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| Creator | Azert |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 42/80 |
| Rank | 8th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 5/10
Thermopylae sets itself in the historical battle between Greece and Persia thousands of years ago, but as a Fire Emblem game. You control the Greeks making their last stand holding the Persians off. This manifests itself in a twelve-turn defence map. Aside from the king and the bard, every single unit is a soldier, or to match the theming, “hoplite”. Though the Greeks will generally outmatch the Persians, very little healing is available. This means that the army will slowly get worn down as time goes on. The only healing comes from skills dotted around the hoplites: most player units have many, many skills, most of which I largely ignored outside of a few major points such as the lord having Galeforce.
The map itself is basic: there is no terrain, mountains to one side, and water to the other. Movement has been cut down across the board: almost every unit only has three move. Despite this, my strategy largely became a matter of pushing forward for the first half of the chapter, swatting the weak foes aside. However, there is an ever-present threat of snipers. These snipers are
ballisticians in disguise, wielding 3-15 range iron bows. They had terrible accuracy, but there was always a 25% chance of my dancer getting sniped by an arrow. Reinforcements were also extremely dense, but to be fair, the Persians did heavily outnumber the Greeks here.
Towards the end, the enemies grew stronger and stronger, and I started to sacrifice my units in order to hold the enemy off that little bit longer, before I reached the timer on my first attempt. While the chapter did a good job of setting the scene, there were enough things that irritated me to pull the score down a bit.
Presentation: 2/5
An amount of effort was put into the presentation, with fantasy classes typical to Fire Emblem not present in any capacity, and animations adjusted to fit in with the theme. However, there are plenty of issues with this presentation. The most glaring issues include several class names being cut off in the status screen and the title screen labels being misaligned, resulting in graphical corruption around the Press Start label. The camel map sprite also has some issues.
Story: 3/5
The story is inspired by the titular Battle of Thermopylae, where a handful of Greeks make their last stand against the might of the Persian Empire. Though this hack’s story is fictionalised, the broad strokes of the real battle are still followed. The King of Sparta will not let Persia pass, and he and his last few men fight to the death. The party members all give their varying
motivations to defeat Persia, and they then make their last stand. The text itself does require some more proofreading: “Greek” isn’t consistently capitalised, for instance. The story itself ends as in history: Persia still wins the battle, though the bards still sing the praises of the Greeks’ sacrifice.
Total Score: 10/20
Judge 2: Frog
Gameplay: 7/10
This chapter revolves around a hopeless last stand by a handful of Greeks against the unstoppable Persian invasion. As such, most of your units are Greek Hoplites, and the objective is to defend a narrow, five tiles-long pass against a massive horde of various enemies for 12 turns. While all player units except one share a class, each one has different skills to give them some individuality. Most of these are negligible, but there are a few cool ones – shoutouts to Kineo the crit machine and Sthenos the trainee (who reached level 13!), those two were major highlights in my playthrough. The lord also has Galeforce, there’s a rally bot, and you get one bard as the only non-Hoplite.
Player units also shared some characteristics to encourage the classic Greek shield wall tactics: most have a measly 3 Mov, plus Spur Defence, so staying mostly in one place as a large Kaga block is heavily encouraged. While cool conceptually and definitely matching the story, this is unfortunately also the hack’s greatest weakness: most units barely move throughout the entire chapter, and it mostly devolves into pressing end turn and watching lengthy Enemy Phases.
Nevertheless, the enemy variety is excellent, and definitely designed to challenge this strategy. There are thieves with pass beelining to the defend points, which must be taken care of in Player Phase; Cavaliers have Lunge designed to break your formation; several powerful bosses spawn throughout the chapter; and more enemy types arrive near the end of the map. I found the first few turns of the map especially engaging, even if it got a bit old and repetitive by the end.
Overall, for a map revolving around standing in one place and watching a bunch of enemies die, it’s definitely an excellent execution! It’s still mostly standing in one place and watching a bunch of enemies die, though. One final nitpick: I kept assuming all player Hoplites had Spur Defence, but a few actually didn’t, which was a constant source of confusion for me.
Presentation: 2/5
The music is good and most portraits and animations are nice, but the map is incredibly bland – it’s mostly a long, empty line. The mountain on the left looks especially bad, and is the same four tiles throughout the entire length of the map. Units also lack battle palettes. I do appreciate the changed stat screen though.
