Video Game / The Last Promise

"Once, men and dragons coexisted. They shared a peace forged in wisdom, a peace that lasted many generations. All that was lost when dragons disrupted this balance in a sudden onslaught.
Man fought dragon in a savage war that shook the foundations of their world. This war was called The Falling.
Defeated and humbled, mankind vanished from the realm. In time, man rebuilt and spread his dominion across the land and onto the islands beyond.
A millennium has passed since those dark days ended."

— Opening narration for The Last Promise

The Last Promise is a Game Mod of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade created by Blazer. Initially conceived as a forum hack titled Tactics Universe using fans' OCs set on the continent of Elibe several years prior to the game it's a mod of, Blazer later took control of the project and reworked it into the hack it is today, with it being considered fully completed in 2013.

The hack is set on the continent of Solum, and centers around a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits rebelling against the empire of Magnus. Though the game initially focuses on the father and son duo of Siegfried and Shon, the game shifts focus partway through to the motivational speaker Anakin and Kelik, leader of the Legend Mercenaries. The four ultimately team up along with their allies to take down the empire and free the people of Solum from their tyranny.

It's overall a simple plot, though its status as one of the first completed Fire Emblem ROM hacks helps it to stand out. It even includes a post-game mode, titled The Constellation, at a time where the only Fire Emblem game with any post-game content at all was Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. Though many ROM hacks have come out and been completed since, few have the reputation and polish that this one is known for.

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Tropes in The Last Promise:

