[FE8] Fire Emblem Deity Device: Saint's Blood (Act 1 Available 11/6/2022)

So you want to see a miracle?

The current version contains act one of the game. It goes from the Prologue through Chapter 11, plus one Gaiden Chapter. I know a lot of players choose to pass on in-progress hacks, but in this version you can experience the full first part of the story, and the characters will be in quite a different place at the end than they were at the beginning (you can think of it like the first season of a television series).

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If you’ve followed my hack, Deity Device, you probably know I’ve been working on a sequel of sorts. This project started with me wanting to tell the story of what happened long before Deity Device, but it evolved into a game that is primarily a sequel set a few hundred years afterward, with the distant past being a set of extended flashbacks. While I wouldn’t 100% say that you need to have played the first game to get into the story, the way it’s written assumes knowledge of those events. So if you haven’t played Deity Device, consider checking it out here.

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If you played the “Bonus Disc” that was packaged with Deity Device, the first two chapters will be familiar, but too much has changed for saves from that version to work correctly, so please start a new game. I think my portraits will be somewhat less hard on the eyes than the ones that were in the original Deity Device release, with most portraits from the Bonus Release at least having their colors improved and Georgette receiving a completely new design. Most of the distant past portraits probably need a rework as they were made before I worked up the nerve to release Deity Device, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. I drew quite a bit of the clothing from scratch, so I apologize if the perspective seems off.

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Story-wise, the game might not seem like Fire Emblem. The conflicts presented are mainly in the Man vs. Society category, and no one is at war. Maybe you’ll love it or maybe you’ll hate it (or you’ll fall somewhere in between, I guess). As might be expected from me, there’s a lot of dialogue. Those who don’t like to read may wish to pass.

Newest Patch-Act 1

Old Patch Archive

4/17/2022 Patch

Balance Patch 1 Download

Patch 1

Something to note: Based on player feedback, vba has trouble playing some of the cutscenes. Use mGBA for a more stable experience.

Gameplay Flow

The game is broken up into three main parties. Two in the present, one with Martha as the main character, and another with Milton as the main character. The third party follows events in the distant past.

Gameplay Changes

Firstly, take note if there is a star within a unit’s or item’s description. A star in a unit’s description means that the unit is a Gameover Condition. This updates from chapter to chapter, so if a unit is no longer a Gameover Condition. He or she will no longer have a star.

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A star in an item’s description means that the item will have its uses restored between battles. This will be familiar to those who have played Deity Device, but a few non-spells get this treatment, so pay attention.

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Weapon ranks are a little different, so here’s a breakdown. Although Thieves have a Sword Rank, they cannot use Swords. Thieves may equip Knives and Daggers. Likewise, Sword wielding classes may not use Knives and Daggers. Knives and Daggers are doubly affected by the Weapon Triangle, and while I’m on the subject, the Weapon Triangle’s influence has been raised to 20 hit/avoid and 2 damage.

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The Staff Rank has been renamed “Assist” due to to it encompassing both Staves and innate White Magic.

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Anima magic returns with new greenish icon. The Anima Rank refers to wielding Tomes and is separate from the innate magic wielded by those with a Leticia Rank. The icon that looks like it is half Light and half Dark is what I call the Divine Rank. This rank consists of Light and Dark Magic. Divine has Triangle Advantage over all Anima like in the older games, but this is a weaker Triangle Effect than most, being only 10 hit/avoid and 1 damage. Meanwhile, the internal Anima Triangle has the same effect as weapons.


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Ability to wield different types of magic varies across classes, even if the requisite rank has seemingly been achieved. This will be noted in the class description.

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In the above examples, it can be seen that the Flare Mage Class can wield Fire and Dark Tomes up to Rank A, as well as Light Tomes up to Rank C. The Female Priest Class can wield Wind up to Rank A and Fire and Thunder up to Rank C. The Staff Icon means that the class is able to use more advanced staves, such as Sleep.

Some other Gameplay changes beyond standard hack quality of life changes are as follows:

-Thracia Style Capturing

-Ability to Steal Staves and Unequipped Weapons (no Con requirements) and Steal with full inventory

-Being Dropped after a Rescue does not consume the Dropped Unit’s turn

-Units with Canto/Canto+ can Drop the same turn they Rescue

-Poison Damage is Increased, and Poison can Kill, so be careful!

