Thanks for playing!
Very cool to hear that you enjoyed the experience so much.
About Hubert: I might make a bonus campaign in the future (about 3 chapters maybe?) where Foulques and Maria try to settle their rivalry for the throne. Hubert will likely also play a role in that story.
@RandomMercenary Tried it but the gameplay is not for me, thanks anyways!
@OP Looks like there was a stray FE8 ROM in your dropbox folder. I’ve removed the link for now.
Oh! My apologies. That’s very sloppy of me. I removed it from the folder.
Now that I am thinking about it, this game reminds me suspiciously of the British Isles’ story, just with some stuff left out and some events rushed to happen immediately, instead of waiting for hundreds of years. Let me explain:
Edit: it was a huge aah text, so I’ll hide it in spoilers to not occupy much space in the thread.
First, there was an unknown amount of tribes we don’t have much information about. They are invaded from the mainland by numerous armies that establish different countries. Only one of the original tribes survives.
The British Isles were originally populated by many tribes of goidelic origin, most of which dissapeared when the Bretons (and later the Romans, the Anglish and the Saxons) invaded. After that, the only native culture left was the Pictish and the Goidelic, which would eventually diverge into others like Irish, Cumbrian or Gaelic.
After centuries, a North Eastern foreign threat invades an entire kingdom and eventually settle themselves there, forming their own realm and changing its name.
The Norse invaded the Kingdom of Northumbria, settled there, conquered part of Mercia and East Anglia, then formed the Kingdom of the Danelaw.
There is a lot of turmoil in the Rich Kingdom of Garleane. After a long, gruesome war, the king of Suntine and his heir have to abandon their pagan ways and convert to Donianity to be fully accepted by their new vassals. Most of the kingdoms are held by one man alone. There is no trace left from the original cultures of the island now, save from the Principality.
Many years later, the land is in turmoil. There are many claimants to the Kingdom of England, including the kings of both Norway and Denmark. So, all 3 kingdoms start a succession war to see who gets it. Eventually the winner, Knud of Denmark, reigned over all 3 kingdoms. He had to fully abandon Norse paganism (Ásatru) to be accepted by the English. Most of the kingdoms are held by one man alone. There is no trace left from the original cultures of the Isles, as most have been replaced or hybridized (the Scotish, for one), except for the Irish, the Welsh and the Cornish.
Many years later, the great king dies. His heir is mysteriously assasinated soon after. This brings the land into turmoil once more, as there is no valid heir. A certain opportunist raises to the ocassion and outlives the the rest of the candidates to the throne. However, there are claimants in other lands. From the North, the Suntine army, led by someone with distant blood ties to the previous king. From the South, some duke who was supposedly granted a claim from a previous king of Garleane. An outsider he is, his lands hail from beyond the sea. Agains all odds, the outsider wins the war. However, the outsider king, the great conqueror’s task is far from done. The islanders will not easily accept his rule…
Many years later, the kingdoms of England, Norway and Denmark had split. Edward the Confesor, last king of the Wessex House, dies. As he had no valid heirs to his throne, infighting starts within his kingdom. Eventually, the opportunist Harold Godwinson steps raises to the occasion and outlives his enemies, declaring himself King of England. However, there are other claimants to the throne. From the North, the varangian King Harald of Norway, with distant blood ties to House Wessex and House Estrid (that of King Knud the Great). From the South, a Norman duke. An outsider he is, a bastard too! Against all odds, the foreing duke outlives his enemies and thus William the Conqueror sits in the Anglo-saxon throne. However, his trials are far from over. The Anglo-saxons won’t simply accept his rule. And so, the Harrying of the North begins…
I took some liberties, I know, but hope you enjoy the reading. If you are a nerd like me, you might.
That’s awesome! Very sharp and observant of you! I’m a big history nerd as well. The story is indeed based on exactly this, with some liberties taken of course. I was just waiting for the day that some other nerd would eventually recognize the parallels. 
So, yeah….congratulations! You got me!
Here’s your price ! 
I’m just happy I got it right, to be honest 
. The problem is that, if that little game you said you were planning about Maria and Foulques war is going to follow this trend, I already know who the winner of this conflict will be, but well. And now that we are on it, how are your other projects going?
The war between Maria and Foulques is going to be based on something else, so don’t worry.
As for my other projects, I am pretty close to releasing the first half of the game that takes place in-between ‘the phantom king’ and ‘Crowns and Thrones. Just need to finish some stuff first.
