Finished playing the hack, overall loved my experience. My further thoughts are below in case people wanted to avoid spoilers
Summary
I do think the direction you took Eirika’s character, making her the focal point was very tasteful. Seth’s death caught me off guard, I put resources into him too.
The writing really did justice to the original story. I think it would be very difficult to balance having stakes in the story while having characters like Glenn and Ismaire survive, but you managed it with the added cutscenes/Eirika’s descent into madness. Silver Wolf was an amazing take with the revived Seth, I can’t think of a more appropriate revival for him.
Playable monsters were very fun too, and I think were implemented very well.
Only thing that caught me off guard was some of the force/psuedo force deploys. The two instances I can think of is requiring Joshua in Scorched Sands chapter. Eirika already has limited slots for that chapter. It is a tough one too, I luckily had him trained up a bit so I promo’d him for the bonus and he fared fine, but for players that didn’t have him trained and wanted to recruit Ismaire, would be pretty tough. The other instance was fine for me since I had other units carry, but the chapter where Margaret is force deployed. I had not used her so having someone with 10s in the stats while everyone else was super powerful did take me out of the immersion for a second, but this example wasn’t so bad since as I mentioned, other units carried.
Overall great experience, I’ll probably play on hard mode next. Seriously good job!
Really happy you enjoyed it, and thank you for the in-depth thoughts!
Massive spoilers ahead
I’m someone who probably enjoys vanilla Eirika as a character more than most, but I still do feel it’s a bit stinky how Ephraim seems so perfect by comparison. Which is why I focused more on her and then did what I did to Ephraim haha. Would you believe for a little bit I considered outright killing him off? But I figured I’d anger enough people with Seth, if I killed Ephraim on top of that I’d find mobs at my doorstep lol
I did worry about Fado, Glen and Ismaire’s survival feeling a bit weird. I guess it’s part of the reason why I killed Seth. To compensate, so to speak. Though I did fully intend to kill him before I even decided to spare Glen and Ismaire, just to balance him in the gameplay lol. Then I started thinking “how would this affect Eirika in the long term?”, and the rest is history.
Glad you liked the Bastion stuff! I didn’t want to just plain revive Seth because then I truly would fall into the “nobody ever dies and everything is fine” trap, but I still didn’t want him to just disappear after chapter 8. This felt like a nice, still tragic compromise.
For Ismaire, I wanted to make hers a difficult recruitment. If I was going to spare her, I wanted it to be something the player would have to earn. Not like, Xavier level, but the turn limit, multiple steps and requiring Joshua to get one of the 8 slots makes it less painless than most.
Oh my God.
Have you updated to the latest version? I just checked and this time it doesn’t seem like I forgot to remove the commands. Try updating and if that doesn’t fix it, then perhaps it’s due to the savefile shenanigans you got going on. Send me a save and I’ll see what I can do.
Found a bug in Ch. 18. The supply menu is completely bugged out on the prep screen. It has cleared it out completely and it has random items in it. If I place an item into it, it goes back to normal. However, the tabs between Lances and Bows crash the game. If I take anything out of the bugged supply (instead of putting something in it to get my convoy back) it functions as intended, but with the bugged supply inventory instead.
I will note that I am using VBA, just in case this turns out to be an emulator bug. Here is the .sav for reference.
On my end, the supply’s items are still bugged, but those tabs do not cause crashes. I’d say it’s most likely VBA problems. I would recommend switching to mGBA, as VBA has proven to cause problems.
Swapped to mGBA, still crashes the game.
Comically enough, it actually crashed and broke a fresh mGBA install when it did crash. It’s now stuck in permanent fullscreen lmao.
edit: was not stuck, I was just being dumb.
Sped through 17 and 18 supply is still broken, and moving forward to 19 still leaves the broken convoy.
Surprised you can’t replicate the bug honestly, I don’t know what either of us would be doing differently to not trigger the crashing. I guess I can still move forward since it’s not the whole convoy crashing the game, just have to buy more lances/axes/bows and leave them on the bench units.
EDIT: Made a recording of me doing the bug. I didn’t realize how busted the convoy was even after “fixing” it until I slowed down and actually looked. I hope this helps in some way.
EDIT 2: I managed to fix the issue. All I did was redo 17 on mGBA a second time and it fixed itself randomly, despite that I did that this morning. No idea what happened, probably some random obscure save corruption that I accidentally triggered because of VBA, but whatever works I guess?
I tried rushing through chapter 17 on your save file. The supply glitches out in chapter 18 for me as well, with the exact same buggy items as the video you uploaded even, but I still experience no crashes. For me, nothing changes when I withdraw or deposit items on the convoy.
To be completely honest, I have no idea. I never experienced this while making the hack, and it doesn’t seem like anybody else has either. The only thing I can come up with is that VBA bugged out somehow and it has corrupted the entire save file. I can’t think of anything to do to fix it for you.
Ah, the sweet sweet Moulder lore. Having his mom and dad playable (as well as his dead brother?) is a nice touch. Always felt he was an under-utilized character in vanilla FE8. I also liked the addition of Seth’s death and how it affects Eirika so far. I got the feels.
P.S. Novala is a mood and I love him.
P.P.S. Melville my beloved good boi
Wasn’t expecting Harold, but I can already tell I’m going to love him. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of weird that FE8 didn’t have at least 1 character who was a brigand-turned party member. Both the other GBA games had at least a few cases of that.
Are you planning to add the exclusive classes (e.g. Fado : King) in your patch ? Just like the ones in sacred trilogy and sacred redux. It would be a cool addition.
From the moment I decided to kill Seth I knew I was going to make Moulder the new advisor. It just feels right, he’s very advisory. The entire drama with his family was just an indulgence, to be honest. Moulder was always one of my favs from this game, so I guess I gave him a bit of preferential treatment haha.
Glad you’ve been enjoying how I handled Seth! It was a lot of fun to write all of the new stuff.
Case in point, Novala. Every one of Novala’s lines was a joy to write lol. I’m happy to see people enjoy his shenanigans.
And yes, I agree. Melville best.
Actually, it was only Gonzalez in FE6. 7 had no brigand. Still, playable brigands are cool. I didn’t initially intend to add any, but I stumbled into the unused brigand portrait and thought, why not?
Found another bug (this time for sure not because of save corruption, at least I’m 99% sure). Chapter 22 repeats itself after I beat it. Beating it a second time does let me go to chapter 23. If I remember correctly, after I finished 21x it sent me directly to 22. After beating 22 the first time, it kicks me to the world map outside of Jehanna Hall. Idk which is the intended behavior you put in but it might be relevant? Still on mGBA.
Spoilers
Not gonna lie seeing default Erika after having looked at angry Erika for most of the game nearly gave me a heart attack. I’m going to take a guess and say you really really like Erika considering how well her character was handled and how much more she got, even hiding Ephraims horse it looks like!
I have the horrible feeling that this is the result of me forgetting to remove test commands yet again. My damned goldfish memory, I swear… I cannot look into it for a few more hours, unfortunately. If I ever make another hack or game or whatever I really gotta get more playtesting done
Spoilerinos
I do like her a lot better than Ephraim, and more than most people, I’d say. She’s not my favorite lord, but I’d sayyyyy third after Leif and Shadow Dragon Marth. Makes me happy to hear you think I handled her character well!
As for Eph’s horse… I’ll admit, that was entirely personal preference. I think he looks a lot cooler dismounted.
that chapter mogall with a crimson eye instead of an evil eye caught me absolutely off guard, ross almost died to it, good thing the RNG Gods love me and made an 89 Hit miss
