[FE8] [Complete] Fire Emblem Deity Device (Animation Bug Fix Released 3/19/2022)

[Shrimperor]

So i played up to and finished ch17 now. Gotta say, Gameplay wise, so far, Part 2 is much much better, i’ve been using more of my units (althozgh Lailah dominates a bit, not as much as Arachne did during Part 1), and there has been less unit Swarms (even if Ch16 kinda had them, it wasn’t as bad as any of Part 1, especially when you consider it’s a survive chapter), we’ve more staffers in the Team (including restore), and the units i find are generally more fun to use.

@Permafrost

I’m starting to think that a lot of problems are coming from me taking for granted that people would want to train a strong team because that is the way that I typically approach a Fire Emblem game.

While i am kinda like that as well, it also depends on how the game pushes you to approach things. Many FE, and especially FE4 (which Deity Device is similiar to), push you to Juggernaut with a strong unit. It’s a problem many games in the series has.

If you want to look at a game where Juggernauting is much harder, look at New Mystery, or Conquest. While it still possible to do there, it isn’t as easy usual and not very obvious, to players tend to train a strong team to be able to do everything they want. Enemies there have high ATK, and in the case of Conquest dangerous skills as well, which makes enemy phasing much much harder.

@Permafrost

The funny thing is that, despite everything that has been said about her, I just don’t think that Arachne is really that good. I’ve always thought that Helen was the better of the two because of her superior range and her immediate doubling.

That would’ve been the case if the game was player phase focused, but it’s really heavily enemy phase focused due to the low quality of the enemies paired with their super high amount and the openess of the maps.

@Permafrost

Bows are a terrible matchup for Arachne in general

Thing is, they can’t damage her, however ther are succesful in zoning out most of the party due to the party having much lower def than Arachne → First instinct to send Arachne forward to facetank everything.

@Permafrost

As far as encouraging the player to use their units in tandem

Gotta say, that works much better in part 2 so far

@Permafrost

lga is a legitimately great unit on this map for getting around the houses and the fences, and she doesn’t take effective damage from the Iron Bows or basic ballista

She still has super low def however and any 2 units can kill her, and you can do everything with Arachne like knabepicer said.

@Permafrost

This has all been meant as an explanation of where the current design choices came from rather than me saying that nothing needs to change.

Understandable, and i guess it’s only natural how one approaches FE will heavily influence how they design a hack/fangame. But that’s why more playtesters are needed, so you can get different experiences and angles

[Xilirite]

In my replay of part 1 so far, I can certainly see what you were trying to go for with these maps, though I feel that it hasn’t hit the mark perfectly. Using the aura buffs is much more important with this set of units, though the sheer number of skills each unit has makes it difficult to remember who has what buffs sometimes. None of that really changes anything I said before, however – all of that is still true, and it’s all the most likely outcome for a brand new player. The map design needs substantial work, not necessarily for their layouts (though some maps are certainly far too large) but for their enemy placement – chapter 4 is a hellish trial by fire if Arachne isn’t leveled enough to tank all the cavaliers, requiring you to surgically bait out each group of cavaliers and then trying desperately to kill them all without leaving any gaps in your defences, which is especially difficult for the first set with the magic accompaniment (to clarify here, not in an exciting way, but in a cheesy ‘baiting them away from the archers at the back of the battlefield for 8 turns’ way), and chapter 7 is comically excessive with the sheer number of high movement enemies you have to kill in the first 3-5 turns and the extremely threatening minibosses (removing their killer weapons and making the paladin weaker would probably help in this regard, if you’re deadset on keeping the chapter set up this way, though really the massive diamonds of identical enemies is pretty silly every time.)

The real test is gonna be chapter 9 and 10, which were intensely uninteractive the last time I played. I feel that sleep staves, if you’re going to add so many to the game, need to have their numbers adjusted somehow, because having them all have such long range, such high hit rates, and such long durations all combine to make every map that has them an absolute slog. From what I’ve heard others say, by the time you get a restore staff, the maps often have several sleep staves, and if your restore user gets slept you’re out of options. This is just hearsay, of course.

