I ran through this recently, thinking it was a new WIP and didn’t realise so many people I knew had worked on this in the past!
Overall conclusion is that I’m quite impressed with the demo.
(I know there’s a google form for feedback, but hey, bumping the thread is extra engagement!)
Thoughts on characters
I found that usage of skills was pretty well done. Skills were fairly straightforward and had good applications.
Farren is a very versatile lord. Being able to steal as a free action is very fun to play around. Dash is nice for dead turns. Fortuna also gives him mage killing utility and the occasional RES hit. Didn’t make too much use out of SP regain because I didn’t use up SP very much.
Basili was a tank on wheels. He did all the things I needed an armour to do but with 7 move and had excellent match-ups against anything physical, even the occasional one tap. Great unit.
Kalea was a litle less impressive but generally a solid performer. Had great match-ups with the lancereaver.
Clay was just an all-rounder reliable damage dealer. Ended up with more str and spd than most and could orko most things with opportunist. The forest/thicket walk was niche, but cool when it did matter.
Raphael was a solid peg knight that did peg knight things. The slim lance double before counting does help to make peg combat feel good. I never accounted for rivalry though.
I think staff/anything horse jeigans are my favourite kind of jeigans (thanks Rakel) and Morena does that well. Good chip damage, staff access and rescue. Heavenly inspiration came in handy for some crit negations and avoid stacking. Guardian was super great when the need did come up.
Dalthus is a weird one.
Unstoppable only ever worked on mages which had weapon triangle advantage on (the reversal of the magical triangle seems very unintuitive?) so they weren’t great match ups even with unstoppable. The scaling of 5 base 20% growth also seems very low.
It didn’t occur to me that the bonus would be 1 turn only (I don’t think this was in the skill description, or outright stated anywhere?), because 1 Mt and 15 hit is such a tiny bonus. It feels like the scaling on this could be a little better.
I also didn’t realise until after I finished that the UI for leveling up the tome could be scaled for left and right. I assumed you’d just have to press augment again. I think this mechanic could definitely use some clarification.
I don’t have much about Parvus and Magnus (wow, how did I miss this obvious joke until now?) since they’re around for so little, but they seem alright and the choice took me a bit to decide.
Prologue (spoilers, I guess?)
I really appreciate the idea of the prologue. The fact the prince isn’t who you actually play as is a fun little twist. His reappearance in ch5 made me go “Yoooo, that’s the guy!!”
As a gameplay chapter, I think it makes for a weak introduction. I am not opposed to a very simple introduction. However, the fact that every turn was just mash the skip button forty times for red vs green combat that make no meaningful difference, every single turn, was not engaging and doesn’t act as a tutorial for anything. It made me wonder if the rest of the game might look like this too (it did not).
The fact that Alba’s skill is for rescuing without penalty, and the lord has no weapons, led me to the very incorrect assumption that “obviously, the Dev intended me to carry the lord with the jeigan!” This seemed to actually skip the lord dialogue about his prf (not that he ended up using it anyways, mind you) as well as losing out on being able to rescue the green noble that showed up later.
The mend staff also seemed to not work at all in this segment, so Mr Sage couldn’t do anything. Again, not that it really matters.
Ch1-2/intermissiosn
The game proper felt good to play. Every cast has their own little niche can did well in their role. The early chapters felt perfectly sized for the early game.
The back reinforcement cavs seemed like they could be indefinitely farmed for exp and don’t really encourage ending the chapter early. Not sure if they’re actually infinite.
Intermission was neat. It’s really hard to go back to FEGBA’s free roam ASM (as cool as it is, mind you!) after experiencing how smooth LT’S free roam is.
Ch3
Fairly straightforward chapter.
1-3 crit thunder felt a little harsh because Farren only learnt smokescreen for me a few turns into the chapter. Smokescreen is a very nice skill to have.
It does feel a little odd to be encouraged to rout the entire map before stealing the artifact when the layout kinda implies you’re just picking one way to the top.
I thought about trying to defeat boss but gave up pretty quickly and bailed.
Ch4
This is a good map.
Made a fun play with smokescreen and Morena’s luck boost to cancel a killing edge myrm down to almost nothing.
Aeon’s compass creating the bridge that also disappears before the boss can get here is a cool moment. Aeon’s compass itself is also a nice crutch for major screw-ups.
The boss seemed incredibly intimidating before I remembered Fortuna just obliterates him.
Ch5
Chapter 5 felt a little contradictory.
The fact that you can only save one axe user, and the fact that the party expressly says (in red) to stick to one route and not split led me to the following conclusions:
-I have to get through this map as quickly as possible because the boss will chase me
-I have to pick my route (and rewards) carefully, because I only have time to go down one lane
-The greens will die if I don’t save them, and I only have time to save one.
None of this was true. I had all the time in the world to rout every single enemy on the map. The greens didn’t even need saving because they won their fight without my interference. Makes it even odder than these two are mutually exclusive since… Parvus, your dad is right there! Talk to him!
The general and the soldier were just standing on a road guarding nothing. I assumed they might have been guarding an escape tile, but they weren’t.
The boss jumps out of last house like he’s the Black Knight in FE9. Surprise factor, I guess?
It almost feels like at one point, you were supposed to run through the map, with what the story tells you and how the map is set up, but it isn’t the case.
