Yes and you get a prize for being the 420th post in this thread.
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Team Stoned Stoners in shambles for missing this milestone
Cerulean Coast OG hipster here, and, yes, it was more fun when Ellerie was mediocre /s.
It’s been exhilarating to observe CC’s evolution from the Coast to the Crescent, even though the rebranding effort is not effectual in my mind :). Plenty of reviewers have expatiated the gameplay in more precise terms than I could, so I’ll just provide some musings on the story as I play the final edition.
Writing: CC’s extremely unique, even idiosyncratic, among hack projects. The droll tone and insouciant, even flippant character persiflage juxtaposed with the brutal realities of the factionalist, fractious existence on the coast and the sinuous political dynamics, mutable alliances, and acute mortality rate ensures an unprecedented experience. For all that many consumers have compared it to D&D campaign for its discrepancies to the archetypal FE invasion plot, I actually find its milieu more reminiscent of those card games whose objective consists of sabotaging your way to the top. Not that such catastrophes can’t eventuate in D&D campaigns, but I’m not very acquainted with those. Rivian demonstrates a meticulous attention to detail in fabricating a convoluted network among the multifarious, mercenary, solipsistic parties of the Coast (
). These characters are frequently odious, self-interested, and more pragmatic than typical game characters, so take that with a word of caution if you prefer epic or high fantasy. Honestly, my impressions of everyone as morally reprehensible to some extent or another encouraged me to release some inhibitions about judging them and accept and identify with them as they are. They’re surprisingly complex and intense, and I enjoyed how Riv generally imparts validity and plausibility to both sides of an argument. Beneath the spirituel jokes and goofy class selections lurks a pervasive undercurrent of desperation and despondence, the futility of humans pursuing overweening, Icarian ambitions without regard for the ramifications for others or the environment. I do find the plot can be meandering and episodic, which makes sense considering, I believe, the maps were designed first, but that also dovetails with the inherently tumultuous purlieu of the violent Coast and Ellerie’s protean, opportunistic nature. I do think this discursive nature helps immerse the player in the troupe, and it actually does succeed in contributing the sense that the player is a battle tactician directing the troops on the battlefield, but helpless to provide counsel in the political and social domain, merely capable of observing dejectedly as everyone fixates on their personal goals without concern for the grander panorama.
5 Likes
I just finished Chapter 7 and I’m having a blast! The gameplay’s fun, I like how quirky everyone’s playstyle is and I enjoy having many different side objectives to pursue during chapters.
I enjoy most characters, but I think what really sells the game for me is the setting. What you managed to do with limited amounts of dialogue, a world map and a diverse cast of allies and foes is truly impressive. The Crescent really feels alive and… believable, in its own unique way.
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Quick question, is there any reason NOT to promote Gecko as soon as she’s able to?
No not really and she eventually will get force promoted anyways.
Cool, I’ll go ahead and promote her then.
Logged in for the first time in a couple years just to say this might very well be my favorite hack, and I’ve finished more than half of the [Complete] ones. Pic related sent my sides into orbit for a while.
Love the variety in objectives, the Prf weapons are fun to use, the characters are original and interesting, it’s decently challenging, there’s little secrets to find, it has everything, even chickens. I’m only sad I won’t be able to stop myself from comparing every other hack I play to this one, I’m sure most will fall short.
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Just finished this about an hour ago. This was a thoroughly enjoyable hack. The premises of various chapters had me gushing to my Fire Emblem non-enjoyer friends about how cool some things were done here that simply aren’t in mainline titles (let alone other ROMhacks) or even other video games. The hack is clever in gameplay execution and character writing, and it’s thoughtful in terms of the general arc everything takes. Spoilers follow in all subsections, obviously.
Characters
Competent, useful for her ability, but I never really applied her for her sheer combat prowess to any particular situation. That medium speed, even with aged wine growths from an early point, held her back from being too useful until Helisent was around to give her the speed she wanted. Her writing is very strong, and I wished the best for her even as everything was going to shit.
My monster creation didn’t feel particularly good, but I made bad choices. Francisca was just better than him for the same sort of role I was after, but I also enjoy flier supremacy so I stuck with him anyway. Love you, Pimpi.
Lindros was consistently useful in bringing enemies to me and breaking tricky range overlaps that the enemies had on me that I didn’t feel like dealing with more carefully. His low speed kept him from doing too well, even with wind tomes that gave extra speed, until I finally was willing to let loose and use the S-rank anima tome on him in the last couple chapters. His gimmick is probably more fun than most of the Prf weapons and skills available.
