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| Creator | Fazelle |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 32/80 |
| Rank | 10th |
| FEU Link | N/A |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 2/10
Endgame is aptly named: it gives a strong sense of finality to its hypothetical campaign. The party is split into half, with the objective being to defeat the many bosses scattered across the map. To at least start with something positive, there are a lot of interesting technical features dotted throughout the chapter. Each unit has a unique command, detailed in the guide. These commands do things such as switch what skills a unit knows, or inflict a status on themselves or others. A few skills only affect the current room in the map. The shop is in of itself a menu command, too.
Alas, I must now cover the negative. One of the major issues with this entry is the sheer information overload. Every player unit has two skills plus their special command. Every enemy has a skill, too. Almost all weapons have been changed in some way, and attention has to be paid to the various new weapons. This frequently resulted in me overlooking something and losing units. I had to spend so long reading the guide to understand the changed mechanics I ended up putting this entry down for about two weeks before I attempted it in earnest.
This brings me to Endgame’s second major issue: its sheer length. The player is given fifteen turns to kill the boss in the centre chamber. To do this, the bosses in the top-left and bottom-right chambers must be killed, and to fight them, two more bosses must be killed each. With nine chambers to keep track of, turns soon grew exceptionally long as several different strategies had to be implemented. Units were lost to many different sources – the Double Lion summoners were particularly obnoxious – and I had to resort to using a save state at the start of every turn. When I thought I was finally finished, yet another boss emerged when the “final” boss died. Three more bosses needed to die in order to clear the final boss’s stat buffs, bringing the grand total of boss kills to eleven.
Overall, this entry took me seven hours to finish. I do not believe it is reasonably possible to finish this on a Game Boy Advance in one sitting. While I must commend the technical effort that went into this chapter, I did not enjoy myself at all.
Presentation: 2/5
The presentation was broadly functional throughout the chapter. The music mostly consisted of Fire Emblem tracks adapted to FE8, though sacrifices to get them onto the GBA were necessary. The character portraits were all fine, and the map layout was also acceptable. Every character had a battle palette, though some of the custom animations (generals and brawlers come to mind) had
some palette issues.
Story: 3/5
Endgame, being styled in the vein of a Fire Emblem final chapter, does a good job at conveying the finality of the situation. The enemy’s castle is under siege, and the princess is about to finish the war once and for all. Everyone has a word to say about the current situation, too. One of the most impressive parts of this submission is the fact that full support chains were written for many pairs of characters, as detailed in the guide. The guide itself also has entries covering various backstory details of the world.
While the sheer amount of text when starting a run bogged me down (I had to read a dozen C supports before the chapter began in earnest) I do appreciate their presence. There was a cutscene where a green unit was killed without any particular impact on the rest of the plot, but I think I might have missed a secret somewhere.
After killing the queen and then the goddess who appeared afterwards, reality began to fall apart. The two lords then managed to break through the void, and the chapter comes to an end there. I will admit that fatigue was affecting my enjoyment of the story at this point, but I do respect the effort put into it.
Total Score: 7/20
Judge 2: Frog
Gameplay: 6/10
I had fun with Endgame. It is designed to be the epic confrontation with the final boss, and certainly lives up to its name in this regard. There are over a dozen bosses, a frankly unreasonable amount of mechanics and skills, and three phases for the map. Despite it all, I managed to beat it on my first try (on Normal) with only a single casualty on the very last turn. I assume that’s the main reason I managed to enjoy it, to be honest – replaying even one part of this chapter seems like hell.
The highlight of this hack is every player unit having their own custom activated ability. Some were really fun – my favourites were Petrina’s Capriole and Rosa’s Summoning. The latter was especially fun – the Greater Summons were incredibly powerful, and being able to move them twice a turn by resummoning was pretty cool. There were other abilities which helped once or twice in certain situations – such as Henry’s Invert or Nenjo’s Cleanse – but many felt either useless, one-time (I kept Irimias as a Dark Master throughout the entire chapter, for example), or superficial.
