[FE8] [COMPLETE] Prologue: The Rider's Trial (Entry for SIGURD)

[squidaccus]

How strange it feels to release something again, after all this time.

graphic design is my passion, guys

The Rider’s Trial is a short, 1-chapter hack for the SIGURD competition. A prologue hack to a project in the works, this chapter is designed to be somewhat challenging, but with many workable strategies.

There’s not too much to say here. Here’s the patch and README: The Rider's Trial - Google Drive

Screenshots

Important Notes

Hold L to skip combat animations in player phase. Hold A to skip them in enemy phase, and L+A to not skip them while still speeding up enemy phase.
The avoid formula was adjusted and all weapons have higher hit, with most having lower weight too. These changes should make combat a little more consistent.
The short bow is a weak 1-2 option with no crit, to hopefully give bow units a solid, if unremarkable option for enemy phase.
Alyne is your only loss condition. The other three retreat on defeat.
Select toggles the danger radius.
Any crit below 10 becomes 0. I don’t believe any unit CAN crit during the chapter, due to this.

Credits

If anyone is missing from the credits whose work was utilized in this project, please let me know.

Portraits: squidaccus

Patches: Agro, Brendor, Leonarth, aera, 7743, gamma, circleseverywhere, Tequila, Vesly, Hextator, Zane, tiki, Scraiza, Alusq

Music:
Army of Agustria: SurfingKyogre
Night of Fate: Azula
Anxiety: Alusq

ASM: Venno, masterofcontroversy

Battle Animations:
Cavaliers (M): SALVAGED
Cavaliers (F): SALVAGED, CelestiaHeart
Paladins (M): SALVAGED, Leo_Link, Pikmin1211, The_Big_Dededester
Paladins (F): SALVAGED, Leo_Link, Flasuban, The_Big_Dededester
Scout (M): eCut, Pikmin1211, Maiser6
Wyvern Novice: eCut, Flasuban
Soldier (M): Alusq
Myrmidon (F): Vilk
Archers: DerTheVaporeon, Flasuban

Map Sprites:
Cavaliers: SALVAGED
Paladins: Leo_Link, DerTheVaporeon
Wyvern Novice: Flasuban
Fighter: ZoramineFae
Soldier: Feier, Flasuban

Misc:
Tileset (Village): Flasuban, N426, ZoramineFae, Venno
Status screen: Jiege
Battle UI: Cynon
Hit/Dmg/Crit text: ExoBlitz120

Thoughts and feedback on the project are appreciated. Thanks for reading!

[ShirleyVaga]

was a pretty fun chapter and the music and ui all nicely different from most hacks i played.
palletes and portraits also are mostly a nice match . the axe rider girl needs a customized animation that has her eyes covering hair jkjk

since it’s a prologe i cant wait to see that project .

[squidaccus]

Unironically, for the full project, I have some interest in making anim reskins for certain characters. So she might end up actually getting an anim like that. Who knows…
Anyway, glad you enjoyed it!

[ShirleyVaga]

Where is the music from since I don’t recognize it.
I also was drawn to it from the purple title screen biased

[squidaccus]

Some tracks from Riviera, some from Yggdra Union, some from F-Zero GP Legend, with those tracks being directly imported from the games in question (since the space wasnt a concern for a smaller project). Theres also a small amount of tracks from the repository, mainly Night of Fate from Kingdom Hearts and Anxiety from FFT. A small few extra tracks that weren’t used as well.

[BobbyAsaka]

Gave it a shot last week with some friends. A few brief notes:

• The portraits’ art style is beautiful. It’s very distinctive and unique in a way that definitely adds to the vibe and identity of the project, and I’d say it’s the chapter’s strongest element. Marina is my favorite of them.
• All player units being cavalry while all enemy units are infantry is a cute touch
• I think I ended up aggroing too many enemies near the start or something, because a bunch of them started charging within the first few turns. It was tricky to advance for a few turns because people were moving in, so I was kinda stuck maneuvering around the starting position for a bit until I was able to actually start progressing. I ended up going to the right side and mostly ignoring the left.
• I appreciate that growths are not visible.
• The story is difficult to assess given the nature of the project. I felt like the intended goal of the chapter was to properly introduce the relevant characters without doing anything too narratively ambitious—and it does accomplish that pretty well! I’d say it does a good job painting an introductory picture of the cast in a relatively efficient amount of script time. But I also feel like not much really happened over the course of the chapter—I think the gameplay part didn’t really add much to the story outside of padding it out, and I feel like I would’ve taken away a similar story experience from watching a cutscene with a bunch of scripted battles.
• One story addition that I think might be a well-matching fit for fleshing out the crew and their vibe more would be a proximity quote system like in Grim Dragon, where little interactions play when you have certain units end turn close to each other.
• The music gives me the feeling that you like Do5/DoW, lol
• I may have lost my shit a bit at the ending

Good experience, looking forward to however you build on this with whatever you make next.