Though, I’m glad to hear that the second part encourages the use of more units – while I feel the chapters still could use a lot of work, particularly in terms of removing empty space and providing less binary strategic options (have a mage tank the wyvern column, or die. Have Arachne tank the first wave in chapter 3, or die), the game is more fun with the wider array of units, even if I had to consciously choose not to have Arachne solo tank parts of the early chapters in order to get everyone the experience they need (which is still a problem – I shouldn’t have to force myself not to use a growth unit like this). From what I understand from hearing other people in the discord talk about it, in the second half Arachne is far less useful than Helen, so this may be a problem isolated to part 1. If that’s the case, it’s good news, because it means there’s only a few chapters that would need adjustment in order to solve the problem! I think a lot of good could come from trying to tone down the number of massive unit blobs in part 1 – there’s only a couple chapters with them, but they’re such demanding challenges compared to the rest that they absolutely require that a player prepare for them, and this necessity pushes units like Arachne from being a useful tank to an easy candidate for juggernauting.

About Chapter 8

I recently replayed this chapter, and I honestly think a silence staff would work fine here. Magic is an extremely reliable and powerful tool in this hack, to the point that magic users sort of take over the game right from the very start. Having this chapter, which already turns a lot on its head (fog of war, self healing doesn’t work, monster enemies, etc), take away your magic users that you’ve been leaning on so heavily would force players to use their physical units who so rarely get that same limelight. Arachne and Luke can still use their horses to rescue units when necessary, and Calista still has to seize the circle, so the only unit who’d really be totally neutered by a silence staff is Gregory. However, with the sleep staff method, the problems are just too large. Your units will almost always be sleeping in the middle hallway, which is exactly where all the enemies will be filing through after you seize a circle. Your thief will always get slept twice in the chest room unless you leave a unit, or even two units if you want to rescue/drop, to keep her out of range the whole time, which makes getting the bottom chest so prohibitively hard that I’ve never even attempted it. The problem with this chapter isn’t that it takes away tactical tools from the player, like Vamp spam – in fact, if you’re training her heavily, Arachne doesn’t even need Vamp anymore by this point in the game. The problem is that the most limiting factor of this chapter is one that is 100% uninteractive – I have no way to counteract the sleep staff besides putting my least useful, least likely to die bodies in the way of it and hoping the boss just cycles through those 5 units and never hits my useful units. Also the three archers in the bottom room is excessive since they spawn without you having any way of knowing, since most likely your thief is asleep in the chest room and your torch is over by Calista on the seize point, so maybe the number of archers spawning there could be toned down. It’s not an impossible chapter by any means – I got it down first try both times, but only because I knew what was coming and was planning for it before I even arrived. For a blind player? It just blindsides you with an absolute nightmare where it can be hard to even tell what you’re expected to be doing about it.

[Shrimperor]

Up to ch 19 is say the only chapters really in a major need of fixing are chapters 4 and 7-9. Other ones need fixes here and there and maybe reduce the reinforcement amount, but aren’t offensive like 4 and 7-9 are.

18x Spoilers

This ends now, Indignation!

Btw, what’s the track used in Ch19? I recognize it somehow yet the name escape my mind xD

I hope the extra menu is unlocked after i finish the game to get the names of the tracks!

@Xilirite

From what I’ve heard others say, by the time you get a restore staff, the maps often have several sleep staves, and if your restore user gets slept you’re out of options.

Tbf, you get a 10 range restore and a 3 range one, and Barrier staff, and many high res units, so your Restore dudes have enough range to cure without landing in enemy status range. It’s done well there imo since the player has the tools to fight them.

[DainnOfGungnir]

I’ve never really posted about a hack before, so forgive me if my formatting or something is particularly ugly, or I accidentally say something offensive. I have no intention to be rude here. I just beat it today, and I have a lot of feelings about what I played.

For starters, I will say that overall, I enjoyed the hack. The story is genuinely intriguing to me, and I always wanted to see what happened next to the characters, or where the plot will lead. You did a good job on it as well as the world-building. There is a lot of very creative ideas in the story and gameplay, and a lot of heart was clearly put into your work throughout the two years you’ve created this. I know completing a hack is certainly not easy, and I wish I myself had more motivation to make an original one myself. Your hack can be seen as an inspiration, in a way.