-Story based Supports-supports ranks are gained through story events

-Skill builds-characters do not gain skills through level up but rather have unique builds from the start
that are meant to inform their role in the party

About the Content Rating

The main reason I gave this game a higher age rating than Deity Device is that the story is planned to contain depictions of human sacrifice that may be disturbing to some. The demo does not contain these scenes. The most noteworthy thing in the demo is probably use of alcohol and some language.

Credits

Battle Animations: Eldritch Abomination; RedBean; HyperGammaSpaces; Jono; GabrielKnight, Seal, Sacred War; Salvaged; Leo_link, Pikmin1211, The_Big_Dededester; Primefusion; Feaw; Iscaneus; Nuramon; Jeorge Reds; TheBlindArcher; DerTheVaporeon; Maiser6; Skitty; Mikey Seregon; Ukelele; SD9K, Temp; Black Mage; Wan; Sme; Sax-Marine; ZoraminFae; Jj09; Devisian_Nights; Jubby; fuzz94; Greentea; ltranc; Zelix; RobertFPY; knabepicer; Jey the Count; Aruka; Kenpuhu; Spud; St Jack; quizf007; eCut; Flasuban; TBA; SamirPlayz; Lisandra_Braze; Shin19; Dolkar; Marlon0024; Asael; Huichelaar; TytheBub; Terespark; Isaac; SHYUTERz; CamusZekeSirius; FEGirls; Raiden; Melia; Ayr; Faolin; N426; Circleseverywhere; Tsushi

Map Sprites: FE7if; Leif; ArcherBias; TAS20XX; Pikmin; SamirPlayz; L95; MeatofJustice; knabepicer; Marlon&Louis; DerTheVaporeon; Rasdel; Nuramon; Its_Just_Jay; flasuban; Sephie; Ash3wl; Dominus_Vobiscum; TytheBub; N426; Devisian_Nights; Melia; blood; Ayr; TopazLight

Spells: Alusq; Thunder Mage; 7743; Orihara_Saka; MisakaMikoto; SHYUTERz; St jack; Bonzai; Blazer; Mikey_Seregon; Sme; Compile; Jubby; Arch; Shtick; Orihara_Saki; Beansy; Hiroto; bwdyeti

Repo Portraits: Sphealnuke; RandomWizard; LaurentLacroix; Melia

Creators of Edited/Spliced Deity Device Portraits: LegendofLoog; knabepicer; RandomWizard; Sterling_Glovner; DainnofGungnir; HyperGammaSpaces; Devisian_Knights

Class Cards: L95; RobertFPY; Aruka; Yggdra; flasuban; Der; Arch; Shtick; Salvaged; Rasdel; N426; Orihara_Saki

Patches: Circleseverywhere; Monkeybard; Black Mage; Tequilla, Rossendale, ShanH, Leonarth, Teraspark, sd9k, Kao, blademaster, Snakey1; Primefusion; Agro; Brendor; 7743; Kaito; Hextator; HyperGammaSpaces; Snakey1; Zane; ipatix; Sme; Scraiza; Alusq; aera; Vesly; vennou

Tilesets: flasuban; HyperGammaSpaces; ZoramineFae; Venno, N426; WAve; RandomWizard; Beast

Item Icons: Leif; Erishkigal: Peerless; GabrielKnight; Zarg; Seal; SacredWar;

Music: RSflame; Pandan; A_Reliable_Chair; Meilu; Sme; RandomWizard; Mr.Green3339; MysteriousDancer; Dolkar;

StatScreen Base Images: kabepicer; kirb

Skill Animations: SHYUTERz; Mikey_Seregon

And a last note. The Patch has several assets implemented that constitute spoilers. If you cannot help yourself from snooping around in FEBuilder, Please Do Not post about your findings here. If you must have something addressed, please message me instead.

37 Likes

Congrats on the release! Looking forward to trying this out.

6 Likes

Ooooh this is exciting! I still think about Deity Device all the time, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting this release. Gonna give this a whirl as soon as I’m able ^.^

5 Likes

Demo is here, oh boy. I’m so looking forward to this. Deity Device is my favorite. The new features sound amazing. I will give my thoughts as soon as I can.

6 Likes

Hype!
I will play and post thoughts/suggestions as soon as i finish the chapters^^

3 Likes

Hey PF, I just finished all the chapters. Had a good time overall, but I noticed some bugs and such, and I have some feedback besides.

