Thank you for checking out the game, @Kjmccloud, and thank you for taking the time to provide your review and feedback.
Chapter 11 isn’t actually too bad if Caspian is a low level or at base level. He actually has decent bulk to still take out pegasus knights if you position him in a tree. Grabbing Liang instead of Roxie is usually a good idea if Caspian, Myles, and Boone were completely ignored. Though, Boone and Myles should have received some leveled from their forced deployments.
I have done some rework on the desert map to make it less brutal already. I have lessened the amount of monster spawns on that map, so I hope it will be easier to break through the monster swarm.
Actually, Majestra isn’t actually supposed to be light magic. It’s basically just a super powerful light brand, so it won’t have advantage over shamans.
The sonic sword is only supposed to be affective against thunder based units and pegasus classes, so that is a correction I should make.
Good catch on the hero holding a lance instead of an axe. Thank you.
Honestly, I don’t know what is up with Faith and Amanda’s support trigger. There is nothing different with how their supports trigger. Faith actually will trigger a support with Amanda like 5 turns later. This makes little sense to me considering they have the same starting value and the same support growth. Not sure if anyone has any thoughts here. Why would it only be happening with this specific pairing?
Regarding your recruitment thoughts:
I intended for Amanda’s recruitment to be pretty hard late in the game. I wanted her to be sort of like a Karla to get; though, I didn’t like the idea of having it be a use this one character check, so I made it so you need a strong team of male characters. Using Shiloh really helps with getting Amanda. She is not someone that is needed on every play through though. She is fun to use. I will give her that.
You do not get any reward for saving the two civilians on Ch26. They are fodder for allowing Ozias to live long. Though, I am rethinking how Ozias is recruited to make it a little easier. Though, I still want the player to have to rush there.
Lionel’s recruitment isn’t too bad actually. Lael just need to be adjacent to Lionel, and you can speak with him on the same turn with either Boone or Ariel. Even if Lael is weak, she doesn’t need to engage in combat for this action.
Ah yes, Shane flying into the snipers. I agree. This is kind of annoying. I have already adjusted this so that Shane won’t be doing this. You will still need to get to him before he does stupid green unit stuff, but it won’t be as bad.
Regarding Chapter 15:
I agree with your assessment on Chapter 15 100%. Actually, that map is probably my least favorite in the game for a lot of different reasons. I don’t like the green units either. The fact that they basically have pass is super annoying. I do like your suggestion with making Wise’s units green though. That might be a good balance here.
Wow! That’s some crazy, high praise. Thank you!! I try my best with creating this hack and continuing to improve it. More supports should be coming soon and there are a lot of pairing that have been written, so stay tuned.
I don’t mean to say that Lionel’s recruitment is hard, I just think that it and Amanda’s are counterproductive to being able to just play the game blind. most people don’t expect to go through a romhack multiple times, and unless you’re looking ahead and trying to route out exactly what you want to do, there isn’t any way of knowing how you should prepare for such recruitments. I love the game, but didn’t really like Riley, so Shiloh is an easy choice for me moving forward, but just playing the game, the player quite possibly won’t even know he exists (actually, looking back, I picked wrong on all three of the character splits, relative to my preferences. I’ll probably be doing Liang, Tanya, and Shiloh from now on)
Lionel’s recruitment costed me a run, because I had Lael and Edith together very far away from him, and having to suddenly change her trajectory after learning what I was supposed to do was more inconvenient than just restarting.
And in the same vein, I don’t think chapter 11 is difficult, either, but not knowing what’s in a village, and also not being able to get to it can be a big disappointment, especially to a newer player who doesn’t know what his team is going to look like going into the map. Removing that brigand I think removes a lot of pressure, and just turns it into a regular prologue map, but there’s definitely an argument there for wanting to reward the player for knowing what they’re doing. And again, money is spread out so well, they won’t need it anyway.
I fell in love with Amanda as soon as she called Faith a peanut, though, so I was determined to figure out how to have her on the team, and willing to make any sacrifice necessary to do so. That scene absolutely brought me to tears, and it alone convinced some of my friends to pick up the hack, too.
I didn’t think Ozias was particularly hard to recruit, though I’ve only played the map on hard so far. Knowing it was okay to kill Amanda on that map made it much more manageable, but my first run through of it, I was skirting her around the map while cleaning up the chests and getting to the secret shop, which was a very difficult, but also very rewarding thing to accomplish, even if I ended up having to replay it again after figuring out what her recruitment requirements were.
I can see your point, @Kjmccloud on Lionel and Amanda being very tricky characters for people to find when playing the hack blind. I know they aren’t needed characters to beat the game, but people do seem to want to recruit as many characters as they can.