Gaining the new magic types was always exciting for me. I always wanted to unlock what new useful magic was given next to one of the characters, whether it be something simple such as a spell I’ve seen before for another character, or a new one entirely. It’s one of the most creative ideas I’ve seen in anything Fire Emblem related, and I think you did a pretty nice job with it. All types of magic were exciting to use and felt truly different here unlike in other games.

However as there is praise there is always criticism–and in particular, the gameplay and the script are the most notable things I think could be improved. There are various typos throughout the script and later on, narrative moments tend to just… abruptly end in the middle of characters speaking. Chapter 27 in particular was like this, as basically every scene ended abruptly. It was rather jarring and a bit funny, if anything. A rereview of the script is probably needed to fix the errors in it.

I’m not sure where to even begin with the gameplay. As interesting as everything was, the gameplay was very polarizing at other moments. A bunch of the lategame bosses felt extremely awful to fight, notably the boss of Chapter 27. Fighting that boss was a super, super uphill battle.
Another example of obnoxious gameplay is Chapter 17. A bunch of ambush reinforcements spawn right on top of the player with no warning. A few turns later that same set of enemies repeats, but now on player phase. It’s irritating and very much pointless. I think reinforcements should not be spawning on top of the player, much less ambush spawns.

Another part I did not like was Chapter 10. It is annoying when enemies spawn on top of you after you hit the buttons to open the doors to the throne room. Not to mention that you only have one healer, and you split on two sides… so one side lacks an actual healing method aside of vulneraries, which just are not enough. It’s moments like these that disappoint me and aren’t particularly well designed in my opinion.

Or in Chapter 20, a certain enemy unit did not spawn after seizing like they were supposed to. I had to go back and cheat via FEBuilder to visit the gaiden because they did not spawn for a reason I don’t quite know. There are countless moments I probably forgot to mention as well.

The best section of gameplay however, was early Disc 2, though. Things were very interesting there, and I liked the way skills and buffing came into effect with your units like Carson’s low magic synergizing with Vesta’s white pool. It made me more careful with my positioning and to figure out how to abuse the tools that were given to me to their full potential, with powerstaff on Vesta being a fun healing mechanic allowing you to heal and dance at the same time. Status staves became less of a nuisance as you got 10 range restore on Nathan. It certainly felt much nicer and much more tolerable as things were in your control.

Aesthetically, it could use a bit of work too–a few of the tracks (I did not recognize the names) were a bit scratchy to my ears, 28x is a good example of this, the player phase theme was not kind to my ears. I did like most of the music tracks picked though, like the one on Chapter 12 perfectly encapsulates the environment–it’s really spooky and uncanny. I wish there was an actual music list in the game, like vanilla GBAFE does.

Some of the mugs are of dubious quality, and while I can respect making them all yourself, maybe you could use a F2U mug on some occasions, especially for something such as the unimportant bosses, since recolors/vanilla bosses are really recognizable.

I think I’ll end it here before I either get repetitive or something. I feel as if I have more thoughts but I’m kinda forgetting them now. But overall, it was enjoyable. Your work was a breath of fresh air and I’m glad to have played it. Carson’s probably my favorite main character.

[Xilirite]

@Shrimperor

Tbf, you get a 10 range restore and a 3 range one, and Barrier staff, and many high res units, so your Restore dudes have enough range to cure without landing in enemy status range. It’s done well there imo since the player has the tools to fight them.

Ah, that’s good to hear! I’m still wrapping up my replay of part one, so I’m excited to see how part two mixes things up.

[Permafrost]

Important Announcement!!!

@DainnOfGungnir

Or in Chapter 20, a certain enemy unit did not spawn after seizing like they were supposed to. I had to go back and cheat via FEBuilder to visit the gaiden because they did not spawn for a reason I don’t quite know.

I put up a new version of the Part 2 patch that fixes this bug. If you are still working your way to Chapter 20, please redownload the Part 2 patch from the link in my initial post.

