Heck. Yes.
Remember back in April? This hack has come such a long way, you love to see it. Can’t wait to play through it all again in the complete version.
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Congrats relic! Looking forward to reading touching Ron/Don supports.
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New Year’s Update! I’ve just done a bit of minor polishing, as well as added a new mug for Rosea, courtesy of Zaim, as well as some prettied up maps from him!
The patch is available at the same link.
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Another Lord mug under Zaim’s belt, what a legend.
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Just beat it and fun as hell lol. I found this hack a while ago due to chess’ LTC of it and I’m glad to see it finished. Underrated and quite fun.
As for criticism/takes/whatever: My only issues is I almost wish the hack was ever so slightly harder. Might just be me though idk lol. Also I think the bottom half of chapter 13 coud look a bit nicer. Though I played before the patch from a couple days ago so that may have been included idk.
tl;dr Had fun. Wish you good luck with your next project.
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Thanks for giving your thoughts! Nice to see people finding it through chess’ LTC. As for the difficulty, I’ve slightly increased the difficulty on chapters 9-12 recently, and I hope that addresses the issue. I’ll also look into seeing what I can do about chapter 13’s aesthetics, since I’m a lot more experienced with mapping since I made that.
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New update today! This one features new mugs courtesy of @Zmr, which look just, really great. In addition, I’ve done a couple minor dialogue edits, including fixing some dialogue where there was some vanilla leftovers I forgot about before, and a new map for ch5! After this, I want to take a lot of time to work on a really substantial update with new chapters and a major revamp of some dialogue, so look forward to that. Patch is at the same link once again.
In addition, I’m still taking feedback! If you have a problem with the hack, or have something you like, let me know. I can’t promise I can address it all, but I am always open to changing things, and I think it’s better to hear from people directly and specifically so I can address their problems rather than see my hack be dismissed offhand. Anyways, thanks to all who have played the hack, especially those offering constructive feedback, and I hope to have some really cool stuff next time I update!
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smh trying to deceive people into thinking Body Ring Ron is optimal, smh my head…
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you mean it isn’t optimal to feed my boy Ron all the stat boosters?!? Impossible.
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That’s a funny way of spelling Vincent.
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Smh, Grant deserves every stat booster.
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I just wanted to share a small update on what’s been going on behind the scenes. I’ve begun work on overhauling the dialogue completely and the maps for the two new chapters are complete. I’ve also done mugs for and inserted 3 new characters into the game, to pad out the cast a little bit for the new length. I may add more in the future, but these are the three that have been finalized. Progress had been hindered by a small issue but it has been fixed and I’m back on track, and a lot of the content is in, with what remains being a lot of testing and writing, as well as some other things I’m looking to implement, such as a new battle frame, custom map palettes, and a real world map!
For now, here are the three new characters:
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It is looking cool game edit
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Why isn’t Bassem a cute girl omg nooooo
Betrayed by Relic
Sniped in the back by a relic
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Another update on how V2 progress is going. I added 3 more units, cause, uh…Well, the reason doesn’t matter, since they’re neat.
Progress on the rewrite of the story and the supports is going relatively well, with only about half the game left needing story revamp. The custom map palettes have also had some work done on them, even if they are not finalized quite yet. (I know this is quite rough still, yes.)
Thanks to @Zmr for this world map, which I might clean up later.
I’m also looking to add/replace some tracks in the music department.
I do not want to say anything for sure but it looks like late April is a likely release date for the update, and if not still expect it later this year.
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Hey friend, just recently finished my playthrough of Journeys. Reading that the romhack had Gaiden inspired design and tight resource management caught my interest. I’d like to write down some thoughts about my experience with the game.
Gameplay
It was really refreshing to play a hack balanced around lower stats and growths not looking at Sho, and very little skill use. It meant no unit could snowball chapters reliably, and every deployed unit had a lot to contribute in every chapter. It also felt like units didn’t get “rng screwed” if they didn’t get certain stats in a couple of levels.
I’m not sure was the weapon triangle touched, but even at WTD, enemies seemed to had decent hitrates, so healers and healing items were in somewhat heavy use. It also meant utilizing rescue/drops to get the injured to safety.
At Chapter 11, the dock chapter where the ship needs to be protected, I think difficult really kicks in. The escort map isn’t at the same pace, but the ones after that again really ramp the difficulty up again. While chapters before 11 were a bit more chilled, at this point the game introduced a bit more “matchup based combat” between classes.
Certain nitpicks/thoughts I have:
- Flynn the summoner joins really early in the game. The phantoms allows a bit too much enemy AI manipulation/baiting, so I decided to not use him, since the phantoms were his only utility.
- Sho loses access to longbows after promoting. I’m not sure if it is intentional, but personally I think promoting her is not worth it. Sho being able to use strong 7 might longbows is a huge asset and she can’t be countered at 3 range. She probably won’t reach A rank bow, so the only contender for longbows would be killer bow. Risking crits vs choosing safe strong weapon seemed an obvious choice to me. She also doubled pretty reliably due to her huge speed growth.
- Lucian is a really interesting character to use, his beaststone+ allows him to tank pretty well the 2 range attacks, and gives him much needed offense. I used him quite a lot, and his b.stone+ just barely had enough uses. Definitely one of the more interesting characters gameplay wise.
- Was it intentional that short bows were E rank, and irons bows D rank? Iron weren’t sold either, not to too many units needed them though. The couple short bows were enough for Grant, who was my choice of warriors.
Plot
Based on the thread, its being worked on, so I won’t complain much about it. It has a very solid base to build around, and I’m eager to see where it develops before criticizing it too much.
