Hey, I played through what’s in the hack so far on NM and thought I’d leave some feedback here. Overall, I enjoyed playing it and look forward to seeing where it goes.
Story
The overall direction of the story is interesting in that you’re actually fighting your opening party, but the pace from Prologue-6 feels really, really fast. Part of that is that the scale of the conflict is kind of odd; defeating an empress with six people in seven chapters is a pretty fast progression, even with the circumstances provided as a reason for why it it was possible (basically that the empire’s army was focused towards the east, iirc). Getting to the actual group of playables is important, but it does make it more difficult to care about fighting your old group when they don’t have a whole lot of time to shine, imo (and Chapter 3 kinda feels like a filler chapter storywise, so there’s even less time). Also, I’m not a huge fan of the “I can’t fall here. I must make my retreat” style which happens with a lot of characters that I’ve seen so far (Saif and Galeforce Knight twice, your entire old group besides Janna, Emil). In moderation, I think it’s fine, but it happened a lot in what’s currently in the demo, so I just thought I’d mention it (also an entirely subjective point on my end). On the other hand, I’ll say that the Miriam’s Mix thing ended up being really clever as I was wondering, “why rename Vulneraries?”, but then it turned out to be brainwash juice, so the change made a lot of sense for gameplay-story integration. This does lead to a weird situation after that where you can still use them even after Moira is gone, which kind of seems like a plot hole? Not sure how you would go about resolving that, but I didn’t actually see the twist fully until Chapter 5 when it became beyond obvious from the village, so the twist did its job. I can’t say much about the story after that since there’s not much to go on so far, but I’m curious to see where it ends up.
Gameplay
Prologue
Not much to say about this one since it’s fairly short. Originally, Roman was really bad pre-buffs (to the point of being ORKO’d on NM by the Brigands here if he uses an Iron Axe), but I replayed with the new patch, which seemed to fix that issue.
Chapter 1
This map was alright. I felt like the village was kind of out of the way at that point since you don’t have any higher Move units, and it’s in the opposite way compared to the one you want to go. Emil kinda felt like a chump, since you can just hit him from range with Miriam/Jakob pretty safely. The left side and right sides ultimately kinda feels like areas you won’t ever go to since there’s not much reason to. It could be cool to make the snag near the start usable to give the player another path to take here.
Chapter 2
I like this map a good bit. The only part that was somewhat annoying was Janna pathing toward the boss instead of going for the treasure, which now has been fixed, so I don’t have any criticism in mind.
Chapter 3
Not a big fan of the fog ballista, lol. I don’t think I ended up losing anyone from it, but I think fog siege weapons in general are kinda sketch. Aside from that, the houses giving tips about certain enemies having items wasn’t particularly useful, as I ended up getting them before even visiting them. I thought the chapter overall was ok though.
Chapter 4
Wasn’t huge on this chapter overall. For one thing, I don’t think it’s really feasible to save the top village because of how many enemies there are on the right side (even when I moved as fast I could, they ended up bodyblocking the path upwards anyway). This also makes visiting the Armory a pain because you need to go upwards to take care of Saif and his cav reinforcements (which are really annoying on a Rout map, especially because they continue for quite a while).
As a result, the map feels kind of like a grind overall. I think just reducing the turns on how long the reinforcements spawn could help a bit with this.
Chapter 5
I generally liked this map. I do think that getting Excalibur through the village may not be the best just because it makes Excalibur not an item the player will definitely have (and not having it would make the next chapter significantly more difficult). Aside from that, the overall amount of combat felt good, though it did fall off a bit towards the end. Some enemies did feel kind of weak (the Steel Lance Cav reinforcements were doing 0 damage to Lily, though she may just be incredibly blessed).
Chapter 6
This one has a couple of issues, imo. For one, the chests are scattered all over the place without any droppable Chest Keys, so you have to have bought them at the shop in the map before. If you didn’t do that (either through not looking at the shop menu or just assuming they wouldn’t be necessary), then Janna has to run all over the map to get all of them, which takes a lot of time. Janna also has her own issues on this map. In my case, her Iron Sword was low on uses, and thanks to no Preps and being blocked off from all of the other units, she couldn’t even break the wall on her side. This probably isn’t that common, but it can lead to a situation where Janna just can’t fight back against the enemies that charge her, which is not good imo. If this happens, getting rid of the Bolting mage becomes a pain, on top of dealing with all the other enemies. Saif and his Paladins are the icing on the cake, as they jump you when you’re probably dealing with other enemies, further making that map risky.