Strangely, I have heard from a couple people who have played Lonely Mirror multiples times already. I was honestly not expecting that, but I like to think that the game has decent replay value. It is always cool to hear people’s experiences.
I really think Liang and Shiloh tend to not get chosen over Roxie and Riley. For that reason, I think Liang and Shiloh are probably the most overlooked characters in the game. Liang can take some work, but can turn into a valuable res tank. Bishop Shiloh is kind of OP at the end of the game with seraphim tomes and having another healer during Burga’s arc is kind of nice. I wouldn’t say they are better or worse than their counter recruits. Just not as liked or overlooked characters/units. I am kind of 50-50 on Tanya and Wanda. It really depends what makes more sense for your team.
Maybe I will see about delaying the Brigad by another turn or 2. That can give the player some more time to get the house, so it doesn’t seem like an immediate rush. I will admit. This house is difficult to get, and I usually ignore it on runs where I don’t really use Caspian or Myles.
I love Amanda too! At the same time, I am terrified of her. She’s great, and a lot of fun to write. Happy you had enjoyment with the Amanda scenes.
Personally, I’ve never considered playing a hack more than once, but this one was definitely an outlier for me. I’ve been building support triangles and considering different units I want to try out for future runs, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely done with it. I really look at this game similarly to how I’d look at one of the official FE releases.
Supports building from three spaces away is absolutely amazing, by the way, and I forgot how huge of an improvement that was until I just went back and played some FE7. Definitely shouldn’t be overlooked.
I plan on giving Liang all the str boosts on my maddening run, so that he can hopefully exist as both a decent mage killer and healer. On paper, he’s an amazing unit without his low str growth holding him back, and I’m excited to see it in practice.
Liang was the star player on a draft play through of the Lonely Mirror. I grabbed Liang after not getting access to any of the healers. I did just what you are planning. Gave Liang the strength boost to get him going. He was my archer, healer, and res tank all in one unit. Worked pretty well for me.
I did most of the testing on Visual Boy Advance 2.0.2, so that is the Emulator I would recommend using. Others seem to work though. I would not use very old versions of Visual Boy Advance though as they experience some issues.
Alright and thanks both of you for that!! I got Visualboy emulator but now I just need to know how to play this rom I’m a big fan of Gba fire emblem games but I new to downloading roms and playing them
Yo Caladrius, been a while. Just wanted to ask how the game’s been updated since I played the first release. I recall a lot of high enemy bulk and reinforcements last time, but if that stuff has been toned down, I’d be up to give the game another playthrough.
Alright and thanks both of you for that!! I got Visualboy emulator but now I just need to know how to play this rom I’m a big fan of Gba fire emblem games but I’m new to downloading roms and playing them
There is a Readme file on the Dropbox link from the parent post that might be helpful to you. It has some loose instruction on how to patch the .ups file.
Yo KrashBoomBang! If memory server, I think you might have played the most up-to-date release. I could be wrong though…
I will have a new update coming in about a month that will be focused on quality of life improvements and refinement to enemy bulk and reinforcements as you mentioned. In addition, there will be portrait improvements, corrections to known bugs, and more supports coming. It will be a nice little patch. You can wait a bit for this version as an option too.
Rather go with Pizza Boy. The ones you mentioned haven’t been updated in a long time. Pizza Boy is the most accurate one when it comes to android emulators.
Retroarch is the best way to emulate on Android for everything that doesn’t have DraStic, PPSSPP, or Dolphin. It’s a lot less of a pain to set up than it used to be, too.
Also… I’m excited for the new patch. I’ve been putting off finishing this hack for the supports…
Silvan seems to be a very popular character both from the poll and from discussion, so he gets the spotlight this month. Honestly, he was a character that I was not expecting to be very popular. I am happy for him though.
Silvan grew up in a well-off household and was pressured into taking on the family business as a blacksmith. After practicing and practicing and feeling like a failure, Silvan eventually runs away from his life and is accepted into a group of brigands.
Silvan goes through a phase of pillaging villages with his new brigand family for survival. During this time Silvan developed habits of overeating and drinking as a way to cope with the guilt of running away from his previous life to now terrorizing innocent people who suffer due to his actions.
After the stress becomes a burden, Silvan returned home to reconcile with his parents… only to be turned away because of the monster he became. Silvan went back to his old ways, but on a smaller scale, and terrorized the village of Rinto for food and alcohol. Eventually, the White Lions responded to Rinto’s request to remove Silvan after some villagers were missing, and a battle occurred, which Silvan lost.
It wasn’t until Silvan met Boone and was given a chance of redemption that Silvan started to live a straight life. Boone and Silvan meet again in the town of Bydale, and Silvan returns Boone’s kindness by offering to join the White Lions.