This poor child. She’s so violent. She’s so strong. Obviously I kept using her after I saw Galeforce, and she never disappointed. I left Gambler’s Folly on her for forever because she had early trouble with speed (5 levels in a row where she missed it on level up), but everything else was consistently very high. Obvious top tier unit, stole Fancy Stabber and never looked back.
Francisca killed things in one hit with Francisca for most of the game. I really liked that. No complaints about any of the rest, even if her stats were mediocre. Having 8 move and being able to deliver the S-rank axe’s nigh-autocrit to an enemy is delicious.
Krynia slaps and can’t die. If I’d fed her more speed, she could have been even more slappy and even less die, not that it ever comes close with defense like she’s got. Just keep her away from mages and all’s good. Her ability’s a little boring since it’s just “be more good at what you’re already good at” but maybe that’s fine for her since she’s an investment unit anyway.
Figuring out everything about Wisp and the Princess made me like her so much more. I used her most for utility than for combat prowess, though she was serviceable in that role too. War Crimes was so much better with her in tow for fixing mistakes I was making elsewhere on the map (nearly perfected it!!). This unit has a great ability from the perspective of skill expression and player choices. Good stuff.
Honestly, Foxberry is kind of silly and annoying and playing her feels a little bit like that too, but she could also open any can in the world if there’s a friendly hand within 5 feet of its surface. She also helped move my slower units forward while still contributing significant damage. Always nice to have.
I actually really liked this unit showing up when he did because I wanted another project to work on at that point. The promotion gains are insane, and he was genuinely contributing all on his own without me having to baby him after he promoted the second chapter I had him in tow. I could ask for nothing better than a fragile little guy to baby into greatness. He did eat all my steamed rice though.
Grow magic one god dang time, please, I’m begging you. You’re so cool, I want you to hit very hard, be better!!
The infinite use magic axe, the telescope, swarp utility, cool story moments, lovable guy. He’s perfect. I want to protect his happiness.
I did a test turn of talking to Qiulan with her at the Endgame for Oriana’s crew. She lost her powers and became useless and I went, “I would rather her continue to LARP, actually,” and instantly reset the turn for that. Fun to use, but not very strong overall. Still, a good candidate for the S-rank light tome since she’s on the side that has to fight so many monsters in the lead-up to their endgame. The log felt more useful than she did sometimes.
Best girl. Takes a beating and dishes it back. Used so many Ruin and Leech tomes in the last 4 chapters. So many.
Honorable mentions go to Zububai, Caloogo, Guard, Oriana, Tower, Maurice, Unari, and Telon, who filled out the bits of my group that got carved in half after a point. Oriana was already getting use beforehand, but the rest were basically all benches for me if not for the sudden need for some fresh bodies who could actually do work. Qiulan was also a strong carry contender on my Oriana side of things, but that fell apart for obvious reasons. Her ability to lower enemy stats on hit is bananas, like maybe a little too good.
Gameplay
The challenges were a lot more engaging while I was still weak and soft near the early game, and became little more than an exercise in putting my strong fellas in the vague direction of the enemy by the endgame on standard difficulty, no modifiers. It felt like there wasn’t ever really a chance for the enemies to keep up with some of the highly specialized and overstatted units I was deploying, particularly Krynia, Gecko, Mince, and Qiulan, though Ellerie’s oneshot potential with her Prf and Oriana’s self-and-friend dance is obviously a contender for applying more pressure than even high statted enemies can deal with throughout the whole game. This is the only weakness of the hack to me, and I’m glad to get it out of the way first.
The varied chapter objectives was a wonder and felt so refreshing to play through. I love escape maps, I loved War Crimes, I really enjoyed getting to solve the “puzzle” of how to efficiently move all the crates down the tower, and I especially liked the number of times you’re sandwiched between multiple enemy types. The one that stood out the most to me was probably the most climactic one in the first act, where you’ve got monsters to your north and an army to your south, particularly one employing ancient tech to make your life hell. That felt great.
Unit abilities that are active or interactive (conditional) passives feel great to use. This is a well-designed system that really serves to differentiate units that might otherwise feel like they fill a similar niche in stats or weapon typing. And, speaking of weapon typing, I’m so glad that there were a lot of varied promotions and classes that got to take advantage of interesting combinations, or really specialize down into the ones they already had from the jump in ways that made them feel unique compared against their peers.
I did feel like swords were kind of bad for physical sword users if you didn’t have high Con or such overwhelmingly high Speed that you could ingore any penalties taken from using an oversized weapon, but maybe that’s just the units I ended up using or trying to use. Magic swords were obviously tight as hell for most of the game because enemies generally have terrible Res, but I don’t know if that made up for it for me. I’ll have to feel it out and maybe see about it on a replay.
