Hi everyone! First, I just wanted to say thanks again for all the great feedback. As we try to make Blade and Claw the best it can be, your comments and thoughts help us move in the right direction. Speaking of which, we’re announcing a new version: v1.0.2. Most significantly in this version, we fixed several bugs pointed out by players and reworked Chapter 15’s intro.
As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback and we hope you enjoy the game!
(Also, if you’re looking to try out the new version without starting over, you can copy your saves from the old version’s “saves” folder into the new version’s saves folder!)
8/5/2022
Balance Changes
Fatigue is retained in the Mountaintop free-roam chapter
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue in Chapter 16 where the boss would talk when he was dead
Eithan now joins after Chapter 13 starts
Fixed a visual bug where a Chapter 13 chest would not show that it was opened
Fixed an issue where Lewis’s stat caps would decrease upon promotion
Fixed an issue where Master Seals wouldn’t work on Nicholas
Fixed a crash that would occur if Duff was killed from attacking on player phase
Hey, I’m getting a crash when trying to enter the freeroam chapter after chapter 6, the game window and console just closes so I can’t really provide you with more details.
Edit: I was able to screenshot before the console closed itself, unable to scroll up sadly, but it seems to have something to do with a music track.
Edit: This error indicates that it can’t find a music file named “Aen Seidhe.” Just checked the build folder, and the music file is included. Could you check your files to see if it’s in there on your end? You can go from the “BladeandClaw” folder to the “BladeandClaw.ltproj” folder. Then navigate to “resources” and then “music.” If it is in there, this is a super weird error that I’ve never seen before, and it may take a bit of time to investigate.
I was chatting with KD as well and there was a dot in the filename of the track “Aen Seidhe” instead of a space. Probably something with my system locale not playing nice with the Python characters, I managed to get past it by changing the name of the track in the music folder and changing all instances of “Aen\u00a0Seidhe” to “Aen Seidhe” in 6 intro and >gamedata>levels>7.
I’ve finished the whole game! Didn’t run into any bugs for the last third, which is great.
Blade and Claw really is unlike any other project I’ve seen, it’s absolutely worth a play to experience the unique mechanics. With the initial bugs already mostly ironed out by the devs, you can give it a shot right now if you’ve been holding off.
I really had a lot of fun playing this hack and got some friends to download it as well, but it’s not perfect. Here’s an honest review:
The good stuff!
Unique gameplay mechanics such as fates style pair-up, which we don’t normally get to see in FEGBA.
Great soundtrack: The engine allows for high-quality songs, no more MIDIs that need to play on GBA!
Unique chapters: This game is absolutely chock-full of unique chapter gimmicks and scenarios. Each chapter is distinct and memorable.
Strong cast: All units ‘retreat’ on death, and are present throughout the story. You get a lot of bits of pieces of every character thanks to the walk n talk chapters, as well as the ever-present base conversations. The cast is smaller than most complete projects I’ve seen, but they each have a distinct presence and fairly unique gameplay purpose that makes the cast feel well-rounded and complete.
Could be better?
Graphical quality is a bit variable, since it seems to be a mash of existing assets from the repo. Specific portraits, battle animations, maps, and minimugs could use a coat of paint, but I certainly wouldn’t say that they did a poor job.
Gameplay might be weird for some people. FE5 Stamina is a controversial mechanic, I’m not a fan of Fates-style AI where the enemy will just ignore you, the deploy varies wildly, and the condensed stat system can be kind of strange and very focused on scaling units towards most of their caps. The huge maps seem designed around everyone reaching 10 Mov eventually, but you’ll get new recruits without a scaled up Mov stat that fall behind your existing units immediately.
The economy of items is nonstandard – the game has one shop, and one chapter where you can get gold. Some players might dislike this system.
