Wondering if it’s an emulator issue but when I have battle animations on, they are terribly slowed down for some reason.
Well, the only reason i recommended switching those chapters to “kill boss” was as a temporary solution to why the seize command isn’t appearing on those tiles.
As an aside I’ve tinkered with this hack in three different emulators (VBA, mGBA, and GBARunner2) and strangely some of the stuff works better on runner which plays things as close to original hardware as possible. Like roms bigger then 32mb (max normal size of a gba cart) won’t play.
I also know you have that “hold a to speed up” thing and it might be screwing up frame timing cause some of the battle animations get sped up while holding A which seems weird. and since there is frame timings tied to alot of things it might be screwing with seize points. I don’t know but since it seems like an inconsistent bug maybe tinker with some of the plugins and see how it works.
Didn’t notice you could speed up the animation with a, that’s pretty cool.
I did for about 5 minutes. It’s either a soft lock or it’s close enough to one to make me want to stop playing.
Alright, I’ve updated the patch! Be wary that so far no one has gone past Chapter 14 in the latest version, so there may be some, if not a lot, of bugs after that.
Here’s a list of things I’ve fixed so far :
-Johnny’s recruitment convo isn’t broken anymore (it’s still unskippable because haha funny old man go brrrrrr)
-Arya can now use axes, which include her own prf
-You can complete seize chapters even though the seize point doesn’t work just by waiting with Sylvester where the seize point should be
-Palmer now displays the correct moving animation, instead of displaying the Pegasus Knight one.
-Desiree’s recruitment work!
-Luna can promote using a Hero Crest or a Master Seal
-Bruce can now use his silver sword lmao
@TheResourcefulRaven since Johnny made you want to stop playing, you might want to take a look at this new patch
I’m actually at chapter 20 (as of yesterday) since i futzed with the seize points and if you try to check map it just hyper crashes. The map is playable you just can’t reposition your units.
Other then that every chapter has worked fine. It’s just seizing hadn’t worked, oh but the houses on chapter 17 can all be endlessly revisited for infinite items.
I’ll probably end up replaying this later with the new patch and see how some of the later chapters behave.
Side note I’ve really enjoyed this story and can appreciate the underlying theme of overcoming regrets. I can actually empathize with Arnold a lot since i had repressed anger issues growing up so yeah…
Edit: on chapter 20 of prior version the bottom door doesn’t work/can’t be opened and the breakable wall doesn’t despawn. The middle right Record Stone’s text isn’t formatted properly either.
On the finale none of the reinforcements have weapons. The map is set as a rout rather then kill boss and the character endings screen crashes the game.
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Ok, i finally finished this hack and since i have some free time and most of my head can focus on this for once, I figured I’d give my overall thoughts.
story and characters
I actually really enjoyed the story being told as a story. It immediately shows that Sylvester is an incredibly blunt individual with a good heart. While he says he’s doing it to brag, he’s doing it to calm a restless ruler of a ruined kingdom (that admittedly he aided the destruction of) so she might sleep better and move forward rather the soak in her regrets.
The overall background idea of not letting your regrets weigh you down is a respectable theme and the regrets of the focal characters were fairly strong and believable but i do have some critique for them.
Sylvester, his survivors guilt and overall jerkbag way of speaker being subverted by actually being a truly good person under it all was clever. From greedily hunting down an artifact to immediately giving up on it to protect the village guarding it from a skeleton army shows he actually cares more when innocent people are under attack then his brigand attitude would lead you to believe. My only gripe with him comes from a plot inconsistency from recruiting his dead brothers fiance who was supposedly pregnant. Even the boss Misery speaks of her as if she also died in the fire when it’s more then likely that the player recruited her which shoots that in the foot, its also never explained what happened to the child.
Arya, because of the touchy subject of her trauma I won’t go over it but i do agree it was necessary it be left in tact otherwise it wouldn’t paint her desire to leave and grow stronger as cleanly.
Arnold, as someone who has dealt with anger issues his story hits me a little closer. However his plot points have some inconsistency I have to bring up. After his rampage the two survivors pointed out that the male axe user died from self inflicted wounds and decided to check the others which implies the others may not have taken fatal injuries but its otherwise left unknown. then there’s the revelation that Marguerite was pregnant with his child, when the hell did that happen. He never showed any interest in her and then after an almost two year time skip of him thinking she’s dead, ending up fighting her, her dying for real, and then getting slammed with that bomb shell so quickly only for the point to be immediately dropped and not brought up in why he wants to ge back to reality after the finale is a little weak to me.
I also have no idea why Zweite had regrets, it’s not super clear that he’s having an identity crisis.
gameplay balance and tech issues
Since i was able to use the FEBuilder to get around the seize point blocks turning them into arrive points i didn’t have many complaints not tied to that. Some of the early game enemies seemed bizarrely weak for their chapters but i remembered just how many characters you get and the weaker enemies help get fresh units on their feet faster.
Heroes having spears was a refreshing touch but in quite a few chapters certain promoted units either had weapons they couldn’t use, weapons it seems they were ment to drop but couldn’t, and weapons they could drop but were worthless.
