Very, very slowly, over months on bus rides to work and back, I made my way through this hack and can finally review it in full.
Warning 1: this spoils like, everything about the plot, I wasn’t interested in keeping out spoilers, so open at your own risk.
Warning 2: this review is 6000 words long.
Review
To preface everything, I consider myself to be “average” in FE skill. Which is to say, I am worse than pretty much any hardcore FE fan, I don’t dabble in nor am particularly interested in high level strats or LTCing or what have you, at the same time I believe I’m better than other FE players in my friend group (to whom standard 3H difficulties are a bit of a toughie and who play on casual).
I played this hack on Normal difficulty and I felt that it was perfectly adequate for my skill level. It was somewhat tight at the beginning, more or less at my level in the midgame, and a bit too easy at the lategame (though still required paying attention). It was a clean and well designed experience throughout, I highly enjoyed how almost all of the traditional classes were reworked in some form, and almost always to give the player more options in how to use each one. I do think that with every other class becoming mixed str/mag, magic becomes the obvious choice of attack for most mixed units - because most enemy classes still have much more def than res. So, for example, Kairos is obviously going to use Fire Brand or Runesword instead of equally strong str swords simply because mag is much more effective. Mag is also the easiest way to bait the common heroes with full WT access and Triangle Adept. And Mag having 1-2 access as opposed to str also doesn’t help, Kyra for me became a primarily light user because of 1-2 access, at least until I received two insanely cracked lategame bows which she began to exclusively use.
The maps were generally designed well, sometimes they felt a bit empty terrain-wise but they generally did their job.
The primary gimmick is, of course, only having one healer, Apate (which is a LIE, you chicken out of the gimmick and give the player Tiresias halfway through the hack, but I digress). I think the mechanic was at its strongest in the first half of the hack. There, not only is the healing more crucial because your units are more frail, but Apate is also far weaker as a unit, only having basic heal, so when you don’t have her by your side, you really feel it, and it really encourages you to bunch together and avoid splitting off unless absolutely necessary. Later on, when your units turn bulkier and Apate gains both Powerstaff and Physic, it becomes much easier to deal with, and Powerstaff allows you to cover both halves of the army with Apate in all but the largest split maps. Perhaps because I played on Normal, but I never saw the need to deploy and train up Tiresias when Powerstaff Apate alone did the job (and tbf it’s not like Normal units clink you for 0 dmg - even tanks like Alonso and Jane could be taken out by merely three units if I wasn’t careful).
Perhaps this is a good thing, honestly. You get your money’s worth with the gimmick at the start of the game and then loosen up the restrictions later on with new healers and buffed Apate. Plus it helps the player feel like they’re getting stronger in more than just their units statting up.
Anyway, as you could tell at the beginning, I am not much of a gameplay person, so that’s it about the gameplay side for now, it’s all story review from here on out.
I could kind of tell as I (very slowly) played this that you were wanting to be a little subversive in the story side of the hack much like you were in the gameplay side. There’s traitors in your midst, the cute baby trainee dies, she’s chopped to pieces, the little brother we were supposed to save dies. The gang following Kyra are, besides the starting crew, various villainous types more often than not - bandits, clearly self-serving mercenaries, corrupt plotting nobles, even a handful of psychos are in there like Nicaea. Dolus even lampshades the subversion by lamenting in his boss convo with Kyra that he gets got by a peasant commoner and not a prince or noble or whatever you would expect of a “standard” FE game. I think though the story is pretty standard in broad strokes. Ultimately, it ends as a battle for the fate of the whole world between good and evil without worrying much about nuance (not that it needs to). By the end of the story, Kyra is essentially a Shonen protagonist - a plucky hero whose biggest power is pretty much just the power of friendship. Her allies openly recognize this in convos before the final battle, she recognizes this in her fight/recruitment of Lorenzo, she recognizes this in her convo with Apate when Apate asks her to kill her, so on and so forth.
