[FE8] Blades of Fate [7 Chapters, plenty more to come!] (Updated: 2/25)

[breadfei]

Hello, I am Breadfei, and this is the first hack I’ve publicly released on FEU. I’ve worked on this hack for quite some time with some reworks and edits, and eventually entirely restarting, but I’ve finally reached a point where I feel it’s good enough to release a small beta version.

Blades of Fate follows the story of Princess Silvia, and her journey across the continent of Hyushinai. With chaos and peril looming over the lands, somebody must act. Silvia, the destined Lightbearer, has finally received her call.

Patches
Newest patch: (2/25/23)
(1/15/23)

Note: I recommend playing the hack on mGBA. Other emulators may work just fine, but the hack was tested on mGBA. If you play on a different emulator, there may be bugs.

Features

• 30+ planned chapters, including several gaidens and paralogues (glorified gaidens)
• A full functional world map, no skirmishes
• SkillSystems, a hacking must-have
• Weapon subclasses, most of which being locked to certain class types
• Holdable items (to be implemented in later updates)
• A party split lasting for 5 chapters
• A potential postgame? (not super likely)
• Full supports (to be added in later updates, for now support levels still increase)

Regarding the content rating

This hack may have some topics in the main story that may be triggering to some people. None of this content is mentioned in this demo.

The hack is not super tested at the time of release, minus playthroughs by myself for now.

If you wish to read all of the story, there are many characters that must be kept alive. As of the 1/15/23 release, only 1 character is required for main story.

Story characters (SPOILERS)

Minor dialogue changes:

• Naomi
• Oliver
• Adrienne

Key story characters:

• Willow

Credits should all be in the readme.

[HeroAltra]

Interesting story and characters. Looking forward to play it, but after that, I’ll gladly wait until it is done. I love hack games and knowing you guys do hacks, inspired me to do the same. Keep it up!

[HeroAltra]

When Liana did a special/critical move, she breathed, taking a sigh of breath before doing such. That was so cute! The animations and critical style of these characters are awesome! Weapons and such are great too and man the fire emblem sacred stones map to pick is nice to have again! Even the not take turn but by action reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and one other game like it. I love this so much! Keep up the great work, looking forward for more upcoming update to play more. Still playing it too. This is so great!

[GabrielKnight]

heads up, the samurai credit is incorrect. Iaijutsu Rogue is not the creator, GabrielKnight is the creator

[breadfei]

Oh, okay. I must have misread it when I was getting all the credits. I’ll have it fixed soon

[Sme]

Played hack, it was fun!

Starts off a bit weak but definitely improves as it goes on, but that’s generally to be expected of anything, you learn more as you work on it so the newer parts come out better, especially when you’re starting out. By chapter 3 it’s pretty good!

Definitely could do with some general polish, there are small graphical errors a lot because you don’t fade out while changing/removing backgrounds, changing the map, or transitioning from world map cutscene to traversable world map for the first time, there’s the occasional small spelling or grammatical error, but these are pretty minor all things considered

That’s pretty much the only thing that doesn’t get consistently better as the game goes on though, the writing starts a bit awkward but improves, the graphics improve, the level design improves, there’s a lot of potential here and I’m definitely interested in seeing where it goes!

[NatePlays95]

Am having fun with this hack! I had time to play up to chapter 3 today, but it’s was pretty nice so far.
I really like some of the animations, particularly Liana’s, she’s so cool! I also enjoy the dynamic between her and Rayen, very cute.

As for feedback on gameplay that hasn’t been mentioned before (playing on normal):

Tiego… Having a lance armored knight in a chapter full of axe users is something, I’ll tell ya. Poor dude couldn’t even block damage from archers. Combined with Provoke, I ended up killing him by turn 2 That’s on me as well, but I think my man deserves a bit more defense.

So, I think I may have used the archer girl a little too much. She and Oliver are both level 8 by the end of chapter 2, but she ran out of bow uses… I don’t remember if there’s an extra bow in Supplies, but if not I’d recommend it. Side note, thank goodness for giving Liana’s PRF 50 uses

The new turn order here is interesting and unique, fresh. Makes you think about battles a little differently. The fact I don’t know how the AI order works here scares me a bit, makes me play more cautiously than before, which is a good and bad thing I guess? I do have some gripes with it, biggest one being how enemies who have acted have the same gray tint as actors. I found myself way too often moving an unit near a grayed enemy and waiting without thinking too much, only to ask myself “Hey, I don’t remember having a Fighter…”. Dunno if you can address that, but it gets me way too often.

