Hey, I am just here to let you know that apparently the boss in Chapter 1-5 seems to be able to move despite the fact the games shows the boss has no movement.
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Do you have a screenshot? He should display movement in 1-5.
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Also, the FEE3 video is live. Thanks again everyone who submitted questions and for all of your support of the project. Hope the monologue was insightful.
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It was an interesting video to watch.
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Just started this hack. I am super stoked. Just finished the second chapter where you get the peg knight in the fog. I repositioned her near the caravan and she picked up an S rank bow (as if she found it on a desert map), is that expected behaviour lol? If it is I better level up Vagelis like crazy lol
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Congratulations, you found your first secret S rank weapon. Yes, this is intentional. Enjoy !!
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I had the same reaction, but figured it out after checking the house
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Mystery shop in where？ Hidden items?
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Are any more updates for this hack planned, and how long will they take if there are?
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Desert maps items are in the first post. The secret shops are secret.
Future updates are planned but there is no timeline as of yet. I don’t predict future updates will drastically change the current gameplay experience significantly outside of maybe new gaidens.
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Not sure if this was reported before, but prior to Chapter 14 preparations, after all the dialogue, there is a brief garbled screen. Not a big issue, but might wanna fix it nonetheless while you’re at it.
Took a screen capture here: https://recordit.co/uJutruZAWq
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Thanks for flagging - there’s a handful of shoddy events (Actually the whole game has poor eventing lol) and it’s on my list of things to eventually fix.
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I’m making a hack of my own, and this has provided me some great inspiration (and motivation too, for that matter.) Thank you. I really appreciate the sheer amount of playable characters. It reminds me of Suikoden II, almost.
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Nice! Always cool to see what inspires others. I certainly referred to a handful of hacks for ideas, too. Looking forward to seeing it.
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I wanted to pop in and say that this is the first hack I’ve ever played that had its own original story. I was initially scared to try anything that didn’t seem familiar to me in original FEs. However I finally got brave enough to try Vision Quest and see if I liked it, I am now 9 main chapters in and I am already in love with so many of the characters. Some characters I immediately fell in love with like Titus, some characters I had to warm up to but still fell in love with like Gunnar (I tend to giggle a bit at his name being the same as the brand of glasses). As an avid story-reader, characters are the best part of any story and seeing how they are nailed here even with the size of the cast makes me excited for more. Thanks for giving me this great experience, I look forward to seeing what else the story has!
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Thanks for joining to post, RedMageCole. Glad to hear you’re enjoying the hack so far. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts as you play through the game!
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Play-through update.
I think I’m almost done the game (at 4-6) but wanted to post a list of issues found recently so Pandan knows as soon as possible. Not sure if I was blind before but it seems all the issues I ran into for the most have been in Part 4 of the game. (I guess because it was developed last and has less QA)
Keep in mind, I think the game is great overall, I will post an in-depth review when I’m completely done.
Minor Issues
Minor Issues:
- Sprites disappearing momentarily in the battle preps menu when scrolling from top to bottom: https://recordit.co/jLsaEJ3UNe
- Another example: https://ibb.co/yYL7R3h
- Thief sprites changed to Wyvern or disappearing in Part 4-1x:
- Little red villager sprite appears randomly in same chapter: https://ibb.co/2g94rGy
- Spelling mistake when red haired girl talks to father the general at night “you energy is palpable. Truly the might of Lomsk….”
Major Issues:
Checking map on chapter 4-6 results in black screen. Initially, I was able to check the map, then i did a few trades / item sells and next time I tried to check the map, i get this black screen: https://recordit.co/EHOS6A1ii4
Guess I’m going into this one blind!
EDIT: Okay got through the last one but…
Checking the map on the final chapter 4-E gave a black screen as well. Didn’t do anything prior. As soon as i was in battle prep, I clicked on it and it froze/black screen. 
https://recordit.co/GRaia8teul
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Thanks for flagging these. The prep issues in 4-6 and 4-E are known. I’m not sure what is causing them. By any chance did you update versions while keeping the same save? I know this caused issues previously.
The rest are on my long list of items to fix in prep for the next version. Appreciate you cataloging these.
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@Pandan No i did not update any versions with the same save. This was my first play-through so there was no previous data. Hope that helps.
I have finally finished it and want to write out my thoughts. Just for context I have been playing FE since FE7 first came out in 2003 and have played FE4-FE10 many times over over the past 17 years. I have some minor experience with the newest ones, but never fully played them.
I played the game on the middle difficulty. I forget what you call it. Also, I went in completely blind to see how much the game communicated to me rather than me needing
outside resources to complete things (which i dislike). Finally, I didn’t use save states for the most part, except for a few places.
