With a main emphasis on using what vanilla systems are there to create unique map objectives and scenarios without relying on heavy ASM usage, units that have distinct weaknesses rather then just being plain good, and an FE10 style party split with 3 unique campaigns to explore. I’m making this in hopes of getting better in the future!
Snyopsis:
Our adventure entails in the land of Paulo. A land rich with history not a soul could remember. Join our 3 protagonists as they each take differing perspectives into this lush land of mystery…and unfold a secret plot unbeknownst to the entire population…
Part 3 (6 Total Chapters):
14x (Completed, Needs Playtesting)
15 (Completed, Needs Playtesting)
16 (Completed)
16x (In-Progress)
17 (No Progress)
Finale (No Progress)
Screenshots
Bugs/Notices
The “AS” in the items menu of the stat screen does not display Attack Speed. This will be fixed (Hopefully) in the next major update.
There are grammar issues. And there are a lot of them.
Content Rating
ESRB Rating: E10
Fantasy Violence
Randomized
Here’s a version of Steel Will that’s randomized via Vesly’s Self Randomized Project. However, this will only cover Part 1 of Steel Will.
Well, a large, Iron Man friendly cast, enemies that’ll hit hard, Manaketes, a rather simplistic story (at least for part 1), a few archtypes from the first game, and characters with generally lower defense.
I’m currently balancing chapter 2 right now. The first demo will have a planned 9 chapters.
Well, the wait is over. FE Steel Will’s beta demo drops today, containing 9 chapters of content! This is a beta demo though, so it hasn’t been playtested by anyone but myself.
Download link is at the top of the thread. Along with new screenshots, and a recruitment guide. A secrets guide will be created for the next update as well.
New Screenshots
Player and enemy units don’t fully have their palettes yet, those will be in the next update, but the gameplay is ready for beta playtesting. If you discover any bugs or glitches, please let my know and I’ll squish 'em! I would gladly accept feedback for the project in all departments.
And yes, the TLP Mini mugs will be resolved. Eventually.
Hello! Minor update to Steel Will, adding the character palettes for Part 1 for both player and enemy characters.
Development on Steel Will has slowed down a bit since I’ve been working on my entry for Celica for the past month, so development of the hack will commence around April 12th to 14th or so after the deadline.
That’s all from me. Patch is at the top of the Thread. Till next time!
Side note: “Ech” in my language means “Eh.” Must be an eh prince.
Grammar is also iffy in places. There’s “they are prepared for our kingdom to concluded,” for one.
“Ceramony” is a consistent misspelling. Then there is “hastely,” rather than “hastily.”
The guy on the left here blinks with his right eye before the left. (From the perspective of the player, it’s his left eye.)
I’m going to become Narcian and order YOUR public evisceration. Kidding.
This is a consistent mistake in the script, too. I didn’t see a single spot where this mistake hadn’t been made.
Bad choice of text splitting. Splitting at the end of sentences, or where you place punctuation, is preferred. Also, I assume “Duchess’s daughter” was the intended phrase here?
Oh, and by the way, I’m being selective with the things I’m pointing out. There are more misspellings in the script than what I’m highlighting, for example.
It’s “assistance.”
Um?
Oh dear. Not quite sure what’s happening here. This happens with a lot of enemies as well, and fixes itself when I hover my cursor over them a second time. The first time I hover, this bug appears. It doesn’t happen for every unit or every weapon; not quite sure when exactly it occurs.
This should just say “infantry.”
“Innobility” is not a word.
“Duche” is also not a word, at least not in English. And in languages where it is a word, it refers to a duchy, not to a duke (or duchess).
What is a “high heir?”
It’s “sergeant,” not “sargent.”
Well, a Swordmaster has it in his inventory and can use it, so you can’t be referring to the Soldier class here. I hope it’s clear later on who can and can’t use this weapon, because my immediate thought is the Soldier class, and yet it’s not the class the weapon is on.
A tome can’t “wield” magic. It can contain magic, for example. It’s Lealid who’d be wielding the tome’s magic, here.
This is more of a “me” thing, but I find the “1-3 Range” in the description redundant, since you can see the weapon has 1-3 Range if you just check its Range parameter.
Is there a reason for the capital F here?
What’s a “vandaler?”
Alright, now onto the gameplay.
I don’t understand why every enemy here has Spur Magic. There are two magic-using enemies on the map in total – the rest are Brigands, Fighters, Archers, and a lone Commando.
As the screen moves during the animation of Aceine’s Excalibur, this darker bar appears.
The Aceine/Kriege conversation has a spot where a line of text skips itself without an [A] press. Myrad’s battle quote does this as well.
There is a “must of” in the Eric/Lealid conversation instead of a “must have.”
Lealid’s battle animation is cool, but it’s a bit odd that she’s using a staff in these anims when she’s fighting with a tome.
The lack of available healing outside of Vulneraries and Avrick’s Breath of Life skill is a little annoying. Certainly by design, but still annoying, especially since Vulneraries only heal 10 HP and many of the enemies here deal more damage than that. Especially when there’s a unit whose battle animation uses a staff that can’t actually use staves
The chest-opening Commando is a bit weird. He opens the chest, then stands there doing nothing. You might as well have made him a regular enemy who simply drops the weapon that you placed inside the chest.
