I’ve now also done a bit of a rework of chapter 4 to improve its previously-slow and linear pacing a bit. In the process, I also finally decided to make a Repeater obtainable, and slightly buffed Ashley’s Strength and Magic growths – no, I don’t have a favorite lord, why do you ask?
Chapter 3 has now also been edited a bit – the layout’s been adjusted a bit (mainly on the left), Kalin can now be recruited by either Ashley or Elys instead of just Ashley, and it now has access to the preps screen. I’m finally at a point where I’m reasonably happy with the earlygame. I’ve also done some cleanup work on a handful of portraits, improving on my old anti-aliasing and other small fixes like that, and fixed the weird slide in Elys’s promoted dodge animation.
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I’ve now done a bit of rewriting – specifically, replacing the boring opening exposition dump, and finding better ways to work in a few details.
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Its so cool that you use what you can do on these Screenshots. Definitly unique compared to your standard placeholders 
- At least from what I’ve seen and read I guess you wanna go for the GBA style at some point/your own artwork is WIP. I understand you wanna go for the GBA Style but it was definitly cool to see something different than usual on the screenshots. It is great that you published it that way, a WIP doesn’t need to be perfect. 
And your battle animation looks amazing! Did you use a base or was it done from scratch?
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Thank you! The Myson animation, as with most of the other animations I’ve made for the hack, was made entirely from scratch. Here, I’ll show some of the other ones:
Unpromoted Elys (Lord)
Promoted Elys (Agastya)
Unpromoted Ashley (Lord)
Promoted Ashley (Wind Lord)
The Engineer class
This one, as you can probably tell, used the generic Mercenary as a base for the still sprite, but the rest, including the movements, was custom.
Female Swordmaster reskin (for planned character Ava)
Some major villains (warning: spoilers!)
Beta (Blood Lich)
Myson (Biomancer)
Iago (Illusionist)
Drazal (Pirate King)
Shez (Fluegel)
The screenshots at this point are somewhat outdated. I have been slowly working towards redoing all the portraits, though while I’ve made a good amount of progress on them there’s still a lot more to do. The placeholders are mostly just cropped and scaled down from my original drawings of the characters lol, and while I do intend to eventually have everything redone in the GBA style now that I can do it, I’ve had enough people express their appreciation of my old placeholders that I plan to also release a “legacy” (hah) version with the old portraits once the hack’s finished – but for now, maintaining two different versions is unnecessary work while there’s still so much to be done.
Here, this is roughly the current state of the playable roster's portraits. (Warning: some are spoilers)
If you play the hack, please let me know how it goes! I’m always looking for any and all feedback on any and every aspect of it!
11 Likes
I think such a “Legacy” version would be cool to have xD
I definitly support that thought.
I’d like to test it out, the only thing that kinda shackles me is time. If I do play it I’ll let ya know!
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I have now put out a slight update to chapter 13 of Alexander route, designed to 1. better convey the Big Story Moment and force it to actually happen (barring Warp staff shenanigans), and 2. make the Big Story Moment have a bit more direct warning so it’s less player-hostile.
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Is ares worth a reset, plus a whole bunch of selling?
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If you’ve already got a solid team, he’s mostly just filler as a unit – decently usable at base/instapromoted, but usually not that impressive outside of his high Res stat. The biggest thing if you aren’t in need of replacement/filler units is that missing out on him means missing out on a Lancereaver and a Hero Crest, which together make up for a large portion of his recruit cost, though the Hero Crest can be stolen from him if you bring Jay and don’t want to spend the money to actually recruit him. (There is a shop on the map to be able to sell stuff to pay him if you need to without resetting, as well as an enemy that drops a Red Gem, but it’s a bit tricky to reach both in time.)
Hope you’re enjoying the hack, if you have any other thoughts/questions/etc. please let me know!
It’s been pretty fun so far
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I downloaded and started playing two days ago. I went with Normal & Classic. I’m currently at Chapter 8, but I think I want to prioritize finishing Engage. In case I end up not returning to this, I wanted to share my thoughts so far.
