Hello, where secret shop? I can’t find it
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lmao, it’s been so long that I forgot. Try deploying Filch on random maps and she’ll give you a hint if there’s a shop on that map.
The Dragon Herald was a great playthrough - Thanks for a great experience! I beat the game on hard mode in ~ 25hours. I think it was very resourceful of you to make the rom the way that you did, perhaps because I haven’t played many other hacks in full, but the use of all the community assets did not show for me. I definitely plan on checking out your sequel game!
Gameplay:
The chapters were very varied in terms of objectives beyond the usual route, defend/protect and capture. I noticed there was a lot of pressure to avoid turtling with lots and lots of reinforcements. I favour defensive play so this was quite the challenge – there were some moments though where I was tanking waves of enemies where I probably wasn’t intended to though.
Chapter 5 was challenging but fun, I ended up rushing the boss with Lawrence and Filch (after she stole some items) because the rest of my team was getting overwhelmed. I liked the fog of war and assassin combo in Chapter 8 but I managed to tank and kill all of the flyer reinforcements with my super Lawrence/Byrd combo. Chapter 10 was tough, as many other people noted, but I liked the challenge and concept a lot. I liked the epic battlefield chapters (Chapters 7, 12, 15, 20) with the waves and waves of reinforcements it was a lot of enemies but gave the story some good stakes reflected in the gameplay. Chapter 16 was ridiculous though with the magical reinforcements with bolting tomes. I also really liked Chapter 17, especially since I was easily tanking the heroes/swordmasters reinforcements with my Byrd and then the sudden magical reinforcements from the top forced me to pivot really quick.
It took me a bit to get used to the longer range of the bows as it definitely made enemy-phase a lot more challenging (which I assume was the intent). It would’ve been nice to have more than one archer for the majority of the game though to make up for all the options with the various bows though!
In terms of gold though, I imagine it would be incredibly difficult to fund your army if you didn’t have Filch though. Without stealing all the gems I am not sure how I would’ve been able to keep fielding units with weapons (and I had some issues early-game even with her stealing all the gems I could). Secret shop prices were through the roof too.
I didn’t mind the use of the sacred stones soundtrack as I quite like it myself. However, it was nice to have a couple chapters where different themes came on as a nice change of pace.
A couple of questions/confusions:
I’m not sure if either of these were intentional or accidental.
For chapter 11, after I killed (mistakenly) Alto the text made me think that all the Wygar warriors/fighters would stop attacking too but then they killed my You so I had to reset. It would be nice if it was made clearer that they would keep attacking or if they’d become neutral (go green etc.).
I’m not sure if there is a workaround but I could not figure out how to complete chapter 14 without Shouzou deployed. Initially I played through the chapter and all the enemies except the kids but I could not beat the chapter since I did not deploy Shouzou and therefore did not get the Pacify tome. I would recommend you either make Shouzou mandatory or have an option to pacify the children in another way (maybe have You talk to them?). I think the addition of the kids is a cool concept but it was disappointing when I had to reset after being unable to clear the chapter.
Story:
The story was nice, snappy and pretty straightforward. I liked the “smaller” stakes with it just being a couple of nations quarreling over the Herald. You was pretty vanilla and it would have been nice to see more of her thoughts after the truth of the Heralds got revealed but I suppose a lot of that material ended up coming from Shouzou (who I feel should have been a co-lord or lord-like character given his importance to the story). I enjoyed the integration of recruited characters in places beyond their initial story beats (like where they were all chatting in groups at the port while drinking) or when Ludo suddenly had a small story contribution like 10 chapters later. Supports were interesting but options were quite limited though – the characters fit the story very well though and definitely felt like part of the “world”.
**UNITS**
You – You’s bulk was super questionable the entire run and she didn’t get that much strength growth so I often had her relegated to staff duty. With the Fire Emblem she was decent though.
Lawrence – The co-MVP of the early to mid-game with Byrd and co-MVP of the late game with Kris. He had power, speed and decent bulk and could one-round almost everything. Whenever I was overwhelmed, I’d just send Lawrence to deal with the problem.
Byrd – Byrd was super powerful in the early-to-mid-game along with Lawrence and fell off a bit when strong magic users arrived to double her in the mid-to-late-game. She was still incredibly useful to the end as an impenetrable, hard-hitting wall.
Rona – No speed to speak of, she was slower than Byrd for most of my run and only passed her towards the end. She bordered on deadweight for most of the run but I wanted to make an archer work. 3 range was super useful for poking enemies though, I guess if she had speed she could’ve gotten OP real quick.
Forz – Low skill but one of my only unit who could comfortably one-round enemies (as long as he hit). Solid unit throughout.
Filch – I fed her some kills initially so that she wouldn’t be a liability, but she turned out to be a decent combat unit. Staff utility was also super useful as a Trickster as I supported her with Lawrence and would often just send the two of them off alone to deal with waves of enemies.
Kris – The co-MVP of the 2nd half of the game, she would’ve probably got there in the early game but I had to bench her for a couple of chapters after she blew through all my light tomes. Once she got some growths under her she was unstoppable, she one-rounded Alto in Chapter 11 (I also didn’t know you couldn’t kill her if you wanted to recruit her later) and then I couldn’t recruit her later. I think I must’ve gotten incredibly lucky with her defense but it didn’t matter because she didn’t get hit usually anyways.
Hartmann – Solid unit throughout the run especially as a mixed wall when Byrd couldn’t hold up to any magical pressure.
Samantha – In hindsight I did not need her given my plethora of staff users. She was super delicate for most of the run and was effectively a staff bot for the whole game.
Laguna – I wanted to use her because of her cool design/concept but it took a lot of feeding of kills and staff botting to her to get her going. Once she got going though, wow, she was super powerful though and she became a one-woman wrecking crew.
Elise – Came a bit late but she quickly became one of my go-to units with good offensive and defensive stats.
Horace – See Elise. They just traded (predictably) defense and resistance effectiveness. His speed was low at first but became serviceable by late-game.
Shouzou – Since I had good physical tanks and lots of magic users I wasn’t planning on using him but then I kept needing to deploy him so I decided why not? His summoning was very useful for meat-shields and he was able to do good chip damage throughout the run.
Others
I used Dietrich, Shouko, Hato, Borgin, and Breunor, towards and during the endgame. Dietrich saw some use for chip damage, Shouko was barely used, Hato was a staff bot, Borgin was a staff bot but was able to do some impressive chip damage with his special tome, and Breunor was the most useful of them all and helped a decent amount in the final chapter. Also used Lorelei intermittently.
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Ch 11
Oops, I can fix that.
Ch 14
It would make since for Shouzou to be forced so I’ll do that.
Shouzou
Shouzou is in fact the third lord of the game (after You/Taiga), and all three are game-over conditions on death. He’s just not usually force-deployed.
Finally, your Kris is fairly normal. She mentions good utilization of defensive wards in her join chapter which is meant to be a hint at her defensive potential.
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Just learn of this Hack thanks to FEU Discord server. Look interesting. And from a well known Romhack maker as well. Will play this in the future
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