Helloooooooo people!
I am finally back and with me comes chapter 5 of witch’s hope
I hope you guys have fun with this chapter! it’s a bit simple but me personally I feel like I made something cool!
Played up to Chapter 5. The hack has a lot of promise to it and I am very excited to see where it goes. You’ve done a great job so far and I wanted to give you some feedback.
Gameplay: I played on the hardest difficulty as recommended in this forum. I had a couple of resets from losing characters but those were always on me making mistakes and not the hack being cheap. I usually play on Normal mode so starting on Hard was a first for me but I was able to adapt. I didn’t notice this hack being any harder than Normal Mode Vision Quest but the hack’s only on Chapter 5 so it’s a bit hard to judge. Personally I like the level of difficulty so far.
The characters feel good and unique from each other. A couple of standards were:
Elizabeth was very interesting. At first glance her speed and Nosferatu prf seem like an easy way to bend the first few chapters over your knee but then you notice the low crit rate every enemy is sporting when she fights and if history has taught FE players anything it’s that a 4% crit is actually a 50% crit. It’s an elegant way to disabuse players from facetanking maps with her until she gets a few more levels in luck.
I feel kinda split on Robin’s prf. Other posters have pointed out that his prf is kinda ridiculous and it is but I really relied on it throughout the hack to get my other characters off the ground. I don’t want to see it nerfed into the ground. Maybe like a baby nerf to start with? Idk.
Max is pretty busted from the moment he joins thanks to his Defense and Speed. He fears nothing outside of archers and I think he might need a bit of a nerf to both.
I really like Julia as a unit. Great job. No notes.
Everyone’s talking about how busted Robin’s prf is but Leo’s Trust blows it out of the water. A Nosferatu prf that boosts Spd and Lck by 3? Leo’s about to turn the game into his bitch from the moment he joins unless you pack the maps with Heavy Spears and Hammers. Trust needs a nerf, a significant one.
Fu’ad the swift is my favorite because the hottest guy in the army and is currently at the top of the list for feeding all my stat boosters to.
I love that Aaron’s class is scammer. I love Greed. I am interested in seeing how any thieves you add can hold a candle to his prf. The role compression of healer + thief is pretty insane on a meta level. I am very interested in seeing his supports with the other characters once they’re implemented. I love Fu’ad but Aaron is a close second purely based on concept.
I do not like how Orpheus is implemented. Having to bank on his prf to kill in order to refresh is hella clunky and potentially frustrating if he does not refresh the unit I need him to. I would prefer it if he were to refresh like normal. I guess you could have it where he refreshes when he attacks or deals damage. I am also interested in learning about his little bird. I like how he fidgets when Orpheus crits. 
Chapters:
Chapter 1 is good. I do agree with other posters that the map is a little empty on the left side.
Chapter 2 is good. The chest being a Pure Water is a let down and I wouldn’t feel let down if the thief got away with it. I’d suggest it being a statbooster like a Goddess Statue or a Skill Book.
Chapter 3 is good. I agree with other posters that the center two trees with the two bow knights felt a but pointless since the map flows pretty seamlessly towards knocking down the westernmost log and crossing over to recruit March and Leo.
Chapter 4 was probably my favorite so far. Lots of room to snipe with your ranged characters but you have to be mindful of the Mana weaponry. The boss, Michael, left his throne in a cutscene but stayed glued to the spot where he ended up instead of charging like he implied in the cutscene making it trivial to defeat him. The cavalry that sat on the throne displayed a full range of movement when examined but never left the throne even when I put characters in his range.
Chapter 5 was probably the orst. Along with the pegasus knights giving empty levels (I know you put a message at the start explaining this so I imagine this will get fixed later on) it just…wasn’t interesting. I moved my characters down. Fu’ad kept the weak peggies off my army while we quashed the bandits and the boss. The only snag that could have happened was the peggies killing the Shaman with the Nefarious Ring but thankfully I was able to avoid that. Eve threatened to start moving in a cutscene but she didn’t the following enemy phase and I finished the map after that. This kinda felt like a filler map tbh.
Plot and Characters:
The plot is good. I love the idea of magic being banned and the ripples it would have on society. It’s ripe for a lot of conflict on every level and I can’t wait to see how you dig into it.
The characters are the weakest part of the hack unfortunately:
Elizabeth quickly vacillates between being Lawful Good and kind of a brat. She has a bad tendency of summarizing conversations we just read (The end of chapter 1 dialogue where she comments on how it’s crazy that she got saved by Robin and now she’s traveling with him and Layla…right after we played through that very situation not two minutes prior. I get the vibe you’re going for with her and Robin being at loggerheads but she comes off as petulant more often that not even when Robin points out reasonable things like not trusting Max, a strange child they just met. I like the concept of who Elizabeth is as a character but her character writing is not there.