Overall
One of my favorites things about FE is splitting your army up to complete objectives. This hack seems to ask the player to frequently do that, so I had a good time on that front. I also appreciate the lower skill distribution, especially now that I’m playing through Engage. If your goal was to make a chill experience without completely stripping maps down, I’d say you succeeded.
If you wanted to have a more challenging experience, I have a few thoughts on where the gameplay could improve. My main criticism is that the bulkier units are too bulky for the enemy units. The more frail playable units are sometimes threatened by enemies, but the sturdier units are rarely in any serious danger. Regardless of how effective the enemy units’ offense is, they’re also not very durable; it’s easy to either ORKO them or do significant damage with the 1-2 range tools available to you. Elys is the biggest offender of these circumstances; there were several times where I either left her by herself or “assigned” less units to group up with her because of how much she can handle. Even though my Elys is probably better than average, I don’t think that much would change.
However, I recognize that this isn’t a simple problem to tackle (assuming you view it as an issue). If you decide to change your hack with this in mind, there are other problems that would become worse because of this kind of change. Enemy placement and quantity would probably have to be adjusted, but there are other aspects of the gameplay that would be negatively impacted.
- There are a lot of 1-tile wide corridors. Currently, if you have enough units, you can force your group through before they get impeded. If the enemies were more threatening, keeping these routes intact would easily slow the gameplay down, so if you decide to beef the enemies up, I think it’d be best to change the maps so that these routes are a lot more rare, or at least reducing how much of the path(s) is 1-tile wide.
- Before Chapter 6, you only have 1 staff user. Thanks to how sturdy the better units are, however, I don’t remember having to extensively stop and heal with Vulneraries. If the enemy quality improves, having another staff user for the earlygame would help keep the gameplay smooth. Changing the amount that Vulneraries heal is also worth considering. Regardless of whether or not you change Vulneraries, I recommend including how much these items heal in their descriptions.
- If the enemies do more damage, there may be side objective timings that have to be adjusted, as the player would have to take more time to reach them, especially when you consider the two points above.
I’m not sure how I feel about the Supply change (Elys cannot access the supply, but adjacent allies can). It adds a bit more tension to Chapter 7 and slightly discourages juggernauting a little bit, but I missed having that flexibility.
Units
She’s incredible in every situation except the beginning of Chapter 7. Having a magic unit with a 55% def growth is already insanely good, but she’s also the only staff user until Chapter 6. Once she gets a few levels, it’s really easy to start juggernauting with her.
He has a bit of a poor first impression; he often faces WTD, having the standard armor+horse effective isn’t unique to him, and Arthur & Felakhos are much better on enemy phase. However, I got lucky with his Spd, so it made sense to keep using him.
She’s alright, I guess. There are some fliers for her to take care of, but being a useful enemy phase unit is important in this hack, so I wouldn’t say she’s a crutch. Additionally, quite a few of those fliers are Pegasus Knights with Javelins, so other units can easily ORKO them. As far as being a player phase oriented unit goes, I would also say she’s outclassed by Caitlyn.
A really great unit to rely on. Even though effective weapons have started showing up, enemies that lack those weapons struggle to do damage to him. Thanks to his high HP, he can also survive magic attacks if needed.
Having high accuracy from her capped Luck is nice, but she’s outclassed by most of the other magic users. Elys is Elys, Kalin has superior bulk and a Summon, and Caitlyn has better offense and resistance. She could theoretically dodge tank better than all of them, but it’s more practical to instead use a unit that is guaranteed to survive through HP+Def/Res, which is easy enough to find.
Really solid offensive stats and can avoid WTD thanks to having access to all 3 tome types. She outclasses Sophia by being immediately useful (while having solid enough offensive growths), Willow by having similarly high accuracy in addition to her other strengths, and Ashley by getting access to 3 range earlier than she does.
