Fire Emblem - The Sacred Boundary

[tulee]

Just to remind you all: The author of this campaign is Vanspirit. The campaign is posted on hiveworkshop on her behalf with her express permission.
The campaign was originally posted here:

【通魔作坊】圣魔之界限FINAL地图下载_UUU9【通魔作坊】圣魔之界限FINAL攻略-标准战役-游久魔兽争霸3地图攻略补丁大全

Permission From Author

This is a campaign from the Chinese warcraft 3 community. Hopefully we can "give back" in the sense that by sharing many campaigns from their community, it will inspire Hiveworkshop creators to make more campaigns, and then the chinese community can play those campaigns when the Chinese translators bring Hive campaigns to their community (so in this way, they can benefit also).

Important:
In the chapter "Warrior's Dignity", you must kill the orc grunt model unit at the top left of the map or you will not be able to go to the next mission.
It seems words inside [] do not show in cinematics, so just assume if you see a sentence that is missing a name, the word that should be there is [Dark Ones].

 

[deepstrasz]

Spoiler: oh boy

1. Opening chapter's loading screen is in Chinese.
2. Seems pointless to showcase all those units. Also, some have hero glow, others do not. They also don't have fluent animations but freeze in between.
3. It says (null) instead of Sniper as the unit name/title in his transmission message. The others have no title.
4. Dragon Rider has no model/texture.
5. I think there are two units named Mercenary, one of them being a blonde haired warrioress. There's also a Mercenary Warrior. Some other too similar names: Archer Lord and Bow Lord.
6. After all the units being showed, the screen turns black and ESC doesn't do anything.
7. Not sure it's any good immersion showing static images that don't even represent what the discussion is about. Just empty places.
8. The ability to the right of Examine has no description. It drops items.
9. A part of the upper UI border appears on the middle of the screen when selecting buildings or when not selecting anything.
10. Heroes without glow should have it for proper differentiation. How to add Hero Glow without Modeling
11. Lots of tall doodads blocking vision.
12. Lan Siya looks like Light Cavalry.
13. Ma Lian's flying height is low and gets through doodads.
14. The above heroes levelled up and some debug messages appeared: 1.
15. Makes no sense. Ma Lian flies but can be attacked by melee enemies.
16. What does appropriate means on the Healing Potion?
17. The scroll on Mi Na has a broken description.
18. Pretty much attack+move. The boss is stupidly weak.
19. Second chapter's loading screen has no text or actually this is considered the first one but it's actually the third map in the pack.
20. You can see the heroes between the changing images as they speak. It's immersion breaking and not nice. They're also selected.
21. The level up number messages probably continue in all chapters.
22. Na Miya has a staff that says it reveals map. The map is already visible. Maybe it refers to invisible units?
23. Some terrain parts are nice while others are too basic like inside the castle.
24. Not sure if intended but next chapters seem not to have any description on their loading screens as well.
25. All spell books look alike also as a non-spell book item (Magic Book).
26. After finishing chapter two, the custom campaign menu was loaded. Same after the third. Probably going to follow this trend.
27. Generally bosses are weak because you clutter on them.
28. Heroes have mana but not sure they're actually using it.
29. There's an item named 10 to the right of the circle of power.
30. Chapter six's map visibility is fog of war.
31. When Kelai Beier appears there's no text. There's also nothing in the quest log. It's grayed out.
32. Same with Ka Ou, no text just points.
33. Kelai talks to Ka but I have not even moved him from there
34. Some heterochromatic girl talks to some dude calling him queen.
35. At the beginning of chapter 7(?), the one when meeting the purple hair girl, the dialog box has no text. Also, no idea why some chapters need this instead of the quest log as in the beginning.
36. Blade Master and Ka Liemu have the same icon. Same was with some archer girl in a previous chapter.
37. Technique and all those stat dummy abilities should have passive icons.
38. Alright with Lu Xifa and the Monk, bosses feel more like what they should be.
39. Ma Lian can fly over walls in interior places/maps.
40. Lan De doesn't have a custom anime portrait.
41. After chapter fifteen, the campaign menu was loaded and no more chapters were made visible after that even though the preview for the campaign says 31 chapters. Alright, tulee wrote about the orc. Make sure to properly have a known issues part in the map thread description and not use separate posts which can go unnoticed.
42. Not sure why would there be common enemies named Magic God.
43. Somehow that guy got all those corpses.