I’m a fan of how you implemented bronze weapons and especially knives. I also like the concept of class-exclusive weapons instead of just PRFs; I already only used blade-type swords on mercs anyway. And having a jagen archetype with Rally is new to me. Rayen is very powerful so in fear of killing enemies and “stealing exp” I sometimes leave him as backup and rally when needed. Of course, all that power makes him great at dealing with emergencies.

Finally, in the first map, I saw some units using proc skills like Sol and Astra, yet those don’t show in the skills section. I’m not too familiar with skills on GBA, are those class skills? And is it possible to have them displayed alongside other skills?

More of a general tip, but when you get close to the end of the game, consider reworking the first map. It’s supposed to be a playground to experiment with the new system, and it does that well, I just think it needs… spice? Some tutorial prompts on the new turn order would be nice but that’s just me.

[Dex]

I really enjoyed the game and had a lot of fun with it. The initiative system was fresh and new. The units all felt like they belonged. And the maps were a lot of fun.
I just encountered one weird thing were that one general who appears in chapter 2 just ignored the group and fucked of to sowhere else. He felt like a anti turtling insentive but ignored the group completely.

[NatePlays95]

After chapter 3. Ouchies.

I’m resilient enough to not be mad at this, but it took me two hours. I barely survived the fourth attempt, as you can see. What a doozie. I want to play more, but I’m afraid I’ll have to reset (and possibly even play on easy mode).

There are too many enemies, I feel. For every player unit that acts, three enemy units follow. Not only is that enough to gangbang a player unit, but if you do lose someone, you also lose that response turn so the enemy gets extra turns. The Turn 3 reinforcements at the bottom are very bad as unless Rayen and Silvia are in attack range, they will act and kill one of your weak bottom units with no time to respond. For your information, my units at the bottom could rarely solo enemies, so there’s that. I think it could be a fun map in a standard turn format, but your new turn system requires new design techniques.

Without Tiego, the healer Ellie(?) is mostly guaranteed to be targeted in the first round. Mostly because the enemy order is confusing. Miracle doesn’t patch this; even if she got to heal everyone every turn there wouldn’t be enough healing, but she also has to use vulneraries to ensure miracle activation.

Mage Girl’s status screen says she can talk to Adrielle, but the command didn’t show up. I’m also surprised there’s no Talk between Ellie and Rayen, so see if that’s something you think would add to the map. I feel the anti-turtle general needs a bit more spice, maybe say he’s looking for something or someone, Idk. As Dex shared, he won’t chase your units, and without a “villain speech” he isn’t very scary.

The “Escape” objective wasn’t very clear. I spent 10 turns walking around the map. In retrospect, it makes sense being at the bottom, but which bottom? There’s no special tile indicating that’s the exit point, and no Escape command when you do stand there.
I’d handle this with a two-pronged approach: First, have a scene moving the cursor to the exact tiles to escape (which I know you have, but are too fast so slow them down) followed by text explaining those are the tiles you should stand and WAIT on. Second, change the escape in case the player forgets / suspends the game. They can be as simple as stairs or glowing yellow “objective” tiles.

Some general details I wanna share: If someone dies, the map music cuts out.
Chapter 3 I’m almost sure has more enemies act than the turn display suggests; I know that definitely happens if one of your units die, but I have the impression it happened anyway.
If Naomi didn’t run out of bow uses, Oliver probably would have broken one weapon. I’d love to see some extras in Silvia’s supply just in case.

The story is really getting my attention, a magic transforming sword, that’s awesome. The lake in Ch3 makes the map very memorable but otherwise the map is very yellow haha. I enjoyed the character designs so far, with a minor exception to one of the prologue gods (the one with Neimi’s hair, her young face doesn’t fit her bulky muscle mommy battle sprite).
For someone’s first public hack it’s great. Up to this point the maps have been fun and I’ve enjoyed the plot (although my bar for character writing is pretty low so who knows).
I laughed out loud at Tiego, so there’s that as well.

[breadfei]

I’ve been getting lots of mixed opinions on the turn flow, especially on chapter 3. I plan to have separate patches with and without the turnflow for next release though.

[Dex]

The turn flow thing can really throw someone off that isn’t used to it. I have gotten experience with something very similar from a very unknown game, that’s why I enjoyed it probably a bit more then others.

[Shiza]

I played this last night and I’d like to share my thoughts on it. My experience varied across the hack, so I’ll talk about every chapter individually first, and then share some general thoughts.

Chapters

• Prologue: The idea of a tutorial chapter works really well with this hack because of the turn system; you really need a map where you’re allowed to make mistakes without being punished too hard and this one is perfect for that while still being interesting from a narrative perspective. The heroes bringing vulneraries to the last battle despite having 60+ HP was silly.

