I went Into this not having any particular expectations, the deflation looked cute and I figured why not? Well about 2 hours later I had finished the hack and now I’m here to praise it. Absolutely a paragon of the mini hack tm, the dialogue is enjoyable and to the point. You’re dropped into the gameplay straight away and the tight numbers are tuned to perfection.
It’s small numbers but everything is pretty recognizable, you got your defensive wall armor who does her job well, your rapier lord using her lord quirks like water walking, your silver lance paladin, an archer and mage who are invaluable 2 range chip in a 2hko standard early game. You get where I’m going with this, units are in essence pretty classical FE archetypical units distilled into their smallest numerical forms. It really takes the edge off of getting used to such small calcs and further solidified the game in my eyes as an extremely smooth experience.
Goa justifies it’s extreme deflation and fixed growths as not just an aesthetic but as core to the gameplay with an experience that is fine tuned off of those features. Every combat is a quick mental calc to make and it really does wonders for gameplay speed. I legitimately took like a 5 minute break somewhere in there and the rest was pure gameplay flow till I hit the ending.
In particular I enjoyed the last two maps, which at a glance escalate map size a ton and I had some initial reservation on. But they play just as smooth as the earlier one screen maps which ease you into the world of 8 health, 0 hp mages. While a full deploy game and one where your units don’t particularly grow a ton I could definitely see myself playing this again sooner rather then later. The midgame ( ch2) shops that carry such a wide variety of weapons with only so much gold to spend serve as a great spice for a run. One you kit out your fighters, next your archer, maybe your jagen. Etc. The game is largely inventory based wrt to unit power, and while you have plenty of tools you don’t have a surplus of them. So you make interesting decisions, further enforced by a lack of on map convoy. Really can’t recommend it enough, had a blast and its a great hack if you need something short and sweet.
On a conceptual level I love the framing of the early game bandit arc as an entire hack. It sells the lower stats even more and it’s a fun low stakes romp. Shout-out to eloisa, absolutely goat jagen. Pretty much every unit has something to contribute but giving her boosters and watching her hit thresholds makes my brain go brr. Stylistically the fe7 color pallette is another charming detail to make note of.
Lastly, a little birdie told me kyrads pushed a silent hotfix fixing some small issues? Sounds like a perfect time to play to me!