Awesome. By the way, I just managed to keep Henry alive in chapter 5, absolutely destroyed all of his enemies. A pity the outcome is the same tho, this shows that I was obviously not meant to do it
Also: who the hell murdered Setyono? This is a question unanswered, the game gives you no hints. It was obviously not Reginald, he is just an opportunist that, well, saw an opportunity, but doesn’t look like he planned any of it. He just took advantage of the situation. Egbert, maybe? He doesn’t strike me as a particularly ambitious or spiteful individual though. He is accused of murdering his brother, but such a thing is never proven as true. Hidayat looks like he really loves his distant kin. So who did it, if you are willing to answer?
I sped through Crowns and Thrones recently. What a journey. Closest thing to a historical epic in a romhack form. It’s really cool how many perspectives you actually play as across just 16 chapters.
I also played Phantom King a long while ago, so it was also pretty cool seeing some of the connections from that.
I don’t remember what said for CELICA so I could be repeating myself, but the gameplay is very original for a FE hack. I did enjoy not having to manage exp/item use/everyone surviving and just focus on the best way of beating the enemy. Definitely a lot more ‘strategy game’ feel than FE usually is.
The class skills to more readily differentiate different troops was also cool. Got a lot of use out of canto+, managing charge ranges and movement skills. It is interesting how promoted classes don’t carry over the skills, since some skills (cough blood tide) are probably better than being promoted. Every class felt useful except myrmidons, who made a nice sacrificial unit I suppose.
I think boss stats get a little out of hand during the later chapters. It starts to reach the point where if I throw my entire army at a boss, the boss will win, unless I managed to trade chain an effective like 3-5 times (and actually hit!). Kind of wish I had a little more gold to use, since buying effective weapons felt very necessary.
Minor note, some of the green unit rescues like Claes and Matilde feel a little prone to crit RNG screwage.
Leon’s a great tragic character. I played Crowns and Thrones Rebellion in CELICA so I knew had actually had another opportunity to coup his dad. It’s pretty understandable why he wouldn’t, since Philip trusted him so much and his position as heir was rock solid. Even people who acknowledged that Leon might be a good ruler all eventually lost faith in him just because he never betrayed his dad. By the time he did commit to the deed, it was all too late.
He really just loses everything. His supporters, his friends, his son, even his legacy, since Diponegoro is going to go down in history as the successful king. It is pretty funny Diponegoro just challenges him to the vote and Leon knows he’s not going to win.
The player is probably more inclined to support Diponegoro than Leon, which is part of what makes this perspective fun, since Leon is also a stand-up guy. Just made some really bad life choices.
Since Diponegoro accomplished basically everything he wanted, I was not expecting to direction of part II to be everything has collapsed upon his death. Reginald is the closest thing to a main character for part II and what a fun character he is. Shady scheme into shady scheme being topped off by executing his own brother. (After how many nobles apparently died in dungeons, I was low-key hyped for at least one brutal execution!) He’s not really a guy to root for, but he really got me interested in what would happen next and whether he would get away with it all.
With like six? seven? different claimants and being able to play as several of them, I had no clue who was going to emerge the victor. It looked like it might have been Gisa after so many of Reginald’s supporters defected, but Reginald managed to crush them anyways and also Suntaine in the same chapter, making him one of the best generals of all time I suppose. Then he doesn’t even get a privilege of a final confrontation with Osmany, which I suppose is all his sins catching up to him.
I know history never wraps up cleanly, but man was I a little sad to not even know what becomes of Garleanne after all this mess. I presume there’s plans for a sequel eventually and look forward to it.
Can’t help but feel a little bad for poor Henry. Lost all three sons and has to live with the guilt of betraying Leon and possibly for how Garleanne ended up in its present state.
No wonder Humphrey declared Garleanne to be cursed and left forever. He saw Garleanne change hands like a billion times in the 30 something years the game takes place, which is a lot condensed into 16 chapters!
Is it me or is the story a plagia of that of early England ?
Wait a bit, their is something I didn’t understand with the Epilogue. Why do Mathilde and Humphrey stand down ? Don’t they fear that would result in Reginald ordering the execution of their respective childs ?
Because Reginald is doomed. At that point, Reginald does not have any legitimacy as a ruler, hostages are the only thing that helps him get by. Not even his own father followed him to his doom. The only people who would possibly be willing to execute the hostages are the troops that followed Reginald to that last battle, and they all died while the others stood by, watching.