Balance seems to be a work in progress. Enemy quality is a bit variable, such as units in the final chapter with low stats and weak weapons that couldn’t deal even a single point of damage to my units. Maybe it’s a ‘normal mode’ thing, but I think the different difficulty modes weren’t thoroughly tested, given fairly obvious issues like the v1.0 normal mode softlock in chapter 11. (It’s fixed! I’m told.) Despite the stamina system, this game was very much ‘build a few juggernauts’ and toss them at the enemy without a thought in my head, since Dex scaling makes it easy for units to hit most of their caps, and the game is generous with EXP and makes it happen. Since the deploy is often as low as 6, I can’t imagine playing too differently on hard, anyway. I can just buy stamina drinks.
There’s an escort mission. I’m sorry.
Lewis is an underwhelming protagonist, I think? He spends the entire game being told what to do – he’s just along for the ride while everybody else moves the plot forward. His promotion is really forgettable too, since he doesn’t gain any new powers, weapons, animations, or anything. All that happens is a reset of his level, and his caps are identical. He uses the exact same weapons from chapter 1 to 23, and you’ll never get a new one.
I felt like I was missing a thing or two with the plot/lore. The story felt more like a vehicle to write fun characters doing things and put them in combat versus assorted assassins/lackeys for the 17th time. I really enjoyed reading everything the game had to offer because it has a lot of heart and has a fun time with it, but it didn’t have tension, emotional punch, or compelling antagonists.
…If you’re one of the developers, I’m sorry this section is so much longer than ‘The good stuff!’. I’m better at picking at things than praising them, even when I had a great time.
Unit Review
Here’s my core army, screenshots taken at the start of ch23.
The images are big because this game’s window is just huge.
I used the hell out of Lewis since nobody else bypasses the stamina system.
He has a strong niche in oneshotting horses/beasts, but his lack of power scaling through equipment makes him often unimpressive compared to other units by the end of the game, since he’s stuck at 1 range with a 6 mt weapon he got back in chapter 1. I had made him my dancer, so he did well in that role when other units would do a better job than he would.
Nicholas couldn’t promote until v1.02 due to a bug, and I was already on chapter 20, and he was still this good. He had the str to use Fimbulvetr without slowing down, and strong 1-2 damage is very good in a game where 1-2 throwables can’t double.
His promotion sucks. Everyone gets 10 mov anyway, he becomes weak to horseslayers, I never saw canto happen once in this engine, and he gets E swords instead of staves. Trying to use the light brand as a sword would be worse than tomes, and it’s already needed on other units.
Do I have to even explain this?
This is a good time to remind people that Mag is also Res in this game, and she can train to use light brands after promoting. I raised up swords, but I was using the brand elsewhere. She actually took a while to become this good, since my other units frontloaded stats quicker, but nobody else got all of them in the same way.
Premier axe unit. She capped everything but HP and Mag by level 6 promoted, and I even gave her renewal. Silver bows were more of a suggestion than a counter.
Wanna see me abuse the bonus XP system?
Wanna see me do it again?
Light brand unit and easily my best at 1-2 range. I just moved her 10 tiles into the enemy every turn without even checking the enemy’s stats, and watched her slaughter the ones brave enough to attack her. Y’all, this is this game’s Thief. What happened here?
Ignore her stats for a second:
I actually think this unit is pretty bad.
She’s a nightmare to train early on due to her extremely low fatigue, lack of staves to grind on, low staff rank, fragility, and hard lockout from combat until the story gives her a prf. Even if you promote her, she can’t use tomes.
A high mag staff user would be impressive if you got any staves stronger than a physic, but you don’t, and the rescue is prf locked elsewhere. Her only weapon has 3 might, and damn if she’s taking the hyper valuable light brand after she finally trains enough sword rank.
I’m not sure which mages promote into staves, but just use Elaine and filler healbots. I played on normal and spent the entire playthrough trying to make her work, and she felt like a good unit for maybe the last 20% of the game. At least her Wall staff is extremely cool.
Filler with wary fighter, which got less useful the longer the game went as my units become one-rounding demigods. Once stamina got less restrictive, I never used him again.
Shoutouts to pair-up filler and miscellaneous units I didn’t use much that I’m not taking screenshots of. The Griffon Rider is probably S tier though, since she’s a flyer with vantage who has access to bows and lances on promotion, and she’s in a game where everyone will cap all their stats if you try. She’d hard counter enemy bow griffons with vantage, giving her even less weaknesses than my Jana.
