Pre-release [complete] copy was provided free by Parr and Lumi
I played Dream of Five.
I was initially skeptical of playing the FE8 version of Dream of Five. When I heard that Parr and Lumi wanted to revive the hack, I was pretty skeptical – in general, I am anti-reboots and anti-sequels, finding that it’s generally best to let old things lie and make new stuff instead. I avoided playing this until now in part because of that skepticism, and in part because I was afraid I’d no longer like what I previously called my favorite hack of all time.
Thankfully, I was wrong!
I played Dream of Five for the Fire Emblem Sacred Stones ROM and wow it’s really good, chief. No exaggeration when I say it’s in the conversation for the best hack of all time. It’s really hard to find fault with it – Parr and Lumi did a fantastic job smoothing over the rough edges of the original, upgrading and polishing everything, and delivering a really solid experience end-to-end. Praise that, I think, undersells its quality. This is a rare hack with so much impressive stuff in it, it’s hard to compare to most of the field.
Usually when I review hacks or evaluate their quality, there’s usually some really basic stuff that gets botched or a clear low point that is easy to direct criticism at. Do5 has no such low points. Every map, every scene, every visual, every musical choice, is generally solid and not an obvious misstep that these types of longposts point out, trying to get through to the devs to PLEASE just listen to me and my epic opinions. Alas, Do5 evades this type of critique. While the FE7 version I recommend for people interested in learning how to make a hack, the FE8 version is the best experience to play and enjoy.
So if you’ve read enough, I encourage you to play this version of Do5. I think only the most unhinged hackrom obsessionists would find fault with it, and those faults tend to boil down to a matter of preference vs. a grade of quality. Disliking this version of Do5 is like wishing that the curry had a little more spice or that the mackerel was seasoned with just a touch more salt. You’re not telling them to start over from scratch.
Any critique, any change, any recommendation is like a finishing touch, and largely to the preference of the person making the recommendation, versus calling out some fundamental flaw that the majority of players would benefit from. In that sense, it’s pretty close to perfect. It’s a rare hack with strong qualities across the board, in a different tier than most. This is a Michelin Star hackrom – it may not be your favorite place to get dinner, but it’s definitely worth visiting once in your life.
I’ll break down my review into a few categories (you may be familiar w/ my breakdown here)
For context, I went to Musain (A Route) and beat the game in about a week or so over a few sessions.
Writing
The writing is strong across the board. Parr did a good job of clarifying parts of the original script that were harder to parse, scrubbing out the more coarse language, and generally delivering a cohesive narrative with good moments. In general, the moment-to-moment writing in each scene was where the hack was the best, in part due to the strength of the characters. All of the characters had a pretty distinct voice. There’s a subtlety to their arcs – the hack doesn’t go out of its way to tell you Rena’s grown into a stronger leader, but it lets the writing show you instead.
The plot, similarly, doesn’t bend over backwards to explain every detail to you. It instead forces you to pay attention, dropping you into the world and learning as the main characters do. There is little in the way of exposition, with one optional house giving you the continental explainer, otherwise you learn as you go and learn what you need to as it becomes important. One note I like is how often Vishara is mentioned early on, only to come into focus for the game’s final act. It never felt like it came out of nowhere because of these breadcrumbs in the narrative, and although we never went there until the end, I had enough sense about it to know what I was getting myself into and why it was suddenly being thrust center stage.
Hard to come up with any serious critiques here. I think the writing got strongest post route split, once Parr was no longer shackled to the completed work from the 2012 version. Depsite the latter part of the game feeling a touch drawn out in terms of gameplay, writing wise it did manage to feel slightly rushed. There were arguably more things that could’ve been wrapped up, but I don’t think the writing is weaker for this choice. There was enough there at the end to make the conclusion satisfying, but the journey was definitely the better part.
Garath was easily the best character – every scene Garath is in was made stronger by his presence. Rena is a strong protagonist, and the balance of her anger, impatience, insecurity, and care for her troops was threading the needle in terms of handling her complexities well without feeling overwhelming or inconsistent. Varkade makes for a good villain, and while the mask comes off a bit too abruptly at the end for my liking, it’s clear to see the fraying between him and Rena throughout the narrative as things progress. It’s a dynamic that could be explored more in-depth, and one that I’ll pay more attention to on a 2nd playthrough.
No characters were grating or annoying. I never groaned when I saw a specific character on screen. Fleurre at the end felt a little off – like she doesn’t come across as being remotely as unhinged in the route split chapters as she does at the end, and I struggle to buy how Varkade manages to get so much influence seemingly so quickly, but these are pretty minor and not something that detracts from the core plot or story.