Chapter 7
This chapter gives you Reiner, who essentially stomps the rest of the map (not sure about post-nerfs though). He’s pretty much necessary to actually reach the top right village on time (also, having the enemy monsters destroy the villages kind of threw me off). But having to rush over that way made going to the bottom left village feel more annoying, and I ultimately ended up skipping it. The bottom right village was also a bit tedious to get to, which also made Saif (and by extension, the Sasha) not end up taking part in much of the action in this chapter since he had to wrap all the way around. Joseph’s recruitment seemed a little luck-based as well because of potential green unit shenanigans, but Reiner probably makes that a non-issue usually. Also, a lot of the reinforcements towards the top right of the map were pretty easy to just hold at the chokepoint. I liked the map on the whole.
Commenting on the characters that join here, Sasha seems pretty meh, Joseph seems alright, and Rebekkah was kind of underwhelming. Her Prf in particular is just not great since it’s not even effective against all monsters so far as I can see, and it’s 3 Mt, so even when it is effective, I saw her doing less damage than other units in the one scenario where she should do more.
Chapter 8
I like the general structure of this chapter and the idea. Some parts of it can be kind of rough though. This is a minor thing, but Lily visually being the same as any other cavalier caught me off guard (pretty sure it resulted in a reset, which was not fun, lol). Carl was a real nuisance because of how dodgy he is along with sorta awkward timing for when he reaches you, so the green unit army dealt with him. The problem with this green unit army is that they don’t turn blue at any point afaik (no talks), and Reiner will pretty much run through the entire rest of the map if you don’t rush along with him. Also, even if Reiner attacks Moira at full health, one miss leads to him getting oneshot. Idk what happens if he dies, but I think letting them be temporarily player units would make this less of an issue. This pressure to move rightward also makes the top left village and Emil’s recruitment more difficult than it probably would be otherwise. This is partially a result of the thief AI that brigands seem to have where they ignore your units. Also, Moira in general is super sketchy to fight because of how strong Excalibur is + she’s on a fort. I was lucky enough to just have enough damage with Rebekkah’s Inspiration to have a semi-accurate OHKO hit chance with Roman, but it seems fairly inconsistent and could prob soft lock some people or require savestating. One last thing: did I miss a unit? There’s an open deploy slot here for some reason, and I only missed the bottom left village in Chapter 7.
Typos
These are all examples of comma splices, which is where two sections of a sentence that could stand alone are separated by a comma. Ways to fix this would be either just making the comma a period and separating the parts into two sentences, adding a coordinating conjunction (and, for, but, or, etc.) after the comma, or making the commas semi-colons. There’s a lot of these, so even fixing just some of them would help a lot imo. All the typos after this point should be specific things.
Usually is “ring”
should be “have to”
“shipwrecking” sounds kind of odd in this way; I think “shipwreck” would sound better here(and in the other times where “shipwrecking” is used, mostly)
should be “amnesia”
should be “gladly”
first “to” can be removed
“had” should be “have”
pretty sure the period should be a question mark since this sentence is just an extension of a question
should be “caught” instead of “catched”
“more” should be removed
could either do “Tell me why Dagran’s…” instead of “Tell me, why did Dagran’s…” or you could just put a question mark where the period is
Needs a space after the first exclamation mark
either “You were a living legend” or “You used to be a living legend” would work instead
should be “you’re used to relying on” (also another example of a comma splice)
Last sentence ends strangely
should be “past”
question mark looks a bit odd starting a sentence, but also, “What” after it needs a space
I don’t remember the exact error here, but I think it’s that the first sentence says something like “wanted to do nothing with me anymore” when the phrase is usually “wanted nothing to do with me anymore”
should be “able to”
should be “retainers”
should be “battlefield”
usually is “let you in on”
“I we” should be “we”
“Somehow” should be “somehow”
should be a question
“went” should be removed
should be “Empress” since it’s at the front of her name
should either be “refuses” or “has refused”; right after this, I think one line says “Feurburg”
don’t think the comma at the end is necessary; should be “hesitate”
should be “in” instead of “on”; also, “best knights” again
should be “think”
should be a question
should be “absence”
should be “knights”
should be “motherland”
seems like this should be “can be no” or “can’t be”
A possessive for any singular word, whether it ends in a s or not, should have 's after to indicate it (i.e. empress’s). There are a very small number of exceptions, but generally, it should always be 's.
seems like the period should be a comma
should be “two”
should end in a question
All of these battle convos cut off. I didn’t see Roman’s with Jakob, so that one may also cut off (not sure though).
Should be “It was” instead of “I was”
should replace or remove one “only” to avoid repetition
should be “such a warrior”
“our” should be removed or some other word should go before it like “we shall make our advance”, for example
should be “Highness’s”
should be “thoroughly”; also another comma splice
“sign an alliance” sounds off; may sound better as forge, enter, or create an alliance
“know” should be “now”