It is, of course, quite powerful that Kyra chooses to become this kind of protagonist in spite of everything that happened to her. Compared to another Shonen protagonist, say, Alm (whom Kyra funnily enough bears some resemblance to minus the whole secret royalty aspect), she goes through far more hardship and very personal betrayal. I was gonna write here about how it’s strange that she surrounds herself with such suspicious and clearly untrustworhy individuals even after she was betrayed by one of her closest allies, but perhaps that’s for the best. After all, by the end of the story, many of them go through their own, less mentioned character arcs where Kyra’s sheer protagonistry turns them more reliable and worthy of a modicum of trust. Maybe we all need a Kyra in our lives, someone to assume the best in even the worst of us.
If I were to rank the strength of the story in chunks, I’d say it has a really strong opening, a fairly good end, and a middle that is just kind of whatever.
The start of the story is really good. It sets up the most important mysteries incredibly well - i.e. who is Apate, who is Dolus, and why are healing arts forbidden. It relies on fairly common tropes to set up the story, but they are executed very well, and it has a very good flow and a very clear sense of urgency, both in the Inquisition’s hunt for the heroes and in Elias’s illness. It characterizes Kyra well and it’s intertwined with the overall plot, in a way that is not really present in the rest of the hack - you wouldn’t really have the prison assault and then escape without Kyra being Kyra. You assault the prison, you escape the prison, both are also good chapters gameplay wise, you fight through to Glamorgan…
…and then it all kind of stops. The momentum of the story sort of fades away. The Inquisition does not follow the heroes to Glamorgan and Elias’s illness is a much more nebulous timer which the heroes cannot really do much about, so the sense of urgency is kind of lost and what follows is several chapters of what’s essentially side-stories in Glamorgan territory. Story wise, this is definitely the weakest part of the hack, and I remember hoping this part would end quickly and we’d go back to Tartarus. It also does not fit with the rest of the story tonally. You have what is a fairly dark and serious story and splice in a comedic segment more befitting of the lighter chapters of Dark Stone than what you had set up thus far.
I should be fair, of course. Isolated from the rest of the story, each of the chapters are alright, Polonius and Ophelia are fun, the three nobles are fun, they have some good zingers, I got Dahl and he was whatever as a character, kind of one note, didn’t use him I believe. But it’s the context around them which wounds them. I also believe that because this is where it is located is what harms the first of the three big plot twists, Pheme’s death. I already knew she would die, but I didn’t expect her to last so long that she reaches the midpoint of the hack, and then dies right after you fight, er, an artist troupe pretending to be zombies led by a BBW-loving moustache-twirling stage artist. That tonal whiplash is certainly something. And while I cannot claim to read into your thoughts and writing process, I have a suspicion that it was an awkward placement for you, too. Because immediately after, you have to brush off why Kyra throws herself into the next chapter (the “oh no Barlowe is kidnapped, who would have thought” mini-arc) without stopping to truly process Pheme’s death, with a line that goes vaguely like “I am grieving, but I am focusing on my mission and the world around me doesn’t stop”.
I thought about it, and I wonder - perhaps it would have worked somewhat better if her death were hastened and she died right as the team left Tartarus? It gives Pheme less time in the story but tbf it’s not like she really needs it and you get a fairly good impression of her in the first few chapters regardless, including one moment where she leaves you for the “she’s totally the traitor” red herring. Her dying at that point would also help sharpen the despair of fleeing Percote and Tartarus - because that way, it is guaranteed that not everyone makes it, and thus Pheme not only becomes “the one killed by the traitor”, but also, metaphorically, a symbol of Kyra’s old village life, which is brutally ended by betrayal. It would suddenly imbue the beginning of the Glamorgan arc with a sense of hanging dread - it almost seemed like we escaped certain doom in Tartarus and are safe, then bam, Pheme’s death shows us that Sandraudiga’s threat still hangs over us somehow. Granted, Pheme’s death during the Glamorgan arc also does something like that, and also Pheme’s death in Glamorgan also makes it feel slightly less filler-like. Just random thoughts.
