Innovation:
This puts Genealogy of the Holy War's scaling to shame: the whole map's on one continent! Thematically, picking up the pieces and reassembling the continent is interesting.
Fun:
The Jugdral inspiration is clear, and I like my Jugdral. Implementing roads to speed up backtracking proved to be useful to catch up any units lagging behind. There wasn't much incentive to rush, however. Almost every enemy was static and when my fortress was destroyed the game didn't end. The chapter took me 47 turns and 1:20 to finish, shorter than what I was expecting. Low percent crits were ever-present, but I never got hit by one.
Theme:This game knew its theme, and stuck to it. The empires shattered with the Divine Glass, and Ki and company have chosen to put things back together again. Small things like the misaligned road tiles add to the sense of the broken world. It's a shame the storyline petered out halfway through, but deadlines are deadlines. It did come to a conclusion, at least.
Humour:The banter between Ki and her friends is funny, as are the recruitment conversations. But then the text dries up in the second half of the chapter: I can only assume due to deadline crunch. But what is there is good.
Mood:The large amount of custom assets set the scene nicely. Being able to see the whole world also helps sell just how big of a task fixing the ruined world was going to be.
Graphics:These are another point of focus. Almost all the default assets have been replaced with large, distinct portraits drawn for the chapter. All the player portraits are tinted blue, while all the enemy portraits are tinted red. The chapter tileset is also refreshing to see. Some of the late-joiners don't have full-sized portraits, presumably due to time crunch, but that doesn't really detract from the work that went into the rest of the character artwork.
Audio:There wasn't the most variety in music, but the tracks that were there did their jobs.
Overall:
This chapter set out to be a big, contient-spanning epic with unique graphics for everyone. And as it so happens, I like Jugdral. I did find it a bit odd I could pick off the enemies at my leisure, but it was a nice and relaxing run, low percent crit rates aside.