[COMPLETE] Blade and Claw (Full Length, 23 chapters)

kdports · August 2, 2022, 9:50pm

Thanks for the feedback! Noted on the bugs there. Will look at getting that fixed in the next patch.

Would you say normal mode is too easy overall? We had trouble finding a good balance between hard and easy mode

Shark3143 · August 2, 2022, 9:58pm

I’m going to play some more chapters and comment further on the game’s difficulty when I’ve experienced more of the campaign as a whole. I’ll probably try out hard at some point as well so I have a more complete perspective on how the game works.

kdports · August 2, 2022, 10:07pm

Here’s a soundtrack playlist! (The link is a little strange - you can view the whole thing through the icon at the top right)

Darrman · August 2, 2022, 11:41pm

Since I’ve got a few people enquiring about the credits for this project, they can be found by going to:
BladeandClaw.ltproj/game_data/events/global_Credits.json after extracting the zip.

familyplayer · August 3, 2022, 12:10am

Thought I’d leave my feelings so far. Got up to chapter 6, playing hard mode. I liked it for the most part but I kinda hated chapter 6 so thought I’d stop and give some thoughts.

I really like the simplified pair-up bonuses. Helps make pair ups understandable but still strategic.

Unit and map design are pretty good so far with most units having a clear niche and maps have well defined goals and paced pretty good. BEXP and reinforcements especially are always a good way of reinforcing the player to move forward and not turtle either.

Now to get into complaints so far. I didn’t have much to say about good but I swear I think what I played was quite good, I just am not as good at explaining what’s good as I am with what’s not so good lol.

Could really use a shop or anything so far. There’s not been any way to get extra healing of any kind except from unit inventories of course. Considering the high damage it would be nice even if there was only one more heal or mend or some extra vulns. You can make do without like I have, but I feel bad if anyone overused some thinking they could buy more soon. As a side note, also would be nice to be able to buy even just irons.

Fatigue I think is introduced a bit too early, especially with such a low unit count at this point and after a chokepoint heavy semi-defense map. Thankfully that next chapter isn’t too bad but it’s still quite strange and could mess someone up.

Chapter 6. Why are there randomized spawns? Why are the monks so strong when you only have one good anti-magic unit with good hit rates (the rest are the ones who can maybe one shot but as I said hit rates)? Why do the tiles for opening the door randomly have super high avoid and defense? Why is the turn limit for BEXP so short if you have to be extremely precise and not to mention lucky on the left side, while the right side I’m not completely sure can do much besides get the left chest

Overall despite my criticisms, I still think it’s mostly good so far, especially for a “hack” that came out of nowhere which, if I’m being honest, don’t always have the best track records. I look forward to seeing what you do.

kdports · August 3, 2022, 12:51am

I’m glad you’re liking it! Sorry to hear you aren’t enjoying Ch 6 though.

If you really feel stuck on the left side, I promise the right side can complete the chapter on their own. I’d be happy to go into more detail if you’re frustrated and just want to move on. Either way, I hope you keep enjoying it!

Shark3143 · August 3, 2022, 3:50am

I crashed the game and this engine doesn’t autosave, so I’m going to stop playing for the moment and give more bugs reports and thoughts.

General Bugs

Suspended data isn’t cleared upon finishing a chapter, so you can “Continue” a chapter you’ve already beaten and saved over.
I don’t know if this is a bug, but the engine doesn’t autosave like GBAFE. Since I now know the game can crash on me, I’d prefer an autosave suspend feature.
HP bar clips offscreen when healing on a fort at the edge of the map.

Chapter 5

Tutorialize the escape mechanic? I don’t know if this works like FE5 escaping or more like the escape patch in builder.
Jana’s map sprite uses a lance, maybe change it to an axe? There’s sprites in the repo for that.
I can’t believe I named a character “Janna”, Flames of Redemption has a Janna, and now this?
We can’t just walk into the restaurant wearing the same shirt.
ONE OF US WILL HAVE TO CHANGE-
Easier than Ch4, but welcome since fatigue took some units away for the chapter.

