There’s no fully original tracks. It’s a mixture of directly ripped tracks from other GBA games and ports from ArcherBias, Trikki Nikki and Sekhmet. You can find the sources and music porters in the Sound Room, and when the website is up and running, that will have the full titles for the games instead of just acronyms. Medium-term I plan to find what the original titles of the GBA rips are and put those in the Sound Room, mostly so people can find them for themselves, but I don’t have them off-hand since they don’t have any titles internally. The other titles are already listed under their original track names.
3 Likes
Anghara: You blockhead! Why would you willingly put yourself in such an obvious trap!?
Browyn:
Had a blast with this and hope to play more of it in the future. Really good game
4 Likes
Glad you enjoyed!
2 Likes
A few minor tweaks. Nothing major enough to really demand a repatch, mostly typos (many of which were caught by the good people of the Homecoming discord, which, by the way, exists).
v 0.1.1 Patchnotes
- Chapters now preceded by the map graphic
- Ruffians are now Hollow. Pirates are now correctly set to Anarchic, and have the correct flavour text
- Corrected slight palette glitching when Bronwyn felt sad
- Cadecber no longer glues his eyes shut in C6 post-mortem
- Number of times Gwyngyll says ‘of the’ halved
- Various other typos fixed
7 Likes
Fire Emblem Advance
It sounds perfect. Plus it makes so much sense if this is a hypothetical FE6 if FE6 never happened.
1 Like
To celebrate Fire Emblem Advance: Homecoming (2003) running on the original hardware, v. 0.1.2 has released. The usual cycle of these is that they come thick and fast as initial things are hammered out, then go dormant for awhile as ‘fixes’ give way to ‘tweaks’ and ‘rebalancing’. Still, there’s nothing especially urgent about this patch, but it does make a few gameplay changes (mostly making C6 easier and giving you more stuff).
0.1.2 Patchnotes
- Fixed various WEXP discrepancies, including Prf tomes and Withering not giving WEXP
- Bolting and Swarming Hex 3 → 5 WEXP. Now noted in tooltip
- Pure Water reduced in price from 900 → 750
- CIMA tracks now renamed to original names from placeholder titles
- Battle with Elvira now unused due to softlock error on turbo
- Gildas: +1 Skl/Def
- C3: Shops now sell Pure Waters instead of Herbal Tinctures (Vulneraries)
- C6: Stairwells corrected to be one tile shorter. Second wave of reinforcements delayed by one turn. A new chest containing a Brutal Blade exists. Engineers now give Treasure Keys when recruited instead of dropping from Grunts
- C7: Removed southwestern Swarming Hex user
- C9: Shops now sell Pure Waters instead of Herbal Tinctures (Vulneraries)
- C10: Fimbulvetr adepts now correctly have Fafnir
- Valkyrie now has description
- Corrected Artillerist stats to no longer have several Female Summoner holdover stats
9 Likes
That almost looks like a wiiboy.
Trying and love the character art
Finished this up earlier this week and wanted to take a minute to leave a detailed review! There are some spoilers here, as I discuss some recruitable characters and some thoughts on the plot, so fair warning for those who don’t want any spoilers at all, though Ive tried to keep my comments relatively broad.
Before I talk specifics, I’ll just start by saying that a high level this is a very polished product, even though its only halfway done. It plays smooth, nothing is very obviously broken under the hood, the story does not suffer from the obvious amateurism or teenage edginess that plagues some projects, and the game is neither stupidly easy nor actively unfriendly.
On the spectrum with “vanilla” FE fan games (projects like Last Promise or even Dream of Five) on one end, something like Cerulean Crescent on the other, and games like Drums of War or Vision Quest somewhere in between, this definitely leans towards the vanilla end in terms of overall feel. There are still some mechanical changes and some unique elements that make it feel enjoyable even if you’ve played other hacks before, which I’ll talk about later. Overall though, you’re not really playing this hack because you want a radically new experience, you’re choosing this hack because you want a really good and polished version of the Fire Emblem experience that tells a fun story and innovates in its own ways.
