Sorry to hear that. I appreciate the reasoning for it not appealing; and yeah, I think if by C8/C9 the hack’s rhythm isn’t clicking for you, I don’t think it would suddenly start to in the second half of the game. Thanks for giving it a shot, regardless, and taking the time to outline your thoughts.
7 Likes
Please don’t get discouraged by this, I do think that you made a good hack. I just wanted to be honest.
And it’s funny, because FE4 is one of my most played FE games, so you’d think I would enjoy this one. The map stuff happening all in one sequence instead of being segmented was a big deal, though.
6 Likes
love all of the act 3 chapters. The siege one specifically
End spoiler
Was expecting we have to fight Micah a second time as a dragon like the traditional fire emblem “BBEG Is a monster that fills the entire screen when you fight them”
But that didn’t bother me tbh
oh yeah uhh not really the reviewer type, I feel like analysis from other people are more accurate.
But I do want to say this, this is the only hack that I replay past chapters only because of the story.
3 Likes
Hi mate, just popping in to tell you a couple of things.
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This is probably the best romhack out of the forty or so I’ve ever played.
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Clio seems like a fine unit but I’ve decided to bench her purely because of her death quote. I absolutely can’t handle hearing that several times a playthrough.
hoo roo, have a good one
3 Likes
It is patchday. With a devblog alongside it!
Now, note that if you’re past C11, the Temperstone is going to revert to 0/50 durability. So it’s going to be useless to you (unless Hammerned, presumably). But it was useless before, so hey, you aren’t losing out. If you haven’t yet received the Temperstone, it will function fine on arrival.
Unfortunately, given that I’m travelling cross-country on a laptop and a lot of my files are, uh, on an unattached solid state in my ex’s glasses case rattling around in a messenger bag, adequately testing the game has been a lot harder than it normally would, as has getting ahold of assets. So changes in this patch have been limited to being relatively safe ones. Even so, I’m paranoid as hell something’s broken… but then, I always am.
As regards gameplay, I’m adding deployment slots to a bunch of maps. As I said earlier, I’m kind of happy to have to be making this change. The one I dithered on most was E-2, which now offers 20 slots. Feels excessive, but there’s definitely plenty for them to do. The others affected were mostly ones that deliberately left the player a little shorthanded, probably to excess.
So this and pretty much all other changes have had a tendency to make the game easier over time. I’d like to… eventually push back against that, but the trouble is that making things harder really needs to be tested. I’m not in a position to do that for a bit. Suffice to say that the current hack is something of a hybrid of the eventual Normal and Hard modes; the timings are slack like Normal’s will be, but there’s going to be a removal of some of the enemy density in both modes, that in Hard will be compensated by enemies being stronger. But in order to do that right, I need to play this final Hard mode. And that’s probably a month or two off. I need a break from playing DoW, let alone serious design. So we’re in something of a maintenance cycle for now.
Two characters were in line for buffs; Karolas now has better resistance to let him properly be the well-rounded, ready-for-anything partisan he is in-story. And Catsidhe… has always been a troublesome unit to use. Myrrh With Better Numbers doesn’t really function in DoW; she needs to level slower because the enemies are far stronger and the chapters beefier, and that dynamism of regular massive levels is a lot of Myrrh’s appeal. There’s enough of the good dragonstone to basically always use, the other stone is useless… so she isn’t really a terribly interesting or fun unit, which is a pity. Nor is she a particularly interactive unit. You just… use the good stone, not the shit stone, unless it’s finishing a guy.
So I’ve taken the decision to give her two actually relevant stones, each with 50 uses (should be plenty); the Glisterstone is now weaker, 1-2 range, and hulks up her resistance, the Temperstone is now 16-might melee and bulks up her defence. I have… no idea how this balances, having not had the chance to try her out, but she was weak enough before that I can’t imagine this will make her overpowered overnight. So now she has tactical depth, and should hopefully be a more appealing unit to use, in line with her story significance.
Cat was really the last of the problem children, so if this change sticks, I’m honestly pretty happy with cast balance. The boss recruits are still very strong, but a tightening of the economy - largely following Pandan’s suggestions - should make it more of a sacrifice to fill your squad with them. In the few tier lists I’ve seen, placement of the bulk of the cast tends to have a fair degree of variance; I think I’ve seen every unit be taken to endgame at some point, and that at this point, every unit has a clear place. Even if some places are better than others.
Speaking of story, I’ve received some very in-depth and as a result extremely useful feedback over te past month or so. Part of my thought process going in was that people aren’t really going to dig into the corners of a hack; play it once, put it down. That assumption was incorrect… which is a good thing, but there’s definitely aspects of the hack that could have stood to be expanded on, that I’ve rightly been pulled up on. While a perk of the boss recruits in my mind was that they could largely be fire-and-forget, there’s definitely occasions post-recruitment at which they really should say something. Also, there are some dynamics that are slightly undercooked, or at least could benefit from a bit more expansion.