Sorry for writing so much. I didn’t intend to, it just came out.
Story
Not gonna go into too much detail here because I think it’s pretty much set in stone at this point. Overall it felt very fire emblemey, which is nice. I guess that was intentional. I don’t play FE for the story so as long as keeps me semi-interested then I’m happy. It had its ups and downs but it all came together in the end and I think the plot finished strongly.
Some people have mentioned there is a lot of dialogue to go through, I don’t think that is the issue. I think it’s more that in certain instances, I can tell where the conversation is going so I wanna click faster through it cause I can predict what the next line will be. Streamlining some of these conversations and adding some tension would alleviate it I think.
Overall though, it’s fine and wouldn’t worry bout this aspect. The food focus was a nice touch. Definitely seems to be your signature.
Artwork & Music
Again, very polished and beautiful overall. I love the GBA aesthetic so I am glad you stayed true to it. I actually don’t like the FE8 color palette so I am glad you made it look closer to FE7 for the menus / stats screens. Small detail but I appreciate it.
The music choices were awesome. Loved the mix and it definitely enhanced the situations. I was getting some major nostalgia trips from hearing certain songs, Street Fighter? DKC? Banjo-Tooie? Something tells me we had similar childhoods.
Map Design
This was ridiculously good. Better maps than most mainline FE games. Seriously. Looking at your YouTube series, you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into what makes a good map. There was a great mix of objectives, the layouts were natural and did not feel inefficient or hacky.
Loved having some side objectives that would reward playing well / aggressively, which is how I like to play. I did not achieve them all and this is something that I will definitely want another crack at on repeat play-throughs (looking at you Boots in pyramid defense chapter). Some I genuinely didn’t know how to solve (the chicken one, the free all prisoners one), but that’s cool. I’ll figure it out next time.
You clearly, love splitting up the party and forcing the player forward whether it is with reinforcements from behind or time limits. No chapter dragged cause of this. Some were frustrating but not in a bad way or in a way that made me wanna stop playing.
Gameplay
I honestly haven’t been this invested in a video game in a while. I felt like I did when i was a teenager playing FE7. So many choices I thought were perfect.
Having a thief “jaigen” is pretty smart because you’re low on supplies and need to steal items to survive. Also, the abundance of fog chapters made leading the charge with your thief doable as well. I know Sothe in FE10 is like this but that seemed like an afterthought and never really utilized to its fullest potential.
Part 1 felt perfect. I think this is the tightest part of the game. The difficulty felt right on the money. I was right on the edge of failing and succeeding, which was so fun. Can’t wait to replay the early game again. It usually is my favorite portion of FE games and it’s very true here as well.
Part 2 was cool. Felt like more standard FE at this point. I usually wait til level 20 for promotion so some units were promoting, others weren’t so I used these chapters to catch up certain units and drop people that had better alternatives. Also, the chapters felt easier so I just used this to play even more aggressively and go for all the spoils I could.
Part 3 was a changeup to say the least. Back into the meat grinder. These were much tougher than Part 2 and put me back into that zone where I needed to get better to get through the chapters. I was annoyed by these because I kept finishing them almost mid-chapter with half the enemies still on the map but I think this was intentional because it reflects the style of Waluyo to charge through enemies even when being pursued. Felt odd to finish maps without killing everything but again I think you wanted this outcome. Also, this was the first time where I started iron manning instead of resetting the chapter. Felt really weird to me but now that I see you intended for this, it makes it less stressful. Starting in Part 3, I only reseted if someone died that I really liked or was investing in.
Part 4 was a good finale. Not much to add. I think the final chapter was the best one (dodging bows / berserks in the middle of a final boss that rushes you? awesome!). The second to last one being the weakest (just felt so cog of destiny haha). Still, even your weaker chapters are still better than the average FE game chapter.
I liked the inverse branching, kept things simple. Loved how you balanced the units. I’m so used to mounts dominating that I was acting that out again here only to be punished for not broadening my horizons. Also, I like that classes that I enjoy were much more viable like armour knights / generals and archers / nomads. No units were obvious juggernauts so on repeat play-throughs I can easily see myself using different units.
I liked the details like vulneraries give 15HP and you have 5 of them. Combining old weapons is nice. The trading is sweet. The health bars hovering on units when below 100% health was great. Shove is a godsend and should be standard in any game now. It adds a lot of flexibility. I liked that enemy units clearly showed when they’d move and when they wouldn’t by their movement. I hate baiting only to find someone doesn’t move in the old games. I liked that recruiting characters was usually very obvious so i didn’t need to guess and risk restarting a chapter cause i need some random person to talk to someone. This is all small stuff but it adds up to a very streamlined / efficient experience.