Also, something must have gone screwy in FEBuilder because at some point after I finished my last playthrough before uploading, several text IDs got randomly cut off starting in 25x and going forward. This is kind of mortifying because several key moments got chopped down to nothing, so I’m really sorry to anyone who got that far and saw what looked like unfinished text. The affected text has been restored from a backup, so please download the new Part 2 patch to properly view the story.

Existing save files should be compatible for those who are playing through.

[Shrimperor]

Are suspend saves also compatible? I am in the middle of ch20 atm, although didn’t seize any of the forward castles yet, i’d rather not retry xD

[Permafrost]

@Shrimperor

Are suspend saves also compatible?

It should be fine as long as you haven’t taken the castles yet.

[Xilirite]

@Permafrost

This is kind of mortifying because several key moments got chopped down to nothing, so I’m really sorry to anyone who got that far and saw what looked like unfinished text.

Oh no! That’s really unfortunate It’s a good thing you were able to fix the issue!

I just finished the replay of part 1, though I had to do some editing of my own – Knight’s Cross doesn’t seem to spawn properly if you skip through the chapter 8 end event (I’d already read it, so I was skipping dialogue), and I never saw the talk command to get the wind lance from Olga. You should really have Bertram say something in the two prior talk conversations to clue the reader in that they should do the follow-up talks (“Hmm…I get the feeling she’s not telling me the whole story”/“I should speak to Olga about all this.”) because I generally assume that, once I’ve done all the visible talk conversations, I’m good to go.

That said, I made a conscious effort to use every unit in this run, getting everyone to lvl 20 and then promoting except for Arachne, who I didn’t refuse to use per se but certainly made an effort not to rely on her too much early on. The only characters I didn’t get to lvl 10 were Luke, for obvious reasons, and Bertram, whose horse was, I felt, far more important to get before chapter 9 than any potentially higher stats. I also tried to get more supports than I did the first time, and a good chunk of my units finished part 1 with a full suite of 5 support conversations – A side note, but Helen parked next to an A rank Arachne support is kind of a beast By playing the game this way, I found it far more enjoyable, though chapter 9 and 10 are still extremely long slogs that long overstay their welcome and begin to kill a lot of goodwill from the earlier chapters. By the time I’m working through the third section of chapter 9, I’m already pretty much done with the experience, and there’s still an entire section left to clear. It’s… mind numbing. But less so than my first playthrough.

These maps still have glaring problems. Sleep staves weren’t fun to contend with, some chapters are WAY too big with not enough done with the space, ambush reinforcements 100% MUST GO, especially in chapter 10 where you could spawn 0 reinforcements in their place and the map would only be improved for it. If you’re going to spawn ambush reinforcements like that, you need to refresh the player’s turn so they can react, and they probably shouldn’t spawn directly on top of players in the way they do – though, of course, the correct answer is to just not spawn enemy units on the player’s turn, basically ever. That said, I understand now why the initial reaction to the gameplay may have confused you, as Arachne was substantially less useful in this run than she was in the one where she got early level ups – she feels like a unit that really needs to be higher level than the enemy in order to truly shine, and otherwise works well as a way to help plug holes in your defensive line while dealing heavy chip damage to tankier units. She still needs to be adjusted such that she isn’t capable of taking over the game the way she did on my, and many others’, first run. Cav effective weaponry (though obviously, be careful with this one), a lower defence growth, anything to stop her from just shredding part 1 to pieces with enough investment.

Ch 4 also needs an adjustment – those cavalry formations are just far too large to defeat in a way that isn’t really cheesy and slow paced, and you should find a way to kill dodge experience grinding. It’s not just getting experience from dodging that’s the problem, it’s that there are several places in the game where, with enough patience, I could have gotten my entire army to level 20/20 in a single chapter just by grinding dodges – notably, in ch 6 you can pick up several promo items, and in ch 7 you have a rout map and a ballista. Standing on a forest and letting it miss my units for a few hundred turns is something that I didn’t try to do, but was aware was an option since the first time I cleared chapter 3 and saw it happen with Lucy. You shouldn’t have a rout map where your enemies don’t approach you – in fact, most of your rout maps work better as kill boss, and one of the only kill boss chapters I can remember (ch 6) is actually the only map I feel would be improved by being rout instead.

