holy shit. its over.
now I just need to beat the fuckass city chapter with three boses (how did I do it the last time?) to acess the rest of the game.
1 Like
so in the end it be worth playing both?
2 Likes
Hey I canât find the itch posting, can you share the link?
1 Like
Itâs on the main post
5 Likes
Yes. Isekai and Dies mode have unique dialogue
4 Likes
Iâm confused. Itâs called dies emblem, and yet youâre still alive? Why bugged release?
11 Likes
Doh! Ty!
2 Likes
Congrats for the release, Sigma !
Excited to play this hack too.
6 Likes
do u think if i asked geoff nicely heâll rerun the game awards but with dies in the running
14 Likes
There is no peak category
2 Likes
Olivia did you not pay attention to where we are
This is FEU, youâre in a place as close to biblical Hell as youâre going to get
3 Likes
dies isnât worth playing once, let alone twice big dog
pick the difficulty that will get ye through the gameâŚ
5 Likes
Ok, after GATHERING some sort of resemblence of thoughts and beating Dies Mode, I am READY to give a RUview on this game.
First and foremost, Dies is a satirical game made about the community (who submitted). Whether or not you have interacted with the community at large, the game will sometimes have jokes that flow in or out of your head depending on how engaged you are to it. Of course, some are more understandable than others, but sometimes some jokes did fly over me.
Dies Emblem at itâs core is hard. And it was made intentionally that way (given the name, Dies). As someone who loves an additional topping of BS to my games, this certainly was fun in a weird way. The game gives you a wide variety of units who excel in niches while also applying FE4-Core castle-like mechanics.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend those who havenât played this game to try it at least once. There is a lot of nuance and dimensions to the gameplay aspect that I feel has yet to be emulated by any other game.
Of course, spoilerâŚish.
The Passion of the Script
The story is made to be an isekai spinoff where users who submitted to the Dies Thread gets sent to hell (outside). There is generally coherence to the story, but a lot of the plot points circle around convenience and time itself. Of course, knowing some of the helltorture that was actual Dies Dev, you can see the gradual decline in writing; something that is even noted by some of the forum users later on.
I wonât get down to the lategame nitty gritty, as I highly recommend you play it on your own. I was genuinely astounded about the commentary about hacking as a whole. The writing in of itself is meant to be seen through the eyes of a romhacker; something that as I have previously said, is circled around. The story slowly shift from being a game about randos trying to get home to about individuals and their projects.
Everyone is flanderized. Of course, there will be obvious overexaggerations in a satirical game, but I feel the flanderization actually helped the obscenity of the premise as a whole. Characterization was wild, especially seeing fellow forum users and actually using them as units throughout the game. It certaintly was an experience trying to STOP Richard Nixon from enslaving furries, or even STEALING water from a local village in the desert. The NPCs were pretty funny overall.
Mechanics good
General Mechanics
As Sigma has mentioned in the mainpost, Dies utilizes the FE4 personal gold system, along with different units providing different preparation commands. You can deploy these units on maps. However, if they are defeated or traumatized, you cannot use their preparation commands on the next map until they are cured.
This also applies to the pawn shop and vending materials.
The pawn shop and vending are made for weapons or armor/healing or utility items respectively.
The game introduces mechanics based on romhackers who have applied certain mechanics in their own games. For example, Team Not Quite Rodents (Lumi and Parrhesia) have the unique ability called Ransom, to which if you have ever played Drums of War, allows you to capture enemy boss units and recruit them to your army. In this same branch, the pawn shop is tied to a unit, Ignis. Ignis himself is an alright unit, however, in order for you to utilize capture , you have to have him be deployed, and allow your units to access the pawnshop via Ignis in order to sell equipment. Any and all equipment that you canât fit in your inventory is immedietely discarded without Ignis.
These little interactions per unit is vital to how you want to play the game.
Take Alanzo, our vending machine (yes, a vending machine). Alanzo has the unique abiltiy, like Ignis, to sell items on the map. To add onto Alanzoâs vending, he has a Magic Barrier that protects all units from damage around him. However, he nor any units in the field cannot move unless you bring the barrier down.
Take another example besides capturing and ransoming: Bard Training
Inspired by SubwaybossEmmettâs game, Balled of the Bard, you have the ability to travel across the map or even refresh other units on command. You can have a fourway bard train across the map if you wanted to. Furthermore, his special ability is summoning a vehicle that allows up to 4 units inside.
What do you get if you combine 4 units bard training and an extra 4 units that you can call in reserve?
These are only two examples of team comps you can create in the game. There is so much depth and viability across the board. Your units can adapt to your playstyle very well. Youâre able to roll gacha for stat boosters, allowing anyone to get insanely good if given enough care and love.
Vehicles
Vehicles are extremely important to the game, however, they are all gameover conditions.
Each vehicle has its unique niche, on top of allowing a driver and 4+ units to occupy space. Each vehicle has their own weapon, so keeping someone as a passenger is neccessary for vehicles to deal damage.
Specific player units give certain buffs to the vehicle if they are chosen as the driver. Which means there is even more to consider when loading a vehicle for a map. There is even a bike, that allows a +1 to the map. And get this: those inside vehicles do not count for the deploy cap, meaning you can deploy a whole lot more people on maps when neccessary.
FUTHERMORE, there are skill scrolls that allow you to have people get in vehicles without taking up the max space needed. Meaning you can have free deploys every map. Vehicles also refill their full amount of ammo every map. Morever, you can manually reload vehicle ammo by bringing Alanzo and buying more ammo for them. All in all super important to consider.
Items
Lets discuss items. There are guns, there are lingerie, there are skill scrolls. There is monster energy drinks.
As I have mentioned above there are certain items that refill after every map. Those are Encounter weapons. There are regular, nonbreakable items and encounter. To refill encounter, you need a specific item from vending to refill uses for a map. This is vital for early game, as you can also get it from monsters.
There are some VERY insane items that you can capture and or obtain throughout the game. So getting them into the pawnshop is necessary.
Items also give a huge impact to speed and weight during fighting. Therefore if you have too many items that weigh you down, you may not be able to double, or even move your regular 5 spaces unless you discard said weapon.
This makes item weight a real thing you need to consider.
Injury System
No one ever really dies in Dies Emblem. They are either injured or traumatized; things that can be remiedied by vending. However, the game will punish you for injuring a unit, then forcing them to deploy again, which gives them a temporary, but massive debuff that reduces stats by 1 for most stats. That doesnât sound terrible, but in a low growth/stat game, losing that 1 can be a huge amount depending on the situation. Therefore, cycling through your large cast of units is also extremely important. (On a personal level its something that I also tried to implement with my own game, which is why I appreciate the idea behind it so much, but I digress). Of course, mandate of heaven stacks are ways for you to negate getting trauma, but just like other mechanics in game, you must cycle between your units and come up with ways to circumvent that specific instance.
Overall, having finished Dies (like 30 minutes after writing this), this was a fresh breath of air. All the satirical elements and gripping gameplay has definitely put this in Ruâs Top 5. We will be playing more in the future.
17 Likes
we should kill sigmaraven
14 Likes
Diesmaraven
1 Like
confidently incorrect buzzer
2 Likes
We need to dies this user
5 Likes
Is Roy in this ROM hack?
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Welp, time to lock myself in the basement for a month until I beat Dies.
It will happen!
âŚprobably
4 Likes
The best unit has arrived
6 Likes