Hi there, and good to see you managed to solve the patching problem!
It makes me very happy to hear you are enjoying the hack so much - and on Hard difficulty, no less! Indeed, my goal with Hard Mode is to challenge player thought and problem-solving ability. FE generally favors increasing or decreasing stats as means of managing difficulty, but in my opinion difficulty can be much more than that.
There are some key phrases and words you used that perfectly encapsulate why I (too) enjoy difficult games: “I figured out how”, “challenging” and “rewarding”. These are all things I too wanted to invoke in players through my map and enemy design.
I decided very early in development that the main characters for this hack wouldn’t be nobles. I understand why nobles tend to be main characters, but I’d say there is room for “regular people” to be main characters as well. Additionally, the idea of common folk, even lowly people, being capable of great things is fascinating to me. Skylar and Camian are both good units in and outside of battle.
Of course man! Just wanted you to know how much I was enjoying my play through. Glad to hear you like challenging and rewarding gameplay too!
Oh, and quick question! My Nigel is lvl. 20, but I cannot promote him with a Guiding Ring. Is there a different item that will be able to promote priests?
Just started playing this hack because of Mangs’ videos. I think he may just be missing stuff. My normal expectation on a hard mode is to have to reset 10-15 times to learn bits and pieces about the map and how units respond, which is about how this has felt so far.
Question regarding map 3, is the Hoplon Guard intended to be acquirable? I managed to steal it because Skylar’s speed was high enough. Also, feels odd that killing the boss doesn’t just end the map. If you’re taking over the ship, killing the captain seems like a sensible way for that to happen, I think.
Curious, anyone out there actually able to visit all three houses within one run on Hard Mode? I found a quick and dirty setup that gets the Halberd, but leaves a lot of other stuff like the guiding ring.
Best I could manage was a complicated setup to sweep through the Zanbato area and then utilize the AI staff priority to have it target less important units to buy time to allow picking up the devil axe before getting a kill on the boss. Goofed a bit and only just barely managed to take the orion’s bolt as well using pure water.
But I’m not convinced it is feasible to pick up all three villages in a single run without substantial RNG abuse.
I’m playing this hack on DS Lite (Slot2 gba flashcart), I’m at ch.8 (“Alchemist lament”) and so far I have encountered no crash/freeze issue.
Truly an interesting and compelling storyline, the protagonists are well characterized and the dialogues relevant, but … the difficulty level is very, too high, even when selecting the easy level !
One wrong move costs a character’s life, and enemies hit hard, and often double. To counterbalance this, fortunately a casual mode can be selected, and there are numerous, if not too many, unit promotion emblems available.
Overall a great excursion into the world of Fire Emblem; anxiously awaiting the completion of the second path…and forgive my rough english.
Yes, it is. As you may have noticed, some enemies have crit chance against your units. The Hoplon Guard provides extra layer of security against that.
True. That would be a very easy thing to add, too, so I just might do that.
It is. However, it’s tricky to do so. Note that the brigands prioritize attacking if you’re in their range. You can also use the Zanbato to quickly dispatch the paladin and the valkyrie - just make sure you don’t let the paladin, the soldier and the cav gang up on you. Using Pure Water when the mages show up makes fighting them so much easier.
The idea is to allow players to have the possibility of promoting their units whenever they want. Some people prefer promoting early for the immediate boost in power, whereas others like to squeeze in as many level ups as they can before promoting.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the hack (and haven’t had any problems) so far! Don’t worry, your English is fine!
The survive 11 turns chapter was very rough. I actually I will have to drop it cause I don’t see the way out. I feel like this chapter in particularly is too overloaded with things to do all at the same time. But at least villagers are blue units not green, bless you for this.
For some reason the game freezes on the gaiden chapter where you have to pickpocket. If I go through dialogue the map is just stuck without cursor, and if I skip it the screen goes black. I tried resetting with various item and team combination but its all the same.
@zerg, I was specifically referring to on the hardest difficulty. The map follows three maps that are all substantially time-locked, so it is not feasible to have managed to grind up many extra levels. By the time you get to that map you’ve only been through 3 maps thusfar, have no fliers and only get your first cav partway through the level.
With the raw difficulty and stats of enemies on hard mode I just don’t think you have the time to safely get all three houses. Because you would have to split the team in such a way that a detachment manages to pick up the north house- without drawing too much aggro to themselves to just die, and also without losing anything necessary to pick up the southwest house on time. As far as I can tell you can’t deal with the southwest brigand/house any later than turn 5 or so without losing the village, and the enemies you have to go through (particularly if you don’t want to kill the cav) are strong enough that you should expect to have to lose a turn or so’s worth of full movement to avoid just getting murdered.
If the chapter came later (after say the forest chapter, where it is feasible to get Skylar and Nigel to level 20+ and promote Skylar if you are willing to spend the effort on cleanup), I think it might be doable. But as-is it comes in at a combination of both early and only after time-limited maps, putting a pretty harsh soft-cap on how powerful your units can be without outright RNG manip.
Though if someone has a strat for picking up all three villages on Hard mode that doesn’t just amount to “send units through and hope RNG is unusually kind” and doesn’t involve RNG abuse I’d be interested. I tried a lot of different ways of splitting the team up in different configs, and a bunch of different tactics for getting to key locations on time. Nothing worked that I tried. Any efforts to head to north-east house always removed something I needed to get to southwest on time (I think it should be feasible to do northeast and southeast together, though I preferred the zanbato so I stopped testing once I had a run that got that and the devil axe).
Firlz. I am playing through on hard mode as well. I successfully completed the chapter and got all of the houses. My strategy was to send everyone south (where the cavalier you get is). Keeping everyone together worked best for me because they could jointly take out enemies in their path.
@lights, when I tried that I was never able to make it through the bottom and still make it up to the upper right house in time without just losing a unit. Usually the cav (As the only way I saw required pushing her ahead to talk to biserka to intercept the upper-right house).
Huh, so looking at some of the comments, there was a monk acquirable prior to that chapter? If so that could be literally the thing I was missing to make that map work out. The action economy was close but not quite there. If I straight-up missed a unit that would explain a lot.
Weird bug. Self-damaged with Devil axe caused monster’s next hit to appear to gain infinite health instead of killing my unit?
Don’t have a save on this, quickloaded once I realized I hurt myself. I’m on Visualboyadvance, happened in the fog stage where you try to convoy the spirits across. Was Biserka with Devil axe against Bonewalker with droppable Bright lance.
I didn’t check whether it actually gave the health due to loading, but as I was pressing the keys I noticed health went up to ??? (like FE7 dragon endboss).
