Confused by what you mean when you say three in a row. Chapter 5 has it, 6 has it via Cromar’s skill (not a surprise), and 7 only has it if you deploy and use Cromar, which is your choice to make. If you don’t want fog, don’t deploy him.
Yeah, I figured that out shortly after writing the comment. Now I’m in Chapter 9 and escaped with everyone, but the chapter doesn’t end. Anything I can do or am I screwed?
Hm, probably. Afaik, this bug is pretty rare and probably related to escaping while a Lord is rescuing (as mentioned in Known Issues). Likely would need to reset and not do this to fix the issue, unfortunately.
Redid and finished the chapter just now. Got some pretty bad lvl ups in my botched attempt so it wasn’t such a bad thing. Tough chapter overall.
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Is the thief staff not working yet?
My Tippany is A rank in staves with 13 con and can’t steal a single iron sword.
I even tried to steal just items and it doesn’t work either. She has 20spd so that’s not the issue here.
I’m pretty sure the thief staff requires your Mag to exceed the target’s Res.
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I beat Bells of Byelen and just wanted to say in short…
I loved it!
I appreciate the more serious storytelling and the clear Thracia themes in storytelling and gameplay. While the godly stuff got a bit complicated at times, the gist was simple enough to follow. I really enjoyed the dynamic of the main characters, although I definitely prefer Cleo in gameplay and personality.
Some notes after beating the game: I am surprised by a lack of stamina drinks in a game with fatigue. It’s not a big deal, but it would help.
I can’t recall being hit by a single status all game, so the restore staff was incredibly useless. I nearly missed some special conversations (Leina’s secret promotion) due to lack of notice. Maybe add extra dialogue when characters have something unique to them on the map, I kept everyone alive so I’d like to be rewarded for that.
Speaking of everyone, while I prefer deploy support development, some of them take far too long. I was able to get Cleo x Lyre and Tiberius x Ojasnavi to A-rank really fast because Lyre and Ojasnavi are late game units, but Longxia and Fangai, who I’ve used all game only got their A-rank at the literal endgame. Considering how every pair has paired endings I wish I could’ve seen more, so maybe decrease the number of chapters needed for these supports.
Otherwise, I don’t have any major complaints more suggestions. Such as more equipable items (they are neat), everyone getting at least one skill and a unit with access to convoy. I was waiting all game to get one so I was surprised to never see one. Perhaps they’d be broken, but they could also be weak or play pure support with rallies or something.
As for my units of significance (in no particular order):
Cleo & Loewe: Cleo is everything you’d want for a unit in this game. Mounted, good build, great stats in every category, universally useful skill and healing. She can do literally everything. Loewe in comparison… is very underwhelming. Questionable offense, can’t capture till promotion, terrible bulk, lower growths, worse weapons and a mediocre personal skill. Both are excellent, it’s just that Cleo is so much better.
Mira, Ulbak & Asha: All good thieves with their own utility. Mira has perfect availability and a leadership star. Ulbak has the best con if trained. Asha is perfectly serviceable from the jump. I used all at different points. Kind of wish I could’ve made them assassins or tricksters though.
Iskra & Kofi: Iskra is basically a necessity for early game and is perfectly usable later. Replaced her with Kofi since I liked his design, he made a good capture unit and sword user.
Longxia, Fangai, Tippany: Longxia isn’t perfect, but I used her all game and her high HP, speed, magic and resistance turned out to be incredibly useful. Fangai is just a ball of stats, amazing unit, must be all the good food. Tippany is a fun healer if you just love seeing movement level-ups.
Faolan, Jenny & Iberis: I didn’t really see much point in using other cavaliers when these two can use two weapon types. Both were reliable. Iberis I thought would be gimmicky, but she really snowballs into a legitimate threat.
Leina, Ngondala, Nahiza, Augur: I really like Leina’s gameplay. To compensate for her low magic, her special skill allows her to heal multiple allies at once if she keeps acting. Very intuitive and I wish I saw more skills like that. Ngondala has an amazing design so I had to use her, A rank light is nice when building weapon rank takes forever (please add arms scrolls). Nahiza is useful, but I wish we got more free ballista. Augur I was never impressed by even after training.
Varga, Svetomir, Jacinth, Ilse, Mathias: Finally, an early armor knight and early priest that are great. Both turned out to be genuinely durable and reliable frontliners. Jacinth is a dancer, she’s great, her secret convo makes her better. Ilse and Mathias were just reliable white mage healers.
Filone & Zweibeck: Both great early game. Considered promoting them, but Zwei did not turn out nearly as strong as Varga and Filone I just lost interest in adding a sniper when I could have a master knight.
Tiberius & Ojasnavi: Both are busted, but by endgame Ojasnavi had maxed out nearly every stat. I love master knights!
