Congratulations on completing it! I’m sorry I wasn’t around more for it (life caught up to me badly), but I’m looking forward to seeing the completed results of your work for myself!
Glad to hear the hacks out now!
Played this hack back when there was only like, 10 chapter out, I look forward to getting to it!
Hello everybody. I am new here.
I registered specifically to point out (and strangely I am the first) that this hack, on real hardware (tested on DS Lite/Phat via slot2 flashcart), crashes/freezes at the beginning of the second chapter, after the dialogues, and all sprites disappear from map.
Is It possible that I’ m the first to play it on real hardware and have noticed this issue? I think in this place it exceeds console RAM memory.
Sorry for my bad english.
Thank you.
Welcome!
When you’re talking about the 2nd chapter, you mean the prison chapter, or the train chapter? If this is the train chapter, then several people have reported this bug, and I don’t really know what to do…
Also, don’t worry about your english, you did very good! 
Thank you for your quick answer. 
Yes, the train chapter! I repeat: i guess It is a RAM memory issue (maybe too many sprites on map???).
What a pity! Even skipping the dialogues, it stops at the same point. Unfortunately I won’t be able to play it; it was very promising. Emulators are out of the question for me! 
No problem! I will try to find a solution ASAP. A lot of people have had troubles concerning this chapter, and I wouldn’t want everyone to be unable to play the hack for a dumb mistake I made lol. I’ll keep you updated if I ever find the source of this problem!
Alright, I played and beat the game yesterday, so I can give some thoughts. Note that I mostly skipped all the dialogue and story, but the few bits that I did read were fucking terrible and offensive and make me want to punch you in the teeth. If anybody plays this, don’t read the dialogue. It’s bad.
As for the gameplay, the part that matters, it’s okay. The game is extremely easy, since enemies are very weak and exp gain is super high. I ended up having Sylvester and Magam just destroy most of the game by themselves since they were so strong and bulky. The high exp gain did make it easy to use other people as well (I trained up Hans and Cazadora just for fun), but other people ended up not doing a whole lot because just having two super juggernauts was all I really needed. The game even gives you some really strong prepromotes later, like Ambrose and Jukujo. Deploy slots were also pretty low, hovering around 10, which was usually 2 or 3 slots fewer than I would’ve liked. It also seems like you’re using completely vanilla skillsystems, which is mostly just an annoyance (stuff like seal speed on all heroes, duelist blow on all myrmidons, counter on all warriors, etc). You can and should change this stuff, because vanilla skillsystems is kinda poop.
Next up is maps.I think a good way to describe most of the maps is “high concept, poor execution.” Many maps have a really creative idea behind them (the prison break, the train, fighting a mercenary squad where everyone has a face and reacts to each death, the hotel lobby, the flooded soda factory, etc). However, it seems like you didn’t really think about how these ideas would translate into interesting gameplay. The train is a perfect example: cool idea, and the map absolutely looks the part, but… it’s just a straight line with enemies and no terrain, so it isn’t very interesting to play. Add in the generally pathetic enemies, and most maps aren’t much of a challenge. I think my favorite map was probably chapter 3, since it was early enough that your units weren’t super far ahead of the enemies yet, and there were some side objectives to split up for with all the red houses and the three recruitable enemies (I managed to recruit all of them on the same turn, which felt pretty cool). And this map doesn’t go for some crazy concept, it’s just a relatively simple map, which works well.
Overall, the gameplay isn’t bad, and it has a lot of cool concepts, but it often gets too caught up in its own ideas to actually make something that plays well. At least the game is super easy instead of being crazy frustrating. Just skip all the dialogue, it made me physically uncomfortable to read.
Oh, I should also mention one really silly oversight I came across. So in chapter 8, Arnold is supposed to join on turn 5. However, I beat the map in 3 turns, so Arnold never joined. He showed up in all the cutscenes and stuff, but he was never actually playable except for chapter 5x.
Thank you for your criticism, it really means a lot to me!
Everything you said about gameplay is absolutely right, but the thing is, I’m not good at all when it comes to gameplay. I’m an horrible strategist, and I couldn’t make the difference between a good unit and a bad unit for myself in vanilla FE. If you have any idea how I could improve any of the flaws you listed in this paragraph, I would be more than glad to listen and incorporate them!
