[FE8] [Complete] The Dark Amulet v1.4 (04/09/2024)

So I managed to “solve” zero civilian casualties on chapter 14. Fun little headscratcher if you want to give it a shot.

I’m up to chapter 20 now and, I can’t believe this…

the single funniest thing in this entire game

Edgar was talked down by Ruslan; I had no idea Wyverns were so eloquent

I’ll have to comeback with a big dumb feedback post once I finish end game, but I have to say, so far, this has been a solid, fun game to play through

has anyone been able to save every citizen in chapter 14? It seems possible using warp staff and if I deploy every flier or paladin feasible

@WaywardTroper oh man, I should really add a note at the start of Chapter 14 that makes it clear that there is no reward for saving civilians. I’m impressed you even tried! :slight_smile:

@Gero I really appreciate all of your feedback! Yes, the dialogue between Forness and Fenix at the start of Chapter 3 is a bit awkward because Fenix is being awkward. He’s bringing up a personal request during a war meeting and is rebuffed as a result.

Regarding your comment on growths, I tried to keep the growths in line with FE7 and FE8. Not quite Awakening-style massive level ups. Early game units like Dwalt and Hilda have totally made it to end game for me in my play tests and have been perfectly competent. Granted, sometimes they just get a bunch of crappy growths, but that unpredictability is part of the joy of Fire Emblem.

@Relic Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. Sorry to hear you’re putting down the hack. There are lots of fun chapters just ahead of you!

Every map is so full of reinforcements that it feels like I’m choking on them, stuck at the starting position for the majority of the map, often for 5 turns or more

I have a tendency to go heavy on the reinforcements, yes. I can certainly find places to tone them down. On the other hand, the maps are balanced around being harried by reinforcements (well, some of them maps, anyway).

On top of that, the enemies are bulky, so your units (unless very blessed/using rarer weapons) cannot cut through the jungle of enemies fast enough to keep up with the rate of reinforcements appearing

I don’t want people to feel stuck and stationary, but I will say that bulky enemies are definitely by design. One-rounding should be the exception, not the rule.

They’re strong, too, so you’re kind of incentivised to funnel exp into one unit (hilda being the most common choice)

You don’t have to funnel all your exp into one unit. If I incentivized that, it was totally by accident. I actually think having a balanced party exp-wise makes the game a lot easier. Hilda, even if over-leveled, can’t be everywhere, and her 1-2 range weapons are limited.

I don’t mind bulky enemies, but I felt completely hopeless against so many of them because my units just didn’t feel up to snuff/I invested in galen (and gave him my heavy spear! So I had no way to kill armors with a lance unit in ch10!!! This is a big issue!!).

Galen, Harlan, and Elyse return, eventually! Losing your heavy spear stings, for sure, but that adds to the sting of the betrayal :stuck_out_tongue:

I forgot to mention that the enemy bulk is so extreme that in ch3 I was regularly missing oneshots with broadsword/heavy spear/horseslayer. Do what needs to be done to correct this, it’s really not okay imo.

I don’t see this as an issue. The heavy spear and horseslayer will bring down armor / cavalry to about 20% of their HP, if not totally one-round them. Easy pickings for an archer or mage you want to train up. Effective doesn’t need to mean instant kill. I think about the wyvern knights in Chapter 7 of FE6. Wolt, Dorothy, and Sue would hit them with effective damage, but it usually wouldn’t kill them outright. Still, bows were your best friend against those powerful enemies, and set them up to be destroyed by Alan, Lance, Roy, whoever.

My advice here is basically to just chill on the reinforcements/enemy density overall. It’s okay if the player isn’t being inundated with enemies every single turn and for them to move forward in the map.

Totally fair. I’ll endeavour to do this.

I didn’t promote my units for it and got my ass kicked super hard, so I assume level 20 promotion isn’t intended here

You’re intended to promote your units whenever you want :slight_smile:
If you find Chapter 10 to be tough, and address that difficulty by using 1, 2, or all 3 of the promotion items you can have by then, great! Resource management is a core strategic decision to be made in Fire Emblem.

you’re basically not getting those chests unless you have that

Those chests with the silver weapons are not meant to be gotten at all :stuck_out_tongue:
They’re meant to be stolen by thieves to represent the castle being ransacked. But if you’re feeling lucky (or greedy) go ahead and try to take them. The risk is yours, in that case.

I really like the setpiece but I don’t think it’s a good map at all as is, shortening it would tighten up the pacing and make it better for both outcomes.

