Okay, so I attempted to play this, and I got roughly halfway through. I played the standard version (meaning, not T2S).
I have a major issue with one of the main aspects of this hack – that being the fact almost everyone has a crit chance at all times, including the enemies. Light magic has innate crit, thunder magic has innate crit, axes were given innate crit, and there’s a new weapon family that also has innate crit. With that in mind, it’s borderline impossible to have reliable combat on enemy phase. Even the biggest tank you have can just get crit and die, and there is nothing you can do about it, because you don’t get a Hoplon Guard until roughly halfway through the game. Until that point, you just have to hope you don’t get crit, which I consider a severe design flaw. And even once you do have the Hoplon Guard – it’s only one item, and you obviously have more units that need protecting.
I find it very difficult to continue playing the hack knowing that at any point, a reset could be enforced solely because a low% crit occurred. And considering how many enemies have crit, those low% crits are quite likely to happen. I think that if you’re going to make critical strikes more frequent, you should also add ways to protect the player’s units from crits. One Hoplon Guard is certainly not enough.
The crit issue is exacerbated by the fact there is a TON of enemies in this hack. Most maps have a high enemy density, and more enemies means more instances of facing crit, and more instances of facing crit means it is more likely to happen, and when it happens, your unit probably dies. You get the picture. Some maps feel oppressive for that reason (Chapter 3 and the survive map in particular), because not only are you facing many enemies to begin with – you also know you might get crit and die at any moment.
Also, in regard to the story… well, the script is filled to the brim with typos. They are everywhere, from unit descriptions to dialogue, and they take me out of it just because of their number. Punctuation is also an issue. I think that, while it’s likely a major task, you should proofread the entire hack. There were errors like this in every single chapter.
I do think the hack is actually quite polished in regard to what the maps look like, how many weapon options you possess, etc. However, the above issues are a significant detriment in my opinion.
A few more miscellaneous comments on specific maps:
The fog of war map was kinda BS. The special event on that map aside, the fact you have to play a fog of war map with several surprises while having no access to Torches (either the staff or the item) is just mean to the player, I believe. If there was a Torch available before that map, I didn’t find it.
Chapter 6 lies to you about its objective. It SAYS it’s a rout map, but once the turn 6 event occurs and the boss dies, the map just ends. This prevented me from visiting the village and the armory in time. I had deliberately left one enemy alive in order to visit the village and armory in peace, but the sudden event (which isn’t telegraphed at all) ruined that plan. I consider this an instance of player-hostile design; if you’re going to put a timer on that map, announce it ahead of time, and change the objective so that it doesn’t lie to you. If you want to keep it a rout map, remove the turn 6 event, or make it so that the boss’s death doesn’t end the map, because it makes no sense.
Chapter 3 plays rather awkwardly in my opinion. Perhaps there is a better strategy I could’ve used, but both enemies you are supposed to recruit here have several other enemies near them, so sending someone to recruit them will most likely result in a death. What I had to do was painstakingly move north in a tight group, barely surviving, and spend a few turns killing everything before recruiting Fey. Only then did I move onto the mage group and recruit the mage. I tried to do both of these things at once, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it without someone dying. I also found that I needed everybody’s action or someone would die, so even though I had Cronus in Fey’s range for a couple of turns, I couldn’t use his action to recruit her because he needed to chip something or shoot a wyvern. In short, I feel like the idea of this map is for you to recruit the enemies either both at once or one after the other, but the way it actually plays forces the player to kill most of the enemies before even attempting either recruitment, and I find that awkward. Again, maybe I simply played the map poorly, but that’s what my experience looked like.
Winter could barely damage anything after she joined, even with her PRF – and she couldn’t double most enemies, either. Training her seems painful even for an Est-type character.
Liam is laughably bad in comparison to Braun. Braun has better stats everywhere, better weapon ranks, and a better skill. Perhaps that was the intent, but if you wanted these two to be competitive with one another, I’m afraid that you failed.
I think that’s about it.
TL;DR From my perspective, this hack’s gameplay is severely flawed and the text is in desperate need of proofreading. I’m not saying that just to be mean – I would like this hack to be better! – but I can’t pretend I didn’t have problems when trying to play it.