In A2-3 you can softlocke yourself. I’m not exactly sure how I did it but I was in the top left corner behind the door at about the height of the longbow archer. Suddenly, the textures got messed up, some enemies are now stuck in the wall and the door to the throne room cannot be interacted with. Not with Aurelia, the thief, door keys, anything
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Hiatus patch 2 is now available in the first post
Starting off again with a big thanks to Rivian and Santi97 and anyone else for leaving some feedback here or on discord. As such, some things here may be redundant with what I’ve already posted on the discord.
First things first, went through and tried polishing up things where I could, events, dialogue, unit balance, timing, all that sorta stuff to try and deliver a smoother/fairer/more cohesive experience. So, I’m not gonna to into particular detail on everything (particularly character balance from Rivian, but everything’s been taken into consideration and tweaked accordingly). As per always, there are surely things I’ve missed/was too lazy to fix.
Gonna start with the part 1 stuff that came in after my last post
Ch0
It’s def tricky, but there are a few ways to do it. If you’re too slow though, the Spooky Fella will get him and take/use the angelic robe (I think I had that in the last patch?).
Ch0x
don’t like how obtrusive the escape arrows are, especially when there can be multiple on one map screen, so I plan to eventually use tile animations to display an arrow or shimmer or something to help denote that. Also changed “Escape” to “Interact”, as it’s more fitting, although you’ll be interacting instead of escaping to end the prologue chapter now haha
On a similar note, I’ve added some dialogue here and there that helps this chapter better serve as a tutorial of sorts for other gimmicks you’ll encounter throughout other explory chapters, as well as some main chapters. Things like highlighting accessible doors, telling you to check closed chests, switches exist, etc.
Fixed the blue tiles in the void cause those look ridiculous, but glad that came off properly as steam
A1-2
Fixed and fixed
I’ve added a note saying that fishing and mining don’t do anything after this chapter, cause I don’t want to remove what little I have of them implemented, so it’s just a hint of things to come. The intent for finding the pickaxe spot was the same as the fishing spot, there’s a path leading directly from the house. Now obviously, that has a dock and bubbles, while the mountain has nothing special, but like with explory chapter intractables, I’d like to add a little shimmering effect as a tile animation to show them off.
I replaced the vendor up top with the wrong-tile-evented-house (which was just the result of a last minute map change) since you’ll have more time once you’re already at top, and the only thing valuable at the shop yet would be a fire tome, which an enemy mage drops in this chapter, so things should flow a bit smoother in that regard.
And this is just the start…
A1-3
Removed hard mode as an option to get rid of those very coincidental workplace accidents.
Fixed, added two more knight classes since I want the 3 specific classes and forgot to add their effectiveness. Bijoux should actually be one of those new classes, but she couldn’t gain any more exp and was perpetually stuck at level 4 before I changed her back. If anyone knows what’s up with that, I’m all ears.
I’m pretty adamant about the chaotic staff event. I did add a little more dialogue, where Auri suggests letting them go cause you’re there to kill the boss, and you can get the staves later, but that’s still up to the player. As I kinda mentioned before, getting the warp without casualties is meant to be frustrating and not even entirely worth it. Part of the me trying to get all meta with the hack again.
I set up a few support partner thresholds between certain characters, and some will start with the C, which should help out those few units a touch.
A1-4
Added text about letting the dog go.
Still no idea about the thief turning on you.
Now on to the N route chapters
N1-1
Probably a combination of the split/bulk when you played it, should hopefully be smoother now.
The ledge is a tricky beast to tame. Morrigan talks about using the ledge to your advantage and not getting caught under it, she also subtly mentions not moving anything when you’re near it haha Doesn’t really seem to be a better way to do ledges yet without asm shenanigans.
Glad you caught that!
You question killing a defenseless man earlier, but you have no problem if he can fend for himself but is retreating…
If it made you notice you can visit it, that’s good and all, but honestly it was just a critique on the abomination of a vertical orientated house itself that I unleashed haha
I also removed the axereaver from the top village for reasons I’ll get to soon.
N1x
I know I’ve seen that happen sometimes before, but don’t know what causes it, haven’t seen it at all this round of editing so maybe I fixed it? That’ll usually happen if you tell the cursor to move to a non existent unit, but Nikolai is always there, so yeah, idk.
Added a bit more text regarding the quest and stating the reward.
Big fan of verticality especially like this with gba limits, will def come back later, and maybe not just in explory chapters…
There’s also a new character you’ll get here now, the stocky sword swinging defense merchant, which also offers some minor but needed healing ability.