Anyway, once the Glamorgan arc is finished and the gang goes back to Tartaros, the pace of the story once again picks up. Unlike with the first plot twist, the second plot twist (Soter’s betrayal) is handled expertly and I have no critiques or alternatives. It was also something I knew from the start, but the foreknowledge did not ruin the moment for me, since knowing it in advance gave an interesting perspective to his pre-betrayal scenes (I also don’t really care about spoilers in general, tbh. Maybe 'cause I don’t really care about plot twists and think they can be kind of dumb so knowing one in advance doesn’t particularly concern me.). The next “dying dream” camp scene maybe laid on Kyra’s anxieties a little too thick but it was still very engaging and memorable. That momentum you built up with the burning Percote scene and Soter’s betrayal was so strong that it even managed to overcome the roadblock that was ch19. I still however stood up when I saw the opening cutscene and went “why is this here?” Story wise, this is definitely the one chapter I’d throw out without a second thought, sorry. I know, you love your blorbo one-chapter wacky guffawing villains, but this was one of the worst places to put them in. It being immediately after Percote and before the siege on the capital is the hack equivalent of (I am sorry) that “Bulma turns to a frog” subplot in the middle of Goku vs Frieza in Dragon Ball. If it had to exist, it really should have been before the return to Percote, and the story reveal of Dolus’s sickness should have been put elsewhere.
But once that chapter is over, everything afterwards is all good, story wise. I did not know the third of the plot twists in advance (Sandraudiga coups Dolus and becomes the final villain of the hack), but it was, honestly, even appreciated? Dolus is a fascinating villain, but he is so distant from the entire plot that in the end it is only Apate to whom that confrontation is truly important. Sandraudiga, on the other hand, was there from the start. And, generally, her writing is simply far more fun to read, you really went off cramming as many great zingers into her lines as possible.
From what I’ve seen, the characters are considered to be the best quality of the hack and I personally agree. There are a few who are perhaps more one-note or don’t have much going on with them, but those which have more of a story focus are well developed and distinct without falling back to tired tropes or other such dealios. And of course the humor, when befitting the tone of the story at the moment, is pretty on-point, most of the character comedy works well. I don’t recall any conversation which felt particularly bad or off-putting. I won’t delve deeply into specific characters here because I will go through each member of my team later.
The worldbuilding feels paper thin to an almost intentional level. You can see it in the map of Tartarus we are regularly shown - it is made clear almost from the start that the two locations which matter in the whole kingdom (hierophate?) are Percote and the capital. Nothing else, thus nothing else is shown. This is not the approach to story writing I do (if you play LoS, you can tell that I can get mired in worldbuilding…), but I can respect it. This is a character story - a story of Kyra, a story of Apate, a story of Sandraudiga, etc.. It’s not a story of the logistics or economics of Tartarus and the rebellion it struggles against, it isn’t a story of the geopolitics between it, Zhu and Glamorgan, and so on and so forth. Still, though, perhaps a little more details into Tartarus wouldn’t have gone amiss? By the end of the story, we know very little about the Church beyond the Inquisition and what little we can glean from Kairos’s conversations (where he can be quite bereft of details; his convo with Fazang is an example of this, Fazang is pretty matter-of-fact about the Zhu pantheon while you need to wring out any details about the Church from Kairos), we don’t really know much about what Tartarus’s society is like beyond the Inquisition’s social conservatism and hunt for heretics (we know for sure that Tartarus has nobles, you meet them in the capital, so what’s the hierophant’s relation with them, does he share power with them or is it the absolute rule it’s seemingly implied), etc.
Still though. Don’t let these various nitpicks and contemplations distract you from the fact that I believe it is a very good story. The character writing is very strong, the story overall is fairly tightly executed despite a few whatever spots. I liked what I saw, hence I was able to write three thousand words about it. If I didn’t like it, I would have dropped it and never written anything. So have a star. 