Se’Mori felt pretty unimportant, but I’m guessing that there are some things that change if I go to Onduris instead. Arcus gets stuff w/ his dad in the late game, which felt appropriate given his focus in the Musain route. Se’Mori basically has no substantial lines post split and felt a little tacked on at the end. Again, minor stuff.
Overall the writing is really strong and the only complaint I could see people having is the vocabulary and diction being beyond comprehension for some players. It’s quality.
Aesthetics
Lumi’s art is excellent. The character designs, color choices, and overall quality of every UI element is an improvement of what we saw in 2012. Aesthetic quality has always been Do5’s “carrying tool”, and its no surprise that AstraLunaSol famously declared “I don’t need to address visuals” – it’s true, they’re really good.
The CGs add a nice touch, I liked the sketches shown in the credits too. All of the artwork is top notch and the map and menu palettes help give the hack its own distinct flair.
Music wise the hack plays it safe – greatest hits mostly from across the series. The FF music for cutscenes fits in smoothly. There was not much, if any, music that felt out of place. The soundtrack does its job of not being vanilla FE8. It takes few risks here, but the music is definitely a background element here – not something for the player to actively notice and comment on. Maybe if this was my first hack I’d be stoked to hear so many of these tracks, but I’ve heard all of these in hacks before, so there was little new on offer. Thankfully, nothing was out of place or a distraction, which is more than sufficient for a hackrom soundtrack. But it will certainly be among the more forgettable elements of the hack (even if my name being immortalized in the soundroom is very cool)
Mechanics
Dream of Five is mechanically straightforward. There are a few movement skills sprinkled in, but nothing substantial or game altering. This is a pretty vanilla experience mechanically, with the focus clearly being on how you interact with the maps. The sandbox is simple, and given the size of most maps, I think it was the right choice to keep things straightforward here.
Shove, swap, pivot were all nice adds that I seldom used. I could see refuge being a good addition to this mix too. The hack respects its roots here, and I see little reason to change it.
Probably the most notable change is the movement stat itself – each class has a set movement that doesn’t grow w/ promo. This means that you start with 6 mov infantry and stay 6 mov promoted. While this takes some getting used to, it is a pretty small change overall and makes the larger maps feel a little less large.
No major notes here. The game keeps it simple and is generally better for it.
Difficulty
The hack is not too difficult, but it definitely forces you to pay attention. I could basically get away with doing whatever I wanted (within reason). The game is generous with gold and items, so I never felt poor. The game starts out pretty easy and ramps up in difficulty. I think the hack’s peak difficulty-wise is the early part of the route split – I was struggling to double and felt the most pressure with each interaction. This pressure faded away with time, but overall the experience was smooth throughout. No difficulty spikes, the game never gets numbingly easy, either.
Arguably the game could probably stand to be a little harder earlier, but I think this choice makes the hack more accessible and gets people into a groove before the challenge ramps up a bit. It’s all pretty subtle, but the difficulty flies at a comfortable cruising altitude.
Long gone are the sucker punches of the past, too – the game is incredibly transparent, telling you when it’s okay to sell leftover torches and door keys, with no BS ambush spawns. Probably the sneakiest thing the game does is put enemies in positions where it looks like they won’t move, but then their AI is set to move anyway – not that I couldn’t counter this “trick” by checking, but the game flip flops a lot between stationary armors on chokepoints and ones that move, or bosses situated on thrones or gates who uncharacteristically charge, that it caught me by surprise a few times. Again, I could check, but some things we accept as standard convention more readily without critically evaluating the context of the game.
Overall the hack is fair. Easy or Hard feels wrong. It’s more “medium” difficulty, overall. And that dififculty is mostly from keeping up the pace and optimizing interactions on maps and doing some math – this is a no BS hackrom. While I do wish the game was a bit more oppressive at times, I can also appreciate the more streamlined difficulty that makes playing through the chapters a breeze. This isn’t quite as simple as ripping through something like Blessed Heart or Vanilla FE8, but it’s only a few notches more difficult than that. And I think that’s okay.
Besides the gameplay itself, the overall difficulty is easily the most notable departure from the original, and the overall experience is better for this change. The difficulty of the game makes ironmanning it a really attractive proposition, and I think that will be the best way to approach this hack next time.
Gameplay
The gameplay is the part of the hack that I think will be most controversial, in part because it is so different from its predecessor, but also because it’s the part that is easiest to find fault with.
I played Dream of Five, and the gameplay was generally good. There are no bad maps. Everything plays pretty smoothly. How you feel about it will mostly come down to preference.
I found that the hack becomes about one-rounding pretty quickly, and the general placement of enemies and mapflow made me feel like I could bumrush the map only to hit a wall and try to position myself so I don’t “suffer from success” and kill 3 dudes on EP only to die myself trying to ORKO the 4th guy. This was the cause of basically all of my resets.
