Bug Found in Venus’s Tale.
Spoilers
The boss nukes a different house rather than the one he’s supposed to; this is on turn 5 btw.
He’s not supposed to hit the northernmost house until after he hits the northeastern one, is he?
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Thanks for the report, I’ve fixed the bug and updated the patch. There’s been a couple silent updates, most recent one adding a talk between Stelle and Clothilde to add a small lore bit that was intended by the chapter’s creator that was forgotten.
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Cool!
I’ll make sure to redownload it. Thanks!
Knab, I got two more bugs to report… and one of them is a real nasty one.
This happened when I tried to initiate the Stelle lore talk.
And this One's a Spoiler, Too!
This happened in Youngblood’s tale when Uyama popped out and left- this actually crashes the game, so uhhhh… yeah.
Not good to say the least.
I’ll put more feedback in a separate post; since my last big tale thoughts post, I’ve done Bar’del, Venus’s, Floor’s, Taika’s, and Sovnya’s tales.
(I swear to god, save for a few differences, most of these could have honestly happened in my own Call of the Armor run… freaky).
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Hi, I just cleared Bardel’s tale, but maybe I found some bugs:
When Ercilia uses Ragnarok in a battle with Joe, the battle will always stop here and no experience bar will appear.
There’s another one, all my units was survived, but I cannot trigger the dialogue that can only be triggered by judging the survival of the four of them.
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Thanks again for the reports, I thiiiiiiiink I should have them all fixed (not sure how that Uyama one hadn’t yet happened, but whatever). Again, updated patch in OP.
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Beat every tale, and I have unlocked every last achievement!
Oh yeah, little bug I noticed- though this one ain’t gamebreaking:
Apparently if you do every tale except Roald’s, you still get access to the Final Chapter. Weird.
This was worth beating two whole hacks for.
Final Chapter Thoughts
I loved this. This felt fun as balls- although the second half having so many stupidly powerful enemies kiiinda scared the hell out of me lmao.
Took me a hot minute to realize who Sayra was without looking at her death quote- Gu’s wife, it seems… somehow didn’t get cursed by whatever Luden did in her world. (If that even happened).
Also this took me a hot minute to catch onto- but are the alternate Alessa and that Great Knight guy from the Reverse Recruitment patch? Because if so, I love the lore implications therein.
Playable Soul Savior was fun too- as was fighting his world’s version of Sovnya.
I figured out around Sovnya’s tale (so little over halfway through the game- and Taika’s tale confirmed it for me that every tale is a Parallel World unto itself:
It might have happened in the Prime Reality, but the exact circumstances are different.
My first suspicion lay in Geirhardt seemingly being in several different classes throughout the Tales, which… I guess might work from a chronological perspective but at the same time… yeah.
Also thinking back to Killian’s tale- considering how old Killian was there, Jeb should already be dead; unless that was someone else with his portrait…
Jane Dough made me laugh simply because I was wondering where they were.
Also who was the brother of that Sage guy that showed up, anyways?
I wonder what the Maiden’s unfinished buisness was…? Oh well. Probably not important.
Also Shale’s new outfit. I wanna see the full art for that dammit.
As for my thoughts on the remaining tales:
Youngblood's Tale
Honestly, my response to what Youngblood did would be something like Mac’s- tell Youngblood goodbye and to never ask for my help again. I’m especially partial to Mac because he was on my endgame team and he was a huge help throughout the game.
Sjoerd really is a bro for choosing to forgive Youngblood after Youngblood dragged them into the mess his tale portrayed.
I do appreciate that the consequences of those actions are touched on; with Itoro’s fate being a reflection of what could have happened to Youngblood: Crippled or possibly worse because he charged right in without thinking whilst looking for glory.
Itoro also had subordinates with him that, implicitly, get badly wounded or killed due to his brash action; and while they may have known the risks (unlike Youngblood’s group), it also is still worth noting that just like Youngblood’s group, they came that close to nearly killing their old comrades from the war.
(Also I’m glad this chapter did not have Thracia fog. God, that would be hell. Would make sense thematically, but like… yeah).
Venus's Tale:
Zain killed both bosses in one go, and I think he critted at least one of them.
