Aha, we know that.
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Of course, it’s all part of the plan
I decided to play this hack from start to finish a few weeks ago, and it was certainly an experience. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the effort that went into this, and it’s the best “demake” I’ve ever seen in many ways, but some design choices make it hard for me to recommend it to most people.
Pros
This hack looks fantastic. Pretty much every portrait is superb, and most of the maps have been recreated wonderfully. I think the menus look beautiful as well. I also like the way the skill system was implemented, and how laguz kept their gimmick intact (although I never found out how to check their “energy”).
Most of the cutscenes are exactly how I remember them, but in GBA form. Even the CGs are here! I can’t imagine the amount of effort that went into this project.
Sound
I don’t know how many people mute their games when they play them and listen to something else, and I can see why some people would, but I never do that. Giving this its own section might seem weird, but hear me out: sound design might have been the most disappointing aspect about this hack for me.
The title screen music was the first thing that caught my attention. Venus Lighthouse into Disturbance in Agustria, seriously? This is some Silvagunner stuff. The funny part is how well it works.
Anyways, it was all downhill from there. This theme is used as the “one enemy remaining” theme for the entirety of FE9, and since cutscenes have no music changes, this theme will play for most of the map end events. Listening to this music while Greil dies kind of ruins the moment. You may argue that I could just play or watch vanilla FE9 if I wanted to watch impactful cutscenes, but if you’re going to the trouble of remaking all the cutscenes faithfully, you might as well play some music that fits the scenes.
I know transcribing and rearranging FE9’s and FE10’s music would have been an extremely difficult task, and it would be unrealistic of me to expect that from this project, as much as I wish it was the case. However, the music that is here was used in a very questionable manner.
Ascent, the Endgame map theme from FE10, plays for the first half of FE9. This is obviously extremely unfitting, and I was tired of it after a few maps. The battle theme from FE9 is in the game, yet it’s not used for the actual battles. What gives? Then “The Devoted” plays from the second half of FE9 all the way to the end of FE10’s part 4. Why.
Most units have a voice clip play when you select them, and I assume they were taken from the Japanese version of Heroes. The fact that they seem to slow the game down a bit (half a second or less) whenever you select a unit already makes me wonder if they were worthy of their inclusion, but I guess I can live with a little lag. Most of them sounded fine. However, Ike’s was extremely loud. You know, the character you might want to move every turn? I wouldn’t recommend using headphones while playing this. On the bright side, Haar’s voice clip was amusingly loud and low quality that I couldn’t help but laugh every time I selected him.
But I know it’s still a work in progress. I apologize for dwelling on this point so much.
Gameplay
There aren’t that many issues, but the ones that exist plague most of the hack, and some are borderline game-breaking.
- Reinforcements are ambush spawns. If that wasn’t bad enough, they don’t appear on the edges of the map like you’d expect. They sometimes appear close to the edge, but almost never on the edge itself. I hate this. Some indoor maps have stair tiles, but reinforcements still won’t come out from there.
- Most maps have been faithfully recreated… just not all of them. Some of the later maps in FE10 remind me of that one SMW hack where all the stages were remade from memory.
- Vantage is extremely broken, with its 100% proc rate. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend nerfing it, as it helps you get through some of the difficult or bad chapters, but it’s worth mentioning.
- I actually like most of the unit changes. Titania is pretty bad, and Shinon is awful, but that’s fine. Mist is TERRIBLE. I get that she’s supposed to become good in late FE10, but it’s honestly not worth the trouble. Might be me, but I think Rolf is pretty great, which I like.
- Promotion items are almost non-existent, so I got through most of FE9 with tier 1 units… until I realized you can get them at the monastery. I couldn’t figure out how to escape it for the longest time, but that’s not your fault.
- Self-rescue SUCKS. Why is it a thing? I often tried to rescue a unit, only to self-rescue by accident. I guess it’s my fault for playing a hack in a different language, but I can’t think of many situations where it would be useful. Speaking of, CON is extremely weird, and might be broken.
- The second half of FE9 is siege weapon/tome hell. Ballistae are the worst weapons I’ve ever seen in a hack, and they’re everywhere. Bowguns in the FE10 part are easier to manage, but still extremely powerful.
- Laguz are extremely powerful.
I’d like to talk about some specific chapters now. I’m sorry I didn’t take as many screenshots as I should have.
FE9 Chapters
13
As I said before, laguz units are extremely powerful. From this point onwards, every map with laguz is hell, while maps with no or very few laguz are easy.
15
Thank you for not slowing down the map to a crawl. However, the laguz are still a huge problem.
18
This is where siege tomes start getting out of hand. Most maps after this one have an overabundance of siege weapons and/or tomes.
21
This is the only map in the second half of FE9 that has no bullshit. I honestly enjoyed it a lot.
23
As mentioned before, the ballistae are way too powerful and unfun to play against. It doesn’t help that you have to manually count their range too.
However, this map has another huge problem. Half of the map will be low-action because EVERY ENEMY MOVES. You’ll kill every enemy before you even reach the second half of the bridge! This applies to many, many maps later on. I think changing the AI of some of the enemies (to move when you’re in range or somewhat close to them) would improve the experience a lot, since it seems like everyone who isn’t a boss has the same default aggro AI.
