Howdy, made an account so I could comment some playtesting feedback, hope the formatting doesn’t make my stuff unreadable.
To start, I should mention that while I definitely have seen the 5Ds anime, the details are very, very hazy behind what must be at least a decade since I’ve last actually thought about it. Not to mention I only know the English dub and their names in that, so some of the characters are just named something I’ve never heard of. That could either be because you’re using their Japanese names (which I don’t even know to begin with), or maybe you just took some artistic liberties. I don’t expect you to “fix” this, because it’s not really a problem, and the only solution I could think up is distributing 2 ROMs with 2 separate names for most of the cast, and that would be a lot of work rewriting that everything, waaaay more than you should be expected to be doing.
Anyways, because of all that, a lot of the references are gonna go over my head so I wanna focus mostly on the experience of someone who doesn’t get all that stuff, and thus focus on the gameplay and art. So, spoilers up to the start of chapter 4 begin below (And PLEASE tell me if there’s an easier way to spoiler tag stuff than this).
Up to start of Chapter 4 Spoilers Below
To start, all the portraits I’ve seen so far (I’ve just started chapter 4) look pretty good, very on model (to my hazy memory). Admittedly there’s just something a lil disconcerting about Yanagi’s mini mug, can’t put my finger on it, just a lil creepy. Also, Yusei’s full portrait—with those shoulder pauldrons—is full on uncanny valley, because I am never gonna be able to get used to his face with fantasy armor on. But that’s just a me thing, I keep expecting to see him and his coat, rather than him and his armored coat.
In terms of battle sprites, those are pretty good. Admittedly the random fighters on chapter 3 having purple hair was weird, but like, fine enough.
As someone coming out of playing Souls of the Forest (which, I’m aware, has had many years of development behind it, and so don’t think your hack needs to match up to something like that) I’m missing a lot of the quality of life stuff in there. Stuff like the ability to see enemy ranges, see allied growths in game, being able to tell when an enemy has a stealable or droppable item thanks to an icon next to that unit, and having units that won’t move have their MOV stat set to 0. That last thing is particularly important in terms of bosses—the prologue boss moved, but chapters 1 and 2’s bosses didn’t, then I killed Jack before I got a chance to see whether he’d move or not, but it sure seems implied based on his dialogue, which is plenty fine as a warning to players.
I am not an experienced hacker, so I’m willing to bet that it’s a lot more complicated to put in all those quality of life features than just, like, downloading some files, and it’s not the biggest deal—this is how vanilla FE8 plays, after all—but it’s something I wanted to mention on the very, very slim off-chance that it really was as easy as importing a pre-existing patch into the hack.
Now, in terms of balance, I’ll admit the hack is very, very strange, and there’s a lot of specifics I want to get in to, but the long and short of it is that playing on difficult mode is a bit of a slog, and felt like it was too random and too difficult, or maybe that was just the very early chapters. Saiga is a massive help—he’s a bow knight Seth with worse mov, con, and weapon ranks, but equal if not better bases, and better growths—but the rest of the squad felt perpetually unable to kill things, and perpetually on shaky hit rates. I can’t tell if this was a case of me playtesting a hack that wasn’t at all tested on difficult mode (which is fine, but I would’ve liked the fact that normal mode is the recommended difficulty to be somewhere on the post or in the ROM itself), or if this was a case of some bug, or maybe you did actually test this, and my units were just colossally stat screwed, or maybe this is the kind of hack where you’re encouraged to let units die instead of trying to brute force through resets and keep everyone up, but if you did test it, and my units are about average, and thought it was fine in terms of balance, I disagree.
Enemies felt way too bulky and JUST fast enough to avoid being doubled by most of my army, but never fast enough to double any of my army but the slowest. The map objectives felt like they were going lightning-fast as recruitable characters or endless reinforcements put me on a timer if I wanted stuff—which required what felt like absurd amounts of risk or knowledge gained outside the map to acquire. Putting optional stuff (character recruitments, stealable treasures, destructable villages) on a time limit is good, but the bulk of enemies and the hit rates I was facing felt like my strategies were always unreliable, and always just 1 or 2 bad misses or 1 or 2 unlucky crits away from failing. For optional chests or villages, that’s fine, for whole, recruitable characters, that feels less fine. Chapter 3 felt downright unfair for how fast it expected me to move when my units couldn’t kill that quick, but I go in-depth on that chapter later.
That’s my summary, for a chapter-by-chapter breakdown, here you go.
The prologue was fun, fine, very tight. Solid map, not boring, not too puzzle-y, good story introduction to the cast. I have no feedback beyond that the boss being able to move SEEMS to establish that bosses move in this hack, but then the next 2 chapters break the trend, so maybe consider making the fact that he moves particularly obvious in the pre-map cutscene? Or give him some line after 1 or 2 turns about how he’s itchin’ to go tear up Satelite trash, the moment they get close, or somesuch. Or maybe, as other hacks do, make units that have no movement AI have 0 mov, so the player can obviously see they don’t move, and thus the boss won’t be a surprise when he does move.
Chapter 1 though, there’s a lot to say. The reinforcements felt like an unfair jumpscare—they spawned without any warning from a place on the map no one would expect reinforcements, and weren’t foreshadowed by a character in the script mentioning it as far as I can tell. The monks in all had non-zero crit rates on most of my player characters—and also Lua, who absolutely NEEDS to survive 1 turn, even through an assault of non-zero crit rate enemy. While crits never killed any of MY characters or caused a reset on my end, it is definitely a bad design choice when so much of your party has so little luck and HP that a crit would kill them from near full, and the boss—who needs to die to end the map—has enough crit with Shine to have a non-zero crit rate against everyone except Saiga. Also, Yanagi is really weak as a healer. I know that’s almost certainly intentional, but in my attempts to keep the party consistently healed, his healing staff broke before chapter 3 started, and HO BOY did that make that chapter a very special brand of hellish.
