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I will only judge it gameplaywise because it's the only thing that matter for me

Compare to the majority of the fire emblem hack, this one is pretty good. The map design is fairly well done, and most of the map have a pretty good potentiel to be good, but the lack of difficulty negate most of it.

The main problem of this hack is our unit become so strong after promotion that you can just send one unit with a javelin, he will kill everthing in enemy phase, and you will just go forward and redo the same. My main unit barely take damage against the majority of the ennemy. For exemple, with Torie, the pegasus knight, I don't care be shooted by 3-4 sniper, because I only take 4-5 damaage, because of the only 2x effectivness, and the other unit do like 1 or 0 damage. That kill pretty most of the interest after chapter 11. And before that, the game was pretty easy too, but because it's the beginning, it could be forgiven.

The main point is that all your unit is too much balanced, all are pretty the same, with the nearly the same speed, the same defense, ect... Normally, in a classic FE, some class are pretty strong, but have some flaw. For exemple, the pegasus knight is very fast, dodge very well, but are very squishy. Here, Torie got amazing defense, because of a solid base defense and good growth. That's why during the mid game, the game become super easy, because all your unit overcome their weakness and can beat anything, without needing a equip synergy. So you just need to put your stat booster on the "best class" that mean flyer unit, because other unit would got the same stat than your peg (cap every nearly stat at lvl9 promotion), but without her flexibility.

I think the difficulty of this hack is around a normal mode of a classic FE, like for exemple FE6, but with OP unit too. So it would really benefit from a hard mode.

Also, this hack is not really design for ironmaning (even if because it's so easy, you could play it ironman, for your first run and succeed like I do), because a the really small cast, without many replacement. For example, you only have one flyer, one archer, ect, so you don't really have the choice, and because all the unit is pretty the same stat wise, you just choose the best class unit.

The main difficulty of this hack is magic user and critical hit. All your unit have nearly the same luck (5-8) too low against magic like shine, thunder or reaver weapon that increase the crit. Because many of your unit don't have enought res or HP, you will be one shot most of the time if a crit occur. And there's no barrier staff in this game, but only 2 droppable pure water But you got your own magic user that could take a crit, and also your pegasus kts. So it's like when you face a berserker or some dude with killer weapon, you need to manage to kill them before they could have the possibility to OS someone. But even that disappear after a while, because the res of your unit become so high like your defense, and you could always rise it with a pure water if necessery.

That's why Torie is so game breaking in this game. It's the only one you could use to take mage during ennemy phase with a javelin, and she will gain so much xp doing so, that her defense and resistance become insanely good. A good balance should be she can't do that if there also 1 or 2 axe user hitting her. But the defense of your unit is so high that you could take 3-4 hit with all your non magic user

And he choose to stay pretty simple, by not implementinhg for most of the game any advanced tool like bolting, berserk staff, warp. But the counterpart is that he does really well the simple thing he does. That why, even if the challenge isn't here, the majority of the map is still pretty good, without any phase where you just move your unit, because there nothing to do. It's really like playing sacred stone, with all your unit a god tier seth. (but without some horrible map of sacred stone like chapter 5x or 6)

So for my next run of this hack, I would modify this hack to create a hard mode, and modify some map to be more interesting, with better ennemy positionning and reenforcement.

Conclusion : this hack is a gem, but a gem that should be more polish to be really good, and that already something amazing.

Fire Emblem: The Road to Ruin is a member of the "old guard" of Fire Emblem hacks, along with hacks like The Last Promise and Elibian Nights. However, I find it often gets overlooked among the community. This review will explore the hack and give it a fair hearing.

History: Development of the hack first begun in 2009, presumably on the old Fire Emblem Universe forums. The first release on Serenes Forest was in 2011. Although the chapters were custom at this time, the cast then consisted of Elibian characters lead by an early Vance, then known as "Vex". The hack soon acquired custom portraits as Primefusion revamped the project, eventually moving it away from Elibe entirely to an original setting, the continent of Pandosia. Progress was slow but steady, with the catchphrase "Never dead, always underground" being applied to it. Road to Ruin emerged from underground, reaching completion on the 26th of November, 2017 with its 3.0 update.

Gameplay: The gameplay is rarely particularly complicated. Being an old FE7 hack, standard Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem rules are in effect. Little in the way of complicated assembly hacks are present, though a small amount of it is present. Deployment slots usually allow around ten units or so to be used at a time. The most prominent deviations from standard gameplay are the hack's frequent usage of generic units.

Generic units are exactly what they say on the tin: generics one gets for a chapter. The concept originates from Chapter 13 of FE5, and is used frequently here. Two early gaiden chapters are dedicated entirely to usage of generic units, and many chapters in the second half of the game have some generics to take the hit for units with faces. This serves to make things a bit easier for the player in otherwise difficult chapters: just let the generic take the hits instead of the players. I like the concept: it gives the hack its own unique spin on things. A common criticism of them is that any experience given to them is wasted, and the special generic chapters have no impact on the rest of the game. This is true.

Plot: The story is generally alright. Vance, the protagonist, is the leader of a group of mercenaries. Two countries, Aksum and Sybaris, are at war, with the latter being accused of attacking the small state of Mora. Vance's mercenaries are initially under contract with Aksum, but soon they defect to Sybaris's side after they perform some investigations into the state of affairs. Things proceed in the vein of fact-finding until about the game's halfway point. Vance runs into an edgy swordsman who then proceeds to alter his personality. Now more irritable, Vance goes and makes some bad decisions and travels quite far down the titular Road to Ruin. I won't go any further into the plot to not spoil anything else.

On the topic of optional dialogue, each character has exactly one support. Primefusion took this decision to avoid getting burned out from writing large amounts of rarely-seen dialogue. I personally do not value supports much and would not mind their complete exclusion, but I understand that some consider them essential. Earlier chapters have optional conversations between characters, but these fade away as time goes on, and as units begin to be benched. Of note are special Interlude chapters that occur after important plot events, which are entirely composed of dialogue, without any gameplay.

Graphics and Music: Road to Ruin presents itself well. The title screen has been changed, complete with a new arrangement of the Fire Emblem theme. The unit status screen has gotten a makeover as well, with dark grey clouds hovering behind it. Map palettes have also been altered, with some late game maps having a completely new tileset. Some custom music for combat scenes has been included as a replacement for the vanilla theme. Most of the vanilla music remains in place, however. The earlier character portraits are quite pleasing to the eye. Later on, their quality does give way to rougher splices, but that doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things.

Conclusion: As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, Road to Ruin is somewhat overlooked. Once the final release came out, a well-known Fire Emblem youtuber (I won't name any names) released a video for the purpose of simply criticising it and refusing to do a Let's Play. Without the exposure from being played by a prominent youtuber, word didn't really spread too far. I do not consider that video a fair hearing of the hack, and consider it to have been treated badly. Around two years have passed since Primefusion completed the hack. It's completed with over 20 chapters. There aren't too many of those hacks around. Go on, play it!

Fire Emblem: The Road to Ruin is a fantastic ROM hack using Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken (known simply as Fire Emblem in the U.S) as a base. It is of very good quality and of high caliber, containing custom edited graphics, units and music. The story line is also quite captivating and interesting with realistic themes of war and politics, as well as several plot twists that will captivate both a player's interest and attention throughout the entire game. This ROM hack is on the same level of high quality as Fire Emblem: The Last Promise and Requiem, and is recommended to anyone who has enjoyed playing them in the past.