Detailed Gameplay Thoughts
- As I mentioned, the difficulty is not bad overall, and there’s definitely a more gradual curve here. Drums of War was really good, but I know anecdotally that some folks bounced off of it because after the first chapter it ramps up pretty quick, and theres two chapters at the end of that game’s first Act (a Defense mission and an escape through Fog of War) that I know a lot of people simply felt overwhelmed by. There were two maps in particular that did feel MORE challenging, near the end of the run, but even then I kind of felt like I probably could have won a lot more easily if I played less aggressive, took my time, and/or wasn’t dead set on finishing every “stretch goal” in the chapter. I should note that I did NOT play an Ironman (and that might be a different experience).
- Related to difficulty, the maps also inherently feel less “pressured”, which can be nice for a slightly more relaxed experience. I don’t think I ever really felt like “oh if I don’t play super aggressively then on Turn 5 an unkillable team of “Fuck You” reinforcements is going to show up and kick my teeth in.”
- As always, mission briefings are super helpful especially given that fan games don’t tend to have decent guides. These provide a good signpost of generally what to expect.
- I know the goal was to create an alternative FE6, but I also think the game overall was very reminiscent of Shadow Dragon/New Mystery, particularly in the pace you acquire your army and the way some characters would join in large packs (in particular, the group in Ch 8 was reminiscent of getting the Wolfpack, and the group in Ch2 felt a lot like getting Barst, Bord & Cord).
- High deployments are nice for using a large chunk of the roster.
- Role of mages was neat overall with their PRFs, though these varied. Eilonwy, Islwyn and Trefor were used frequently due to their prfs; others fell more short. I’ll chat about these in character reviews. The idea in general though of a low-res environment where both ally and enemy mages are strong player-phase tools that are protected by a shell of phys units was pretty effective overall.
- Most of the basic gameplay changes are, I think, pretty good.
– Erasing “outlier rolls” in combat is a small but smart change. No missing with a 95%, no getting hit by a 3%, and no enemies rolling 1% crits. This is just like a really reinforced 2 RNG system and I thought it was fun.
– Cavs losing access to swords until promotion is a neat change that I think helps to rein them in without having to totally tank their stats (which is the alternative we often get) and is nice because it makes it easier to see them on the map and know who to send to counter them without having to manually check if they have a sword or lance.
– 2-3 range bows, which I know have been a fixture of Do5 and Drums of War, continue to rock and provide a great niche for these units, particularly when enemies hit hard and being able to soften up a kill is very valuable.
– A small change that I liked was borrowing FE5’s approach where magic swords use RES – this seems like a nice alternative to doing a STR/MAG split OR having a situation where a strong phys unit just gets to also automatically deal a million damage with a magic sword. Given that DEF is used a lot more than RES due to enemy types, this also helps to make it relevant for characters to have high RES and lets you do some shenanigans with Barrier/Pure Water & the Light Brand.
– Scout is a fun-looking class and I liked its spd niche
– If the Miracle Tonic stays in, it’s a fun tool for letting units go off alone a bit more or just in general letting them heal. MAYBE it shouldn’t be a full heal, but I don’t know. Conversely, the lack of mass Vulneraries was nice and had a surprisingly noticeable impact on the feel of the game.
– The mixing of light magic with anima is nice for simplicity
Chapter-By-Chapter Comments
1- Ch 1 was good. Lots of chance to get to know your suddenly large enemy and start thinking about who will get a spot and who’s getting an early bench. Not too much pressure outside of protecting your villages.
2- Ch 2 is a good map. Two sides, you can kinda loosely split up by weapon type and keep raising your chosen units on some relatively easy foes.
3- Ch 3 is good again. Not too stressful. Lots of opportunity to use your units and focus some xp to your chosen favorites.
4- Ch 4 was fun, but I felt like the premise was maybe underbaked. After the first 2 or 3 turns everything was a foregone conclusion and I was just mopping up.