Final team and unit thoughts
These were mobile screenshots so don’t mind them being much larger than desktop emulator screenshots. Going to go through my final team vaguely by order of recruitment.
The heroine herself. Incredible unit and became the unquestionably best unit from her promotion onwards. Strong, bulky, very easy 1-2 access, and at the end of the game carries not one but two insane bows to tear through anyone who gets in her way. Oh and both of them have 1 range (Cupid is even 1-3…). Foot unit mobility, but all the long range she’s got and ignoring terrain move means she is never truly behind in a formation. Not much to say there, I think everyone agrees that Kyra is S or at least close to it.
I’ve already talked a lot about Kyra in the previous section. Despite having a somewhat tougher and darker vibe, she is overall very Shonen-protagonisty - a local hero from a small village with hidden talent who powers through people of far greater caliber than her and saves the kingdom thanks to a whole lot of guts and a whole lot of trust in her friends and allies. She held on to her original motivation of saving her brother for longer than I anticipated - that still seemed like her primary motivation even as they approached the capital. Realistically, you’d wonder about the selfishness of killing a whole lot of people (even if they were pretty bad people) not for a greater cause, but solely to save her brother, but well that’s the usual problem with the “saving my family!” motivation trope. Even then, she fought for a good cause so I don’t really condemn her for the selfishness of that motivation.
Kyra ended up with Hestia in my game. Honestly… I’m a little unsure about this one? It is pretty cute, I won’t lie, but the relationship feels a little one-sided. Hestia is clearly head over heels for Kyra, but most of what Kyra mentions about Hestia is that she finds her and her looks cute. I wonder if they needed one more scene to establish Kyra’s trust in Hestia further to sell it to me. Actually, thinking about it - Hestia has a really good confiding scene with Kyra, about her backstory and the reason why the Inquisition went after her and how she became a rebel, and not only does it detail Hestia’s backstory but it also establishes how much Hestia actually trusts in Kyra - since, well, this isn’t something she’d want to tell, well, anyone. Why not a similar confide scene from Kyra’s side? We actually learn very little about Kyra’s backstory before the start of the game. We learn tidbits about her parents and what happened to her and Elias through her conversations with Elias, but that well goes completely dry once Elias is taken away from the team, none of the characters really ask Kyra about it and Kyra herself isn’t particularly interested in talking about it. So I wonder if Hestia could be that outlet after Elias’s kidnapping, through some kind of confide scene. Doesn’t have to be as traumatizing to Kyra as Hestia’s whole thing, of course, but I’m just wondering here.
It’s not at all a bad romance, I just think I was not completely sold it yet. Overall, great unit, great character, can’t wait for her to end up in Smash Bros.
The hag in white herself. Obviously, S tier unit by default. The fact that she seemingly carries several actual staves with her and hides them under her coat makes me wonder how she looks while walking. A staff is difficult to hide under a cloak, since unless it is a teeny tiny “staff” (in which case it would be a wand) it would be larger than her and thus blatantly stick out from her cloak. And several is even worse. Or maybe she has a Rescue staff solely to “rescue” staves she hides behind a tree somewhere.
As a character, she is very interesting, one of the most interesting in the hack I’d say. I predicted fairly early on that the reason why light magic is banned and why she is so somber about her past is that it involves draining people (a fairly common trope in darker fantasy stories), and I mostly predicted correctly. That doesn’t make it bad or cliche, of course. I also predicted fairly early on that she and Dolus have a past together and that too came to pass.