As for the maps, well, I don’t have much more to say actually… Chapter 3 is also one of my favorites by far, but as always why I’m confident I can come up with cool concept, I lack the kind of thinking that can actually make it interesting. Once again, if you have any kind of idea that could make any of the maps more interesting to play, I’m (almost) begging you to tell me!
Also, thanks for pointing out the Arnold stuff to me. I actually changed the chapter so that it would end when the two bosses are defeated, but didn’t think this through. This will definitely be fixed later. Although, logically speaking, you were softlocked at the last chapter, weren’t you? Since, I mean, you need Arnold to talk to Anastasia in order to reach the final boss.
Finally, I’d like to adress your criticism on my writing. While I agree that ToTF is a deeply flawed game and I must admit that when I replayed it for the last time with a friend of mine, I cringed a LOT while reading the dialogues, I also have to admit I was a bit hurt reading your first paragraph. As a debuting hacker, I’ve always looked up to you (among other people of course), so reading you “wanted to punch me in the teeth” hurt me harder than anything in my recent memory (Which, I suppose, mean I haven’t been through much hardship, haha…). But I’ve always been a sensible kid, so maybe I’m just overracting a bit. That’s not the point I wanted to make, sorry for going on for so long about that.
I believe that all criticism is valid, but I simply can’t do anything with what you said right here. What did you read exactly that gave you this reaction? The only unskippable dialogue in the entire game is Johnny’s recruitment, so I’m assuming you at least read that one. Was there a problem with that one? What else did you read? What would you change?
With that said, I’m still really thankful you gave my hack attention and took the time to give me some feedback on it. Thank you very much!
1 Like
You shouldn’t criticize the dialogue without reading most of it, or even pointing out what you thought the bad parts were. Otherwise it accomplishes little save for threaten the creator.
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The Arya flashback and that scene where Arnold wakes up naked were the main ones that made me outright angry. Stuff like that should not be in a romhack, period.
I don’t understand why, those two scenes are not violating any rules? They can be in a romhack according to the rules. Unless i am mistaken about the rules ofc, if thats the case i am sorry about that.
4 Likes
Ah, I see. Well, I must say these dialogues aren’t exactly what I’d call representative of the hack’s quality. The Arnold gag is a tired anime trope but nothing more. You’d see the same in, let’s say, Konosuba. A PG13 show. As for Arya, it’s a bit more complicated, but I have carefully planned it so that, while squicky and played for drama, it never steps too far. Nothing is shown, nothing is even explicitly said, the age gap isn’t that big, they get interrupted before it starts getting too horrible, and even ignoring all that, there is a trigger warning list (Which I assume you’ve read, because else it would be a very, very, very unlikely coincidence that you happened to read only the two most questionable pieces of dialogue in a hack with more than a hundred written cutscenes), and the hack is classified under “17 and up”.
I know my work doesn’t compare to even 0.00001% of how excellent that book/movie is, but would you want to punch Stephen King and/or Frank Darabont in the face for making the rape+murder of two pre-teen girls one of the major plot points in The Green Mile?
Maybe I can rewrite it to make it less cringe, that I can admit. But deleting taboo subjects from a hack that’s clearly labelled as “17 and ups”, and, dare I say, is handled more tastefully than a lot of the hacks that have sparked the same controversy is simply against my principles, sorry.
If you have anything else to say, or even actual criticism concerning the writing, I’m all ears. But this isn’t what I’d call criticism, unfortunately.
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I haven’t played the whole hack, but i feel most of the criticism of the gameplay and map design is fair, although it could have been written less harshly… now, as for the criticism of the writing, I think you’re being way out of line rude, you might not like the kind of humor in it, which is often very crass and cringe, but i feel like, with the exception of a few bits, is not offensive in general terms, and is really nowhere near the level of bad of many others, some of which are amongst the most well regarded hacks here.
I dont know what put you so over the edge with the writing, but to react and come of so strongly as you did in this post is very harsh and sad, i expected way more of someone as preeminent in the community as you. I personally have some grievances with the writing in your hack, but i would never use such words, is disrespectful and counterproductive.