Edit: also yeah, it IS the story of England. I made a full analysis a few coments above.
Interesting. To be honest, I hadn’t gotten that Reginald was doomed, because I had just dunked on Foulques during the precedent chapter.
Also, from what I saw of the map, it seems that had the earls followed Reginald, the battle would had been quite tough, likely requiring to funnel Foulques forces in the chokepoint and slowly kill them (or go for the duke himself), but not impossible.
Finally, I was a bit sad to see Reginald lose. Yes, it is implied that he was absuive and tortured peoples, but It still felt bad for all my efforts to go down the drain.
Yeah, I completely understand the feeling. Can you believe I liked the guy for a while? Mainly because I admired how good he was at scheaming. He literally got ONE chance to ascending in the nobility ladder, he took it and actually managed to outlast everyone in the island. If Foulques hadn’t had a claim on Garleane, he would have won… Just like Harold Godwinson and William de Normandie.
To be fair, Harold lost mainly because he was unlucky. He was actually winning before his mens got out of position and were crushed by William counterattack.
Meanwhile, poor Reginald had to face a gigantic army, with commanders who have almost no loyalty to him. It would had taken some miracle, like Foulques getting sick and dying, for Reginald to come out on top.
Honestly? Had Foulques waiter another season before invading, Reginald may have had time to recover from the rebel faction and Suntine’s war and resist the Duke’s advances.
Also, Harold had mainly levy and huscarls, he was still recovering from Harald’s invasion, whereas William had more actual men at arms, including heavy cavalry, he was still fresh. If he had a season to recover, he may have stood a chance. But after just one month of respite, well. You know how it ended, for better or worse.
Can’t help but laugh at Henry’s misfortune. The traitor deserved it, he killed Leon.
Not to mention, I will never understand the dukes saying Leon was a coward. Expecting a son to overthrow his father is absurd.
Got here from Dani Doyle’s review, just finished chapter 1. Not sure if I will continue, but the hack is interesting.
Just wanted to point out I noticed several it’s/its mixups, and though it’s not technically an error, I’d recommend sticking to three periods for ellipses consistently. I (and I think most people) parse longer ellipses as extremely long pauses, which sound unnatural in normal dialogue.
Passive healing skills like Amaterasu and Camaraderie also don’t seem to work. Am I missing something with how they’re supposed to be used?
Anyway, I like the concept of the hack’s gameplay – long-term resource management typically leads to loss aversion and conservative play since you don’t know how far your resources need to stretch or if there’s going to be a situation hours down the line where you really, really need something you could use up right now. Knowing that I can use everything I get at the start of the map is really freeing, and allows you to fine-tune the difficulty much more precisely since all players start at the same level.
The generics are also an interesting mechanic – I like how they invert the typical Fire Emblem gameplay of encouraging defensiveness and protectiveness of your precious babies, and it’s a particularly good fit for a story where you play as the evil empire. There were several moments where I thought, “This strategy is a little reckless, but it’s fine, I’ll just lose a few generics” – and then had to do a double take at how callous and monstrous that reasoning was. It really makes you feel like an actual general who has to knowingly send people to die, rather than the typical FE commander who can and should keep everyone alive. The retreat sequence at the end of chapter 1 was particularly effective at this, since the most effective strategy is to sacrifice generics to buy yourself time.
Unfortunately, it just didn’t click with me in practice. My least favorite part of Fire Emblem has always been the randomness of the combat, and I have to agree with Dani Doyle’s assessment that the combat is just too swingy here. I rarely saw hit rates above 90% with any generics, and generics often stand little to no chance of hitting enemy commanders, especially if they’re using terrain. I find myself just throwing tons of units at them in the hopes that one might land a hit, which isn’t very engaging. I also don’t like that there seems to be a perpetual 5-10% crit rate on all attacks. Distressingly often, it felt like I won or lost based on luck rather than through my own tactical decisions. Given how much you’ve streamlined the rest of the gameplay (which I do appreciate), maybe it would have been a good idea to limit crit chance to only certain weapons?
Hey, thanks for giving it a try! The things you’re pointing out are definitely the weakpoints of the hack. I guess enjoying it really depends on what a player likes or dislikes in a Fire Emblem game. I knew whis would be a “love it or hate it” kind of hack when I started development.
Anyway, thanks for trying and sharing your experience!