Reading the map thread description, I thought this would be the best of Vanspirit's campaigns, being the fourth in the list. However... it's worse than the previously uploaded/approved one. Very repetitive, least challenging (except for some parts now and then) or creative in terms of gameplay, not even nearly as immersive as the previous. I get that it's hard to create a proper JRPG feeling, it could even be am real time one, not turn based, but this campaign isn't even trying. It feels like doing a speedrun test. Also not sure it has anything to do with the real Fire Emblem game, names being in Chinese, story kind of off, kind of nonsensical, battle here, battle there, battle everywhere.

However, overall, some work put in although very Simple borderline,
Approved.

---

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If you're not satisfied with the review and wish another opinion, contact the other reviewers or use the staff contact:
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/staff-contact.692/

 

[cleavinghammer]

General: Every ending level except the first sends you back to the main menu.

Light cavalry model is permanently yellow TC.

Non-standard cliffs are walkable.

So is it Skyhawk Rider or Eagle Knight? Same for Archer Lord / Archer Thaness.

Duo Lake is sometimes called Duo Late.

Kan Naen's icon is a bald guy.


Intro cinematic:

Loading screen is untranslated. I'd recommend adding "Press ESC to continue" here and at the first screen.

Music goes silent for a while before looping again.

... That's a Saber.

"Heavenly Cavalry General" "not very powerful" -> then why's it called a general?

Skyhawk: agility unit -> agile unit

Sniper: Message says (null)

Dragon Rider has no model.

Mercenary is used twice as a name (the Captain model and the blonde woman).

Archer Lord and Bow Lord use the same descriptions.

After the Magic Knight, faction music played and the screen went black.




First level:

No loading screen text?

Intro:

since the that separated -> ? Also, was it good and evil? The intro only mentioned two people fighting.

Armored Infantry wasn't in the intro lineup.

Aw, FE music is only for the cutscenes?

Sometimes a hero dies and a dialog box with a bunch of numbers appears.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Several items are still untranslated. Can't even tell which ones because, well, I can't tell what they do/they can't be equipped by the units.

... Kan Naen's model should not have a sword if he can't use swords.



Fifth level:
This should use a "bring units here to complete level" trigger, I ended up not getting the sword because the units I told to pick it up kept dropping it and then the timer ran out.


Sixth level:

Dialogue with Kelai Beier is untranslated. He also can't use the sword he comes with.

Both dialogues with Ka Ou are untranslated.

End cinematic:
Organization/people's name is untranslated. Edit: this continues in all cinematics afterwards.
Queen -> King (going by later scenes, the portrait is supposed to be a guy with a beard)


Seventh level:

Starting dialog box is untranslated.

New girl can't equip her axe.

No quest menu.

 

[cleavinghammer]

It'd be nice during the "now the army is attacking this region" black/white screens to have a map of the areas being fought over to give a sense of progression.

Jie keeps dropping his sword at the beginning of the level (and on the 15th, it's possible for him to spawn on the opposite side of his sword, and he can't pick it up in the Extra Campaigns). No wonder his generals don't want him fighting.

Store is always called Goblin Merchant.


Eighth level:

Su Fei keeps attacking during her recruitment cutscene.
tenderly -> tender
Su Fei can't pick up her own sword.

End cinematic: Whatever the guy is looking for isn't translated.


Tenth level: So is it Aoken Beisi or Aoken Beituo? both get used.


Eleventh level:

No air-blockers here, flyers go over walls with no trouble.

... I'm sorry, but I can't take anyone literally named "the whore" in French with any degree of seriousness.


Fifteenth level:

most power fortress -> most powerful fortress


Sixteenth level:

End cinematic: While names usually go unstated, (null) appears instead of Jie's name.


Eighteenth level:

General Offensive in the menu, General Offense in the intro cinematic.

Untranslated item that says Magic Book Power 25 in the north area of the map.


Nineteenth level
Intro cinematic: most power general -> most powerful general

I dunno about "Magic God" for these units.

"X of the King"'s descriptions read "X used by the wise man", is that right?

Another untranslated Magic Book item.