5- This was one of my favorite maps in the hack. Lots of different things going on, a little more difficulty than earlier missions, but lots of options for how to approach the mission. Trefors little camp in the west was cool, and the flow of enemies from multiple directions kept me more on my toes. Ultimately, I ended up assassinating the boss right near the end of the map and it felt like an earned, tactical victory.
6- This was one of the two maps where I reset a few times, mostly just due to the reinforcing cavalry being a real threat. However, I was trying to simultaneously whether their assault and push further in towards the ballistas, and I do think if I had just focused on establishing and holding a position, then going in after reinforcements were done, this would have been fine. Fun overall though!
7- This was kind of a funny or silly mission, though my internal radar inherently wondered if something will come up later with these two (i.e. will they be used as a figurehead by the opposition? Not sure). Not too hard. Liked the idea of recruiting the Loyalists, though they should maybe be toned down slightly since after getting even just 1 or 2 of these Ironclads they were ready to go finish 90% of the map for me.
8- A little more hectic with the time pressure, but fun overall. I liked that you simultaneously had the established party and the “new party” taking their own sides of the fight and trying to link up (and I think if you wanted you COULD have basically just had the new folks sit tight, you’d just give up some loot). I had a few minor glitches here where the bosses used wrong portrait while speaking but that was it.
9- This was another map that stood out as good to me. I didn’t understand what was happening with the refugees but it made sense at the end that they were kind of a “timer” and I think this was telegraphed I just wasn’t realizing. Trying to reach all the villages to pre-empt the militias was also kinda fun; I personally couldn’t reach the top ones, but don’t really know if that was an issue of timers being tough or if a better player could have done it (and it wasn’t the end of the world anyways to fight a few villages). The tone also tracked well through the mission.
10- The other map I reset a few times. This was a good challenge, lots of fronts to contend with. It does feel like if you really wanted, you could spring for the southeast room and just camp out there to wait things out with a small front line. I was struggling trying to push too aggressively and take out all the ballistas, eventually I just accepted this wasn’t reasonable. Did get to beat the “bonus boss” in the southwest though, so still felt accomplished. One of many maps towards the end, as a side note, where I started thinking “okay too many reaver enemies”.
11- A decent map, and relaxing after the previous map which was a little tougher. Not a lot of further thoughts here. By this time, I had good tools.
12- Maybe a little too easy and short. I finished this thing off in just a handful of turns and it didn’t feel really intentional. This is kind of just an end-of-act narrative map so that’s not the end of the world, but if one map would benefit from some change it might be this. Maybe adding more “stretch rewards” to incentivize you to try to do more actual combat would be good. As it was, I basically sprinted by characters down, flew Hrolf and Sian across the river to pick them up, and then retreated across the gorge before the rest of my army had even crossed the bridge in the first place. This map also of course is limited by the fact that it puts Anghara in the heat, and by now she’s starting to slow down, so that’s another element that I know probably limits how much you can do. This issue overall might also just disappear in the next version – part of the incentive to rush was also just knowing that I was at the end of the game.
Characters
I’ll chat about folks in loose groups. Order is kind of haphazard. I also don’t know growths so lots of discussion is anecdotal or based on impressions that may not be accurate. Overall, most characters got at least SOME use, with only a few exceptions. I also think I got everyone but if I missed any units, someone please let me know!
Ratings at the end are for how much I liked the portraits, not a gameplay tier list – and this is all relative to each other, as the overall quality is really high.
- Bronwyn was a fun Lord who turns out pretty well. She got a good amount of use, and generally fit her characterization where she started out weak and needing some spoonfeeding, but was growing to be more capable by the end of the Act. I also may have underestimated how good her Rapier was, and its possible she was always really strong and it just took a few chapters for me to understood her usage. As a side note, making Rapier reaving is smart: its always dumb that the MC has effectiveness against armors and cavs and then has a weapon type that is actually countered by their weapon type (conversely, this is why Hector’s Wolf Beil slaps).
