Myth Of Arland (2/22 Chapters)

Hello all. I’m sorry for waiting after my introduction, but I have time to create a Romhack now.
The hack I’m talking about is called the Myth Of Arland.

Patch:

What is Myth Of Arland?

It is a progressing FE8 romhack with 2/22 chapters completed with a completely original story with difficult gameplay inspired by FE7 and FE8 and FE6.

I’m aiming to break into a story with a good, serious political nightmare.
This is why I categorized as 15+.

Features of Myth Of Arland

You’ll like this if you enjoy:

  • Political drama backstabbing

  • Solid Fire Emblem

  • No skills. a familiar and tested game

  • Martial arts

Screenshots

map1

Gameplay Notes

  • I am trying to fix the title screen error,
    if you have any idea how to fix it please let me know

  • So far, I hardly changed the music but that will change soon

This is my first attempt at creating a Romhack. I hope you all enjoy!

CREDITS:

  • Splinterlocke for Eminoch portrait, Mako for Taparrian portrait, Memestaralbert for Morven and Nehoman and Golu portrait

  • Knabepicer for stat page

  • Agrro for patches, Brendor for patches, 7743 for patches,
    Hextator for patches, Tequila for patches, Gryz for patches, Circleseverywhere for patches,
    Alusq for patches, Gamma for patches, Venno for patches, Stan for patches, Magrika Is Now Canon for patches, Fati for patches

  • 7743 for FEBUILDER thank you very much

11 Likes

Ok, that was bad.

The map was giant and empty.
We had no backstory on what the hell is actually happening.
I don’t know who I’m playing as.
The enemies are all the same.
The “story” is nonsensical. I didn’t understand a thing.

So
Have fun playing around with FEBuilder. Because this is what it is I think.

3 Likes

Rude

Got uh… constructive feedback?

16 Likes

Can we please exercise literally any tact at all when offering criticism? Especially when it’s somebody’s first work – if you don’t have anything to contribute to the discussion, just don’t say anything, man.

16 Likes

How is this not constructive.
I pointed out what was bad and needs changes.

Glad to see someone entering the hacker space :sunglasses:
I just finished chapter 1 and have some thoughts…

The enemies don’t appear until turn two which left me wondering if there was anything that was supposed to happen. Then they suddenly appeared as ambush spawns and were almost guaranteed to attack my priest.

There have been several discussions on why ambush reinforcements are not fun, but TL;DR they’re intended to surprise the player in way that’s impossible to react to.

I think this chapter could do with more enemy variety and maybe something that would encourage the player to use more than just the cavalier and wyvern lord. Just the two of them are more than enough to win the chapter. (I’d even argue the cav could do it by himself)

You might also want to tell the player outright that the Supunifier is a devil weapon. It was a nasty surprise for me at least.

More of a personal preference, but I don’t like how nobody has vulneraries. If the healer can’t reach or is dead, you’re out of luck for getting HP back.

As for the map itself, it has a good size, but I think you could add some extra things to help make it feel more like a village and make it play better too. Chapter 5 of FE8 is a good example in my opinion.

I’m not much of a plot guy, so I won’t make any comments in that regard.

Overall, this chapter needs some work, but you have some good things to start with. The player units are diverse and with some changes, this can be a very good chapter.

And don’t get discouraged if someone tells you your hack is bad. Every hack needs a lot of work and changing when it first releases.

Good luck with your project.

15 Likes

Congrats on release! Highly recommend you share a bit more detail in your first post about the project, including some screenshots, story notes, and description of specific changes/mechanics so people know what they’re signing up for.

Here is a template that can help you better structure the OP.

Good luck and welcome!

12 Likes

I’m sorry this is the experience you had.
I will do my best to give the next patch a higher quality.
Thank you for your criticism.

4 Likes

I will rework enemies to appear in the first round and give more variety in them.
I will also add more healing. Thank you.

1 Like

Thank you for the template, I’ll make a higher quality post next update.
Thanks for the luck!

6 Likes

Hey, don’t get me wrong
It WAS bad, but mainly because it’s baraly a hack. It’s obvious you just started. Try messing around more.

You’re not being helpful here.

Please let them hack in peace, it’s clear they’re just getting started - it’s daunting enough to put out an early release as a newcomer. Don’t make it more difficult.

16 Likes

Additionally no one else need respond to this in particular. It’s done. Back to hack topic please.

1 Like

Thanks for telling me the template!

The Romhack is now updated and published with 3 chapters, but one is a story chapter so its really 2.

