Is it safe to play now or should I wait for the extra stuff that’s coming out for it? It look super impressive and would finally give me a good reason to go back through this game. Also is hard mode any harder than vanilla? Thank you!
Lunatic is pretty hard, despite all the new tools
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Sweet, good to hear. I like a brutal experience when it comes to Fire Emblem
Hey is there a map for the chapter 15 sand items? I just reached the map and I’m dreading having to find all the items
Personally, I would assume it’s the same locations as vanilla
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The locations are the same as vanilla (next to bones) but some items are changed around slightly.
I would like to report a bug, but before that let me just say great game so far. I think this is my favorite of the fe8 remakes. The bug I would like to report is when Colm would steal an item it would just disappear instead of go into his inventory. I’m playing on ironman lunatic and I first noticed it on ch10 however I think it may have happened earlier. There were a few times I felt like I was going insane because I had thought I had stolen the item but it wasn’t in my inventory. 
Seems like no one else is reporting a bug like this so it might be a problem on my front (I’m using mGBA, might be a little outdated).
Edit: Oops, just saw the post were you mentioned this was fixed, my bad I missed that when I was skimming the page.
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Hello, this was just fixed earlier and you can redownload the rom to have it work correctly! Sorry for the trouble there
3 Likes
I’m sure it was fixed as well but the burglar axe was doing the same thing
So far I have played up to beating Chapter 9, and I wanna give out my thoughts on this hack so far.
The Positive
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I really, REALLY like all the cool visual details. I like the use of the Sacred Echoes UI, the updated portraits, some unique battle animations here and there, new map palettes. It all overall looks really good.
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Some of the new weapons added are really creative, like the Burglar Axe, and Estoc. I really enjoy using them.
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I like that there are new characters being added, as base Sacred Stones has a very small cast. I already recruited Mina, and I look forward to recruiting the gal who is also named Alice, haha.
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The ASM used in this is REALLY impressive. I really like the new statuses, such as Hide and Provoke. They really shape up how you play maps. And I really like the addition of the Rune Staff as well. And the new way of triggering combat skills seems very interesting.
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I like the addition of new music. Especially some tracks from The Blazing Blade. Hearing Rise to the Challenge in battle always gets me in a good mood. Hope to see some more new tracks too.
The Negative...
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While the graphic updates are overall pretty good, some of the palette choices are… really not good. Gilliam’s armor looks too dark. Garcia’s clothes are green instead of blue, as if Gilliam was a Fighter. Lute having a long hair animation doesn’t fit, and her palette looks as if FE6 Sophia was a Mage. And also, Seth and Amelia are lacking palettes altogether, and just have the default player blue colors. All this together makes the palette work feel… sloppy. Also, while I appreciate Neimi having a more unique battle animation, it seems a little too different compared to others. It feels as though she was given too much favoritism.
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Speaking of favoritism, the character balance is all over the place. It seems the approach with skills is similar to FE4/FE5, where characters stat out with skills with no rhyme or reason as to why, while other characters have no unique skills at all. Why does Moulder get Live to Serve, but natasha gets nothing? And why does Neimi get Bow Range +1? And I have only taken a peek at Chapter 10… but WHY does Gerik get Rally Movement of all things? This all feels very poorly thought out. It feels like you’re going for more of a “wild” factor, rather than something that befits the characters themselves.
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While I DO like some of the new ideas with classes (yay Seraph Knight with Bows!)… I do feel some of the class balance goes a bit off the rails… First off, WHY in the world are Heal, Mend, and Recover locked to Priests and Plerics? It feels very weird. I get that having 1-2 range healing is a cool niche. But instead of making Cure the dull staff that anyone can use, why not make it the other way around? Have Cure be 1-2 range and locked to Priests. Because having THREE staves be locked feels a little too restrictive. And Why is “Chevalier” a class that needs to exist? It kinda just feels like class bloat. Making Forde a different class is neat. But why not make him an FE7 Nomad instead, and have him promote to Ranger? With that, you only need to add 1 new class as an alternate promo for Nomad, and not 3 entire new classes. Other classes like Rebel, Vagabond, and Veteran just feel tacked on. You don’t need so many different classes. And also… WHY remove swords from Rangers??? When I promoted Neimi, I just felt dissapointment. Swords are what makes them a viable alternative to Sniper.
