Is it normal for Aloysius (or any other character) to get 100 gold for no reason when he stands there? The message just popped out, dissapeared and I actually got those 100 gold, but that was way too random not to ask.
I also got an elixir when any of the two flying units end therir turn in that tile my cursor is marking. In case you don’t remember, it’s the village where you get the hammer in chapter 1.
Edit: nevermind, a village in chapter 2 explains it. Well, I wasn’t expecting every chapter to be a desert chapter, but I’ll take it.
Yeah, I like ground items. Some are guaranteed item pick-ups, some are random chance. Ironically, this hack has no desert maps, despite having desert treasure everywhere. They appeared in Treasure Hunters, too. Although it makes more sense, given the theme of that hack. It’s also very subtle softlock prevention in some places. Keep your eyes peeled, and you might get some good stuff!
3 Likes
@WilhemTehLynx Thanks for this hack, it was fun!
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In my attempt to go beyond the brief on Ch9 where you only need to kill 1 boss, well… I tried killing them both heehee.
When enemy phase hit, they both died to poison thus achieving a unique way to clear the chapter.
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Just when I believed I’d thought of every crazy thing the players could do…
Well, congratulations, you actually found something I never accounted for. Although I guess there’s no point in accounting for the player going out of their way to break the game like this. With how the eventing works, the game will by default put you on Route A. (Though you’ll probably have to move a unit to activate the always condition) Good on you for finding this, though.
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Loved to be able to play with all the units all the chapters, great idea, also it was fun looking for the “lost” items. I hope to see another of your works.
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Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve always liked full deployment, it never felt right for units to just sit around on the bench and do nothing the whole game. And ground items are great too, mixing up the gameplay a bit each playthrough depending on which ones you get.
While I do have ideas for future hacks, I’m not sure if I’ll make them yet. But never say never!
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I finally finished playing this hack yesterday. And I gotta say what a wild ride! How the story is set and how the characters were banded together in this game feels like I’m at the “Avengers Infinity War - Endgame” phase of this story (and you can’t help but feel like maybe certain groups of characters had their own individual games before appearing in this culminating game). Why I mentioned Avengers is because during the final battle someone had to do a sacrifice, and there was a scene with the remaining cast mourning over the grave at the last part. Gotta say that’s a starking similarity
This may be the only romhack I played where I have capped the ENTIRE cast to Level 20. The full deployment feature is an absolute delight as always.
Although I wish the game had the QoL of having HP Bars displayed below the unit. I could’ve saved countless minutes by having a visual of their health in a glance instead of checking by highlighting each and everyone.
Overall it’s a pretty well rounded and a very fulfilling FE hack. I felt the love, care and thought put into this game. You should be proud of this one. Thanks for your hardwork!
2 Likes
Thanks for playing it! Finally glad to see a bit more in-depth words on the hack.
The similarities you noted in the story are unintentional, but I do see what you mean. I wanted every character to be developed and have some kind of history, due to the “almost ensemble cast” objective I had. It makes the story more immersive, and yes it makes it feel like they’ve appeared in other games despite having not.
As for HP Bars, well… I dunno. Maybe I’m just too used to vanilla, which is why the hack has a very vanilla feel, so I don’t bother adding something like that. I understand that other people have different preferences, though.
2 Likes
Hello, update on this hack. Not right now, but someday soon, probably.
I had a surgery recently and was replaying my own hack here to pass the time during recovery, but as I went on, I’ve found plenty of typos, a couple parts of the script I want to slightly revise, even some underflow glitches in the otherwise overlooked easy mode I was playing on. See, I never actually playtested Easy mode; I did some debugging to make sure the “Casual mode” part of it worked, but I never played through the full thing because I thought it would work itself out. But it turns out that wasn’t the case like I thought. Heck, FEBuilder itself even told me that and I didn’t listen, heh. As a result, I’ve been working on a Version 5. I have no timeframe on when it’ll come out-- my workflow’s been inconsistent due to aforementioned surgical recovery-- but I do intend to give this hack one more update.
