Fire Emblem: The dark hour. Hard Mode available. Complete

Each act is 5 chapters.

Took it for a spin and I though it was pretty decent, though like all new hacks, I have spotted some issues. I documented them for convenience.

Before the dark hour:

  1. Breguet needs buffed. Everything doubles him, and he fails as a tank because of it, which is especially bad because Ryan’s the only other unit who has a decent amount of defense. Also, he has major accuracy issues.

  2. Ryan should be higher than level 1 if you want him to be an Oswin-style mini jagen.

  3. Having the avatar only start with slim weaponry (I went cav) really hurts their damage output. I would suggest upgrading it to iron. Also, the avatar’s bases kinda reek.

Bandit raid:

  1. The map looks suspiciously similar to FE9 chapter 1. There’s even the bandit who destroys the village turn 1.

  2. The village that O’Neill and Arla come from uses vanilla FE8 dialogue.

  3. I noticed that Breguet’s death quote calls the wrong portrait.

  4. O’Neill has 0 base luck.

Ruin checkpoint:

  1. Andrew and Lilo use FE7 colors for their portraits.

Stronghold Approach:

  1. O’Neill also has the wrong portrait in his death quote.
  2. Ballik’s speed is a bit high for this point in the game.
  3. During the part where everyone speaks at the end of the map, anyone who dies still speaks.

The Bandit Fortress:

  1. The map music choices are kind of weird.

Ok i just buffed breguet so he isn’t useless.

the bandit raid map is based on the FE9 map. (I said in the hack description that some maps are going to be based off of Fe9)

O’neill and Breguet’s death dialogue protrait now fixed.

Ballik’s speed is nerfed.

As for the ending part of chapter where everyone speaks i can’t for the life of me to get
the game to check if the character is alive and not play the dialogue to work no matter how hard i try
so that part is just there as a place holder until i can get it to work.

Hello! Much like Green above, I also played through the most recent release, and I had a good time! But I do have some feedback, both positive and otherwise, that I’d like to express.

  • Script: The hack does have a handful of spelling and grammar errors, but nothing that hurt my overall experience. I was somewhat baffled by the fact that all chapter titles, and the name of the hack even, were all lower case. While technically incorrect in regards to grammar, I did end up finding it charming in it’s own way!

  • Avatar: I was surprised with how well it was implemented! I ended up going with armor knight mostly as a joke, but they were still able to contribute! Although I have to confess that if the growth rates for the avatar are going to be flat 45s across the board, then perhaps promotion gains for each class option should be more pronounced.

  • Weapon Triangle: I don’t know if it was intentional, but the effects of the weapon triangle seemed increased, and were making both player and enemy hitrates fluctuate dramatically. Now while I think a more powerful triangle can work, the abundance of lances on the player team and abundance of axes among the bandit enemies in the first few chapters led to many instances of neigh unhitable enemies. I personally would recommend considering adding a second weapon type, such as swords, to armor knight in particular.

  • Music: Almost entirely sampled from Gaiden and Thracia 776. These are two of my favorite FE soundtracks, and I loved how they were used here. However, there was either a strange choice of map theme or even glitch in ch 5, where the conversation theme between the dancer and brigand played throughout the whole map, and since it was a very short loop, it was somewhat grating.

  • Chapter 1: Not a bad starting map! Although I have two specific recommendations: since the tent has provoke, the enemies will almost always attack it, which robs the map of it’s challenge and can be easily cheesed. I’d consider replacing provoke with shade, the opposite skill, that would enable the enemies to still target it but not compromise the challenge of the map. Also, the first boss having wrath is probably too dangerous and punishing, and means that only Ryan can engage them safely.

  • Chapter 2: A fun, simple homage to FE 9 and other chapters like it, the brigands targeting villages could make for a simple but effective anti turtle incentive, but since the first village is reachable on turn 1, and the new allies that join you spawn from the second village, it doesn’t work as well as it could.

  • Chapter 3: The worst chapter, if only for the fact that it’s just taken straight from FE 8 and barely adjusted. I would recommend either creating a completely new map from scratch with a similar premise, or if that’s not realistic, making further edits to the terrain and enemy placement to make the map play more differently. Also, Lilo with point blank and a 1-2 range shortbow is both bad and redundant, and she doesn’t even need them; she was a perfectly serviceable archer for chapters 3-5, and she never once needed to counter in the melee.

  • Chapter 4: This map really impressed me! Very fun, good use of reinforcements, an anti turtleing incentive, and a really fun twist/surprise in the enemy dancer with her staff. The bridge section could use a few more enemies. Probably my favorite chapter overall.