I think the final plot twist with her, even though I suspected it, makes her seem a lot more nefarious at the start than she perhaps comes off in the end. I am talking about the scene after the showdown with Dolus, where she admits that Dolus’s energy was not necessary to heal Elias after all and she could have done it at any time. Kyra’s forgiving of her is pretty powerful, it shows her character growth and that she’s moved on from solely looking after her family and now also looking after the world at large, but then…
…so that means Apate just manipulates literal nobodies she met yesterday into taking arms against the Inquisition, right? She just keeps throwing people at the Inquisition until she lucked out with meeting Kyra and she turned out to be precisely what was needed to take down Dolus. It’s implied throughout that she’s thrown many more people at Dolus with poor success before, yes, but that scene after Dolus’s death implies that she’d start recruiting people almost as soon as she met them. After all, Kyra was just a nobody village huntress at the time and Apate pulled on her heartstrings to throw her right at the Inquisition. That’s probably what you intended to do, yes, Apate can be quite grey and the story seeks to highlight that, it’s just an observation.
She’d be in good company with LoS Rhea, though Rhea has that Dark affinity which makes her even worse. 
One of the two obvious red herrings to distract you from Soter, her red herringness being incredibly blatant with that pre-Percote “I am so sorry… I am so sorry…” with no context given. As a unit, she was great all throughout. She acquired huge Mag early on and actually capped it before promotion, and that allowed her to nuke and even one-shot units on player phase, which was really useful in the early to mid game. Later on, she competed with several units for the player phase nuke slot, but she was unquestionably the best mage out of them. Tomebreaker also came really in clutch, and using Tomebreaker + Segell is comical.
As a character, not too complicated and you don’t learn too much about what is up with her, but the one big character scene she gets (her despair over having learned Soter’s betrayal early) is very well done, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Always fun to see a character break down over something they could stop but failed, and get comforted by their peers. She ended up with Kairos, which was a fairly standard “fiercely independent girl gets melted down by playboy who turns out to actually care for her” affair, though it was alright regardless. I do like the implication that after their A support they just start fucking right there in the middle of the camp.
And her fire brand consuming hubby. Was an indispensable unit in the early game, Fire Brand came in clutch, he was also the first unit I promoted. Over time, he turned less and less effective - his defense was simply not up to snuff and the stats of the enemies meant that he’d be facing 40-50 hit rates which is nowhere near low enough to consistently dodge tank when his HP and defense are so low. His damage output also turned out fairly mediocre. Perhaps Spellsword would have been a better promotion for him since then he could use his mag on anima instead of being forced to use Fire Brands (which are decisively mid in the lategame). Still though, I took him to the end and he handled some units there.
As a character, he was great. He is the lens through which we get to know more about the Church and their workings (though he can be rather tight-lipped there). I think he resorts to his usual line of “oh I am such a terrible priest” a little bit too often, it feels as if every one of his conversations which involve his priesthood in some form have him invoke it. Besides that, though, a very insightful and charismatic person, has a distinctive personality without it feeling forced or one-dimensional (I feel a more trope-filled FE like Awakening or Fates would just turn him into a flat womanizer lol). Already mentioned his relationship with Hecate.
The only one of the bandit gang I kept till the endgame. Sorry, Fango did not interest me and while I tried to use Lopez, I did not know about the triangle attack so I dropped him without bothering to train him to promotion. Maybe that’s for the better, I’m now unique among Hag players. Anyway Begona was great. She has very clear TMGC Natasia vibes, though less exaggerated. Amazing player phase unit, if you throw her at someone she undoubtedly one-rounds them, and her high speed and luck meant that she could efficiently dodge tank and so she had a bit more longevity than you’d expect of a unit with only 11 defense at the endgame. Perhaps it’s difficult on Hard, of course, though since she’s geared for player phase I assume you just tank less with her and use her as an emergency kill button.
Very fun character. Provides a down to earth viewpoint with basically anyone she converses with and has some fun lines. The bandit gang were in general quite fun, I’d say they were better comedy characters than the Glamorgan nobles and their peers, especially as they clearly grew throughout the journey while Delilah or Simeon just… stayed the shitheads they were. Only complaint I have is - why does she have so little conversations with Kyra? It seems like such an obvious setup, former rivals now uncomfortably working together and having their rivalry develop into camaraderie. Would have been great for a series of convos or even a support chain, but as far as I recall it’s very barren and Begona instead has convos with Phobos, whom I frankly did not particularly care for. Why only have one muscle girlfriend for Kyra when you can have two, Rubenio?