I was able to figure out the achievement, needless to say.
I do like how Seu is a reasonable enough person- and I do kinda wanna hear more about the Liberation army but… ah well. It is what it is.
Sovnya's Tale
You know, it might be me, but wasn’t there a recruitable cavalier amongst the souls that Sovnya could bring back? What happened to them?
I do like that the group does care about Sovnya- and it really does say something that Vectar was the one who ultimately went in first to save Sovnya.
Taika's Tale
This had one of the most interesting concepts behind it- and I do like the usage of Castlevania music for the enemy theme. That said, two nitpicks:
First, the Cyclops guarding the bottom right Treasure chest I feel like requires a little too much luck to beat- you can’t kill him in one turn; and enemyphasing him means having to equip the Axe, and praying to god that the RNG doesn’t decide to smite you with the Cyclops’s hammer… and you need to do two rounds of this.
The second one is that beating the boss requires the Hoplon Guard if you don’t want to be constsntly gambling. Like I get why she’s not supposed to be easy to beat, it’s just…
It gets annoying, imo.
That ending though-
I guess it’s better for the world if you recruit D. Sunwing…
Floor's Tale
Floor’s Tale was fun once I got the routine for it nailed down- seeing Fernandez again was a joy, and his wife absolutely tore shit up.
Also, Hunter’s Arch is such an absurdly good weapon- using it feels like having a machinegun in all the right ways lmao.
Roald's Tale
This one… honestly really could have happened in my Call of the Armor run, because nobody playable in that chapter was in my endgame team; and I had recruited all of them. Hell, they were even all in the same classes as I left them.
I do wish it was easier to get Roald and his old wife to have a battle convo, but alas.
Bar'del's Tale:
Y’know, I’ve been wondering this for a while- by complete coincidence, I think, Bar’del looks exaclty like the youtuber FitMC. Go figure.
Anyways, Bar’del’s tale was fun- Luden’s survival and the woman who rescued him… actually, was that woman even in Call of the Armor?
Because it feels like she was and I missed her somehow… or something. I have no idea.
Harvey being playable was nice too- got to see him and Joe Shmoe talk.
Well this has been a long post and a fun hack- would recommend; but only after beating Call of the Armor for maximum effect.
Thanks for playing! I’ve fixed the bug with Roald’s Tale not being required, thanks for pointing it out.
Regarding some of your questions
Spoilers
That would be correct.
Also who was the brother of that Sage guy that showed up, anyways?
This character is a crossover from another romhack. He’s one of two cameos, the Realmstalkers being the other one.
I wonder what the Maiden’s unfinished buisness was…?
This wasn’t enough for her penance, not even close. She has to return to Them.
You know, it might be me, but wasn’t there a recruitable cavalier amongst the souls that Sovnya could bring back? What happened to them?
As Sovnya notes at the start of the tale, these are the ones that Kuijia didn’t pick. Canonically, or at least in the canon of this tale, Kim (the cavalier) and Giroux (the soldier) were the two picked in Interlude 1.
Luden’s survival and the woman who rescued him… actually, was that woman even in Call of the Armor?
Because it feels like she was and I missed her somehow… or something.
The cloaked woman he is talking about is the Fate Maiden, so in a manner of speaking, she did appear in Cota. The fact that she’s somehow familiar to him was supposed to be another vague hint at her true identity (along with the fact that she is recognized by Jezebel, Iskander if you actually get that battle quote in Gu’s Tale, and she references her Cota boss quote with Geirhart at the end of Alessia’s Tale)
You’re welcome!
Response Contains Spoilers
All of those answers make sense; though ig I didn’t recognize the cameos bc I never finished what they were from…
For Bar’Del’s tale, I meant the woman who you can play as that rides the horse. The one that Bar’del has a talk convo with; I was talking about her.
Oh, Ercilia. She’s the daughter of the Chapter 18 bosses from Cota.
Ah okay, thanks!
I suddenly remembered that while playing with Kilian’s tale, if two people were in a rescue state and using “Stairs” on the stairs, the map sprite of the rescued person would stay in place and disappear, but the disappeared person could be found in the “unit”, but there was no way to control.Perhaps this can also be considered a bug, so I am here to inform you.