For bugs;
  • Elthunder, with anims on, appears to freeze the game indefinitely. Had to patch in the “hold L to turn anims on/off” patch to unstuck my game.
  • Removing items from convoy in ch 5 would also cause the game to get stuck. I don’t know if this happens in other chapters as well.
  • In battle, the textbox rework seems to create somewhat jankier boxes. Maybe refrain from resizing the boxes in boss/death quotes?
  • I don’t think this counts as a bug, but just some advice: I think the way you’re inserting music into the game is causing file size to balloon uncontrollably. I think it would be greatly beneficial to either use converted songs or to learn how to convert songs into the FE soundfont (specifically, NIMAP 2, which is more or less an improved version of the vanilla soundfont with additional options). Having the ROM already hitting 30 mb when patched so early in development is crazy! The whole of Vision Quest, with all 40+ chapters and a huge suite of music and art and animations and everything, is 26 mb. I know this was a problem in Deity Device as well, and I think it’s something that you should try to account for in designing Saint’s Blood – I think the gains in having the source soundfonts for every song you import is vastly outweighed by the huge technical problem it causes.
For unit thoughts;
  • Myrmidons having crit boost is suuuuper questionable, though the addition of an early hoplon guard (even if it’s missable) is helpful. If the change was made primarily for Martha, then she should really just be given the crit boost skill as a personal thing, bc generic myrms having it just means that they’re gonna be annoying to fight against. It’s already hard enough to design around when it’s just swordmasters and zerkers! I’m gonna follow up on this more in the feedback section.
  • The cav duo feels substantially weaker than my other units right now. I think the idea is meant to be that they’re very tanky, but with enemy quality being so low, my squishy units are having no issues surviving. This leaves them feeling like they struggle to kill, while not being appreciably much more survivable than my other units.
  • As always, mages are very strong, in all the same ways they’ve always been. Easy access to infantry effective weaponry turns most of your anima mages into unstoppable powerhouses. That said, I greatly appreciate the lowering of spell range in general. Mages feel far more manageable when I don’t have to worry about being pelted from 3, 4, or 5 range, and my physical units feel far more useful when the range difference between them and the mages is so much lower.
  • Ralph is awesome.
  • So far, there are few units that feel super stand out from the rest in either direction otherwise. Phineas is maybe a bit crazy strong, since he joins and can immediately one round at 2 range with thief utility and high avoid, but that also seems like something that would be very temporary.
For feedback;
  • With the amount of items I’m getting due to capture shenanigans, I hope I start seeing prep screens sooner rather than later – I have goodies to hand out!
  • It’s cool to see you trying out custom art! It gives a lot of the character art a very distinct vibe, and that’s neat. However, I really don’t think that the blonde/blue hair that you have going works much, it ends up looking like an accident more than an intentional decision. I feel like it would be much nicer looking, if you want to keep the idea intact, to have them just have a single strip of hair highlight, rather than having the “I dipped my hair in a bucket of paint” look. (Maybe when you have more experience with the custom work down the line, you could even try to change it into more of a gradient look, which is what I feel like you may have been going for at first?) As is, it doesn’t look great.
  • Having Ivan’s descendant look exactly like Ivan is very funny, but also I hope it’s a placeholder, bc I can’t look at him and not go “it’s green Ivan! Wyvan Rider :)”
  • Item uses are CRAZY high for a capture hack! I have like 400 uses of heal between all my parties, it feels like.
  • On that note, capture is fun! I’m enjoying the extra layer of seeing if I can squeeze some extra juice out of a chapter. I think the huge number of droppable weapons in ch 4 is a missed opportunity, since it seems like that would be a fun capture playground to try to navigate, trying to get as many of the sleep staves and steel blades and greataxes and el-tomes and the like as possible.
  • I think there are too many weapons with a tiny bit of crit on them. Things like thunder tomes having 5 crit on them, t1 myrms having crit boost, etc can lead to a situation where a player has to gamble on not getting an unlucky dice roll just to kill generics. Enemies having crit isn’t a problem when they’re controlled – an enemy with a killer weapon, placed in such a way that the player has tools to deal with them beyond just “take no damage” or “have a hoplon guard,” is a great way to create a unique challenge on the map to be tackled – but having such tiny amounts of crit tied to weapons means that you either don’t plan around it, bc the chance is so low, until you get crit by a 2% and have to reset, or you plan around every 5 crit weapon as though it were a killer weapon, which could get arduous.
