Just a silly gameplay focused hack with 17 chapters (including 1 gaiden), 44 playable units, relatively low growths, stat caps of 20, only 1 skill per unit (in addition to shove/canto/crit bonus), 3 difficulty options (plus classic/casual) & varying map objectives. The gameplay is fairly ironman-friendly. The story also exists, but don’t expect good writing or walls of text.
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I would like to bring up a concern with that third screenshot- double negatives. They really make everything confusing. I’d strongly consider writing that line more clearly.
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Fair, it ended up that way due to being limited to one line but “You’re actually taking the offer?” would’ve been way clearer, so maybe I’ll fix that later.
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Guide Recrutament ??
So I just finished this, and I’m almost at a loss for words. This played incredibly well! You really know your stuff for map flow and enemy pacing. I had a great time with this, playing on hard mode. Even as early as chapter 1, noticing how player units combined for kills while still keeping up a good forward momentum through the map, it all just came together really nicely. The personal skills on everybody were also pretty nice. I also thought the shops were cool, having lots of different fancy weapons for each shop. I do have a few suggestions, but still, this was great and I recommend this to everybody.
Mechanic suggestions
I noticed that the player never gets any leadership stars. I get why, since everyone has supports that you’re supposed to use for hit bonuses instead, but I rarely got use out of them, since I wasn’t building my team around support partners. I think it would’ve been nice to just have 1 leadership star on Fabian or something, to increase the baseline hit of everybody. It would really help with using steels, braves, and especially the C rank heavy weapons.
Also, was Jacques really supposed to have no promotion? I assume this was meant to be a Marth-style thing, and I did have a very good Jacques because I went out of my way to give him most boosters so he could hold his own. But you might wanna give him a promotion, or maybe a rapier-type weapon or something? Since otherwise, he really doesn’t have a lot going for him aside from always being deployed.
Also, status staves are worthless. Statuses last for 1 turn, which means any enemy afflicted with a status will have it cured at the start of enemy phase. Status staff hit rates also stink since they’re vanilla. I suggest jacking up status staff hit rates by a lot so that they’re actually useful (like, base 100 or 200 hit on status staves), and making statuses last for more turns. Maybe 3?
Map suggestions
I thought almost every map was paced masterfully, with your use of turn events rather than relying on reinforcements all the time. There were only two maps I think could use some touching up.
Chapter 11x being a little gimmick map is neat, and it was super cool to save all the civilians just in time before the reinforcements caught up to me. But I don’t see how I could ever get the chests in this map, since they’re behind a bunch of enemies that would trigger the reinforcements. Maybe on a lower difficulty, I could see it being more feasible to kill the promoted enemies here, but on hard mode, I was definitely not gonna do that. Maybe put the chest contents on enemies as drops instead, so you could still get them by killing those enemies right before escaping if you set up for it.
Endgame felt like it wasn’t fully realized. I actually beat the map in under 10 turns, so I didn’t even see the turn events here. I think you could make this one more interesting by having the boss open a door every other turn, to make him feel more active. And if you take too long, maybe have him start opening those chests too, and have them contain additional weapons he could use. As is, endgame kinda just came and went for me, but I can totally see the vision behind it.
Fixes and other things
The greatbow is not effective against fliers.
You left enemy stat variance on. I don’t know if you did this intentionally or not, but I suggest installing the patch to remove it, since consistent enemy stats is just really nice.
Team pictures
The Bilf was an obvious highlight. Jacques got up there just by being a recipient for so many boosters as well. Clara and Pauline really surprised me with their combat. Negative shout outs to Jannik for getting awful levels all game.
I really didn’t know what to expect when trying this, but this was a fantastic time. Such a good pure gameplay hack with such perfectly flowing maps and excellently paced enemies. Thanks for making this.
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oh hey krash, i saw you extolling the virtues of this hack on your personal discord dev server, maybe i should play it?
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I’ve taken a pretty big shine to this hack due to recommendations and glowing words from friends. As a portrait artist, I was wondering if you would like me to help you clean up or redo any portraits? If so, you can contact me in DMs here or on Discord @ goldexclamationpointhashtag9123
not really a portrait artist but i could splice smth for this if you wanna wanna
i would love to contribute a portrait or 2
Thanks man! I agree with most of your suggestions and I’ll probably have time to make/test some changes on the weekend so expect a new version then.
And thanks everyone for the portrait offers but this hack has around 70 or 80 portraits or smth so it’d be a lot of trouble and I’m personally fine with them being scuffed. I also want to get this hack off my mind asap so I likely won’t be making more changes after the next version comes out. If someone really wants to make a version with better portraits (or any other changes) then they’re totally free to do so but I don’t have the time.
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I’ve played up to ch 12 in hard mode, having a blast overall though ch11 gave me emotional trauma( the holy bow boss on the seize point was a monster) and I think I’ll wait for the new version and play on normal. Difficulty aside, Westrian war is very tightly designed. Maps arent the largest but they are dense and generally the whole map is utilized to full effect. Alot of clever AI changes lead to clear packs of enemies you know you have to beat and plan out how ahead of time. I got attached to several units Mainstay Lina, Lucie, Bogdan,jannik( who died from one too many nomads in ch11)and the gigachad himself Fabian (with every booster). Im mostly avoiding any super direct gameplay feedback because my hard mode experience is skewed.
But overall I would say for the last 5-6 maps most player units who joined had unflattering bases. Now there were useful ones in there, and ones I used as fodder. But largely felt very underwhelming. I really like the bard decision, and it felt like it had longtime effects I was broke the whole run practically. I do think a little more money to buy weapons would be nice. I saw an effective shop and some others but lacked the funds , and most combat by my units was either an iron, silver, devil axe, braves or the odd 1-2 weapon. There’s variety in the weapons in the sandbox but I did feel a little limited in my ability to access more. I adore the early braves/rescue , and the generous tools at your disposal but some more easily available during the midgame would be nice.
The game is defined by its con deflation relative to gbafe/most hacks, most units get weighed down significantly by higher tier weaponry. This also plays a large role on enemies who can vary 4-5 speed depending on weapon. I really like this use of the system, it’s fresh and leads to volatile matchups. I think the style would be greatly benefited by some sort of MMB stat display so you could see enemy AS without having to open their inventory. Of course if it’s a deliberate choice that’s cool, but otherwise I think for a game where a core combat stat like AS can be altered so drastically the info being displayed not In a menu does alot for gameplay being smooth in my opinion.
Im looking forward to my next run though, there are a lot of units i wanna try out. Keep up the great stuff!
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Made a new patch:
- certain bows not being effective has been fixed
- status staves now last 3 turns and have 5 uses
- the contents of 2 chests in 11x are now droppables on enemies
- doors in endgame now open one at a time over many turns
- Jacques can now promote with a master seal
I sadly don’t know how to display attack speed, and the fixed enemy stats patch is incompatible with skill systems so I couldn’t use it.
EDIT: also fixed other effective weapons
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the fixed enemy stats patch is incompatible with skill systems so I couldn’t use it.
Hi! It’s actually not, just follow the steps here:
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Thanks! Just made a final patch with that & the minimug stat display with AS.
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I’m not too familiar with poison effect, but is it supposed to only last one round (actually no effect) on boss sitting on throne/gate? I used poison bow on the boss in Chapter 7, and he was restored immediately at the start of next turn without taking any damage.
Edit: As answered below, probably normal behaviour.
One more question though, Bilford (Knight) and Blanka (Nomad) can’t use longbow. Is it intended?
Thrones have always automatically cured all statuses at the start of the turn in the GBA games.
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