Story: 2/5
While I’m unfamiliar with the source material, the story worked well enough. Fitting for a Greek tragedy, it’s filled with pathos and drama, and I liked the short introduction of each player unit. Constant formatting issues and some typos – plus vanilla boss dialogue – did detract from the experience for me, though.
Total Score: 11/20
Judge 3: Struedelmuffin
Gameplay: 6/10
Nearly every unit is a Hoplite class, differentiated primarily through their unique skills. Much like the historical event it is based on, you are defending a narrow pass with a wall of soldiers. Allowing any of the enemies to get through will result in an immediate defeat, so you are encouraged to keep a very defensive position without advancing forward too aggressively. While this makes sense thematically, it is unfortunately a decision that does not lead to particularly exciting gameplay. A lot of time is spent watching the huge mass of enemies attack your units each turn, which quickly became tiring and led to me turning off animations. While the lack of healing available combined with some interesting enemy unit variety does make the battle of attrition somewhat interesting, I couldn’t help but wish for a more compelling map layout the entire time I was playing.
Presentation: 3/5
I would first like to give this hack credit for committing fully to the Greek setting by changing so many aspects of the game, from the backgrounds to the class names and class sprites. It’s a nice touch, and it helped a lot with reinforcing the theme. The portraits, most being splices, are also well done for the most part. Beyond that, unfortunately, there are a significant number of visual issues that detract from the experience. The map itself is very plain, being just a straight line with a simple mountain ridge and an inaccessible coastline and ocean. I also found it disappointing that none of the characters had unique palettes, especially since they all share the same class and have identical map/battle sprites aside from Leonidas and Voithea. I can see that genuine effort went into the thematic consistency, but I would have appreciated a bit more visual differentiation between the characters and a more interesting map layout.
Story: 3/5
Thermopylae is a Fire Emblem interpretation of the real world Battle of Thermopylae, focusing specifically on the defending force led by Leonidas. The characterization is fairly simple, but it is effective enough to tell an interesting single-chapter story. We first get a brief introduction to Xerxes, the leader of the Persian army, and see that he is ruthless and power hungry with his servant fearing him. There’s then a contrast with Leonidas’s army, who voluntarily choose to risk their lives to fight for him even though he permits them to retreat without losing their honor. We also get brief introductions to some of the characters, which helps you get some attachment to them before the game starts. The story being told is overall straightforward and simple, but it does a good job at doing what it needs to do.
Total Score: 12/20
Judge 4: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 4/10
Thermopylae is a retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which the completely outnumbered Greek and Spartan forces held the line against the Persians at the titular strait. It follows the story very closely, which means you’ll be fighting on a long, straight, enclosed path while defending against a ludicrous number of weaker reinforcements. There are no healers, just some paltry chip healing in the form of a few skills. All of your units are Spartan Hoplites, with one bard for good measure. All of your units have unique skills that differentiate them, but since they’re all hoplites, it’s hard to visually distinguish them from one another.
I greatly appreciate the narrative synergy in this chapter, but it doesn’t make a terribly fun game. Waves of enemies pouring into your army of overpowered units isn’t very compelling, even when they start putting up resistance. I had a few failed attempts on this map, and I certainly improved from attempt to attempt, but I never felt like I truly mastered the map gimmicks. By the end of the map, my forces had whittled down to merely King Leonidas, and it ended. Certainly interesting, but probably not the best fit for a chapter.
Presentation: 2/5
The presentation here is a bit hit-or-miss. The map is good, but I notice a continuous sequence of unbroken tile errors along the base of the leftmost mountain. I like all the unique classes added, along with their map sprites and animations. Having all the player units be hoplites is a pretty egregious oversight, even if it’s the point of the hack (maybe give some units splashes of color?) Some portraits are a little mismatched, using either FE8 or FE7 colors,
Story: 3/5
I’m being pandered to with this entry. I’m a sucker for ancient Greek history… at least in theory. The writing in this is passable, but it doesn’t focus too hard on telling a super compelling story. It’s fine because the focus here is on the mechanics of the battle of Thermopylae, but the rating still stands.
Total Score: 9/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Frog | Struedel | Bandana | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 5 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 22 |
| Presentation | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 9 |
| Story | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 11 |
| Total | 10 | 11 | 12 | 9 | 42 |