As a side note, My ONLY sadness is that I really thought she would gain magic and a prf on promotion: being the grandchild of a famous Witch Queen, having THAT promo portrait, and having a game where you highlighted the strength of your unique mages I really thought this was going to be where this went. This isn’t a critique at all just felt like sharing lol.
- Anghara is a straightforward Jagen, gameplay wise. If she does stay central as the game goes forward, she probably wouldn’t mind some decent growths if she doesn’t already have them. Overall though her bases were surprisingly decent outside of HP. As a character, I also really liked her.
Like the portraits for both, especially Anghara which was one of my faves. Bronwyn A, Anghara S.
Lorcan & Gwenael are a fun pair of Christmas cavs. Lorcan’s strength is kinda rough, but he ended up getting an energy ring from me towards the end, and got one of the promotions. Gwenael was the “preferred cav” for me early, but her speed was getting to be more and more of a defensive liability as the game went on and everything started doubling her. Still fielded both at the end.
Both feel like a good approach to cavaliers. As I noted earlier, sometimes we get Cavs who feel really weak as a tradeoff for mobility. These folks always felt serviceable and useful, they just had to be confined to the enemy time they are good against. As the stats show, they were a mainstay in my army.
Liked both portraits a lot – they convey an interesting pair with lots of characterization. Lorcan A, Gwenael A.
The Archers! I haven’t included the archer we get right at the end of the demo, though I’ll likely be using him as well once I’m back. He’s not quite as good as Maewen was, but he’s pretty comparable overall and I’m excited to give him a go (he’ll be taking Caradoc’s spot).
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Of the other three, its probably pretty obvious that I focused on the first two. 2-3 range bows is great and makes archers invaluable, and these were a part of my roster for some time. I originally liked Caradoc more, based solely on portrait/vibes, but he just couldn’t keep up with Maewen. Not sure if she was blessed or this is just natural, but she really outpaced him and ended up crazy strong.
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He, on the other hand, was increasingly a liability and if I was paying more attention I should have swapped him out for Rattler. He just didn’t do a lot of damage due to low speed, and low defence and res meant he was also a huge defensive liability (seriously, there are VERY few units in this hack who can survive can getting doubled).
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I wish I’d used Rattler. Didn’t give him much of a go, but looking at the base stats now he was pretty ready to roll.
Portrait wise, I liked Caradoc. Rattler is fun in a gimmicky way. Maewen I like the colour scheme, but something about the portrait is just a little underwhelming to me. Not bad, but not my fave. Caradoc B, Maewen C, Rattler B.
The healers!
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I ultimately used Coretta over Aneurin, but this was really based on basically nothing at all. More speed is always nice, but honestly I suspect these two were probably pretty interchangeable.
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Nerysse is fragile, and she came relatively late and low levelled, but its hard to beat a healer on a horse. Definitely think I’d be gradually transitioning this direction.
More broadly, the fact that mages don’t all get staves on promotion inherently makes healers more worth keeping around I think, rather than what I often do which is to just have several mages who take up a part time, gig economy job throwing out heals on the side.
Portrait wise: Aneurin is kinda an odd looking dude but I liked him. Coretta is generic but fine. Like Nerysse’s vibe. Anuerin B, Coretta B, Nerysse A.
Fliers!
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I couldn’t find my screenshot of Merry and unfortunately I simply don’t care to go back and take another. Merry was underwhelming to me. In a world of 2-3 range bows, using an early fragile peg knight is even more perilous, and I never felt like I got a ton out of her other than visiting villages, etc. Cavs only having spears though does help a bit as it gives her more of a niche as one of only a few sword users. I might use her more in the future, but the problem is she’s also got some pretty good flier competition.
