Appreciate it but still no dice. Game still crashes when trying to open it up through lt-editor. Saying game may be corrupted but I’m able to launch the game just fine through the exe but for some reason it won’t launch through the editor.
Edit: I figured it out, apparently my lt-maker was outdated and didn’t realize. Once I installed the latest version, I was able to open the game up in editor so all is good here.
Friends, uh, people who think about the Holy Roman Empire too much, and, uh, forumpeople, lend me your ears.
Too long has the war between “idiots who think GBA hacking can do everything LT can” and “idiots who think LT is the only solution to all non-vanilla endeavors” persisted. The hackers, they cannot add knives or bombs as weapon types without cannibalizing another, nor can they have more than 5 inventory slots, nor can they field a roster of 153 units, yet they will claim that LT holds no true utility.
Thereafter, further fools will come saying that you need LT to implement some manner of mechanical marvel, when in fact FEBuilder patches such as “Special Event per Unit/Item” or even sheer eventing prowess will allow most hackers to implement the monstrosities of their furthest nightmares without even learning buildfiles.
However, an astute observer may ask, “Why the fuck would you need 8 inventory slots or the ability to have 153 party members in a normal game?” To which I would answer: well, yeah, fair. What, then, is LT truly good for?
That’s right, baybee, you can publish games on this shit (provided you, you know, get all your own assets for literally everything which might take a while). I, BigMood, proclaim my goal to be the publication of Server 72 as an actual game you can purchase online for like tree fiddy or some shit. This will, of course, take a considerable amount of time and money, but I would like to finally lay to rest the question of “Why use LT?”
Anyway, yeah, Happy April Fool’s Day everyo-
Oh, huh.
I forgot it was April Fools, and was legitimately looking forward to it.
We could always race to see who can do it first lol
finally i will have all 4 good games available on steam
I’d absolutely love some kind of updated/polished Server 72 release and would throw some money at you if it’s on Steam (biggest wish would be some kind of option to play through the stages with different parties maybe some kind of custom characters even, would be peak).
Also Stranger of Paradise enjoyer spotted, I respect your strength.
Absolutely same here, would not mind paying for a rerelease with new content, S72 is incredible, would love to have an excuse to play through it again
I’m really intrigued by this game, but I’ve never tried nor interacted with Lex talionis before, I’ve heard of it but was little intimidated , and I don’t know how to work with it to play games, do i need to download LT to play?i dont realy have any experience with this.
I Clicked the download link and downloaded the most recent one but when i checked the WinRAR zip i saw it had the folder had threequel and threequel.exe ,
. am i doing something wrong or do i need to do something else first?
i would post a image it doesn’t seem to allow me still new to the site
Yes, the .exe bundling for LT games is a little strange. What you’re seeing is correct: extract the folder and .exe into the same folder and then run the .exe and you should be good to go. You don’t need to download LT separately to play.
oh thanks you now i can play , I’ve scratching my head at this all day.
So, I managed to finish this game after a loooooong time, having to stop playing it since several levels are very time consuming and I had tons of things that just had a higher priority for my time.
First and foremost, I have to say that this is one of my favorite games I have ever played, period. Not just Fire Emblem, not just fan games, but all games in general.
It has so much charm, the characters are compelling, the comedy is on point. And the way you managed to integrate MMORPG mechanics into a Fire Emblem game? Simply genius.
I’ll stop ranting and try to actually organize my thoughts so they at least make some sense. While I hope people read this and share their thought, I should warn anyone reading this that it will be LONG and I don’t really do TL;DR. It will also be full of spoilers. You’ve been warned.
The world outside of the game sounds so interesting, too: a world that just got blindsided by magic suddenly appearing, and the way the world has been adapting to it. We see it in several of the commentaries Philo does about her job and what magic is capable of doing, from Orchid who is trying to find applications for magic in food preservation, and even in the trial by the way law enforcement has to quickly develop to deal with magical crimes and the scary implications of someone being able to change their appearance (I also laughed a little at the though of a book now being considered a lethall weapon. Imaging just taking something out to read in the open and everyone running and screaming thinking you might Bolt them or something).
The detective and Ace Attorney bits were gold, too, though I found that not being able to check your evidence and profiles in the last few ones when you have already been asked something really sucked.
Now, reading the first paragraph of this section you might already know that I was not a total fan of the tone shift of the game in the last few floors. While in the 45-49 floors there is still some comedy, it still turns pretty grimdark and by the end there are some pretty big stakes in play. It wasn’t that bad since you do hint at this pretty early (Zelk speaking about the Real PKer, Hardman’s daughter being dead was very obvious from pretty early on), but I still very much enjoyed the earlier floors more. I also reeeeeally didn’t like Zelg being replaced by the end. I loved the dynamic of the group, and the new guy just doesn’t mesh nearly as well with everyone else. Also, Zelg was supposed to be there when they broke through floor 50, so his absence made me sad.
Now, speaking of characters…
Just kidding, let’s talk mechanics first.
I like the balance between the ranged DPS and the melee DPS. Melee just does INSANE damage after you invest a little but has next to no support options, are more risky with positioning and might have to take a counterattack, while ranged DPS can attack from a safer place and have a lot more supporting options (except Hardman, but he compensates with 3+ range, having a lots of mobility and being the king of midgame).
And finally supports units, while sometimes they might feel boring since they don’t one shot something every turn nor do they demolish bosses, are so important for everyone else to shine as much as they do. Dazzle needs no introduction to anyone who has played the game, offering ANYTHING you might want: defense, movement, crit change, BRAVE WEAPON EFFECT FOR EVERYONE!? He’s got you. Healers are nothing new for RPG players, and the support options they have at their disposal are just so good once you climb some floors: nullifying mages with Silence, most enemies with Blind, Entrap to bring whatever you want to kill right next to your DPS, Auras to boost everyone around them… and many many many more. And the lastly Primal isn’t left behind. Heck, I’d argue Primal was were I found the best support spells before the end game. Shift is just so damn good. Any boss or dangerous enemy that doesn’t have a “you can’t move me” ability would get shifted into the middle of the party and get destroyed afterwards.
And spellcasters aren’t the only ones that eat good. There are A LOT of support weapons. Lances get the most, with pretty much no pure DPS one and mostly stuff that deals with enemy positioning, and Bows have several debuff ones and Pinner is just great.
IMO swords are the worst melee weapon type by far, only being good after floor 40 since you get 3 units who use them, 1 of them probably being the strongest unit in the game and the other one being the second best DPS. Before that I only used a sword once or twice, them simply not being worth the inventory slot nor the money. They could have totally used a buff early game IMO.
Axes, then, are the “hit something and watch it die” category, what with having an unconditional brave weapon (so you can use it with other combat arts unlike Lion Spear, and you don’t need someone to warp an enemy to you or you to the enemy like Unsheater), anti-armor weapons, and just overall higher might.
There’s just so many different weapons available, you can approach the problems the game presents you in many different ways. A lot of the time spent each chapter was trying to decide what to bring to the map. It is so satisfying to find that weapon that you might not use much but is exactly what you need to beat that chapter that has been giving you so much trouble, or finding interactions that make you realize that something that looked mid might actually be broken. Makes me want to play again just to see what I would do different with the knowledge I have, and see if I can find different ways to beat the maps.
Just to name a few, I think my favorite stuff to use was Shift (undisputed #1), Pinner, Repeller, Home Run Bat, Kzoora, All the Brave weapons, Explosive Shot, Spectral Bow (even if I only used it like twice) Idh-yaa (even if it was always just one or two points of damage from being great), Entrap, Backdraft, Fargaze, Levitate and Fog.
I also really like the way you get to personalize your characters, even if is pretty obvious where you should invest your money in most cases. The game encourages saving your money between chapters and buying stats until you need to do so. Spending just enough to reach a certain breakpoint so your character can double an enemy, one shot them or survive a hit allows you to get more or better weapons, and having more money to spend in the boss if you need to.
Skills and masteries are also good. Buying a weapon mastery is pretty much the same as buying several skills because of the wide variety of weapons you get access to. This means skills have to be pretty good, and oh boy do most not dissapoint. Soulstealer is EASILY the best buyable skill in the game, allowing your DPS to refuel and continue murdering everything in sight. Convoy Stance allows you to have back-up weapons in case you are running low on durability, and also allows your supply to act as a toolkit; just buy niche or conditional weapons and leave them there, and if the need arises take them out from the convoy. OOS I’ll speak about when I get to the characters, but most make your units even better at what they already do.
And, to end this section: the maps and the bosses. The variety of objectives and mechanics you have to face makes it so it (almost) never gets dull. Making terrain give cover from ranged attacks was very interesting, both protecting you from the enemies as well as being really freaking annoying at times. Really liked the change.
I don’t know how you managed to make everything feel so balanced - apart from a couple maps, nothing really felt like total bs and I could track the mistake that caused me to lose - be it a wrong move, not reaching a breakpoint when buying stats, or not realizing I needed a certain weapon to solve a problem. Most bosses are pretty fair, and the boss maps always feel epic with the objectives you have to complete or the enemies you have to beat before reaching the boss. The phase transitions and each boss’ mechanics were great, too. Except for one specific instance…
Now for the not so great part: accesories felt pretty bad. As I mentioned in the tips I gave someone before, I feel like the only acceptable accessory for most characters are HIT boosting ones. Sure, Provoke and the Leadership skills allow you to boost your hit rates pretty well, but a lot of the time you have to hit enemies before they get the chance to reach you or divide and conquer, and with how much a single miss can cost you - a lot of times meaning even a game over - it doesn’t even feel optional. And this only gets worse the later you are in the game. The only exceptions I made were for the DEF and RES boosting accesories in the very early game, Pet Rock for Hardman, Desperado Ring for GGWP in the last 3 floors, some random rotating stuff for Dazzle and Luck Tag for Cerulean Shimmer (and Crit Guard for that BS dragon boss). I tried some other ones every once and then, but they really weren’t relevant. Any other time my characters were rocking Accuracy Lens or, once they were available, Blood Drops, and pretty much never unequiped them (except for, once again, BS space dragon).
