Glad you read through my experiences!
When it came to evaluating units for my misery mode run, I ran into a Binding Blade situation where there are just so few “good” combat units on the team that John XVI being slower to start is really only relevant in normal mode where there are more viable units. For example, Unari feels better than John XVI in normal mode as Will to Live will basically always get a kill with a silver axe. In Misery Mode, Unari struggles to kill things with even a gold or brave axe, so she’ll take 2 actions per kill. At base, John needs a turn or 2 to hit either a high damage or movement skill that was overkill in normal and just enough in misery mode. Assuming you hit something good on turn 1 or 2, over the span of a 5-7 turn clear, John would’ve saved you more turns than any other footlocked. There’s also the huge plus of not needing weapons and having an ignore def weapon, meaning she’s self-sufficient and doesn’t need an s-rank weapon that the others will need to clear the insane generics post chapter 20.
Loved the game and if you give us a Big Berd drop I’ll be keen on seeing how he also performs in misery.
By any chance, does any concept art of any of the major characters (or at least, of Ellerie) exist? I’d love to draw fanart or commission fanart to be drawn, but I’m not really sure how most of the cast looks below the shoulders.
That would be sick. None of the characters have concept art sadly.
Currently at Ch. 15 I’ve been enjoying the game a lot. The cold caller getting hyped up only to get smacked by a basic infantry had me in TEARS 
Is there any reason to delay… Any promotion once you get the opportunity?
Or just, outright not promote?
is it best to early or late promote in this hack?
Early promote if u can, there’s honestly no disadvantage if u do that, ig ur exp gain is slightly lowered but ye other than that u’ll be fine.
thanks
I was just asking because the Unlimited promotion item (Is this a spoiler?) feels… Suspicious…
Yea I promoted every unit I could at 14x. There’s honestly no downside to doing it. Levels don’t reset and unlike Sun God’s Wrath you don’t learn class skills at a later level.
Where is the escape tile in chapter 26?.
Ty
It doesn’t show up until you take out the engineers
i believe this is just a visual glitch due to the number of unique map sprites, it happened to me on sone chapter too
Enjoying the game so far, just reached chapter 9! The game has been a puzzle mostly, but all units having unique skills and pref weapons makes you really feel the power and potential behind every character.
Summary
I surprised myself by actually full clearing the enemy reinforcements in chapter 8. My units were more powerful than I thought they were, since I had originally decided to hang back and take out the enemy commanders by Oriana dance + 12 movement poking + rescue abuse with Vermillion. Since Vermillion couldn’t dent the spear commander, I sent Gecko in and it snowballed from there. (Absolutely wild that a series standard ability like galeforce is the best ability despite all the other crazy abilities). The turn economy with dances, bard buffs and Ellerie kill confirms is insane, and it allowed me to kill all of the enemies on a turn that I thought I would have to retreat on. I then went and (Staff) rescued the two friendly chicken units from the back left and right of the map, and (Character pickup) rescued them through the escape point. I’m sure that didn’t actually do anything, but it felt nice. : ) Starting chapter 9, after making a bow+1 crit+30 unit named Shinon, I was feeling pretty pumped. When the necro dragon appeared on turn 2 I was like “okay, if I take this guy out, I can leisurely do the level without having to continue pushing forward so haphazardly” So I sent Chalice and Tower to flank him, having tower empower Gecko, And having the Bard buff Gecko from the max possible range (so she wouldn’t be one shot). I then sent Vermillion in with two (Dance’d) Feather Furies to chunk his health. Then I sent in Ellerie to use her Pref weapon to whittle him down, and then I had Gecko use the Fancy Stabber to finish him off (it was so cool they both had unique dialogue). Success! Killed on turn 3- and then I found out that it finished the chapter early. I was so sad. It means I have to actually play the chapter properly, by rushing the map, and THEN rush back into a semblance of a group and defeat the trailing dragon, all in under 13 turns (for full exp). It’s gonna be a hassle, but game design wins in the end, c’est la vie.
I cannot believe there is still so much game left too, like, proper fire emblem game length, I’m very excited to play more.
Edit: Just reached Chapter 11, and I just have one question: Do Big Berd and Locust die forever if I kill them; are there consequences?
Summary
Their introduction stated they were some of the few enemies with skills and told us how they behave ie- Big Berd will attack you in range and Locust will not, and it gave me the impression they were the fire emblem standard trope characters of “if you avoid killing them in chapters that they appear you can recruit them later” but by this point I’m not sure that is the case anymore. I have managed to outmaneuver them in all previous chapters, including sneakily defeating the boss inbetween the two of them without major losses during the two boats escape chapter. But in this chapter (11) they seem to have droppable items finally. One of which is important for the hammer weapon quest, which I am missing (Since I’m a growth unit whore who sold my previous treasures for many wonderful aged wines). So is them having dropabble items the go ahead to kill them on this map? Or is it a very very clever way to make the player want to kill them even though you should still avoid killing them?
