Jump to content

What's up with The Last Promise?


AnonymousSpeed
 Share

Recommended Posts

Move this to the Fan Projects section if that would be more appropriate. Otherwise, we shall continue uninterrupted.

So, what is the deal with the Last Promise? I get the impression this is one of the more famous ROM hacks out there. I can't think of another FE ROM hack which people were inspired to make start work on a sequel to, yet alone someone other than the original creator. I'd like to know more about how this hack got its reputation, and also what that reputation exactly is. It gets a lot of trash for bad writing but I've heard a lot of people like it or have respect for it.

I get that it was a very early completed hack, but exactly how early, and how many brownie points does it get for that?

I'm really interested to learn more about this specific hack and the place in FE hacking history it holds, so any insight on the issue is appreciated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Move this to the Fan Projects section if that would be more appropriate. Otherwise, we shall continue uninterrupted.

So, what is the deal with the Last Promise? I get the impression this is one of the more famous ROM hacks out there. I can't think of another FE ROM hack which people were inspired to make start work on a sequel to, yet alone someone other than the original creator. I'd like to know more about how this hack got its reputation, and also what that reputation exactly is. It gets a lot of trash for bad writing but I've heard a lot of people like it or have respect for it.

I get that it was a very early completed hack, but exactly how early, and how many brownie points does it get for that?

I'm really interested to learn more about this specific hack and the place in FE hacking history it holds, so any insight on the issue is appreciated.

 

im not totally aware of its full history but waaaaaay back in the days before awakening was released (late 2000's early 2010's) there was a trend of 'community' hacks on the major fire emblem forums of the time. the basic idea was that people submitted their own custom mug sprites, write up a little bio for the character, and then a 'team' of hackers would get to work on making a full fire emblem hack with community submitted sprites and characters. of these community hacks pretty much all of them fizzled out and died for the most part but one held on surprisingly hard and that was a fire emblem hack by the name...

tactics universe. helmed by a guy called blazer who was and possibly still is a fourm manager at one of the other major fe fourms of the day? idk i havent payed much attention to him as of late. the point is he was basically taking charge and keeping tactics universe on the move despite all the other community hacks fizzling out and dying but at the same time he was starting to transform it more into his brain child then a community hack and eventually such changes reached fruition as tactics universes name was changed from tactics universe into last promise and from that point onwards it was basically blazers baby.

so some more time passed and eventually the last promise came into fruition and what a joyous occasion it was for you see last promise wasnt just an earlier fully completed fe hack in the style of the main games, it was in fact the very first fully completed fire emblem hack in the style of the main games (that wasnt a reskin, and was from the english speaking fe community anyways) a milestone for the english fe community reached at last! there was much celebrating and much motivation for other hackers to complete their own hacks, and everyone loved last promise  for it had achieved greatness! but then the rub happened.

for you see last promise is not a very good game unfortunately. certainly a technical and professional achievement for the fe community at the time, its functional, has some clever ideas, generally cohesive, and the effort put in clearly shows. however, it also carries a lot of the worse habits of early fe hacking design (overly large maps, enemy spam for days, poor placement) and some bad design choices in general really , and perhaps most importantly a plot thats trying really hard but ultimately ends up stuck up it own ass in a bad way (blazer carried over a lot of the tales of series bad habits into last promise for instance). the important thing to note here however is that the last promises flaws became more and more apparent as time went on, hence why peoples opinions have soured on it to an extent.

personally i do respect the game for achieving something no other hack really had at the time,  but its flaws are too prominent and too numerous for me to overlook. that said i have to give it props as being both a strong motivator for the fe hacking community in both what to do and what not to do.

thats my take on it anyways.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I drew up a world map for The Last Promise, I didn't know much about its prior history as Tactics Universe until someone pointed out that Solum looked very similar to Elibe.  As it turns out, Tactics Universe was initially an FE7 prequel until it was decided at some point to be mostly its own thing and a whole bunch of names (not just the hack's title) got changed to what they are now; for example, it's no longer Etruria but Magnus that's now being a jerk.

Anyway it's already been mentioned, but TLP was a milestone in the FE hacking community that helped pave the way for future FE hacks.  And I'll even argue that it's still very playable even today.  We all already know its... story, but it's still entertaining and bridged together by some pretty fun chapters and characters; it's kinda like Fates Conquest.  I've mentioned a few times before that I unironically want to see a character spotlight on Kelik, but I've recently changed my mind about that.  Now instead, I want to see one for Shon; I think there's potential for discussion regarding his personality, his long journey, and the final destination of said journey as well as what he ultimately did there.

But mostly, I just want to hear more of that ridiculous voice given to him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's notoriety is equal parts earned and attributed; Balance is all over the place, from the relative effectiveness of your cast of characters, to difficulty curve to abrupt spike, and end game becomes an absolute mess of both you and the enemy slinging absurd numbers back and forth and dice rolling your way to victory. That the author got something of reputation for responding... tersely to criticism and claims of lack of quality/theft/etc didn't do much to ingratiate it in some parts of the community.

