Hey @TytheBub, took a break from my own project to give your hack a playthrough. With how much time you spent on making it, I figured the least I could after completing it would be to give you some feedback. Before I get into it, I want to say that I really, really enjoyed it and that I thought you made a stellar project. Any criticism I have is supposed to be constructive.
Maps and Gameplay:
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I thought you did a great job with the mapping. All of the maps looked very polished and I didn’t catch anything that looked funky. There were a lot of different locales and, for the most part, this tied into some really solid gameplay.
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This is a bit of a personal opinion, but I am a bigger fan of smaller deployments, so it was unsurprising to me that I enjoyed the front half of the hack’s gameplay a bit more than the second half. This is certainly no fault of your own, but having said that, I felt it gave me a lens to assess what I liked and disliked about the second half. Some of the chapters in the second half were quite large and had many turns of just moving units without much threat. They felt a bit like a slog and I felt it encouraged more turtle tactics, especially as siege tomes and staves (especially berserk staves) came into the mix. Chapters that I felt really exacerbated this problem were Chapter 18 (The Usurper), Chapter 20 (Ahribaal route), Chapter 24 (Maximum Power), and Final 2: Old Wounds.
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In several chapters units can get belted through one tile wide corridors with little chance of a counterattack. Chapter 18 was a quick example I had of this due to so many units being in trouble through the passageways in the middle of the map. Due to enemy ballistae and magic (of which not many units have resistance to), there were only a small amount of units that could take a beating through those, and even then, it was more of waiting for ballistas to run out before moving. This played into encouraging the group to tie very close together and just wait out attacks rather than moving units forward.
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Chapter 20, with its rising and lowering tide, almost plays like a defend chapter because of how little you get to move for several turns. It becomes a minor nuissance to navigate 14 units through a one tile wide area several times.
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Chapter 24, as well as a few instances elsewhere in the hack, had very large maps. This was more commonplace in defend maps, like in the Kotan route. I think your idea was that if you spawned enemies farther out, it would give you more time to react, but in some cases, in just meant waiting three or four turns for your enemy to actually get to you. I think you can achieve the same effect with a smaller map.
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I certainly enjoyed more chapters than I disliked though. There were some chapters that I really appreciated your creativity. My favorite chapter of the hack was Chapter 21x (of Ahribaal route)… Just because I hadn’t seen anything like it in a GBA Fire Emblem game. I enjoyed chapters where you took features and combined/altered them to paint a different picture.
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Chapter 21 (Ahribaal) was probably my second favorite chapter. I thought it was a well put together chapter with a unique gimmick, and more than anything, it showed just how much could be done on a small map with a larger deployment.
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Like I mentioned earlier, I enjoyed the gameplay of the first half of the hack a little more so than the second. Part of this was due to the size of deployment and map size (even though some of the earlier maps were fairly big), but the other part of it was due to critical rates. There were many of my units throughout the game that had low luck and, by the second half of the game, critical rates, either due to weapon criticals or class bonuses, left me screwed to a critical. In the second half, chapter length was on average longer, so this stung a bit more (being that I would restart on a character death).
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Really like the battle at Tarka as well as the final chapters. I think it’s really cool when portions of a hack are expounded upon in more than one chapter. It’s something I really appreciated and will borrow somewhere into my project.
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Spoiler Territory
Summary
I’d be remiss to not mention the two major boss fights in this game… Specifically, Nahhak and Maximillian.
Nahhak’s battle was manageable… Once it becomes apparent a tsunami of enemies was going to spawn in. Certainly lost the first round of that boss battle. I’m not entirely sold on changing the concept of what you did… I think it is more of a case of having a subtle warning about how to prepare. It didn’t seem fair to me to work my way deep into the chapter only to get wrecked by eight enemy reinforcements that essentially trap a unit in, but if there had been a cue to avoid it, I think it would have been more palpable (i.e. If a character would have said “It would be best if we could entirely surround him before engaging”, you’d have a better chance of having the player prepared for such an event).
Maximillian (second phase) was another beast altogether, but I had one minor, minor gripe with him and the final stage. The reinforcement side of things was totally fine and I actually liked the rush to finish the chapter. It become apparent to me that his final phase was dealing physical damage, meaning any mage was completely out of the question in fighting him… Unless they were simultaneously fast enough to hold a heavier tome and withstand a hit. Even the bonuses to his def/res were 7/10, suggesting it was a physical fight. My MU had maxed speed and I had used an angelic robe on him, and still, he couldn’t attack Maximillian with Dunbaalze (his only move that would deal damage) without getting doubled himself. Not a big deal though, physical fight. But my gripe was that I thought this was a trend for me, and that he was one or two points too fast. Maybe I got hit with some poor speed level ups, but most of my units could not hold an S tier weapon and hit him without getting doubled themselves. And with hit rates being somewhat unreliable on him, it made for a fight that was slightly more RNGy than I would have liked. Minor gripe though.
- Even amidst these gripes, I can honestly tell you that the pacing and enemy challenge (minus one or two bosses) were pretty spot on. It felt like it was a very true to original FE7 hack and definitely brought back some nostalgia of playing FE7. There were never any issues with the AI, issues with chapters, etc. This was a really well put together project.
Writing
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Wanted to say I think you put together an admirable story. Enemy motivations were believable, player character motivations were believable, and the recruit-able characters definitely had their own little charms. I really appreciate when side characters show up with dialogue in chapters, and I thought you did a decent job about this.
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Spoiler territory
Summary
I thought some of the main characters had some character growth and development… Though I may be hypercritical in wishing there was a bit more. MU didn’t really pay much for any of his mistakes, nor did he make much attempt to overcome them. Orion had flaws in his character, which I appreciated, but in the end, as he says himself (the quote is close, not exact): “You can only change a person so much”.
Errors:
- Like I said earlier, the hack played really, really cleanly. There was only one issue that I came across in the entirety of the hack which is a testament to how well together it is. This issue was that in the final chapter, looking at the stat screen of several characters (Dyo being one of them) would cause the game to crash/brick. Easy reset of the emulator solved it though (unless I pulled stat sheet up again). This was on VBA.
Final Thoughts:
On the whole, I thought your project was pretty exceptional. For the most part, it felt like a true to form FE7 game and I think you did an outstanding job. Like I said in the beginning, I don’t mean the criticism to be mean, but constructive, and for the constructive criticisms that I did have, I found myself twice as often saying to myself “Huh, that was clever” or “Huh, that works really well”. Congrats on a great project.
Character Sheets (because who doesn’t love seeing these?)
I could not get Dale to get speed, at all. Used two speedwings on him. Was so surprised when I saw his speed growth in FeBuilder at 50, which made Arthur’s speed at the end all the more questionable.