She’s a flier, so I fed her some kills here and there. I don’t remember if that paid off, but regardless, she’s pretty useful, even in Chapter 7.
His bulk and cursor summon are really useful. I wouldn’t say he’s better than Elys, but it’s hard to argue he’s not a top 5 or so unit.
He’s good. There are bulkier units available, but I definitely wouldn’t say that he’s frail.
He’s okay. Summoning Buddy as bait (which mostly came in handy during the early parts of Chapter 6 and the later half or so of Chapter 7) was a lot more useful than anything that he could as far as combat goes.
By this point in the hack, I wasn’t expecting a Myrmidon to be good, but he’s important for clearing Chapter 6. There’s also enough slots to bring him along in Chapter 7, and he didn’t disappoint.
Other Units (0-1 level ups)
Felakhos- The Jeigan being strong is to be expected, but even with that in mind, he’s a bit too strong. He can kill enemies even while equipping Bronze weapons, and he generally takes even less damage than Seth does in FE8.
Sophia- With how the enemy stats are compared to player stats, I don’t really see a need/have a desire to train her. She struggles to do useful damage, even against enemies you’d expect a monk to be good against (knights/shamans). Her bulk is also horrendous, but how much of an issue this is varies by map; in chapters where units are confined to 1-tile wide corridors, this isn’t a big issue, but in the more open maps that also tend to feature reinforcement enemy fliers, I don’t want to make things even harder on myself by babysitting her. 1-2 range physical weapons are also somewhat common in this hack, so it’s hard to safely deal the 6 or so damage that she does.
Jay- There’s not a lot of stuff for him to steal, and he doesn’t show a lot of promise for contributing to combat.
Tinker- Pretty similar thoughts to Sophia. If I had to pick between the two, I’d train Sophia. 4 mov and even lower offensive growths doesn’t give me a good impression.
Lily- Troubadour good. Next.
Seteth- He’s at least decent, but I can’t confidently say how great he is compared to the rest of the team. If there’s going to be a ton of archers from this point forward, he’s not gonna be as bulky as some of the better units. On the other hand, he still has 8 mov. Even though he has low growths and EXP gain, enemy stats are also low, so his stats could be solid enough to pull through for a while.
Chapters
The Prologue, Chapter 1, and Chapter 6x don’t have much to them, so I don’t think there’s a lot for me to say. I wouldn’t say they didn’t hampered my experience, but I definitely see them as missed opportunities.
Chapter 2
On my first attempt, I didn’t realize I wouldn’t reach the Blue Gem until Turn 6, so I reset. Because of how easy it is for the left route to get clogged up by enemy units, I decided to send everyone but Elys that way (Felakhos rescued Rhea after doing a Turn 2 Sophia talk with her). Elys started the chapter with 8 Def, so combining that with the pillar made her survival almost guaranteed. The only thing I missed out on was the droppable Steel Lance. I don’t think having droppable items (or stealable items, except for like Vulneraries) on reinforcements is a good idea, especially since the game forces the map to end on Turn 8.
Chapter 3 (8 turns)
There’s a lot of 1-tile corridors, but unlike Chapter 2, the enemies are a lot more spread out. Additionally, you have a pretty generous amount of time to do side objectives. I forgot about the Knight Crest until sometime after finishing the map.
The NPC cavaliers didn’t really do much in my run. I thought they might block me off from the boss, but I was able to stay ahead of them.
Chapter 4 (12 turns)
After Turn 1, I had Jahid rescue Kai and go into the top right mountain. If I knew about the pegasus knight reinforcements I probably would have sent them down to my group to help out with them.
Since I was able to keep the new units from harm, there wasn’t much to the chapter. It felt like it dragged on and on, unlike the previous chapters.
Chapter 5 (13 turns)
If I had to pick a favorite chapter, I’d probably pick this one. Turn 5 has two thieves ready to enter the treasure room, but there’s at least two other enemies in range. It’s not an impossible challenge, but this situation was interesting to think about. Shortly after that turn, however, there’s at least a few turns of just moving units.