  • On ch 4, I think the reinforcements as they currently exist aren’t playing nicely with fog of war. As is, they spawn in packs of 4 (or more, even?) and in spots that don’t feel as though they have much telegraphing their presence. Quite a few times, I had packs of several units spawn directly on top of me, often including archers, or else they would spawn in a very small pocket of fog of war and I would watch as a clown car of guys pour out of an area I had just cleared out a turn ago. Telegraphing their spawn locations more (paths that lead off-screen, cave tiles in the mountains) and having them spawn in smaller packs seems like it would go a long way to helping. Also, maybe put the torch staff on an earlier cleric instead of the regular torch? My thief can only be in one place, and the map has three places I want to be (bottom left for sleep staff, bottom right for village, top right for all the clerics spawning there)
  • On ch 5, I think it would be a huge help if there was an easier way to get back to the north after rescuing the priest. As is, I had to sidestep Larry to kill the thief before he could take the treasure, and then stand around waiting for a few turns to recruit him before I could really move on. Maybe in dispelling the illusion, she could open up the top wall of her cell? Right now, the map grinds to a halt after you recruit her.
  • I don’t like the book chapter much at all. I think that’s ch 2? or 3? It’s not very fun, in part for reasons I offered in unit thoughts; the cavs aren’t very strong, the enemies aren’t threatening, and killing them is often very awkward bc the numbers just don’t line up nicely. All the prfs I have on all my units are completely useless in this chapter, too – the def piercing sword is just not gonna do anything unless enemies have good defense stats, the cav effective weapon isn’t helping against a bunch of books, etc. It’s not hard either, so it’s just a very awkwardly paced chapter where I’m just hitting books for 6 damage a bunch until they all die, with some of the books seemingly arbitrarily being one shot instead. And they all do different elemental damages, but the elements don’t do anything, and the only difference is minor differences on their sprite that coincide with them having wildly different stats? It’s a cool concept, but I think it needs work.
  • You asked specifically about enemy quality: yeah, it’s pretty low. I think that low quality is part of why you spawn so many units in ch 4? And it definitely causes its own issues. With the power of magic giving you so many effective options, more powerful enemies wouldn’t be a huge issue, bc you’re often overkilling enemies by a wider margin anyway. Obviously, though, if you went from one rounding most enemies to two rounding, you would end up having to redesign enemy placement, so you have to be careful about how you go about it.
For script stuff;
  • You’re still early in the script, and a lot of things are being stated in very blunt and straight forward ways that end up being far less interesting. For instance, after “losing” his duel in the university, Poseidon just spells out the exact nature of his inferiority complex. I can understand through context that he’s taken a blow to his pride, and letting the audience infer that and figure things out for themselves would be much better in this instance. Similarly, the end of ch 5 feels like it may be the weakest part of the script so far, with the entire outburst from Annie just feeling really off and extremely unsubtle, especially given how little the two characters have interacted up to this point. If you need her to blow up at Milton in this scene, she should reeeally have a different reason – it’s not even like she doesn’t have reason to be shaken in this scene, given all that just happened – because having her outright say “I’m supposed to hate nobles, but you’re not like other nobles, and I’m mad at you about it!” immediately after the very evil noble goes “nyehehe, you’re not evil like us other nobles, are you, Milton? You respect women!” is just extremely on the nose. Don’t be afraid to pump the brakes! You have a whole game to develop these arcs, you don’t need to spell them out for the player yet. Just set up your dominoes, and you can knock them down when it really counts. Let me get invested into these characters first, before you go telling me what their arcs will be.
  • The scene at the start of chapter 1 is veeeery long, and a lot of it feels very superfluous, with a lot of lines that feel like they repeat the same sentiment several times. I feel like you could cut down each of the individual scenes by a third, or even by half, and leave them nearly intact. Otherwise, I’m basically spending the first 15 minutes of the game reading, since the only gameplay in that time is more or less a cutscene map where you one shot 4 brigands in an empty field. I say this as the guy who just tells people that don’t want to read lots of dialogue to avoid my hack – it’s not that I dislike reading, it’s that it’s bad pacing.
  • I like the new support system, though I wonder what will happen in situations where you happen to not deploy a couple characters on maps where they have support talks. Will there be other chances to grow these support ranks if you miss the first opportunity? I know Vision Quest uses tellius style support growth, where it goes up when two units are deployed on the same map rather than per turn as a way to pace out the speed you gain supports while making them much easier to grow. Maybe something like that would work better if you don’t already have a contingency in place?
  • I’m curious about where Milton’s plotline is leading him. In general, the plot hasn’t really started yet in any capacity, with everyone mostly running around fighting bandits. I kind of wish we had more examples of what the new religion is like – I think it’s meant to be the Jugdral faith, right? I’m not familiar with those games, so I don’t know what any of that means, and having some kind of showcase of what the new church believes in would make it easier to invest in the (seemingly very one-sided) “dragons vs Leticia faithful” thing that’s brewing.