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Hrolf was one of my favorite units, and not just because he reminded me of Haar. He’s got a really unique, vivid visual design, and gameplay wise he did a lot of work for me (especially because I didn’t have a ton of great axe units). Low Res is also less impactful than low def, since it can be somewhat circumvented, and there were lots of good axes to use (I liked the Lictor Axe). He was one of my best fighters even BEFORE thinking about the fact he could fly. The fact you have to pay 400 gold a chapter to use him is also kind of neat: even though this is just objectively a drawback, it actually made him MORE fun to use because it felt like a nice bit of characterization (and its not like gold was ever super tight throughout the game anyways).
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Sian joins a bit later but for me at least was just a clear upgrade over Merry. I like her design, and she does some neat things gameplay wise. The fact she has high res and we’re starting to get Res swords also helps her – you can do some fun stuff with Pure Water/Barrier, for sure.
Portrait wise, Merry is fine but forgettable, thought the other two were great. Hrolf S, Sian A, Merry B.
Fighters (and Brutes!)
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I liked Ludolf, design-wise, and so he was an easy choice. The fact he came a chapter earlier also helped him. Conversely, I didn’t use Arne or Nete to any meaningful degree, so its hard to judge them (but also, post Arne). They were basically just a Bord & Cord; they joined with very little fanfare and obviously didn’t have much role in the game (and this seemed intentional). So I can’t offer a lot of input on them.
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Ludolf, on the other hand, was pretty good throughout the game, but towards the end of my run I started to notice that damn, this man just really did not want to develop his strength to any significant degree. Possible this was bad rolls, but I wonder what his growths were. He was still reasonably functional due to Axe base MT, and I like that he got Champion. He was less of an offensive unit than a relatively resilient frontliner with good HP, SPD, and DEF. When I inevitably do the full playthrough though, I might give more of a shot to one of Arne or Nete.
Portrait wise: Ludolf A, Arne B. Nete gets a C only because I don’t know if I even get a strong sense of personality or even what her class would be from her portrait.
“Scouts”!
I didn’t get a lot of mileage out of either of these units, but I kind of liked the class as a concept.
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I originally used Per, at least, out of the initial crew of Per/Nete/Arne, because I wanted to try out the class and I felt like he had some personality. And he wasn’t bad but he also wasn’t anything super spectacular. A good filler unit until units I liked more came along. Also didn’t help that he was kind of directly competing with Lorcan & Gwenael and I liked them better. But the general idea of basically a Lance Myrmidon is a neat class.
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Gower was fine, a decent later-joining unit. His overall stats are okay; nothing special, but decently bulky. He originally got a promotion just because he was a mandatory deploy in Ch11 and I hadn’t realized I could use the Infantry Seal on my Ironclads instead, so I figured “why not see if this guy is any good for the 2 chapters left in my run”. No strong opinions on him.
Portraits: Per B, Gower B/C (nothing really bad, but a bit more forgettable).
The sword infantry!.. One of these things is not like the other.
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Seriously though, Shaker I maybe should have put separately because he obviously is meant to fill a different role. I get the impression he’s meant to more of a generic, semi-bulky infantry. I didn’t use him so I cant actually gauge, but playable undead are always fun!
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Lasse I had no attachment to. Another unit that contributed a bit early but was benched before long. Probably a fine unit and might get a shot one day, but I wasn’t super compelled.
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Gwyngyll I actually liked design-wise. Didn’t make the team this time through, but actually might in a future run. I think in most cases it feels like she would turn out better than Lasse overall (especially since both are gonna max Skill/Spd).
Portrait Ratings: Lasse B, Shaker B, Gwyngyll A.
I think anybody who has played a semi-difficult romhack knows that despite being pretty meh in mainline, Ironclads can be quite critical in fan games. Having a unit that can actually reliably hold a line and NOT get one-shot by everything that moves is invaluable. These two are no exception.
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I liked Dave(tt) a lot and did a lot of work through the early/mid game. Does what an armor should, and has just enough HP to survive most of the mages so far, though the continued 0 zero res is gradually getting more and more worrying. Felt very key at a number of different points. Sorry Dave, you definitely should have gotten that seal over Gower.