I hate Imperial. It makes it so hard to actually hit the boss with your squishy DPS (heck, the Fire Dragon with it’s pseudo imperial I had to Convert wyverns and suicide them into it until Philo could finish it in one hit, since it one shotted everyone but Zelg), but I get that the omni counter was neccesary as otherwise you could poke some bosses to death – I feel like it could have been managed differently, via mechanics that limited damage or made it hard to position your units to deal damage, or adds that that kept your DPS busy. I’m not an expert, though.
I, however, really dislike the “can’t be countered” part, since that makes it so you can’t, for example, Provoke or debuff on the counter to then enable your DPS to hit harder or survive the counter, or deal some damage in the counter to then finish the boss in your turn. Didn’t feel fair TBH. The first part was made worse when combined with Nightmare, since it means the boss can walk to your tank, hit them, and since they weren’t provoked by the counter they can walk to your backline and murder them (which is why Zelg’s skill that makes him Provoke when getting hit is so important).
While I mentioned that the weapon variety allows you to face problems in different ways, this is not true in all the maps. The one that comes to mind immeadiatly is floor 46, where it feels pretty much like a stat check. I couldn’t beat it with any combination I could think of, and ended just boosting my stats until I could one shot the bosses. Which i found annoying when most maps reward your creativity.
Also, Charge Lance is so bad because of what it causes for the design of Lance units: half of them have very low movement (Zelg and Longinus are the slowest units at 4, Dazzle is at an unimpressive 5, and only Cinco is good at 6), which means you are pretty much forced to use it if you want them to keep up. But then you are forced to micromanage your inventory every time you do anything because you HAVE to start the turn with it equipped for it to have an effect, and forgetting to equip it and then seeing you could have saved the chapter from disaster had you had that one extra move is such a bad feeling. It is meant to patch out the low move of these units, but it feels like such a bad solution when you could have given them decent MOV instead.
S-rank weapons and items felt very lackluster, with the exception of Kzoora, which is only good because DD gets to one shot squishies and recover the use for free. Everything else is just way too expensive for things that you can only use once, or in the case of the spells I can get similar results with cheaper alternatives.
The pace at which you gain skills feels pretty good, giving you plenty of time to learn the ins and outs of every new skill you get and finding cool interactions with the exception of the last skill, which you get super close to the previous one and only get to play with it for 3 floors. This means you don’t have time to get used to them, and as you’ll find out in my comments about the characters this often meant that I didn’t use the skills or misplayed with them.
Stats are pretty unbalanced, but this is more tied with base Fire Emblem design. There are way more physical enemies than magical (thank god) so DEF is way more important than RES. There’s 0 reason to get a point in DEF or RES for any squishie, as HP is literally double the bank for your buck unless you are taking more than 2 hits in a single turn, at which point something has gone wrong. So you just get enough HP to survive a counter from the boss and go to town with purely offensive stats. Non-healer supports don’t even need stats: they should never see combat except to maybe finish a 1 hp enemy, so you can just get enough HP to survive a random hit and save all that money for use on your other units (just look at my Dazzle having 38 POW in the last floor and still being a beast). Skill and Luck are not worth the investment IMO. And, for the end game, since you have stat caps and you will have more than enough POW to max the important stats for each unit and get a decent amount of HP, the Power Stone Final Boon looks so, so much worse than the Memory Stone.
The one boss I think I disliked was the black dragon (can’t recall its name). The guaranteed crit means you are guaranteed dead without a crit guard, which means you either don’t have an accessory (and can’t hit consistently), or you have to find a moment to convoy stance and get everyone fighting it crit guards. And you need to find this opportunity while being swarmed by either very resilient Dracozombies, forcing you to spend mana (unless you are Hardman with Soul Stealer and Pet Rock, which was my salvation; still, this only deals with one a turn, and chances are you have several in pursuit by the point you are trying to get to the Skypiercer); and by Mogalls that hit super hard and have a huge movement, meaning you have to move really slowly, which means you’re facing more reinforcements… it is quite draining. Also, having to use a specific item (which you probably don’t want to use in any other circunstance) to counter a mechanic instead of having options of how you want to deal with it isn’t fun.
Finally, remember what I mentioned about tanks feeling good? Well, that is lost little by little, and by the end you are constantly sorrounded and have to one shot everything or risk a death or huge damage, with your tanks unable to Provoke all the threats or be positioned in such a way that only they take the hits. Zelg spent the time as a walking Leadership bot and the ocassional Provoke to give +HIT on something on floor 51, and floor 52 was him just surviving vs the invincible boss (and he needed help from Auras to not be one shot), as an example. The game also feels balanced around you one shotting the bosses in the end game, and while they have Unbroken to stop them from just dying, it doens’t feel as good as chipping away at them like the early bosses, at least in my opinion.
Does work great for Floor 51 though, the multiple phases representative of each stage was pretty cool.
Now that I think about it, Tanks carry the early game, supports (Shift) dominate the mid game and DPS are king in the late game. I don’t know if this was intentional, but I find it pretty interesting.
Ok, NOW it’s time to get into the best part: the characters.
- Zelg
Zelg is, without a doubt in my mind, the main character. He’s the party’s leader and, when the serious part of the story starts, he’s the one that kicks things into motion.
As a character, I quite like Zelg. He can take a joke and knows how to crack one too, is knowledgeable but not pedantic, listens to the opinions and ideas of the other party members, seems genuinely interested in what they like and do, and as we later learn is willing to risk his freedom and his life to protect his fellow gamers. The epilogue is about what I would expect of him, just going back to the grind.
As a unit, Zelg is the single most important unit in the early game, he’s the only one who can actually take more than one hit, and thanks to the low defense and HP of units early on he can actually deal good damage with little to no investment in Str. Add to this that he gets access to every physical weapon, and there’s a lot he can do: he can one shot cavaliers with Pike, leave a huge dent in armors with the Hammer and fliers with bows, immobilize enemies with Pinner and Repeller, counter hard with the Devil Axe, debuff with the Poison and Wither Bow, chip safely with the Long Bow, laugh at melees with Armsreaver, reposition with the Vortex Spear, resist a little more with Defender… deciding what to equip Zelg with was a big part of the preparation for the early maps.
Zelg stays relevant in the mid game, but his damage starts to feel lacking and the bigger and more open maps start making his lackluster mobility more evident. And while he gets more options, most of the weapons in the floor 30-40 range don’t offer much utility, which is what Zelg starts to pivot into at this point. Charge Lance is a welcome adition, and one that never left Zelg’s inventory since the moment I could get it, but I already mentioned how I actually think that is a bad thing. One idea I didn’t think about trying was using the Explosive Shot to taunt in an AoE; will see if it works in my next playthrough.
By the end game, Zelg feels lacking: his low movement speed is made even more evident when sorrounded by people who can teleport themselves, allies or enemies; can attack from a huge range; or simply have more than 4 move.
Waiting for him to walk forward so he can draw enemies into range feels too slow, especially after the first one or two turns when the remaining enemies are further away and he has to get to them to be useful. Most of the time you can either reach and kill them without being hit back with your other units, or you just use Hero to AoE taunt.
Skills:
Zelg’s active skills are very simple, but they get the job done: Tank Stance allows him to walk in the middle of a room and leave everyone there Provoked for your other units to pick them off, and it giving him half DEF as RES means he never really has to invest in RES to take hits from mages, and they also tend to be less prominent and easier to kill than melees.
Fortify Armor comes at a perfect time to solve one of Zelg’s troubles: Imperial bosses being able to hit him without getting Provoked. It also allows him to Taunt archers without having to have a bow with similar range of his own, as well as ballistae and siege tomes, keeping your other units safe. And not to mention the status immunity, which does some serious heavy lifting in some maps. There’s always the option of using it on someone else so they can better take a hit, although I found this is very situational.
Zelg’s weapon crafting is good from the moment you get it, if only to get a more accurate or slightly stronger weapon without spending money; it’s when you are allowed to get the Brave effect that this becomes crazo good, allowing your DD or Hardman to be even more of a monster. You are given other options, but all of them seem pretty lackluster when compared to just getting more uses and Mt for your Brave weapon.
Armor crafting is… pretty bad, tbh. The main use I found was getting rid of effective weapons weakness and getting a few extra points of RES, but nobody really wants to equip the Accessory it makes (see above: HIT accessories owning that slot), and the fact that it stops working after you get hit a certain number of times makes it even worse.
Finally, Craftman’s Glint is pretty much just there to justify Zelg picking this class to climb the tower with, since whoever is using your Brave forged weapon is probably murdering whatever gets hit so the taunting effect gets wasted.
