[FE8] Fire Emblem: 7 Siblings [COMPLETE] [LET THE FEAST BEGIN]

Thanks for the heads-up, I was able to reproduce this on my own. I thought I had fixed this before, but it seems not. Will hopefully get a patch out for it soon.

Thank you, your hack is great, iā€™m having a lot of fun :grin:

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Hello all, version 1.2 is now up. Changes of note:

  • Minor tweaks to enemy placement and unit balance
  • Fixed a minor oversight with a conditional event
  • Further typo fixes
  • Fixed a bug with player HP overflowing in save data if over a certain value
  • Convoy now has 200 capacity as opposed to 100

Important: This version will not be compatible with save files that were started on a previous version. Changes were made to save data structure that break saves from previous versions, and thus to play this new update, you must start a fresh save file.

I had intended to eventually upgrade supply capacity at some point, and I knew this would break saves, but just decided to do this now since there was already a bug which would involve re-arranging save data to fix, thus breaking saves. So if you want to continue playing a save game that was started on version 1.1 or earlier, continue playing on that version and do not update.

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@WarPath Just finished this amazing high quality hack, i had lots of fun.

Looking forward to ur next hack!

Thanks!

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A new update has been released, version 1.3, and the download can be found in the opening post. This update includes a fix for the glitched Ch. 4 houses on certain emulators, although this glitch never occurred in the first place when using mGBA and using mGBA is still recommended.

I was only able to make sure that this fix works on VBA-rr, so I cannot guarantee it will work on other emulators that experienced issues. Additionally, if you started your playthrough on version 1.1 or earlier, this update will again break your save, so be warned.

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My friend, love the concept of the hack, i was waiting for a final version to try it, so, lets gooo.

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Version 1.4 of the game has been released and can now be downloaded in the opening post. This version mostly has minor balance changes, notably some slight buffs to pre-promotes that join in the midgame or lategame.

It appears that most major bugs have been ironed out, and I am relatively happy with how the game plays at the moment, so I would expect updates to be less frequent from here on out unless major issues arise or I have a major feature to add. Thank you all once again for playing and for the feedback, and I hope you enjoy!

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Just finished playing this hack a few days ago, and I gotta say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I havenā€™t played FE hacks to completion in a few years, but this was one that I was motivated to finish - to see the story through to the end. Hereā€™s my thoughts in detail below:

Story
To start off, I saw your post in this thread about the source material for the hack's story - that being the story of your own life. You were able to turn your story and your struggles into a creative endeavor, and that is something that I really respect you for, if a random stranger's opinion on the internet can mean anything.

A plot thread that really stood out to me was with Kenneth. This was a story about a mother trying to provide for her children, but it was also about a manā€™s intentions being twisted and warped - both by his own character, and the influence of others, resulting in catastrophic consequences for the continent. He went on this rampage for the sake of his family, but to do so he left a broken home and let his familyā€™s homeland get ravaged. That was definitely a story thread that I resonated with, and it had a pretty satisfying if tragic conclusion at the end. Kudos to you for that.

Several of the characters were fleshed out and developed pretty well over the course of the story in my opinion - especially Scott, Nancy, and Kenneth, but there are a couple of pieces of feedback in terms of characterization that I want to give, if thatā€™s ok.

In my subjective opinion, I feel like Arianna wasnā€™t really fleshed out or developed much over the course of the story. She definitely had buy-in to the story, given that her and her boyfriendā€™s homeland was under attack, but she felt mostly static in terms of character and development to me. Scott to me felt like the main POV character and ā€œlordā€. While I understand the context behind her being characterized that way, taking the story as it presents, she is a ā€œlordā€ and thus a POV character, and her being on the fringes of the main emotional core of the story doesnā€™t really jibe well with me.

Another piece of feedback I want to give is on the development/relevance of the other 6 siblings in the story. I liked the chemistry between Scott, Nancy, and the other 6 siblings, but they also seemed to just be kind of ā€œthereā€ to me - not exactly relevant to the plot, except as ensembles in the family scenes. To me, if I took them out of the story, the narrative would not really be changed. This may be be some confusion on my part on whether theyā€™re main or secondary characters, but personally I feel a bit of dissonance at many of the titular characters of the hack not being more plot relevant.

To reiterate, this was a relatable and engaging story to play through and see through to the end. If I offended you, I apologize - that was not my intention. I just wanted to share my feedback on the story as it presents to me.

