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| Creator | Rasta |
| Engine | Lex Talionis |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 47/80 |
| Rank | =5th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 7/10
Empty Halls puts the player in control of some corrupt clergy. The public are rioting, so they must be put down. How exactly? By summoning dozens of meat shields to take all the damage. When they die, they take their attackers down with them. But the priests and troubadours summoned forth for body-blocking purposes do have staves of their own, which they can effectively use to slow the enemy advance down. Status staves, teleportation staves, and even offensive staves towards the end of the chapter are available for use.
The chapter itself is very easy: at no point was the throne under any threat. Enemies did start attacking from multiple angles during the later turns, but the throne never came under any real threat. The bishops were only ever in attack range once, and the relevant enemy was promptly obliterated. While I had no trouble in finishing the chapter, I did enjoy inflicting many statuses on the enemy, and the map ended with the two armies largely wiping each other out.
Presentation: 2/5
Presentation was average, all things considered. The map was fine, the music was decent. Battle animations are completely absent, presumbably for the sake of speeding up the chapter.
Story: 2/5
The storyline was quick and didn’t dwell on too much. Some priests, living in excess, have their church attacked by hungry peasants wanting their food back. They have to therefore summon a massive army of cannon fodder to stop them. When the map finishes, the priests get bailed out by a dragon knight who mops up the peasants, before everyone gloats about how many people they sacrificed. While I smirked a few times, the story itself is barely above excuse plot level.
Total Score: 11/20
Judge 2: Frog
Gameplay: 6/10
This chapter revolves around a very large amount of defenceless priests defending a throne from an angry mob for 7 turns. The main gimmick is your units’ inability to attack, with the only way of dealing damage (until the final two turns) being dying, which inflicts 1 damage on the attacker. Instead, you get access to a variety of staves, such as Sleep, Berserk, Warp, and Gust (shoving a unit). There are also three named bishops with access to summoning staves – most of your units start unselectable outside of the map, and these staves are used to bring them into the fray. All enemy types also have an associated gimmick – for example, Fighters attack doors, Thieves move through walls, and Mercenaries have a whopping 2 HP.
Speaking of health, units die incredibly often here, as stats have been completely removed – almost everyone has 1 HP and always deals & takes 1 damage. This is very fitting for the player units, but makes enemies a bit too fragile I feel: I ended up basically routing the entire left side of the map just by letting a bunch of units there die (plus some good Berserking in the early game to be fair). In general, this chapter wasn’t particularly difficult due to the sheer amount of meatshields you have access to & some really good staves like Berserk and Sleep, but I still found most of it engaging. Obliterating the boss on the final turn was also pretty funny. It did grow repetitive by the end though, and having so many player units made turns feel a bit like a chore.
Presentation: 2/5
Everything here looks nice enough, but there weren’t really any highlights for me. The status screen did feel a bit off though. I also encountered some minor annoyances – there’s no way to view the remaining turns of status effects, and Sleep staves often became unusable for unclear reasons (do they have Cooldown)?
Story: 3/5
The story has a funny premise and some good dialogue which made me laugh a couple of times. It was a bit simplistic and the lack of unit descriptions was disappointing, but it worked well enough for its purpose.
Total Score: 11/20
Judge 3: Struedelmuffin
Gameplay: 7/10
Empty Halls is an interesting entry as far as gameplay goes, playing almost like a tower defense. You are defending a throne room from a horde of enemies charging at you, but your main counterattack comes in the form of sacrificing your own clergy to deal damage. You summon swathes of priests and troubadours, equipped with a random selection of staves, on each turn in an effort to stall your attackers for 7 turns. There is no conventional Fire Emblem stat system, instead each unit has 1 HP and will die to most anything, from a berserked ally’s attack to a sacrificial unit. The only exceptions are mercenaries with 2 HP and a boss who has 5, but neither are particularly difficult to deal with, especially once you obtain 3 copies of a staff that can deal 2 damage freely. Most enemies die quickly, making the chapter very easy overall. I also encountered an issue where some of my units could not use traded staves despite being the same class, which was confusing and possibly a bug. Regardless, I had a fun time playing around with this concept and it’s a solid entry.
Presentation: 3/5
The presentation is a bit barebones, but is still nice enough to be serviceable. A few issues stood out to me, such as the civilians not having a class card or the somewhat confusing mechanics on a couple of the staves (gust seems to not push enemies afflicted by another status?), but nothing stood out as a major issue. It would have been nice as well to be able to see the duration of my status staves or to have some clarity on the cooldown of the staff that summons four units at once.
Story: 3/5
There is not much story to review here, as Empty Halls only just barely tells us enough to understand why we’re being sieged by green units. We play as the leaders of a wealthy, villainous church that do not care for the commonfolk and, as a result, a bit of a peasant uprising is taking place. The morality is straightforward, we are very clearly on the evil side of this fight as we sacrifice followers and try to suppress the peasants fighting for food and equality. It’s interesting to play as unapologetic villains who win in the end, but there wasn’t really enough of a story being told here for me to get invested in anything. The “Brothers, it is time to lock in” line was pretty funny though.
Total Score: 13/20
Judge 4: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 6/10
Empty Halls is a neat little fangame where you control a large army of generic clergymen who only use staves, as abiding by the theme of the contest. Instead of being beholden to run through enemy units, you’re tasked with defending the throne against an onslaught of mooks. You have your standard FE fare of sleep, berserk, freeze, warp, and rescue, but you’re also given some cool new tools. I won’t cover their details, but there’s Gust, Barrier, Runewall, Summon Forth, Summon *Four*, and the special surprise staves at the final stretch. As you throw your horde against their horde, your units will trade their lives for 1 point of damage, meaning that the inevitable sacrifices of your units feel less inevitable and more strategic. It feels puzzle-emblemy in that sense, but there’s so many units and so much variation, it still feels freeform in its execution, like a traditional FE game does!
It’s fun and captivating, but even with a 7 turn time limit, the gameplay does get a bit exhausting. With so many generics with relatively impactful turns, managing them all can get a fair bit tedious. This is also certainly a personal thing, but I realized when playing this that stunning and delaying enemies isn’t as viscerally satisfying as outright removing them via bloodshed. It’s still a very fun and satisfying chapter, though.
Presentation: 3/5
Solid stuff all around. Nice map, good portraits. I think the highlight is the music, which comes in blazing with a triumphant opening orchestra, which sets the stage for this grand, holy massacre nicely. There are some clarity issues with the usage routines of the staves, where I’m not sure if they’re supposed to have durability or cooldowns tied to them.
Story: 3/5
An army of peasants rises up against the big bad church, except you’re playing for the church’s side! There’s not a lot of text, but it certainly knows how to set the stage and tone with the little bit included. I appreciate how grim the bishops are near the end, which characterizes the church as this sinister being, even if they were the ones defending themselves in this scenario.
Total Score: 12/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Frog | Struedel | Bandana | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 26 |
| Presentation | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 10 |
| Story | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 11 |
| Total | 11 | 11 | 13 | 12 | 47 |