As far as other skills you can get him, I wish I had bought Enrage way earlier: he’s supposed to take damage, so he shouldn’t be full HP often, and that extra movement would have done so much good so many times. Leadership is good since it gets your units HIT, which you might need against particularly dodgy enemies, and Zelg is going to spend most if the time between enemies anyway so you don’t have to sweat the position of your DPS so much. His OOS skill, Determination, makes him tankier, which when I got it I thought was a godly skill… except he was already taking so little damage with just stat buys, that I now feel like I wasted the MEM and money.
Stats:
Zelg only really needs DEF to take hits (he gets free RES with Tank Stance), HP if enemies are already hitting you for 1 or you maxed defense, and Speed to not be doubled by bosses, mages or very hard hitting melees (I’m looking at you, Berserkers). Maybe some STR in the early game to one shot Cavs with Pike or chipping enough to kill with someone else.
All in all, Zelg goes from being the #1 unit at the start to wishing he could do more by the end… which is honestly fine. In-universe, his class is considered lackluster for a reason, and even if he isn’t nearly as good by the time you reach the final floors he can still save your butt by provoking that one enemy you can’t finish off, immobilizing someone or simply by eating hits like no one else.
Zelg2
I honestly think he’s not a bad character…
but he’s taking Zelg’s place, so I can’t help but feel some level of dislike towards him.
Sorry.
- Hardman
Hardman, being the oldest in the group, serves as a nice contrast to the other characters (specially Loonie). He also serves as the character that knows the least about games, so you can explain stuff to the player by having them tell this stuff to him. This, however, is (thankfully) not used much, so Hardman doesn’t pass as an ignorant person or one that needs handholding. His age means that he’s also the one whose life is the most similar to the player’s, what with him having lived in years closer to ours. But, again, he’s not portrayed as a cranky old man who thinks everything was better before technology or magic, even if he does some comparisons every now and then.
Hardman is, along with Zelg’s scene at the end of floor 10 (or was it 15?), the first one to hint at a darker plot underneath with his furtive comments about her daughter’s current whereabouts. He’s, however, still my least favorite character of the first four, so it was kind of dissapointing that the section you control him for in the OW was the longest.
That epilogue was too sad, though. Why did he have to pass away so soon, he should have lived for many more years and get to teach Loonie’s and Zelg’s kids how to mount (the couple is not canon at all but I’m calling it).
As a unit, Hardman starts the weakest character. He doesn’t have any strong interactions until later, the early bows are kind of lackluster compared to the spells Philo and Loonie get, and as mentioned before, swords suck, so he only has range 3 and mobility as his advantage. However, early maps depend more on Zelg tanking and chiping before finishing enemies off and you don’t have enough units to just clean a big area in a single turn for your DPS to be safe in enemy phase, so you can’t really exploit this mobility as much as you would like.
This changes when you get Pet Rock: this gives Hardman a HUGE +50 Crit, and while the -50 hit might sound very bad, Hardman gets Aimed Shot at level 10, which allows him to attack with… guess what? +50 HIT, completely nullifying Pet Rock. This only works with bows, though. Which, once again, goes to show that swords suck. Combine this with a Killer Composite and his OOS and you’re dealing a crit with almost every attack, completely erasing any non-boss in a single hit and one or two rounding bosses. Get him Soulsteal and this becomes free. He also gets access to Explosive Shot, allowing him to obliterate up to 5 enemies in a single shot (more commonly 2-3, but I did get to hit 4 enemies a couple times and it felt GOOD). The Bow keeps getting better after that, with higher Might, higher range, magic damage that can hit through walls, a conditional but easy to proc brave weapon (that sadly doesn’t get 3 range, but still is pretty strong), and finally and infinite range S rank weapon.
He, however, starts falling off in the later stages since enemies start getting enough Avoid that the -50 HIT from Pet Rock is actually noticeable, becoming dependant on Leadership and Provoke to land hits cleanly. Also, DD and GGWP start hitting harder and harder while Hardman doesn’t get any new toys that allow him to go beyond what he could already do.
He also can’t use Brave Banner with Bows, and since swords suck (ok, you got Unsheater at this point, but you already spent a lot of MEM on Bows and skills so getting to A swords is not worth it, not to mention you would have to drop Pet Rock since Aimed Shot only works with bows, severely gimping your damage) that leaves him unable to use this very strong option, further leaving him behind. He does, however, still have the advantage of mobility and a longer range, so he doesn’t feel completely outclassed.
Skills:
His first skill, Canto+, is… something that I won’t comment about, since I completely forgot about it for the whole game after like floor 5 or 6. Probably would have opened room for riskier plays, but eh, never felt the need.
Hunter’s Mark comes next, and while it can be huge damage boost if you pump your Skill up, you get the same damage with for the same cost with a point of Str without having to use a skill or spend mana. By the time you max Str, Hardman already deals enough damage to one shot adds and you have better Boss killers, so I never felt the need to invest heavily on Skill to make this stronger. Maybe I should have, though, and then he would have been less dependant on Leadership and Provoke in the late game.
I already talked about Hardman’s monst important skill, Aimed Shot, so I’ll skip that.
Strafe feels… bad. It is a speed boost that can go up to 7, which is HUGE. However, it is a conditional speed boost; in a world where being able to kill an enemy when you need to, depending on a conditional speed boost to double doesn’t cut it, IMO. You’re better off investing in speed to ensure you can get the double when you need it without having to compromise your position. I guess you can assume you’ll always move at least one space and can then spend 1 less point of speed, or you can plan very careful to ensure you always have enough speed to double, but it feels like too much trouble for little gain. This can, however, allow you to double 27+ speed enemies in the endgame, so it does have its use.
Windrush never ever had any use since, as mentioned, I pretty much never use Hunter’s Mark, and I don’t think there was a single time since I got it where I felt like an extra point or two of move would have made a difference, since he already has one of the highest move distances in the game. I can see this being way better in traditional Fire Emblem where you can use all that move to rescue, or to reach the next group of enemies since you could survive and kill them in enemy phase, but neither is the case here.
For buyable Skills, Soulsteal is a must so you can spam Aimed Shot, and Armsfaire is extra damage. His OOS is great, extra Hit and Crit in a passive is something I’ll take any day and makes the combo with Pet Rock even better.
Stats:
You’ll see that I had the same approach for all my DPS units: get enough speed to double everything in a given floor, then get enough Str/Mag to one round or one shot whatever you’re hitting. Add HP as needed to survive a counter from something you can’t one shot (mostly only in early game and vs bosses). Rinse and repeat each floor. I really didn’t bother with the other stats except for a point or two because I was like “eh, why not” in the moment. Hardman could have used more Skill by the end, but it is such an inefficient stat that I honestly didn’t think about it.
Hardman has an ok early game, becomes godly when you get Pet Rock + Aimed Shot, and keeps being good if only outclassed in the boss killer category. But few things feel as good as getting one crit after another when you attack.
- Philophrosyne
Philo was, personality wise, my favorite character for most of the game, and by the end it was tied with Loonie. She’s smart, confident, resourceful, has a great sense of humor, and is just all around super cool. She’s obviously Tsukuyomi (which I already suspected, but with the reveal of her being called Luna it was even more obvious). I just can’t wait to learn more about her when I play Isekai Emblem. I’m guessing this will explain her being combat savyy and the friends she can’t see no more.
Her conversation with Sidwell is also pure badassery: him threatening her and she just going “you’re threatening the wrong person, now keep playing before I decide to erase you”? Damn. And it fits, because while she’s nice and all, she’s actually the most threatening person of them all in IRL, and it’s not even close. I also didn’t really like the epilogue, she seemed to have made pretty good friends with everyone and her just dissapearing like that leaves a bad aftertaste.
She also has the #1 best design, and I won’t accept a different opinion regarding this.
As a unit, Philo in incredible from start to finish. She deals great damage right from the start and has a lot of great options at every stage in the game: can debuff enemies, can drain tank a little bit with Resiphon, gets to laugh at melee weapons with Shroud, can immobilize with Mire, be a mage killer with Shadeslash, burst with Encroach.
And then Shift appears and blows everything else out of the water.
It is such a powerful tool: anything that isn’t behind a wall or has a skill that stop it from being moved can be dumped in the middle of your party and be immediatly destroyed. She was pivotal in clearing floor 35-39, since you can just shift the boss into your party and kill her, stopping her AoE attacks, basically getting rid of any difficulty there might be. I might have to try to beat those floors without Shift next time.
But that’s not all: Shift can reposition your allies, and unlike Rescue it doesn’t consume the affected Unit’s turn, so you can use Shift to extend their movement so then can reach an enemy or get to safety. She then keeps getting more utility, with another good damaging option every once in a while.
Then Consume comes around and boost her burst all the way up when you start to think she’s not a good damage dealer anymore.
Skills:
Circulation: while this is mentioned as being a flat out broken skill by everyone, the reality is that it is more of a necessity for Philo to even work: EVERYTHING she does costs mana, so without a steady infusion of the thing she would become completely useless.
Purify is pretty freaking good: it is a free action, heals for a ton, and even clears debuffs! Helps keep up with enemy damage, get rid of Afterburn for Orchid, and just cleanse nasty debuffs in general. They only bad thing is having to get stacks to use it, but Philo should be getting kills often enough for it to be constantly online. It does get a little less useful once you have a full 16 unit party, since you have enough units to cover your healing needs, but it is still a good option to have.
Ritual is… meh. You get it as the bosses start getting tougher, which means you want to hit with as little units as possible while hitting as hard as possible. This helps with that. I also can’t help but notice that you get this at around the space floors, which have several nasty debuffs being thrown at you, so it mostly seems like a way to deal with that.