3 Likes

Alrighty I finished the two chapter demo released and I’ve a few things to say.

chapter 0

This chapter is very empty and easy, right off the bat the wyvern lord is so busted that he can easily just solo the map in 2-3 turns, and the village can’t be visited.

I’d recommend sizing down the map by a bit, making the one chapter Jagen something other than a WL or add archers that can deal significant damage to him to keep them in check.
I’d also recommend adding a bit more terrain, the map feels really empty and there’s not really much in the way of strategy save for checking enemy ranges.

chapter 0x

Nothing to say here bc this isn’t a chapter other than having to ask what compelled you to use what appears to be glitched tiles in the house?


the ones right by the stairs, they look to be glitched village tiles. If you were going for rubble there’s probably better ways to achieve that.

chapter 1

There is genuinely no point to the preps in this map, you have no money and no items from the previous map should be traded around.
Overall it was okay, the two thieves showing up was a weird decision from a gameplay standpoint, and they can’t really do much since it’s easy for them to be surrounded.
The warrior boss being on the seize point can be assumed but the tile he’s on isn’t called ‘podium’ so that may lead to confusion. Also, you can send the player to the title screen by using the event for that in the end event and setting it to 1.

writing

I’ll be very plain here, the writing is pretty bad.
The concepts presented are decent enough, having the cool Jagen be kidnapped is a good way to make the player dislike the villain.

The problem comes down to the general way the characters speak, it feels very stunted and doesn’t sound natural at all. Along with that the characters don’t really have personalities or have their own way of speaking, all of their dialogue comes out very flat and unnatural. To give an example of unnatural character writing, when the Jagen gets kidnapped it’s not Arland who says “NOOO” it’s the fighter who has just recently met the Jagen, there’s not nearly enough dialogue between the two of them (or even at all) to make it believable that the fighter would be saying this over Arland.

The characters also speak actions? This doesn’t come off as natural in a game form at all, these kinds of descriptors like draws sword can be assumed by character dialogue and reactions to that character, I generally recommend you take these out.

Finally there are two characters who don’t get any dialogue at all, this is problematic because it fails to give us a reason beyond gameplay achievements to like these characters, making them no better than the generic unit from the DS games or Fates.

I recommend reading up on writing advice and practicing more, I’m not the best one to ask since I’m nowhere near a professional level of writing myself. There are plenty of resources here on FEU or just for writing in general.

graphics

Let’s start with the portraits. To be quite honest, most are legitimately kind of painful to look at.

I’m not an expert on portrait making but just by going off of what I know the colors used for the palettes don’t work at all. I’ll use the fighter dude’s portrait for this (doesn’t look much like a fighter btw) to demonstrate what I mean, this generally applies to most characters who have are palette swaps, notable exception being Arland himself.


Starting with the hair, the plain white does not look good at all, generally pure black and pure white won’t look to great along with overly bright and saturated colors, they just stand out too much. To keep the feeling of white hair let’s stay with a light gray color

Already looking a bit better and easy on the eyes but the hair still doesn’t look right, the hair doesn’t fade into darker colors very well, generally with things like hair and clothing you want to darken the outer shades to make it look generally better, I’m not the best at explaining things like this so if you want a more concise guide I’d suggest looking for one.

Now the hair’s looking good, the same general problem can be applied to the clothing so let’s change that up a bit (you seemed to have messed up the palette order of the portrait’s colors somehow, I used Ephraim’s portrait from here on since it’s easier to read for me and the fighter’s portrait is a recolor of this one.
Portrait Editor Fire Emblem - the Sacred Stones # GBA (patched).GBA_20@14 Jurrien_8ACDF4
and here it is, with a few simple edits the portrait now looks much more in line with FE portrait colors and is easier on the eyes, feel free to use this recolor if you feel so inclined.

Generally the same thing with the portraits can be applied to the animation palettes, most look pretty bad and are hard on the eyes, the same steps can be applied to the animation palettes.