All that said, I enjoyed this second playthrough more. I still think this game needs heavy tweaking – everything I said before 100% applies, and I feel it should be addressed if you’ve a mind to continue working on this hack from here. I really enjoy the playable cast, both as characters and as units in my repertoire, and with substantially better map design I think this game could shine, but it needs work.

[Permafrost]

@Xilirite

By playing the game this way, I found it far more enjoyable, though chapter 9 and 10 are still extremely long slogs that long overstay their welcome and begin to kill a lot of goodwill from the earlier chapters.

I’m glad that you at least enjoyed it more the second time even if some of the issues persisted.

@Xilirite

Knight’s Cross doesn’t seem to spawn properly if you skip through the chapter 8 end event

The issue may have been that Lucy has to talk to Arachne during the chapter in order for the Knight’s Cross event to occur. If you were skipping Talks that you didn’t think were necessary because they didn’t immediately give items, you may have missed that one.

I have a guide written for all of the secret stuff in the game as well as a character usage guide, but I’ve been saving them until after the game has been out for a while in order for people who want to play completely blind to not be tempted to peek, though it looks like people are already mining it in Builder (though I kind of expected that).

@Xilirite

Sleep staves weren’t fun to contend with

One reason I lean so heavily on Sleep in the current build is the AI doesn’t seem to know how to use Silence correctly, possibly because I changed so many classes into other things. It seems to only target Luke and ignore any other magic users, and I have to wonder if the way Silence targeting is coded is connected to a class list somewhere in the game’s data (rather than checking if the unit has weapon ranks in something magical). Luke’s classes just replace Troubadour and Valkyrie, but Helen’s were once the female cavalier line, I believe Arachne’s were once both instances of Wyvern Knight, and Calista’s were Eirika’s classes. But hey, at least Berserk never appears anywhere in the game.

@Shrimperor

Btw, what’s the track used in Ch19? I recognize it somehow yet the name escape my mind xD

It’s a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team track. I don’t actually know the track names from that game, but I think that track is either from the dungeon with Articuno or the one where you meet Nintetales.

The sound room isn’t actually open, but I do have plans to release a patch with the support room unlocked for those who are interested, if that’s anything.

@Shrimperor

Tbf, you get a 10 range restore and a 3 range one, and Barrier staff, and many high res units, so your Restore dudes have enough range to cure without landing in enemy status range.

It’s more than that. Your main Restore user is effectively immune to status through the Boon skill (unless it hasn’t been working properly).

[knabepicer]

@Permafrost

One reason I lean so heavily on Sleep in the current build is the AI doesn’t seem to know how to use Silence correctly, possibly because I changed so many classes into other things. It seems to only target Luke and ignore any other magic users, and I have to wonder if the way Silence targeting is coded is connected to a class list somewhere in the game’s data (rather than checking if the unit has weapon ranks in something magical). Luke’s classes just replace Troubadour and Valkyrie, but Helen’s were once the female cavalier line, I believe Arachne’s were once both instances of Wyvern Knight, and Calista’s were Eirika’s classes. But hey, at least Berserk never appears anywhere in the game.

In one of the most incomprehensible moves IS has made, GBA Silence AI is set to only target units with a staff that they are capable of using. It ignores mages otherwise.

[Shrimperor]

For ch20 i think you really need to reduce the reinforcements by alooooooooooot. I get the idea behind it, but those were waaaaaaay too much. Reduce em by half and/or make them appear make every 2nd turn should make it much better imo.

