During the past two years, the mighty Karala Empire sought to conquer the entire landmass, culminating in a revival of the Daemon Lord and his minions from beyond the dark abyss. Almost every area saw some kind of loss from the sheer brutality of the fighting that occurred. However, just as darkness was about to envelop the entire continent, the prince of the conquered land of Trisbyne, Victor, led an army fighting for freedom, and using the Divine Artefacts, was able to topple the empire and defeat the Daemon Lord once and for all. For a moment, there were hopes that peace would be restored.
Those hopes were soon dashed.
With the collapse of the greatest empire on the continent as well as other governments, former soldiers and brigands alike have taken advantage of the breakdown to loot and pillage at will. Society has broken down in many areas, and countries whose militaries have been decimated by the war find themselves unable to deal with the unrest that plague the lands. Even those who escaped relatively unscathed find themselves facing the burden of a desperate population of refugees who have lost everything. Moreover, the surviving governments live in fear of Trisbyne, as in spite of Victor’s popularity as a hero of the war, his country’s acquisition of all the Divine Artefacts makes it such that none would be able to oppose them should they seek conquest just as Karala did. It seems Victor has plans to assuage these fears, but what they are has yet to be revealed.
The newly founded kingdom of Thessa was a former province of Karala, which had long sought to gain its freedom from Karala’s oppressive rule, and finally declared itself as its own country during the war, although they remain unrecognized by most other nations. lts leader, King Juvenal, has his hands full keeping the fledgling nation together with bandits, unrest, and the spillover violence from across the Karalan border.
Both her continent’s and her king’s concerns are far from the mind of the newly promoted Captain Serini, whose mind is occupied by having to adapt to leadership, and trying to forget the circumstances that led to her promotion, as she sets out on a border patrol with a few troops. Little does she know that this routine mission would set her on a path that would shape the future of the continent, and force her to deal with the difficult question: “Can man truly live in peace?”
Things to feature in the game:
Probably 20-25 chapters of gameplay
An original story, based on the concept of what happens after a traditional FE story finishes
Dismount like in the days of yore!
A limited form of the skill system, with new custom skills
The now standard QOL changes
New classes like Deserters, Ballisticians, Hunters and changes to existing classes such as 5 move armors and mono-weapon cavs
This is somewhat alluded to in the story summary, but it’s like “What do we do now that the evil empire that started the war that consumed the world has been destroyed?”
Just a quick heads up that I’ve updated the download link with improvements to the first map, as well as an actual opening cutscene this time. Also, there’s now a discord!
I love the story premise! “What do we do now that the world is saved?” is underrated as a jumping-off point for a story and I look forward to your take on it. Since the demo is just one chapter, I wrote down some quick thoughts on it.
thoughts on the chapter
The glaring element here is Zoe. She’s on a Seth level of strength, but without the drawback of stealing enemy experience thanks to the Mercy skill. I’m used to having to be strategic with using the Jagen unit to weaken enemies, but now I can just Mercy everything to 1 HP (and it will be 1 HP, because she crits everything with her crit bonus) and then use another unit to finish the job. Apparently, the game thinks Zoe still isn’t powerful enough because the village gives a brave bow, which I didn’t even use because she doubles and crits with the steel bow already. Why not give an interesting weapon for one of our other units instead? Not even the enemy archers have a chance of countering Zoe since she can take a few hits and has enough speed to dodge everything. Her only weakness is that she can get boxed in by enemies from all sides if you let that happen. You may be going for a unit like FE8 Seth where it’s just plain fun to use the unit and the game doesn’t arbitrarily punish you for doing so, but in a vacuum with just this single chapter (more generally, while the game is still short enough that none of our units will get the chance to grow to her level), I get the feeling it would be better if she were just a very powerful archer instead of a completely infallible sniper.
That being said, I do think you can pull off the whole concept of the archer who has the Mercy skill because she doesn’t like killing. It’s a great connection between character and gameplay; it just needs a little more nuance on the gameplay side.
Aside from Zoe being OP, the chapter plays well. Our starting crew all seem likeable and I look forward to seeing them bounce off of each other in conversations. I like how we have the more grounded perspective of a commander rather than a princess or what-have-you. The bad guys are generic bandits, but I figure we’ll get the juicy details about how mercenaries have turned to banditry in later versions. You’re off to a great start!
Thank you for the feedback on the demo, and I’m glad you’re looking forward to it!
With regard to Zoe’s balance, I am generally trying to balance the game around hard mode, on which she fails to double several of the enemies in the first chapter with the steel bow, and gets about 3HKO’d, so I wanted to give the player a limited tool that would be able to take down any enemy they were finding particularly challenging to deal with (that brave bow will be the only one in the entire game, as the village dialogue indicates). I am considering whether to make Zoe a high-level archer instead of a sniper, so thank you for the input.