24
Geoffrey died in turn 2 or 3, before I even had a chance to save him.
Also, this swordmaster had a shoe for a weapon… okay.
27
It’s probably too late to change this, and a little subjective, but I don’t like the idea of Ike being necessary to defeat the strongest bosses. I like flexibility.
Of course, this is a solo battle, but this applies to some bosses in FE10.
FE10 Chapters
1-2
Sothe is useless if you didn’t train him. (And why would you?)
1-3
If you raised anyone from the Dawn Brigade or Liberation Army during FE9, the rest of part 1 is a complete joke. My Ilyana could solo anyone.
1-5
You have to recruit Jill, Zihark, and Tauroneo, or else they won’t appear in the next chapter. I learned the ward way…
2-1
If you did not raise Brom and/or Nephenee, you’re softlocked. (And why would you, honestly? They sucked.) None of my units could damage the boss.
By the way, Heather is insane, but I’m not complaining.
2-3
Most ballistae from this point onwards use Reyson’s animation for some reason, which causes the game to freeze.
3-13
Ilyana was not available for this chapter. She returned in part 4. Maybe she was sick?
4-P
This is where the hack goes from easy to insanely difficult. There are flying units with bowguns with insane might, and status staves everywhere. To be fair, I didn’t realize I could have promoted my units to tier 3 in the monastery, so part of it is my fault, but I doubt it would have helped that much.
4-1
This map is unplayable without torches. Map took me 74 turns to beat because the reinforcements go on for too long.
4-3
The map was so different from the one on FE10 that it took me a really long time to find Stefan.
4-2 and 4-5
These two maps are a slog. IIRC, they both have snow, which didn’t affect anything in FE10, but it does affect movement here.
Endgame
No Ascent in the one chapter where it should have played. I couldn’t figure out how to remove skills, so I couldn’t bless anyone, but that’s my fault for not knowing Chinese. I was able to beat the game just fine with Ike, Caineghis, and Sanaki, but it took a lot longer.
That’s about as much as I remember. I’m sorry or if I sounded rude at any point, since it wasn’t my intention, and for focusing on the negatives. Honestly, though, I can’t stress how amazed I was by the amount of effort the team put into this. It’s really one of the most impressive hacks I’ve ever seen, and I can’t wait for the English patch.
I had a lot of fun playing the first half of FE9, until the most glaring problems started showing up. I know there’s a cultural divide on what we consider challenging, and I don’t want necessarily this hack to have a complete rebalance. Different music choices and a few changes to the enemies (and the ballistae) would go a long way.
Anyway, congratulations on the release, and thank you for sharing it here!
8 Likes
I am gald you enjoy our hack.
You can check the energy here, did you see thirty? This line shows the energy.
You can image how big the work is. So I said we didn’t put so much attention to the music. That’s endeed a problem. We will continue to work on that, as well as bugs.
It’s okay. I remember all the maps that you are talking about. You are right, the siege weapons are unbalanced. I also hate them. I just finished my maniac mode two weeks before. We find that it is super difficult if you don’t turn to 3 tier. Laguz units are powerful because we want to keep it. You cannot find other fe which has them right? You can treat it as our design.
2 Likes
We achieved 7 supports. After we fix some bugs we will release 4.4.
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Pictures
Anyway, sorry if it took so long. The difficulty I’m currently facing is how to insert serif font into this game. This proves to be hard because not only was this hack uses japanese rom, but the encryption also hinders the progress. I had to ask a wizard just to insert the narrow font into the game.
Bugs
In any case, this is just the first step and more bugs/crashes are still to come so… yeah, progress will soon follow. Thank you!
14 Likes
You are Amazing for translating this! I cannot wait!
translation time so awesome
Pictures
Whoops! Crisis averted. So now I could finally begin translating without anything seemingly prone to breaking. In any case, just like my last translation, I will be releasing the patch with the UI/Items translated > Story translated > Music translated periodically so that you guys might not have to wait for a long time to play this. I have no deadlines set for this but I really hope this hack can be showcased by FEE3 this year. Thank you and see you (not) very soon.
27 Likes
Great! I am happy to see the process. A good beginning is half done! There are so many words in the rom. So maybe you will have the memory overflow.
2 Likes
Does anyone know a patch which can fix the weapon to a character. The weapon cannot be traded or putted into convey.
I think there is a patch preventing trading item + you can combine that with a simple weapon lock.
Do i have to play through FE 9 to play FE 10?
Oh man this rom hack is so amazing, I’m in love with it, can’t wait for the English release!
No, you can choose fe10 at the beginning.
Hey I really enjoy this Hack it’s super fun but how do you get out of the monastery do I have to do one of those maps with the pirates that have the portrait of that one senator dude
Senator Armstrong?
No, you can go to the border of the map and select exit.
2 Likes
With the help from @Oocities and a prominent hacker named Scraiza, we could finally get some massive progress onto this game. Take a look!
Gif
1
2
Teaser
27 Likes
Whistle, it looks AWESOME so far. Keep it up!
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