[FE8] [Complete] Fire Emblem: Vision Quest (v3 by Pushwall - 1-Oct-22)

I’ve used John GBAC for a long time in my android and have as yet not experienced any emulator-specific bugs. You could try it; there is a free version available that works perfectly fine – and displays no ads if you disable your wi-fi when using it, in case you find ads too annoying.

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Funnily enough I also own John GBA premium also and just didn’t realize it! Gonna give this a try to see if it helps

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Looks like it doesn’t matter what emulator I use, I’m gonna get that crash on 1-3. Love the mod, definitely one of the best made that expands on the original content! I hope I can see the rest, but I guess I’m gonna have to give up on playing it on mobile

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Sorry to hear this isn’t working. To confirm, you are on the latest patch on the dropbox?

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So I went ahead and redownloaded the latest patch, made a new hacked rom, and started fresh in John GBAC specifically and it worked! Sorry it took so long for the reply, I was a bit disheartened having to restart so many times :sweat_smile: Can’t wait to play through the rest of the game! Props to you Pandan for making the best hacked FE8 rim I’ve seen so far

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So, what exactly is Endgame X? Do you have to train the units that are forced, or is it a trial-map type deal where they all have predetermined kits, or is it just an extra cutscene?

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It’s basically a glorified cutscene - it’s designed so that you can beat it even if all the units required were immediately benched.

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Insert “History repeats itself” Joke here

Fire Emblem - Vision quest 2.0

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First FE hack I’ve played and I absolutely loved it. I did my first playthrough as an ironman run and that probably influenced how I felt about different aspects of the game.

The biggest thing that stood out to me was the abundance of side objectives on nearly every map. They were very clear - most of the time being villages, chests, or a little arrow on the map telling you to go here. I did like that when new objectives were introduced, they were explained fully, along with what you have to do in order to get the reward. The fact that nearly all of them were essentially on a timer and you had to play quickly in order to get to them created a great dynamic. They always introduced a situation where I had to decide whether I wanted to put my units at greater risk for the potential of greater reward. (To which the answer was always yes, for better or worse.) But the loop of taking a risk out of greed, ending up in a dangerous situation, having to claw my way out of it, and coming out on top with a 30th speedwing for Lera because she refuses to get speed on her own had me completely hooked. It made every map feel like its own struggle, and I felt like I was always having to pay close attention to both the map itself and my own movements within it if I wanted to get the most out of it. If I had to quit a map partway through I would sometimes find myself laying in bed or driving around and start thinking “damn, I still gotta figure out how I’m getting to that village without killing half my team” and I would have the urge to play again. If it wasn’t obvious, this was far and away my favorite aspect of the hack, and something I don’t think mainline FE does enough of. I also loved that many of the maps featured multiple paths, and to cover the most ground (and often hit up the most side objectives) you’d have to split up your army, allowing individual units to shine more.

The only thing that I ended up being annoyed at was the amount of fog of war and the fact that some of the enemies inside of it have effective weapons and high movement. I would usually come into these maps pretty prepared, with torches and torch staves ready, only for an 8 move paladin to come from just outside of torch range into my units. This was actually how my ironman run ended, I think the map was 4-2 or 4-3? It was the one where you have to save the horses. Granted, when I was doing my preps I switched around my torch guys and accidentally put all of them in the bottom area, leaving the top group with only my thief to provide vision. I put Titus in a small corridor where I could only see a couple enemies that weren’t doing much to him, and he ended up getting killed after being swarmed with sages and a paladin with a heavy spear. I don’t necessarily think that this was unfair considering I messed up not having a torch staff with both groups, but it still felt pretty…lame. Most of the other fog of war maps I didn’t have trouble with, and most of them I did end up having fun with, but at times I did notice enemies coming out of the fog with effective weapons and thinking that if I would’ve happened to put a different unit in a different spot I would’ve gotten completely blindsided.

As far as the characters and story goes, I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would by the end. The strongest character in my opinion was Titus, I felt like he ironically became more and more endearing the farther along the plot progressed. If there’s one thing I could complain about regarding the story it would be the end, as it feels like there are a ton of plot points that don’t really get resolved in any way. It seems like it’s setting up for a sequel, which I think would be great, but as a standalone plot it it does feel pretty unsatisfying.