• Ch0x: I don’t like how the map is perfectly symmetrical but it’s fine for a place like this. Even if it’s only the first map with these units, I would recommend making the enemies somewhat stronger to make it more interesting. Any of your units can solo this map which isn’t ideal. Minor nitpick: the door before the boss seems rather unnecessary and is just a time waster. Story-wise, I enjoyed how I was tricked into thinking Rayen was going to be the main character for a minute.

• Ch1: Even if it’s a route map, the number of reinforcements make this a survive chapter in disguise. The monsters are extremely weak, and I assume their base stats are the same from vanilla FE8. I suggest tweaking them to make them closer to human classes. With that said, this map teaches you how dangerous reinforcements are with this turn system. Players can easily get unfairly punished since they might not be able to move multiple units out of danger in time (in a way, they’re almost like ambush spawns). It’s not the biggest deal here because of the weak enemies, but you need to take this into account for future chapters.

• Ch2: Enemies start hitting hard now, but the low enemy count makes this an easy one. Tiego made a good first impression character-wise and then a horrible impression as a unit. A knight that gets one rounded by fighters in his introduction chapter isn’t a good look. However…

• Ch3: …Provoke makes Tiego actually useful, or rather, an essential unit. For me, this was the best and worst map at the same time. I have to admit that finding the best way to make use of Provoke and having to choose between using my top-side or bottom-side units was fun, but it still felt like it was pretty much impossible to reliable beat this without losing anyone. It’s very easy to get screwed by bad RNG. Recruiting Adrienne was also very inconvenient considering you need your lord who is probably too busy dealing with the absurd reinforcement count. I suggest spacing them out a turn or two because it’s a little too overwhelming in my opinion. Also, even if it’s somewhat obvious, I think there’s no indicator of where the escape point is.

• Ch4: Fog of war and FE7 weather seemed like a recipe for disaster but it was actually not bad. The houses were a nice touch.

General thoughts

• The maps themselves are pretty good! They’re neither too big or too narrow and you’re making good use of terrain. I also think they’re aesthetically pleasing.

• No armory before Ch4 means you can run out of weapons. I was raising Naomi and her bow broke in Ch2 which means she was completely useless in the hardest map of the demo. You can’t know for sure which unit a player is going to use so maybe add a few droppable weapons if you don’t want an early armory (for Naomi, the monster archer in Ch1 or one of the archers in Ch2 are good candidates for a drop).

• The way you reworked the weapon system seems fair.

• Under the assumption that you made all the portraits, it seems like you’re getting better. The ones from the prologue are easily the worst while Willow’s is one of the best so far. One consistent issue I see is that a lot of characters seem to be missing the upper part of their head (i.e., Easton and Tenori). A good way of avoiding this is imagining what the characters would look like if they were bald. Others also have random mistakes such as Asha missing part of her ear.

• The plot and worldbuilding are interesting so far, and I feel like we’re only scratching the surface. However, so far, the characterization isn’t very strong, with Silvia feeling rather… detached? She lacks passion and I found it difficult to care about her. Rayen is also not the best deuteragonist for her since their interactions lack any conflict, and they praise each other endlessly. I enjoyed some of the side characters, though, and I can’t wait to see read their support conversations.

Overall, I think there’s potential in this. Despite some rough spots, there’s some level of polish and effort that is surprising from a new hack. Sorry if my post was a little wordy, but I hope you find my feedback useful, and I wish you good luck on future releases!

[breadfei]

It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? I’m finally back with another patch, my apologies.
This patch has lots of fixes and adjustments to earlier chapters, as well as adding chapter 5.
Units have also gained their own unique skillsets! Some minor issues may come if you managed to level a unit to level 15 or higher, but otherwise you shouldn’t run into issues.

Newest patch here

Most notably, this version has a patch with and without LazberianTurnflow, for those who wish to play without it. This is the reason I only added 1 chapter with this update, to be able to get more of a feel on how the chapters play without LTF.

I hope to finish up Act 1 (prologue through Ch6x) within the next few weeks.

Edit I forgot to add beforehand: Easy and Hard mode should both have proper bonuses/penalties now.

[breadfei]

Following the FEE3 release, I am here to give a small update!

This project isn’t dead, I’ve just been slow with development. Progress is going well so far, and I hope to release all of act 2 alongside the end of act 1. I will attempt to post updates regularly, and I’ll try to release more patches after act 2’s release.

[Sara]

The FEE3 Trailer is really good, I am really excited to check this one out!

[theroonco]

Thanks for the great trailer! How many acts will there be in total?

[breadfei]

Currently 5 planned, each being similar in length.

[theroonco]

Thanks! You really have your work cut out for you, huh?

[breadfei]

Yep. Just gotta keep making consistent progress though!