I don’t know if there’s anything in particular I missed, but in general my thoughts so far: Relative to Deity Device, I think maps in general flow better. It generally feels like there’s more factors pushing me to move faster, though it’s still inconsistent when and how this pressure is applied: ch 4 has a lot of capture targets that I had to play aggressively to grab in time due to how I positioned my units, but ch 5 was very leisurely since the thieves would run right up to me to steal an item off of me, which I would then take back immediately using capture. Unit parity seems greater overall due to magic being weaker and physical units being stronger, and capture ends up playing really nicely with the overall design philosophy of focusing more on a gameplay sandbox than a focused strategic flow. I think raising enemy unit quality, lowering the frequency of enemy reinforcements, and providing more reasons to engage with the capture mechanic (lowered uses on weapons/staves, more small scale stealables like cheap sellables or extra vulneraries) would help emphasize greater player expression. Overall, while it’s very clearly an early demo of the game with all the rough edges that come with that, my first impression is that this game looks poised to be much better than Deity Device; it just needs to be a bit more polished, a bit more focused, and in terms of the script, needs a bit more room to breathe. Very excited to see how you build on what you currently have. Lemme know if you have any more specific things you want me to address ^.^

6 Likes

time to play this one too

2 Likes

Thanks for leaving your thoughts. As far as the bugs, like I admit in the OP, the game is in kind of bad shape, and I’m most likely going to have to extract the script and maps and rebuild from scratch. As far as supply stalling the game, that only ever happened to me if I tried to go back into supply a second time while managing capture inventory. But I could withdraw from the supply in Chapter 5. Elthunder was working the last time it was used during my testing, so I’m sorry the game got out like that. But I kind of wanted to get some opinions before I went making a bunch more chapters. And I wanted to know if having three parties going at once would be discombobulating.

Units

-Myrmidons having innate crit was one of the things I wanted feedback on. One of the reasons Myrmidons always feel kind of underpowered is they’re supposed to be built around getting crits, but in reality, they don’t actually crit any better than anything else before promotion. I also gave the Mercenary class higher strength and defense but lowered its speed and skill to have less overlap between the two. But in general, I wanted to encourage approaching units with crit with higher defense or using Poseidon’s Barrier in the case of magic enemies. Also, I know not everyone seems to like the way I balance around passive buff skills, but Clarabel grants Crit Avoid to adjacent allies. I’m not sure what you were getting at in regards to Martha when you talk about crit and Myrmidons because she doesn’t have an innate crit bonus.

-While I know it’s hard to say because they’re only playable on two maps, my experience with Adam and Eve is a bit different from what you describe. Adam doesn’t double much, but he at least had fairly high single hit output and could take many hits with a Barrier on him. In Chapter 4, I consistently felt like I needed everyone, and he could work fairly autonomously compared to others. Eve isn’t really meant to be that great offensively because of her utility as a mounted staff user, and she starts with enough rank to use things like Torch and Restore. But she can fight in a pinch.

-As far as mages. Theo is meant to be a nuke, but he dies very easily. Several enemies in Chapter 4 can even double him. Leticia is meant to be much stronger than those around her.

-I kind of expect Phineas to feel much weaker going forward, especially in maps less heavy with axe users. I gave him Swordfaire to even out his stat spread being split between strength and magic, but I don’t expect it to carry him forever given his growths.

Maps

-I think I might make Chapter 4 last more turns as it still feels like the chapter is still going when it ends. I guess I wasn’t sure how players would feel about a nine or ten turn defense map that early on.

-In Chapter 5, I had already changed it so that Clarabel reveals an entrance to the boss room as originally she revealed a door, but it caused way too much waiting around for Annie. But I’ll think about redesigning the jail cell as well.

-For the book chapter, I admit that Barrier is the only PRF that factors into the battle, but I don’t really find there are enough enemies for it to feel awkwardly paced. Each party member can one shot one type of book, though Adam needs his HP topped off to activate his skill. Sid can one shot any book with his Silver Sword. Adam can one shot Fire and Wind Tomes, and Eve can one shot Wind Tomes. The characters are even vaguely color coded as to what they can kill.