Ritual, however, gets better once you get Sacred Vessel, if only because if you have a free turn and have the mana you can Ritual to get a Purify charge. Purify is such a good ability that this is worth it if you have the chance and can spare the 2 mana.
Finally, Incarnate seems like such a good way to get that final push to finish a floor. I say seems because i always forgot it was an option, so I never used it, but I definitely could have made my life easier with it.
Of the buyable skills, I listened to the plot and got her Convoy Stance, and she was a great use of it for the whole game, what with the mana regen. Soulsteal, once again, is a must for all attackers, and this is specially true for spellcasters. Circulation is just not enough to keep up with how mana hungry Philo becomes in the late game. Armsfaire is just extra damage, and I didn’t feel the need to get S in Primal.
I didn’t get her OOS because at the moment I was enjoying Resiphon tanking a little and liked having the option, but TBH that stopped being relevant rather quickly so maybe I’ll try it out next time.
Stats:
Just did the same as with Hardman.
Just like Hardman, Philo is best during the mid game where her access to Shift skyrockets her utility, but unlike him she stays a very good unit from start to finish, with no point in the game where she feels lacking. Truly one of the best units in the whole game, she never fails to make a big impact in any battle.
- Loonie 2ns
My favorite character along with Philo and the source of much of the comedy in the game, Loonie is the deuteragonist along with Zelg: while Zelg is who makes things happen, they only happen because Loonie is involved: the succeful 8 and 16 person alliance, as well as the Real PKer plot moving forward.
Her innuendos never failed to amuse me, her extroverted personality makes all her interactions with the other characters such a delight, and her magic drone hobby makes ger even cooler. Also, her using a dimensional fissure to change her rug’s color while making it seem so casual is pretty damn funny.
As a unit, Loonie is your only healer for a while and therefore she is the very bestests of allest and you will say it and mean it unless you want her to leave you to die. While Divine magic aside from Heal and Shirk for the escort missions is pretty dissapointing in the early game, you can give your other units some Def or Res auras if needed. However, I feel like she works better as a DPS who can heal as needed, usingAnima (can’t recall the name it is given in this game, sorry) magic to DPS. Wind, being the very first Brave weapon you get, gets her the highest damage in the early game, and with Osmose you can deal even more damage without having to drain all your mana.
You can then decide later if you want to focus on Divine or Anima, which each option offering different possibilities and playstyles. I honestly was in a decision paralysis for the longest time and ended up doing neither, which gimped her usefulness.
Skills:
Osmose is a damage buff that gets you mana back per hit. This makes it so that brave spells go mana neutral or positive, meaning if you have Osmose ready to go you can use them without going OOM, which makes a big difference in your damage and uptime.
Conversion is what really makes Loonie stand out: being able to transform an enemy into an ally is strong the whole game (except Floor 51: the unit dissapearing when the floors change was a bummer), but it is the strongest when it is introduced since the less units you have control over the bigger the relative increase is when you get one more: going from 4 to 5 units is HUGE, from 16 to 17 not so much.
The converted enemies can fill several roles: bait, damage dealer, and even healer, while also being able to become mana batteries by getting kills or with Devote. The biggest uses I can think of are the Fire Dragon boss map, which seems designed for you to Convert one of the wyverns from the very start and use it to kill the Greatbow archers; and the floor 40 boss, since you can get a General that heals, has the infinite range bow and great stats.
Encourage: while this comes with a small bonus to Magic and Res, its actual use is to give mana to allies. Which pairs nicely with…
Devote: this allows you to give mana to Loonie with anyone who is not in need of it, which she can then use to attack, support or Convert, or maybe pass it along with Encourage. Please note that converted units can use Devote to refuel her too, so if they stay around they can pay back the mana it took to brainwash them. It fits so well with the rest of her kit.
For buyable skills, Soulsteal is as always a must if you can deal damage, and Armsfaire is more damage. High Sanctuary was kind of a bummer… a nice plot device, but losing MEM just for what could amount to a cut scene is pretty meh.
And then there’s Zeal. It’s a skill that should make you change your sequencing so as many units as possible dies with Loonie nearby, and since she is a supporting DPS she’s prone to be in the middle of the battlefield and therefore her aura should benefit multiple allies… but I honestly forgot it was even there (you might have noticed a pattern by this point). It is not as impactful as her other abilities, and while the stat boost is nice it is conditional.
Stats:
Built like a DPS.
Loonie has a pretty simple but also very useful skillset. It feels like a pretty cohesive design, with every skill working in tandem with the others except for Zeal, but that takes advantage of how her role keeps her near the front lines close to your units who could use the buff. She can fill a variety of roles, and therefore your experience may vary with mine depending on how you decided to use her. All in all, a great unit, even I feel like by the end I couldn’t exploit her full potential due to my indecisiveness.
Now that the original four are out of the way, we have the allies we get at floor 21. This bunch joins you at the start of the mid game, and therefore you still get to spend a lot of time with them and even though your party size just got doubled everyone still gets a good amount of screen time and you can see their personalities being fleshed out.
The new characters bring new stuff to the table, but nothing that is very different from you already have so it doesn’t take long to adapt to them. They also only have 2 skills, so not many things to memorize. You get an extra healer, a mage DPS that will feel similar to the ones you already have, a melee DPS that might feel a little different what with her getting countered but in the end she just has to kill stuff. The only one that feels really different is Dazzle, but that’s because he’s quite unique among all characters.
- Dazzle
My man here is not only the most chill dude there is, he is also the most handsome of everyone we get to see (Hardman being a close second, though). Dazzle is full of good vibes, and it always seems like he is happy just for being here; and that’s pretty good, since that’s what his job is.
Dazzle is a combination of a very simple unit that has simple skills with the complexity that comes from making sure your position is good enough to make full advantage of said skills because damn are they strong. From the very start he makes a big difference by allowing you to reach stat threshold that you wouldn’t reach otherwise, mobility and debuffs, while the passive healing takes a big load off your healer’s shoulders.
And that would be good enough, but then you get to stack these bonuses, and then you just go ahead and get Brave Banner and anyone who can use it becomes a monster. And while I gave him no stats so he really couldn’t do combat, he could use Combat arts to move enemies around or immobilize them, giving him some flexibility.
Dazzle is fun because, unlike other units, every lance you get access to is like a new skill for him. New lances where definitely the weapons I looked forward to the most, wanting to see what new banners they would have to offer. This also means that Dazzle feels like a countinously improving unit, even if you don’t get a level up.
He’s also a barista and gets to have a gaming cafe, which is honestly a job I would love to have.
Skills:
Raise Banner / Flag Throw are the ones that matter the most, allowing you to set your auras. The most fun part of getting new weapons was checking what new Auras Dazzle got. While I didn’t use most of them other than to check what they did, I was always looking forward to what these new spears would offer me,
Grab Flag allows you to recober Mana and your broken spears. Super good but I would have loves to get it earlier.
Low Profile might as well not exist.
I feel like Convoy Stance is a very important skill for Dazzle, allowing you to refill your inventory after you get some flags going, get the aura that you need, and maybe grab a Mana Drop if you’re going OOM.
His OOS gives allies in a big area around him more damage, which is super nice. I gave him Aid so he could have more options when it came to how he would spend his turns. Weapon ranks felt unnescesary as he can still use lances to set up flags even if he can’t wield them himself.
Stats:
He needs nothing, except maybe a little HP so he doesn’t randomly die or can take a hit for one of your other squishies. The way he’ll make you spend money is by having a ton of lances in the Supply for him to pull out as needed.
Dazzle is a simple guy with simple skills that has a huge impact in your battles. He’s one of my favorite units gameplay design wise, and I really feel like you had a stroke of genius here.
- Hero
I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Hero’s character. He seems so bland and any jokes that involves him just misses completely for me. He does offer some insight on how Blizzsoft inner works and the game development, which is nice, but I feel like he could have been handled better.
Unit-wise, thought? He… is interesting. The first time I played this (I dropped it once, not because I disliked it but because of a lack of time) I thought of him as a very inferior tank compared to Zelg, what with no way to boost his damage reduction (Zelg gets to patch his resistance and his OOS gives damage reduction (which I now realize is very small), and while Light Dispersal is supposed to do that for hero it just… doesn’t). He also had to spend way more mana in order to be able to Provoke many turns in a row, which meant he was OOM pretty damn fast, and I ended using him more like a healer.
However, this time I returned a much better FE player and I realized Hero’s potential: proactive Provoking. While Zelg is great at provoking during enemy phase, Hero is able to use its superior mobility and range (thanks to Pow/2 range tomes) to get to the enemies first, and can then Provoke up to 5 enemies with a single attack. This allows you to move much more quickly through a map, as well as making for an excellent panic button when some reinforcements or phase change or whatever blindsides you.
I found it better to use Pow/2 tomes to Provoke groups of enemies; however, if you have someone you can use to trade with after using them, the aura tomes allow you to Provoke for 2 mana. My main problem with him is that he feels pretty much the same through the whole game, and none of the skills he gets feel exciting. Still, this means that he is consistent, and if there’s something you want your tank to be is exactly that. Also, he’s right when he alludes to Justicar being a sick class name.
Skills:
Canto: was nice, but no rescuing means this isn’t as good as in regular FE. Still pretty good for when you have to Chain Trade or do some interaction as part of a mechanic.