Chapter 6 (7 turns)
I didn’t realize how much help the SE group needed, so I reset on Turn 3. I decided to keep Elys by herself so that Arthur could support that group. Even with this change, she had less trouble dealing with the enemies she encountered than the SE group.
Since I sent Elys to the bottom right, I tried to get the top right group to reach the Red Gem. After seeing how frequent the reinforcements are, however, I changed my mind sometime during the chapter. I didn’t think it was worth another restart.
The chapter lets you deploy your entire group, but I benched Jay and Tinker (Sophia was on shopping duty, but now that I think about it, I should’ve swapped Jay with her). Not only is the the map fairly open, there’s a lot of enemies with at least 6 movement. I was already struggling to keep units like Ashley and Willow out of harm’s way, so I didn’t want to add more frail units into the mix.
The frequency of brigand reinforcements (especially the ones in the center) was pretty annoying, so I didn’t mind ending the chapter early. Because of all of the reinforcements, Yuri wasn’t able to help with Kostas like I was hoping. Thankfully, I already had Jasper and Caitlyn in range, and Jasper got a crit on one of his Twinblade attacks, so I had a relatively smooth fight vs Kostas.
Chapter 7 (11 turns)
My experience with this map was somewhat smooth, but I definitely got lucky, as there’s a lot that can go wrong in this chapter. 1v1 fights aren’t a strong suit in FE gameplay, and I don’t think Elys vs Chiron (plus the Bael, I guess) shows otherwise. Chiron doubles Elys if she hasn’t gained any Spd, and it’s incredibly unlikely that Elys will have 15 Luck at this point in the game, so there’s a chance that he’ll get a Luna crit.
However, even with this in mind, I wouldn’t blame players that want to take some caution. Not only are there several archers, there’s also some enemies with horse slaying weaponry (one of which being a Halberd fighter close to Alexander’s spawn), so rushing to Elys’s aid may not even be something the player wants to attempt. There’s also a Killing Edge myrmidon and a Nosferatu shaman, who hits pretty hard compared to the usual magic enemies.
Lastly, instead of Felakhos being able to participate, Seteth makes an appearance. Seteth’s offense is solid, but it’s not clear how much you should be relying on him because of the all of the archers hidden by the fog. I didn’t have anything important on Felakhos, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for being mad if they happened to leave their Pure Water with him.
The map might be too big, but I appreciated having the extra space between enemies since there’s fog (though the standard vision range could probably be a little higher). Having the main boss be visible is also a nice touch. I didn’t want to look for the Secret Shop, so I skipped out on that.
Thanks for the hack! I had a pretty fun time with it, even though I put a lot of criticism in there. Good luck with the rest of development.
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Hi, and thanks for the feedback! Based on what you’ve said, there’s definitely some things to improve — easy and enemy phase-focused is the opposite of my goal — so thank you for pointing them out.
Elys should be able to access the convoy herself. That was a glitch, which for some reason only appeared in newly-started save files, hence why I didn’t catch it. It seems to be an issue with a patch I recently installed, and I have fixed it with an update that is now live.
You’re definitely right that some of the early maps could use improvement – I recently did some work on them, but they could probably use more improvement still, it’s definitely a rough spot in the hack’s design (chapters 3 and 4 especially), you can definitely tell that I got better as I went on.
Enemy stats go up significantly as you go farther, but your comments indicate that they may need to be buffed a bit in some of the earlygame chapters as well, though I don’t mind a few units being strong early on. Arthur, at least in my experience, falls off pretty hard long-term. Felakhos, while unbeatable early, drops off a cliff by the end of chapter 10. Elys I know to be a bit of a risk design-wise – she does get threatened later on as enemies get stronger and better-designed chapters push for faster play, but I don’t want juggernauting at any point really, and she’s definitely Juggernaut Risk #1, so I’ll think about making some adjustments.