I also really like the idea of chapter 10 as this long holdout against all odds. Certainly don’t want it to feel like a slog, but it should feel long. I’ll see what I can do to tone it down.

Another thing is that the maps feel like, too terrain heavy?

Terrain is great! Bonuses to defence at the cost of movement speed, just like terrain in a real battle in real life. It shouldn’t feel like a hindrance, more like a tactical consideration. But I hear you - overdone, and you get bogged down in it. I can trim it down in Chapter 11.

Thank you again for your detailed feedback!!!

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Goddamit Vorgus, I barely have any money to spare. I’m living through iron weapons, mostly :sob:

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Seriously I don’t consider hacks done until supports and PE are done and so many hacks be saying “complete” without them. So this is a pleasant surprise. Actually fully done AND a focus on story and characters here and not just gameplay omg yes!! Like you sacred stones was my first one playing it in Walmart when they used to let you play the games in the stores. and been hooked ever since. I am excited to dive in, expect my review in like… 5 months as it takes me forever to finish games and FF7R about to come out lol

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Some thoughts, I’m up to chapter 11:
Writing is decent, events are character driven and make sense so far.
I agree that the maps go kind of heavy on the reinforcements, so far it doesn’t really feel that different from the GBA games where you have hordes of weak enemies for your units to wade through. In some cases like chapter 8 that can get really bogged down with a lot of terrain and enemies. Another thing I didn’t love about chapter 8 was Donnal spawning on the right side and that area being pretty enemy dense, I put most of my army to the northwest to meet up with Fenix so he doesn’t hog all the kills, luckily I sent both Pegasi east to the village and was barely able to chokepoint for multiple turns with vulneraries, but it could easily have been a reset.
In terms of units, I’m actually a fan of the slightly lower growths, but I think when looking at averages there will be a few clear standouts and to a degree that almost seems unintentional. Like given her additional levels Hilda is pretty likely to turn out a powerhouse and it’s not difficult to train her since you get her very early (also 11 con as soon as she’s a cavalier is hilarious), Edric really struggles with a base speed of 6 and only a 35% growth, I gave him the Speedwings so he’d stop getting doubled at least. I’m glad I did because chapter 9 was pretty tough even with that boost, I’m glad my Shorn is pretty blessed in multiple areas or I feel like that could have been a softlock.
I expected promo gains to be more substantial like FE6 to make up for the overall lower growths, but it seems like that’s not always the case, I tested a few and Griss’ is the only one I’d consider huge, with Dwalts being especially disappointing.
Overall I still like it so far, the reinforcement spam just has me worried, because I feel like that kind of difficulty balances on a knife’s edge and if at some point too many of my units fall behind I just won’t be able to deal with it, especially because the game likes to force certain deployments.

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To be fair, you made it pretty clear green units are chump blockers up to this point (in fact, I wasn’t expected a reward, and was actually surprised when there was one in a later chapter). I just figured

  1. it was in character for Edric to order the Phoenix blades to save as many as they could and
  2. 14 and 15 both had some tricky objectives across the map that reminded me I had a 4/5 warp staff just hanging out in the convoy and you mention by design you wanted us to use it a resource, not hoard like a treasure

Hey I just started this hack and have been really enjoying it! Just wanted to report a bug I found. When using the energy ring on Elyse on her join chapter, it’ll say her magic was increased but it actually increases her strength. I’m playing on normal if this helps.

Wow I’ve always used the Energy Ring on strength-based classes, not magic ones.

I bet, since I split STR and MAG, I need to create a separate stat booster for magic… I’lll look into it.

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I have found a bug here.
In Ch1, if you leave Griss green, he will “join” us after the end of Ch1. But this is the problem.
In this case, in Ch2, Griss will turn into Captain, with Boardsword and Vulnerary in his inventory, can use sword and lance but no lance animation.
Those weapons and items in his inventory all disappear, including the Heavy Spear.

That’s hilarious. I’ll just add an event at the end of chapter 1 that forces Griss into your party if you haven’t recruited him yet. Thanks for flagging this!

Please play chapter 1 again and actually recruit him, in the meantime :slight_smile:

Big question here:

Spoilers

I just entered the last stretch of the game. As you start chapter 19, the player is told which characters are no longer essential, and which are still essential… And one of the still essential characters is Elyse. However, she hasn’t return to the group yet. Was it possible to recruit her in chapter 18 and I just missed her? Or does she return at some point from then on?

