I’ve been making an effort recently to play some more hacks and I also have been wanting to start reviewing hacks for a while now so I figured now would be a good time to start both!
For now, I’m going to try out the first 3-5 chapters (depending on the length) of romhacks and if I end up liking it I’ll plan on playing more down the line.
I’ll primarily choose which hacks I play through recommendations by others so if you want me to look at your own hack, please feel free to suggest it! I prefer playing hacks in progress or recently completed in order to give feedback where it can be put into place easier, but I’ll accept any recommendation by the creator. I also do not accept lone links, please give a brief description of the hack if you want me to look at it.
Only rules for submission are that it’s publicly available, does not break any of rules of FEU, and that it IS NOT A PME.
This will definitely not be a priority since I both have my own hack to work on and a busy personal life.
Also feel free to ask any follow up questions about any of the hacks that will be listed here and I will do my best to answer them, including requests to elaborate on any point.
Grug 2 by Team Sacred Stoners (Chapters 1-4)
Grug 2 is, from what I have played, a mechanically sound and incredibly creative romhack with some slightly messy balancing and is not afraid to throw the player a difficulty spike or two.
To begin with the aesthetics, I am happy to say that Grug 2 looks and sounds pretty good, although there are a few snags. The character palettes for one are incredibly rough and seriously need some touching up, along with that some portraits are a bit jarring with how close they look to a vanilla portrait, namely Tagerine. Overall, though Grug 2 is not going to be turning heads with how flashy and beautiful it is, it certainly will not turn people away from it.
Story wise Grug 2 makes it clear out of the box that it looks to be more than a ‘meme hack’ that just has things happen for the sake of comedy, being a sequel to the first Grug game there is obvious continuity and a clear storyline to follow. Overall, I’d say that the story so far has been creative and fun, albeit just a tad meandering. One unavoidable snag of writing a romhack sequel is that you inevitably have to at least recap what had happened in the previous game, and thankfully Grug 2 makes that optional and even turns what would be a slow crawl of a timeline and information like Genealogy’s opening into an enjoyable cutscene full of personality and character. The story won’t blow you away from what I have seen, but it is fun and enjoyable.
Gameplay is where I feel that Grug 2 has been very strange on. To begin, the gameplay of the early two chapters is fine enough, pretty nice difficulty then chapter 3 suddenly spikes in difficulty to where units that were previously surviving just fine and growing at a steady rate are suddenly much less powerful and useful than before.
The map design overall though is what I feel largely saves the somewhat poor early game balance of difficulty, the maps reach this midpoint between complex and simple to make the chapters not too daunting to jump into unlike Thracia 776, but not a mindless slog like Echoes or some Archanean maps are. The reinforcements in chapter 3 are very bad though, just having huge stat blocks approach the player is no better than a real, conceivable, and hard-time limit, other than the fact that it is less transparent.
The units also feel pretty unbalanced and unfit for an ironman (Which in of itself is fine, not every Fire Emblem needs to be ironman friendly to be a good game). Examples like Kaito and the Demon come to mind where they tear enemies to shreds and feel like a second and third Jagen in some ways, while units like Torrent struggle to contribute due to their really poor stat spread. Overall, while definitely not a deal breaker, the somewhat poor unit balance makes Grug 2 poor for ironmans early on and places too much emphasis on the use of certain characters.
To conclude, I’d say from what I have played of Grug 2 it is a very solid romhack with pretty good gameplay, story and presentation. The gameplay, while having somewhat poor unit balance is fast and has pretty good map design, the story is fun and enjoyable, and the presentation is incredibly solid with only a few snags.
I would recommend Grug 2 to those looking for a fairly challenging game with an enjoyable story and who are alright with the occasional difficulty spike and having a somewhat big difference in unit viability and utility.
[COMPLETED][FE8][29 Chapters] Grug 2: Grug's Prehistoric Truancy
