I know I’ve already written multiple romhack unit effortposts here, but I’m going to continue because I enjoy discussing romhacks and there aren’t many places to do so.
The next unit I’d like to tackle is Gecko from Cerulean Crescent.
Now, Gecko is a vastly different unit from the ones I discussed here before. She is not a unit with excellent base stats, and she arguably has no base contributions, either. She’s the hack’s early-game trainee, and you have to feed her kills because she can’t really get them on her own.
I don’t tend to use units like this very often, but I made an exception for Gecko. First, she has Galeforce, and seeing that on her skill list naturally makes me think, “This’ll be so fun if I make her good.” Then there is the fact that she has unique quotes tied to personally defeating bosses, which makes me want to bosskill with her. And of course, there is her personal weapon, the Frying Pan, which refreshes its uses every chapter, gives her a statboost, and has some crit on it. The idea of bonking bosses with a pan-wielding trainee and getting unique dialogue for it was just awesome to me, and so I did it. A lot.
Of course, the road to greatness is paved with obstacles, and I had to invest a lot in Gecko to make her good. I gave her stat boosters, I gave her a lot of EXP, and on every map where I deployed her, I tried to make sure she would do stuff before I worried about most other units. Was this undue favoritism? Probably. She did not do anything spectacular. Even after the training arc was over, she still wasn’t some amazing contributor; she was definitely one of my best combat units, and she did make use of Galeforce to flexibly defeat enemies on player phase, but she wasn’t some god-mode unit. But honestly, I thought it was okay. The journey felt more important than the destination here.
In the end, Gecko and her dreaded frying pan turned into a Dread Fighter wielding dreaded… swords, but still pulling out the frying pan on occasion. I think it’s just fun to raise a unit who gives you multiple amusing reasons to invest in her, even if the payoff isn’t exceptional. The payoff for me, in this case, was enjoyment. Playing the hack felt less like I was clearing a campaign and more like I was Gecko Gaming.