She returns in Chapter 22. You cant miss her.You make a good point - that warning is a bit of a spoiler, isn’t it? I think I’ll cut her name from the list.

Don’t have much more to say, just wanted to make sure some of my points were made clearer.

To be clear I’m not against this, I just think the combination of bulky enemies + so many enemies causes it to feel less interesting about combining for kills and more tedious and encouraging juggernauting. I think you should pick one out of lots of enemies and bulky enemies. I am actually a proponent of enemies being strong and one-rounding being rare, but this also comes with considerations wrt density.

FE6 Ch7 is not constantly spawning new reinforcements at you for several turns.
I wouldn’t mind this but there are so many enemies on that map that if you don’t one round you just get even more bogged down. Also in FE6 Ch7, the wyverns are uniquely strong enemies that there are few of, they’re not armors or cavs which are common enemies that are frequent in reinforcement waves and spawn on forts for multiple turns in a row.
If there were a few cavs or a few armors that were uniquely strong and not a common enemy type, I wouldn’t be mentioning this, but they’re pretty common. Not to mention miley oneshots fliers just fine with her bows, and you seem to be fine with that (and I enjoy it). This issue does kind of go away and come back in waves due to how your units can level strength, so that’s the reason I pointed out ch3.

EDIT: it’s also a very very small difference between the damage you do and killing, as in 24/25 damage against 25/26 HP, which never feels good. If it was like 2/3 HP it’d feel less bad, somehow? since there’s not the hope of it being close. This is not my saying you should nerf effectives, just explaining why imo it feels bad.

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Chapter 18

The Swordmaster in the middle treasure room will most likely have crit on any east-side units, due to there being no way to transfer the Holy Guard to this party. The east side naturally enters that room slightly faster than the west side and is not guaranteed to have any tools to safely dispatch of him. I would recommend switching this unit to a Hero or giving Harlan’s PRF +10 LCK (or +10 direct crit avoidance if possible), as the safest solution to not facing this CRIT is to jostle Harlan around with the cavs and then wait 1-2 turns doing nothing on the east side, which is somewhat inelegant and unsatisfying.

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Chapter 18 Response

Galen wielding Chivalry (gives defense when held) can probably eat a crit from the swordmaster, unless he hasn’t gotten good DEF level ups. I’ve also had success using Miley with a longbow from the west wall to knock him out harmlessly. Or you roll the dice on the crit. Heroes have big stats and might even tougher.

Chapter 18 response response

Both of these are at least somewhat situational (admittedly Galen is highly unlikely to burn Chivalry before then). Miley from the west wall is already fairly slow (-1 to 2 turns of dead action on the right), unless you expose her to the berserker with the battle axe. The Hero would probably be tougher objectively, but would feel better due to Harlan being able to tank (with Harlan being the most consistent unit, both in terms of his stats being fairly fixed due to not having him for long periods and him receiving a fresh PRF this map, ensuring that he is not without it). On the whole the swordmaster simply plays worse for no discernible benefit.

Small text problem:
The Ch3 target should be " Seize gate " , not " Seize throne".

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I just finished the first 7 chapters on Hard and I’m extremely impressed by the map design. They all flow exceptionally well and just when I was about to add the small caveat that maybe the objectives aren’t varied enough we get the chapter 4-5 combos that are both unique as well.

Lots of small touches showing up great thoughts and foresight.

“Wait, the thief only told me to let him keep his lockpick, what if I took his sword too, would he be stuck then ?”
Sure enough, two swords, right at the start.
“I just sold that first chest key, and what if one used it instead of the thief ?!”
Boom, one key drops from a conversation.

The prologue has that mandated straightforwardness / simplicity yet surrounding reinforcements and a mobile boss keeps you on your toe at a brisk pace.

The separation of chapter 1 in three lanes, each with a side objective threatened by delayed waves of reinforcements, with a bandit destroying a village to both establish the threat and showcase how this mechanic works - it’s the kind of thoughtful design that’s invisible but players notice when it’s done wrong.

I also love how the narrative is weaved seamlessly into the gameplay. Like how chapter 4 uses a big, scary yet so far removed wave of reinforcement on the last turn to really sell the siege is hopeless but the bet works nonetheless. Or how chapter 5 unit limitations are justified by the context of the chapter.

The team responsible has earned my full trust in the fairness of the designs and I’m looking forward to the rest of it.