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The Arnold waking up naked thing is just lifted from Berserk no? From what I remember in this hack, he’s wounded and unconscious and his love interest sleeps naked next to him to warm him up because they’re in the middle of a Tundra and he’s already weak. Whatever.
Arya’s flashback is long-winded and I’ll say that the part that probably rustled you wasn’t exactly needed to drive the point that she’s been an outcast with no friends. It’s a cutscene that goes on entirely for too long. But at the end of the day even that scene isn’t that bad, and she manages to escape from the situation unharmed. Honestly, get over yourself with the whole internet tough guy act on a Fire Emblem fan project forum. It’s embarrassing.
@Zeldacrafter64 I was going to avoid saying anything about your writing/story because I felt that it was a lot to get into but I’ll highlight a few problems I had with it, or at the very least things I thought could be improved.
The writing is all over the place and isn’t exactly consistent with itself, or the setting that you’re presenting. It almost felt like you had a certain idea or direction planned for where you wanted to take the story, only to abandon that plot thread. I’m going completely off memory here, but a few examples of some jarring inconsistencies being:
- This world has access to transportation via trains but everyone is still fighting with crude iron and steel weapons.
- The inn chapter makes mention to some elite group of generals working for an empire (The guy with the Roy mug is one of them) but they never show up or are mentioned again
- Sylvester and friends go on a treasure hunt to find some ancient ruins or village, which makes sense, they’re bandits, but then the apocalypse happens and there’s now skeletons everywhere. This is extremely early in the game
- Now the game’s theme is surviving a post-apocalyptic event, and fighting evil necromancers, complete with an evil religious group who shows up like one time
- But there’s also slime people and a girl made from trash that are friendly and that you have to save from persecution
- Your main motivation in the game seems to be hunting down some Skeleton Necromancer who I think you met maybe one time
I feel like you wanted to go in two different directions here. The first 1/3rd of the game you have Sylvester and co. being bandits and doing bandit things, but then they’re suddenly not anymore and the game goes another way, with a lot more fantastical themes and downright weird additions like the Skeletons or the slime people. When I saw the trailer during FEE3, what attracted me was the novelty of playing a hack where you’re a bandit. But by the time the game got to the Soda dungeon I was pretty much completely checked out of the story and just fast-forwarding along.
Lastly, some of the cutscenes do go on for way too long. The Johnny thing is a gag, so whatever. But there were certain interludes between chapters that felt like they took forever, and that was with holding down fast-forward in my emulator. Frequent typos were a thing too.
That’s not to say that I didn’t like everything. I thought the scene with Arnold betraying the mercenary group was a really nice touch. I also liked the initial chapters as well where you’re robbing that noble or when you “kidnap” Lucy. I just think that there was definitely some confusion on where to go with the story.
Other people are probably more qualified to go over gameplay than I am. Like I said, I really liked the portraits and map designs, and Ironman-friendly hacks are my favorite to play. Though given how easy the enemies are on most maps, I’d wager you’d have to try and get some of your units killed.
6 Likes
right then, i wasn’t going to say anything but that’s enough of a pile-on.
This:
is not really actionable criticism, and I don’t blame people for knee jerk jumping in to respond to it.
On the other hand, comments like
especially as the third consecutive multi-paragraph callout, aren’t really necessary either.
I’m going to take things as charitably as possible and assume that nothing that has been said so far is intended as a personal attack, but let’s direct the rest of the conversation towards the project itself. The rest of @Mermur’s post beyond what is quoted here is excellent, with detailed and specific points of criticism, and I would encourage people to follow that example.
9 Likes
Awesome to finally see you’ve completed a hack, which is no small feat, so congratulations! I just started playing but have a quick question/maybe bug?. Doesn’t matter what chapter I’m in but whenever I go into a battle with any character the movements of the animation of the attack is very slowed down to the point I have to use fast forward just for it to look normal. Have you came a cross this issue before? Just so you know I’ve tried emulating on my computer with multiple emulators and also I’m using retroarch on my PS3 to play and it does the same thing. Thanks for all your hard work on this and I’ll be sure to give it proper feedback once I play some more of it.