Thanks for pointing out that hiding in the chapter 4 mountains is a thing you can do, I somehow just didn’t think about that. I will make it not a thing you can do by putting a Short Ballista in that corner.
Chiron in chapter 7 cannot double Elys even at base thanks to the weight of his tome, he loses 3 speed down to 6 AS to her base of 5. But even so, Elys is not meant to fight him, and the crit risk is meant to prevent it from being safe to do so. The intention is for Alexander to rush in to help her (he can use Bronzes to negate the crit risk, and Chiron has a ton of Res but very little Def), while she backs away from him, but I recognize that it’s a bit of a weak spot in gameplay that devolves into “move Elys back and forth a bunch until Alexander eventually shows up”. I definitely need to give it some thought as to how to better handle that. I’ll swap which end of the area they start in, so Elys can back away towards the breakable wall.
I’ll also change Felakhos’s temporary unavailability to use the “deny deployment at preparations” patch instead of removing him from the team, which I really should have been using before and have no real excuse for why I wasn’t.
Once again, thank you for all the feedback, and I’ll definitely think about some of the other things you’ve said. I’d be happy to discuss more in detail, but this reply is getting too long as is. Thanks for playing, and I hope you do come back to play the rest!
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So, after a busy day of tuning, tweaking, testing, etc., resulting in buffs, nerfs, changes, and so on, I’ve got another update. This time, I’ve also got a rather detailed changelog, as I wrote down every change I made as I was working on it. Most of it’s numbers stuff (nerfing defensive stats, buffing enemies, etc.).
Aside from the various adjusted numbers, map edits, and whatnot, the one thing I will call out on its own is that the class descriptions for playable unpromoted classes now include the names of their promotion options.
Changelog
Elys: -1 base Def, -10% HP growth, -10% Def growth, halved EXP gain from staves unpromoted
Ashley: +1 base Str, +1 base Mag
Felakhos: -3 base Def, -1 base Res
Arthur: -2 base Speed, -2 base Res
Willow: +1 base Speed
Caitlyn: -5% Speed growth, -5% Res growth
Jay: +1 base Mag, base Sword rank to C
Jahid: -1 base HP
Tinker/Zan: Trainee classes +1 mov
Zan: +5% Def growth
Argo: -15% HP growth, -5% Def growth, -5% Res growth
Vox: -10% HP growth, -15% Def growth, -5% Res growth
Chapter 2 Rhea is now unrescuable
Archie now moves off the pillar to attack in range
Chapter 3 Knight Crest is now in chest, Red Gem stealable from Rowe
Poison weapons might increased to match that of iron
Hammers have +5 hit
Longbow drop moved to chapter 3 from 6
Steel Lance drop moved to chapter 3 from 2
Enemy placement and map edits to chapters 3 and 4
Enemies have been slightly buffed in chapters 2-5
Enemy Dark Mages +1 Mag and +1 Con
Enemy Engineers +1 Str and +1 Mag
Enemy Mercenaries +2 Str, +1 Spd, +1 Def, -7% Spd growth
Enemy Myrmidons +1 Str, +1 Spd, +5% Str growith, +5% Spd growth
A few enemy Hand Axes and Javelins have been removed
Chapter 7 - Gargoyle in the room near Elys now drops a Bronze Lance for Alexander to use against Chiron
Chapter 7 Killing Edge Myrm no longer has Killing Edge
Ruin tome weighs 1 less
Some other adjustments to enemy stats, placements, and inventories
I have now also made some additional adjustments to Chapter 10, again.
More adjustments:
Changelog
Sophia base Light rank to D
Kalin now joins with a Ruin tome instead of a Flux tome
New item: Seek, a D rank 2-range-only Light tome with infinite hit, infinite uses, lower weight, and a boosted crit rate, but even lower might than a normal Light tome (2 as opposed to 4) – but notably, it’s light enough to not weigh Sophia down. Obtained from the Sophia-Rhea Talk in chapter 2, replacing the Pure Water.
Mid-tier Light tomes have had their weight reduced.