@Permafrost

but I do have plans to release a patch with the support room unlocked for those who are interested

Yes, please! Considering how good the writing is, i would like to be able read all supports^^

[Luba]

Hello, just done with chapter 20 on part two, so i felt like it was about time to give some feedback, while my thoughts echo a lot of the criticism thrown at this game, i don’t think most of the design decisions are bad, but there are general balancing issues due to this game’s focus on magic, as well as the low power of enemies that are sent against the player.
Regarding magic: There is a great disparity in the potential and effectiveness of magic classes compared to physical ones, most physical units are locked to 1-2 range for most of the game, while magic ones can go as high as 5 range it feels like the melee classes require small buffs here and there to be worth the deployment slots they need, specially since you can technically solo most of the game with one or two mages, as long as you don’t get hit by a sleep staff, which takes me to…
The infamous sleep staves: I feel like these require a general nerf in range if it is at all possible, due to the overwhelming range which can eventually cover most of the screen and the generally high hit rate that they possess (Specially once you start seeing multiple of these bad boys on part two), these tend to cause a lot of trouble and disrupt the player’s formations, which is troublesome since a lot of the time you end up with allies being put to sleep and immediately getting surrounded by the massive waves of reinforcements that are regularly deployed, this issue becomes more obvious once you get Walter, who can gain full levels before promotion for each use of his sleep staff, which leads to him racing to a level 20 promotion and end up being able to sleep bosses with 60% or higher hit rate, which can trivialize a lot of maps and enemies, specially with a dancer on your team.
Stone: On a similar note to the sleep staff issue, Walter’s ability to rush his experience gain lets him become quite tanky, which gives you another example of a unit who can solo, without much help, entire armies of enemies, simply get him relatively defensive, equip him with his stone tome, and you can end up with 10+ enemies petrified every enemy phase, which is specially harmful against bosses, since petrified enemies have all attacks against them get 100% hit rate, Walter can infinitely prolong an enemy’s petrification once the first application succeeds.
(Understandably) Wasted potential: It saddens me that you do not recruit a bow unit in the first part, and that you only seem to obtain your first bow somewhere between chapter 15 and 20 (Apologies for my poor memory), it would make the game much more fun early, and relieve the stress of some of your units if you could recruit an archer in part one, since having someone to deal chip damage without always killing enemies due to their low res can help the melee units get kills and experience.

Those are my only criticisms for this hack, i don’t think there’s much of an issue with huge waves of reinforcements since most of your units, with the help of those “aura” skills that grant bonuses to nearby allies, wont have much trouble dealing with low level, low quality and poorly equipped enemies, and i really enjoy the story and the writing, a lot of it feels somewhat lacking in part one, since the setting is developed slowly almost every chapter, but it comes together nicely in part two, Thanks for reading the mess of letters above, and thanks for making such a fun and enjoyable game.

[Nazcanhok]

How do I complete chapter 8? help me

[Star-Lord]

I’ve finished Chapter 8.

I feel like this hack was pretty much geared for someone like me in mind. I’m a pretty trash tier Fire Emblem player so I tend to not look for optimal ways to win/always try and spread my exp around all my units (so I didn’t have the Arachne Juggernaut issue compared to others). The hack is a little wordy but I honestly don’t mind because so far I think the writing is strong enough to carry the game.

That being said I was very frustrated in chapter 8 when I lost the chapter because there was zero indication that you’re fighting against a turn limit until midway through the chapter, and even then we aren’t given a number to aim for. When I lost the first time I sat there like “Why wasn’t Helen transported there at the beginning of the chapter?” It would have given me a sense or urgency to finish everything ASAP… which is what I did my second time around lol. Then I saw the cutscene after and I was like “oh ok so that’s why” but it still didn’t seem very fair for a blind player.

Chapter 9 has really sort of demotivated me to continue the game right now. I think there’s too many annoying enemies to really contend with at the beginning to make playing fun. The light cavs are just a pain to deal with because of their long range so somebody usually ends up dying on enemy phase. Like I said, trash tier player here. I ended up getting through this group once only to die later on in the chapter (me being stupid) and then I decided to stop playing because I don’t want to bother with that group again. I can pretty much tell it’s going to be a bit of a slog to get through the rest of the map when I do get there though.

I honestly do enjoy it more than I dislike it but those chapters are brutal.

[Shrimperor]

sees desert chapter
Panic
remembers that most of the army are mages
Calm. Desert was more fun than i expected. You don’t hear that often.

