To build on that, the game uses a modified EXP formula that increases gains at the low end and decreases it at the high end. This is more significant than vanilla GBA.
Thus, the higher the level compared to the enemy, you will get significantly less per level. The inverse is also true. Loewe starts a quite a few levels higher than the average enemy, which is why his gains are slower early on.
Gave this a try as a blind ironman, am up to the start of chapter 7 now and would like to give some first impressions.
First of all i wanna say this is a very cool hack with lots of mechanics and the playstyle of a game not as often seen in fanprojects (Thracia). So huge props to the team behind this for making it happen.
Now for some nitpicks.
Gameplay wise i liked pretty much every chapter so far, although i was thinking “man i hope this guy is recruitable!” on more than a few bosses so far.
Like come on, that portrait is legendary!
Another one was the boss of chapter 6, McCallum. It was specifically mentioned he was trying to atone for his sins in the conversation and his description, and getting an prepromoted berserker with adept sounded super fun. To my surprise though nobody could talk to him, and when trying to talk to Cromar i only got “This is my fight!” over and over. I was however able to rescue him with Leina and thought the way to recruit McCallum was to do that to not be under the time limit of him dying. I ended up not finding a way to keep him alive so i just killed him myself. He didn’t have a hand axe on him so i could just pepper him from range and get a lot of experience chipping since he’s promoted.
I ended up sending Myrmgirl, dark mage nerd and Rook knight guy into the arena, but lost all of them due to some bad play, got up to the mage gauntlet tho!
My next complaint is writing related. Some chapters have really good text formatting, others do not. However many seem to namedrop a thousand places with barely pronounceable and hard to remember names, which are currently irrelevant. So i legitimately cannot remember a single name apart from us fighting the empire of Selese and there being a people called Cythians or something like that. I also generally felt like some dialogue could’ve been condensed and found myself wanting to just get through it as quickly as possible at times. Chapter 6 then went in the opposite direction and felt like there wasn’t enough build up to all the many things happening in it.
The Characters themselves were likeable and all felt useful, it’s always hard to decide who i want to bring, even with the fatigue mechanic and ironmanning taken into account.
All of that being said: I understand that this is a Telephone hack, so there are various different skill levels and creative minds all adding something to the project. It’s much harder than if you have a game director with a clear vision that everyone else follows. With that in mind, this is still a fun and unique project that i’m happy exists. So again, huge props to the creators!
Glad you’re enjoying the hack.
The guide has a lore section with information about the major countries in the story, it should update periodically throughout the game, I think. At this point you’ve fought Selese, one of the dukedoms in Decia, whose duke, Cidor, has already surrendered to the Cythean Empire and is assisting the Empire with the occupation of Decia.
I can say you got close to sparing McCallum with how far you got into the arena, although he is not recruitable.
I totally forgot about the guide, will check it if i need to, thanks.
Aw kinda unfortunate. I would’ve honestly loved if there was an elaborate way to get McCallum as a meme unit instead of Leina and Cromar, or get Leina and Cromar later instead should you be able to do it.
On chapter 5 the music stops after 1 turn of battle
Currently playing this hack up to ch7; without delving into too many details, I must say the features/quality/attention to detail to various things is pheonomenal so far.
That said, I’m currently facing quite a few bugs.
First of all, on chapter 6, after recruiting the hero, after a certain point, scrolling through the pages of his unit data caused the game to freeze. Unsure of actual cause given this didn’t happen before, but if it helps any I had him use a pure water beforehand. For testing purposes, I also had him go up against the baron in the arena (which idk if it’s even possible to beat at all?) I also had him go up against the baron in battle, and when the baron killed him on enemy phase (the hero survived player phase with a pure water) he didn’t revive despite having dullahan equipped?
Anyway, currently on chapter 7, and I’m facing a much more severe issue; apparently the save/debuff data just broke? My units are randomly having vastly reduced stats despite not even reaching the fatigue threshold. This somehow sometimes fixed itself when undeploying the units…except for the lords, which are also currently experiencing the biggest stat drop out of all units. With this current issue idk if I can continue playing through ch7 or beyond.
At least for the last issue, I uploaded a patch this morning that should resolve the debuff issue that crops up in 7, according to someone else who played it. The other issues are new to me, but I’ll investigate and address that as soon as I can. Admittedly, I rarely use pure water, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the cause and testing just didn’t catch it, and I’ve never actually gotten Cromar killed since it’s pretty tough, outside of throwing someone at Zeus like you did, ha. Will check the code to see what’s up there, thanks for the bug reports.
Heya,
been playing the game a lot since release and overall I really love it. There’s some unevenness due to the telephone approach, but mostly it feels pretty coherent and well thought out in terms of gameplay and story.
I have a pretty annoying bug to report though, during Interlude 3 Emil and Iberis got loaded in as blue units for some reason (might be because they were carrying enemies at the end of the last chapter) and consequently go missing in the next map.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the hack. I’ve heard about a few issues where units disappear during interludes without a clear reason, but the condition you mentioned seems fairly reasonable. I’ll test soon to confirm, and if that is the case, it should (hopefully) be a simple fix. Thanks for the bug report.
Thanks to a savestate I was able to drop their captives before finishing and that did indeed fix the issue.
Uploaded a new patch addressing various issues. Changelog:
Pure water and Dullahan issues, since both are at least avoidable and somewhat annoying to test, will be put in a “Known Issues” tab in the OP for now and fixed with another patch soon.
Do we have a recruitment guide, per chance ?
It would a shame to miss out on some of the cast
Is there any issue with using an old save from after ch1?
No, that should be fine. I don’t think any new patches will have save issue concerns, but I’ll mention it if there are any.
I uploaded a quick guide to the same folder as the patch. Most of them are fairly straightforward, with a few exceptions.
Hey all, I put out a smaller patch that focuses on a couple newer issues that came to my attention.
Sadly i no longer have that savefile because i reset, but going from the very first release to the very first bugfix patch DID bork my save (some units dissapeared, lords lost all their stats, etc) but it hasn’t happened since so it should be safe.(Note: Last thing i did before patching was finishing the chapter with the Arena, but left the 3 units inside there, escorted them with cleo to the boats because i didn’t know how to leave.)
I did find one big bug now lol
It seems using the combine feature when sending things to the convoy jumbles up what scrolls you have, happens if you either have scrolls in the supply already, or if you send multiple at once.
This happens on both the previous patch to the current one, as well as the last one released (Save transfered from the earlier to the former.)
Good catch, I’ll add it to the known issues list for now. I have an idea of what’s causing it, but it may take a bit to fix.