- I intend to read through quite literally the entire game script and read it over more carefully this time to correct as many typos as possible. Inevitably, I’m going to miss a few, but that happens to the best of us.
- I intend to add a little bit of extra dialogue, some things I initially didn’t implement that I feel like adding in now.
- I intend to polish the script a little more in general, removing a few redundancies, and putting more variety in place of phrases I found myself frequently using. I use the phrase “I don’t blame you” and the word “Shockingly” a lot more than I thought and the characters should probably use more varied words than those.
- I intend to correct that easy mode underflow glitch I mentioned.
- Who knows? I might add something else. We’ll see how I feel as I go along.
Once this update is made, hopefully future FEU members will be able to stumble upon this hack and experience Kingdom of Ghosts at its pinnacle. I want to make this the last update I should have to make, and I want it to be a good one. I’ll let you all know once it’s done.
11 Likes
Hey, I’m still working away at that update. A bit slowly, but I’d say I’m maybe halfway there. I’m quite liking the changes I’ve made. I’ve updated some character motivations, tried to make things less contrived, and polished up some cringy dialogue I could’ve sworn I’d proofread. I also made some minor changes to the gameplay, so hopefully it’ll flow better. I got the dancer rings to work as normal now instead of being staves, so that’s nice.
Unfortunately, my laptop has been having issues and won’t charge, and I haven’t been able to get it fixed yet. Fortunately, I was able to make a backup of the hack on an external hard drive, so I haven’t lost any progress. But the update’s development is currently on hold.
Regardless, I’m thinking so far that this update will be well worth it. I’ll try to remember to let you know when I’m back in business. Until next time.
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Laptop issues are finally resolved, so progress on the hack will continue again. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it out in a couple months. Stay tuned, folks.
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Alright, this’ll be the last update before the final release.
I’ve set a deadline to get the hack done before the new year, or just after (My motivation being the petty thought of “I don’t want to change the title screen to say 2026 instead of 2025 despite the fact it would only take a few minutes to update the graphic!”). Progress has been very slow because I’ve been working on other projects, but I am almost done. Hopefully the hack will be peak by the end of it. Had to do another playthrough, and I’m glad I did, because I noticed even more discrepancies while doing so. QA really does drive developers insane, even the ones who actually like what they’re doing. And writers suffer from “I’m embarrassed about this thing I wrote a few months ago” syndrome, so that also torments me.
Yeah, that’s about it. See you soon, with the release of Version 5. Don’t be afraid of no ghost.
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Well, that’s that, then.
I’ve finally gotten out Version 5, and boy am I tired. If I ever make another romhack, I think it’ll be a while from now, and probably nowhere near as long as this hack. I always wanted this to be my “Great Big Project” and everything after would be smaller, so it’s to be expected.
For those of you who play this hack, consider telling me what you thought of the hack once you’ve finished it. Feel free to tell me what you liked and didn’t like, your favourite protagonists and antagonists, favourite and least favourite chapters, so on and so forth if you decide to leave a review. Other perspectives are always nice to hear, and can help me improve with whatever future stuff I might make.
Anyways, that’s about all I got for now. Until next time.
8 Likes
I’ve recently finished my playthrough of Kingdom of Ghosts and enjoyed my time! There are many hacks that revolve around skills, QoL, music, and other changes, so experiencing a hack more focused on a vanilla experience was refreshing.
I’ll leave some of my thoughts below.
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I like how you get once of every class in the beginning. It makes this hack unique and lets you have more time to invest in the characters.
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The hidden items you can find makes it fun to explore the map, to see where a treasure could be found. This is made finding secret shops fun to discover. After I finished the hack, I looked into FEBuilder and saw many other secret shops I didn’t even know existed!
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I like having multiple paths in the story, meaning you can have a different experience than others (I picked the Mattheos route).
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You put in Angels, aka Kinshi Knights, aka fliers with bows. Thank you.
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A big issue with the enemies are the low crit % throughout the game. Some chapters felt like I was always a crit away from dying. I started to notice this in Chapter 6, which was filled with light magic and thunder mages that had a low % critical chance to just kill my units. I feel like some additional luck for some units would be nice, at least for the earlygame.