I think you mentioned you’d do skills differently next time around cause they felt tacked on and I get that. They didn’t add too much but they didn’t get in the way either.
Overall, the gameplay is pretty much the best I’ve experienced. Whenever I felt like something was going wrong or things were unfair, I had to think and realize you gave me all the tools to succeed and I was just using them incorrectly. I felt the intentions of what you were going for as I was playing. I think VQ made me better at playing FE in general which is an amazing feeling.
Final Character Stats
End game stats that I accessed via the Map after the ending. These are the stats for my final party in the final chapter. For some reason Titus is missing from this menu but he was definitely in my final party as he helped me take down the final boss:
https://recordit.co/LRXNACfsgQ
I spread around my stat boosters, gave a few to Larisa to make her a tank. A few to Storch and Helga as well.
Next Steps
It seems some people are pushing for a sequel, but I’m in the camp that I think polishing up this game and tweaking the difficulties here and there would be more important. Especially the stuff I’ve already posted about in Part 4 and the issues in the epilogue (text for turn counts is garbled). A really well done FE game is good for many, many play-throughs so I would lean in this direction before doing a new game.
Having said that, if you ever decide to make a new game, I think it would be worth making a kick starter or patreon for the people involved. Clearly, you have a talent for this and having VQ under your belt shows it would not be throwing money down the drain or risking a lot. It would be nice to give back to the people involved even if it is small.
I would like to personally offer myself up to test any future work you do or any other grunt work you need help with (VQ related or anything else you work on). I thought about getting into rom hacking myself but after playing VQ, I’d rather bet on you than on myself. At least for now. So please reach out to me if ever you need any help with anything no matter how trivial. I have a FEU discord account and an account here. Please don’t be shy about this.
Summary
Overall, I would like to say congratulations Pandan to you and your friends that helped create this. I’m sure it took years and was done all in your spare time for the pure love of FE because it really is an amazing piece of work. I’m surprised something this good can be made by strangers on the internet. If you and your friends could make a FE game this good, why can’t Intelligent Systems?
I’ve lamented the direction of the FE series over the past decade, they seem more focused on anime stories and pure RPG elements then making a balanced, repayable, tactical game. While I am glad FE is very popular now and more FE games are to come, they are getting further and further away it seems from what I look for in a FE game. VQ fills the void by capturing exactly what makes FE5 to FE10 good and summarizes them in a tight package. No bloat, no gimmicks, no unfair gameplay mechanics.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for giving me such a wonderful experience over the course of 40h and for the future experiences it will bring. Please express my gratitude to anyone else connected to the project.
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Hey tbone,
Thanks for the detailed review. Really means a lot to me that you wrote out so much and that you enjoyed the game as much as you did. This sort of feedback makes this hobby more rewarding, and I appreciate your willingness to give the game a try and share your thoughts on it.
Given what your experience with FE, it would not surprise me if we came up with the same set of video games haha.
As for next steps, I appreciate the offer. Right now I am taking it a bit easy. I actually haven’t played through the entire game on hard mode myself yet, and am currently iron manning it on stream so that i can collect footage to use for rebalancing. My goal at minimum is to make an updated v2 with some of the tech fixes you called out and also making part 2’s difficulty scale better. My original intent with part 2 was to keep the level curve relatively flat to encourage rotating units, but I learned that this didn’t impact player behavior in a meaningful way, so it will be better to make them stronger overall. We’ll see when this happens, but I’m guessing before the halfway point next year I’ll have mustered the energy to do a lot of things I’ve been avoiding and push out a more polished update.
A sequel is not off the table but I am not putting pressure on myself to make anything else. I am exceptionally fortunate to have received the support from everyone on the “& friends” team, and really feel like we caught lightning in a bottle when we made VQ, and I question if I’d be able to do it again, especially with the general direction I’d want to take a potential sequel. We will see!
While a kickstarter or patreon is flattering, I personally don’t want to 1) take any money and 2) put any stringent deadlines on myself. I work full-time and would not want to make this into a second job.
While I’ve considered developing an indie SRPG (I have a few FE-adjacent ideas I’ve considered pursuing) so that I could legally monetize the hobby, I don’t think I have the chops on the tech or art side to make anything happen. I’d say as a “Hacker” I am very much a fraud, but I do know that I generally make good maps, can write well enough, and have a good grasp of FE mechanics. Regardless, I think this is off the table unless I was to do some sort of drastic change in my personal life that would allow me to invest time into it, which is (unfortunately), unlikely, because it could be fun.
For now, I will continue to gather feedback and prepare to make some needed updates. Appreciate all the time and thank you again for sharing!
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