Which brings me to the biggest problem with Endgame: there is so much going on here, yet most of it feels completely unnecessary, serving only to add complexity with minimal gain. As mentioned before, giving every single unit their own unique ability felt like a tacky gimmick instead of a cool feature, due to most of them being uninteresting. I really wish it kept only the most unique/fun ones. Every generic enemy having a skill added nothing except mental overload and some very unfun gotcha moments. The chamber system – and its overly complex explanation – made the map incredibly boring for minimal gain. And so on.
At the end of the day, Endgame plays like a pretty vanilla FE chapter most of the time, with some rare exceptions. Yet despite this, it has an incredibly lengthy and complex guide, with way too many mechanics – and especially names! I can’t believe the only way to see what each ability does is cross-referencing the unit’s name in the guide every single time! – to keep track of (which, again, are mostly irrelevant). It took me several weeks to beat it – not of active playtime of course, but rather the first few turns intimidated me so much with their mental overload, that I just couldn’t bring myself to resume playing for so long. Complexity for the sake of complexity isn’t fun or interesting, it’s just exhausting. And please: don’t explain every single mechanic in a lengthy guide entry. R-text is right there.
Despite it all, I’ll reiterate: I had fun with Endgame. With unnecessary mechanics trimmed down and the horrific Guide burned with fire, it does have the making of a good chapter.
Presentation: 1/5
Some of Endgame’s presentation is fine enough, and there are a few neat touches – the eventing was pretty cool, especially the end event. Unfortunately, most of it looked pretty bad or low effort: the stat screen is completely unedited, the portraits are a mish-mash of F2U splices with some FE7 colouring, the combat palettes are frankly horrific, and so on.
Story: 3/5
Similar to Endgame’s gameplay, the story is incredibly over-the-top and complex. There are so many characters, a lot of backstory (even having its own Guide entries – can I never escape?), and even support conversations – every single characters has at least four complete support chains, which is frankly an insane feat. I definitely applaud you for pulling this off in a one-month contest! I did enjoy some of these, such as Godha X Jessica and Utena X Shango.
Unfortunately, just like the detestable Guide, the writing is way too lengthy and wordy. I’ll admit that by the time I beat the chapter, I was so tired that I just skimmed through the ending. This probably would’ve worked better in a full-length campaign, with the time needed to get invested in the characters and story here.
Maybe Endgame is actually a horror story, with the Guide as the monster. I was certainly terrified by the end.
Total Score: 10/20
Judge 3: Struedelmuffin
Gameplay: 3/10
Endgame tackles the interesting premise of throwing the player into a grand finale chapter without really giving them much context or time to adapt. And, to its credit, it does genuinely feel like you loaded into the final chapter of a game that could have easily had 20+ chapters before it. The map is absolutely massive and crammed full of bosses, split objectives, unique mechanics in different rooms, etc. Pretty much every character has a custom skill in the form of a menu command (some of which are much more complex than others) that you must read about in the guide to properly understand. There are even 25+ support chains written that you are encouraged/expected to do for the bonuses they grant. It’s clear that an immense amount of work went into creating this chapter, and so I have to commend the creator for their efforts here. That being said, the sheer amount of information being presented alongside the complexity of the victory condition is, for a single chapter, unreasonable. I am the last judge to complete my LEAF entries, and I would be lying if I said it were not single-handedly because of this project. Having seen that my fellow judges have spent upwards of 8+ hours clearing this, I can say with confidence that this hack is ambitious to a detrimental degree. I really like the idea of what was done here, but a LOT of things needed to be cut for it to amount to an enjoyable experience.
Presentation: 3/5
The presentation of Endgame is solid, with some pretty strong eventing in particular. The menu command skills each unit possesses are documented well in the guide, though I must mark some points off here because of how inconvenient it is to go back and forth between the guide and the skill screen just to read about the many things each of my units can do. The portraits and map design are of solid quality but not exceptional. The soundtrack is probably the weakest point, getting very repetitive over the exceptional length of this chapter.