In short, non-zero crit rates on chapter 1 and not-literally-ambush-but-it-sure-feels-like-it reinforcements aren’t fun. Also, tanky, powerful, and dodgy enemies mean more uses of vulneraries and more healing uses, which can lead to an exhausted supply really quickly (this is a pretty universal thing for the first chapters, imo).
Chapter 2 was also pretty fine, though, as Yusei says at the very beginning, the lack of axe units makes hitting lance users a little inconsistent, so actually moving quick enough to reach Yuji before he explodes on the next turn is pretty hard. This is a problem throughout the hack, but this chapter made me, personally, feel it pretty hard. Also, the fact that a soldier with a single-use chest key spawns to “loot their treasure room” is really weird, because the soldier will only steal 1 item, before just patiently waiting there for the party to show up and murder them for their javelin. Maybe give the soldier a multi-use chest key? Or two keys? Or maybe them a thief with a lockpick and the steal AI (if that’s a thing)? Just throwin’ out ideas.
One thing though is that, because of a lack of stealable icons, and the general power of enemies (alongside the weakness of my own healing capabilities), it was really hard to both remember that enemy vulns could be stolen, and also get them, which, fun fact, made chapter 3 even worse. Maybe this is just a skill issue, but like, the limitations on healing felt extreme. If I’d been told this was the difficulty to expect, I could’ve adapted and played incredibly seriously and tensely, but the feeling I get was that this level of difficulty was unintentional, again, because the game was playtested internally on normal mode.
Chapter 3. I don’t know what to say about this chapter beyond what I’ve already said. I ran out of healing staff uses beforehand, was suddenly expected to deal with infinite reinforcements before I could get my hands on another, and just barely got out with everyone alive by the skin of my teeth. There’s so much I could say, but let me limit it to what I’ve already said: inconsistent hitrates and tanky/fast/hard hitting enemies made trying to rush the map my only option, as it wasn’t possible to consistently kill the mercs/soldiers that spawn in the middle forts on the bridge while they were on it, and thus move on top of them to prevent more from spawning. It was a mad dash, incredibly frustrating as I lost attempt after attempt, and ended up just throwing Saiga with his Seth bases at the enemies, which baaaarely worked out in the end, requiring me to use literally all of my vulnerary uses left over from the previous maps. This is genuinely a situation where ambush or same turn reinforcements would’ve been easier to deal with, because at least then, after I survived the ambush, I could cover the middle spawns freely and kill the enemies outside of their forts without their massive terrain bonuses.
I survived thanks to making walls of units which could all tank exactly 1 hit, not get doubled, and survive. I did this multiple times, had to juggle vulneraries like I’d just gotten out of clown college, and barely made it out. It didn’t feel fun, it felt like I was relying on 80s and 70s to hit to consistently make this work. This wasn’t even a situation where I felt like I was greedily taking up optional resources, because there practically weren’t any. Saiga was able to kill the boss and get her talisman on the last turn because Yusei was already home free, and Saiga had already killed Jack. I was stuck at the beginning because of the positioning of the archers and knights, meaning I had to throw a physically tanky unit at each of the pairs, and kill the soldiers beforehand (which were too fast for Lua or Luca to double consistently without having their javelins equipped first), and somehow blitz my way through the rest of the units. A lot of this could’ve been alleviated with lower stats on enemies, or another heal staff somewhere in chapter 2, or just more warning that chapter 3 was gonna be really hard so maybe you should stock up on stuff now by being extra careful and stealing more vulneraries, or maybe allowing the preperations screen to be viewed on chapter 3, so you could buy more stuff at the pre-map armory to stock up on the bare essentials, especially since you get 7k gold the chapter just before.
In the end, chapter 3 felt like it left a bad taste in my mouth. Had I been playing on a lower difficulty, or had conserved heal uses beforehand, or stolen more vulneraries, I could’ve gotten through easier. Chapter 3 felt like a massive spike, though.
This is all to say: maybe tune down the difficulty of difficult mode? Or make it clear that it’s pretty darn hard? Or decrease enemy AVO by lowering their luck across the board? Or… y’know, lots of stuff.
The game isn’t bad, I should say. I had a lot of fun with the prologue, the support writing is funny, the early parts with Rally, Martha, and Yusei were cutesy, the cast feels solid enough, the themes themselves are good (telling the story of a bunch of poor kids in an annexed area fighting back against their oppressors and holding on to hope that the world can change is hardly the newest thing but it is particularly effective to connect with me inpaticular). I just feel like my decision to play on difficult mode, as opposed to normal, when the result was really, really very hard, and nothing about it felt like I was making this massive choice in terms of it (and it wasn’t mentioned whether the hack was tested or balanced around normal or difficult in either the post or the ROM), it leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth.
I’ve got half the mind to restart the game on normal mode and see the difference for myself. But I’ll admit I probably won’t, lol. I’m stubborn, if nothing else.
So, yeah. tl;dr is that the presentation and art and writing is overall solid, but, on difficult mode, the game feels intensely punishing, and a lack of resources early on lead to me damn near getting into a situation where sacrificing units would be my only out. Reducing the difficulty of that mode, or making it clear that the game was balanced around normal, or that the difficult mode itself would be Very Hard would all be very, very appreciated.
but well it’s an interesting story with the 5ds characters and Full of references