Thieves having steal+ was really making me want to leave one unpromoted to steal useful weapons from slower heroes and generals. However several units seemed to have this issue of weapon ranks being locked at C until they promote.
Any additional issues i have are more subjective or might have been fixed.
in closing
I’m not exactly one who can tell when a story is written well, but for what it’s worth I, minus some inconsistencies near the end due to Anastasia being removed and some details being changed (I’m guessing), thought the story was pretty good. The gameplay while a bit buggy and rough was fun. However most importantly i enjoyed myself and would tentatively recommend this hack to others, while advising them to wait for it to possibly get cleaned up a little more.
Hopefully everything i wrote here doesn’t come off as too harsh or anything like that.
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Wow! Thanks for all that feedback, this is super useful! (By the way don’t worry, nothing you said came off as too harsh!)
If I may reply to some of your points about the story :
-I think you may be mistaken about Sylvester’s sister-in-law. She is dead, and so is her child. I’m guessing you’re mistaking her with Alicia, the bishop you can recruit during Ch14, as a common complain I’ve received is that both of them sharing similar colors and being Sylvester acquaintances from before the incident made several people question whether they were the same person or not. If this help, here are both of their portraits side to side (Left is Alicia, right is Sylvester’s sister-in-law) :
(But don’t worry, I intend to make some changes to Sylvester backstory in an upcoming update, and with that I will update the sister-in-law’s portrait to be more noble-like and more distinct from Alicia)
-Arnold’s child is one of the aspect of the story that suffers the most from poor planning and having to change one of the scenes younger-and-edgier-me thought would be a good idea to write. Initially, while Arnold was comatose after his hallucination of Kuru and Darius (after the first encounter against golems), Marguerite was implied to have basically raped him with ambiguous intentions. I’ve changed it for this update because it was insensitive and mostly served the purpose of giving Arnold a baby so he could have a reason to not want to die later on. (It’s still implied they make love at that point in time, but I may not have been very clear with that lol) As you rightfully point out, he doesn’t express any interest in her, which is another thing I intend to change in the (hopefully near) future, by giving them more scenes together.
-Zweite on the other hand suffers from pacing issues. I originally wanted him to detail his backstory in the main story’s cutscenes, but it felt unnecessary so he was more-or-less pushed to the side. When the supports will come however, we will finally get to see what kinds of regrets he holds! (Which, by the way, may as well apply to the entire cast)
(Gameplay balancing is hard and I have a monkey brain so I can’t really comment back on that, sorry)
Also, would you mind giving me more details on the endgame inconcistencies? It is very likely I forgot to change some dialogues, but without someone pointing it out for me going through every line of text myself when I have no idea which ones should change is going to take an awfully long time.
Also, if you have anything else to add, feel free to do so! If you’re afraid to clog up this thread or just wanna talk in private, you can contact me on discord (Zeldacrafter63#5412)
Edit : btw I’m really glad you enjoyed the story and characters so much!
Well the only other major one is alex get pulled up using Anastasia’s dialog after phase three starts.
yeah, i got the two mixed up, but to be fair its easy to get it mixed up since she isn’t introduced during the flash back and Sylvester reacts with “you’re alive!” to sombody who isn’t explicitly shown/stated to exist.
Edit:
Gah, had to reread it. Her being related to the sister in law would actually make his reaction and her appearance make more sense.
I think it only is confusing to me since her appearance could have changed after years that passed after the fire, much like sylvester’s appearance had changed.
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Since Jack gave his I might as well give mine for how much I played (I will probably come back to it at some point when the supports are done)
I like Sylvester it’s quickly apparent there is more to the story then is immediately obvious hes a kind hearted man who’s doing questionable things.I feel like that could have been explored more explring the limits of his kindness.
I didin’t finish the game but I feel he needs to give a reason you suck speech to someone drawing attention to all the people hes brought together and the limit of his own forgiveness
I wish everyone else was more fleshed out it’s not just the supports missing Only a few characters have story relevance after recruitment making the larger cast redundant story wise
I have at least two characters from the Knights I would of thought the knights would have more presence in the story or at least thoughts on what Sylvester is doing Maybe supports and intermission dialouge will alleviate this
I do like what was there though
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Alright, new version up! Check out the “what’s new?” section of the OP to see, well, what’s new.
Also, I didn’t want to reply at first because I was afraid to come off as anti-criticism, but I feel like a reply wouldn’t really hurt, even 16 days later, so…
That’s a good point you’re making here. Thankfully, I plan to re-write his backstory soon, and I have planned a scene that might show those limits~
That is also a good point, though I don’t really know where to add that…
This however I compltetely disagree with. In my opinion, by virtue of having at least 30 characters (which is a lot by regular story standards), Fire Emblem and other FE-related stories cannot afford to give all of them some spotlight in the main story. This is especially true with ToTF, since the roster is so massive. So, the main story focuses on Sylvester, while most characters will meet their character development through supports. I know this is frustrating due to supports not having been implemented yet, but I don’t think I can reasonably fit all these people under the spotlight.