Just like this
Alrighty, I finished playing this a week or two ago and got all of the achievements, so here are some comments/notes/criticisms I have on each tale. Spoilers, obviously.
Kilian
- From what I can tell, unlike most of the other tales, if any of your playable units die, you get a game over. This isn’t communicated to the player, and it probably should be.
- Kilian can cheese his duel by just beelining for the stairs. There’s a silver lance goon and a swordslayer goon down there, but his base HP total of 80 is so massive that he can actually enemy phase them, elixir, and then enemy phase them again to kill both of them with 100% safety. He can then kind of just chill downstairs for the rest of the map, since the boss doesn’t know how to use stairs. Going downstairs might be intentional, but if it is, the boss probably shouldn’t spout lines and summon goons as if Kilian was still upstairs. Maybe add some comedic lines where the boss shouts at Kilian to come back and fight him honorably, then sheepishly admits his weakness to stairs?
- Tito’s stance gimmick is kind of… meaningless. There’s no stat changing between his forms, and he can do it at-will, so all it really amounts to is that he can’t enemy phase with the same weapon type he used with his last player phase action. The fact that he even has a stance change ability at all also isn’t communicated to the player well- I had initially thought that his swords were for a promotion later or there to symbolize his idolization of Kilian. It’d prooobably be an improvement to just make him some sword/bow hybrid class, but just telling the player that he HAS a stance change ability in a text box or something would also be an improvement.
- I liked the subtle usage of the Maiden here a lot; since I played this tale first, I was wondering if I had missed a character or something. This made her reveal in Taika’s tale much cooler.
- Alderich’s Illusion tome should probably have its description edited to remove its reference to Drouin, it doesn’t really make sense here.
Taika
- If the goal of the Fate Maiden here is to see if the cult’s cache would remain safe if Jezebel and Taika were allowed to live, why is she interfering in the experiment with her support staffing?
- I loved the rewriting of history that FM did at the end here, it landed perfectly. Good stuff.
- The actual loot here ended up not being used in the final map, which made the Fate Maiden’s actions here puzzling. A subtle nod to the loot from this tale in the other maps would be nice. Maybe make Vivek’s stat buffs between the main game and Alessia’s tale (or Alessia’s tale and the final tale) be the gains he’d get if he ate every stat booster here? Or have him drop a line in the final tale about inserting the gold gem into a slot in the Fire Emblem to activate it?
Sovnya
- The map objective here is unique, I like it. It’s also something that’s hard to do in a normal hack, where the deployable cast size is larger and where you’d risk a softlock if the player’s team just isn’t good enough.
- Geirhart is a pirate here, but a hyper journeyman in Alessia’s tale, which can’t promote from pirate. This technically also conflicts with Youngblood’s tale, but I think it that’s on-brand for Youngblood’s tale. Maybe he could be swapped out for Philip? IIRC, Philip and Uyama are the only cast members we don’t actually get to play with in any of the tales, and while he isn’t an Interlude 1 unit, he is a close associate of William.
- I’d recommend buffing Vectar’s Skl so that he has the same Skl stat he had in CotA. IIRC, currently, he has an imperfect light brand hit rate on the wyverns that could cause a frustrating late-map reset. It also just… feels weird to see a Vectar with just okay Skl. Incidentally, increasing his level to 19 wouldn’t affect much, but would make him FEEL more like CotA!Vectar.
- I like the subtle usage of the Maiden here as well. She really blended in as a “portrait error”.
- The achievement here could probably be worded better to make it clearer that you just need to spare the boss, not every (or any) fleeing enemy.
Roald
- give roald his rings you cowards
Bar'Del
- Good map, although I encountered a situation where, when the purple units appeared, a purple great knight in the top left spawned and was immediately in range to attack a child. My archsage was chipped and a skeleton was near him, so I couldn’t actually warp the child away or warp Kilian in range to block without risking death. I’m… not actually sure how you’d fix this, because if the child pathed right instead of up at the end of his movement, they’d have been fine. Maybe move the great knight three tiles back and make him a paladin?
- I liked the Luden lore conversation.