Prep screen is planned to start from Chapter 6. You don’t have the prep screen in any of the playable chapters because the player is unlikely to have anything beyond starting equipment.

Story

-The point of the ending scene in Chapter 5 isn’t what you took from it. Not saying that isn’t my fault, but it’s not about Milton being different from other nobles. Firstly, remember that Milton is not a “noble.” He’s an elected official. Several of his scenes are about how he has to stay in the good graces of influential people to maintain his position. Which is why he reminisces about his expectations from his university days after everything goes down at the end of the chapter. The subtext written into pretty much every Milton scene is that he’s not meeting his own expectations because of the way he has to behave in order to maintain the position that will supposedly allow him to make a difference. And Annie’s reasons for blowing up at Milton more complicated than what’s on the surface. “Why do you have to be this way?” is fairly open to interpretation. Maybe it feels final because the demo ends there, but her feelings are more complicated than what you describe.

-As far as missing supports due to benching, a lot of the game will be full deploy because of the different parties.

-The church where Georgette serves plays a significant role in the opening act of the game. But the implication is that there was a massive cultural exchange between Judgral and Celesia because of Cosette and Orville (this is why Tomes and Staves exist in Celesia now), and Jugdral’s pantheon of dragon gods have taken root because of the vacuum of Celesia’s church collapsing in Deity Device. There’s not much to it other than there are twelve dragons revered as benevolent deities, and the Church was created by Bragi of the twelve crusaders who is revered in a manner similar to Saint Elimine in the Elibe games. But the symbol around Georgette’s neck is from the Heim scroll, and Kyle (the captain of the guard at the church) has the symbol from the Bragi scroll on his coat collar. Maybe things feel half assed because the story essentially at the prologue stage six chapters in due to it being structured around concurrent happenings. Perhaps it might not feel that way if this release went on longer.

3 Likes

I wouldn’t say it feels half assed, just that I don’t have enough knowledge of Jugdral to know the score beforehand.

As for ch 5, I understand there’s more to it, but it’s still a scene that reads really weirdly. Whatever the issues Annie’s nursing, the specific way she blows up feels awkward, and I know you have the skill to write that kind of dialogue in a more natural and human way from your last project. I don’t have the benefit of knowing what’s next, so the dialogue mostly elicited an audible “what the hell?” in the moment.

For the books, I don’t necessarily want to spend my silver sword on books that deal 5 damage. I generally used Tornado to bait them in since it would regen uses and was way more economical for it, + it could counter attack.

Hopefully you continue honing in on nailing the flow of the maps, this is a very promising start so far. Good luck on the next update! I’ll be there to give it another whirl when the time comes ^.^

2 Likes

Jo!
I finished the available content and it’s really promising so far. Writing as strong as always, and gameplay i have no major complaints so far as it flows really well!

It’s really interesting to return to Celesia and see what happens not only long after our Journey in DD, but also long before!

First, bugs and Typos

In the dialogue at the beginning of chapter 4 after Ms. Nun runs away upon seeing the prince this happens


For Typos i got these two


Not much, but these were what i was able to spot while playing^^

Also, 2 of Letty’s spells being prayes and the other 2 ‘‘Holy Verses’’ is kinda… distracting xD. Is it intended or is it something you overlooked?

Gameplay and Map thoughts
  • I don’t mind Myrms haing innate crits, honestly, but if it proves problematic how about replacing innate crit with Crit only on initiation?

  • In Chapter 5, i think your forgot to give the thief that spawns an extra key, because atm he just stays on the first chest after he opens it and doesn’t move


    My suggestion would be to give him an extra key and make him spawn a turn later because of the dancer there.

  • I don’t find anything troublesome with the units and maps otherwise. For early game i found the difficulty fine, aslong as it slowly starts ramping up from now on.

Script thoughts

I shall prepare for suffering. Especially Letty and Mr. Representative. Blondie is quite cocky, i like him xD.
If there’s one thing that felt a bit weird, it’s the ‘‘Why are you always like this’’ at the end of ch.5. ‘‘Always’’ for a person she just got to know is a bit…weird ngl. I think you might need to change the wording here a bit, or maybe move the discussion/arguement to a later chapter?