Also, I’d argue the first two knights you recruit are both deserters, so they wouldn’t have any reason to hold a stronger opinion on Sylvester than anyone else. There is however one knight who supports with Sylvester, and I plan for them to discuss that, so you just have to be patient to see that, haha!
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I am on the final chapter now, so I wanted to provide some feedback. But first the bugs, which I know some are fixed.
The chapter 17 bug where you can visit the villages over and over. I believe you said this was fixed on Discord.
The dancer Ludmilla crashes the game anytime she dances without animations on. Works with animations for some reason, but the rings crash the game with or without.
This memory stone doesn’t work. I have a screenshot of the specific spot, but idk how to post images here. I will post it on Discord.
The final door before Boneface on Chapter 20, I think you put another boss there now. But that door doesn’t open when picked. I had no door keys to test. Which means I couldn’t access those 2 memory stones or that chest. (I would like to know what was in the chest.)
Ok now the feedback
The game is really interesting, it needs some polish of course. But the morally gray lord, is so much more believable. I see a lot of myself in Sylvester. Sylvester might be my favorite lord because of this. It’s between him and Ike. The two non lordy lords. So maybe it’s just my taste.
The sheer amount of characters is odd, most are useless. I don’t think you really need to cut them down, but I feel like it’s a bit much.
The convoy disappearing with no warning sucked. I would have liked to at least have access to the convo in Chapter 20 party preps. That way I know this is my last time accessing it. If I knew during the chapter 19 preps, it would have also been ok. So maybe just add a line, saying after this battle I’m leaving. Just so we can prepare.
This is definitely a good hack, and despite it’s flaws. I feel like you’re moving the hacking community forward. The whole morally gray, no one is evil works. It’s real, and real works. I look forward to what you do next.
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You can use “list” to get around that since it still has all the supply items there, just moving them around becomes slightly more cumbersome.
Anywho. I definitely plan to give this another go post supports existing and see what’s changed for myself. I just have a few hacks backlogged i want to get through first.
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How do I get Velvet? I’m waiting on the ruins in Chapter 6 and they aren’t appearing.
Thanks for your interest in the game! Check out this answer to a similar question. If the ruins circled in this picture aren’t in your version, it means you’re playing an outdated one.
It looked like a house, so I assumed I needed to wait on the one at the top.
Yeah it should focus on Sylvester absolutely but i feel like it’s missing the “core group” if that explains better. I expected the woman hes explaining the story to to show up earlie and you to use her as a vessel to explore syls past not saying you had to do it my way to even agree with me.
They might be deserts but they had to have reasons to join in the first place right? some desire that drew them to the knights in the first place agreeing with their goals at the bare minimum i would expect.
Again your free to think otherwise it’s your gmae and your writing this is just how i see things.
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First off, I want to make it clear that no matter whether or not I agree with it, your feedback is valuable to me, and you sharing your thoughts is something I greatly appreciated, even though I may not have properly shown it! I won’t deny this is still my game and my writing, but I think it’s important for any content creator to remember they’re not doing what they do uniquely for themselves, and listening to other people’s advices, reviews and thoughts is an important part of the process.
“Missing the “core group””, you say? Mh… Would you mind elaborating a bit more on that? I thought Sylvester, Zweite, Arnold and Arya functionned quite well as a core group. As for the woman Sylvester is talking to, it’s funny you mention her, as I do intend to rewrite a lot of her scenes to be more impactful. Right now they’re kind of a bore, in my opinion…
As for the guards, I recall you left around Johnny’s recruitment chapter, so I’ll detail the reasons the few guards you have at that point have to join :
Armaduro only got the job to stay close to his little sister, but this didn’t stop them from slowly growing apart, so when he saw Sylvester and his gang, he made up his mind and decided to leave her and his past once and for all.
Lucy… has Stockholm’s syndrome. (listen I can’t make each character’s reason for joining really deep and stuff, she’s mostly just comic relief)
Shell only collaborates with Sylvester due to the recent situation with monsters, and only sticks around because he kept helping more and more people out (especially since there isn’t a single chapter where you can’t recruit anybody, except for the final chapter)
Hercules is the other way around. He joins because he knows he and what little remains of his group (Aster, Lily and Gontrant) won’t last long on their own. So while Shell joins to protect people, he joins to be protected (which is especially funny since they’re each other’s canon pairing but I’m getting off-topic haha)
In short, only Armaduro and Lucy join before Sylvester decides to become a good guy. Lucy joins for an admittedly flimsy reason but she’s an eccentric character so it works, and Armaduro didn’t join the guards out of a desire for peace and justice, so he doesn’t particularly mind the criminality.
If you have any other question on the game or its lore, I would be more than happy to answer them!
its kinda hard to explain especially since it was a month back but It felt like there was no core group.
there were a group of people who were supposedly the focus of the story but aside from Syl and maybe Zweite I did not feel their presence stprywise.
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Spoiler
will Arnold become traitor in sylvesters group? i dont wanna waste my exp on him and hes group like arshan too etc.