Holy Provocation: the reason Hero is such a good tank in fast paced maps. AoE Provoke is a godsend when facing hordes, ranged Provoke is so good vs Ballista / Fliers / Horses. I always forgot I could Provoke while healing or using other AoEs, which is something I plan to better use next time I play.
Light Dispersal: this skills caused me more annoyance than anything: Hero is a tank, so he’s not supposed to be finishing enemies off: most of the time, you want to use him to Provoke enemies who are threatening your team and who you can’t kill this turn.
Light Dispersal asks that you use him to finish off enemies, all so you can get back 1 mana and a little RES. Yes, you don’t have to kill to get the RES, but then you are drying your mana even faster. Mind you, if you stack this it could work great, but mages are already less frequent than physical enemies so having to go through hurdles to be able to take hits from them without making a big investment in stats makes this more trouble than it is worth. A use it can have is Provoking with non-Divine spells, so if you are against a single enemy you can use Fire to Provoke and not need someone to trade your Divine tome away so you don’t go OOM.
I do feel like this would have worked if I had given Hero more stat points in MAG, since then he could have dealt more damage and actually be able to kill enemies more easily, but my "minimal offense investment"TM strategy for tanks worked so I never felt the need to get him MAG, maybe gimping the usefulness of this skill.
Abjure Anger: another good ability. Auras just rock in this game. This gives your units damage reduction, so you don’thave to invest as much in HP for your squishies to be able to survive a boss’ counter. Also makes Hero more durable.
Judgment Mode: this is so good combined with the last skill, but you get that so late. On its own, it is pretty mediocre. The fact that he has to pay an upkeep sucks, mostly because it means more micromanaging: I missued it all the time, leaving it on when it wasn’t needed so I wasted mana, and forgetting to turn it on and therefore not Provoking and dealing 0 damage (well, technically 1) with melee weapons once I got Smiting Strikes.
Smiting Strikes: again, this is great but you only enjoy it for 3 floors. And, unlike (almost) everyone else who just gets nice little extra things that aren’t pivotal to how they feel, this changes Hero for the better by a lot. It gives him the ability to Provoke in enemy phase, which means he can both go fast with AoE Provokes or slow and provoke everyone with counters, making him more flexible. This also allows you to actually use Lances and Swords without having to invest away from MAG if you want them to deal some damage, which is nice because then you can use the boosted DEF and RES from Judgment mode and also get more utility (which underutilized tbh: in retrospective this could have allowed for many things, but I just never bothered).
His OOS skill sucks.
I got Hero no Skills, just item ranks, and even then I only spent 10 MEM: one for Items B, since he runs OOM pretty easily so Mana Drops help greatly; and B anima because… I honestly don’t know what I wanted that for. Didn’t use it at all.
Stats:
I actually got hero some Mag, all the way to 20, since I wanted him to have stronger heals and a bigger range with tomes. 100% worth it. After that it was maxed def, enough speed not to get doubled and as much HP as I could get. He was, along with GGWP and Almanac, the unit with the highest POW.
All in all, Hero is a tank that favors fast maps that allow him to use his movement and range in his favor. However, he leaves a lot to be desired ability wise apart from Holy Provocation and Divine Strkes. His ability to use Divine magic allows him to act as a support in maps where Zelg can do most of the tanking, so he almost always has something he can help with if you give him a good loadout.
- Double Down
I’m honestly not a great fun of DD as a character: most of the others feel very relatable, or at least I can see myself interacting and having fun with them… while DD is just like “Hulk Smash!”. This does make for some funny jokes, but they tend to be at her expense and not her being funny. I do like her friendship with Dazzle, but that’s mostly because Dazzle is a great character.
As an unit, though? DAMN. She’s a monster. When she first joins her stat distribution leaves a lot to be desired being slow and super squishy, and her Wary Stance might trick you into making her an offtank. But as I mentioned, DPS want Speed and Str/Mag, and she’s a DPS alright. Every skill apart from Wary Stance just screams at you to make her a monster that one shots everything in her path. She shreds bosses, one rounding or close to one rounding them with proper setup (AKA give her a Brave Custom Arm and have Dazzle stand next to her).
6 move is phenomenal. She may only be able to use Axes, but that’s all she needs: Axes are the best damage dealing weapons, and oh boy does she make good use of them. From Killer Axes getting her 75%+ crits when combined with killer and her other skills, AoE, anti armor, Brave weapons… uh, tbh those are all the axes you need. But the lack of variety doesn’t make them any weaker.
Skills:
Rooted Blow: your first damage skill, and tbh it is quite nice. When she joins it is a +10 dmg with Steel Axes, or +8 with Killer Cleaver If you want to keep the higher crit. The downside blows, but it can get the job done if you need that extra damage to kill something without getting countered.
Wary Stance: trap skill, ignore it completely.
Reckless Attack: now this is where DD starts absolutely slapping. This makes it so DD can hit twice before being countered, allowing her to kill most if not any regular enemy with impunity. Who cares if she takes double damage the next turn, nothing will survive to counter and you have tanks and your brain to stop her from being hit in enemy phase. And this gets even better once you have a Brave weapon, since she can hit FOUR times before being countered, demolishing any hope your enemies have of seeing the next turn. Just bonkers.
Grindskull: this is actually quite useful since you get Kzoora somewhat soon afterwards, so you can obliterate stuff in an AoE and then get your nuke back. Also helps with Brave Weapon durability. All around much more useful than I expected it to be. I’m a fan.
Luna Impact: and this right here is why DD is the absolutely strongest boss killer. You see that Stoneskin that halves your damage? Well, DD doesn’t. She singlehandedly took down the floor 51 boss in every single stage after she got damage resistance, just one rounding every health bar the moment the invulnerability wore off. The moment you get Luna Impact you probably want to spam it every single turn to blow elites and bosses up, which is why Soulsteal is so important on her.
DD was one of the characters that got a Memory Stone, since she benefits from several skills and she is one of the few characters that see a real benefit from her S rank weapons.
Killer: +50 crit almost every single attack against non-bosses? Sure, I don’t see why not. Ridiculous ability to be honest.
Soulsteal: you want to spam Luna Impact. This allows you to spam Luna Impact. Enough said.
Armsfaire because when you are hitting for at least 4 times each turn, +4 damage adds up.
Stats:
DPS go brr.
In conclusion: invest in DD, and after a couple levels watch her destroy anything that gets in your way.
Lady Orchid:
Lady Orchid feels like the character I’d be friends the most with. She’s fun, smart and easy going. She’s curious and kind of a nerd. Yeah, BFF. She’s also super cute and no I don’t say that just because she reminds me of my wife and I have a soft spot for any character that does that.
She’s also super relatable IMO because she’s someone who’s working in the kind of things that one doesn’t really think about when you imagine a world with magic, but that would probably be what most people would end up working at in such a world: the way to impact daily life with magic. (That gets thrown out of the window when she becomes a billionaire in the prologue, but she’s still cool).
As an unit, It took me a little while to understand Orchid’s main appeal. And I’m not talking about the scaling damage, even though that is pretty cool during long boss fights; no, I’m talking about her ability to either kill or damage multiple non-adyacent enemies in a single turn, a role unique to her until you get Almanac. Apart from that, she has an easy to proc mana recovery and has access to a Brave tome the moment she joins, making her simple to use but effective from the get go. She appreciates a support who can Restore her once Wildfire stacks get too high and maybe heal her once in a while.
Skills:
Firepact: your tool to recover mana. It lets you keep on the offensive while also getting resources back, and if you add Soulsteal you can get up to 3 mana while also finishing enemies off. One of the best mana recovery abilities.
Wildfire: Orchid’s bread and butter and what gives her an unique role in your party. Wildfire allows you to get up to 3 rounds of attack per turn at the cost of a DOT debuff. The most impactful use of this skill is giving Orchid the ability to dent or kill up to 3 enemies at once. Just find a spot where you can get reach them all and fire away (literally)! You can also use it to stack Inflame faster: a lot of my first turns with Orchid consisted of going for double Wildfire Inflame if it is enough to kill something, followed by either a regular Inflame or Firepact Inflame, stacking Coursing Heat very quickly while most of the time killing an enemy and heavily denting another. You have to be careful, though: this can very quickly eat through your mana, so you gotta keep a pretty close eye on that.
Coursing Heat: this skill gives Orchid a way to stack damage for all her attacks when using Inflame. While fun to stack and on long maps can actually make a big difference in Orchid’s damage output, I find that by the time you got your Inflame stacks to max you don’t have enough mana to use your best spells or the battle is almost over. I feel like the best play is to get some stacks early, and then only Inflame if you can one round with it or finish an enemy off with Firepact. But, again, this is really fun because numbers go up serotonin goes up, so it is a well designed skill in my book.
What I DON’T like is that this makes Inflame pretty much designed for Ochid, since no one else can use it as effectively, so it feels like every other anima user got shafted of one more spell option.
Vow of Flames: allows you to Firepact with any Fire Tome, which means you get to get a hit with a stronger tome with better accuracy for cheap or even free, and can Inflame while keeping your mana up. It doesn’t even have a drawback with Flare, since that can’t double anyway. Once again, simple yet useful.
Cataclysm: as with most final skills, I barely used Cataclysm since I completely forgot it was an option while planning my turns (I only used it once, and only to see what it did). While it is cool that you can get one really strong AoE hit for free (and can even Firepact to get 2 mana back in the process), the fact that it locks an inventory space meant that I never really felt like using it
.
