I went into it primarily to make fun of, imo, Mangs and his fans' completely hypocritical and/or misguided perception of classic FE vs. nu-FE. I think the tone is quite inconsistent (the first chapter stands out especially) and the characters are hardly more dignified than anything post-Awakening that are apparently so offensive. There's also quite a lot of references to stupid internet memes (
one of those fucking undertale skeletons is basically a character in this), fetuber in-jokes, and just general millennial humor that are far more nauseating to me than tired anime tropes. That being said, though the influences of the game's story are very obvious, I think the execution is better than the majority of Fire Emblems, which are generally extremely bland and anemic. I actually don't think it's much like FE at all plot-wise, but that is a compliment. The talking head segments go on for quite long in Andaron Saga, especially if you're reading everything in the X chapters, but it all feels worthwhile and fulfills a function, whether that's characterization, worldbuilding, or foreshadowing. I have several nitpicks but they're not really interesting to delve into. The story and characters are serviceable.
It's worth mentioning the production value. I've played enough FE rom hacks that it is immediately obvious when a portrait is spliced together from pieces of official sprites or taken from the FEU resource repo. Andaron Saga does have a little bit of that, but there's clearly a lot of care put into making the designs cohesive. The battle sprites all look great (not mermaids), the mini portraits all look great, the factions that you're fighting from chapter to chapter all have distinct color palettes, there are custom made CGs for critical story moments, many small details are accounted for and it all adds up in a significant way. There was also considerable effort put into the 100+ song soundtrack which, from my knowledge, is mostly original compositions with only a few covers of tracks from other games. They're almost all great songs too, you get leitmotifs and full usage of all the GBA soundfont instruments, all that fun stuff. There's only a few songs that I think are notably mind-numbing (fuck everything about chapter 5) but that's still better than most FEs, let alone rom hack soundtracks. It's very professionally done.
I like how it plays a lot. The way supports give more tangible bonuses in the form of things like skills, items, access to new weapons, prfs, raw stats, and gold (combined with certain supports being time gated) is phenomenal if you enjoy pairing and light build autism. There's also several non-support macro decisions that you're making throughout a playthrough (most importantly, in the first half) that trickle down through the rest of the playthrough in very impactful and fun ways. Some obvious ones are the Dawncaller decision (this even affects whether or not you get a light brand in chapter 5), the centaur decision, the marriage gift, who you have talk to the weird sage (item he gifts you depends on the unit's stats), and several others. A lot of the early chapters have superbosses who, if killed, will drop their superweapons for you to use. In one case killing a superboss even nets you a completely different character to recruit down the line. Some characters will get stat boosts and other bonuses for being deployed or fulfilling side objectives in some maps. Pretty much every map has one or two guys on it with something like a speedwing that's really worth bringing a thief for, specifically. It is a feast for the autist who loves replaying these games with different teams, and units that are redundant or unfun are the exception.
Andaron Saga does bullshit you though. There are a lot of fog maps and several of them are Thracia fog. There is a lot of enemy phasing, it gets very long, and there is no option to hold L or whatever to toggle animations. Their way of shifting more focus to player phase is often just to dump a whole squad of reinforcements right on top of you, and in some chapters the location and squad is even slightly random. Effective weapons are extremely common among enemies, and you cannot see stats and inventory simply by mousing over a unit. There are enemy dancers and it is never clear exactly how smart they are. Certain bosses in the lategame are knowledge checks that are even more absurd than Conquest is with shurikenbreaker. Maps where you have a lot impact on the pacing may be the exception, but that doesn't bother me that much because I think warpskipping to the opposite end of the spectrum is insanely fucking gay, plus I think giving you an early dancer and a shitload of Rescue uses (
as well as possibly 2 galeforce users) is a good compromise if you really, really want to kill boss/sieze as fast as possible when given the opportunity.