The end-of-chapter event had “concent” instead of “consent.” That’s one I haven’t seen before.
“They don’t seem to of gone far” → “They don’t seem to have gone far.” Seriously, please stop this. It’s have. Not of.
It’s “Tactician,” not “Tactitian.” Also, Sargent again.
Also, holy hell. You spell “ceremony” correctly in the line that comes after this, after misspelling it in the entire start-of-chapter event. Character development!
And then you use “there” instead of “they’re.” Please, stop it.
Roles. Not rolls.
All these spelling mistakes appear to come from pronunciation. You know something is pronounced one way, which leads to you misspelling it in writing, because you make assumptions. Please, check that stuff if you’re unsure.
Parents’ house.
They’re taking care of him. Not there.
Sorry if it comes across as too pedantic or rude. I’m just trying to be thorough, to make sure the feedback is helpful.
I didn’t end up having much to say about the gameplay. It was definitely a map. Had one strange part that I think could be improved. Also, if you want the Thief to be an anti-turtle incentive, I feel like he should appear a lot earlier, because I was almost done with the map by the time he showed up.
Hi, Vulgard! Thank you for giving the hack a go, and for leaving feedback!
Response
All’s cool. I’m glad I got some sort of feedback, negative or positive, I’m thankful for it.
What is the part in question?
I’ll do that.
Yeah, about that, I have this internal hack I created years ago (not sure if it’ll ever be released), and forced myself to adhere to the “Speech Terms of Fire Emblem”, so to speak, and when I started making Steel Will, I decided to do away with that. Then I kind of regretted it 6 chapters in, and tried reverting most of it. Seems I let a few slip through the cracks.
That seems to be a visual bug with the Modular Minimug Box Patch. I’ll look into that at a later date.
That’s supposed to be “Nobility”.
Earlier on, I was using the title “Duche”, to create a new “tier” of hierarchy. But it seems to be confusing rather then creative. I’ll revert it to “Duke” just to keep things from being confusing.
Whoops. I’ll fix that.
Yeah, don’t know what I was thinking there. I’ll change it to “Myrad only”.
…You know what? I kinda agree. Vanilla Fire Emblem did it with the Long Bow, but now that you mention it, it does feel redundant. I’ll just keep it at “Aceine’s Tome” then.
No. I’ll fix that.
Well, there are more magic enemies later on. I chose Spur Magic because I was trying to find a skill that wasn’t too game altering, while also not being unnecessary. I never really noticed it while playtesting honestly. I think I’ll change it to Frenzy, or Fiery Blood instead.
Magic Animations is the one thing I know next to nothing about. I’ll look into it at a later date as well.
The original animation doesn’t have a “Tome” option. Just stave animations. I’m not well versed in battle animations admittedly. I’ve made my own, but they’re only reskins. I’ll look into it though!
Yes, it is by design. I was considering adding 15 heal Vulneraries, because I knew not having a healer might be annoying, but I was never sure. What do you think?
Ah, that seems to be an AI issue. Assuming the escape point was blocked off, the AI changes to stand still until the escape point could be reached. As for why I didn’t just give him the weapon, I wanted to encourage the player to split to get the Kabutri, and save the village.
Yikes.
I will make note of that for sure. I was quite hasty writing wise at the beginning admittedly.
Thank you once again for leaving helpful feedback. I’ll create a thread and see if I can get some playtesters to help out, and get some friends to proofread.
I don’t think it’s necessarily terrible for you to just ignore the general unspoken rules of “language in a Fire Emblem game,” but I feel like if you’re going to do that, you should set that expectation through either a very light-hearted tone or some other measure.
I don’t hate that inherently, although I do feel like if you’re going to invent a new set of noble titles, they should be more distinct from regular ones, or it should be clear in some other way that those are intended titles and not misspellings.
It’s not a huge deal, that’s why I said it was more of a “me” thing. I’m personally not fond of many vanilla descriptions, because I feel like they underinform or unintentionally mislead the player at times.
I was just confused by every enemy having the skill on a map where it doesn’t have much of an impact. If you’re going to put the same skill on every enemy… well, I suppose you can do that? It’s just that in this case, the presence of the skill was irrelevant.
I’m generally a supporter of this, unless your hack has very small numbers or you’re deliberately going for the DSFE healing experience (as in, “healing once from any source may not be enough for your needs”).
That’s what I did; it just later turned out that me splitting was unnecessary, because the Commando refused to move. On principle, the idea is sound – it just didn’t work the intended way in execution.
I’ll tackle some other chapters at some point and write about them here, which I hope will be helpful.
Yeah, my hack generally has smaller numbers in lieu of DSFE. It’s my favorite era, and my main inspiration for this hack.
According to my playtesters, it seemed to be an AI issue, since they didn’t face any issues. Maybe I’ll add another escape point to remedy this issue a bit.
Hello! A minor patch drops today! Manly for chapter 1. It simply implements some changes suggested from some insider playtesting, which you can hop on here if you’re interested. More will be implemented very soon.
Part 2 of the hack is well underway, I just have to complete a few more chapters, and playtest through them a bit, then I’ll work on Part 3. Till next time.
Edit: I put in an older patch, but now it’s updated. It features a new character in chapter 1.