Gameplay
The gameplay was overall pretty solid to me and kept me on my toes, even in normal mode. The enemies individually were not that threatening to my units, but there were just enough of them, and they hit just hard enough/were accurate enough so that I couldn't juggernaut with one or two units.So kudos to you for the enemy balancing.

One thing that stood out to me was not having that much gold over the course of the game - I was pretty gold starved, moreso than Fates: Conquest. Granted, I didnā€™t steal as many gems as I could have, but it motivated me to use every available resource I had - such as transferring weapons/items from characters I wasnā€™t using. Overall, a nice constraint.

Units used
Scott - Hit hard, was reasonably bulky, crit hard, and I think he was speed blessed for me. Awesome unit to use - fast axe fighters are one of my favorites

Arianna - Fast, very accurate, and not really strapped for power due to high might of bows and her personal weapon. Kind of fragile, unfortunately for me.

Nancy - I didnā€™t use her as much as Scott, Arianna, and the other siblings and benched her for a good part of the game, but then she got her personal weapon in the final gaiden, and she made a comeback.

Kayla - A pretty good healer from start to finish.

Will - Tons of power, okayish speed. One shot several dangerous units in the end game with the S rank tome.

Keegan - Stole some gems, opened doors and chests, and was a good enough switch hitter before promotion. But after he promoted, he was able to dodge tank and solo portions of maps in the lateā€™game.

Kristia - Tons of power like Will, was able to Eclipse several dangerous enemies in the last 2-3 chapters and the endgame - enemies that I may not have been able to beat otherwise. And she was able to one shot several dangerous units in the end game with the S rank tome.

Luke - Hit hard and tanked hard.

Serah - Good secondary healer with a Mend staff. Unfortunately got magic screwed, so she couldnā€™t heal as much as she could have.

Michelle - Always crit and dodged when I needed her to, and was able to do that to several of the reinforcements in the end game.

Nikko - Also hit hard and tanked hard.

Reilly - If Keegan soloed parts of maps in the endgame, Reilly soloed even more. She was the exception to my impression of dealing with enemy formations carefully - once she promoted, I could throw her into a horde of enemies and she could tank them and kill them all. 10/10 unit.

Moses - Hit hard enough to one shot some units and close out kills on others in the late game.

Meredith - Late game dark flier, who also cleaned up reinforcements in the end game.

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Hey, thanks for playing, and Iā€™m glad that you had a good time! I definitely understand that it can be tough to finish hacks, I struggle with it myself, and Iā€™m glad 7 Siblings didnā€™t outstay its welcome for you.

Firstly, I want to say you did not offend me in the slightest with your commentary on the story, and some of the issues you mentioned are things that I myself wish I had handled differently.

Some responses to your own story thoughts (story spoilers)

Iā€™m glad you enjoyed the story. As you said, it has a lot of personal meaning to me and this was part of how I expressed myself, so Iā€™m glad that others are able to enjoy this outlet as well.

The story was structured in a way such that the ā€œmain plotā€ (evil invading country, other countries need to band together, dark magic) was very standard and nothing you probably havenā€™t seen before, with the real intrigue being Kennethā€™s involvement and his relationship with his family. Naturally, this leads to a big role for Kenneth and for Nancy, and for Scott as the sibling most involved in the story and often serving as somewhat of a stand-in for him and the rest of his siblings.

I would have loved to have written the other siblings into the main story a bit more, but I was torn because 1. there are simply a lot of them, and including them all in roughly equal major roles wouldā€™ve been tough, and 2. I didnā€™t want the player to feel absolutely compelled to use all of them in gameplay, and in fact the game explicitly goes out of its way to make this optional - Ch. 19xx, even on the highest difficulty, was balanced with a base Nancy with Maternal Pride, a 15/5 average Arianna, a 10/1 average Scott, and the rest of the siblings alive, but with their base stats.

Arianna, on the flip-side, has a major role in the story, but often gets caught having a majority of her lines related to the ā€œstandardā€ part of the plot. The times where she may have had more of a voice and dynamic characterization, funnily enough, I think are often filled by the appearances of the other siblings. So they get more of the emotional moments, while Arianna often is just talking with others about getting A to B, and both parties are short-changed in terms of the main plot involvement. In retrospect, what I wish I would have done here is have some of the other, non-Kenneth villains have a bit better characterizations and be more tied to Arianna, and that mightā€™ve, in terms of the main plot, knocked out two of my bigger regrets about how I wrote the story, those being lack of interesting villains outside of Kenneth and lack of time for Arianna to shine.