Also

SPOILERS

“I am Cosette, the liberation Princess”
;_;
Cosette is too good for this world

[Permafrost]

@Nazcanhok

How do I complete chapter 8? help me

Hello, sorry for taking so long to answer. I’m not sure if you’re having trouble beating the chapter or if you do not understand how to progress. If you do not know how to progress, what you have to do is have Calista move to the center of the magic circle and seize it.

@Shrimperor

sees desert chapter
Panic
remembers that most of the army are mages
Calm. Desert was more fun than i expected. You don’t hear that often.

Maybe the biggest plot twist of all is that the desert is a breather chapter.

@Luba

i really enjoy the story and the writing, a lot of it feels somewhat lacking in part one, since the setting is developed slowly almost every chapter, but it comes together nicely in part two

I guess this gives me an opening to go on about my approach to writing the narrative of the game, so if you want some insight into my story craft, you can click the spoiler below to see a wall of text about it.

Me rambling about imaginary people with colorful hair.

I can understand why Part 1 wouldn’t be someone’s favorite part of the story, but at the same time, it’s necessary to make what follows work. Calista probably isn’t a very easy character for a lot of people to relate to, mostly because of her mindset that what Glenn and the Church say must be correct in spite of what the player is watching. And the part of the game that follows her as the main character doesn’t feel like a hero’s journey because Calista is never really allowed to have any victories.

When she rescues Nathan from the bandits, she is immediately confronted with the bandit leader’s family, and she was forced to admit to herself that whatever grief the little girl was feeling was not as important to her as saving her brother. This only further conflicts with her attempts to find peace in acting selflessly so that she can go through with her role as a Maiden. Then, when her army overcomes Erdus, Calista is brought to her lowest point yet. She is so terrified of what she did trying to rescue Nathan that she finally gets talked into the state of total selflessness that had been lingering at the back of her mind and making her feel guilty about nearly everything that she did.

When writing Calista, I didn’t want her to feel like just another fantasy character who has to give her life because of some big important magic thing. Such characters are often written with a sort of serene acceptance of their fate, but I wanted Calista to feel more human than that, and so, she starts lashing out and is eventually driven to full on rage over the fact that the world that she is supposed to die for is incredibly unfair to her, seemingly requiring her to be miserable while living whatever amount of life she is allowed to live. This is a big part of why I tried to weave so many lighthearted moments into the beginning of the game. My hope was that seeing Calista acting like a normal young woman and having frivolous conversations with Helen and Arachne would give context to just how emotionally exhausted she becomes later. That way, players wouldn’t see her later actions and think, “Wow, what a b***h.” But ultimately, Calista always does whatever the forces who she believes are greater than herself tell her to do.

Then Part 2 comes along and the new cast of characters actually starts working against the antagonists. This comes with a bit of irony in that the early Part 2 cast would traditionally feel like a bit of a shady bunch, with Carson obviously having a lot of secrets and your first new ally is the highly irreverent Lailah. Meanwhile, in Part 1, the party contains of the church’s Maiden and the prince of a nation whose name is derived from “heaven” along with their knights, but the story beats are such that by the end, the player might be asking, “Are we the bad guys?”

One thing I had in mind when writing Carson was an article I read which proposed that villains are often more popular than heroes in fiction because villains tend to be much more liberated, free living people while the selflessness of a hero isn’t something that many would really want for themselves. So Carson’s actions are driven by his own value judgments, and he would never really think of going all out to help unknown others just because he might be able to. But this outlook leads him to valuing individual lives far more than the church because he assumes that other people are capable of acting on their own in the same way that he does.

There’s honestly more that I could say about developing Carson’s character, but I don’t want to get too deep into spoiler territory for those who might click on the spoiler tab in spite of the risks. If you read through all of this, then I hoped you gained some insights.