It’s kind of tearing me apart not knowing, I’m not sure if more effort will lead to less rewards because the extra effort wasn’t necessary and I was just overthinking it.
Judging by the recruitment guide, it seems you can’t recruit them
Even if they can’t be recruited, I wouldn’t want them permanently removed from the story. Its fun to see bumbling fools returning time and time again.
oh no yeah theyre fine get that aged wine
Thank you for making this hack! I’ve been really enjoying the map design, the unit feel, and the tongue in cheek humour. I just got the Ellerie promotion and burst out laughing at the “behind the scenes” of the promotion animations and the lampshading of putting every lord on a horse. This game makes me want to compulsively inspect everything to get all of the lore and snarky descriptions.
I really love how distinct each unit feels, even when they’re performing the same job. It also feels like they’re all equally viable with different distinct niches they each dominate in, incentivizing you to change up your army each map. I unbenched a level 7 Raylin for chapter 15 for her passive AoE healing to deal with the cannons when the rest of my army was about 10 levels higher, so I didn’t think she’d be much use in combat. but she ended up still pulling her weight and landing several kills with the various magic and gimmick swords I’d accumulated in my convoy.
I’m also impressed at how most of the characters have some sort of additional mobility skill, but all of them feel completely different and rely on the player juggling their mobility gimmicks to get rewarded with more movement, making just moving around the map feel like a fun puzzle.
I can’t wait to play more!
I just finished this game last night, and it’s been an incredible amount of fun. The writing, the (type of) gameplay, the map design, I think it’s all stellar. Finishing the game gave me that somewhat melancholic “oh no, I’m done?” type feel which generally follows a good piece of fiction.
Sure, I could spend some time nitpicking things, but it’s mostly feedback I see you’ve already addressed (for example, the somewhat low difficulty due to the mid-development change in design philosophy, and the early game story). Besides, it’s more fun to focus on the things I do like. So I just want to post some positive things that stood out to me, in no particular order, some broad, some specific. Made an account and everything.
End-game Spoilers, obviously.
Things that stood out to me
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Ellerie. Ellerie, Ellerie, Ellerie. She has become my favourite lord, not just in a romhack, but in any Fire Emblem game in general. Her descent into wickedness is both serious and also played up in a funny way. The mission objective “Kidnap Child” and the pop-up “You kicked the dog! Good job!” come to mind. Her friendship with Mince, her relationship with Krynia, her populist speeches, her ruthlessness when it comes to those she deems have wronged her. Oh my god, her boss dialogue with Secundus. The way she asked Oriana and Tower for a dying wish, and me mentally going “she’s going to ask them to kill Maurice isn’t she”, and her saying “Kill Maurice”. I’ve gotten into drawing lately and I really want to try and make some proper fanart of her sometime. Incredible work on writing this awful war criminal (affectionately).
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Your change in design philosophy to lots of action-refreshes was a good one. I can’t remember the last chapter where I didn’t try to set up a three-way Ellerie refresh with a Seahawk Flag, and it was fun every time. Some other favourites are Lindros’ Lunge, Rohesia’s Decapitate, and giving Mince an Arcane Bow and moving him forward (does that count)?
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Inter-personal conflict within the group. If there’s one thing that’s very easy for a story to lack it’s this, and CC has it in spades. The characters with lots of speaking lines (Ellerie, Oriana, Tower, Lindros, etc.) obviously have a lot to work with, but even the characters with relatively few speaking lines have very strong personalities which naturally leads to conflict. Basil/Thyme, Pomelo/John XIV, and Dune and Hagendire with everyone else come to mind.
And mostly random thoughts:
Random thoughts
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The game has lots of cool weapons and toys to play with, both prf and non-prf. You really don’t need to be cautious with your spoils.
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“Oh, a third chicken, you think a triangle attack has been built in? Nice”. Also the chickens and arising sub-plot in general.
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The Betrayer ending is hilarious. This man is truly an artiste. Without a doubt the most wonderful betrayal I’ve, nay, the world has ever seen. Bravo!
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Map design is great even though I would have preferred the game to be a little harder. I might try Misery mode some time.
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Are there just very rich chickens with bobbies running around because you thought it was funny?
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I really liked how killing some enemies with specific characters could lead to some changes (Rohesia getting a semi-promotion on talking/killing Cherise, Ellerie getting +1 to all stats on killing her uncle) and I’m wondering how many I’ve missed.
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I used Chixin all game and erronously assumed he couldn’t be promoted. I only saw in some screenshots in this thread that you could. Oops!
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I’m seeing a lot of stuff about Plucker’s Eye and I have no idea what it’s about. It’s been 2 months or so since I started playing so I can’t really remember. Maybe in Misery mode!
All in all, I saw that you’ve made a challenging mini-hack some time back so I’ll be sure to check that out as well. Thank you so much for making this hack, it’s been a blast!