Trouble with this is, it’s a pretty dense hack as-is. Finding places to slide in significant scene additions is tough. But there’s avenues which weren’t explored much in 1.0, and it’s been pointed out that boss conversations were badly underutilised as an arena to let characters interact without bloating pre- and post-chapter scene counts. So a few more of those have been added, and a few that were meant to work but were ordered incorrectly have now been rectified.
Honestly, there’s pretty much no way to fully explore all the aspects that feel they could do with full exploration - the story is, ultimately, a little too big for a 22-chapter hack’s own good - but the hope is that it will feel less stretched or wasteful in places, and to hopefully patch over the sense that this hack was largely written on the fly without much detailed planning from the top. Because, uh, that’s exactly what happened.
What’s the roadmap going forward? We’re getting very close to the definitive edition of DoW, in part because I’m experiencing more and more the immensely frustrating experience of ‘fixing something is leading to errors elsewhere’ (just look at the v. 1.05-era mega-prepromotes infesting Act 2, as a result of what should have been a clean bugfix). I do aim to formally make the Normal / Hard split once I’m situated in Australia, and all the various other patches, and at that point I’ll be done with sweeping changes, given that… I’ll have to apply them to several different ROMs.
And then there’s other plans, beyond DoW, but you’ll have to wait until FEE3 to find out what…
1.15 Patchnotes
- Fixed misplaced tile changes
- Blades reduced in price to standard sword levels (though slightly more expensive per use)
- Pavel now begins game with Ruby Gem instead of Lapis
- Master Seal sell price reduced from 1250 to 500
- Steel swords and ash longbows now correctly give double WEXP
- Iron blade WEXP reduced to 1
- Boss music now plays correctly for all bosses
- Corrected Sagittary having a weakness to Kreshnikeve
- Some scenes and conversations added
- Karolas: +2 Res / +5% Res growth
- Catsidhe: Stone effects overhauled significantly
- C4: Fixed issue where door key backup on right flank could be lured at range
- C5: Replaced Ecorcheur pseudotimer swordmasters with future Ecorcheur bosses
- C12: Fixed issue where Purge adept would move
- C10, C12, E-1, E-2: Added two deployment slots
- C13: Added deployment slot
- C15: Stealable Lapis Gem on swordmaster downgraded to Ruby Gem
13 Likes
Are you trying to patch to a clean rom?
That’s why it does not work. Make sure you’re applying the patch to a clean rom.
1 Like
I’m on E-1 at the moment, how many maps are left? The game feels like it’s telling me it’s the last couple of chapters, which is terribly sad as I’m still enjoying the hack hugely
goes to E-3 (so 2 more)
Blast, but thanks
Just finished it. Great hack, great experience, probably the best out of the dozens I’ve played, as I mentioned before. Sad to see it go, but I leave you with my end-game Roxy
What a fucking beast
3 Likes
Just got to Chapter 11. I was going to wait until I’d finished to say something but couldn’t help myself. From a gameplay perspective it might be amongst my favorite projects to date. From a story one it most certainly is. When people talk about wanting more “mature” themes in their Fire Emblem, this is what I envision. You do a fantastic job of capturing the world’s perspective from the soldiers fighting on the frontline. The writing has often times reminded me of Glen Cook’s The Black Company, which I consider to be at the height of the genre. I love that so many of the initial characters continue to have speaking lines and comment on current affairs, something I’ve always found sorely lacking in other games. The codex entries are also an extremely nice touch, and one I was happy to find when I was looking to see if the game had any mechanical information.
The initial party aren’t the only ones I’ve enjoyed getting to know either. I think I may have recruited bosses just as often as liquidating them solely because they looked interesting and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It’s one of the more original mechanics I’ve seen, and so far I think it’s been genius. I’ve hardly had anyone die, but I could see how it’s helpful for less-experienced players to bolster necessary spots in their army, and for others to acquire some much needed gold. From an economical perspective, even with all my recruiting I haven’t been streched too thin. But I appreciate that the convoy armory has been expanded, while shops on the map are generally carrying more interesting equipment to purchase.
I’ve put about close to 18 hours in so far. The maps are dense with plenty to do, which is what I prefer. Large deploy counts, with multiple objectives. They’re difficult and interesting, but not to the point I’ve felt overwhelmed. The map where I had to defend Micah was the one that required me to activate the majority of my brain cells and retry it.
I really don’t have anything bad to say here. Slim Weapons being upgrades over Iron was discovered later on, forcing me to undo generations of Fire Emblem programming instilled in me. I appreciate that looking at growth rates is disabled. I think it detracts too much from who I want to use. I also thought a certain paladin would rejoin with his boss stats, only to be disappointed that they were his original Level 1 stats instead!
Looking forward to finishing the rest of this as soon as I’m able to.
5 Likes