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Elibean Nights. One of the oldest hacks around. Set between FE7 and FE6, EN doesn't care about the traditional Fire Emblem structure. Instead of playing through 30 chapters one after the other, EN gives you a menu where you go and select one of several tales. Each of these tales are self-contained in terms of gameplay. Your units are largely different in between all the tales, of which there are eight standard ones, four "side" ones, and the grand finale.

With the unique chapter structure comes unique chapter ideas. Of note are Rath's tale, where you're plunged into Thracia fog while trying not to get horribly killed by some Thracian trick, Raven's tale, where if you're going down, you're going down in a blaze of glory, and Karel's tale, where he goes on a solo mission taking down everyone in his way. In general gameplay terms, things are quite satisfying. You have strong promoted units with powerful weaponry. Go and take the fight to those pesky bad guys! Increasing replayability are the achievements included in the game. While by no means are they required to obtain, they provide additional goals to aim for on replays of the tale. There are 17 of them in all to unlock; I only got three on my own playthrough.

The stories were nice little things. There are overarching plot arcs throughout the tales, but the major events are largely self-contained. Of note are the large amount of optional conversations scattered around the tales. Most of them give nice additional plot, and some of them give powerful weapons to units. A few achievements require completing long talk chains as well. Be sure to check the status screen, as the talk display hack has been helpfully added in. One of EN's best known features is the Matchmaker. With it, you can set character pairings to your heart's content. Characters in the tales will shift around to ensure your desired pairings work as they should. Considering shipping is serious business, it's a very nice option to use your personal preferences. I just left them all default though. I don't like rocking the boat too much.

Elibean Nights is feature-complete. The most prevalent issue is that it's still a bit unpolished. It's like a v0.99 release of something. All the tales are there, and every tale can be played through. However, things are rough around the edges. Typos are scattered around the dialogue here and there. A random unusable weapon might be wielded by some enemy. But those errors are easily overlookable. I did run into a couple of game crashes during my playthrough, unfortunately. I'll make note of them to give anyone reading this some advance warning.

EN Game Crashes and Other Severe Bugs:

• Going into the sound room on a brand new file crashes. It works once you've started playing the game.
• Killing Erik while an enemy in Hector's tale softlocks the game. His death quote never plays.
• NPC Fargus dying triggers a conversation between Rebecca and Lowen instead. After this, the chapter ending begins to play, and the tale is counted as complete.
• I encountered crashing in Rath's tale, but unfortunately I couldn't really pinpoint what was causing it.
• About half of all Bonus Content scenes lock on a black screen after the chapter name appears. Saving before entering them renders the save file unusable.
• Upon completion of the eight standard tales, Zephiel's tale and the back room of the tale select screen lock instead of unlocking. They are then left inaccessible.

Considering Arch has officially cancelled the hack, most of these issues probably won't be fixed. That does not mean the game is not worth playing. In a way, it's kind of a good thing that Arch officially pulled the plug. It gives some closure to the project. The current release is the final one. You have no reason to wait for the "EN 2020" meme. What you see is what you get. Go and get it.