It felt a bit like driving on the highway and getting up to 60mph, only to quickly have to slow down onto a side street. There was a lot of this “stop and start” on the maps, largely due to enemy placement and how fast enemies die and how easily the player can die if you try to do too much on EP. It was pretty easy to overextend and suffer, but the PP interactions made it feel like this was more doable than actuality. I know I’m not describing this well, but it was something I struggled with throughout – feeling impervious and then suddenly dying because my guys were too strong and killed too many things at once.
This also led to many situations where the maps would empty out. The pressure was uneven on a lot of maps. I’d find myself stationary for a few turns dealing with a bunch of enemies in the same spot, only to clear them out and then have a march to the boss with nothing to do inbetween. The turn by turn action is uneven, and I think the mapflow suffers as a result.
Similarly, there is a lack of diversity in maps and objectives. Almost every map is a kill boss. Towards the late game, there were many multi-boss maps. It led to many maps feeling sort of samey, and I generally struggle to pick out unique setpieces or scenarios because every map was nearly identical. The bosses died so quickly or died before they could do much narratively either, making it feel a little unnecessary to have so many – this is especially true in the lategame, where all of these epic mugs basically die the moment you engage with them. It felt like a flex to show off so many custom portraits in such minor roles, but the main issue I had here was how there was basically no objective diversity. While few people ding FE6 for being all seize, this isn’t something that draws much praise, either.
I think the best way to frame my critique of the gameplay is that in general, Do5 played it safe with objective and map design, taking few risks and doing few things that felt non-standard. The most non-standard thing about the hack was the numbers and interactions (you get close to caps pretty quickly IMO), but the maps themselves did little of anything I hadn’t seen before.
Overall gameplay notes felt like FE11 in terms of difficulty and mapflow. Pretty high hit, high damage encounters, with maps that featured consistent A to B type flow. The items are also pretty vanilla, but the additions of the “vorpal” weapons, high-rank killers, were nice. I was surprised by how bad brave weapons felt here, and maybe they were nerfed? I mostly ran killers and vorpals by the end because crit was really nice for avoiding counters.
The game also deploys a lot of back reinforcements, which worked really well on some maps. In particular, I liked the gargoyles in the Musain map where you rescue Jolyon and co. – basically any map that encourages you to use the chokepoints from two angles gets a thumbs up from me, and the reinforcements were generally well placed and timed, in particular the ones from the back.
I do wish the hack had more objective and map diversity and was more willing to put the player in less advantageous situations. Many of the battles felt like neutral at worst, and rarely did I feel pressure or like I was on the backfoot. I have a hard time picking out the maps because the plot moves pretty briskly and there is generally little time for anything to marinade, both on map and in story, which while it creates a good overall experience, it’s hard to pick out particular moments that really stand out, especially true of the gameplay. It’s a bit paradoxical in a way – the gameplay quality is so consistently solid that it almost becomes boring and hard to parse, while a game with more mixed quality will have more defined, memorable moments, in part due to its low points and flaws, making its relative high points feel higher. The delta between the best and worst map in Do5 is miniscule, and all are generally strong to begin with.
So overall I would say the gameplay itself is good, but 27 chapters and it felt like little changed in each scenario. Musain probably was the highlight for me, in part because the more experimental elements from the original were largely kept in tact. Other callouts are the final fog map (I like the setup), the Hereward rescue map, the chapter with the tower you can break, and the fog map where you recruit Gabriel.
In short, the hack didn’t take enough gameplay risks or experiment enough with different kinds of scenarios and setups, and I think it would be stronger if it did. That said, it executes the fundamentals well enough that this is more of a preference issue than a quality one. The gameplay is still good. I anticipate fans of Drums of War will enjoy this one a lot.
Closing Thoughts
I played Dream of Five, and it was really solid. I don’t think it is hyperbole to call it the best hack of all time – it executes everything well and leaves little room for critique. My complaints above are incredibly granular in nature, and are not meant to be indictments of the experience. It’s really, really good and does nothing poorly. Even if it isn’t to your tastes, you can’t deny this is quality. It’s probably the best you can do while keeping things so mechanically simple. The aesthetics and writing alone are worth playing for, and the maps make doing so a treat.
I said in my video on the original that if Do5 finished back in 2012, we’d be talking about it as a classic. This version I think will deliver on that, a modern classic that excels in every dimension. I foresee this being immensely popular, and for good reason.
Kudos to Parr and Lumi for the great work. It’s top shelf, chief.
Too lazy to edit because it’s been close to an hour and I really should get back to work.