Delano
- Not a fan of this map. The low% crits are annoying, and while you do have two hoplon guards with which to play around some of them, it’s not made clear that you have the time to afford to be defensive with your unit placements, as the brigands start concerningly close to the villages. Those brigands end up not being a problem due to the arrival of blue reinforcements later into the map, but the player has no idea that the brigands aren’t a threat until after they’ve already made risky opening plays.
- The map is also kind of just… boring. Millicent effortlessly solos the bottom half of the map (even the lancereaver hero), and Weber mostly handles the top half on his own (with some help from his son). Delano, Itoro, Maluj, and co. kind of feel… pointless.
Alessia
- Great map. I really like the phase transitions of the map and the pegasus reunification event/story beat.
- The dragonspear really, really could do with having its hit buffed by 20 or so. The paladin gets some juicy ohkos with it, and it seems to be what they’re meant to do, but they get absolutely rocked if they whiff. I don’t think any of the other maps use dragonspears, so it should be fine to just give them a hit rate buff here so that the player doesn’t have to play around iffy 80%s.
- Minor nitpick, for both this map and the final tale: Instead of giving Bliksem a semi-hidden -3 Mag effect, couldn’t you have just lowered the boss’s Mag by 3 (and done the same for final!Vivek)?
Floor
- Cool map, although I didn’t really play much of it because I decided to heavily rig a turn 3 clear of it (w/ the achievement) for fun.
- Neat maiden usage once again.
Youngblood
- PEAK. VERY fun map. I love that it leans into the “this tale proooobably is fanfiction” angle (and Jimbert).
- The trapped souls are a creepy touch that I love, but they aren’t really followed up on by the rest of the hack. Them’s the breaks, I suppose, but it’d be nice to maybe add a reference to them or an explanation for their existence later.
- One minor change I’d suggest: Make all of the trapped souls reachable by the player’s units, instead of just some of them. I personally wasted some time trying to herd Maluj into killing them before eventually giving up, and I think the streamlining of the map would be improved if the ones that are inaccessible were just… cut. Maybe add a message or something if you kill them all? But not an achievement, since that would make them too obvious and ruin their creepypasta factor.
- Maybe add an achievement for killing all of the named purple units? Dunno if this is a good idea, it might impede the map flow. If you do do this, make sure that all of the bridges lower once you reach that ending zone so that Geirhart doesn’t have to go aaaaall the way around.
It’s getting late and I’m tired, so I’m gonna put Venus’s tale, Gu’s tale, and the final tale in their own post tomorrow.
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Gu
On paper, I like the idea of this map a lot: a (Thracia) fog of war map where none of your units can counterattack at 1 range. In practice, this was my least favorite tale of the hack and genuinely tempted me to drop it.
The Necrodragon Trap
The necrodragon stair trap is, bluntly, bullshit. You show the player a room that seems to have nothing but a sleep staff cleric in it, and when they try to send a unit into it, you teleport them to a kill chamber halfway across the map, where a necrodragon and a skeleton will kill them from full health unless their name is Drouin (w/ Illusion equipped) or they dodge the skeleton’s arrow.
The death scored here does not feel earned. Unless I’ve missed a piece of dialogue somewhere, the player has no reason to expect that a stairway even can send a unit 20 tiles away in a different direction (because that’s not how stairs intuitively work), so the trap feels like ragefest reset bait instead of a clever gotcha. When fucking Thracia executes its “warp” traps in a fairer way than your map does (because you can at least use a Rescue staff as an out in that game), you should know that you’ve done something wrong.
I would strongly, strongly recommend moving the necrodragon kill chamber to be just north of the cleric chamber, in a spot that’s visible if Drouin is standing on the mimic chest tile (to the right of the cleric chamber). This would A. make the kill chamber a logical endpoint for the stairway, B. make the player aware that trap stairway(s) exist and that they should play around them, and C. remove the bow skeleton from the equation, making the trap much less deadly to units who are at full health. Setting the crit chance of Wretched Air to – and reducing that necrodragon’s STR slightly so it can’t one-shot units from full health on its own would also be nice, but not necessary.