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Aside from Skills and Classes being unbalanced, I feel as though some maps are just unbalanced as a whole. Especially Chapter 5. The bandit reinforcements come in earlier than in Vanilla. And the addition of the miniboss makes it much harder to deal with them. Plus, enemies in general seem bulkier than normal. I was playing on hard mode, not Lunatic. And boy, this map was NOT a good time. Plus, While I understand the removal of Throne/Gate healing to prevent Boss Abuse, I think it overall diminishes the gameplay experience. It just makes bosses seem weaker. Also wanna add to this that, I do NOT like Lute being recruited later in this. It just feels very off. She’s supposed to join in the monster chapter because she researches monsters! Taking that away from her completely diminishes her character.
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I really appreciate having more music in Magvel. ESPECIALLY if it’s some good ol’ Elibe music. However… the way the new music was implemented seems a bit poor. The music ported from FE7 sounds EXACTLY the same. I think it would sound a lot better if you changed some instruments around to the more commonly used in FE8’s soundtrack to make them blend in more. How they are right now… they stick out a bit like a sore thumb. If you want, I could personally help with the music aspect, as I’ve already been porting FE7 songs to FE8 for a while.
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And finally, my BIGGEST gripe with this game so far… is no weapon durability. I’m sorry, I KNOW it’s a system that many people enjoy, but I just don’t vibe with it. I feel it takes away a layer of item management that is signature to Fire Emblem. When you take that away… it just feels hollow. There is no thought on when to use a powerful weapon; I can just use it as much as I want, since there it’s NEVER gonna run out. And in addition to that, while I think early game shops having some items be of limited stock is a GREAT idea in concept, I think it’s executed poorly. The game feels extremely restrictive early on. And I think strategy games like Fire Emblem are supposed to be about freedom to the player.
Please don’t feel I’m diminishing your work with the negative points. I’m just trying to be critical from a game design perspective. And I appreciate all the effort that’s been put into this project. It really shows a lot of people worked really hard on it.
And also…
The Funny (Exploits and Bugs)
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The Entombed exploit
You may have removed of Throne/Gate healing to prevent Boss Abuse, but you accidentally created a new form of it in CH4: All you have to do is bait the boss Entombed to one of the bridges, and chokepoint the bridge with Colm using Hide. And then, you can grind any unit that can attack from 2 range on the boss. Because the boss has Renewal. The accidental discovery of this was absolutely hilarious. You can sorta pull this off too in Tower of Valni 1. -
The Districts Bug.
I found a major bug: If you enter a District when a unit other than Eirika is the first unit in your party (Which happens if you don’t deploy her in Skirmishes or Valni), then sometimes that unit will spawn off screen and walk into the map from the side if you try to move. Though, often times, this will get you stuck in a corner. Other times, that unit won’t spawn at all, and you won’t be able to do anything. In both cases you are unable to control Eirika no matter what
That is Amelia on the top left.
Also, specifically in Port Kiris, there is a funny out of bounds armory with some pretty OP items (Where Amelia is standing).
Is this incredibly funny? Yes. Will I be abusing this and buying OP weapons early? Also yes. How did this slip past the devs, despite Tower of Valni being a very often used feature? No idea.
TLDR: While some of the design choices for this project are questionable, I’d be lying if I said I’m not having a good time. And the graphics are absolutely wonderful. Some aspects still need to be worked on. But overall, pretty good stuff. Just some things that baffle me a little bit. Looking forward to future updates.
4 Likes
I appreciate the feedback! I think we may just have different approaches to game design, as, aside from the palette work which I am overall happy with (which btw, Amelia does have custom palettes for every class and I just personally liked the Salvaged palette for Seth), the suggested changes would effectively be an overhaul of the game that doesn’t fit the vision I have put together for this project. That being said, I’m glad you’re still having a good time and thank you for playing!
9 Likes
Thank you for making this. Its good to have a clear vision for how you want your game to be.
Hope the District bug gets fixed soon. Cause its VERY easy to run into.
That one should be fixed already! If you redownload the hack it’ll be fine now
3 Likes
This is awesome! MVPs so far are the tag team of Duelist Mina and Berserker Ross.
Also, I found a bug where if you try to trade in the Ephraim route, the Trade tutorial will trigger and I can’t move past it without a Vulnerary to trade.
I managed to recreate the glitch again. I went back to do 5x over again so I could see 5xx, so I lost my supports, but,
I got them both to A rank support on Chapter 7 (Did it on Chapter 8 last time) and,
Colm cannot trigger the A support conversation, whereas,
Neimi can.