Necromancer dude gets called (null) twice in the ending cinematic.


Twentieth level:

Holy Evil War -> Holy-Evil War maybe?

When everyone is giving their speeches with the camera snapping to them, the archway gets in the way.


Finale:

Rest east -> Rest easy

souring -> soaring

Na Miya's epilogue shows a beastmaster and a male portrait but says "she".

passes away -> passed away


Extra Campaign 1 and 2's loading screen is untranslated. They have no dialog whatsoever, and nothing happened once I killed every enemy in the second one.

Training Map:

Mi Na's name box is blank, though she has a name. Enemy player has no name.
Text should not be purple, it's almost unreadable.


----


Bugs: No real bugs that I can see (apart from the previously mentioned "kill this one orc to advance").

Story: The plot takes a while to pick up but it does get interesting after a while. It would have been nice to see plot happening during more than just beginning/end cutscenes or when you recruit someone. The whole

Spoiler

"your advisor was actually an ancient spirit the whole time"

and Jie's

Spoiler

wife

things aren't foreshadowed but they don't come across as meaningful either because either they only talked about the current situation (heck, I thought she was the hippogriff hero until the final level) or interacted maybe once.

Music: More FE music would be nice, sometimes it's Warcraft music and sometimes there's silence for the whole level.

Gameplay: I don't think the RTS format is best adapted to FE's TBS (although I do like the "press to advance text" mechanic, it's a lot easier than having to read fast/having to wait for the text to finish). There's simply no real reason not to simply gank every enemy by sending every hero you have and ignore the whole weapon triangle thing.

Overall, it was a good effort, shame the gameplay gets stale fast.

 

[tulee]

Fixed the spelling/grammar/missing translations Cleavinghammer mentioned.
Worth noting some of the phrases inside brackets [ ] are not shown in the campaign --- If there is a noun missing in a sentence, especially something with "the" in front and then nothing follows, assume the word that should be there is [Dark Ones]. Hopefully this issue is just a temporary bug in the current wc3 patch.

The items without translations were in japanese originally, so I left them as they are.
Vanspirit did not put the names of the characters in the dialogue after chapter 6? I think, so it's not that the translation isn't there, but the names seemed to not be included on purpose once they those characters have been introduced long enough for people to know them (just a guess).
Aoken Beisi and Aoken Beituo were both used in Vanspirit's campaign, so not sure which one is correct.

Also, resolution of the background campaign screen picture was improved.


Thought I would add some notes I wrote down from when I first played Vanspirit's campaign:

Hidden

General points

I really liked how similar the campaign was in the story to a typical Japanese-RPG from like the 1990s; Has some prince, finds out that a simple conflict between two nations turns out to have something/someone sinister pulling the strings behind the scenes, then defeats that evil. The music was great, and the dialogue between the characters was really good. They talked how most people would normally talk, which made it far more immersive.

Some specific points I felt could did not make sense:

It was implied that the Queen of the Dark Ones could have killed Jie Feier and his friends in that valley when he first encountered the Dark Ones, but let him survive because she wanted to cause problems between Duo Lake Kingdom and the Dark Ones in order to bring the Dark Ones closer to the Kai Nidun empire. This seemed like an illogical decision since she could have destroyed him right there.

Kai Moduo (one of the 5 Empire Army Generals) could have been set up as a far better villain. He was actually the most evil of the 5, and should have been left to last. He should have been able to escape at sea, so then he could have been one of the final villains before fighting the Queen of the Dark Ones. Also, he would laugh too much in his dialogue, which kind of made him look more silly sometimes than evil.

The campaign tried to remove responsibility from the main enemies for the actions they had committed. Like the King of the Kai Nidun Empire, at the start he was able to talk normally to the 5 Generals, but then in the mission we kill him, he is suddenly acting like he is completely being mind controlled by the Queen of the Dark Ones, removing his responsibility for his actions (like invading another nation in order to "unite them so that then the Dark Ones can live peacefully on the continent"). And the Queen herself is described by the 3rd last enemy boss (the necromancer) as being bewitched by the Demon Ahte Disi--- which also removes her responsibility for her actions. It seems that Kai Moduo was the only villain who actually seemed like a real villain, besides Ahte Disi.

Overall, really enjoyed this campaign by Vanspirit.