[FE8] Fire Emblem: Souls of the Forest

Anybody who buffs the weapon triangle is an amazing human being in my eyes.

Congratz on this latest release. Gonna take a dive into this hack in the next week or so. :triumph: :mask: I love it when stealing has no correlation with speed! :hot_face: :money_mouth_face: :cold_face: :heart_eyes: :innocent:

Am at 14x and yeah

I only started like 2 days ago so the recent hotfix is definitely there.
(Oh btw this Hack is freaking fun. Wanted to mention that but was having so much fun I can barely take my hands off this game)


found another hahahaha

strange It I was playing the chapter just fine but I had to leave (Forgot that unlike normal FE it doesn’t autosave so I had to restart). I came back and reboot and all the weird stuff happened.

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I am aware of this bug but I’m not sure of what exactly causes it. I updated my installation of Expanded Modular Save for the next hotfix 17, so that should hopefully fix it? It will break saves though, so be sure you have a savestate, load it, and save after the update drops

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First of all thank you for all your work, the hack is very fun. I love that we can do ridiculous things like this with all the tools.

Sorry Master sword swordmaster you can’t crit this unit.

Now the matter I was playing chapter 20 and I found that the male falcoknight is weak to Lochaber besides the arrow weakness


so maybe the male falcoknight class is being considered cavalry and flyier at the same time, because the female falcoknight isn’t weak to the Lochaber.

First of all thank you for all your work, the hack is very fun. I love that we can do ridiculous things like this with all the tools.
image

Weak…
SotfV9Hotfix17-13

At least my unit has over 100% crit. And how is the difference 20, do you have 2 lucky seal?

Edit: Ok there is a second seal

After looking around into a mixture of things in the builder, i noticed those intermission maps and also realised I wasn’t actually asked if I wanted to do them, is there a particular reason for that?

epic
hotfix 20 has a very cool and funny item that will make swordmasters not suck imo

3 Likes

Where would I find this item at? Looks like fun!

it’s a droppable item in chapter 13

So uh, was I supposed to actually have a choice between valsith and rakel’s route or is one route not finished yet?

Rakel’s route isn’t finished.

Ok, I was curious because I noticed a bunch of stuff in some of the eventing on some maps that never actually came up.

Swordmaster Rakel when/J

Ok, I have now finished the Valysith route and have some… strong feelings about this hack.

Gameplay

I’m ripping this Bandage off first and foremost. Chapter 1-17 were a fair challenge, had a few rough encounters but didn’t lose anyone while managing to do as much as possible, i was given a lot of weapons to use and plenty of need for them since I did all the gaidens as well, speaking of.

Chapters 17x-Final2 are severely unfun. Atleast to me and I shall elaborate to the best of my abilities for each from what I can remember. Starting with the overarching complaint I have. There is no justification for massively inflating unit stats with equipment, all it does is serve to frustrate the player when now they have to punch through a general with 47 defense, 38 res and 70 HP, or a sniper with 37 defense and res and 68 HP while also having 28 Speed, just makes using some units actually impossible.

Generals, all physical mounted units Wyverns and Eldrich Knights struggle from here on out from this point onward due to having lower speed caps the every other class, 24 for paladins, 22 for wyverns and 21 for Generals and E-Knights.

Whereas Bishops, Sages, and Valkyries have 27 and Warriors have 26. Snipers, Berserkers, Heroes, the single Deserter, Pegasus Knights, Assassins, and anything else I forgot all have 30 meaning unless weighed down they will easily double over half the cast of playable units on these stages.

Now for my few map issues.

17x, Those Inflated Snipers in thracian fog is mean and a serious dick move if you’re using fliers or the cavs. I get reigning in fliers but since they ALL have 3-5 range and inflated defense killing them is pain in the ass.

23, Rakel’s soulbound is too powerful, 31 speed doing 40 pierce damage is too much. If the intended plan was to bait her away using someone holding the earth power you get, fine, but that seriously isn’t intuitive in the slightest.

Final1-2. Oh boy the only other thing i actively despise when hacks do, obtuse mechanics and weapons with over 100% crit. I don’t think its possible to actually unequip weapons in the GBA games so the entire gimmick on the boss fails, 1-15 range is severe overkill and only dealing 25% damage is needlessly harsh coupled with 99 might and unless every one in your 18 slots has 80 HP she is going to kill someone every turn till you kill her, and if not her then the two bolting mages will likely finish them off.

Then we get to the other half, every single one of those spirit weapons have 200% crit is bad, ontop of that they all have 30 speed/power and take half damage. they literally kill anyone they attack this isn’t fun or challenging its just bullshit. You have 1 crit blocker at this point if you didn’t steal that iron rune earlier. And with them all having either 1, 2, or 3, range with overlapping movement something will slip through and start a conga line of kills, it straight up demands everyone using Meister weapons just to not be killed since even with supports you can’t survive a single attack.

its just so damn frustrating.

Story

I don’t really know how to feel about this one. Its pretty decent all and all but my gripes with it mostly stem from it being incomplete currently.

Though was truly irks me is killing Rakel off screen. Since I had her supported with Beryl and it remained there after she left I assumed she’d rejoin before the end and who do I find on chapter 23? Her Corpse. That angered me. Since it ment I wasted Beryl’s supports on her.