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Deheuba I also really liked, though we got a LOT less time with her, as she joined after the action was cooling down in 11 and Ch 12 was pretty quick. I kind of feel like she will fulfill the overall goal of “survival” better than Dave due to her higher Res – those are some pretty good mixed-bulk stats. Somehow even slower, but at that point does it matter?
Portrait wise liked both. The black armor and red hair on Deheuba really popped in particular for me though. Davett A, Deheuba S.
Almost done! Grouping these folks together for discussion purpose, because I didn’t want to talk about Rhlain with the Christmas cavs or group the skirmishers with the archers, so I figured I’d discuss everyone at once here. Also gonna own: wow, I should have really taken more time to look at stats here when thinking about units.
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Gildas I felt was useful – a very “plug and play” unit at a time where having someone who felt bulky was an asset to the team. I knew that he was basically a prepromote that probably seems overly strong due to promoted bases but will fall off quickly, and intended to slot him in really briefly and eventually rotate him out when I got someone better. But damn, looking at him now next to Rhlain, who I barely used, that gap looks REALLY small, and even in the niche I was looking at him for I think I overrated him.
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Conversely, Rhlain got almost no use, and probably deserved a shot! I was like “I already have two cavs, who needs a third?” but stats wise he absolutely would have held up. As a side note, I’m kinda fine with this (and the other cases, like Gower or Sian, who feel similar) approach where later joining units are pretty good, because while it sucks to be like “damn why did I bother training Unit X”, if these units don’t have competitive stats they just discarded automatically in favor of the units you’ve been using since earlier and are attached to. Anyways – I’ll give him a look next time.
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Llewelyn and Hywel have the same problem, which is that 2-3 range bows are SO good that I didn’t really want to use bow cavalry. I used Llewelyn slightly more because I probably overvalue speed, but neither unit made a huge impression. After promotion, assuming they still get swords, I imagine I might get a little more use out of one of these folks, and Llewelyn was fine as a filler (and the mobility WAS nice in Ch 10 to shift between different “fronts” of the fight).
Portrait wise: Gildas B, Rhlain B, Hywel B, Llewelyn A.
I genuinely didn’t realize I hadn’t talked about her, but I’ll keep this short. Dancer Tier unit. Early dancers are always particularly fun, because they open up a lot of options and make recruiting enemies (like Quistan) a lot less onerous of a task. She’s not quite on Calista’s level, from DoW, but I liked her. Feels surprisingly bulky, and I don’t think I was ever actually worried about her dying, which is nice. Not much else to say.
Portrait: A.
Finally, the mages! I saved these for last because its obvious that there were intentional design decisions behind each of these characters to an even greater extent than other classes. Some worked great, and some didn’t work quite as well.
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Eilonwy was, probably evidently, my favorite. Good attack and speed made her good at her job of magic assassin, especially with her prf – when I needed someone to kill a boss, especially, she was the go-to pick. You do have to be careful though – pre-promotion, I think she was someone I had to reset for a few times because I didn’t account for 3 range bows and she got blown up, etc. Definitely squishy.
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Trefor was a good unit. He got a surprisingly decent amount of personality just out of the context of where you meet him and the fact that he’s dragging along some undead when he joins (and the fact that he looks like he works at Fantasy Hot Topic). I was kind of sad that it felt like it would be using 3 slots to deploy him and his crew, so the skeles never came along, but maybe next time I’ll give it a try. Even as is, he was a fun unit and filled (what I assume was) his intended role as an anti-mage with high damage and high res. His prf was also good – not too flashy, but did the job, and 3 range is great.
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Islwyn was good. Late joining, and again, didn’t get to use her much, but her prf was solid design wise. Gives her a niche but almost by definition is not overpowered. Would be great for weakening enemies and feeding kills to another unit. HP condition does prevent it from getting too out of hand. Also surprisingly bulky for a mage (7 Def, 12 speed, and 37 health? Nice). Feel like I get what this was going for, even if she’s not crazy OP.