Also THANK YOU for not opening with a boring ass text scroll set to Slow. Nobody wants to listen to a geography and history lesson when no stakes have been introduced yet and there’s no reason for us to care about anything. It’s just a bunch of names that will be forgotten immediately.
I’ll touch on the writing as a conclusion. Same as the map design, a great display of confidence and skill. Slowly building up the conflict between the two Dukes through the eyes of the characters themselves, only delivering information as it becomes relevant, does wonder to build interest, immersion and engagement. Some of the supports are also genuinely surprising and interesting, like the Katrine and Griss one.

I don’t want to sing Dark Amulet’s praises before I’ve fully finished it, because Naga knows some hacks don’t survive their last stretch, but this is incredible - and incredibly enjoyable.
I have literally no complaint.


Wait. I do, actually.
Please, for the love of everything that is good, get the fucking “shopping in preparations” tax out of here !!

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Time for a 3 AM feedback and screenshot wall-o-text post. Just beat the game on hard mode and I have to say, I pretty thoroughly enjoyed it. To avoid spoilers and writing a novel, I’ll break down my thoughts and spoil accordingly section by section. Let’s go!

Plot/Writing

I think this was a good spin on the strengths of what makes a Fire Emblem game, specifically the Super Famicom and GBA era games good; You fight a God, get a magic sword, and a blue haired prince is your lord. Really, the only missing beat was at no point was the titular Dark Amulet referred to as the Fire Emblem, or any orher Mcguffin. The plot had quite a few twists and reveals that kept me hooked, so I appreciate that, and tonally this would fit snuggly as a hypothetical FE6, where instead of rebooting with a simple tale like Roy’s, IS kept the dark tone and themes of FE4 and 5 and continued from there. That much of conflict revolved around a main villain who became more vile and tragic as the plot continued, and the realistic consequences of succesion by bloodlines factored so heavily in the plot was a nice touch. My only real critique is that basically every character that featured heavily in the flashbacks not named Zeddard or Fortness didn’t have enough writing to inform either how much watching a Blood God revive effected them, or why the dice were cast that started the initial war between the brothers that kicked of the plot, but otherwise, I look forward to the Tyranny of Light if you decide to make a sequel with all those bombs dropped on us in the Epilogue

Complementing the plot, the character writing is basically the bedrock that forms the foundation. The cast features no real out and out comedic characters, and some are archetypal at first blush (looking at you Shorn) but between plot beats and supports, everyone who I deployed had extra dimensions or charms to keep me interested. Bonus points for having so many in chapter talk events, boss conversations, and personal items to further flesh out the details. speaking of personal weapons…

Weapons/Treasure

I for one will always endorse FE games that add character with personal weapons, so I applaud your inclusion. The abundance of Broadswords, and careful use of the hammerne staves made it well worth using each and every one; I did find some characters used their weapons as a bit of a crutch (Sheila needed her Thorn basically up to and through promoting until she hit multiple strength levels is the first example that comes to mind. The flow of gold, gems, and shops felt pretty fair. I tend to steal lockpicks and sell elixers at every opportunity, so I didn’t personally struggle inventory wise. My only grievance, if any, was that magic felt kind of bland until Elyse rejoined, but her kit she returns with as well as the killer light siege tome were very fun to play around with. TBF, there wasn’t much need for much tome variety, but it would have been nice to see a personal dark tome, as an example, or effective damage tomes to help with some of the punishing reinforcements

Maps/Design

Speaking of reinforcements, I actually didn’t struggle with any of the maps as intended. I did go out of my way to “solve” chapters 14 and 15 to get every green unit and reach each village as a challenge, but other then that, every stage felt fair but aggressive, and thanks to the in-stage callouts, there weren’t any surprises. For me, the highlights had to be crashing the wedding (I actually laughed for a moment thinking it was going to be a Eleanora only map), all three gaidens (fantastic work with the eventing and scripting throughout, I loved getting to play the flashback memory) and the escape from Fenix that rounded out the end of act 1. Visually, none of the maps really “wowed”, but I liked the use of community created tiles and remixing FE8 maps for fresh-perspectives, and they all did a good job of using design to create challenge, objectives, and plenty of bottlenecks to make stands against reinforcements, so I will take well designed over visually overstimulating

