I am really enjoying the current version you have going, but one of the things I feel lacking is unit identity. Your flat growth rates are what is making the starting units shine so much. I think stretching and thinning to match class identity would go a long way in pulling those “memorable units” feelings you want. In practice, the low 20% growths across the board with your act 1 drafts just end up hurting the level up screen. It gets to the point where units that start out with strengths and weaknesses just turn into liabilities. The excess of promotion items in the game can be very confusing to parse alongside this. Worse still the early game drafts become far less interesting of a decision because you are basically picking the best stat sticks and occasionally rare items. The diversity is so vast in early game to late game stats and the growths too stunted across the board to ever grow attached in my opinion.
Yes I know I am supposed to be dumping and swapping units but the act lengths don’t really lean into that at all, with Act 2 potentially being the first map set you come to that will stop a full deploy. So in practice it isn’t until late act 1 to act 2 that I have choices to make in deployment, and by then the only units with real growth potential, the starters, are catching up to the units you can draft that are supposed to have strengths and weaknesses. Which at first makes units like armored knights sound horrible until you realize that any unit that runs averages as a baseline gets it even worse.
All these units with misaligned stat identity flattens the difficulty curve of the draft phase too much. Armed with this knowledge the unit draft feels far less interesting. Dancers are even stronger because the opportunity cost of useful plays is higher. Starting units that get stat screwed (as is tradition) don’t have mid-game flex options because the drafts you can get are soon outclassed severely by the promoted counterparts, and the the stat difference is negligible between the Act 1 drafts. Act 2 is the most forgettable draft phase because you are incentivized to pick certain characters over others.
For example dark mage is stronger than its other contemporaries because not only does it get Nosferatu like you have noted, but also because Luna allows the class to punch way higher above its weight. This is alongside their classes weight towards high magic/res making them the ultimate mage tank, with a matching cannon. The way stats work rewards consistent investment in a stat due of how linearly it scales. Since you are always going to be level screwed, you can basically keep drafting dark mages to replace your middling units, as they will at least have some relevant stat to lean on when you are pushing your 3 starters and maybe your lord to their limit. A run with 4 dark mage units can still promote at 10, and be a heal stick for the future replacements, while carting around Luna and Nosferatu just in case.
Likewise Wyrven Lords generally roll better because their stat concentration gives them a unique roll and flying units will always have utility at least. Being able to charge down a mage before they can act gives them an advantage over their much squishier counterpart (falcon knights) who can’t do the same to strength/def units.
I think you have a real good foundation and I am loving the map designs (except act 3 FOW map that legit lost me a run because I couldn’t find every unit you hid LOL). I just really hope you revisit the draft decisions more in the future.
Alright so looking deeper into your code, I like the way you implemented character recruitment. Very clever. Reviewing how it works, I think it would be cool to edit in interesting growth rates between the chapters. I think high variance on both ends of the spectrum (even higher and lower growth potential) in the early game will make for more memorable moments and define playthroughs more. I am going to play around with the numbers to get a better idea on how things work but if I am right what is essentially happening is that you are cloning a generated enemy onto a hidden unit minus the growth rates and swapping it in to the player party. While a lot of work, do you think that it would benefit the design if you had an RN pull the unit having it’s stats cloned onto that allowed for more variances in growth rates? This would allow you to utilize growth rates for balancing efforts on top of your current rock<Paper<scissors design mirroring the weapon triangle. For example I think Dark Mages are in a good spot, but if other classes were allowed to potentially gain an advantage in raw stats, they would compete for more spaces on my roster and give the player agency to come up with alt side objectives and tailor their gameplay to these as well.
I am enjoying this work of yours, I just think the replayability factor of this rogue-like is a bit on the low end for me now that I know the stat curves are incredibly static. Your map design has clever quirks to them that make them feel like a good player can come up with multiple solutions depending on their rolls or force them to be creative when they don’t have the right tool for the job. However, in practice, the average stats of your units just push standard weapon triangle + terrain advantage plays, with the early game mattering the most on stat distribution due to killer weapons locking potential power gains. I think you could push this design even further, and limit the availability of bog standard mobility units (flyers?) to give even more choice and consequence on the individual level spectrum. Like villages in mountains or islands, and thieves that have an easy path to escape routes that the player needs to catch up to.
All in all it is a solid game right now, I am just blown away by the potential you have here. By far one of the best Fire Emblem games I have played and a real evolution of the core game design that I think the main series moved away from in more recent releases. Your efforts in designing unique challenges keeps the gameplay entertaining.
Hi, I think it would be great if there was a turn counter showing on the maps so you can know how soon till your doomed. You implemented this timer already on the Final Preparations map. So would this be easy to add?
Hello. Parten my ignorance but I want to ask, how do you launch this? I heard about this yesterday and wanted to try it out but I’m not sure what app or program I have to use to launch it.
Okay wow it’s been like almost an entire year, this is crazy. I pretty completely dropped the project off to do uni and other things, but now that it’s the summer my schedule is suddenly wide open. But admittedly, there’s not much else to do with this hack. In theory I could get more out of it, but due to size restrictions, I can’t exactly add more maps. I’ve had some ideas bouncing around for a sequel, but that’s far away. But I’m coming back to patch up the last few things
A really interesting idea, and one I had quite a bit of fun playing through, though I think it could be improved by giving the units you recruit a bit more distinction - rather than all of them appearing identical, it could be interesting if some of them had their growths skewed in a specific direction. A bit like natures in pokemon. You could have balanced, lucky, aggressive, defensive etc. - either more or less in depth than that. It would add more depth to choosing who to recruit, beyond just bases and items.
I also agree that it would be nice to have random generic male or female avatars for the phantoms. Or at least female and male phantoms. Especially for the dancer.
Bad news first. Outside of a few minor fixes here and there, I will likely stop patching this hack. It’s in a form I can be pretty happy with, and while there’s a lot of features I’d still love to add, it would be a lot of time an effort into a project I haven’t played around with in about a year.
But here’s the good news: those features aren’t gonna just die. Instead of cramming them into my existing hack, I’m just going full send into a sequel. Once I have something of substance, I’ll make a separate post, but the scope is larger and I can really apply all the concepts I’ve learned through making the original. I don’t wanna pressure myself and rush it, so it’s likely gonna be a bit of a while before you get anything, but once I finish the main rogue-like engine I can really start making gameplay.
As a sneak peek of some things I wanna fit in:
Variation between phantoms, aka ± base stats and growths
They’re still gonna have generic portraits and names tho. That’s deliberate and intentional on my end. Stat variation was a technical limitation, but it’s a personal aesthetic choice to make them generics because that’s the whole point.
Optional gaiden chapters that offer serious challenges with great rewards
Multiple lords. Merriette isn’t gonna be the only one to storm a dungeon any more
An actual story that isn’t just 3 cutscenes(?)
Map design that better scales with the game
Arena finally lol
Less deployment slots so you actually have to think about your army
A much shorter campaign. Think 10 chapters total compared to the original’s 15+prologue+bosses+final
Monsters
A final cutscene that doesn’t glitch and make you play the final chapter again (I’m sorry, I literally have no idea how to fix that one)
Thank you to everyone that has played this hack and stuck through my slow and confounding changes (maybe I liked shamans a bit too much). Hopefully I can throw together something eventually, and hopefully I can make it a great improvement over this hack.
And even though I’m gonna stop working on this hack, I plan to have one more patch to fix some glitches, balancing issues (yes I know the act 3 water map kinda sucks), and maybe try to squeeze in a little extra content I haven’t implemented yet.