Scymerius was my first recruit, Vasiliki was my second one (though you know how much I despise her), Fructuoso got got. I did not learn who Scymerius is beneath the mask so I’m just gonna use they for them for ease of writing. Anyway, great unit. Not particularly bulky, but with that speed and strategic use of Triangle Adept they had quite a lot of survivability and hit back really hard. But they were primarily a player phase unit, if Shade doesn’t already make it obvious, and they put in the work. I did give them a bit of favoritism, namely the growths boost. This made their decision to disappear two damn times all the more annoying.
As a character, pretty funny in their convos with Kyra, consistently made me laugh, especially in how Kyra clearly does not put up with their shit at the start. I did not go down the scavenger hunt to track down their scattered backstory with Fructuoso and Alastor, but from what little I got to see I can tell that I missed a lot.
Almost benched Fiadh once but I gave her a chance and she turned out better and better. That Bow Range +1 is her most important asset, it allows her to soften up targets without fear of retaliation and generally snipe off enemies behind formation, and her high str meant she could even put in the work against bosses so close range units could finish them off without getting painfully hit.
She is only really relevant in the story in the Glamorgan arc and drops off afterwards, barely even gets convos, but she’s fine in Glamorgan, if rather simple. There doesn’t seem to be that much going on with her besides her foster daughter relationship with Barlowe, which was neat but also felt like a fairly standard setup for a FE retainer. She does have an attitude though, and that’s always cool.
Ah yes, the one you described as the unintended Seth of the hack. I promoted him to General and while he didn’t feel overwhelming he certainly put in a lot of work and was among the best five units in the team. That bulk is crucial the later you get into the game, really helps with baiting out enemy groups and living, and that speed can make him surprisingly dodgy at times, which even saved my ass in some cases. But his offensive power was always very poor and downright pitiful with magic, so he could never bait out and handle units alone, he needed someone to player-phase targets around him so he could keep on moving forward.
Fairly standard Don Quixote archetype, character wise, with not much going on with him beyond that as far as I’ve seen. He had very few if any base conversations so he never evolved beyond this level. His Sancho Pansa was more fun in the few conversations I got with her, since she’s basically just A Gal, the most normal person you’d meet who just had to end up working for a crazy old noble. However, Teresa couldn’t keep up stats wise, and though I promoted her, her flying utility was not worth it enough to keep her and so she got benched.
I honestly have no idea why I used Delilah to the end. I think what happened was that she was a mandatory deploy for one chapter, I used her, and then I never took her out of the lineup. Hell, she was still third in the deployment list in the final map. Honestly, though, she was pretty neat and had her uses, though she was firmly in the bottom half of the units I used in the final maps.
Pretty funny character, she is definitely the most fun one of the three Glamorgan nobles, and her lines are sufficiently haughty and noble-like all the way to the end. She ended up with Jane, and I feel like it had much of the same issue as Kyra and Hestia? Namely, it did not really feel to me like Delilah reciprocates Jane, while Jane is obviously head over heels for her and trying to win her affection. But I enjoy the type of stories where the fawning underling actually gets the SO, so I am willing to forgive it, and the setup of them running away together is also pretty fun.
Speaking of Jane, she surprised me. She hovered over the bench button for quite a while, she felt very inaccurate and not really pulling her weight, but I ended up giving her a chance and it was worth it. That’s some insane bulk, she got over her accuracy issues and her promotion solved them completely since the Bounty Hunter skill gives her big accuracy bonuses against most units since she likes wielding heavy weapons (she used the Silver Blade incredibly well). Her only two issues were her lack of magic, 1-2 range, or resistance, but as long as no mages were targeting her she’d tank everything in her face and usually one-round them in response. Great unit.
