That doesn’t seem nice (what ATHATH is doing) if you ask me.
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Assorted bugfixes?
Saying that there is no way to differentiate the Francis houses in the maps. That it is a problem that you don’t know the loot of Francis houses until you visit them. When they are the brown roof houses that you can check in preps and then the rewards system is the same that villages.
Ranting about the unit balance because you can’t have weaker units as Mikelo being weaker than Carley or Ciera being strong in Lunatic. When literally everyone can be visble in a team in this hack.
That the supports system discourage from supporting because you can’t start supports with anyone because limited and some A supports suck ass so you are limited to do the good ones with the spreadsheat. So it should be unlimited B supports with less money to compensate. When you can complete the game supportless and the supports are rewards and bonuses for completing them not something essential to complete the game.
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I see. That sucks about the things he’s saying, and imo it’s a bit cowardly from him ranting about those things when he could’ve either just say them here or DM’ed to the hack creator, or you know, keep it to himself.
A shame really, since he was posting about his experiences with it (namely training Ciera) and did post about some bugs found but then he stopped. The dark sides some people hide from others.
my brother in christ I DID tell the hack creator (in feucord)
I gave some feedback and captain explained his reasonings for some of his design decisions. It was a civil conversation (with some follow-ups later), and the things that weren’t intentional were addressed/fixed in the update captain pushed 12 hours ago.
What Alex is referring to here is a conversation I had with ALEX arguing that the first EXP “house” you get after Francis joins being an EXP village was misleading/awkward design. I brought this up to captain later and he said it was an oversight. The most recent patch changed it to be an EXP house, I believe.
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Ah ok then. Sorry if I was misled and ended up misjudging you (my main flaw I believe), since I don’t really wander on many discord servers.
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it’s okay
thou art forgiven
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(post deleted by author)
(post deleted by author)
I have finally finished this hack! And I just wanted to give some of my thoughts on what I liked and disliked. Overall it was a positive experience!
Story
The story was serviceable. I prefer gameplay, so it didn’t rub me the wrong way most of the time. I liked how everyone pointed out how weak Roseanne was, and ho boy, that definitely shone through with the gameplay; she was terrible. I also thought it was interesting how the story was laid out in terms of actual armies. I don’t usually see the war aspect talked about, with how they actually command armies of 1000 plus men, instead of just a group of 10 or so main characters. However, the story drags a lot. Especially in the latter half of the game. I would have liked it if Briar had gotten a little more development before turning into an evil man, and seeing the king’s death scene would have been cool as well. It’s kind of jarring how we’re just told about it. That’s personal preference. The villains, however, were definitely a bit lackluster. Throughout the story, they honestly feel like bumbling idiots who literally can’t do anything right. And by the end, they are kind of a joke. Besides the actual joke boss, Emmanuel and Briar don’t fare much better. Briar, damn, he can’t do anything right, can he? And Emmanuel is just very bland and kind of really dumb throughout the plot as well. Overall, the plot was servicable with some head-scratchers throughout, but nothing that distracts from the greater plot.
Gameplay
The gameplay of this hack, I thought, was quite interesting. I prefer my fe hacks to be on the harder side, like really difficult, and this one is moderate in its difficulty. I played on Hard mode and had a fun time throughout. The early game I think, is where it shone the best. The lower power level of your characters, combined with overlapping ranges of some strong enemies, made some maps quite difficult. From how I played, most of my characters were really squishy, so I had a very player-focused experience, which I prefer. I think the good usage of unique weapons on generics kept you on your toes, and made it so you couldn’t just throw an armor knight to bait everybody in. I think that the chapter objectives were really great in some of the chapters. There were unique ones, like heading to a sieze point, then having to run back, and others like leading away horses for rewards. That was a great idea. The characters were also quite fun to use, with them being quite unique to each other. Really enjoyed the portraits, they looked great. Isabella was my favorite character, fun in gameplay and funny in personality. The culmination of this hack, and the best chapter, I think, is chapter 17. This is right at the halfway point, and the conquest-style defense chapter was great. It had a unique spin of not just being a defense chapter, which is nice. The combination of strong bosses, reinforcements, and nasty siege weapons made it hard to push upward. It was definitely my highlight, and a great chapter!