Finally the map look, overall the maps just don’t use the tiles correctly.
Using chapter 0 as an example.
image
the road and forests look very unnatural and out of place, along with that, the villages aren’t connected to the road in any way. The easiest way to solve this is to use ‘transition’ tiles such as these ones for the roads


these tiles have grass transitioning into the road tile, making the tiles clash much less against each other.
image
with this the roads fit in much more, although it still has some problems, mainly it’s just too straight. This isn’t a perfect concrete road, there should be some more weathered and twisted parts of the road
image
the roads definitely look more natural with this but the map still feels off, this is likely due to the forests and general lack emptiness of the map.
The forests spread out are fine, they feel natural enough to not stand out and work, the lines and clumps however look unnatural, real forests aren’t in strait lines that suddenly cut off (unless they’re on the Canada and USA border) so they look unnatural.
The emptiness of the map comes most likely from the general lack of things around, whether they be villages, armories/shops, paths around the center of the map, or buildings. Let’s fix that without taking away from the map’s main ‘‘flow’’
image
and here it is, now it’s looking much more like a town and feels less empty. It still doesn’t look the best mostly because the maps general flow and identity doesn’t lend itself well to maps that aren’t empty imo, it has some of the same problems as a lot of Birthright maps.

I didn’t know where to put this so I’ll just stick it here, I really like the music choices… past the first cutscene, lots of really nice sounding custom tracks!

Overall I didn’t have a great time with this one but it’s overflowing with potential, there’s a lot of concepts in the story that can work if better written (the unique keywords for stats shows this well, along with the general key events that play out.), and the two maps aren’t inherently super flawed, with a bit of work I can see this hack being a fun time! I’ll be sure to keep following this hack’s progress and best of luck to you!

1 Like

Thank you very much, I will take this advice into account.
You will later discover why Jurrien is afraid to witness the kidnapping before his eyes.

Thank you again for the effort in the post.

1 Like

First I just want to parrot what theghostcreator said, there’s a lot of potential with your project. And keep in mind that I only know what’s in the current prototype you put out. I’m sure there’s a lot of information you have brewing that isn’t implemented.

Mainly I just want to talk about some ways you can improve the writing, hopefully you’ll find it constructive. Writing is the hardest thing to make good in story based FE Romhacks, and I hope no one discourages you from pushing forward. You will only get better with practice, after all.

Have a bit of a wall, so hopefully this will make it cleaner:

General

A general note I have is make some time to review and edit your writing. Alternatively you can collaborate with others (be it commissioned on this forum or with a willing friend). There were several things I noticed in the dialogue in need of edits (grammar, use of asterisks for actions within dialogue, among other things). For example, one line that Arland says in Ch1 is “Excuse me from talking”, but I think you meant “Forgive me for asking” since he asks to hire the mercenary).

Sometimes the initial stuff we write isn’t the best, but going back to review what you’ve written will likely see errors you didn’t notice at first and you can correct them with edits. It will give you more experience writing, and will make you less likely to make similar mistakes going forward as you continue making your story.

Writing in MoA

The dialogue in general feels disjointed and jarring. When Jurrien and Arland are talking to each other it doesn’t really feel like a conversation in the current build. But some edits can make a world of difference to make it flow better without removing any information or intent from your writing.

CH00: the way the conflict begins is rather jarring. The gist of what I got was Jurrien is found injured on ground, says Pulrossan soldiers did it, Arland decides to fight the soldiers. Simple and to the point which is good, but the dialogue made it feel a bit disjointed and motives weren’t really clear to me. For example; Arland says “a meaningless world with meaningless people…” which implied to me that he thought everything was meaningless. But he then immediately declares he and his allies will “(…)start change for the communities of mankind today!!” in the next line of dialogue.

Ch00x starts with a lore dump. While they’re an easy way of conveying a lot of information to the audience, lore dumps tend to make the readers disinterested. Try writing information you deem relevant to understand into the opening sequence.

For example, instead of making a lore dump to tell the audience Pulrossa has been buying back land in 00x, in the opening of Ch00 when Jurrien states he was attacked by Pulrossan soldiers, Arland can reply something along the lines of “Those Pulrossan bastards have been causing more trouble since they started expanding their borders!”. The characters with no dialogue can also be used to give other tidbits of information. The Priest can comment on how they’re using abominations (ghosts and demons mentioned in 00x). You can also convey the bit about demons and ghosts mentioned by placing some as enemies or reinforcement units in Ch00.

Ideas to help you improve

One of the best things you can do for yourself to improve your writing is to make time to read other works. It will take time of course, but spending that time will help you improve much faster. You’ll surely get ideas to make new characters, adjust events, think on how things will affect each other, and so much more.

This was sadly a short lived thread Pandan made a few months back, but even so it has a lot of great choices in the comments. Cool Books

Study how characters interact in other stories, how they speak to each other. How would a prince speak to a commoner in the world you’re making? What are the people of Pulrossa like?

Consider character motives. Why is Arland doing what he is doing? Why did Jurrien join Arland? Who specifically or what group is making Pulrossa such a greedy country?

So on and so forth.

1 Like