Overall, this is an experience that’s more satisfying and tightly designed than a lot of mainline Fire Emblem, and I’m happy to say that the time I spent with the hack was a genuine joy to me. Thank you so much to Rivian for putting it all together and to everyone who contributed along the way.
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Ellerie is my new fav ‘lord’ in fire emblem history omg she was so AWFUL. so awesome. her flavor text was to die for. godly game. great stuff <3
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Really enjoyed this, and I’m already thinking about my next run! Every character feels like they’ve got some hidden sauce to them where an extra item or weapon makes them even better, and it made my brain feel massive when I put them together and used them to clear maps. But for all the wacky but good characters in the game, the standout was the custom unit.
The Ride Never Ends
I’m guessing a lot of people saw Skeleton Archer as an option and laughed it off. But I saw potential, and it payed off in the best way. First Strike let me do so many funny things, the already crazy reach of the supersnipe was upgraded to 6, and with two refreshes I could delete 3 things of my choosing on the very first turn. But that was just turn one, after that I have him the Autogrip and Telescope and he was basically guaranteed to critical. Lindross dreamed of creating life, and his first creation was a god of death.
His one flaw is he couldn’t use Ballistae, but I think that’s intentional. He’d be even more busted if he could.
Oh yeah, and the writing is really funny. I would go through item and character descriptions just to get more funny flavor text.
3 Likes
Sometimes, one wonders whether if living in “real world” is really worth it, if living a lie is really all that bad. Because, occasionally knowing the truth makes us feel hopeless for humanity, and any number of other things. So, what if living a lie is considered to be morally apprehensible by many. I mean, what’s more important some arbitrary notion of truth and justice, or the far more impactful, and important factor in human lives called happiness.
Hiding reality can only really be accomplished by increasing control. Control over people, and their lives as a whole. But obstacles are always there. There are always unruly elements in society, those whose only aim is to against the establishment. These people must always be controlled, as these persons will constantly work to destroy the paradise you have created.
Thus, to deal with these issues, you may employ a secret police of sorts, and use “physically hostile treatments” to control these, for a lack of a better word, these pests. After all, there should be no mercy for those who go against the public will (embodied by you).
But these renegades are hard to control, so you start more and more concentrated efforts to finally vanquish them once and for all. You start re-education camps, targeted killings and oppression against all those who dare oppose your rule. You start thinking of drastic ideas, ideas such as 24/7 monitoring, constant stream of propaganda showing your benevolence, or even replacing certain, rebellious people with more obedient and docile clones.
But, take a step back, and realize what you have done. A society, built upon the sole purpose of increasing the happiness of the common man, has instead betrayed them instead. You, who promised greater liberties, have instead become a ruthless leader, with your initial promises, blown away by the winds of change. The people, under your oppression, start missing the olden days. Now tell me, is this what you wanted, the ideal society you dreamt of? Or was it all a cover, for what you really wanted, revenge and power. Regardless of good intentions or not, the end result is the same, liberties? Demolished. Quality of life? Irrelevant. And happiness? Gone…
Although the truth may be bitter at times, it’s almost always better than lies. Lies hold back positive progress, and only serve those in power. The truth is the most important weapon on the public’s side, and autocratic rule, threatens to take it all away. Knowledge, justice, democracy, liberty, these are all things worth protecting. Because even if reality is bleak sometimes, there is always hope. Hope for change, and hope for a better future…
My “John” disappeared after chapter 11? Is it a known bug or it’s just me?
Thats a totally new one to me. Just disppears from the army without death?
Yep and I remember I didn’t use him on chapter 12 and he just vanished without a trace. Perhaps he is scared and wanna stay on the ship for the rest of the game haha.
Joking aside, I can send you a .save file via dm to check if you like.
Yeah sounds good. Would help to see if they just escaped or got erased.
Hi, I’m a Chinese FE fan and I really love your hack, I personally think it’s the best one I’ve ever played. So it comes to me that maybe I can translate it and share it to some of my friends and the Chinese community. Please tell me if you mind me doing so or not.
Again, thank you for your great work!
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Glad you enjoyed.
Of course I don’t mind anyone translating it, but I think @glitter.xin already started on a chinese translation. Maybe check out things there.
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Really appreciate it, thanks.
I havent played this yet (ill do it once im done with a second playthrough of tmgc), but like, is this relevant to the game, or just some of the best writing ive seen in a while.