End Game party & Characters

I like the decision to make every recruitable unit functionally or mechanically unique; that and having so many death flag characters made me look at my deployment composition with a critical eye each map, and having frequent reasons to deploy characters to trigger valuable talk conversations and the deliberately paced supports meant few characters slipped through the cracks. There were just enough that I had at least a few that spent more of the game on the bench then deployed, but everyone contributed enough to be promoted and there were no maps I felt cheated on deployment slots forcing me to bench my favorites; over-all, growths seemed to be deflated, but fair, but I did have several frontline units suffering from Lyn or Elrika-esque spreads that made every energy ring a high demand treat for multiple characters, and also (though this is more a treasure critique) the almost total lack of magic boosters hamstrung my healbots through-out, so I think more energy rings and magic boosters could be sprinkled throughout to help a bit to compensate for somewhat un-even promotion gains and in-consistent levels, if you want my genuine criticism there. At any rate, here’s the team that fought God and healed the wound:
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first up, Edwic; Hector with two swords didn’t really disappoint. Thanks to using his broadswords liberally, he made an impact on every chapter he deployed in. The choice of bows as a second weapon was interesting, but it had the added benefit of making him a good wall to plug gaps for late joiners needing experience to stand behind him. Mine turned out a quality unit, but that came at the price of hoarding every speedwing- Edwic consistently got doubled by every other sword infantry unit he faced, and his defense was somewhat shakey until he snowballed around chapter 20 and eventually getting consistent Aether procs. I also like that unless played extremely aggressively, he gets rightful king right around when the Dukes and Duchesses declared him King, very appropriate and well played, good work!

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Julia… this one hurt a bit. While her promotion gains were insane, and her work as a staff-bot was invaluable, her late promotion and frequent speed-levelup misses meant she spent a lot of time basically on an escort mission. She was also in an awkward position of being more mobile then all her best A-rank support choices, and likewise didn’t want to hug to close or risk getting sniped with a javelin or arrows. She was invaluable, but she kind of felt a touch like playing with a female Roy to back up other more capable units… still I applaud the bold choice to have the final boss not die to a magic artifact sword, but be healed by a mother and daughter instead

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I loved Freya, mechanically and writing wise. She missed a couple key chapters for plot reasons, but her and her pegasi partner in crime basically saved any chapter that required rushing to save green units or villages. Her personal weapons were also invaluable, good enough I opted to let her keep them as her kit in endgame and give the S rank rimlance to someone else She struggled to get strength on occasion, but thanks to access to effective and reaver weapons, and consistent crits on solo missions, she never really struggled to contribute damage at any point, even with her level lagging compared to some of the rest of the party

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Eleanora was, unsurprisingly, very very important and valuable, even after she capped her level relatively quick. Her magic was just high enough to make it worth using mend staves with her, but getting powerstave and having an abundance of barrier staves meant she could do some very silly things going into the late game. If she hit magic more consistently, she could have been a funny pick for a light brand unit going into chapters 24 and 25, she did just fine once I bought her some boots and functioned as a dancer and healer very well, and even held her own if caught out of place. Also, her a Shiela kept the tone just light enough through-out to sprinkle in a bit of much appreciated levity to mi in with the tonally serious plot, so thank you for that

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Elyse is an odd unit to qualify- she put in the work through act one, and while she was missed throughout act two, she came back and snowballed fast even with a forced promotion and a late rejoin. I think I just most appreciated just how unique her kit was, between perfect magic access, three cool and fun personal tomes, and enough magic to blast anything that didn’t double her. It just hurt she didn’t get enough time to develop as a character with the rest of the Phoenix Swords, and she was usurped as my main magic damage unit by another mvp unit. She is very good mechanically, just a bit of a miss narratively

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Yeah, Alexias more or less obsoleted Elyse, as I was implying there. I gave him the perfume and after carefully sniping some monsters and reinforcement paladins, her was more or less my only juggernaut unit, to the point of being confident enough to warp him ahead on more then one occasion to break up snarls of generals and magic users that would otherwise slow the party. Having three range on everything meant he was a better sniper then the actual sniper, and his brave tome, while necessary to get him up and running, also meant he could melt anything not made of anti-magic. A proper Est unit, and a well done trainee unit, and my best unit of the run, no contest

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Shorn was… a funny unit. Total monopoly on three really good critical swords meant he could put in the work in the last couple chapters, and her was fast enough to even hold of Fenix at the end of act one with no sweat… but then he also had higher defense then strength throughout most of act two. He had all the tools and growths he needed, but he almost felt like a tank swordsman for a while, and the idea of a defensive swordmaster actually was fun to play around until her got it together and became a crit fiend for multiple chapters. His writing also was a big turn around. He was amusing with his constant “Tch”-ing and tough guy persona, but his heart was really on his sleeve the whole time, and had a lot of nuance with all his supports