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Jasper was one of the two mages, on the other hand, that didn’t quite work for me. He’s evidently meant to be the “tanky mage” who ISNT a wrecking crew the same way as some of the others, but has his own identity and use. Surprisingly decent defense, and the prf giving 8(?) more, helps him. In practice though, he just couldn’t really do the job for me and still died really easily, mostly because he was always getting doubled, his actual HP total was still low, and even mages did good damage to him. He had more bulk than any other mage and even most infantry units, but he took enough damage that he couldn’t really be a tank (and the fact the prf was 1 range hurt his ability to play safe and have it as an insurance policy). In my personal experience, he’s the unit I think most needed an adjustment: whether that means giving him more HP to better fulfill his tank role, more SPD so he isn’t getting doubled, or even looking at slapping Wary Fighter on his prf or making it 1-2 range. Lots of options here but think something would help him out a lot. I really wanted to make him work and think there’s a really cool unit in here with some tweaks.
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Finally, Quistan. This is a unit I just didn’t vibe with. And that’s probably okay! But I wasn’t really sure what role this character was meant to fulfill, other than to do the same as Eilonwy. The challenge here is that the prf feels like overkill. “Deal 1 billion damage and instantly kill any enemy” is actually busted, but I don’t remember if there was much that I felt like Eilonwy couldn’t kill where I needed this instead. And the tradeoff for this being a tactical nuke is that it only has 8 uses, so its something you have to VERY intentionally use to blow up a boss, in contrast to every other unit who has enough uses on the prf that you can actually think about it as part of their regular identity. Especially for a unit that joins when you’ve still got 70% of the game to go – maybe on a Gotoh an 8 use prf would be fine. I would gladly take a weaker prf in exchange for being able to actually use it without feeling a huge sense of “oh god I should have saved it”. Others might like this character overall, btu this was basically just an instant bench to me
Portraits: Eilonwy A, Trefor B, Islwyn B, Quistan B, Jasper A
Plot Discussion
Finally, some VERY brief discussion of the story / plot so far. I’ve really enjoyed it: there’s a good amount of worldbuilding, while still being pretty easy to keep up with.
The biggest strength of the plot has been that, at least early, you as the player know there’s a lot going on but its not entirely clear exactly who you should trust and who has their own designs. Is Anghara cooking up plots of her own? Can the royals be trusted? Was the prologue a false flag attack by someone? Even when it comes to the characters you end up trusting, you can definitely feel like they have their own agendas and aren’t 100% reliable. There’s a good sense of scope and politics happening in the background of the game, and even by the end its not 100% clear that anybody really had an “evil plan” per se as much as a lot of characters acting and reacting in response to events and sometimes having goals that come in conflict with one another.
Except for one character, who is obviously a dick. But its not immediately apparent from when this character appears, and even this does seem like a situation gets away from that character and they have to scramble, more than they are inherently evil. I do think a few more scenes/lines playing up the positives of this character early on might be helpful and make some of that fall from grace feel more pronounced; or even just characters talking positively about that character and giving them a good reputation. It does feel clear maybe a bit too early that this person sucks or at least will end up sucking. Depending how the second half of the plot develops though this may ultimately be fine.
The churches are fun, I like the idea of Law, Balance, and Chaos as the primary religions, in conflict with one another, and the idea that you get good and bad versions of each (i.e. Law vs Tyranny, Chaos vs Anarchy, Balance vs Hollow). SMT vibes intensify. This is seemingly a large plot happening in the background, which we haven’t got a lot of but I imagine will be more integrated as we approach the end. Similarly, obviously Esper is a plot element that isn’t really explored in the first half, but 10 points if you can guess what character may turn out to be a manakete.
Bronwyn and Anghara are definitely the stars of the hack, story wise. Bronwyn is a LITTLE annoying early on, with indecision/bad decision-making, but the fact everyone kind of acknowledges this in universe AND the fact it makes sense helps. Anghara is just great from start to finish.
Brand and the Chancellor are both good characters too.
Overall, this was a really great experience and I’m excited to see where you end up!