Chapter 6

Lots of minor graphical issues with the tiling.
Blue tiles used to open the gate are labelled as “Gate” tiles, with associated def, avoid, and healing.
No-XP reinforcement ghost spam is annoying in a game with a fatigue system, so I skipped a chest in favor of ending the chapter far sooner.
There’s a seemingly useless broken wall? It’s hard to reach.
Enemies won’t attack Cyrus, but he isn’t fun on player phase either due to low offenses. Odd unit…

Chapter 7

Boss didnt grant XP, chapter ends instantly instead.
This chapter’s gimmick is VERY cool, but it’s more optimal to fight the reinforcements for XP rather than barricade/clear fast, since BEXP doesn’t scale with clear time here and you need extra time anyway to traverse to the top right chest. Incentivize barricading the villages somehow with minor items upon ‘visiting’ such as vulneraries, perhaps?
RENEWAL??

Chapter 8

Boss battle quote plays repeatedly.
Are the reinforcements infinite? Could be abused for farming.
Actually yeah the reinforcements clipped on top of each other and stacked.
Yeah that crashed the game after a bit after the units started sharing tiles.
No autosave, so I have to redo the entire chapter.

I think I unfortunately have to complain about a chapter for the first time, but I have been having a lot of fun until now.

I can’t deploy anyone fragile because the back reinforcements and fliers make it very hard to stay out of danger. Since enemies ignore player units that they can’t damage, I can’t bait out or move said fliers because they can’t hurt my frontline, causing them to mass-beeline the backline units. I can’t sustain vulnerable units on vulneraries alone because there’s no source to obtain more of those.

Therefore, I restarted and only deployed a couple units with high defense. I’m sitting here player phasing a map full of stationary enemies that won’t fight me. I kill 1 or 2 units a turn, and there’s hordes of enemies to kill. I can’t take damage because everything is physical, and training a weaker unit would be hard.

I don’t care about the fatigue cost of this strategy because Lewis doesn’t take fatigue and I sat out everyone for fatigue reasons besides Geoff and pair-up filler. Using Lewis this much is actually very economical on fatigue.

Upon fighting reinforcements for countless turns to see if there was a cutoff point, their inability to move on enemy phase eventually crashed the game when they kept spawning on top of each other.

I can easily redo this chapter in like 3 minutes by solo deploying Lewis and running straight at the boss, so this isn’t a huge setback, it’s just that the chapter’s design is awkward and can even cause the game to crash, which is a problem.

Maybe there should be a quality over quantity approach to the enemies in this chapter, because they can’t touch my powerful units, but overwhelm weak ones from every angle. I’m reminded of that boat in FE9 with the Ravens… I would always do that chapter by just cutting my deploy and juggernauting. What other strategy do I have against fliers attacking from inaccessible tiles on every side?

SP776 · August 3, 2022, 12:14pm

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! It’s super helpful. Also, thanks for pointing out the crash. We’ll see if we can fix it in an update. Sorry that it messed with your playthrough in the meantime, though.

I hope the rest of your playthough goes well!

Liemile · August 3, 2022, 4:40pm

Hey again ! Launching the game for the first time today, and… I have a bit on an issue.

The window of the game is too big, and I can’t shrink it, or shrink game within the window. Any ideas how to fix that ?

SP776 · August 3, 2022, 4:55pm

Totally fair! From the main menu, click “Extras.” Next, click “Options.” From that menu, the second item should be “Screen Size.” You can adjust that slider with your arrow keys until the window size is more manageable. Hope this helps!

Liemile · August 3, 2022, 4:55pm

I’ll try, thanks !

familyplayer · August 3, 2022, 7:06pm

Finished chapter 6 and now the new 3 guys from there and the griffon merc are just gone from my army for some reason in the next chapter? It’s not for story reasons so this must be some glitch. They all died in the previous chapter except the thief but that shouldn’t matter in this game right, so I assume this is a glitch.

kdports · August 3, 2022, 7:47pm

No, if they died they’re dead. The explanation box is that they will appear in the story, so you won’t miss dialogue. They are no longer deployable, however.

familyplayer · August 3, 2022, 8:45pm

Oh then all I can say on my part is “woops.” That’s my bad. Though that again makes me question chapter 6’s design like before lol.