  • Chapter 5: Has the potential to be a really good map, but the pacing is all off. The eastern section is too far away from the rest of the action, and I ended up spending 5-6 turns waiting with one half of my army near the boss while the rest helped Millia recruit the enemy unit and the thief looted the chests. However, with a few cuts and additions, this could be a really fun map! I personally recommend an anti turtleing incentive with the two green prisoners, which currently are just decoration. Since the narrative tells us the bandits planned to either convert or execute their prisoners, perhaps a brigand reinforcement can move to kill them if the player takes too long or ignores the east side, potentially putting them and their master seal reward at risk! Just a thought. Also, adding one or two more enemy dancers, maybe without staves, could add flavor and challenge to the map.

I know this is a lot of feedback, and may be a lot to process, but I want to end it off by reiterating that I very much enjoyed this hack, and I hope to play through both new revisions and chapters alike in the future.

6 Likes

Actually on chapter 5 there is a fighter with door keys. He is made to go to the prison room and execute the prisoners. So yeah there is an anti turtleing in the chapter.
Also the weapon triangle is the exact same i never touched it.

The creator especially mentionned that some maps were based on FE9. It’s not a crime.

Sorry I think I was too harsh on u for frejia’s 20 str growth and poor base at tales hack… But 65 is too much for a myrmidon (and 40 is a bit much for a thief either)
The fighter is 40 too
(And idk if u can adjust growth rates for classes the MC is)
Yup breguet hp is too un-knighty
And ryan’s bases and ( growths in compare to another soldier) are too strong to be a 1lv unit (I recommend either making him likr 5+ lv or nerf his growths and bases a bit
Sword classes are mostly about double attack and hit more and dodge more so no need to get extreme str to balance the poor mt. just enough is ok.
45 str growth mage…idk but his growths surpasses the archer a lot except 10 on def
Same for arla and ryan (except 20 on luck) (tho if ryan is MC too then high growths are justified)
(BTW will ryan get a helmet off portrait as story unfolds?)
And hatchets are free so I grabbed some lol
And what is church for? I tried trading away vulundery but no commands shown there
And vanilla map wtf…
Brigand:hey prisoner escaped, everyone to arms!!!
Me:wtf why do u prepare to fight rather than chase them down??? And they are not even saying about defendning the fortress

Also Btw the chest in chapter 4 is a random item chest.
I’ll leave that to your imagination of what you can get in it.

Bekfast finished it.
Str growth dancer… Borris and breguet needs the growth more (alex maybe)
Longbow: description is 2 to 3 range
Also long bow:shoots me at 4 range
The bosses:dont abuse me hahaha we have good cri–
Frejiah: (and the calvalier and alex rescue take drop team)ok 0 hit boomer (only player phase so rescue or dance then reposition the dancer to remove the risk of getting hit or critted on)
Why are there prisoners door… No use or talking at all
And maybe make the brigand have door key and priortize the captives to force players to rescue them quick
Mine random loot is speedwing

I decided to make a few late game maps ahead of time. Here have one that i got and remade in FE5 tiles.

1 Like

A little update i spent some time editing the earlier chapters a bit and i gave Breguet a different pref. skill
than solidarity to fit his role a little better.
The dark hour.2020-03-06 23.17.51

Also some bosses (Mostly big bosses. :example: Tyras) will have ways of not being easily cheesed.
(Example)
The dark hour.2020-03-06 23.18.02

1 Like

I have decided to make a difference between an army Mercenary and a bandit Mercenary.
This is the difference.

Soldier Merc.
Battle Animation Palette The dark hour.gba_0B

Bandit Merc.
Battle Animation Palette The dark hour.gba_D5

What do you think?

1 Like

There r no methods to prevent players from cheesing a beatable boss with rescue take drop…
Plus, due to the extreme high triangle effects, I used myrmidon (boss has 0 hit at player phase) to chop his hp
And can you customize the skills? 25% hp isnt really that much and is too dangerous (4 def isnt too if hp is thay low) (not like everyone just gonna scratch him a bit everytime)
(And if first attack of a same turn of combat made him drop to 25% does the skill work at follow up?)

The creator already said he/she didn’t change the weapon triangle. Yet there are 2 people now commenting on that

So either he/she is mistaken and changed something but not on purpose, or there is something else …

@helix0981 You shoud look into it if there are multiple people saying it :slight_smile:

EDIT: I will try out this hack myself too, and do the math, I’ll tell you about the results I come up with :slight_smile:

@Auduhlma As requested i looked into the weapon triangle to see if it has been modified
and the results was, it was not changed. The weapon triangle is still the same.

Update: After a long time of adjusting and testing act 1, after i make the first chapter of act 2 ill release the updated patch.

i’m pretty sure someone else experienced this problem, it might be some unexpected bug that is screwing up the routine

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Well doesn’t this look familiar.

The dark hour.2020-03-11 16.20.59

2 Likes

It’s fog in FE5 tileset but it’s not Thracia fog, this truly is an unfamiliar sight.

1 Like

Map wise not fog wise. sry i need to be more clear next time.