Misc Thoughts
Final was really easy, and I finished it lightning quick because I could oneround the minibosses with braves, and dance my strongest brave into the totem for enormous damage.
Braves and Silvers state to ‘tire units’ like in fates, but absolutely do not seem to do that.
No S-rank weapons makes me question what the benefit of S ranking is.
Insight scroll comes way too late to matter?
Ch22 really comes off as pure filler, you’re done making your units stronger and getting more loot, the boss is a faceless goon I hammered out before anyone could come to his rescue, and there’s nothing that happens in this chapter narratively. I love the walk n talk before final, though.
I’m so glad you had a good time! Your feedback is really appreciated, as is all the bugs you helped us find and fix.
To your point about the story
I 100% agree that the plot/lore is lacking in comparison to the characters. I think it could be good to talk about why that is. I am not very confident in my own writing (especially after Snow and Fire, which I think I did a poor job writing). I also think it is very hard to tell a story with serious emotional impact in the FEGBA format. Character portraits rarely emote, and lacking voice acting or a narrator can make it nearly impossible for emotional moments to really hit. I don’t think FE 6/7/8 succeed in ever making me feel strongly about the plot (with the possible exception of the Monica scene in FE8, but I consider that a character moment). I decided that I would rather not attempt to create deep emotional impact, and instead just go with the flow and make the plot more lighthearted.
It’s understandable that you felt it was lacking, though. I will be looking to work a more compelling plot into whatever project comes next.
A friend of my discovered a fairly complex bug in Chapter 3.
By pairing up Marian onto a wagon, they go from 0 to 1 Mov, allowing them to move on their turn.
From there, if you move, click the ‘barricade’ option, and decline to place the crates, you will have moved the wagon without ending it’s turn. You can use this strategy to move a wagon an infinite number of tiles on your turn.
You might also be able to get a wagon to level up by having them generate XP through guard stance, which would be pretty funny.
Ha! Thanks for pointing this out! That’s a funny bug. Should be fixed in the next patch. Infinite movement in chapter 3 definitely seems a bit too strong!
Hey everyone! After a lot of testing, we’ve come across a few new bugs we wanted to address. For the most part, though, this update deals with how MOV is handled. One thing we noticed is that a bug with MOV growths caused infantry units to have the same mobility of mounted units. 1.0.3 fixes this bug, but we also adjust MOV caps so mounted units preserve their high-mobility class identity. We hope you enjoy the update!
8/12/2022
Balance Changes
MOV caps for most classes were adjusted
Renewal nerfed from 30% recovery to 25%
Bug Fixes
Wagons in Chapter 3 will always have 0 movement
Crates in Chapter 3 can no longer be killed by magic attacks
Fixed an issue where bosses can gain weapon ranks
Fixed an issue where the Chapter 9 trickster could recruit wall staff barriers
Fixed a bug that caused DEX to affect growth rates at a much higher rate
Nice Game you’ve made, enjoying it so far on Hard Mode blind, even if CH 4 kinda made me struggle a bit, it’s my first time getting used to Pair Up.
However, I would like to mention a bug in CH 5, after the scene where Jana introduces herself and goes a different route, the screen fades black, and from what I assume there to be text, the text isn’t visible and the screen stays black until the Base Screen comes up. I don’t know if it is intentional, but I suggest you look into it and fix it, since while I am aware it is a Light-hearted story, I’m always happy to look into the story of the fangame I’m playing.
Thanks for the comment! Glad you’ve been enjoying the game so far!
And thanks for pointing out the bug–we’ll fix it in the next patch. Luckily, none of the story gets hidden by this, but it obscures our brief tutorial on the fatigue mechanic.
Unfortunately you would need to use an application like Wine or Bootcamp to play this on Mac. I’m not familiar with them though, so I can’t give you detailed install instructions, sorry
“You know, I gotta be honest, skill is a really boring sta-”
“Wait it increases growths now?”
“…”
“Yaknow, skill has always been one of my favorite sta-”