But now that I’m writing this I start to wonder if it works with the Armsthrift Banner, because if it does then you can walk around with Dazzle and one shot stuff after you get some Inflame stacks. Something else that I’ll have to try next time I play this. But, then again, this is only available for 3 floors, one of them being a bosses-only map so you probably won’t be getting Armsthrift triggering easily and chances are Dazzle has something better to be doing standing around with this banner (like, you know, standing around with a DIFFERENT banner).
When it comes to buyable skills Soulsteal is a given, but something I wish I had invested in earlier is Enrage. It has great synergy with Wildfire since you can easily proc it yourself, and while it boosts her damage a little it also gives her that sweet sweet +1 move, allowing her to position herself better for those multi-enemy scorchings.
For the rest of the MEM, she got A anima for more options (never felt the need for S rank) and she comes with B items for Mana Drops. As I mentioned, I really liked spending a lot of her mana early so her OOS seemed useless so I didn’t get it, and even if I played her differently +20 hit isn’t really relevant until very late in the game when you are rocking Blood Drops, and a little extra avoid isn’t something you want to depend on to survive a turn (and it is nullified by Blood Drop anyway).
Stats:
DPS baby. Full speed and Mag with enough HP to survive the counter. NEXT.
Lady Orchid is a fun character both in her interactions and the way she feels to play, definitely filling that traditional black mage feel by focusing completely in dealing damage with very little utility while still allowing for some clever plays.
Damn, I have already written this much and I STILL have half the characters left? Ugh. Well, at least I think I can keep it short from here.
The last batch of characters you get are the ones I felt the least connection with – with the exception of two of them – since you don’t really meet them until they join you. They may get mentioned or may have a line from them, but the first time we get anything out of them is the drama after beating Floor 40. And while the detective segment is cool and all, I really couldn’t care about any of them and just wanted them to suck it up and keep playing.
Also, unlike the previous party merge, you get a lot more units and they start with 3+ skills; and if that wasn’t enough, only 2 floors after the merge everyone gets ANOTHER skill, so it can get a little overwhelming. If I’m being honest, apart from Almanac, GGWP and sometimes Chidori, none of these units felt great to play (the cleric was also fine I guess, if really simple) and I only really cared for Almanac and Chidori as characters, since you get to see their antics from very early in the game.
Longinus.
Longinus feels like the kind of player you would like to be the captain in an e-sports team (which I guess is why she ends up in one). Focused, serious, devoted to winning, while not being a dick. I really can’t say much else about her character wise, though.
Unit wise, she is the absolute worst victim of Charge Lance syndrome. She is as slow as Zelg, however she has a problem with one of her best skills allow her to give mobility to everyone in an AoE. Guess who can’t take advantage of it? That’s right, herself. This means If you go casting Terrify to get everyone in a good position she is almost always left behind, unable to do much. She’s also not as tanky as Zelg or Hero due to inferior defensive skills, leaving her as an offtank that focuses more on supporting whenever she is actually in range to use her skills. Her being able to Taunt in an AoE IS pretty good, but it was more of a panic button if no other tank was in range.
Skills:
Divert: I think I underutilized Shirk tbh, definitely one of the status I want to try and use more next playthrough as in theory it should allow for a much more offensive playstyle while still keeping your squishies safe. Therefore, I underutilized this skill and don’t feel qualified to say much about it. I do feel like she has better stuff to do in her turn, though.
Command Mode: command mode is interesting. In theory, this allows her to take magical attacks quite well. In practice, she’s a sitting duck who can’t even counter them more than once per turn and loses half her DEF making her quite vulnerable to mixed enemy formations.
The most important part, though, is it making her other skills free actions. She has other 3 fantastic skills that she can spam to really buff her allies if needed. The bad part is that it has an upkeep and spamming her skills will leave her OOM, since she has no good way to regain mana, forcing her to rely on Mana Drops and getting mana infused to her by her teammates, resources that I’d rather spend on other units with more impactful skills or on the DPS so they can keep clearing the enemies.
Shout: the best Provoke in the game bar none. AoE 2 that also boosts allies damage? Sign me up! The problem, again, is that she is too slow, making it hard to be proactive with your Provokes so she is outclassed by Hero, and she has no way to Provoke reactively. A great skill, she just can’t use it at its full potential.
Terrify: her best skill, IMO. +2 move is INSANE, and you give it in an AoE of 2? Just pop this in the middle of your team and watch them be able to clear a huge area of the map with their new reach. The problem is that Longinus will probably be left behind, unable to keep supporting the team. Still one of the best skills in the game, even in her hands. This is the one that I kept spending her turns and mana on, and knowing I could just pop +2 move if needed opened a lot of possibilities.
Rally: a great buff for everyone, I usually used this to reach a benchmark to either survive a hit or one shot something. The fact that it lasts for 2 turns makes it even better. I spammed it way less that I expected to, mostly because my other buffs were often enough and I preferred to cast Terrify.
Read Movement is her OOS skill and she comes with it, and it honestly is pretty good. Being able to spend money on Skill instead of speed means she doesn’t have accuracy issues, which means she is probably good without a Blood Drop. This also means buying points in Skill if you want to use her Command Mode res buff doesn’t feel as bad.
I got her B items because she needs mana drops, and B axes because I wanted more options but I honestly never used them.
Stat wise, I maxed Skill, Def and HP. She wasn’t tanking much, but if I needed her to she could do a decent job.
Longinus is a character that is held back by her mediocre move. I honestly think that, since she doesn’t need to land a hit to Provoke, it might be worth it to get her rank A in items to equip the Anchor Boots after which I fully expect to see her with new eyes. In my first playthrough, though, she feels like wasted potential that, outside of a few first turns where she is still close to the team, struggled to make any contribution.
CincoDeSeptgo
Even less to say about this guy. Was not a fan of the way he speaks, his personality is nonexistent, and I struggled to find use for any of his skills except for that one mechanic that is pretty much made with him in mind (invincible entombed boss). He has no damage reduction so he can’t really tank, his skills except for one leave him vulnerable to be absolutely destroyed by counter attacks, and having to spend mana on your other DPS in order for him to trigger what could have been his best skill makes it not worth it most of the time.
Didn’t spend much in his stats since my money felt better spent elsewhere. His saving grace is his OOS, his last skill and the fact that Polearms offer so much utility. Still, probably tied for worst unit in the game IMO.
I don’t even feel like talking about his individual skills, since I barely used them. Blastback is good since it allows him to actually deal some damage while staying safe and displacing enemies. Swap allows you to trigger team attack, but is usually not worth it: I mostly used to effectively grant 2 more move to someone else. Compose makes him a great mana battery… once. Still a great skill.
I got him Aid just so I had something to do with his turns. Otherwise he was a mana battery for Loonie, Devoting himself to her.
Just a character that feels bad all around.
Gosthen/The Lawww
A full support healer! Ghosten was pretty bland until you find out he is the Real PKer, and… well, he is a bad person. Can’t say much about his character. I liked Lawrence a lot more, being smart, snarky, fun but also caring a lof about justice. I wish he spent more time in the party.
As an unit, this is your stereotypical support. While the other units that can use Light Magic until now felt like they had other roles and only had Light as a backup, this unit right here is all about healing and increasing your other units capabilities to blow stuff up.
Light Range+: one more to the list of super simple yet very impactful abilities. That +1 range comes in handy a lot, mostly for being able to reach an ally that needs a heal , but also for reaching enemies or allies with your support spells. Entrap and Rouse are such powerful spells, and being able to use them at effectively 1 less mana thanks to the passive recovery of this skill does stack.
Live To Serve: saw absolutely no use, since my man shouldn’t be taking hits.
Powerstaff: if only the good spells weren’t so expensive, and if he had a way to recover lots of mana fast. Alas, this is not the case, but this is an insanely powerful ability so it makes sense that it is expensive to use. The amount of stuff you can pull off thanks to this is crazy, making me get B items to be able to down mana drops as Pray was not able to keep up.
Pray: good for those down turns where you have no need to use him to execute your turn. Also great for long maps, as there’s usually plenty of opportunities to use it. More mana is always good.
Aum: yeah, he’s almost never at full MP. I guess you can combo this with Cinco’s Compose for an emergency revival if something goes really wrong, but usually if people start dying and I can’t clear the floor in the next couple moves the run is doomed anyway.
His OOS is Infiltrator, which I once again probably underutilized it as I always kept him in the back when I could have been way more aggressive with his positioning. Maybe next time I’ll actually see how useful this is. Or maybe I won’t get it at all, who’s to say.
Soulsteal was there to get him mana if I needed to use him to finish an enemy off, but it only came up once so this felt like a waste of money and MEM.
If you read this it should come as no surprise that I got A rank in Divine: Rouse and Entrap are just too good to pass up. B in items for Mana Drops, didn’t touch Anima.
Once again, a simple yet good unit concept. His real power comes from the spells he gets access to, not his skills, but that’s enough to make him very useful. I don’t see myself making any changes to his kit.
IlllIlIll
Lines, as I have seen people call him in this thread, is a character that is very cool because of what he embodies in the world of the game: someone who is forced to accept a change in reality that goes against his beliefs, since Divine magic demonstrate the existence of a God that he did not believe in, and he himself has been blessed with the powers of such God. This completely changes his view of the world, and you get a peek at how he’s dealing with this through his conversations with the crew.