Pure Waters have been made rarer, no longer being buyable until after chapter 14 except in the chapter 7 Secret Shop, and the only other one before chapter 10 being a stealable in chapter 6. (No more counteracting low-res characters’ low res against early mages.)
Concoctions, which heal 20 HP, have been added as a midground between Vulneraries and Elixirs. They are buyable starting after chapter 11E/12A (replacing pure waters in the shops), and have replaced Elixirs in a few places (including all non-secret shop places Elixirs were buyable).
Aside from that, expect another change to chapter 10 soon – I’m probably going to have the Twins flee after a certain turn to put a time limit on getting the Warp and Rescue staves, but will need to do a bit more testing to figure out the right turn.
Updates to chapters 6 (increased reinforcement enemy variety, improved enemy stats and inventories), 6x (slightly increased enemy variety), and 7 (improved Chiron vs Elys/Alexander sequence)
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Unfortunately, I have had to remove the Triangle Attack for now, as it appears that Danger Radius is causing Triangle Attacks to work with only two pegasi instead of three.
Other ongoing adjustments:
Angelic Robes have been nerfed to +5 HP instead of +7.
Arthur now starts at level 5 (up from 3) with the same bases.
Jahid now starts at level 4 (up from 3) with the same bases.
I have added a new staff, Festal, a D rank healing staff that heals the same as Heal but has 1-2 range. Lily now joins with one in addition to her Mend staff, and they are buyable starting after chapter 11E/12A.
Recover staves are no longer buyable.
Enemies that will attempt to destroy villages now carry Torches in their inventory, an idea taken from Sacred Echoes.
Lily’s portrait has been updated a bit.
2 Likes
Some updates to chapter 8
Lysithea no longer stops moving towards the escape point to use her Elixir, she will move towards the escape point no matter what and then use the Elixir if she’s damaged
Some slight tweaks to enemy stats, positions, and inventories
A larger wave of (standard) reinforcements show up alongside the twins to make the later parts of the map less empty
The shop has been moved closer to Ares to make selling stuff to hire him easier if necessary
If Felakhos is deployed, opening dialogue now indicates that Felakhos and Elys should go talk to Ares together, hinting for both to go towards him since his recruitment requires both
So, I’ve made some slight adjustments to chapter 8x (slightly less choke points), and more importantly, I’ve added a new character, because I felt like the later earlygame could use a little more variety. The axe fighter Melanie, who you may recognize as the boss of the prologue, now returns in chapter 7, where she is recruitable by Ashley. The prologue dialogue has been slightly edited to have Elys spare her life and send her to prison. The Blue Gem in one of the Chapter 9 chests has been turned into a Hero Crest to account for the increase in Hero Crest users (it sells for the same amount if you need money).
More changes!
- Steel weapons have had their might buffed, such that they are now one might higher than killer/gem/reaver weapons (so +2 on the Steel Sword and +1 on the Steel Lance/Steel Axe/Steel Bow).
- Blades have been removed. In their place are the Greatsword, Greatlance, and Greataxe, exceedingly strong but heavy C-rank weapons with the downside of allowing your opponent to strike first when you initiate combat. These weapons may receive more adjustments soon. Melanie now joins with a Greataxe, the Silver Lance from one of the houses in chapter 8x is now a Greatlance, and Titan’s Silver Blade is now a Greatsword. They are also buyable in chapter 16x, and on the world map after chapter 21.
(To do if I can figure it out: have the foe’s follow-ups occur before counterattacks when using a great weapon on enemy phase.) - Felakhos’s Strength has been nerfed by 1 (which is made up for by the +1 might on the Steel Lance)
- Arthur’s Con has been reduced by 1, which I actually consider to be something of a minor buff, since it allows him to now carry promoted Elys even as a Paladin, and it’s not like he has enough speed to care about losing it.
- Ven’s Con has been nerfed by 2.
UPDATE: Units with Vantage, and by extension enemies hitting first when you use great weapons, can now crit normally.