So uhhh, I am currently on Chapter 17. I see Valerie, Quirina and Abram together and blocking the way to the boss I need to take down. Was I really supposed to take down Valerie along with Abram and Quirina or not? I only see a retreat quote from Abram and Quirina.
Whether or not you defeat any of the other bosses in this chapter doesnāt affect the plot. Valerie also retreats.
Okay, I guess thatās good to know. (Though I ended up using two freeze staff uses on her to not make her move.)
Would I recommend people play this hack?
Yes, absolutely.
Do I think most people would like it?
Uhā¦maybe.
EDIT: After I typed this up I forgot that Francis existed and I used him and I gotta say actually literally everyone would like this hack play the hack use Francis OK bye
Siege Warfare
Lords of the Seas emphasizes its naval combat, which is cool and all but most of the time you have 1 or 0 ships. The tools you have for waging war on the open waters are quite nice (fliers, acrobat, pirate), but where I think this hack shines is its mixture of ranges. Long-range (4-7) combat is everywhere, and you get a considerable amount of access to it compared to most games, especially in the late-game. I felt like the tools around this high-range combat all felt richly designed and fun to use. You could divebomb a countering siege position with a steed by dismounting before your attack. Ship-to-ship siege vs effective combat felt very satisfying. Eruption mages effectively edged out your navy, but under some circumstances you could get in with a 1-2 cannon and light them up.
Consistent access to funny ranges like longbow/the other longbow and eventually titan longbow and THE ADJUDICATOR also helped pad out player tools in terms of mid-range combat. Unlike games with 3-10 siege tomes that the player gets one of before some random lategame shop, this hack really felt like it kept mid-high range combat in mind for both sides with reasonable consistency.
Son of a Submariner
The submarine summon is maybe the most inspired summon idea I have ever seen (tied with Acielleās log in Cerulean Crescent). Itās an extremely versatile summon, able to do quick naval pokes, body block/bait, or even throw out some chip damage without taking damage on an actual unit. However, the naval-locked movement combined with the land-locked unit makes it positionally interesting to deploy.
Using the submarine on a land map also comes with its own surprisingly engaging minigame: ensuring the submarine (which does not just have 1 HP and can in fact survive a variety of attacks) actually dies the turn after you summon it so you can reuse it again at a later juncture. I donāt know if gaming it like this was intentional, but it definitely rewarded me with the gigabrain feeling whenever I managed to pull off the perfect bait that killed the damn thing.
Filler Hell
Around chapter 21, there was a string of absolute filler chapters that I could not be arsed to give a shit about. Toris? Setsuko? Metal Gear? Who the fuck are these people? Why am I fighting bandits?? I can imagine a few reasons for wanting this stretch, such as giving us time to use the landships and generally fuck around with lategame tools, but by god, the hack is actually full-length without them, itās fine man! Move it along! This is especially egregious because there are tools that can be leveraged if you absolutely must pad the length, like the Duke of Saintking, who is instead relegated to an (admittedly funny) endgame farce.
Ciara
wtf bulky thief, built like a semi truck
Guns
I fuckinā love guns, and this hack is no exception. Big fan of the niche the brave dualies provides, that being an accurate 1RKO for a lot of units you just donāt want to bother eating a counter from, like mages, dagger users, or even a brave swordmaster up close.\
THE ADJUDICATOR being an unlimited use 3-4 with crit was extra funny. It got funnier when I put focus band on Reynard. If only Iād kept some goddess iconsā¦
Spooky and Mysterious People
There are too many of these for too little payoff. Ooh, the Watchers are spooky, ooh, whatās going on with the nice water bow lady, ooh, what Quirina doing, and then I have to watch fucking Pavo of all people act mysterious too? I can only care about one melodramatic diva at once, because thereās so little to care about until they explain their shit! And, to be fair, they all eventually explain their shit, except fucking Pavo. Is that locked behind an A-support or something? He spent all my supports and map talks just being mysterious or complaining about Erland touching his boat (Iāll get to this in a sec) and then just??? Doesnāt explain shit??? The dancerās probably mysterious too, but I got her killed! Thatās how little I care! These people gotta use words! They were invented to help communicate!
Here there be relatively more in-depth spoilers.
Watchers Fam
Iām gonna be real fam this one felt like super wasted potential. The ingredients are honestly great. Quirina being shunned from her weird gun Amish community because she wanted lifesaving medicine for her daughter? Kino. Abram having a weird courtly love for her that keeps him going until nukes start getting dropped? Honestly, also fantastic. And honestly, her boss chapter pays this all off immensely. We see the resentment that she has towards Salathiel and Armelle which she plays up, as well as the fact that, deep down, she really does still care. With Abramās convo, we can see how she shut herself off after her perceived betrayal by her family and clan, and how, despite that, he could always see a bit through the cracks through to who she really was aside from her front of being a money-grubbing merc. Taken alone, I think this is a fantastic chapter with really impactful recruitment convos.
The problem is, this is all fantastic payoff for a setup that doesnāt properly occur (emotionally).