Shark3143 · August 3, 2022, 11:45pm

I encountered a softlock in chapter 11 so I’m once again deciding to stop here and post my detailed feedback. The softlock needs to be hotfixed as soon as possible – I think you can get permanently stuck if you save in the sewer.

This post is 95% ‘things to fix’, but I want to be clear that I’ve really enjoyed these chapters.

General

I’ve been informed the boxes/barricades in chapter… 3(?) can be placed on top of other units, which might be able to crash the game in a similar manner as the reinforcements of chapter 8.
You can ‘fix’ an over-fatigued unit by giving them BEXP or promoting them to get their max HP over the threshold, restoring them for use for one more chapter.
I used bonus EXP on Cass and she only gained two stats, HP and Def. Aren’t I supposed to gain three? Strength is only at 7.
She ONLY has capped Mag, Spd, and Dex, and 16 Def, how could I possibly survive without 10 Mov? I’m going to riot. The system is broken. I only have NINE Mov. She’s been ruined.
Cass is odd. While her base stats are terrible, I raised her to highlight how busted bonus EXP is when you cap stats early – she finishes Spd and Dex at a low level, allowing me to crank Mag and Def really high. The crappy thief is now genuinely a very strong unit.

Graphical

The quality of minimugs is a bit variable.
Preston looks like he was downscaled without having been cleaned up afterward? The outline needs to be repaired in many places, facial features/hair shading have really suffered.
Theresa’s eyes on her mini need to be much darker, the glowing eyes are a bit creepy.
Ruth’s minimug has some of the best detail I’ve seen at this scale, armor and hair have been AMAZINGLY rendered, and the overly simple ditto-face she has is clashing horrifically. If I cover up her face with my thumb, it’s my favorite mini of all time, and then I remove my finger and I’m sad.

Chapter 9

Are fliers meant to be able to fly through all of these walls? Exterior walls I can imagine them going ‘up and over’, but wouldn’t the interior walls be solid?
Not immediately obvious Preston and Elaine are player army – I thought I’d have to walk and recruit them.
Villages are comprised of unflyable “Walls” but Walls are flyable “Ramparts”? Maybe allow for flight over villages by making them also rampart tiles.
Bottom right village isn’t visitable. What item did I miss? I did get the bolt axe from the other one.
It’s by this point that Theresa is really feeling like a terrible unit. Between no money/extra heal staves, on top of the fatigue system discouraging staff grinding, I haven’t gotten the staff rank to use either of these two physics, and BEXP usage won’t fix her staff rank. Was I meant to spam the wall staff?
I only failed to save one green sage (Theresa can’t physic…), maybe add a lower BEXP partial reward if you get close to meeting the objective?

Chapter 10

Tutorial for the collapse mechanic? I guess it’s a debuff, but what’s allowing me to do this? It also hits AoE?? Why can my small children throw enormous rocks 10 tiles.
Lower right door can’t be opened. I now know it’s because of the chapter’s gimmick, but it feels odd in a map where you deploy a thief for the chests anyway.
I’m experimentally spamming the hell out of the wall staff, and barely managed to get Theresa to B rank staves, but it feels like a waste to overcap fatigue on her doing ‘empty’ staff uses to try and force her to be usable, given how good Any Other Staff Option is right now.
The promoted enemies this chapter give BUCKETS of XP, but I’ve still only seen the one Master Seal. Was that non-functioning village in 9 meant to be a master seal? I’m dinging some Lv 20s here…
Objective doesn’t update from “Seize Throne”
Getting new recruits with 5 mov feels really pointless at this point of the game. The rest of my good units have 8-10 Mov because Dex scaling is kinda busted.
I spent so much effort to use Theresa despite thinking she’s bad, and I’m hard-locked out of using the rescue staff anyway? Man.
At the end of this chapter I have 2 level 20s and 2 level 18s. The experience is really outpacing the rate of Master Seals… I didn’t even count Jana, who used one already.