I also feel like revived Maeshlan needs a portrait to convey some of what was actually done to him, his battle sprite not having a face was a neat touch, but doesn’t work if the player doesn’t let him see combat that map.

Since obivously i don’t know what you have planned for Rakels route I’d strongly advise against using the plotpoints of, “without rakel and beryl the empire was overrun and valysith and sybil are both killed or join the villans and get turned into overpowered soulbounds the player has to fight” it would be seriously boring to effectively have the exact same premise happen on both routes, and considering how near the end Sybil starts to talk about making the hard choices and looking beyond yourself, and Valysith starts to show signs of PTSD as well as his struggle to accept some of sybils choices it seems like that might be the way Rakel’s route is set to go.

I also kinda felt like the story didn’t know who the main character was supposed to be. I mean (with the pre-hotfix20 version i’m on) you get all this dialogue showing rakel struggling with some pretty severe PTSD and beryl clearly recognising it and wanting to help someone he sees as a friend in need of help and what does he do, just completely abandons her when she needs it most when he could likely bring her back if she just actually talked to him about it. to instead follow a leader who quite literally has no idea what she’d seen since this who event started and refuses to accept that sending someone to try to bring her back might be a tactically sound desicion due to her status as the emperoress’ right hand, which gets to be even more galling once he actually sees more of what she’s seen and starts to show simmilar signs of mental duress.

This just ended up alienating me to valysith and his character, he starts off like this valiant leader who thinks calmly and rationally but once he joins us slowly becomes irrational and jaded to the point of almost committing treason solely for personal reasons which would have doomed the very lands he sought to protect.

Finally, Bugs

only really ran into two, and one I’m not even sure is a bug.

  1. Both Rakel and Innisa can use knives for some reason.
  2. Deserter can infinitely repromote into itself.

Both of those bugs are secret features lol

2 Likes

Souls of the Forest

a hack infamous for its crazed creator making insane difficulty with insane mechanics

I have to admit, the first version I played of this (which I can’t even remember what version exactly) like twoish years ago(?) really didn’t impress me, it felt so overwhelming that I could feel the map breathing down my neck stifling me.

However, as it stands, the current version of Souls of the Forest is a game I’d have to recommend to everyone to at least try once. It really strikes a wonderful balance of having such familiar mechanics in a different coat of skin and usually taking the weapon triangle convenience into something that affects almost every other moment.

The enemies are just as deadly and versatile as ever, but the player units have just enough of a stronger fighting edge that creates a very tough but very fair feeling experience.

What I wasn’t expecting to be drawn in by, however, was the writing. I was pretty damn entrenched in the dynamic of Rakel and Beryl. I felt the game did a good job of justifying both of their opposing viewpoints about the world and didn’t insist one was more correct than the other.

Extended Thoughts/Critiques

I did feel later on the game really lost steam post where the intended route split would be after chapter 16.

It felt like ch6/7 also did an excellent job of establishing the soulsborne as a terrifying force but then it gets a bit sidelined with the other country, and when we return… they’ve made zero progress since we’ve last seen them.

Like I didn’t mind too much, because the plot felt focused on the character dynamics was the focus rather than stopping the cult.

…then Rakel leaves and you side with Val to defend the empire.

Imo, the current route in the game is a bit dry relative to what was there earlier. The story changes so much focus and relegates Beryl from an up and coming leader to someone who kinda just gets thrown to the sidelines in the face of two new lords.

Both were semi-established and I don’t have anything particularly wrong with them in a vacuum, but I still feel that we didn’t really… have super much of a reason to get attached to the lord that joins in ch17 AND THEN the lord that joins in ch19. Both really compete for establishing themselves and as a result, the lord that I grew attached to got elbowed out of problem solving the plot he discovered first with Rakel.

It feels like he’s almost forgotten by the game and then remembers by having one of the two new lords pull Beryl aside and asks “but how do you feel about X”

I also feel like the objectives of the maps after this were a bit more… linear/boring. The game had mostly seize maps post super early game, but it was a bit surreal to have a game that generally went hard to avoid cheese kinda just went “eh, do what you want”

ch17 = talk with anyone
ch17x = talk with someone who can be a flier
ch18 = prep map
ch19 = fog of war map which I did like enough
ch20 = nothing particularly wrong, but didn’t do much for me sieze map
ch21 = Big symmetric defeat boss castle map, with chest items on par with enemy drops
ch22 = Rout! and a really fun rout!
ch23 = defeat boss, cool set piece idea but I 1 turned effortlessly
endgame = felt more focused on being different rather than being fun IMO

Also the way that enemies stacked S ranks for stats ironically made them less threatening for the most part because they lost the weapon flexibility they once had. Just swapped out interesting enemies for more stat stick enemies which I didn’t love.

I also think the game feels less about “unique characters” and more “making the weapon types/classes themselves unique” for the most part but that’s completely fine and more just me noticing something about the design lol.

Tons of nitpicking aside…

All in all, I can say I played an FE title unlike any other. And I cannot wait to see the other route. Though I’ll probably replay with a different squad before that even drops lmfao.

1 Like

Is there a skill system?