Story: 3/5
Endgame’s story was my favorite aspect of the project, but it is admittedly also suffering a bit from the “finale” premise. You are expected to care about the characters and their relationships, and to read their many supports, but you are being introduced to so many units at once that it becomes hard to get invested. It really feels like these were characters you could have grown to love over the course of a campaign, but instead you are given their entire lore dump all at once and it becomes overwhelming. That being said, the dialogue between the characters is still pretty fun to read and I did like quite a few of the support chains. Though I was pretty exhausted with this chapter by the time I reached the finale, I did think it was pretty interesting and unexpected.
Total Score: 9/20
Judge 4: BandanaSplitzzz
Gameplay: 2/10
Endgame is a map that models itself after the bombastic, enormous late game maps of traditional Fire Emblem. There is a ludicrous amount of terrain to cover, and it’s broken up into distinct “chambers”, usually containing a mandatory miniboss in each. There are frequent enemy spawns from all directions, and there’s a fairly strict 15 turn timer hanging over your head all the while. You must know who to send on every path down the map to have a chance, something that can only be done in repeated attempts (but not really in a fun way). Beyond that, you have to spread your army incredibly thin across so much turf that they turn weak in comparison. Not a very satisfying feeling when you’re 8 turns in and have to reorganize your entire army.
One thing that really held this entry back is the ludicrous amount of reading expected to be done by the player. In this hack, there are guide entries, supports, weapon text, skill text, and the shockingly frequent mid-map gameplay-important cutscenes. I would be fine with reading these tutorials for gameplay comprehension, but there being so much bloat to read makes it all the more apparent just how much actual gameplay bloat there is. Every unit has a unique character-based toggle that usually applies one or more skills to the unit. It feels like a staggering amount of code, gameplay-wise, for such a non-interesting effect in gameplay. This chapter feels like a totally ordinary final chapter with absolutely no understanding of how your units work, a “worst of both worlds” execution of the execution of the idea of a final chapter.
While I was playing this chapter, I took a break to have an ice cream cone. It wasn’t just a chocolate ice cream, though. It had this sort of chocolate shell and channel of fudge inside it that made eating it strangely dynamic for an ice cream cone. As I worked through it, it sort of unraveled for me to eat these different flavors. It helps that during any given stage, no matter what, I actually enjoyed eating the ice cream. When it was done, however much time I took to eat it, I was completely satisfied. I did not want more. As I returned to complete the second phase of the map’s boss, just below 2 hours of game-time in, I realized that these ice cream manufacturers understood boss design more than Endgame. The map spawns multiple other intended to be mandatory bosses in the corner of the map, and I’m given a massive statcheck if I disagree. I bait out the boss with my summoner, standing still for a few turns, and I seize and win.
Presentation: 2/5
The biggest thing I have to compliment on is the detailed and thorough guide entries on pretty much every single mechanic added, for better or for worse. Solid portraits, an inoffensive map, and simple cutscenes. What really gets grating is the map theme staying constant throughout the entire duration, and the boss-phase shakeup just means it gets grating a second time. You would think with all this thoroughness, you would add a title screen too.
Story: 2/5
I usually struggle picking up on names and settings in these short stories, but even then, the writing here felt extremely difficult to follow, with all of the names and history expected to be known just to get the point across. It doesn’t help that this is distinctly supposed to be the last chapter in a theoretical full game already, so these character relations are all lost on me. I do, however, appreciate the moment-to-moment writing. It’s fun and energetic in a way that shows off the individual’s personality in small bursts.
Total Score: 6/20
Results
| Category | Darrman | Frog | Struedel | Bandana | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 2 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 13 |
| Presentation | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 8 |
| Story | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 11 |
| Total | 7 | 10 | 9 | 6 | 32 |