Having said that, it has a full fledged post game mode, original (" ") maps, new weapons, halberdier integration, a original plot and a whole heap of new mugs and a few new animations, before the community really developed enough to open create and share content and create tools to facilitate the process

Bear in mind, some of this is only secondhand I've heard from streams and forums, but the short is TLP was one of the first to do it in a big way, and made a few mistakes everyone has made strides to not do again

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Blazer has a pretty decent write up in the OP of its thread here. The first release was in 2009, and the trailer for that release is still up (lol). and if you're interested in a fairly detailed explanation of the hack's early days, this suuuuper old (and unfinished) wiki page is a pretty nice read!

Edited by TheArbiterK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

as someone who was a part/contributed to the project and was there since like 2006, it was just a forum hack that was "stolen away" by blazer which caused backlash in the community do to it not being his project, but just one that he was a programmer for. the reason it has a bunch of notoriety is because many of the games problems and bugs were renamed as "features" by blazer as he refused to fix a lot of them, and the head sprite artist for the game is known for making all of his face sprites look eerily similar (as well as an interesting side job). the reason it's famous is because it's the first fully completed custom fe hack in the english speaking community(mk404's fe7 reskin was the first fully completed one but it was a reskin), has (awful) voice acting, and a (nigh incoherent) plot as it was originally called Tactics Universe and was set as an elibe hack. not exactly a prequel to fe7, that would be fe7x, this was like... I think 200 years before fe7 or something, due to etrutria being the bad guys yet in fe7 clearly this is not the case nor is this ever mentioned.

Edited by Chocolate Kitty
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/20/2019 at 7:51 PM, Chocolate Kitty said:

it was just a forum hack that was "stolen away" by blazer which caused backlash in the community do to it not being his project, but just one that he was a programmer for.

Nobody seemed motivated enough to take it back though, so it's arguable that it would've become yet another in a sea of dead hacks if Blazer hadn't acted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i know theres been accusations of author insert in the form of kelik as well, though honestly i kinda feel like kelik is more so blazer copy and pasting a tales of character into fire emblem with little thought put into whether that actually works. which is honestly one of last promises biggest problems in my opinion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Just saw this post, gotta laugh at all the literal slander and misinformation in this thread. people just make up whatever stories they want these days, huh...

"I'd like to know more about how this hack got its reputation, and also what that reputation exactly is. It gets a lot of trash for bad writing but I've heard a lot of people like it or have respect for it."

Sadly, the easiest example would probably be to liken it to Fates, though not as extreme, lol. To most people, it had likeable elements, but they were very subjective. So while most people either ignored it or appreciated it for the free mod it was, others were upset that it was popular since it was arguably rather bad (bad writing, bad gameplay, questionable music, and tons of other things you could critique, just like any game), and people's self-determined sense of righteousness activate when a "bad" thing becomes popular (e.g. SAO as an anime example), so there was a loud/vocal minority that disliked the game in an attempt to "balance out" what ppl felt was undeserved attention/praise.

Of course, it's not a secret TLP was only popular because of its timing (being a heavily customized FE romhack before Awakening), but these vocal people enjoyed making fun of the game and its creator under various pretenses regardless, which is just how it goes, so it is what it is. 😃

Another minority of people actually gave helpful, constructive criticisms while understanding that TLP was a free fan mod/hobby and that the creator didn't even want to work on it anymore (and had no obligation to), but entitled people didn't feel the same, and... well, I'll leave it there I guess, since my interpretation of it is biased in its own way.

 

Funny thing is that clearly from this thread some people still aren't over it, lol. Not even going to bother correcting stuff since people believe what they want anyway

Edited by Crimson Red
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For what it's worth, i thought the hack was really well done considering how little you had to work with! 

Personally, loved the music choices, the graphics were great for the time, and the events were creative.

Your goal was to have fun, and i can clearly see that in your work. You should be proud of your accomplishment and how far you came! I'm sure this sounds strange, haha. But don't doubt your own creation!

Edit: oh and of course awesome references to Asbel Lhants Lunar Requiem Mystic Arte and Yuri Lowell's Savage Wolf Fury! Just wanted to mention that! Xd

Edited by lightcosmo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I may not know very much about the hack itself, but I did play it for a long time. however, I picked Logan (which I still think is the superior choice, dont judge) and found that there were things about the game that just was not well balanced. the mage general fight was a cool concept, but due to his capped stats, it was very difficult to keep units alive. there was one boss with 10 move, one of the members of the senate wasnt even promoted, the king had non-capped stats, which was disspointing, and of course there was the meme of "conquer: 1/72 turns" map which was the map with he bolts with ten move, I believe. as for the story, the senate felt like a last minute change. also, the crit lance has 10 uses, and cost over 6000 gold.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...