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I was extremely happy to see Gareth show up when he did, as I love infantry weapon specialists. He had a variety of good spears to swap between if Freya didn’t need them and the one-two of he revenge spear and the S rank rimlance meant he was phenomenal going to endgame, and thanks to his promotion skill, he was possibly my best out-and-out wall to hold chokepoints, even more so then Morgana or the man who actually promoted to the Wall class, as long as I used him to lure in mages, hand axes, and bow effectively. I was blindside by his reveal when I A ranked him and Shiela, but I do appreciate how you handled his and several characters choice in orientation and preferences

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Confession time- I buffed the promotion gains for the Seer to see if get her to around 15 magic could solve my warp issues, so this Catrine is actually a bit of a cheat and should have closer to 17 or 18 magic, and ultimately that was her struggle. She missed a lot of magic levels, and the exp was split between multiple healers, so she promoted somewhat under-leveled as a result. He ranged Heal staff was a welcome and well designed surprise, but basically every A rank staff user struggled even with how valuable their access to physic, warp, and rescue was

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Shiela was a real turn around for me. looking at her bases and growths, I really worried if she was just going to be pure utility as her skills implied, but then she hit more strength levels then her brother, and got the absolutely crack Dazzle on promotion, so she more or less carried when she wasn’t robbing pockets and treasure chest. She more or less 180-ed from one of my worst to my best, on top of just having free range to followed right behind the fliers that cleared her path straight to her prize

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Galen wound up being my best Dark magic user even with his average at best magic start. It also helped that he hit a lot of defense levels early that guaranteed he could plug any gap not guarded by mages, and even then with the options to fight fire with fire seemed like a great idea, and the resulting Shadow Paladin class overperforming even as he leaned on a pretty average magic value for most of his levels. Really, the inly tragedy, in my run, was he lost Milly due to her and Shorn fitting together very nicely, so Gallen ended my game heartbroken even after redeeming himself as my best paladin-unit

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Milly was an absolute monster very quickly. It didn’t matter she missed some important speed thresholds, her personal bow and skill picked up the slack, and being locked to two range didn’t matter either, as she replaced every hand axe and javelin singe-handedly. The stacking pain of a Killer longbow, high crit, and very soon after that guaranteed hit, was a deadly combination that made her my best bow unit among a strong collection of contenders

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Volke is looking pretty good here; I joke, frankly, I just love Harlan’s dynamic with Julia, and the reveal when he picked up a light brand that he was actually my best magic sword wielder in spite of his growths was huge, and his personal weapon may be my personal favorite among the personal weapons. While I didn’t see all his writing, just his redemption arc with Juila and flirting with Julia alone was enough to sell me on him. The only negative, at all, I have is I don’t care for GBA assassin sprites, but I can’t think of a preferred option on the animation repo that would be agreeable, so that is purely a petty, personal grievance

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Hadima showed up and just started wrecking face very fast. The access to multiple anti-arrow shields help her a lot, as well as adding even more utility to the flying squad, thanks to be very good at tanking for the pegasi and Ruslan should the need arrive. She was my de-facto axe unit, and I enjoyed her dynamic with Galen (eidt: not sure why I wrote Harlen there) as well as best boy…

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Ruslan!; I’m tempted to just write KAROO! here ten times and move on, but…
Ruslan was my personal favorite for the quality and humor of his conversations, and his variety of monster weapons made him flexible and reliable. More then once he would rush clusters of wyverns or pegasi and singlehandedly carry the day that me, and after having a heart-to-heart, even got great at fighting monsters as well. His mug broke fairly frequently, for reasons I still can’t figure out, but he otherwise earned his keep

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Nadya was kind of the unsung hero of my run, constantly topping off Freya after promotion as well as just having enough spark to frequently get rid of beefy generals and great knights, or at the very least, soften them enough for Hilda, Hadima or Ruslan to finish the job. Despite being more lowkey, Nadya basically perfect access meant she never got benched given the choice

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To sum up the light novel hiding in the drop down boxes there, I enjoyed the Dark Amulet very much. The characters were a blast, and it did a very good job playing and feeling like a lost gba era game, or a Kaga-lead FE 8 that didn’t have to play it safe

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Report: When Edric uses the Lionheart sword, music stops sounding if he lands a crit.