[jackofblades1991]

Ok, having just played chapter 8 myself i can confidently give some criticism on it.
I understand wanting the threat of an unbreakable sleep staff was what you had in mind. However since the calculation for its accuracy ends up (if i did it right) at 154 no one in the usable party at that time has ANY consistent chance to avoid being slept. The absolute lowest i saw the accuracy was 66% on olga because she kept level resistance (minor fyi warding blow doesn’t work on status staves) and that unavoidable sleep means he can and very much will chain sleep the party.
Which since he will very likely sleep luke you are dead in the water since the only magicly defesive units you have otherwise really need a healer to back them up.
There are only a few solutions to this problem. Either give sleep staves a hard range limit so you can lower his magic without effecting its range to make it threatening but not obnoxious with the zombie spam, just straight up reduce his magic so he can’t reach 11 tiles away, or change it to a silence since that leaves half your units dead in the water since letting glenn do any amount of combat is too dangerous.
I had him proc sol against a corpse and he ended the fight a 1hp since aether freakin crit.

[Ysa12]

I already played this mod since last week and here are my verdicts:

1. Magic units are OP as hell. They have various special effect tomes (bonus def/res, hp drain, horse killer, infantry killer, flier killer) and some even has absurdly long range for FE universe (1-6 weapon range of non siege tome). Not just the weapon range and special effects, magic weapons are LIMITLESS and overpowered might score for LIMITLESS weapon. If that’s not enough, some magic tome even has 50 crit or something and even FREE LIMITLESS BRAVE magic tome.
2. Physical units are kinda joke here, at least until the part where you can’t use the majority of your magic units. Not only they are mundane in every aspects, the magic users are mostly well rounded enough to take several hits. You can even tank with magic units (Dark magic users) because they tend to have high defense or can use hp draining tome. I also think no magic users has very bad survivability here (no def no spd no res no luck). Normal weapon has LIMITS and bad might score, only bow that has higher range than magic. Before your physical unit can reach and clear the enemy magic unit, they will kill you first for sure if you rush in with anything but Falcon Knight who has high resistance.
3. Infinite use staff is double edged sword. Before you have Restore, it is annoying af because your unit will be rendered useless and most of the time you will have a really hard time to take out those staff users asap. After you have restore and Dance, its GG af.
4. About that magic using pegasus, I think she is OP in every way. Yes she starts with 1 Mag, but her weapons are absurd. I even has 99 crit with her Aura.
5. The reinforcement is kinda absurd, like they appear out of nowhere in the middle of your formations.
6. The most redeeming part of this mod is there are no 100% rooster filler characters. Everyone has, at least a little, some sort of plot involvement here.

So, I recommend this for people who are PURELY into the plot. For those who are looking for a balanced gameplay, don’t bother, you’ll be bored really really soon. For those who is looking a balanced game, this is not your cup of tea.

[Shrimperor]

So i just finished the hack yesterday. All in all, i really enjoyed it. I will write down some fast thoughts:

• Story is really really good. Pretty much better than every FE, and i like how it wasn’t about some evil cult with their evil dragon or something. It was a more personal, and more ideological conflict. ‘‘Is it right to sacrifice the minority for the happiness of the majority?’’ Was the main point, i say. I also loved how you had so many x chapters in showing other prespecives and building the side cast.

• Cast was really really strong, and i really loved em. My fav. is Cosette. I don’t wanna talk spoilers much, but she really really wormed her way into my heart.

• If i have to criticize one thing about the Story/Cast, it’s the support system and how often it felt disconnected from the Story. Some times it clashes with the Story, some times you unlock support to early before events happen in the story, etc. I think it would’ve been better if you’d removed it and ‘fused’ it with the Story instead. With how good the writing is, i don’t think you should’ve left so much behind content you can only view 5 of per character. Or maybe remove support limit and limit to only one A support per person instead of 5 talks limit?

• Gameplay wise part 2 was much more fun than part 1, mainly due to the player having too many options, but some stuff still needs some fixing. Mainly: Huge enemy swarms (especially in Part 1), reinforcements (some of which are Ambush spawns), and the status staves in part 1. Also some maps could be smaller (especially those FE4 sized ones, have too much empty spaces). There were alot of good ideas gameplay wise, but the execution was so-so. Also, shouldn’t Cosette be the one/also be able to seize since she was the lead/commander in part 2?

All in all, that was a very enjoyable ride/read, and if you are able to fix the gameplay, you won’t only have the best FE story (hack) out there, but also a unique gameplay one