Having a lot of fun with this version, but a few thing
war wizard on sorcerer doesn’t work.
some promotions don’t show skills properly, like summoner and ninja.
Summoner seems extremely underpowered. Summons seem pretty useless and the summoner lvl 5 skill consequently doesn’t do anything. Add onto that the 3 turn/action delay and just the absence of the very powerful skills of the other shaman promotions. Also, no flying, no natural taunt effect…
bow range creep is brutal.
new chapters’ reinforcement spam is brutal. I felt like I was playing path of radiance maniac.
The route split caught me off guard. I think there needs to be a stronger warning about what’s going to happen. As someone who skips most dialogue, I’m sure it’s largely my fault, but I still think there could be something. Say, an unskippable anna pop up with colored text type of thing. Also, please let me use my convoy.
Does shadowgift not work on other dark magic users? I noticed you took it off Dorcas when you added to ability, which makes me think it should work on Dorcas. And there’s only one natural dark mage, so it seems weird.
Does the con ring do anything in modern con? It’s hard to tell how that works since the game just shows classic con.
Is nils supposed to not use rings? is ninian supposed to not have skills? I thought it was a cool differentiation, but ninian just suddenly popping in to the bottom of my character select options caught me off guard.
no bottom right hidden treasure?
Is there a personal spell list somewhere? I’ve been trying to look through the files but I haven’t been able to find anything.
Cannot replicate the shop crashes you mentioned. Are you using version 1.70.2? Also, are you using the Modern rule set? Finally, is this a save that was originally created on this version, or an older one?
Currently on a dev break but will be back at it in a week or two. I’ll test all the shops with Modern and Retro when I get back to it, but a cursory inspection doesn’t crash anything for me.
I’ve played through the current version up to chapter 28’s prep, and figure I’ll stop there for now. While I’ll probably wait until the rest of the chapters and playable Mark have been added to come back and start over, I have to say that playing through what I did was an absolute blast! It really feels like a sort of ‘best of both worlds’ remake due to the fact that it’s essentially built on the original game as a base, and how much you want it ‘remade’ is customizable.
Even as a WIP with the odd bug, the experience overall felt of extremely high quality. More than that, I found it largely achieved the difficult task of striking that ‘new’ FE feel where it tries new things mechanically, while not going overboard to where it doesn’t feel like Fire Emblem.
I took all kinds of notes as I played, and while I don’t have the time to detail absolutely everything, I tried my best to expand on key thoughts. For reference I played Hard/Classic/Random/Custom.
-My Settings-
Skills: Full
Branched: Expanded
Revised: Full
Sword cavs: On
Pair-up: On
Distinct wyverns: On
Dystinct druids: On
Indoor flight: On
Rebalanced mov: On
Female enemies: Off
Revised promo stats: Off
Improved units: On
Personal spells: On
Personal staves: On
Unlimited items: On
Stat boosters: Consumable
Shop items: Revised
Loot items: Revised
Stealable gold: On
Modern bows: On
Bows > magic: On
Modern staves: On
Modern AS: On
Big Triangle: On
Dialogue revision: On
Chapter revision: On
Early recruit: On
Class names: On
Dorcas: Brigand
Erk: Mage
Lowen: Soldier
Isadora: Mage Knight
Leila: On
Uhai: On
Anna: On
Elbert: Lives
Skip Lyn: Off
Item Randomizer: Off
-Bugs/Inconsistencies-
The modern weight offset being (CON+STR)/5 seemed very unintentional? I personally changed it to CON+(STR/5) after a couple chapters which felt much better.
Kent and Matthew have the wrong eye color. Dart too, alongside his hair.
Phalanx skill description error.
The thief animation hitting on first blade, but dodging on second kind of strange.
Can use restore on a character silenced by Kishuna (still silenced, just gives exp).
Is Teodor supposed to move in 23x? Also in 23x, the Thieves up top have no lockpicks.
Legault battle sprite generic unit (don’t remember what this means).
Underdog/Pragmatic both use the same skill icon (had both on Raven).
On chapter 25, the visit command does nothing on the house down and to the right of Merlinus (right next to him).
Also chapter 25, one of the knights on the right eventually seems to spawn with no weapon, or one he can’t use.