The fact that in the end he decides to go throw fists with God for what he did to him is both absurd and completely in line with his character.
As an unit, though, Lines is pretty uninteresting. He’s not a great tank since he can’t Provoke, but he can bait magic users with his high resistance. He doesn’t have any DPS skills that would make it worth investing in his offense, meaning he gets no money to bolster his damage. He gets stuck with Swords, the worst melee weapon type, although this does give him a way to strike using his MAG for damage with the magic swords, if you do end up investing in that.
However, in the end, the only thing noteworthy is his aura, which he can stack with that of divine tomes to increase the survivability of the team. However, he isn’t nearly as impactful as any of the other aura bearing units. In the end, I just used him as another Divine magic user.
Skills:
Imbue Shell: ah, such an annoying skill. The fact that you need to have a Divine tome equipped to restore mana makes some turns very akward. Would have been so much better, and made Lines that much more usefu, if he got the Priest treatment and had an unconditional +1 mana per turn. Though maybe that would make him too similar.
Blessed Might: adding RES to healing is pretty nice, since that means he can do decent heals without having to invest any money in his Mag after he joins. More hit is ok, but not nearly enough to drop Blood Drops if you ever want to hit, and the extra melee damage is pretty meh when he still won’t be denting any enemies without investing in Str.
Hallowed Blade: nice if you need a little extra damage to finish an enemy and still keep your auras. Still won’t be dealing any damage. Used like once or twice. Sonds so good in theory, but the reality is that you would still need to invest in offensive stats for this to be good and you have better places to spend your money on.
Aura of Protection: the one good skill. More Auras more good.
Auto Repel: hey, you won’t go OOM from countering if you leave your Divine on! This is actually so good, if it weren’t because you’d rather tank with your actual tanks and murder every enemy in your turn so Lines doesn’t really get a chance to counter anyone.
For buyable skills, I got him Leadership because more auras.
Denial, his OOS, is kind of ok… except that most important debuffs happen during combat OR make you worse in combat, and since Lines isn’t really fighting anyone this kind of goes to waste.
I should have gotten him A in Divine so he could use the stronger tomes and serve as an extra Entraper / Rouser, but alas, never did.
When it comes to buying stats, I think I got him a little Mag for better heals and a little Res expecting him to be good at baiting mages, but he never amounted to much more than an aura and heal bot, as well as using Restore to remove Wildfire stacks from Orchid. He never got to bait anyone as mixed enemy formations destroyed him.
Lines is a character that is pretty cool in the context of how the world has changed in this universe. In the Tower of Dreams, though, he is as uninteresting as it gets.
Shimmer
The main thing I’ve got to say about C. Shimmer is: free weapon ranks, and with that, a second bow user! Bows are so good in this game, so getting a second bow user was super good. Coming with free access to Convoy was also invaluable, often using her skill just to access convoy and choosing bows again.
As a character Shimmer subverts what you would expect from a magical girl, being a MMA fighter who likes to throw hands. I would have liked to see more interactions with DD, since I feel they share a simple mentality: have fun and beat people down.
As an unit, Shimmer comes at a point where killing everything is the better play so having an extra tank is not that great, and enemies hit hard enough than an off-tank is bound to end up pretty badly hurt after only a couple exchanges (having a second HP bar helps).
She has incredible flexibility, being able to use all the tools this game’s arsenal offers; and if you read the rest of this review, you’ll notice that I consider the flexibility all these tools offer the best part of the game. Not having to spend MEM to get your weapon ranks up to S is also a BIG money saver.
However, this comes with a couple caveats: Shimmer is basically a worse version of the other units that specialize in whatever weapon type you pick, and if you pick magic she doesn’t have a reliable way to recover mana, having to depend on Mana Drops or get killing shots with Soulsteal.
Therefore, C. Shimmer spent most of her time with a bow, which allow for chip damage, finishing enemies and applying status. I do feel like I wasted her potential, though, since surely there was something better to do with so many options.
Skills:
Magical Transformation
Convoy access, allows you to get S rank in whatever weapon type you want and can even provoke in a pinch. This is what makes Cerulean Shimmer unique and the basis of her as an unit. The main issue with this is that for this to be used at its full potential you have to buy several different weapons, and that costs money that you might have to spend outfitting everyone else.
Muscle Magic
This is here so you don’t have to spend money and POW on both physical and magic stats while still being to use any and all weapons efficiently. I never used it since in every given map Shimmer had a dedicated roll from the start, but the option is there.
Friend Shot
Sounds ok but it forces you to position in a certain way to take advantage of it, and even if you crit this is only hits one target, 10 mt for a skill is pretty bad and you don’t have other things to boost the damage. It does Provoke, but it only one unit at a time while Shimmer doesn’t have ways to mitigate damage on her kit.
Love Charm
Conditional Provoke is like, the worst thing you can get. Things can spiral out of control if the enemy you needed Provoked doesn’t get the status, and the fact that Shimmer doesn’t have damage mitigation and you have to get low on HP for this to work makes for a pretty bad combination.
Grand Finale
This is cool since it allows you to play aggressively with your positioning knowing you have a second HP bar. It also works with Love Charm since if you die due to your low HP you revive, but this means that if you needed to Provoke something with Love Charm you can get screwed over by now being full HP. Can still save you from a slip up (I know it did for me in floor 50).
As for Grafts, I got her OOS and it sounded pretty good… until you realize that you very rarely care about weapon triangle and you’ll be using your weapons mostly because of their unique effects, so it is mostly useless. Soulsteal is there because it is a unit that has no reliable way to get mana back.
Stat wise, I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to do with her. Some speed to double slow enemies, enough Str for her to deal noticeable damage and one shot fliers with bows, and some Def for her to be able to tank a couple shots as needed.
In the end, Shimmer feels like a character that is there to show you all the depth the weapons in this game have, but fails due to not having the tools to exploit them (mana for magic, damage mitigation for tank, damage boosting for DPS) and being outright outclassed in every roll.
I think she would have felt much better if you got her in the starter party or after the first party merge since units that can fill different roles are at a premium due to low unit count, but by the time you get her you just have better options for every job.
GGWP
Another ex-Merchant player, and just like the rest of them he is super sweaty about the game. Nominated for “the most likely to be an isekai anime protagonist”, he of course wields swords. As a character, he is the guy who only thinks about games, games and more games, to the point of being rude sometimes by brushing aside concerns about other things. The most interesting part regarding him was the detective segment, to be honest.
As an unit, this guy right here is your third boss killer, and he’s GOOD. Not as great as DD, but that’s an very high bar so I can’t be mad. He’s the one reason physical swords exist, and of course you want damage damage and damage (not like swords do anything else right?). He was mostly outfitted with Pursuer, but the weapon that truly makes him a boss / elite killer is Unsheater: double damage + double the attacks with Swift Sword or even Astra completely melts everything except bosses with insane damage reduction.
This sword, however, is also the reason DD beats him: she doesn’t have a condition attached to her Brave Weapon, and therefore doesn’t need the support GGWP needs to do her job; she comes earlier, too, so you have more control over her stat distribution. Also Luna Impact FTW.
The two advantages GGWP has is that his skills give him more survivability, and that swords have slightly more HIT, which coupled with some points in Skill allows him to use a different accessory than Blood Drop without feeling like you’re throwing (which also increases his effective bulk since then he gets to keep his AVO): the Desperado Ring allows ALL of his multiple attacks – either 4 with Swift Sword / Astra alone or 8 when paired with Unsheater – to go first, dealing absurd damage even if he misses a couple.
Skills:
Swift Sword: Simple, to the point. Double all attacks with no penalty and a low Mana Cost. Get Soulsteal and you can just use this every turn of the fight.
Spot Dodge: this allows him to attack an enemy that he might not one shot without taking damage from the counter. It does have a CD, but it having a 0 mana cost means you can use this pretty liberaly.
Evasive Offense: you can actually make use of this thanks to dropping Blood Drop! However, Iike always, I’d advise against depending on luck to not take damage. Kill them before they can counter instead.
Vantage Strike: Do this to chip at a boss with Imperial so someone else can take the kill, or to finish an enemy next to another one that you can kill with Vantage. Didn’t use it much, tbh.
Astra: this right here is the murder button. The huge +50 crit means you’re hitting 2 crits on average, 4 with Unsheater. The main problem is the HUGE mana cost means you can’t use this much, as then you are OOM with no built in mana recovery, and you usually want your DPS to have 100% uptime. Still, if you need something to die and DD is busy somewhere else, this is the skill you pick.
For MEM things, Soulsteal is mandatory to keep the damage coming and Armsfare is awesome if you are hitting a lot of times. I also recommend getting his OOS for a funny scene (don’t keep it, though… UNLESS). I got him A in Swords and A in items to be able to equip Desperado Ring, which needed a Memory Stone.
Stat wise, full Spe and Str as expected of my physical DPS units, as well as some Skill since I dropped Blood Drop (heh). A little sprinkle of HP with leftover points.
All in all, GGWP is a weaker DD against bosses but can surpass her vs enemies without damage reduction with some support. He is one if your better units, easily one rounding most enemies and is part of the reason you can be so aggressive with your approach to levels. Just make sure to keep Swift Swording everything, and when you need huge damage use one of the positional tools you get access to – mostly Shift, Entrap and CincoDeSeptgo skills – and unleash the Unsheater upon your foes.