Chapter 11

This chapter’s gimmicks are incredibly cool. There’s nothing like this in any other romhack.
Why does Cass have a talk dialogue with Lewis about playing Hide-And-Seek during the arena?
Why does Lewis talking to Marian in the Arena trigger a dialogue about Laval with Quincy in it??
Halberdier’s generic art on their stat screen is using the armored general class card – I’m 95% sure there’s a halberdier class card to replace this with in the repo.
Alright did y’all remember to playtest the sewers? It’s just a softlock, since I can’t leave until I rout the enemy, but I can’t reach the archer. The longbow archer won’t move because he has 9 power and can’t hurt Duff, but you left him out of magic range with no bridge anywhere to walk to him.

I’m getting an overall feeling that this game didn’t have enough testing runs before release, since I’ve managed to brick the game twice now through what I consider to be normal play. I had saved prior to the 3rd arena fight, so I don’t have to redo much, but saving in the sewer could permanently lock your save, and as such, is the first problem that really needs to be fixed immediately.

SP776 · August 4, 2022, 12:36am

Thanks so much for the feedback. We’ll fix this ASAP. Unfortunately, normal mode did not receive as much testing as hard more, so this got missed. Sorry for the frustration this caused!

SP776 · August 4, 2022, 4:25pm

New Update! Version 1.0.1

Thanks to everyone who played the game and gave feedback! We’re always looking to improve things, so we’re happy to announce a new update to Blade and Claw. The file in the Drive link reflects this up-to-date version. Changes are listed below:

8/4/2022

Balance Changes

Added an option to Chapter 3 to make fatigue easier to handle
Rebalanced normal and easy mode so player units would gain more HP, but would no
longer gain as much STR and DEF (enemies bypassing player units will happen less)
Rebalanced Chapter 7 bonus experience to scale with turncount

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where some boss battle quotes would repeat
Fixed an issue where boss kills wouldn’t show item drops
Fixed an issue where reinforcements in Chapter 6 wouldn’t spawn on some turns
Fixed a softlock on Chapter 11 during the sewers
Fixed an issue in Chapter 10 where the objective wouldn’t update
Fixed an issue where Chapter 8 reinforcements would overlap

Other Changes

Added a credits.txt file to the ltproj folder

Shark3143 · August 4, 2022, 7:16pm

Knocked out five more chapters. I’m still on v1.0 for now, since I don’t know if you can easily transfer saves in this engine, and I also don’t feel like redownloading the whole game unless I need to get past a critical bug. (I had already simply avoided Ch11’s sewer and skipped Duff.)

Anyway, I’ve got my usual pile of detailed thoughts, bug reports, and feedback. I genuinely can’t put this game down, so you get to hear from me extra-often.

Note on Bonus Experience

Geoff failed to gain 3 stats with BEXP, despite having HP, Mag, Str, Spd, and Mov as open options.

This happened with Cass with her Mov/Str, making me wonder if units with a base 0% growth in a stat can’t gain it with BEXP, despite how Dex increases growths. Snooping in the files confirms that Geoff has 0% growths in Mag, Spd, and Mov, while Cass has 0% in Str and Mov.

In the case of Cass, this makes her extremely powerful in that it’s easy to force a series of Hp/Mag/Def level ups, turning her into a monster mixed tank who can slaughter armies with a light brand. I’m not sure this unit was intended for combat, but she’s my best unit on account of being unkillable and having 1-2 range.

Chapter 12

Duff appears in base convos even if you didn’t recruit him. (I skipped him to bypass the v1.0 sewer softlock.)
You can bypass the frozen condition by swapping to a paired unit. I don’t think this is a bug, just noting a cool strategy.
Are the walls spawning in pre-programmed positions? What would happen if a unit is already standing there?
I happen to be using Cass for combat anyway, but I wonder if others would feel constrained by bringing her on low-deploy chapters to open chests.
Enola’s hair shading seems off, the grey I would expect to be the darkest tone is very light.