TL DR
- Authentic “Gaiden meets GBA” type of hack, with fairly challenging difficulty. No bs difficulty though, its a very fair challenge.
- More gameplay than story oriented romhack. The story at the time I played it was easy to follow, though it seemed to have some gaps in certain sections.
- Not fully polished yet, some palettes need reworking, minor spelling errors, supports bugging etc, but those won’t affect the gameplay nor experience.
- Andre mvp!
Definitely worth trying out. Very unique, might even call it a bit “old school FE” type romhack, and the difficulty is enough to keep even experienced players on their toes. I would recommend to both newer and older FE players.
Really nice job with romhack. Eager to see what progress will be made.
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Hey, thanks for the kind words about the hack!
It was not modified at all from vanilla, but I jacked up weapon hit a lot, so that’s what caused this.
This is a totally fair criticism that I completely agree with, but he’s in the game and I think taking him out/moving him this late into development would be a mistake. At least I learned what not to do from him!
It is intentional, but I might let her keep them. My reasoning was that she was already strong enough with the huge caps her promotion allows her, so she could afford not to use the longbow.
This was intentional, yes, but I’ve also completely revamped how it works. Now, there are 0mt unlimited use iron bows, available to purchase in the preps screen, while the former iron bows have been renamed to forged bow, to avoid confusion.
Let me know what specifically you want to see it developed! I’ve finished the rewrite, but I’m not super confident in my writing skills, haha.
Yeah I’m sorry you had to bear with this stuff, but most of this has been resolved as of now, so hopefully future players will not have to bear the same jank.
Indeed.
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Not sure how big of a text dump I end up writing so putting them in these spoiler thingies.
Part 1
I mean, the first part is pretty straight-forward. Another nation invading you, and the internal conflict that takes place there. Rosea and Vincent have to flee, and gather forces to overthrow the invaders. No complains or anything about the next couple of chapters, as they go from town to town trying to recruit people to fight for their cause, while learning to lead a bigger force.
I’m not sure if Gustav’s dialogue is a premonition of the experiments, as he says he saw Oclain doing horrible things to its people, without explicitly stating who doing what. I liked this sort of foreshadowing of upcoming events. However, it doesn’t progress more than that, as the castle chapter is more about them escaping from the castle, even when they just arrived there. I kind of understand the objective of escaping, as Adrian points out that his group was being chased by strong enemies. Maybe they found another entrance to the castle? Did the castle have some sort of shortcut to Courve, because the boss was optional?
I would consider Midas the main villain of part 1, as he is shown at the beginning, and hes the final boss of that part. The ending cutscene of chapter 8 is a short one, about them celebrating the victory over Midas. There are no mentions of shapeshifters or dark druids at this point of the story, since part 1 focused more on the reclaiming of Courve.
Part 2
There is a minor six month time skip here in the story. The attack on Oclain is part 1 in a larger scale, but with the dark druids and shapeshifter lore in it.
Lucian gets introduced, along with the experiments on turning people into shapeshifters. Its kinda weird that the NPC points out that Lucian is recognized as a shapeshifter based on his clothing.
It was a bit weird that in chapter 9 ending Vincent learns they are marching to Oclain, when you’d think that the army would have good enough communication to announce their plans to each other.
After the chapter 11 and 11x, Reginald’s secret dock stays a secret. The story kind of skips to Mark needing a bodyguard. His “matter of grave importance” are the books mentioned in the end cutscene? Rirskel is also introduced as another shapeshifter, one who seems to have succumbed to his thrill of the hunt. Lucian mentions he himself was made into one without his choice, but we’ll never know if Rirskel was willing.
When storming the Oclain castle, not much is known about the dark druids, and their motives stay a secret. While its kinda nice to have some speculation in the lore in games not a Dark Souls fanboy btw, I understand if someone finds it weird that some things aren’t explained at all.
Overall some narrative was missing in between the chapters. I’m not sure how much is being written, or rewritten. While personally I do enjoy my FE games even with cringey story looking at Three Houses, a little lack of isn’t a deal breaker. The story doesn’t have to be main attraction point of the hack, when the gameplay is as solid as this one has.
Overall the themes of conflict, human experimentation and that stuff is pretty grim, but it was subtly hinted at. Not sure what kind of tone the hack’s story was going for, but it didn’t seem like overtly gloomy or that sort to me. There were some humor packed moments as well, like the cutscene in 4x where Michael charges in and gets kidnapped, got a laugh out of me.
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Midas actually gets a lot more screentime to help facilitate this, but I’m glad it was already easy enough to pick up on this.
Yeah this was stupid and has since been removed.
These are good points that I haven’t totally addressed, especially the stuff with Rirskel.
I found a lot of people agreed with this so I’ve added a lot more information regarding him
I’ve pretty much either totally replaced all the dialogue from 6-end
and a lot along the way also got minor touchups.
This stuff is good to hear! I’m glad it wasn’t too dark or anything overall since that wasn’t my intent, and I had fun writing the scenes with Michael in them, so it’s nice to see people like it.
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To be honest, the screen time that Michael got, made him a really relatable and likable character. He tries his best, albeit with questionable methods. His motives are honest and pure, and despite getting a bit scolded by his father for picking up the mercenary work, he still remains enthusiastic and doesn’t give up. That’s pretty admirable in my opinion.
By the way, that reminds me. In chapter 4, in the lower left corner where the house is, the NPC is the same as Michael’s father in the ending cutscene. Even the NPC in the house says his son joined mercenaries but forgot his steel bow, and gives it to the player. So, it was pretty confusing to see same looking man calling Michael his son and telling him that a bow got stolen by pirates.
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