Lyre & Nikolas: Immediately loved her for her personality and gameplay. Perfect utilization of a support with Cleo so for the rest of the game they were glued together. Wyvern knight with great stats and bulk with a skill perfectly tailored to stick close to her best support partner. Excellent endgame unit. Nikolas ended up being the only lance user I used seriously and he never got to A rank. Great extra flier and made use of all my spare lances!
Summation: Really great game! If you ever make a sequel or a new game, I expect it will be amazing too!
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Personally, I like that BoB doesn’t have s-drinks. In Thracia, once you optimize for them, you can kind of just ignore the fatigue mechanic and continue abusing your carries. IIRC, BoB un-fatigues units who have special interactions on maps (e.g. the axe twins getting their prfs), so the other use case for s-drinks of making sure you don’t miss out on special events is absent.
Yeah, that’s a product of being a telephone hack. Loog will probably adjust that if/when Project Bells ever releases.
Yeah, this was a gripe I had as well.
If you’d like to read any supports you didn’t get, I believe all supports are unlocked in the support viewer after you finish the game. I’d personally recommend checking out Awa’s, hers are all great. Sadly, I don’t think this will show you any of the paired ending slides.
Personally, I like that BoB doesn’t give everyone a skill. Sometimes, your niche can just be having solid stats or a fancy prf, and that’s fine.
You’re intentionally never given a unit with convoy access, as that would utterly break the capture system. More importantly, if there was a convoy unit, their existence would make the player feel obligated to take each map really slowly so they can capture→convoy as many items as they can.
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Okay all fair points. Those were just my final thoughts. Thanks for answering!
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Hey, glad you enjoyed the game. On some of the things mentioned here, a couple responses:
- S Drinks and Fatigue restoration are something I’m pretty unlikely to add at this point, though I can see how they would be useful. If I were to do it again, I would probably allow Fatigued units to be deployed but just be immensely punished for it in some way that utility units like thieves and staffers can’t get around. Really, this is just to get around having to manually unset Fatigue for some chapters under the hood, which I don’t really like doing (and which S Drinks would admittedly help with).
- Agreed on some early/midgame supports developing too slowly: sped these up near universally for the eventual next update.
- Restore’s almost wholly useless, yeah. I’m planning on removing it and adding some other staves that give dancer ring effects that can act as restores for some new status stave enemies sprinkled in.
- Definitely have added some equips/scrolls for the next update. The problem with this is, as mentioned, how they intersect with capture and no convoy, leading to pretty strenuous item management. I don’t like having infinite map convoy in a capture context, though (too easily abused), so my solution in the update is to add a convoy “unit” that you can call in for a turn as sort of a single-turn inventory mulligan/capture enabler. Exact tuning may adjust on how long they can be on the map for, but that’s the basic idea.
Again, glad you enjoyed the hack, and thanks for the kind words and review (Kofi gaming is awesome, I don’t see a lot of people use him).
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- That’s fair! The only time stamina was really a problem was endgame when I wanted two units to support, but one was really close to max fatigue and I didn’t want her to not get exp all map. Otherwise, I loved rotating my army.
- I love the concept of everyone having paired endings with every support partner and the people deserve to see them.
- I would love more utility for staff users since I also didn’t use status staves too much, but that might be my straightforward gameplay/forgetting they are there.
- I think games with large rosters can totally have fun with utility units. Maybe a unit built around rallies or spurs. A unit who has all the movement skills and decent survivability, but weak offense. A unit who gets stronger when capturing, but has low build so you have to work on getting them build level ups. Loads of potential here!
Of course! I like to give my two cents when games do great work! Kofi’s design stuck with me and while he wasn’t an endgame unit, I did enjoy him and his support with Nikolas for several chapters.
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For what it’s worth, I like the current system of just setting relevant units to one point below their fatigue limit; it feels pretty natural and isn’t overly punishing. I think the ability to force-deploy units despite being fatigued at a massive penalty would make people afraid to let units actually fatigue, since they could be needed for something next map and be pretty much useless for it. Compare this to the current system, where a unit you didn’t expect to deploy can function just fine and will just “waste” some EXP.
Maybe the current system could be communicated to the player better, though? Like, a guide entry and/or a pop-up?
Yeah, to be clear, I’m not making this change to Fatigue here. It’s just what I’d do if I were to try out Fatigue again. I don’t think force deploy is particularly relevant in either case, though, since no one’s really getting forced without already being immune to Fatigue (and if you just mean being able to deploy them, then ideally that unit is not “needed” for any map: tighter design like that really doesn’t work in a Fatigue context).
Hi everyone, I created an account just so I could write about this amazing hackrom. Please excuse my English—it’s not my first language.
I’ve loved this game since the very beginning; its challenging gameplay really drew me in (in my opinion, most Fire Emblem games are way too easy). At first, I had a hard time making progress and figuring everything out in the early missions, especially the third one—that one seemed really unfair to me.