Chapter 13

The arrival at the capital is a tad abrupt, narratively. Maybe the characters could be seen walking inside beforehand?
Eithan has joined my base camp pre-chapter. I have never seen this man in my life.
Halberd item description missing a period.
I have decided that having Lewis be my dancer is unreasonably funny. (Also, optimal? Who else deploys to every single chapter?)
Nicholas can’t use master seals, to my immense disappointment.
I really like Farrell’s portrait.
I feel like I have to S Drink Cass since there’s a chest. Fatigue system doesn’t play nice when you have one door/chest opener.
Monika’s portrait is almost very good, but the outline color isn’t working on her at all, since it’s lighter than what it’s outlining.
I’m starting to wonder why anti-armor weapons are so frequent when non-armored units like Jana and Geoff cap def anyway. I can’t imagine Ruth/Cyrus being so OP to require constant counters, when fates AI already nerfs their ability to enemy phase to begin with.
Locktouch manual solves the fatigued Cass issue, I suppose, but these things are alarming when you don’t have prior game knowledge.
Jana has capped every stat but magic and HP by level 6 Wyvern Lord. She opened the double sniper room on accident and survived enemy phase anyway, since she has 51 HP, capped def, high avo, and guard stance up.
Chest with the freeze staff doesn’t visually ‘Open’ when opened. You can’t open it again, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first time this has happened.
Lewis lost 2 speed on promotion and I am vaguely unhappy about it. He had 27! Why are his promoted caps lower than his unpromoted caps?

Mountaintop

This story-only walkaround chapter automatically clears all fatigue, I think? Intentional?

Chapter 14

Laval has a base conversation with Lewis after ‘killing’ him in the ruins. Shouldn’t he be ‘dead’ right now? He taunted us as if we were walking into battle with him.
Duff is still appearing in base conversations. I have never spoken to this man in my life.
It would be nice if promoted Lewis had a new combat animation of some sort. I turned anims on to check, seems identical.
I’ve received tons of swords and axes by this point of the game, including killers, magic variants, etc. Yet the most impressive lance is still a steel lance?
Brigands don’t attack player units if there’s an available house to burn, but their AI changes to aggressive once you visit them all. I found their aggro behavior to be kind of unpredictable.

Chapter 15

Intro cutscene was buggy. The tutorial on killing Angela has been replaced with the cutscene background with Theresa standing around.
This chapter looked annoying, so I low-manned it with Cass and Lewis in 5 turns. Cass sprinted to kill the healers, while Lewis killed Angela a couple times for XP.

Chapter 16

Everett being a high growth Est unit doesn’t seem to be interesting when I already have units like Jana and Cass with four or five stats capped.
I feel like you could solo this map in minutes with a high defense unit by mashing End Turn and allowing the new recruits to die.
Boss triggers an event and speaks, despite me having killed him several turns prior.
Cannons gimmick is extremely funny and creative, but I don’t know which tiles will be destroyed.
This chapter is very unique and memorable, but I don’t actually enjoy sitting around waiting for fliers I can’t reach to trickle in on me.
“Survive for 1 turns” should say “Survive for 1 turn”.

SP776 · August 4, 2022, 9:37pm

Always great to see your thoughts on the game! The feedback is super helpful.

Also, if you ever feel like bringing saves to a new version, you can copy your saves from the “saves” folder in the old version and paste them into the new version’s saves folder. However, if you have a chapter loaded already (if you’re in the preps menu, for instance), you won’t see the new changes in that chapter. You’ll see changes in all subsequent chapters, though. Hope this helps!

As always, I hope the rest of your playthrough goes well!

Donlot · August 5, 2022, 3:14am

Gonna give this a go once some of the bugs have been ironed out, first project since Iron Emblem that made me go “Holy shit this looks great”. Phenomenal trailer too, Good job KD and SP!