The entire time we see Quirina on camera, sheās basically being a ham, super haughty, insulting everyone, whatever. Itās the persona she puts on and in her join chapter, it comes off. Fine. The problem is thereās a lack of insight from the player end into these gaps that Abram can see. Despite having battle convos with both Salathiel and Armelle before this chapter, she keeps a firm grip on the card of not explaining jack shit or showing any sort of emotion. This is actually even worse on Salathielās end: all he says is āBy the godsā¦ā and āWhatever youāre planning, I wonāt allow it! Never!ā Like come on man, you had to be part of the community that cast your wife out after she left to get medicine to save your dying kid and youāve been wracked with conflicted guilt ever since. Feel something, say something other than some dry-ass cookie-cutter line.
Surprisingly, I think that, rather than the Watchers, the biggest missed opportunity to build sympathy (or at least sow the seeds of being a fleshed out character) for Quirina lies with Roseanne. The two share similar circumstances; Roseanne is cast out from her homeland and directly betrayed by her family. If Quirina was ever going to feel sympathetic to someone, it would be Roseanne. Even a touch of āI deeply hate you because you remind me of my past selfā wouldāve been warranted here instead of the usual taunting with a sprinkling of vague self-pity.
All in all, itās rare that I like the ending to a narrative arc but absolutely nothing that comes before it. I think in this case the problem is that thereās absolutely nothing that comes before it.
End spoilers.
Daggers
Big fan of the 1-2 pierce daggers. I was surprised by how balanced they were as a tool compared to the rest of the tools given. The constant damage and flexibility made dagger combat a reasonable prospect even on healers, but due to the harsh strength caps for dagger users, they never became broken. I will say that this restriction made dagger/physical units feel more dagger-locked than dagger/magical units. Roseanneās prf went almost entirely unused for me because she was squishy enough that 1-ranging a mounted unit wasnāt usually a good prospect (and dodging is mildly fake in this hack). On the flip side, dagger units that could heal or do magic damage in a pinch were quite nice for chipping or sometimes even killing just about any enemy type.
The Actual Naval Part
I passed over this as āless important than siegeā earlier on, but I actually did like the water-based design of the maps. Besides having a fresh style, they also encouraged me to use more fliers than I usually did. The ability to dismount or remount+canto allowed surprisingly fluid movement through water with fliers even when facing down effective ballista. Positioning around what T-head could pick off was very satisfying, esp. when doing a fat traverse. On that noteā¦
13 Likes
Because itās the same house that was in the previous chapter, since youāre in the same place. You visited it already, essentially.
2 Likes
Not sure if you can still title defense here if you missed it last chapter, but if thatās not a feature it might be nice to add. I also think it would be cute to have an interaction play here even if you did hit the previous chapterās title defense. Not necessarily another match per se, but something like having the gladiator in question nursing his wounds and he tells you to bugger off and leave him alone. Or a cutscene between him and Francis that highlights how Francis feels about the duelists outside of a combat environment. Thereās definitely room for something here
4 Likes
Just curious, Iāve been made aware this hack contains the āsoft-savestateā (reset restarts turn) patch but donāt see it mentioned anywhere.
Iām wondering where that stands in regards to balance. Option for casual, planned around, something else?
Itās not really a patch, just deleting part of the routine used for the suspend function. In terms of balance, the hack isnāt supposed to be particularly hard. You can use it as much as you like, Iām not judging you for it.
3 Likes
Okay bit of an odd question buttt, lowkey how viable is stelara dagger? Iāve been training her dagger rank as a joke lol. She has not gotten as single point in str.
Also support in the menu is still green colored which insinuates a free action but it ends turn when done
Iāve updated the patch to allow actions after support conversations, so that should work now. As for your dagger cleric dream, she has a 20% strength growth and only gets 1 on promo, so you may want to keep dreaming.
5 Likes
Every stelara that gets trained is comically blessed
1 Like
Got some thoughts on chap 9, I think it should be more apparent that itās a 2 stage fight, cause you can be off position for it.
Also, if Iām being completely honest the main lord is pretty weak. And I understand thatās kinda the point but I think you could give her some aura skill or utility to make her fit more with this ātacticianā persona. So far her best quality is apparently hearing since she can somehow notice every reinforcements comin her way haha
You get a warning that thereās more enemies coming, and you can reset to rewind if youāre out of position when you trip the trigger for the second phase. As for Roseanne, yeah, she isnāt supposed to be a particularly good unit. She can coast off some good early levels but youāre mostly holding on for her scripted promotion. At least she was a bat in a previous life. Thatās real lore now.
(In all seriousness itās just that Iām not a fan of ācamera pans to boss who says reinforcements are coming and I guess the protagonist is just psychic or somethingā so I just prefer to have a player unit notice it most of the time, and since Roseanne is always there, there you go)
3 Likes
I think I got severely str screwed, somehow she has 4 str rn lol, meanwhile my thief has capped str lmaooo.
also maybe you can sneak in a second gladiolus, considering this is her only nieche. She needs to double to kill armors with it so it runs out FAAST. I think the lord is just a lot more basic then the other dagger users you get early honestly, Everyother user has sometype of niche that helps like stealing and staff access but her whole niche is tied to the gladiolus, after itās depleted sheās basically just worst thief gal.
1 Like
If youāre that down bad for it you do have 5 Repair uses you could spend on it. Like I said, Iām not particularly interested in making her a good unit, at least not before promotion, which pretty much turns her into every other dagger using class at once.
I forgor repair exists lol. I think I just got super str screwed, guess i need to power level her. Whenās the story promo?
liking the changes so far, the temporary units help fill the cleric missing during those hard maps. wished the witch stayed tho.
You receive the promo item at the end of chapter 17.