As a character, I honestly don’t remember anything about her besides her affection for Delilah, and overall being the straight woman to her ojou shenanigans (despite being very much not straight). Honestly I feel like that made them a better comedic duo than Simeon and Dahl? 'Cause Dahl himself is a comedic unit pretty much, his whole thing is that he is really really ambitious despite being a little pea brained, so Simeon doesn’t really have a straight man to bounce off of in the same way. The bandits were better than either duo, but still.
Thief. Well, she also could do work with Segell here and there, but generally she was there to tag along and get chests. I still regularly kept her on the team though. Some of it is because she made a very good impression in the chapter she briefly joins in, some of it is because she was the most attractive of the cast to me. Yeah I said it. But she’s a pretty fun character in the brief moments we see her, too, very sober about herself and her work while also a good person overall. I liked her conversation with Fiadh.
Fairly good all-rounder unit. Not as bulky as Alonso or Jane, but can hit hard on both sides of the spectrum and has better movement. Not as fast or nukey as Hecate or Begona, but could actually take a few hits. Had an issue with his low HP but it was never detrimental. He was also the only cavalier I had for much of the game since every single one kept dying to very preventable causes so he had to be here by default.
Quite a good character. Agari died as a green unit so he spent the rest of the story moping about his loss, but it was an understandable moping and Hestia’s story about what happened between him and her only made it more understandable. I enjoyed the parallel between him and Soter, where Soter abandoned the friends and life he had for the sake of power and recognition in the Inquisition and Pericles abandoned power and recognition in the Inquisition for the sake of his friends and family. Really should have had them fight in the final maps to see whether they have a convo - but unfortunately Kyra critted Soter so I didn’t get a chance to see more battle convos without resetting.
Alonso 2, but he’s a mage. He was a godsend in the first map he shows up, a bulky unit is exactly what I needed at that point, and he put in the work from that map onwards. Maybe not as crucial at the end of the game, but still very valuable in the team.
Not that much to note about him, character wise. The convos he does get, though, are pretty neat. I enjoyed the one he had with Kairos.
I wanted to keep one of the units from the Zhu chapter, and wanted a second archer besides Fiadh, and settled on Xinyi. However she didn’t really do that much from here on out. The bow access was useful and she helped chip in and take down fliers here and there, but she was definitely in the bottom half of the final unit list.
We don’t learn that much about the Zhu characters but they have some fun lines and they’re overall pretty sober and do a lot of work helping the worldbuilding. I particularly enjoyed the setup of her being the translator between Kyra and Jingyi and the shenanigans which would ensue. Since I get to meet foreign language speakers quite a bit for work/life and end up in situations like these fairly often, they’d always get a relatable chuckle out of me.
One of the two lategame units I picked up to fill out the extra slots. Obviously here as a crutch if you arrived to the final maps with a pretty poor team, and comes with a free hallowed weapon (which I kept on her). I had her nuke some units but overall relied on my own.
Quite a neat character before she is recruited, and of course it’s a plot twist that out of the Dolus family it is her you get to recruit and not her clearly red herring son. Her presence really helps to reflect just how inhuman and disconnected Dolus is, her conversation with Eupraxia is very nice (I assume they were lovers?) and I just want the best for her.
But why exactly is she Sloth? There’s a clear theme with the hallowed weapons and their owners, but I’m not sure what makes her Sloth. She doesn’t seem slothful to me. Is it because she didn’t stop Dolus earlier in the story? But she obviously couldn’t, she was just one woman, even if she’s pretty good at magic.
And the last one. My second cavalry unit which actually survived and stayed with me to the end (for the three maps he is around for). Perhaps less of a lategame crutch unit than Thyone because recruiting him requires you to have a durable enough Kyra to endure his smacking for long enough to convert him to the side of good with the power of friendship, but still valuable regardless.
Awesome character. I feel like this is something anyone can agree with, his character arc over the course of the hack is constructed incredibly well and comes with sufficient payoff. There’s not much else to add.