Some AI seems to ignore units they can’t damage, while others still attack? As best I can tell, it seems like the AI doesn’t account for some effects that reduce damage or increase avoid (like Kent’s personal). This one probably had the biggest impact on actual play.
Shaman hex applies even when missing.
Killer lance seems to have -2 avoid? Or perhaps its weight is different than it displays? I noticed an oddity when swapping between it and another lance on Fiora, where it would result in a difference of -2 avoid for a reason I couldn’t figure out (shouldn’t have been weighed down by either). Though I could be missing something.
Some of Ninian’s lines sound like they’re from different VAs?
Karla’s personal doesn’t work against swordreavers.
Momentum doesn’t trigger correctly if you move away, use an item, and come back. It also doesn’t count the appropriate amount of spaces when going around a corner. Seems to instead check the difference in spaces from start space to end space.
Breath of life also heals user (if unintentional).
After swap, sometimes if I selected the swapping unit again and then backed out, they’d lose their ‘second’ turn (had it on Lyn).
No base access in the lead up of 27x if it’s unintentional.
Druid Malefic Aura bypasses Mage Knight’s Mage Armor. Also bypasses Nihil (if it’s not supposed to).
I only glimpsed her in the menu, but Louise seems like she might be missing skills from her first class.
Chapter 27’s win condition runs off the border.
-General Observations-
The collection of voicelines is largely good and comes together well. The only outliers I’d say are some villagers, Lucius as Ike feeling strange, and Rebecca’s voice and talk sfx being different tones (low vs high) mixing oddly.
I found most early bosses to be quite easy due to them easily being outranged.
Some skills being more leadership themed and affecting the army was really cool, both mechanically and for flavor.
Guy’s new myrmidon animation and the Mage Knight animations feel kind of out of place compared to the rest, at least out of the animations I witnessed.
On a similar note, while it’s nice to have the option for a wider availability of classes, some of them do feel pretty out of place for the setting (Centurian coming to mind).
That said, lots of new classes are really cool (Sorcer’s splash damage changing playstyle).
I only played Lyn and Eliwood’s modes in vanilla FE7 years ago, so I don’t know the game’s script well enough to know what parts were adjusted. Though I can say that nothing ever felt out of place or jarring with the exception of the Leila/Legault recruit conversation. Conversely, chapter 28’s contingency convo stood out to me as a nice addition. In general it was good to see more ‘background’ characters put to use.
Spells being above refresh in Ninian’s menu tripped me up a lot. I ended up using the wrong dance a lot.
Stealables were nice to have around as a secondary objective.
Pure Water/Vulnerary felt much more useful when infinite.
-Balance Impressions-
When it comes to weapon types, lances were the clear winner for me. Its rounded stats and extra point of damage reduction made it pretty much always a good option. Sword locked units that had a niche felt fine to use (dodge tanks, Eliwood with Rapier, units with good MAG to take advantage of the ranged swords), but others like sword cavs ended up being underwhelming. Axe units I played around with the least, so I can’t speak too much on them. Though I will say the change of -1 damage given to lances does now also makes them feel more unique compared to the other weapon classes, balance aside.
By the end of Lyn mode, I had Saggitae on Erk (nearly more), and Physic on Serra. I’d suggest nerfing personal staff/spell exp a bit, except then farming ranks on units that gain magic on promotion would be harder than it already is.
Staves in general were a very useful debuff option. I got good use out of Enfeeble and Sleep, and Nightmare is OP. I was hoping to be able to steal sleeping units weapons, but it’s probably better that I couldn’t lol.
Lightning being effective against wyverns like thunder felt a bit strange, and kind of like it cramped thunder’s style a but. Maybe it’s just me, but despite the spell’s name it never struck me as being linked to thunder/lightning.
The weapons were balanced well with the infinite use setting enabled. The change to javelins and hand axes made characters who could retaliate at range much rarer, and thus much more valuable. The only weapons I found generally not worth using were weapons that lowered evasion.
Magic in general felt much stronger as a result in the change of range availability, as well as new spell effects (big fan of Moonlight). Bows being the ‘true’ ranged option and having the advantage over magic felt balanced well, which makes the wind ward skill a bit strong in my opinion.