There’s a sniper near the end of the map who has a ballista, but can’t use it and is thus effectively unarmed. I believe one of the reinforcement skeletons has the same problem? It might also be worth checking if the reinforcement skeletons actually pursue properly, as I don’t think I saw all of the ones I saw in febuilder in actual gameplay.
The exterior West “path” and exterior South “path” (flying over the mountains with the pegasus) should probably be removed or be made inaccessible, as dead ends that can’t be checked without reset scouting are bad design in Thracia fog map, IMO- especially since the achievement’s description specifically nudges the player towards checking corners.
The Fate Maiden really adds nothing to this map, and arguably detracts from it. She doesn’t really have a gameplay purpose here, and she only has ~50 hit on any of the good/relevant berserk staff targets. The player is not told that she won’t use her berserk staff against them, resulting in unnecessary hesitation and a slowdown in map flow once they see her. IMO, she should either be removed (except for her cameo in the ending cutscene) or not receive her berserk staff until she’s recruited (so that her berserk range doesn’t spook the player).
Using a 10 range bolting mage in a map where the player can only see 8 tiles ahead (without a torch staff that they may not have gotten yet or a torch they definitely haven’t gotten yet) is pretty cringe. You have raepurge; was that not suitable?
The story of the map was great, but I couldn’t appreciate it as much due to how much the map (and ESPECIALLY the necrodragon trap) tilted me.
New patch is out, with many bugfixes. Non-exhaustive list:
Fixes
-
Armorslayer is now effective against Armor Knights
-
Fixed Taika’s death quote in her own chapter
-
Properly deleted a certain hero in the Final Tale’s ending
-
Shouldn’t see any more bugs with units losing weapon rank after combat
-
Smashed some typos
Patch, as always, is in the OP. Many thanks to Dani Doyle for Let’s Playing this hack and finding some of these.
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Realized I forgot to do these last two.
Venus
This map has three major problems:
Communication
The boss’s conversation implies that he’s going to destroy one house on turn 1, another house on turn 2, another house on turn 3, etc., requiring the player to use their movement staves to meet tight turn limits for objectives. A cool map concept! But the way this actually works is that he starts destroying houses on turn 3, despite the conversation about how he’s about to destroy a house occurring on turn 1. He then DOES stick to his one house/turn pace after that, tripping up players who assume that this means that he has a delay of 2-3 turns between house obliterations. Extra signposting about when he’s going to destroy each house would help this map a LOT.
Also, the dialogue heavily implies that losing a single house is a game over condition, but it… isn’t? From checking febuilder, it looks like you only get a game over if you lose more than a certain number of houses? Letting the player know that they have some leeway would be nice.
Achievement
The achievement for this map actively drags it down. In a map all about momentum, movement staves, and rushing to objectives, you’re saddles with a green unit you need to babysit and drag over to the bosses with the movement tools you would much rather be using to do cool things. You need to drag him to specific squares in the ballista boss’s attack range, too, or else he’ll be close enough to fight the boss on both EP and OP and get his teeth kicked in. Feijao’s conversations with the bosses should have been a cool easter egg, not an achievement, especially since “don’t let any unevacuated houses be destroyed” would have been a perfectly serviceable achievement that would have meshed with the map’s concept a lot better.
Incorrect Map Objective
The map’s objective just… straight up lies to you. The map is Kill Boss x2, not Rout.
Sunwing could also do with having a little bit more skl so that his intended engagement with the Sniper on the ridge is 100% consistent, since he dies if he whiffs. The killer bow nomad was somewhat awkward to deal with without a source of crit protection, but I might have just been bad. Is Warp+Impaler III the intended solution for him?
Overall, this map is really close to being a cool map that gives off fe8 Free Play LTC vibes, but it has a few critical, easily fixable flaws that make it feel awkward to play.
Final
Peak.
Minor nitpicks:
- There’s an opening in the wall in the top right of the third stage of the map that looks like something a flier could pass through but isn’t.
- The achievement in this map and the way the numbers (exactly) work out nudges you to beat the final boss in a lame way: plinking them with Sothariel 14 times. Giving her a bit more HP would force the player to contribute towards the boss kill with their other units. This is really more of a minor psychological thing than a significant issue, tbh.