Robin is good. I like him being the cynic to Elizabeth’s idealist. Everyone seems to quickly gang up on him though. I get he’s kind of a dick but he’s a dick with a point. I got up to his B Support with Elizabeth. I like it but the C support is a bit confusing. IT starts out with them talking about magic then suddenly veers into how Elizabeth doesn’t want to kill people (despite at this point she’s probably killed quite a few already). There’s a ludonarrative dissonance there that needs to be addressed.
Layla is kinda…there. I didn’t start her support with Elizabeth with my playthrough so I don’t have the full picture but despite being with the party from Chapter 1 she kind of fades into the background.
Julia and Max’s support is fine. I can’t comment on the rest because their supports haven’t been implemented yet.
Like other posters have commented, your hacks grammar needs a lot of work. That’s probably the second biggest flaw of the hack after the characters.
Misc:
Throne healing seems to be disabled. “Boss”, the knight gaurding the gate in Chapter 3, and the cavalry guarding the throne in Chapter 4 did not get any passive healing for some reason. They might not have gotten any terrain bonuses either but I couldn’t be sure.
Player Phase music is not great. I like a more action oriented soundtrack for Player Phase and the one you have currently is just not doing it for me. Admittedly that’s more of a personal thing.
Is it possible for you to turn off the difficulty option if Hard is the recommended difficulty anyway and you haven’t balanced the game for Normal and Easy? The hack Road to Ruin only had one difficulty. It didn’t even let you select difficulty.
I really want to reiterate that despite my criticisms that this is a very promising hack and I can’t wait to see what you come up with next. I am rooting for you!
Ok so first I would like to thank you for taking the time from your day to play and write a long post about the hack this is truly appreciated.
To address some of the things you mentioned in your post
I know some characters and their prf seem broken rn but I would like to avoid nerfing characters for the time being at least till I have a lot more chapters to balance around I would rather my hack be easy with broken characters than be hard with poorly balanced ones
And about leo specifically he has low magic base and growth which I assumed will balance him to just be a wall later in the game
As for the difficulty options normal and easy ARE easier than hard it’s just that it’s using vanilla FE auto levels aka I am not balancing than hand and there might be bugs idk about so like the option of making the game is easier is there I just have never tested it
And last but not least writing and characters
I do agree the characters and dialogue are the weakest link in my hack because unfortunately I have no experience writing I will try my hardest to fix the writing and make characters like layla more relevant after a few more chapters I will probably try and rewrite the dialogue for the first chapters
But I did try to give the characters more character using supports and I hope you liked it
Also you said “I can’t comment on the rest because their supports haven’t been added yet”
This might be a bug? Because all the characters currently in the hack have supports with other people? Can you please elaborate what you meant by that?
Oh also throne healing is disabled on purpose and the bosses not moving in chapter 4 and 5 seem to be mistakes from me that I thought i fixed I will fix them.
Also sorry to break your heart but orpheus doesn’t actually have a bird
That was just a bard combat animation that unfortunately comes with a bird because it’s based off the fe6 bard. sorry!
I got Leo and March’s C-Support to proc but there was no dialogue just a prompt that they had reached Support Level C so I had just assumed you hadn’t implemented their Support dialogue yet. Orpheus, Fu’ad, Nous, and Aaron had joined Chapter 4 and because Chapter 5 only had 6 deployment slots I couldn’t bring many of them with me. Since they had joined recently I made the assumption they hadn’t built Support with anyone but that was an assumption on my part. I had assumed that the only Supports implemented so far were Elizabeth/Layla, Elizabeth/Robin, and Max/Julia.
The march and leo thing seems like a bug
Idk what caused it I will look into it
They are supposed to start at rank C already.
By any chance were you playing on an older version when you recruited march and leo?
Then updated it after you recruited them? Cause that will cause them to not spawn with their C rank already.
Maybe? I clicked the link next to Download Here: at the top of the page and downloaded the patch. I remember that you had already posted about adding Chapter 5. I’ll double check and get back to you.
First I would like to thank you for pointing these bugs to me idk how I didn’t notice them at first but yeah I just updated the hack
leo and march will now spawn with C rank support it seems like I was testing something then forgot to revert their support to normal
As for chapter 4 and 5 the bosses will now move instead of stick to their places
this happened because I was using a the wrong patch to change the AI4 aka boss AI of these characters which made them stuck with move even if they already had an AI that made them rush.
Yes I love this statement because I feel like some hacks try to give like this hard challenge even with their normal and easy modes and not everyone is here for a slogfest and hair ripping difficulty.