• Action Girl: Karina, Inanna, Alice, Cia, Lirin, Rachel, and Emma. Par for course in Fire Emblem, although this one doesn't have quite as many as the canon games do.
• Boss Rush: The first chapter of the endgame has you facing off against Louis, alongside four of Magnus's senators. You need to kill each senator before you can face Louis
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Siegfried may have landed a serious against Lahar in their encounter, but it wasn't enough to stop Lahar from killing him almost instantly and in one blow. To make matters worse, his corpse is now available for Lahar to bring back as a Reanimate...a really, really, REALLY strong Reanimate.
• Can't Catch Up: Haas, Storm and Arthur are three units who join your army at different points in Siegfried's campaign. Once Chapter 10 ends and they leave, they don't rejoin until Chapter 21. While Haas is a prepromote and thus suffers the least, Storm and Arthur (especially Arthur) will likely rejoin at a very low level unless you fed them kills while they were still in your army, leading them to be outclassed by other characters who fill similar niches.
• Crossover: Zoro appears as a boss in a sidequest chapter, and can also be recruited into your army during the post-game. Once you defeat him, you even get his sword, which functions a lot like the Luna tome.
• Crutch Character: Siegfried is an unusual example, as though his bases are only slightly higher than your unpromoted units and his growths are incredibly high, he still proves to be one of your strongest units until he inevitably falls off. Fittingly, his Plotline Death isn't until late into the game when he's already been surpassed by most of your other units, even if you have been using him regularly.
  • A more straightforward example is Levion. He initially appears in Chapter 12, and after the chapter is over he doesn't come back until Chapter 21. Despite this, his bases are so incredibly high that he's still considered a very solid Paladin in spite of his late rejoin time.
• Developer's Foresight: In Chapter 17, Lyam reveals to Anakin early on that he's actually a mole for Magnus as the supposed warden, as an early clue to his eventual turn into a green unit from a red unit once you approach the throne room. If the player somehow manages to get to the throne room and attacks him before triggering the event, he has a quote specific for this one.
  Lyam: "I don't want to kill you. If you run, you might live. But if not, do your worst!"
• Disc-One Nuke: If you know where you can find it, the Elysian Whip in Chapter 3 is this for Inanna. If you're persistent into giving her a early promotion, she can be a Falcoknight as early as Chapter 5.
• The Dreaded: The Ceros are considered to be feared even by their employers. There's a good reason for this: Upon Lyam's order to unleash them, the soldier that freed them, alongside another soldier near him, were killed the moment they were set free.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: In the middle of Chapter 26, a prepromoted Warrior named Gary joins your team. His bases are quite high, and he'll easily pull his weight for the brief time you get to use him.
• The Emperor: Louis, despite technically being a king, serves this general purpose in the story.
• The Empire: Magnus is the obligatory evil empire this time around, though in the original draft it was Etruria.
• Fighting Your Friend: A hidden chapter unlocked if Siegfried doesn't engage in any combat during the prologue pits Shon against his friend Corben in a one-on-one training battle. He's none the worse for the wear afterwards, and joins up with you in just as good shape as if you didn't get the sidequest.
  • The Final Boss is against a resurrected Siegfried, whose body is being controlled by his old sword and begs for your army to put him out of his misery.
• Guide Dang It!: A few of the below-mentioned sidequests are not properly explained in the game itself, meaning you'll need to use a guide if you want to get all of them on your first playthrough.
  • The Emblem weapons vary in how easily they can be obtained. The Emblem Blade and Axe are very easy, being obtained from a chest and an enemy respectively, but the Lance and Bow are far trickier. To get the Lance, you need to have Corben visit the southwesternmost house before anyone else does, and to get the Bow Haas and Storm need to have a talk conversation in the first optional side chapter after you get them back. Getting them is very worthwhile, however, as they unlock a bonus chapter where you're rewarded with several rare items at the end.
  • The Seven Secrets are a basic achievement system that rewards you with pieces of a speech as rewards for completing small missions. How you get those secrets is never explained, but their conditions are easy to look up online.
• Initiation Ceremony: Anakin's story-based promotion is framed as this, with him being given a noble title by the Duke of Aegis.
• La Résistance: Solum's Rebellion, as Siegfried takes to calling it.
• Late Character Syndrome: Frederick and Rachel are the last two units who join your party, in Chapter 27. Both are considered among the game's weaker characters for different reasons.
  • Rachel joins as a Sniper with S-rank bows, but otherwise low leveled with low bases for her join time. There are no fliers in any of the chapters she's playable in, so her bow niche is no help in raising her stats, and even if you do somehow train her to be on-par with your other units, that's all she'll be: On-par.
  • Frederick, meanwhile, has more adequate bases for his join time, but is a General whose high Defense, low Move and mediocre Speed won't help him much with Chapter 27's massive map or the magic users of the endgame. He might be useful against the handful of physical-attacking units, but if you want a General on your team, you're likely already using Kevin, who has some of the best availability in the game.
• Magikarp Power: Sai is this game's resident Est, a level 8 Fighter with lower bases but solid growths. Many believe he's redundant due to you getting Gary in Chapter 26, though he can be serviceable if you decide to train him, and the fact that he comes with a Dragon Axe in a map full of Wyvern Riders encourages you to do so.
• Master of None: Halberdiers and Soldiers might as well get the short end of the stick of combat. They're meant to be a faster counterpart of the Knight/General class line, but compared to them, the only advantage they have is movement and speed, and even then their speed is marginally 2 points more than them. The only playable Knight and General, Kevin and Frederick, has an unusual 35% speed growth and Frederick starts out with near his speed cap, respectively. They even lack the crit bonus that Halberdiers have in the Tellius games, and their higher speed cap doesn't matter much when Champion Siegfried can pretty much double almost everyone in the late game. Even with that, various other lance-wielding units perform better than them, with Wyvern Riders/Lords and Pegasus Knights/Falcoknights having flying utility and Cavaliers, Shon and Siegfried having better statlines and caps along with good growths and being horseback units.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: You can either get Logan if Anakin chose to trust him in Chapter 11, or Asch if Anakin chose not to trust Logan.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Due to some Early-Installment Weirdness, Lethality cannot be activated at 1-2 range. While this isn't obvious with Althares, this is more blatant with Liquid, who will never crit even with Hand Axes and Tomahawks.
• Really Royalty Reveal: Cia, a rather inconspicuous unit who joins you early, eventually turns out to be the crown princess of Alicia.
• Schmuck Bait: In Chapter 14, you can buy a Member Card from a shop for 6000 gold. This might seem like a great deal... until you realize you can get a free one in the very next chapter. Even if you sell the Member Card back, that's still a not-insignificant 3000 gold that's gone forever.
• Sidequest: In addition to the usual "Gaiden chapters," there are a series of optional objectives that the player can take on in exchange for small bonuses, character development or no reward at all.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Given that older drafts of the story took place in Elibe, it's natural that several key places and concepts have very close parallels to places and concepts in those games. For example, Magnus was originally Etruria, Valencia was Lycia, and Blaine was Bern.
  • The first few bosses are eerily similar to the Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade ones. The Prologue boss, Byron "the Lion", is essentially Batta the Beast with green armor, and even has the same shtick of shouting his title when you fight him. Chapter 2 pits you against Jaled, a bandit with an inflated ego who takes over a residential area and looks awfully similar to a certain peerless swordsman whose name is feared by the gods.
  • Additionally, the fact that the Ceros were originally noble assassins who targeted corrupted people but gradually became a tool of war and evil is very similar to the Black Fang's backstory.
• The Unfought: Lahar is an evil dark mage similar to Nergal, who is responsible for many of the events that take place in this game, including Siegfried's death and resurrection. However, soon after Siegfried is brought back, his possessed body kills Lahar, leaving you to re-kill Siegfried.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: The final confrontation between Kelik and his brother in Finale, Part 2 is a one on one affair to help the others reach Lahar faster. It doesn't matter if Kelik falls in battle, as he will later join up with the rest following this none worse than wear.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: During Chapter 14, a person who looks similar to Father Claud of Edda gives you the Divine tome upon reaching the village he resides in and claims that he knows that he'll meet the Legend Mercenaries again, but is not seen again afterwards.

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