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Ashlyns weapon is the only personal I feel needs a buff. Ashlyn isn’t supposed to be strong, and her personal seems like it should help her low str, but barely helps her. I found a Flame Sword to be the better option, as Yang’s Blade was essentially a 1 Might and 1 less weight version of a Flame Brand, while I could buy more Flame Brand and Yang’s Blade couldn’t be repaired. Personally, I think she should have some effectiveness in her weapon. When I got a Wind Sword, Ashlyn became much more effective. (I originally thought the Negate Defenses, or Luna, ability for her weapon would fit her, but it could probably cheese the final boss.)
Also, I wanted to point out that Whitney’s Counterblade doesn’t Negate Criticals. Silas says its used for “countering the most seasoned enemy veterans”, and I think it’s a bit misleading, since due to Whitney’s low Luck, she can just be crit herself before getting the chance to counter. I think it would be better to change Silas’s dialogue to mention caution when approaching seasoned enemy veterans.
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Eudaimonia’s Kiss has a very big issue with unit overload. The amount of enemies that spawned would cause the game to visually freak out, resulting in graphical errors. My units and the enemies map sprites would be randomized, combined, or even disappear. Usually this would be a mild inconvenience, but the method to fix it is by restarting, which I couldn’t do until I reached a checkpoint. While the chaos was funny, I also found it annoying, and it’s the only chapter I didn’t enjoy.
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I also streamed my playthrough, so I had some people comment on the hack. A few viewers were interested in it, I remember one saying they were going to try it, and one viewer applauded the hack for having a cowardly shy Jagen.
Heres the MVP of the playthrough: Arlo.
Loved getting Magic, Skill, and Speed. Gave him everything because he swept through everything and crit everything.
1 Like
Thanks for the review! Great to hear you enjoyed the hack. And I ought to watch those streams sometime, so thanks for letting me know it existed.
On Crit Rates:
This is the one part I couldn’t really fix that I tried to. I artificially reduced the luck stat of Ekklisian soldiers, but couldn’t reduce it by much or it would cause an underflow glitch. I did artificially increase the luck stat of the protagonists too, but it seems it wasn’t enough. Since enemies often have small crit rates, Kingdom of Ghosts probably would’ve been better as a casual mode hack, even on Normal and Hard mode, so this is just one of the problems that came with it not being one. This is the same reason I gave the players Titan Amulets as well, usually right before bosses with noticable crit rates.
On Ashlyn:
Ashlyn was one of the hardest units to balance and I think you’re right; I probably should’ve made Yang’s Blade a bit more powerful. My brother always complained about it and I couldn’t quite figure it out, so… yeah. Oof.
On Whitney:
I didn’t want to give the Counterblade the “Negate Criticals” effect due to the presence of Titan Amulets, but I did consider it. Which is why I gave it a luck boost instead. In retrospect, the Charian Weapons are supposed to be pretty strong, so I could’ve afforded to do it.
On Eudaimonia’s Kiss:
I knew that was an issue and tried to prevent it. I never ran into that bug after some fine-tuning, but I always knew it’d be possible for some people depending on playstyles. Sssssorry.
Edit: After some experimenting I found out that you can fix this error without needing to wait for a checkpoint by simply turning on battle animations. Unbelievable.
On Arlo:
Oh my Eudaimonia, that is the most powerful Arlo I have ever seen. Takes me back to when Kingdom of Ghosts was still in early development and Dillon and Dustin dominated the whole game.
Overall, these are some very well-balanced and clearly thought-out criticisms, and I’m very glad to hear it. I feel like I’m moving up in the community a bit, heh. I’ll be sure to go watch those streams. Thank you so much!
1 Like
I haven’t played the hack beyond the very beginnings but one question
I artificially reduced the luck stat of Ekklisian soldiers, but couldn’t reduce it by much or it would cause an underflow glitch.
Did you mean the skill stat? Luck doesn’t increase crit rates in GBA Fire Emblem.
