that makes me sad.
Presentation: 1/5
Nothing in this hack was particularly offensive, but this massive map covered in rivers that don’t make sense comes close. The music got a bit grating after a while of listening to it. I know it wasn’t entirely possible with the limitations of GBA, but having statused units still move on turns that they had the big status icon over their head because it gets removed on the start of the turn was particularly frustrating.
Story: 1/5
The story here feels more baffling than coherent. Your units are attacking a castle (with staves, because it’s legal (do not pay attention to the zombie with poking sticks)) for what seems to be a training exercise. The enemy boss congratulates you (for stealing her castle) and requests to join the party (?). Too many questions are asked that simply don’t grip me enough to listen to their answers.
Total Score: 5/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Frog | Struedel | Bandana | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 15 |
| Presentation | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
| Story | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Total | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 26 |