One of the things I liked best was the gameplay mechanics: stealing and capturing items struck me as something truly original and incredibly fun. I loved that, as I progressed, I had many more weapons at my disposal, especially once I got Buldak; stealing became much more fun, and by the end, I was even stealing heavy weapons as if they weighed nothing. I know that stealing (I’m not sure about capturing) comes from Fire Emblem Thracia 776, but I’ve never played it, so this was my first experience with these mechanics—they’re truly incredible. I don’t know why there aren’t more Fire Emblem games with mechanics like this.
Another aspect I loved the most was the story and its characters. The story was fascinating; the plot twists, especially at the end, were not predictable at all. I was genuinely surprised by Kwame’s true identity.
I loved Cleo and Loewe with all my heart; they quickly became my favorite characters, especially the interactions between the two of them. I loved them so much—in fact, I wanted them together. I tried my hardest to get the solo ending just so I could bring them together, but unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed. Is it possible to get an ending where the two of them are together? Please, if anyone knows, let me know—I’m begging you.
I thought the maps were better than in most Fire Emblem games; they made me think and take the enemies into account—from their weapons to their stats. In many Fire Emblem games, I’d just send my strongest character in to kill everyone. Except for Chapter 3, which I had to restart about four times—no exaggeration—to clear, I thought the maps were extremely well-designed.
The skills were some of my favorite things, especially Carl’s, Mantou’s, and Hornet’s—they were super overpowered.
As for the support conversations, I thought they were great; my only complaint is that they’re a bit hard to unlock. I didn’t even get the A-rank one for Axel and Iberis, even though they were among the units I used the most.
Now I’ll show you the units I used and enjoyed the most:
Cleo
Cleo was one of my best units, and since she was on a whole different level from the rest, you can imagine how much I used her. I preferred her so much that I’d let her kill half the enemies.
Loewe
Loewe was a terrible unit at first. I thought he’d stay that way, but surprisingly, he turned into the killing machine I never imagined, especially after getting his Kaiserschwert sword. Having it taken away from him at the end was a tragedy.
Jenny
Jenny, oh Jenny, I had so many problems with her at first. I was tempted to drop her and replace her more times than I’d care to count. Thanks to my brother’s insistence—he also played this wonderful ROM hack—I didn’t give up on her. He said she was incredible. In the end, the effort was worth it. When she advanced to Sword B and could use magic swords, man, she went absolutely wild.
Carl
Carl—his skill made him the character with the highest critical hit rate I’ve ever seen in a Fire Emblem game. He reached 93 critical hit rate with the Kukri and 70 with an Assassin’s Sword.
Iskra
I love Iskra not only as a character, but as a unit—she’s the best mage I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing
Leina
Leina—at first I didn’t like her one bit; she was basically a healer who didn’t heal anything. But I tried her out as an attacker, and that was enough to keep her. I evolved her super late, in Chapter 21, but it was totally worth it. The thing about Leina that turns her into an absolute machine with the best stats is that… she evolves again—AGAIN! Two evolutions mean the stat buff stacks, of course, if you evolve her before Chapter 21. If you’re playing the game, DO IT
Tao
I lied when I said Carl had the highest critical hit rate in the game—no, no, it’s actually this awesome psychopath. With his second attack using a Killer Weapon and its accessory, he can easily hit 100% critical hit rate. Thanks, CCP 5, I love you. Oh, and to top it all off, he’s got 5 Vigor. There you go.
Iberis
Iberis is surprisingly amazing, especially when using Brelthunder—it takes out everything effortlessly. You just have to watch out for its low speed.
Tiberius
I love this guy—his weapon is one of the best, especially for leveling up. Don’t hesitate to use it; it’s a bit tough to level up, but it’s worth it.
Tobi
I saw it in a picture and was surprised by it, so I decided to use it—and I don’t regret it; it really turned out to be overpowered.
Valse
My best spear unit—it could use Valor spears, and the damage was insane. Plus, its synergy with Hornet was totally worth it.
Axel
Axel, honestly, I have no idea how I managed to get that unit—I don’t think it’ll ever happen again if I play the hackrom. It was an absolute beast, though a bit fragile.
Alena
Alena was really good, especially at the beginning and in the middle, but she slumped a bit even though I kept using her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t up to the same level as the others; maybe it was because I evolved her too early.
Buldak
IT WAS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY—I could steal practically every weapon in the game except for the heaviest ones, and I wasn’t bad at fighting with a Daring sword.
Joie
Joie-Joie, I love this girl—even though she wasn’t as good as the others, she was really helpful, especially when it came to capturing things.
I’m absolutely thrilled with your work. Thank you so much for bringing us this gem. If it were a Fire Emblem game, it would be my favorite alongside Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Shadow of Valentia—I’m just too indecisive to pick just one.
If there’s one thing I could complain about, it’s mission number three—it’s a real drag—and how hard it is to get support. I really wanted to get several supports, but I only managed to get about three.
Many thanks to your team.
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Great hack! The fatigue system was really cool
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kill[A] this[A] bitch.[A]