[FE8] Fire Emblem: Souls of the Forest

[Scraiza]

Hello FEU! After much time in the shade, I’m here to announce my project.

Fire Emblem: Souls of the Forest is a gameplay focused hack made with FEBuilder that I’ve been developing since around late 2017, and now I feel like it’s a good time to make a public release.

I’ve done changes on this project which I feel modify the vanilla FE gameplay to give the game it’s own unique, yet not cluttered, experience.

The hack features:

• Three difficulties and many custom gameplay options, such as 100% Criticals, Fixed growths, Reverse mode, and many more. Lunatic Reverse is the intended mode for those seeking a tough game, but Normal and Hard are also avaliable, and the modifiers are completely optional.

• Thracia style trading.

• 16 chapters and 3 sidequests, the first 8 chapters and 1 sidequest have writing in them.

• 27 playable characters, all with custom portraits.

• The standard quality of life hacks, such as warnings for effective/killer weapons, HP bars, growth rate display, etc.

• Classes each only have access to one weapon type, but weapon triangle power is greatly increased.

• Bows have 2-3 range as standard.

• Mounted units have a bit less move in general, but possess Canto+.

• Custom art mostly made by myself, or obtained from the Ultimate Graphics Repository.

• Almost entirely custom music.

• Strong emphasis on weapon types and class individuality.

• Master Seals as the sole promotion item.

• No ambush spawns.

• Generic replacement units that join if you lose enough units.

There’s supports, they increase based on deployment, similar to games like Path of Radiance and New Mystery, but there’s no writing done on them yet.

Specific gameplay changes can be read in the diary that the game has.

The patch can be downloaded here:

SotF8.2.ups

The hack’s discord:

Join the Souls of the Forest Discord Server!

Screenshots:

[Mega]

An archer lord is mega nut.

[WhydidImakethisaccount]

Seems like a neat concept. Congratulations on making a public release! I will surely try it out!

[StreetHero]

Why not put the ups here already? Because i hate discord for " tell me what to do "

[ShinKuma]

Something else to invest a weekend into. Thanks and good luck with any additional progress.

[Klokinator]

I don’t hate Discord. However, the more hoops someone has to jump through to play your hack, the fewer people who will actually play it. Put the link here asap.

[Scraiza]

Sorry for that, my internet was just temperamental and somehow didn’t want to let me upload to dropbox, but now it’s up, so you can download it directly

[AlfredKamon]

Very nice project, I’ll try it out for sure.

Edit: Beryl’s animation is so badass.

In your events, use _0x0228 0x7 before ENDA if you want to avoid that “fade to black” effect.

[Tequila]

New EA should have that defined as NoFade.

[Kirb]

Didnt the name change to EVBIT_T 0x7, which is defined as NoFade anyways

[AlfredKamon]

Listen guys, I’m 80 years old, new EA is for young’uns

[Kirb]

And what do you think the elder in elder wizard stands for?

[AlfredKamon]

Some feedback. I’m playing Lunatic. I won’t comment on the story since… there isn’t one. I will merely leave some insight about gameplay.

CH1

1. Beryl is very cool, but he has trouble doing anything. He has very low firepower, and despite the utility of 2-3 bows, he can’t kill anything and needs some babysitting. For a lord, it’s a bit underwhelming. Moreover, most of the damage in this hack comes from the Weapon Triangle, and he hasn’t access to that.

2. Once the initial wave is gone, the rest of the enemies don’t do anything. You can just bait them one at a time, which is a bit boring.

3. I like how the gameplay revolves around Canto+.

4. The small graphical changes are very appreciated: the map UI, the map palettes, the status screen, the battle frames, etc. QoL improvements overall.

CH2

1. There are two height errors in the map. I’m referring to the “broken wall” tiles. You’re connecting a 2nd floor with the base floor, which is geometrically impossible.

2. A Devil Axe with 26 Mt and 126 Hit is a poor design choice. As you wrote in the description, “It’s a roll of the dice”, which… is never a good idea in FE since it already has so many RNG factors. I’d recommend to make it considerably weaker.

3. Why does the soldier have 42 HP?

4. Aside from that, the map is fun, challenging and with a great variety of units.

[Pikmin1211]

Congrats on release Scraiza! <3

[Scraiza]

Devil axe is a gamble, that’s the whole purpose of the devil axe, it’s intentionally broken early on.

If you don’t want to risk it, don’t use it, you don’t need it unless you mess up.

[Scraiza]

Thx fam, the supprt from every one of the early crew got it this far.

[AlfredKamon]

It’s your take on the Devil Axe; I personally dislike the whole purpose of the Devil Axe and I think that Intelligent Systems created a very unbalanced and nonsensical weapon. In fact, they never used that concept again. However, I can understand your point and I accept it. Thank you for sharing.

Aside from that, I took some time to write that feedback, and you only considered the small critique to that weapon. I don’t want to be that guy, but I have to say that shrugging off the constructive criticism of the first players of your hack isn’t exactly the best way to market your product.

[Scraiza]

Sorry if it sounded rude, wasn’t my intention
In regards to Ch1, if you’re careless the stationary mercs+archer+brigand can gang up on you as they share ranges, that’s the threat they’re supposed to create, it’s a first map so I’d rather not overwhelm the player

On Ch2, I’m not really sure about how to make the wall holes look good lol, I guess I could just eliminate the stair tiles. and the bulky soldier is just so their steel lance doesn’t just get killed effortlessly, since they don’t really have any other stats

[AlfredKamon]

It’s okay, don’t worry. Glad that you’re taking this seriously.

I approve of the soldier concept. I also went for a high HP, high Str variant in Midnight Sun. I wanted to see if that was your idea as well. I’ve never liked how squishy the soldiers were in vanilla, like, these people should be militarily trained, not just some fodder with weaker stats than a common bandit.

As for the walls, yeah, try removing the stairs, I see no other course of action there.

I will play more this weekend and let you know.

[Klokinator]

So, I disagree with you, Alfred, regarding his devil axe change. In fact, I implemented an identical devil axe based on the one that appeared in FE7if.

That being said, I don’t like either one compared to my ideal devil axe, but I’ll explain.

Original: 50 Hitrate, 20 MT, 20 WT, 31-LUK chance to backfire. This has a LOT of luck variance factors. Not only can it easily miss entirely (Which is at least good for building wlvls safely!) but it also has a backfire chance.

My Devil Axe: 120 Hitrate, 25 MT, 25 WT, 30-LUK rate to backfire. I originally changed the devil axe so it was less luck based. Since it was basically guaranteed to hit, and basically guaranteed to deal a shitload of damage, the only luck-based element here is the backfire chance, which I made possible to negate entirely via having 30 LUK. This is a pretty good implementation.

My Ideal Devil Axe: 120 Hitrate, 25 MT, 25 WT, Does not backfire, but drains 1 max life every time the user attacks with it. Becomes unusable when the user is at 1 max life.

My ideal implementation would allow the axe to still exact a grievous penalty on the user, but one that might be worth the guaranteed huge damage it deals. It’s OP, as strong as an S-rank weapon, but not luck based at all, which makes it the ideal solution. I’ve never seen anyone suggest a better idea than my implementation that Brendor made, so I think this is the best solution to the Devil Axe Dilemma.