Silvan has a good heart and enjoys surrounding himself with lots of drinking buddies and having deep and illuminating conversations about life. Silvan is someone who never judges anyone for their past or current mistakes, because he believes that he was given a second chance. Despite accepting others, many of Silvan’s friends have judged him for his habits and appearance. Silvan is never phased, because he likes food too much.
Appearance:
In matching his vices of drinking and gluttony, Silvan suffers from abdominal obesity. While the massive belly is one of Silvan’s defining physical characteristics, Silvan also has muscular arms and is physically strong. Silvan has messy brown hair and wears a small goatee. He also has a piercing and tattoo that he received during his brigand days. Silvan does not wear a shirt and instead wears pink shoulder pads and pants.
Growth Rates:
HP
Pow
Skl
Spe
Lck
Def
Res
85%
55%
60%
45%
25%
35%
10%
Unit Analysis:
Silvan has very good bases and a solid growth in HP, Power, Skill, Speed, and Defense and will be able to one round many enemies immediately when he joins. At max stats, Silvan will on average have one of the highest stat totals out of any character in the game. His only shortcomings are Luck and Res, but thanks to Silvan HP bulk, he can take a few hits from mages, and can even one-shot them on player phase. Silvan’s low luck will cause him to be prone to critical hits, but he can mitigate this with good support options or being given the Amulet equipment, which negates critical hits. Still, even if Silvan does take a critical hit, there is a strong chance he survives thanks to his good bulk.
Silvan has a major downside in his recruitment. Recruiting Silvan means sacrificing a speedwing, which could be used to boost characters like Boone, Caspian, or Winifred. Recruiting Silvan is an “all in” situation, and if he is not being used, get the speedwing.
There is no going wrong with either of Silvan’s promotion options. The Berserker has stat caps that work better with Silvan’s base stats and growth rate, and coupled with the added critical hit bonus and his amazing Skill growth will make Silvan a reliable powerhouse, being able to go toe-to-toe with any enemy. The Warrior has a worse speed cap but grants Silvan access to bows and longbows. This option provides Silvan with better weapon versatility and range of attack.
Overall, Silvan is a candidate for the best axe user in the game as well as one of the best physical units available. Silvan has amazing bases, good growths, good support options, and the highest constitution. This allows Silvan to wield the heaviest axes without losing speed, and don’t be surprised if he doubles even myrmidons early in the game. On the contrary, this makes Silvan a difficult character to rescue, which is only possible by a few characters.
Support Options:
Silvan possesses an Anima affinity but may have limited support options due to the optional or late join time of some units.
Boone - Ice
Winifred - Dark
Liang - Anima
Riley - Thunder
Pepper - Ice
Ozias - Fire
Silvan appreciates support from other front-line units that improve critical avoid, critical hit, defense, and avoid. Of course, damage output and hit rate are also welcome support bonuses too; however, they are not as necessary given Silvan’s strengths to accurately one round many units.
Riley’s thunder affinity bonuses are mutually beneficial for both characters, and if Riley is chosen to join the team and used alongside Silvan, he can make a great berserker buddy for Silvan. Thunder affinity provides all bonuses that Silvan most appreciates.
Boone could arguably be the best support pairing for Silvan as Boone will always be a party stable. Silvan will appreciate the added defensive support from the ice affinity, and Boone appreciates the added offense and defense that Silvan provides. Silvan and Boone both enjoy the critical evade boosts from their affinities as both units have shaky luck.
Pepper, being the other ice option, is not as good as Boone due to her late join time. Pepper should definitely be considered if choosing to use Pepper and Silvan has not rounded out his supports.
The Liang and Silvan pairing provide both guys with double anima bonuses. This is a mutually beneficial and is the best option if wanting to boost Silvan’s power even more. Liang also really appreciates any boosts to offense and defense. This support is best if Liang joins in Chapter 11 instead of Chapter 21.
Winifred can make a great support partner for Silvan and has good and consistent availability; however, Winifred has several very nice support options for her to consider such as Myles or Wise. Silvan does make a great secondary support option.
Even though Ozias provides a nice Fire affinity bonus for Silvan, this pairing should not be considered strategically; though, their support conversation is nice. Ozias’s very late join time means that Silvan would only benefit from the support for a few maps.
Popularity Poll:
I intend to continue doing character spotlights each month. At this time, there are a few characters that I am thinking about doing next. There are a lot of characters in the same vote bracket, so it is difficult to go with clear winners. I’ll probably factor characters that are discussed in posts often. Vote for your favorite characters and tell me why you like them.
I try my best with creating this hack and continuing to improve it. More supports should be coming soon and there are a lot of pairing that have been written, so stay tuned.
You can wait a bit for this version as an option too.