The demo convers this story’s first act, which follows Angus - a former general who was exiled from his country for his past crimes. He ultimately settled down in a remote village and formed a new family. But 15 years later, with war on the horizon, Angus received a letter calling him back to serve. The story then follows Angus through his internal conflict of protecting his new family or serving his country, while uncovering the secrets of his past along the way.
As this is a demo version of the game, the full game is still a work in progress, and as such any feedback you may have is greatly appreciated. A recruitment guide, secrets guide, a music sources document and a credits document can be found in the folder.
I have added an additional section on the story to the OP for more detail.
As for gameplay, I’d compare it to FE7 hector mode (at least in the earlygame). Enemies are not overly strong, but they outnumber you by quite a bit, so weaker units can still contribute. The first few chapters are somewhat of a training arc where your Jaigen carries while other units get exp, but your other units catch up quickly. Since your Jaigen is the main character in this game, the chapters are more deliberately designed with your Jaigen in mind. And growth rates are fairly low (around FE6 level), so units are unlikely to snowball, meaning soloing with a few strong units is not viable.
On Chapter 2, depending on who Angus speaks to first to recruit them (Brandon or Lysandra), they can cause the other to loop their dialogue options and retrigger events such as Brandon/Lysandra recruiting each other or either of them recruiting Mercian.
In this image, we see Lysandra’s only available conversation, that being Angus’s, after Angus recruited Brandon and Brandon recruited both Lysandra and Mercian.
After triggering the Angus/Lysandra conversation (recruitment), Lysandra becomes able to talk to Brandon/Mercian again, with the same recruitment dialogues she’d use to recruit both of them the first time. This is also true if Lysandra is recruited first, with Brandon being the one allowed to re-talk.
Mercian/Lysandra conversation, despite Mercian already being recruited.
Thank you! This issue should hopefully now be fixed and I’ve reuploaded the patch. Chapter 2 is the chapter that gave me the most trouble by far, so if you encounter any other problems, please let me know.
He is supposed to move. He will move to try to escape at the bottom of the map. The reason his attack range is like that is to signify that he will not attack you.
Finished the current demo, and although I do not have a strong opinion through its general gameplay, being somewhat in par to enjoyability compared to the original Fire Emblems for the GBA, I have to recognize that its current ending is, by far, one of the most jaw-dropping conclusions I’ve ever faced. For the sake of conserving its novelty, I will not delve further on this, but I am obligated to say that this ending is the strongest point of this hack - being expertly crafted, greatly hinting at a very strong chain of events yet to come.
Some of the units in this hack suffer from being outclassed strongly, with main examples being Austin/Chase (with the second not only having somewhat better bases and growths, but also one less level), and Brandon/Dawson (with Brandon having better growths, extra levels thanks to his trainee condition and a good availability, making him a very strong unit.)
On the subject of not being able to solo/snowball, although 9 chapters don’t give me the widest of time margins to commit strong grinds, I have been able to set the seeds to begin what could be called “The Snowball arc”.
Almost all portraits have had major graphical upgrades (before and after examples below)
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Most maps have had aesthetic upgrades (before and after example below)
Before:
After:
And some other smaller changes:
Other Changes
Every chapter now has an intro narration
Removed chapter 5x
Added leadership stars
More music tracks from other games
Chapters 2, 6 and 7 now have real bosses rather than generics
More QOL features such as growth colours and MMB
Changes the requirement for ch2x (end the map before turn 12 rather than after)
Some minor balance changes
And a progress update on the full version for those that are interested:
Progress Update
I have been making good progress on the full version and am at a point where I have a general overview of the story as well as drafts for almost every map and character. Now comes the difficult part which is actually putting everything together. There were some setbacks that have elongated the process (adding skills required me to build the entire rom from scratch), but with a solid draft in place, I hope that will make it easier.
I had originally planned 2 route splits, the main one at the end of the demo, as well as a smaller one later on, but I ultimately scrapped it for story reasons (with the added benefit of making things quite a bit easier).
I can’t give a definitive time frame for the full release yet, but I’m hoping the draft will allow me to release it sooner rather than later (although I’ve found that the final polish is actually what takes the longest). Depending on how long it takes, I may decide to release a full version with no or very few supports first and then release the final version with supports a while after that.
You can find the new patch in the download link in the original post.
Edit (22/07/24): I have re-uploaded the patch to fix a major bug as well as some other oversights such as most enemies being 1-2 levels higher than they’re supposed to.