Suggestions
  • Since there’s no attack music to interrupt Map music anymore, can we have the same for Heal/Assist music? It quite annoys me that everytime i heal the music gets interrupted. Of course could turn animations off, but i honestly wanna see all the cool magic effects.

  • Thracia capture is amazing as always, but it’s also a pain to manage with only 5 Inventory spaces. Is it possible to have more inventory space? Thracia had 8 per character hence it worked quite well with the capture thing. Only if possible of course^^

That’s all for now, keep up the good work!

2 Likes

Surprised that Deity Device is getting a sequel. I haven’t even started on playing it yet. Seems like I have to get on with it soon, after finishing the postgame of The Last Promise with Updated Animations.

P.S. It’s going to take some time to get to Deity Device, just need to try out a few ROM hacks that caught my interest.

3 Likes

The pros:

  • Excellent writing. It’s (sadly and somewhat surprisingly) rare for a fangame to nail the writing, and when they do it tends to be either the characters or scenario but rarely both. This is “just a demo” but what it shows is extremely promising.
  • Theodore is a shithead and it’s GREAT. I can’t wait for someone to piledriver him into a stone floor, very invested in this character arc. He’s so unlikable it feels like watching a villain origin story !
  • Gameplay wise, the roster is full of quirky units and I love it. It feels weird at first but when the story starts acknowledging it (chapter 4 conv between Georgette and Poseidon for example) and you finally shift your usual paradigm to embrace what makes this hack unique it becomes a very enjoyable experience.
  • Love the clever use of prf weapons, skills and star equipments. It feels fresh and make units distinct.

Con:

  • The portraits range from ‘just okay’ to horrendous. I’d rather have the game reuse solid but generic open-source mugs than whatever nightmarish muppet monstrosity the President’s brother is supposed to be.
  • The name reminds me of Dark Deity and I’d rather forget that.
  • I can’t wait to play more, the demo’s too short !
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Deity Device was first

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Thanks for playing. I can’t seem to recreate the issue you had with the dialogue event at the start of Chapter 4, but I have had another report of it. Creating events where stuff happens in the middle of a conversation (like sound effects or music changes) can be really fussy, but it seems to be working fine, even if I mash A. Do you mind telling me what emulator you used?

Because of the way that staves and dancing are hardcoded, I don’t think there’s currently a way to have the BGM for those animations change by chapter. I also haven’t heard of anything that would expand unit inventories, but it would be pretty cool if there was something like that.

There’s a link in the OP to the original hack that this is a sequel of. Your post reads like you haven’t heard of it. And I named that hack “Fire Emblem: Deity Device” in 2019, long before I had ever heard of Dark Deity. Google was actually confusing the two for awhile, but upon just checking, it looks like that doesn’t happen anymore.

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RetroArch - Core: VBA-M. On Android if it changes anything.

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Thanks, I do all of my testing with mGBA. It’s possible that the emulator got stuck because of how busy that conversation is. When I originally wrote the scene, Adam was standing behind Poseidon, but no new portraits would show up after Georgette made her speedy exit. So I wound up removing Adam because he only had one line, and that fixed things. I’ve used versions of RetroArch that have an mGBA core. If the Android one has it, it may give a better experience.

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I seem to remember that conversation being buggy in my playthrough as well, although I forgot to write it down. There and in at least one other conversation, the text speed would permanently slow down and text boops would only play occasionally. It may be a bug with the way the text engine formatting was done?

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I did a quickfix on the patch to make Elthunder use the vanilla Bolting animation. Hopefully that will keep it form softlocking the game. I also replaced the keys held by the thieves in Chapter 5 with Lockpicks. I also gave the Lockpick an unflattering description to emphasize that it’s useless to the player. This will also prevent an issue I didn’t think of until today where someone other than Annie can potentially open the jail cell by taking a door key from one of the Thieves.

Did you have the same double portraits as Shrimperor or was it just the text speed and boops? The text speed issue might be explained if you had text speed set to fast. Because there is an instance where the text speed is set to slow for a bit before being returned to normal. If you had the text speed on fast, it might have seemed like it had been set to slow from your perspective.

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I only experienced the issues I described, but they lasted until the end of that dialogue. Maybe it isn’t properly set to stop slowing down the text?

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Because it sets the text speed to normal after the slow down, it might appear slow if you were playing with text speed set to fast. The text speed isn’t changed again, so it would stay at normal for the rest of the scene.

Screenshot 2021-10-12 233542

1 Like