Playability: 2.5
"Quest of Hoto" is a simple but interestingly set up FF. You start in a large bustling city controlled by orange with some elite post-iron troops scattered about. The goal is to get some more troopers and assasinate your brother, who is guarded in the large grey city by a reidiculously large army.
There are two groups of troopers to find; finding both is done quite simply since the map is set up in a way that makes it easy to explore. One major inconvenience here is a 3-layered fortified wall that is required to break down to get one group of troops, really quite unneccesary and 1-layer of small would do.
After this, I got the notion that I should head up to the city and blast through to my brother. In the city there are two-color enemies. Yellow have towers, white have troops. As soon as I attack the troops with my cats, a bunch of ballistas pop out of the woods and shred my army to pieces. This means you can't slowly pick down the troops with catapults, and you have to be careful whom you hit. Considering how tiresome and irritating it is to slowly pick down tower by tower, you'll find that sooner or later you should just chrage in. Every time this happens, you're swamped over by the mess of white and get blown to bits.
Overall, this scenario isn't very fun to play and you can't get too much out of it. The author added a few elements to the map to allow you to try a few different strategies, which can be fun for a bit... But in the end they all end in failure and you will get tired of it quick.
Balance: 1.8
The scenario is probably impossible, if you can do it it's by luck. Problem is, every time you charge into the city you'll get the ballistas on your tail. It just doesn't seem possible that this could work. Even if they don't catch up to you, the white army in the city is a little too much to bear. This scenario could be vastly improved by cutting down the white army in the center, and getting rid of some unneccesary parts, like the 3-layer fortification.
Creativity: 3
The starting city looks great, and is complete with working villagers. Nice to see this for a change. The rest of the map is very run-of-the-mill though. The gameplay is simple, although I do like the ballista clump that sneaks up on you when you attack white... Haven't seen something like this in awhile. The story is non-existent. Overall, enough in here to make it a vague stand out.
Map Design: 3
The city is a cut above average, although the rest of the map is a cut below, pinning this at a 3.
Story/Instructions: 2
Instructions are given perfectly as well as a couple hints, but no story or bitmap. Really need to know more about whats going on. Aftermathes would help to.
Additional Comments: Not really anything remarkable---does need some work. I'd advise the author on updating this sometime in the future to make it more fun.