The extra layer of differentiation between bow users depending on their class path was unexpected, but welcome. While I leaned more towards being able to counter close (really needed some enemy phase counters), the longer ranged bow path also felt compelling.
Skills in general weren’t too overwhelming on enemies, good balancing there.
While I was worried Dual Strike/Guard might be too strong, I was pleasantly surprised to find they weren’t. Seems like it replaces supports giving buffs at 3 spaces, which is a clever trade off.
Shops felt kinda useless with infinite weapons on, armories a bit too. The market was useful though.
Upgraded personals is a fantastic idea, and probably one of my absolute favorite things from the project. Having a different kind of progression that’s both satisfying mechanically and character rich is just great. Also a nice way to favor units you like, or even lean into a certain playstyle (with global personal skills). Though I will say that some of the options felt like sidegrades or downgrades compared to the base skill (Erk’s, Raven’s needing more distance).
One downside of having a wide choice of promotions and cool skills, is that pre-promotes became kind of inflexible in comparison, which made them often feel somewhat underwhelming.
I had two Mage Knights (Isadora & Kent) and found both of them very underwhelming. Both their swords and their starting spells felt like weak options even with momentum (possibly due to low MAG growth on Kent’s end).
The in-universe justification for the turnwheel mechanic is very fitting, but I’m not a big fan of paying for individual uses of it. If you had to pay to upgrade it, it’d feel more worth it (1 use per chapter upgraded up to 3 maybe?).
-Character Specific-
At first I thought Rapier wouldn’t be great, but there were more ways to get flat damage than I anticipated and it actually made Eliwood play pretty uniquely. I ended up using him a lot. It’d be nice if Idealistic didn’t get ruined by level ups though (>95% HP trigger?), and applied for the whole combat like Erk’s skill.
Lyn having a reliable 1-2 range prf made her very useful alongside her use as a dodge tank. I also really like the flavor of her skills and the fact that you didn’t overlook the fierce quality to her like many of her post FE7 appearances do.
Hector was unsurprisingly the strongest of the trio, and my most commonly used (though Lyn and Eliwood weren’t too far behind). Great for choke points, and also for piercing into enemy formations when paired with Matthew.
Valkyrie Priscilla was great and served well as support/minor combatant. Was curious about trying her in Seraph Knight, but with her 5% str growth it didn’t really feel like an option. A scenario I ran into more than once when considering promotions.
Karla joins pretty weak for her chapter in early join, and still hasn’t picked up after much babying.
Leila started to pick up a bit once promoted to trickster, though I overall found her underwhelming compared to Matthew. As someone who stayed undercover as a double agent, Matthew’s personal skill feels more appropriate on her tbh. It was also tough to pick between the utility of trickster, vs her much more personalized look in assassin.
Obviously I used more units, but these were the ones I had something to say about beyond that they were good or bad.
-Questions/Suggestions-
What RN does the game use? From my playing it seems like it’s either to be 2rn or hybrid?
What determines dual strike/guard chance? I couldn’t find the equation in the files.
The lords being as usfeul as they are, I found myself using them a lot and also reaching level cap with them quickly. Maybe it could be worth having an early lord promotion option? If not, some earlier Juna fruit would at least help.
I also found myself with an excess of some promotion items, while having to wait a long time for others (a second fell contract for example). A setting where all promotion items were master seals could be interesting. Though getting a single early seal would have gone a long way as well.
Dark magic users in general seemed pretty rare. Something like the flying Malig Knight class could be nice as another option? Or some promotion for a magic class line that isn’t shaman? I had hoped to get Renault the ability to use it.
While I appreciate having the rng locked for things like level ups, I found that restarted levels always having the same rng could be frustrating.
A volume slider for battle/dialogue voices would be great.
Being able to preview heal amount would be also be nice.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I’m going to continue developing more content and fixing bugs soon, so this will be very useful.
In terms of cosmetic tweaks for existing assets like voices etc., I’m likely going to hold off on addressing those until the campaign content is complete.
Oh. I also forgot I took a screenshot of this, where enemy reinforcements all stood around until a certain threshold was crossed. Not sure if it mirrors vanilla behavior or was intended, but I thought it was notable.