Chidori
And here we are, one of two characters of the final party merge I actually cared about. Chidori is a very goofy woman who gets along with pretty much everyone and seems to enjoy every aspect of the game: combat, exploration, easter eggs, glitches, you name it. She also happens to be very wealthy and have the best wife (excluding mine obviously). Her antics are always funny, and her ever positive outlook makes for a delightful character.
Unit wise, she’s a spellsword: the first and probably only unit you get that can effectively use all those swords that you have been unlocking, both because her kit gives her ways to make up for the negatives and because she quite literally makes them stronger by “unlocking their true power”. She pretty much works as a mage scaling better with Mag than Str, having a decent mana recovery option, being able to fight from 2 range and getting access to some of the best offensive spells via swords.
Skills:
Ether Strikes: this is pretty much a passive that ensure that her mana recovery method is actually viable, by adding Mag/2 to her physical sword attacks. The Active I never used since if you are actually spending mana to attack you are better off using the spell options.
Energy Funnel: speaking of mana recovery, this is actually pretty good: just find an enemy that another unit poked previously and finish it to get 3 mana back (since you obviously have Soulsteal, right?). Mana recovery that also deals damage is the best form of mana recovery as it means you can keep the tempo up, which is very important in most maps once you get past the mid game – going slow usually kills runs.
Blade Lore: ah, yeah, the skill that fixes magic swords and gives Chidori her gimmick… this skill annoys me because it is just here to say “hey, magic swords are for this girl right here! This excuses how bad they are before this point, I promise!”. I know I’m repeating myself, but it annoys me because it means we could have been unlocking new and cool weapons instead of placeholders for when Chidori joined. It gets better when I tell myself that this is supposed to be an MMORPG and the items aren’t designed around your units and there are probably tons of other players that have classes that actually used the swords, and it makes the game feel more real… but it still annoys me because swords suck until the very end of the game.
Ok, now I’m over it. I promise.
Blade Aegis: damage reduction! I… completely forgot about this. She still feels incredibly frail, but that’s the life of the DPS. Maybe if I had taken this into account in order to invest less money in her bulk. But alas, seemed pretty irrelevant to me.
Bladesong Stance: and welcome to one of the strongest lv 20 abilities in the game! Bladesong Stance is every bit as powerful as it sounds: you can spam you Brave spells as much as you want, Luna every Res tank without a care in the world. And if you keep on the offensive (as you should), this isn’t even that expensive: with Soulsteal, this can end up being as low as 2 mana per cast. This takes her from slightly weak, having to balance using your strong spells with dealing lower damage with Energy Funnel and the weaker sword spells, to a competent magic damage dealer, taking over Looney and Philo in the magical DPS department.
Her OOS, Seasonal Revolution, is her getting a sixth different skill in an attempt to make her interesting… but everything the skill does can already be done with a specific sword or has a very bad negative effect (apart from sealing an inventory slot, which is already VERY bad). The only reason I used this was to see what all the skills were, and I couldn’t have been more disappointed.
Now speaking of stuff you actually control, you already know Soulsteal is mandatory and since she gets to attack with a Brave effect every turn Armsfaire does great. A in swords so she has access to everything and B in items for mana drops.
Stats are DPS like.
In the end, Chidori is one of my favorite characters, but I dislike her as an unit. Magic swords were clearly designed for her, which means you get to groan whenever you unlock a magic sword as it is effectively useless until the late game when you get her, as if swords didn’t have it rough enough. And while she does beat Philo and Looney DPS wise, she has nowhere near their flexibility while laking the damage to significantly dent bosses, making her mostly useful to deal with Adds.
Almanac
Saved the best for the last, Almanac right here has everything going for her.
As a character she’s a badass. She’s an actual, super skilled bodyguard, has the coordination and skill to play a class that literally no one else can because of how difficult it is to use without throwing up, is the best wife and will absolutely find you and kill you if you dare do anything to her. And all this while also being fun to have around and very smart, too.
And if her character being so good wasn’t enough, Almanac is the best unit in the game. Hands down. Part of the reason is because she has access to Primal magic – if you read my opinion about Philo, you already know Primal is GOOD. But then she goes ahead and takes this further by having the strongest action economy of any other unit. It’s ridiculous what you can do with her. You have to sit down and really take your time to read through her abilities, then go take some air and then come back and read them again. Afterwards, play a level and screw up several times because you misunderstood how it worked. Then play again and have an epiphany as you realize that she trivializes a lot of the threats in future levels.
And I don’t even have to complain about swords, as the only one that matters for her – Lightsaber – is already unlocked when you get her!
Skills:
Shadow Arts: you get another turn after you use Primal Magic. Yep, just an extra free turn. Just like that. WHAT THE HELL. This is the skill she had when this started. HOLY HELL. I mean, sure, she lacked mana recovery so she probably couldn’t spam spells every turn BUT THIS IS SO STRONG.
Shadowblade: didn’t take long for her to get mana recovery lore wise, and it is in a way that boosts her damage considerably. Oh, and she still gets to use her next skill afterwards.
ShadowStep: Teleport to an ally. Infinite range. AND GET TO MOVE AGAIN. What the hell.
In Shadow: you don’t need to use the extra turn that ShadowBlade into ShadowStep gives you? No problem, here, let me give you Shirk, Canto+ and more HIT and CRIT. TBH I almost never had this on since I spent the charges all the time to zip around the battlefield murdering enemies or supporting allies.
Shadowclad: apart from your first Shadowblade, you’ll pretty much always have at least 2 Dark Energy when you Shadowblade so you’ll take way less damage from counters; it is, however, pretty easy to make that 3 so you get to Brave as well, because being able to teleport wasn’t enough.
For MEM things I got Soulsteal because obvious reasons, but then I took Lifetaker. As strong as she is, she has no absurd damage skill that allow to always kill her enemies before they counter, so she tends to take damage; this allows her to heal up and keep poking around the battlefield uninterrupted.
Got her A swords because Lightsaber is so important to her damage with Shadowblade, and then B Items for Mana Drops.
This means that, even with a MEM stone, I had to leave Primal at B, but this still gives you Shift, Fog, Encroach, Levitate, Luna and Fargaze – all great spells.
Stats are DPS like, not much to say here to be honest.
Almanac arrives at the end of the game for a good reason: she gives that rush of “endgame unit” that most of her partners lack, and while she would have trivialized a lot of encounters in previous floors she arrives when things are so hectic that her dealing with multiple threats at once is not only helpful, but pretty much required.
Her interactions with other characters are also very good, helped by the fact that we get to know her from much earlier compared to the rest.
Oh, and she is also a possible solution to Floor 50 without the Zelg plan. That’s also cool.
FINALLY DONE.
This took me so long to write (6 months holy cow). However, this game is such a work of art that I felt that I had to do my part in letting you know how good it is and helping you do even better in your future projects.
I hope the feedback I give helps you keep making great games, or at the very least you find pleasure in knowing you gave me one of the best gaming experiences I have had.
Cheers.
Now to finish the rest of the trilogy (already done with Dragon Herald, only Isekai Emblem to go. Really thrilled with getting to know Luna before the events of Server72! She’s very different so far).
S72 biggest glazer
idk doot if anyone has my back i know it’s gotta be my man HVP
several people can be at the #1 spot
I never really reported back after beating this game like… over a year ago by now. Oof. Sorry about that lol. I do want to say though that once I DID finally get through the section that was giving me trouble and beat the romhack my immediate thought was that it was the most fun Fire Emblem experience I’d ever had. From the characters, to the plot and ESPECIALLY the gameplay, everything clicks so perfectly. I’ve been constantly shilling it to my friends ever since and I REALLY hope that more content is released in some way or that this world and characters are re-explored again in another game.
Floor 52 was my favorite (or whichever one it was that had the stationary Hardman and the constantly shifting stage w every boss health bar). S72 felt like it was at its best when the gameplay was quick and bite-sized and every situation felt like a puzzle to be solved, which due to its compactness only had a limited number of possible “answers”, and the many different boss health bars you fight in quick succession in that map felt like the perfect encapsulation of that type of gameplay.
Floor 50 was by far my least favorite however, it reminded me A LOT of the final map in Vestaria Saga since having so many units to pick the moves of meant that every turn took a WHILE and made it very time-consuming if you had to restart. And having the map be so big meant there was a LOT of room to make small mistakes through the run that’d end up costing your attempt which while very true to the MMO experience, I didn’t enjoy as much as having the challenge in a more condensed form.
I may have accidentally sent this message before I meant to initially oops
I saw the original send and was about to meme but you edited too fast. Too fast on the sticks.
You know it
…I need to replay this soon
Hey, just remembered, is Time Trial mode still being worked on, or is that cancelled/on the backburner? Is cool either way, no pressure, just wondering
75% cancelled, 25% “i’ll do it at some point b/c i’m really bored”
Understandable lmao
Started playing this recently, just hit the 20s. I’m enjoying the writing & characters a lot! Excited to see what happens with all these plot threads in the background (game hack, top players disappearing, the mystery of floor 50).
One minor complaint I have is that “shift a super-powerful enemy closer, hit them with arrows, and then convert them” trivializes a bunch of levels I’ve recently played (dragon, a few of the early 20s). It’s fun to find an overpowered strat, but I’m hoping to be able to handle later levels in other ways. I’m also a little worried I’ve made bad builds if I can’t handle the levels without that cheese. 
I enjoy the “waking up as different characters” thing. Was that inspired by Homestuck? Gives me kinda that vibe…
