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| Creator | RKG |
| Engine | FE8 |
| Download | Here |
| Score | 29/80 |
| Rank | 22nd |
Reviews
Judge 1: Darrman
Gameplay: 3/10
The main factor in the score being so low is the decision to stop blue units from passing through other blue units. This was to facilitate the three-way battle, but this is still an unnecessary irritant when moving units, resulting in units being boxed in by their allies. Outside of that, the map was large, yet sparse. The objective is to escape, with one unit at the bottom of the map, with the rest of the army starting near the escape point. Two armies stand in the way: one hostile green army, and another red army. All armies are hostile to each other. However, the enemy density was so low it was simple to travel down the green army’s side of the map. Its boss did not move, so he was ignored. The entire red army half of the map was also completely ignored.
Presentation: 3/5
The character mugs are decent, and I very much appreciate the SNESFE music selection. However, the score is reduced by an unusual glitch when scrolling through units in the status screen: they linger longer than they should.
Story: 2/5
I feel that I’m missing context for things. The hack is a sequel to the author’s previous hack, Latro the Grim, which I have not played. The story starts off with an attempt to kill an evil king, but the party was foiled with an illusion and the leader captured. Then a week passes and the leader is freed by a friend. The king is then killed in an off-screen battle. The lord still needs to get back home. At the same time, her party launch a rescue mission, unaware of the king’s death. His army and the neighbouring country fight at the same time. The party eventually escape, and the friend stops his army pursuing. The lord gets to see her family again. She then reports to her king, who ominously threatens things. With the king dying off-screen and his unexplained illusions, combined with a cryptic riddle ending things, I should have played Latro the Grim first – its very title tells me the evil king is fought there.
Total Score: 8/20
Judge 2: MCProductions
Gameplay: 1/10
Conceptually this map is really cool. A three way battle is really cool for scale and storytelling, however after this and the fourth Fell Xenologue Map in Engage, I will never complain about Gronder Field again. In order to get 3 opposing factions working in GBA, this mod makes it so ALL units cannot pass through other units, even if they share factions. This single decision kills any fun the map could’ve been, and I found myself using emulator fast forward by the end of it.
Presentation: 1/5
Bad midis of SNES FE tracks, obvious splices, and mapping errors are all over.
Story: 2/5
I genuinely do not understand what happened in this plot, but I’m giving extra points for acknowledging character deaths. More hacks and mainline FE need to do that.
Total Score: 4/20
Judge 3: 2WB
Gameplay: 3/10
Gigantic field with next to no terrain and a huge coalition of both red and green units that will brawl with no input from me.
I. REALLY. hope I don’t have to explain much of why I find this a particularly disappointing thing, especially when the hit rates of each side are shaky (70-80 even with WTA).
wow
i’m watching units fight with no input
It’s intrinsically boring because I Am Not Doing A Thing. I’m not PLAYING THE GAME. I’m just WATCHING, and it’s not even interesting to watch because it affects nothing and I have no investment.
I spent 45 minutes to get to turn 15, in total. About ten minutes at most was time I spent looking at enemy unit stats, enemy formations, finding where to position units, deciding order of operations. Everything else was reading or watching red-vs-green happen in front of me.
Which, I’m going to be very, very blunt: is bad. I didn’t do any gameplay until pretty much the entire red team was dead. I killed two red units – a Soldier with Kaiya and an armor knight reinforcement with Akira; and four green units – two Brigands and two Fighters, one each went top and middle.
It only even took me that long due to the Myrmidons not being allowed to walk on Rivers anymore. I just booked it to the eastern edge.
The fact that the enemies that stick around are green units, and thus don’t populate the danger zone map with their area, feels really bad.
The fact that blue units can’t walk through one another, though, is totally irrelevant and I actually felt it was nice with how few units I was handling – that is, half my army at a time. It only caused minor inconveniences with checking damage output, but it also let me feel kinda tactical and smart.
Presentation: 2/5
The soundtrack is good though the third cutscene’s song kind of just hurt my ears in its before-kickoff section.
Having like fifteen combats in the opening cutscene is NOT a refined look, especially with the damage numbers not lining up in all cases.
The mugs are quite decent and fairly varied in their unique traits. It’s not displeasing at all to look at.
The map is… a very open and bland plain. It’s humongous. And doesn’t have any features.
The unit palettes are okay – I don’t like the suuuper bright colors chosen for the archer in contrast to the ones on the fighter, for example; but both work really well individually.
The Novans being green caused me confusion at first, because they had been red – why are they now green instead of the new faction being the green one?
Story: 3/5
>there’s no time
>healing takes exactly the same amount of game time as any other action and that’s a cleric
eternal screaming
The introduction and set up for the story are good. Maybe a bit slow, but a significant part of that is covering events that don’t matter – like, we have no need to introduce Anthony nor does Latro’s first dialogue add something – but these are nice pieces of text to explain the events and the characters we do see!
The story the hack’s gameplay is actually about is really… quite lacklustre. Go save the not captive who isn’t actually any more.
The story the hack *glosses over* is intriguing – politics and hidden deals, unseen hands. Why is this group behaving this way? A suspicious set of actions.
But that, in turn, feels a bit like a bait, because it’s so nonpresent. It’s a twist right at the last second except unlike when those happen in longer stories, it just kind of ends with no payoff.
Total Score: 8/20
Other Notes
> (You can use the A button to fast foward battles, and units cannot pass through since no patch exists that allows green units to not pass through blue units without blocking all units from doing so)
… what? this
there’s no way, right? can’t be that miserable.
like
surely
there’s an easy enough way to do that. the allegiance check function that says “blue can attack red”, “red can attack blue and green”; etc; is something that’s not undocumented by any capacity; and the game definitely uses this function to determine walkability.
and I know for certain that Teraspark also did work on something like this. I don’t remember how feature complete it got but I know this got studied more than once. aaaa.
Judge 4: theghostcreator
Gameplay: 2/10
This is not a great chapter. I was honestly so confused too because the backgrounds for the cutscene maps looked fine but this… this is just a gaiden map. An absolutely empty field save for a single river and patch of forest. There’s very little challenge here, you just walk forward with your two groups, initiate the talk, then walk up. The enemies weren’t challenging and honestly the whole thing was just boring. One annoying thing was that all enemy range didn’t show the green unit ranges and I wasn’t told that the green units were aggressive towards player units. Your units also can’t pass through each other which is genuinely infuriating. TLDR: It looks like a gaiden map and plays like a Genealogy map.
Presentation: 4/5
The portraits and music are mostly good but the awful looking map deducts a point.
Story: 3/5
Was pretty good but it didn’t explain much and some characters didn’t speak at all, feels like an abridged retelling of a preexisting story.
Total Score: 9/20
Results
| Category | Darr | MC | 2WB | Ghost | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 9 |
| Presentation | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 10 |
| Story | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 10 |
| Total | 8 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 29 |