Overall though, absolutely a fantastic hack. The complaints I had were pretty minor compared to the amount of things I think were done right. I didn’t mean to turn this post into an essay, but I ended up a lot more invested in this hack than I ever thought I would be. Thanks for making it, and I really hope we get to see more later on.

Also, are you taking donations? I looked around but I couldn’t find a link or anything.

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Thanks for playing and sharing your thoughts. Glad to hear you enjoyed it - a lot of the aspects you highlighted were parts that i enjoyed a lot and tried to emphasize as much as possible.

The 4-3 units with effectives is a relic of an older build and I thought I removed them, next update i put out will remove these, so I apologize for the issues there. I agree it was a bad idea.

On plot, my view was that I don’t think every story needs to have a clean and tidy ending, and that things will always be left unsaid or open to interpretation. I was particularly inspired by my reading of different historical periods, and how when one major conflict is resolved, there are others already brewing in the background. I wanted Vision Quest to be a snippet of time into a world rather than a neat and tidy tale, if that makes sense.

Appreciate you taking the time to play and share feedback !

EDIT: Sorry I missed your last question. I do not take donations or have any mechanisms for receiving money/tips, but I appreciate the sentiment and offer - it’s incredibly flattering.

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Good to hear! There’s clearly been a lot of effort and time poured into making this, so I think you deserve to feel a bit flattered!

I get what you mean about the plot. I think mainline FE and other rpgs have conditioned me to expect everything to be wrapped up neatly by the end, so the end of the game being more open ended just caught me off guard. I don’t disagree with your reasoning for making it like this, though, and looking at it from this context does make me able to better appreciate it.

I do have a few more random things that I enjoyed about the hack, to help if you plan on making more hacks in the future.

Stealing is great. It ties into what I was saying about the side objectives in my initial post, but adds an extra layer of usefulness to thieves. Having at least 1 stealable item per map gives you a legitimate reason to keep a thief on your mainstay team. It makes you ask whether bringing a thief is worth the extra items when you could deploy a reliable combat to be safer. And if you do go for it, you have to keep them safe while getting them in range to steal. Is it worth it to give them some xp to help them survive these situations? Like I said before, it’s these kinds of questions that really make an FE game fun.

The abundance of reaver weapons added an extra layer of thinking beyond just seeing a group of axes and throwing a sword at them. I feel like in a lot of FE games you sort of stop noticing the weapon triangle by the end, but in this hack I always felt like it was relevant. And even though I wasn’t a fan of the effective weapons in the fog (glad it wasn’t just a me thing,) I did appreciate their placements on the normal maps.

I also liked the split tier one classes, like the cavs and mercs. I couldn’t exactly tell you why I like them, I guess more unit variety is always nice. I’d love to see this expanded upon more and with tier 2 classes. For example, I think great knight and paladin are good examples of a “split class,” and more of these would help add greater unit variety.

I saw a post earlier where the poster didn’t enjoy how tight money was, but I personally found it to be a good balance. I think it helps make those side objectives even more tempting, which is always a plus.

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Glad you liked these elements - most of what you mentioned I am aiming to expand on more in my next project - stay tuned.

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I’m sorry…

WHAT

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Hi there ! I noticed a pretty big bug.

I can’t get past onderdonk’s chapter anymore. The game softlocks at the end of the cutscene.

Any idea why ?

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Hey Liemile,

Never heard of this one - which emulator are you using? I’ve found most of the end of chapter softlocks are emulator related.

Also, are you on the latest version? Was anyone dead?

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Aside from one of the civilians. no death.

As for the version, well… I think i am, since Arckady’s pref weapon is here

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There could be some issues with a dead civilian… I can investigate.

Are you using mGBA? that’s what I use to test and haven’t run into issues here.

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I’m using Visual boy advance, on that case

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Try mGBA if you can and see if that works - VBA has caused a few issues for some folks at different points.

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I’ll try someday. Thanks !

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