Just finished my playthough of 1.7.2, overall I enjoyed it but there are some things that could be improved on. I play somewhat efficiently but I never leave objectives being in the interest of turn count.
Units are generally well balanced. I think Lily (crazy personal skill and very high strength) and Oona (7 move and can use both healing and light magic) may be a bit too good and Axel (redundant, mediocre stats), Darius (benched him after mages started doubling him), and Harold (redundant, mediocre stats) are too weak but otherwise they're mostly fine. I like how some of the traditionally weak classes ended up being good like Fighter and Archer, in fact Elijah and Stark were my best units alongside Lily.
The maps were mostly good but the surprise reinforcements from where your group started were annoying since no warning was given. For 1-7 and 1-12 the chests being out of the way made the maps drag on way longer than I'd like, especially with thieves only having 5 move. These were the only two maps that I particularly disliked, with 1-12 being by far the biggest offender. The chests are very out of the way and Matteo has an elixer to steal so going for all of these ends up wasting a lot of time. Also the only challenging part was the surprise reinforcements which was also un-fun. I also think you should not recruit Nero and Sophie here and instead automatically recruit them afterwards since they will do nothing unless you go out of your way to feed them kills. They're too weak and too far away to meaningfully contribute in this chapter. One general issue I had was the low frequency and poor selection of armories and vendors. I strongly feel that 1-11 should have had an armory and vendor.
The writing is quite impressive for a hack. The story so far is a nice introduction to the world without feeling pointless like FE7 Lyn mode. The characters are generally good with a lot of fun dynamics like Owen and Sawyer, Owen and Elijah, Sawyer and Eagle, Stark and Grace, etc. Belle ends up being a bit one-dimensional but it's understandable given the circumstances she's dealing with. I really liked Seneca and Sebastian and hope they continue to have a big role in the story. Seneca reminds me of Ludveck but much more sympathetic and it seems that he's actually right about Belle's resistance harming Fortuita.
Even though only the first part is done, this hack looks very promising and I hope it continues to maintain this level of quality throughout.