Now onto what I didn’t like so much. I think that the daggers, while a cool concept and a nice idea, kind of made the bosses hard to consider a threat. Luna knives, with fast and bulky users of them, shout out to Ciera, making any strong boss kind of a cake walk. This really culminates in the final boss, where his stats don’t mean jack when you can knife him in the back a couple of times and he’s done. Another issue I had was the lack of difficulty in the second half of the game. After chapter 17, the game does not have a spike in difficulty I saw ever again. The maps are fun to play, just not too hard. However, the stretch of chapters between 20 to 24 is a massive slog in my opinion. These maps are huge, with wide open spaces, and not much to do besides push forward and kill everything in sight. Its at this point that your characters start snowballing hard, and absolutely nothing is a threat. The only resets I had were from a cheeky siege tome I missed the range of, or a random flier. The maps were kind of boring, honestly, just way too big. It also doesn’t help that the story relevance for these chapters is pretty low, with fights against randos we’ve never heard of. After you fight Quirina, the map quality increases, but at that point, it’s a race to the finish. Finally, I was disappointed in the final map. It’s really sparse, with nothing pushing you forward, and the final boss, like I said earlier, is a joke and a half.
My final thoughts are that this is a solid hack with a good starting hook with some nice gameplay overall. You could have trimmed the fat a little, but its a nice comprehensive package. Its complete too! Which is something that not a lot of people can say, so good job!
Overall: 6.5/10
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So, interesting thing, I made a sub with Erland on the tile I’m hovering over, and he disappeared? I can’t select him and he doesn’t seem to be on the tile he’s supposed to be on
Edit: Thankfully he’s still around in preps in the next map
Just finished Chapter 17 (March of the King), but was pretty disappointed by it.
Further detail, contains spoilers for ch. 17
Briar really did not live up to the hype.
Initially I thought that him folding instantly was a nod to his unboosted form being sickly, so his boosted form here still isn’t that strong.
But then the cutscene after treats him like he’s super strong and everyone in your army is terrified of him? What?
I was able to beat the map on turn 5 (before loading a savestate so I could get the Roseanne boss convo on a turn 6 clear), which was before he was even able to demonstrate the lance’s ability to blow up a house. Why is everyone afraid of this chump??
And of Valerie, apparently, despite her having like zero street cred by this point (we’ve wiped the floor with her three times).
I think this map played out far differently in practice compared to how the story and map design seems to have intended it to play out. Briar’s house destruction feat happened like half a map behind my army, I was far past that area and had routed the map.
This made it extra jarring when Briar waved his hand in a cutscene and his men had somehow isolated Roseanne from the rest of her units (except for some generics, I guess? at least, I assume she only has generics near her, because just standing by while she’s being executed would be a pretty black mark on the characterizations of the rest of the cast). It evoked the same feeling as, like, trouncing a JRPG boss and then being told in the cutscene after that they actually beat you without breaking a sweat.
I’d strongly recommend buffing Briar’s stats a bit here, especially since he’s supposed to be the climax of an arc. Maybe you could make the Lance of Light give some stat boosts while equipped instead of buffing Briar’s base stats directly, to emphasize that the Lance of Light is what makes him so fearsome here? Having him flash it around a bit and/or disable some power limiter or something in the post-map cutscene would also sell him suddenly being a scary, insurmountable threat better.
On a side note, I’m not really feeling Roseanne’s arc here. Proposed plot tweak: Roseanne does attempt to parley and ask for the pegasi in Ch. 16, but the parley is exploited and she’s punished in some way for her mercy. This would better set up Roseanne being cold and pessimistic later (esp. to Valerie) and make her face-heel arc a bit smoother.
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So I recruited Francis on chapter 14 but I don’t see him in the preparation menu of chapter 15 and 16 is this intentional?
Would it be possible to rename the physical draconic weapons to something different than the magical draconic weapons? I understand that the dragon sprites usually distinguish between the two, but it’s a bit odd for both kinds of dragon to use what appears to be the same weapon unless you check its description. Maybe name one sludge breath and the other tainted steam?
Also, the current description of Toxic Breath implies that it inflicts poison, even though it doesn’t.
Bug Report in this chapter, once I killed the boss, I started getting this message for every action taken by anyone (player and enemy phase).
EDIT: I have reviewed why I cannot post the image since I just made the account for the bug report. To summarize, in Chapter 4, after killing Abram, a text pops up as intended that goes along the lines of “Something’s not right…”, implying that you need to be ready after you seize the point. What the bug is causing is that the text appears upon every action taken (player/enemy, even as they spawn).
Bug Report, Vyndalvus+ can quad.
EDIT: Bolding text because of the below comment.
Shhhhh! Don’t tell him, it’s gonna get nerfed!