Honestly, that hotfix is the only thing you need to do. I changed the promoted enemy level bonus from 19 to 9 and played a bit of late game, and it was perfectly fine. No real need to go through hard mode with a fine-toothed comb, since this one change does the job.
I want to thank you for your thoughtful feedback here and Iâm glad youâre enjoying the game. As mentioned, Iâll be uploading a hotfix tonight to remove that chapter 24 debug prompt and I will go ahead and also reduce the promoted enemy bonus levels. We had no idea that hard mode enemies are given +19 levels on top of whatever gets specified in the chapter data structure until last night. I knew the game gave out some bonus levels none of us realized it was that many! Had we known before, weâd have definitely lowered them sooner.
Regarding crit and luck, we will have to play with some numbers. I think part of it is marginally higher enemy stats like Skill across the board compared to vanilla, compounded by hard mode bonus levels. As for items, I assume some of the frequent offenders are tomes like Thunder, Shaver, Shine, and Divine, as well as the occasional Saber or Flight Lance (both of whom were previously their respective weapon typesâ âSlimâ weapons and kept some of that crit those had). I donât think our early units are particularly unlucky ones, but distributing 1-2 base points or 5-10% growth bonuses to some of them probably canât hurt. This wonât make it into any hotfixes we do and instead will be something to look at for 1.1.
As for reinforcements and deployments, I feel like they go hand in hand and are part of the larger attempt to balance EXP gain over the course of the game. In retrospect I believe I made many of the gameâs maps a little larger than they shouldâve been too soon, leading to maps that might look nice but necessitate enemies/reinforcements to fill their space. I wouldnât mind adding deployment slots to maps because more units is fun and it does help distribute EXP, but I also wouldnât want the player feeling like 25% of their deployed units arenât really contributing. This is something we can try and balance a little more for 1.1 as well.
Speaking of 1.1, I think weâll still go and look at hard mode more properly even with the hotfix just because we didnât really playtest it at all until the final month before release when one of our team members did a quick run through the mode and came out the other side alive. Heâs the most skilled player on the team, though, so he didnât immediately flag any of the excessively strong enemies as impossible problems and I assumed since we hadnât heard much from him on it that the mode was hard but reasonable. No shade intended towards him at all, of course.
Thanks again for playing and Iâll have a hotfix uploaded later tonight.
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Oh, we never responded to this, but this is intentional. It will unlock after beating the game, though it will still be completely filled for you.
Quickest way to get me to playâŚstory and lots of support mentioned. Goes to download
Awful Emblem - Version 1.03 Hotfix (12/2/25)
- Removed another debug script from Chapter 24
- Fixed more potential instances of inventory resets during prep screens for characters joining that chapter.
- Reduced the number of bonus levels promoted enemies on Hard receive from +19 to +9 (same as Normal)
- Fixed additional typos.
- Purposefully re-enabled the 100% completion support viewer debug feature until we have proper code to unlock it upon beating the game once.
Thanks to everyone whoâs been pointing out bugs, typos and more. Hopefully this should make it so everyone can reach the end of the game now.
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Are recruitments all straightforward? I see this does not include talk bubbles or any talk indicators in profile. Are there any plans for a guide?
Thereâs a Talk indicator in the unit Personal Data page 1/3 replacing the Affinity line on the right column. Recruitments are usually obvious though some will have less obvious alternative conversation pairs.
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Ran into a very odd issue in chapter 28, where I get the âno, we failed!â dialogue and get a game over for seemingly no reason. I talked to green Mikhail and he left the map safely, but then a few turns later, at the end of enemy phase after a trio of wyverns spawn from up top, game over. Iâm gonna check the rom later and see if I can figure out whatâs getting mixed up here.
The failure condition is only supposed to trigger if all three villages are destroyed or the named green unit is killed. Iâm also wondering what happened to cause that for youâŚ
@FPzero and the Awful Team, thank you for this Amazing romhack!!
For a game 12 years in the making, its a :
Look forward to future projects, great work all around on this 1, i loved it, i want more !!
also 1st time seeing Beatrice angry!!!
Another question, what is the final deployment count?
its 14
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thanks!
Realized I had the 1.0 version and once I updated to the latest it all reset, I could cry.
(Idk why they was sent as a reply)
Is the name of your updated rom the same as the name as your old rom? Check to see if your save file is still there, just with a name that differs from the name of your rom.
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Right thatâs how it usually works and I know it was the same because it asked me to replace the original file so I know the name was the same. Idk why it chose to delete but hey at least I was only on chapter 6.
Not sure if this is a glitch or what but the first time I played I got June & Ferris on chapter 3 and they even turn blue however Iâm now on chapter 4 and I still donât have them in the party. Did this change? Even the dialogue and the fact the enemy had a random hammer on chapter 3 makes me think that I was still supposed to have them. Also, noticed some previous support match ups are gone like Martin & Kate. Not seeing this mentioned in the hot fixes so checking
I donât even know where to start with the June/Ferris thing but Kate and Martin do not and never did have a support.
In trying to patch the issues that some have had where joining units could have their inventories reset if you saved during prep and restarted the chapter, I had to modify a few opening cutscenes such as the one with June and Ferris in chapter 3. But all I did was change them from being named as proper units in the opening cutscene to being defined as cutscene units that can be safely used temporarily.
I might have one theory but explaining it will be hard. Iâll try and figure out whatâs going on later tonight.