N1-2
Changed up this map a bit, but cutting back the bulk def helps here too. Moved the boss off the fort to help with any bad rng before you get mauled to death by the dogs. Timing is all set up to make things much easier to manage. The mauthe doogs come later, are slowed a bit more at the start by terrain, forgot to mention I dropped them down to 6 move, but most importantly I changed the howl range to be the same as physic, so I think it’s like 4ish here. Howl’s implementation was initially just an excuse to use the cool wolf spell animation, but I think it’s a nifty addition if it can’t orko things from across the map anymore. Also vulns are now up to 15.
Added a check to not give you a second tranq bow if you haven’t used the first.
Monk recruitment now is just Nikolai, this helps with encouraging the party split.
N1-3
Fixed the bulk, relocated some items, gave the door guard boss AI, gave things a little more time to percolate so this chapter should be a bit smoother too now.
New merchant to the rescue!
The 6 (now 7) extra deploy slots are if you want to split your party, as Nikolai mentions when entering the fort. Long story short, splitting will make the beginning of the map harder, and the end easier; while not splitting makes the beginning easier, and end harder, kinda. More so just a what if you want to, and I may force you to split on hard mode. Regardless, there are checks that will tweak enemy AI and some other shenanigans based on your chosen starting positions.
Big buff angry warrior with a sore foot is nothing compared to a tranquilizer tipped arrow… But I gave the vagabond class steal+, so you don’t even have to kill him now like you probably did to his son!
There’s a lockpick you can get in N1x that Morrigan can use, and the pirate can get a hand axe in N1-1 from the boss, unless you got his steel lance instead, in which case you’ll get a hand axe from someone in N1x, or vice versa (getting the second boss item is new, the other stuff was already there).
Other stuff
Story
Yeah I’m not good at that stuff, the main gist of the early N route chapters is finding some old shanty town on the northern shore and trying to dig up dirt on the kingdom or something like that. There’s one key conversation in N1x which sheds a lot more light on the situation, although very subtly, as I like to do. I can touch on this more eventually, but particularly regarding the N route, it was originally just mean to be a few chapter side thing midgame. Eventually got pushed further and further, so it’ll be weaker narratively until I can sit down and really plot out what I want to do with it, other than just having a sequence of maps for it.
N2-1
I’m glad you got to play this before it broke (still haven’t looked into fixing it yet tbh) as it’s probably my favorite chapter I’ve made. For the bosses, I’m assuming the problem is getting to them… (use the stairs on top of the other boats to go below deck just like you did to get top deck at the start). I did add a line regarding that character and that item…
Also wish there was a way to display green ranges. I may just make the green units red here since they never really interact with the already red units, but idk it just feels neat getting flanked by two other opposing forces.
I hope I covered everything that’s been brought up for the N chapters and hope to get the next couple A chapters touched up soon. I haven’t completely given up on this quite yet it seems. Something I’m definitely realizing way too late is I really need to work on simplifying things, and cool it with all the crazy eventing. But anyways, as always, I’m still welcome to any comments, critiques or feedback!
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The hack gameplay is pretty decent I’d say. Like the aesthetic of the maps and setting but it feels like text for the story drags on for quite a bit. my best way to explain it is that its a lot of text but not a lot is actually being said, idk if that makes sense but its the best way I could word it.
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Hey I played through whats released so far it’s really fun! The aesthetic is great with winter landscape, maybe I just like snow though haha. All the sprite work is really nice, and I am liking the builds of the characters. Everyone has great feel, gameplay wise and they work well within the story- good job there. The portions that are similar to Echos are fast enough- Me personally I always like when the whole game is within the battle maps.
- Fire Emblem is a game where unfortunately maps are important, is a world map in the works? It doesnt have to be super good or anything but just to make sense of where I am
- Are you gonna do supports? Your dialogue between characters is great, sometimes a little to long. I think you’d do great with supports, I know its a lot of work though so no worries haha
- I like most of the map gimmicks, the map with the treasure hunters(Facade of Reality) stood out for sure- I was able to get most of the items but had to be careful not to get punished really fun chapter!
- Couple critiques, there is some spelling errors for sure. Also the map (Passing Through) was excellent, tight map with lots of characterization- felt like a nice little town with some perfectly placed hijinks- and a simple gimmick with the boss, pretty fun!
-The Story might need something tangible to grab onto, I have very little idea what the plot is until the 5th chapter? and even then its loose- now maybe your trying to avoid that writing style but I think you need to define some things better here IMO
Ultimately I really liked it though great work, I hope you stick with it!
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yaaaaay there is hope. Can’t wait to see where you take this!
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This looks like such a promising hack, I’ll hop in the discord but hope it isn’t a permeant hiatus.