Thanks for all this valuable feedback! I can definitely do something from there!
Oh, you can tell me every single problem you had, as long as you’re being constructive about it and not just sending violence threats! I can’t guarantee I’ll fix all of them (The train for example is something I wrote when I was fourteen years old, of course at the time I didn’t give a fuck about the logic of having trains in medieval times, and now I regret it but it’s done, but changing it now would have way too many consequences…
Believe it or not it actually isn’t, I’ve never even watched berserk lol.
Well you see, at first I wanted to leave it at “she’s an outcast with no friends”, but I couldn’t find a way to make people care, so I had to find one particular event that could be a bruh moment. At first it was supposed to be an hostage situation, but given Sylvester had already rescued her recently, I felt it was a bit repetitive… Although, I personally didn’t feel like it dragged out for too long? I suppose I should see a let’s play or recording to see how people react to it.
Well… Technically, three of them do show up. The purple-haired general from the intro of the prison chapter, the one you mentionned and the boss of the chapter your get Theodore and Andrew. These guys (And specifically the purple-haired one) were supposed to be more important in an eventual sequel, but yeah maybe this might seem a little bit anticlimactic here? Mmmh… I’m struggling to see what I could do to help it, but I’m sure I’ll find something eventually!
This, however, has always been planned. When I originally had the concept for my world, long before I even had the first seed of ToTF’s story in my mind, I wanted to make “an apocalypse in a fantasy world”. This is probably the only point you’re making I don’t consider being a flaw actually lol
I’m assuming the evil religious group is the one from the lighthouse chapter? If so yeah, they’re actually just a small sect. Is it really that bad that they only appear once? I mean, I get you could expect them to be more important given the MASSIVE overabundance of the “church bad” trope in JRPG, but… I dunno. Can you develop on that? Why did it strike you so much?
While I agree that it may be a bit weird, this isn’t exactly how it went. Maybe I wasn’t clear (Which is very likely, I’m gonna look into this part in depth later on and rewrite some stuff), but only the trash princess is really friendly, and it’s only because they managed to reach her that Sylvester and co managed to not get slowly and painfully killed by the other feral ones. And once again, she’s the only one getting in trouble, not the whole race.
Mmmh… Isn’t him kidnapping your friend enough of a motivation though? Do you think I should add another “kick the dog” moment for the party’s hatred toward the guy to be justified? aaaah it’s getting late where I live and my brain hurts, I’ll have to think about all that in more details tomorrow
While I get that it can be a pretty big turn-off, I personally think this is what gives Terror of the Forest its identity. I felt like there were already enough bandit hacks being made where you do bandit stuff, and wanted to break the mold by letting the player play an heroic bandit who learns he can do more than mere banditry. I’m sorry if it has been a letdown, and frankly, I can understand why (The switch may be a little too sudden?), but this is the hack’s identity, and I would never change it.
Anyways, thank you so much once again for the criticism! With this I can look at what scenes could be improved and actually do something about it! If anything else comes to mind, please tell me!
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This has actually already been encountered, but I don’t have a single clue what might cause this, sorry…
I don’t want to clog up your game thread with any more spoilers or public criticism, so I’m happy to take any further discussion to Private Message. I just want to wrap it up and say that ultimately, I think you did a great job on what was essentially your first project, and something that you apparently started as young as 14.
While I think there’s certainly room for improvement, despite the issues I had, I still enjoyed it enough to play it as long as I did. One example of gameplay that stood out to me in particular was the “Surprise Boss” you’re warned about in the chapter you recruit Cazadora. You’re given plenty of advice in that chapter to avoid the Arena, and if you still go there, a super strong Berserker comes out, but it’s still ultimately an enemy you can overcome if you use your units to their full advantage. It also gives a great payoff as well. Comparing things to Dark Souls is pretty overplayed these days, but it reminded me a lot of how in that game, if you play smart/good enough, you can beat the Black Knight right after the tutorial. It’s a refreshing and memorable way to do that, where as most other hacks would probably just spawn a high stat, unkillable enemy that follows you around the map.
I’ll definitely give your game another try soon, and I’m looking forward to seeing you keep polishing it, along with any other projects you end up making.