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| Creator | Alanzo |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 53/80 |
| Rank | 12th |
| FEU Link | Here |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 7/10
Caged is not a submission that messes around. You have five units, each with Shove or Canto and a skill that is worth paying attention to. Your job is to contain a prison break, and the rebels have enemies scattered everywhere. There’s a large amount of bosses that must be handled too. The game appears to incentivise splitting up: there’s a dark mage to the left and a general to the right. The dark mage gives stat bonuses to a chosen unit, while the general is recruitable. After a rough first few turns, I found things eased up when sticking together: I took everyone to the right after finding the most optimal turn 1. The Rescue Staff is your friend, and Lunge proves to be useful against the boss.
Overall, fast play is required: if the thieves open every cell, you will get overwhelmed.
Presentation: 3/5
The character portraits are all fine. The cutscene music is good, but the use of only one theme across the map and combat did grow to be repetitive. The lord’s animation had oddly long hangs whenever he missed something before the enemy dodge animation played. The cutscenes are well-evented.
Story: 4/5
Pacifist noblewoman Maria steps forth into one of her prisons. The conditions are absolutely horrible, and the prisoners blame her pacifism for it. This is not at the expense of her anger, and she is not pleased at the job warden Rick is doing: despite her giving massive money to have good-condition prisons, the warden claims to have barely received anything. After being told to fix things, Rick and his subordinate have a conversation: perhaps he should stand up to Maria one of these days.
Meanwhile, the prison gets attacked by a rebel army, lead by characters akin to traditional Fire Emblem protagonists. Rick’s job is to defend the prison, and that’s what he has to do. The high score is for the ending: it takes some unexpected twists that were foreshadowed quite nicely in hindsight. The discrepancy in the missing money is also found and the thread tied up. The ending is quite open-ended, and I’d be interested in seeing the consequences of Rick’s actions.
Total Score: 14/20
Judge 2: Rivian
Gameplay: 6/10
We’ve seen countless jailbreaks in hacks, no doubt due to Thracia influences. A reverse jailbreak, however, I haven’t seen before. It’s an interesting gimmick as it effectively allows you to see what enemy reinforcements look like and weigh up if its worth the effort to stop them. There is also some neat side objectives such as the general, the boon granting shaman and droppables. feels like the chapter demands very optimal early turns for the situation to not snowball into a guaranteed loss as each cell opened can tip things over the edge. It took me a lot of resets to optimise every early turn to get into a position where I could safely kill the boss, who thankfully isn’t much of a threat. t I do wish the map was a little more flexible, perhaps an extra unit would be enough.
Presentation: 3/5
It is a solid looking prison map and the eventing is competent in the start and end events. It feels like there was some corners cut on player battle palettes using default player blue rather than the colour of their mug.
Story: 4/5
The dynamic between Rick and his above-it-all Commander was pretty interesting, especially as he gives in to his savage instincts and slays her. Rick really goes off the rails in the end event which was pretty enjoyable. The fact that he accuses the boss of cowardice due to sending his troops ahead of him while he stays still, a typical FE map convention, was neat integration. The rebels do get also get some sympathy for what screen time they had. All in all, I liked it.
Total Score: 13/20
Judge 3: Legend of Loog
Gameplay: 7/10
Caged tasks you with defeating the rebel leader who is trying to lead a prison break, with various thieves opening up prison cells with red units inside them. You, on the other hand, have a comparatively small force that is poorly equipped, but the units also have solid personal skills and can get better equipment off enemies on the way to the boss.
The map encourages splitting at the start, but this seemed like bait when I tried it on my first attempt. On the reset, I just sent everyone right to save the green General which was much smoother. It would’ve been nice to have splitting as a focus, but it’s not a big deal. The rest of the map is simple, as the boss is weak and charges, making the chapter easy to clear. Overall, the chapter was solid enough.
Presentation: 3/5
I don’t have too much to say about the map and portraits, as both are fine. There’s a decent amount of cutscene eventing which is cool, and the music was generally well-chosen and fit the vibes of the chapter.
Story: 3/5
Caged is fairly unique in its approach, as you take the role of the “baddies” who are trying to prevent a prison break by The Rebellion. The end event takes it in an interesting direction when the prison warden kills his boss and goes on the run, sparing the leader of the rebellion but killing the priestess that the leader is close to so he is “set free.” This naturally leads to questions about what happens next, but Caged leaves that open for the most part.
There are also a few unique scenes you can get if you do certain achievements, like sparing/killing certain bosses. However, I did kill one of them and still got the sparing scene anyway, which seems like a bug. And while the ending was interesting, it does not flow naturally at all from the ending of the map, which makes it feel rather disjointed along with the scenes not flowing well together either. There are also a decent number of noticeable typos. In general, the story was neat but lacked in execution.
Total Score: 13/20
Judge 4: Levin64
Gameplay: 6/10
Preventing a jailbreak is something most hacks haven’t done. We have five units with great strength, yet cannot double for the most part. They have enough bulk to survive 1-2 enemies, but the enemy density starts to become more egregious due to the player only having 5 units; even though it’s incentivized to split to prevent enemies releasing more prisoners. I ended up going to the right and trying to hold out as best as I could; I wish there were some other routes I can experiment with because as I try to go for another route it never went well. The gameplay itself is nice and tight, but more flexibility could be appreciated.
Presentation: 3/5
The character portraits are good; no vanilla assets, yet most units have default battle palette. The player map theme is a great pick since it matches with the situation, yet it starts to get repetitive because there’s no battle theme nor enemy map theme. The cutscenes are amazingly done.
Story: 4/5
The commander’s dislike of the “Dove of Galatia” is shown nicely here and tied to the end of the chapter, where he ended up killing his boss. Some of the wrap-ups in the ending are amazingly portrayed, especially if the achievements can be achieved. Some typos can be found, though not to an extreme degree. All in all, everyone has enough screen time to establish themselves into the whole premise, and I ended up wanting to know what happens after all that has been transpired in the hack.
Total Score: 13/20
Results
| Category | Darr | Rivian | Loog | Levin | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 26 |
| Presentation | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Story | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 15 |
| Total | 14 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 53 |