I got their supports on Chapters 3, 5, and 7, if that helps at all.
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This was happening on normal mode only if you visited the ch9 district on Ephraim route. It is fixed now, but unfortunately I don’t think it will be a fix that applies to old saves as an unintentional flag was set so I apologize for that
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Thank you, will be looking into it
yeeeeeeeeessss
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Heyo so i just finished the hack.
Feel like i should give my thoughts so hope im not too harsh.
For starters i really like the way skills work in the hack, it gives more control to the player and leaves less to rng hell, and honestly most skills dont completely destroy the balance of the game (im honestly still a little suprised Azure twinblade wasnt busted lol)
Second with a lack of durability system i was afraid this would lead to some problem but honestly it didnt, weapons were evenly placed apart, not only that bows felt like an actual weapon type and with the Severely heightened effects of the weapon triangle and gaggle of Type-effective weapons alot of situations felt like puzzles where i had to weight my options of if i wanted to abuse the weapon triangle or effectiveness (Mina was a great example due to her Estoc).
Most characters felt like they had a unique class, or at the very least a class that obviously THEY use the best so it feels like it gives more diversity even among characters with the same base classes.
The arena never felt abuseable but when you do see it you were still allowed to use it at least a little.
The Twins often felt like consistently useful units and Erika never had a Struggle against her level cap
I love the way Super trainee classes were changed, For Ross and Amelia specifically the respective faire skills and All around stat caps of 30 make their version of the Super trainee classes worth using compared to their normal classes.
Now for a little critisism (ill attempt to avoid any personal biases but please forgive me if it dose show a little)
One BIG problem and im really hoping it was just an emulator bug is Stealing; it dosent work. Anytime you attempt to steal an item like a Gem or a stat booster with the Steal command the item will just vanish into the ether, never to be seen again. This is pretty disheartning but it can be lived with (I know many dont even bother with stealing but it still kinda sucks alot)
In the chapter you get Innes, Tethys and Gerick, Gerick is waaaay to quick to die before you can even reach him and i had to rng abuse to be able to reach him in time with even Seth before he got killed by the enemies coming at him.
Light Magic Skills seem to not be working? it could be just me misreading the text but for the Divine spell it felt like it was not giving speed neither on player nor enemy phase.
The skill system while good, feels extremely underutilized and felt like a nice small bonus in the midway point of the game rather then a useful tool. Glass half full though this System will likely be something future romhacks use and i look foward to seeing it again.
Finally, The credits crash the game, everytime i reload the epilouge on the screen where it shows you the turn count for each map the game freezes and i cant even soft reset the game. You can still get to the creature campaign but still a small problem.
I still enjoyed the main game and ill likely write a follow up when i finish the Tower/Ruins and Post game in general.
Again, hope i wasnt too harsh and i will early wait for whatever your next project will be :3
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Thank you for the feedback! Stealing was broken on the initial release, but it was quickly fixed. If you download the patch again, it will be working.
In the chapter you get Innes, Tethys and Gerick, Gerick is waaaay to quick to die before you can even reach him and i had to rng abuse to be able to reach him in time with even Seth before he got killed by the enemies coming at him.
For Ch10A, I hadn’t actually encountered testers losing Gerik here so it wasn’t tweaked much but I am open to working on ways to improve it. Was this on lunatic difficulty?
Light Magic Skills seem to not be working? it could be just me misreading the text but for the Divine spell it felt like it was not giving speed neither on player nor enemy phase.
Light magic skills should all be working properly, I just ran a test with Divine on MGBA and VBA and it was granting the +4 speed on initiation as it should be.
The skill system while good, feels extremely underutilized and felt like a nice small bonus in the midway point of the game rather then a useful tool. Glass half full though this System will likely be something future romhacks use and i look foward to seeing it again
I was hoping to avoid it being overwhelming to manage, as I do appreciate the simplicity of Fire Emblem 8’s gameplay. Therefore, most stack skills come about through promotions to certain classes. If people really enjoy this system though I am also open to seeing if more can be added.
Finally, The credits crash the game, everytime i reload the epilouge on the screen where it shows you the turn count for each map the game freezes and i cant even soft reset the game. You can still get to the creature campaign but still a small problem.
This one seems to be emulator related, since I could not get it to occur with MGBA or VBA. The turn counts do display incorrectly due to the inclusion of Ch16, but it shouldn’t result in a crash. I will see what can be done to fix this still either way!
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