My imperfect solution to Arianna and the siblings getting short-changed in the main plot was the abundance of in-map talk conversations involving these characters. Arianna has the most in the game by quite a lot, averaging over one per chapter in which she appears, and the other siblings have quite a lot as well. This is where I tried to fill in a lot of those gaps that I felt like I couldnā€™t in the main plot without making it overly long or complicated to read. Arianna gets more fleshed out as a character, and the other siblings give check-ins on how they are doing as well despite not appearing for chapters at a time. I realize this is indeed imperfect, but I do hope it fills in some of the holes I wasnā€™t able to in the main plot.

If I ever do make a sequel, which Iā€™d say is unlikely right now but not impossible, it would be focused on Arianna and her family, and she would not get the short end of the stick there.

Some stray thoughts on your commentary on the gameplay and units

I am glad you enjoyed Normal mode, and that it was still engaging even into the lategame. I had a friend describe the gameā€™s design as one that ā€œdoesnā€™t expect you to do excessive planning or math, but it does expect you to pay attentionā€, which is largely the style of how I like to play Fire Emblem, so Iā€™m glad this these seems to have been able to shine through in some respect.

The gold and economy specifically came from a place of disliking how often money doesnā€™t mean much in the main series games because itā€™s often very plentiful, so I tried to make it so that you had to work for it and consider your purchases a bit more. There are probably ways this could have been improved, but Iā€™m relatively satisfied with how it panned out. Near the end of the game, you start to get a lot more ā€œfreebiesā€ in terms of weapons and gold, which was intentional to help players who had been struggling with money all game to cross the finish line.

Thank you for the unit descriptions! Itā€™s always really cool to hear the experiences of others with units. Iā€™m glad Reilly turned out well for you - she can take a bit of work to get going, but you can really be rewarded if you put in the work with her.

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Response to your responses on the story (spoilers)
The talk conversations that the siblings had definitely did serve to flesh them out a bit more.

And yeah, looking at things from your perspective regarding Arianna and the other 6 siblings getting shortchanged in the story and also given the limitations of the medium, I appreciate the solution that you came to to give them a bit more fleshing out

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hey WarPath, just a warning if you donā€™t complete chapter 15 in one sitting, or using save states to take breaks, the map become unwinnable.

it probably would have been fine if I broke all the tents on the same turn but I didnā€™t, had to use the Builder to Force-Clear the map.

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Could you expand upon this? Iā€™m not quite sure what you mean, Iā€™ve never encountered this and donā€™t know why it would be happening. All flags that are relevant to chapter completion should persist over suspend.

the objective is to kill all the tents, I killed one on turn one thanks to scottā€™s water walking.

suspeneded and took a break since I had just marathoned three maps back to back (not something I normally do anymore) when I came back I then destroyed the remaining tents but the map didnā€™t end, instead I just went till the time limit and the now dead commander proceeds to gloat and I get a Game Over.

hopefully this works a bit better.

also female assassinā€™s still have the 60hp cap.

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Part of me really wants to just jump in now!! then the other half wants to hold off in case you add supportsā€¦ugh Iā€™m bad at decisions!

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Hm, I was not able to reproduce this doing something similar to what you said. I defeated the tent near Scott, suspended, turned off the game, then rebooted and resumed, and I was able to defeat the rest of the tents and the chapter ended as it should. What emulator/platform were you playing on?

Also, thank you for the heads-up on the assassin HP cap, although I doubt this will be relevant for 99.99% of players considering the bulk of the two female assassins.

@tweetyboy I would not wait for supports, as if theyā€™re going to come, it will be at best many months from now. And in all honesty, they may never come.

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welp downloading it now! lol

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Hmm, well it may have just been a weird fluke.

I was able to keep going I just had to force it using builder. Not the first time, not likely to be the last.

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A new update, version 1.5, has been released. Changes include:

  • Minor balance tweaks to player units
  • Minor typo and bug fixes
  • A long-awaited change to Ch. 1 that Iā€™ve meant to do for some time, but kept forgetting

Download link is in the opening post, as always. Didnā€™t expect to have another update out so soon, but had a little free time yesterday and today and figured I may as well tweak a couple of things.

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Question, what are the rewards for completing 5x in nine turns?

You receive a hold item that passively grants +2 speed and +2 resistance.