I’m personally not a fan of the AI refusing to attack since it tends to just slow things down
6 Likes
In general if we want to adjust the AI to attack and not stand there reports like this are useful, so if you notice it happen make a note and let me know the specifics.
Gameplay review
1-1
It’s SoA 1-1, I think I’ve seen it praised enough around FEU that I don’t really need to go into much detail. Good chapter overall.
1-2
Very straightforward. Charles spawns way behind where you realistically will be which is annoying. More annoying is that he will approach you but not initiate a talk so you have to waste a turn to do that even if he’s right next to you. A reaver weapon (on a wyvern no less) in the second chapter of the game is pretty overkill. I can understand not wanting to have Belle just solo but Oona is the only unit who can do anything significant to the wyvern, and guess which unit is the best at soloing this chapter?
1-3
My perspective may be slightly skewed because of the shaman being OP but this chapter is quite a slog. You’re forced at the beginning into a chokepoint further made annoying to navigate by green units occupying your space (I actually rescued one out of my way). After that point it’s just bait and switch. There is a thief that attempts to add some sense of urgency but fails at doing so since he follows the same path as you anyways.
1-4
It would be nice to have more than 3 units at this point but you don’t. The map is pretty big for the amount of units you get and is only further slowed down by reinforcements charging you from the objective side of the map and that there are chests scattered about with only one key to open them. They end up failing as a side objective because you just kill everything and then wait around in front of the boss while units run around passing the key to get stuff.
1-5
No sense of interest or urgency whatsoever, you just kill enemies and walk forward.
1-6
Decent enough but with a lot of open space for no particular reason. There’s enemies to the far left that serve seemingly no purpose. The brigand rushing the village is nice but the rest of the enemies just wait in place for you.
1-7
Your knight joins immediately next to an armorslayer merc for maximum “haha gotcha”. There are chests and a thief but you recruit the thief so you just watch him get the items for you and then he runs into you so you can recruit him, so the thief stealing things dynamic just isn’t there. You have no real reason to not take your sweet time as usual. The ending half of the map is a slog while you move thief lad to get the one chest randomly halfway back through the map and the rest of units down the empty one tile hallway to the boss.
1-8
Another big open field, but this time without even the benefit of a brigand village to try to speed you along. For extra fun factor, it’s a rout map with reinforcements, so if you’re not able to kill the last enemy immediately you might get haha’d and have to spend another turn dealing with those.
1-9
A fog map. In true Pandan style there are wyverns in the fog so if your torch staff use is a bit off you might get ganked and forced to reset for trying to move forwards after torching. There are also reinforcements that can spawn while you’re near the edge of the map and mingle in annoying ways with your units, effectively cutting some of them off from you. Killing the boss ends the chapter which is nice but he has innate crit which is less nice.
1-10
Big open field again. Lack of objectives again. Enemies wait in place again. Conveniently the only side objective is also the only enemy group that actively approaches you so you don’t even have to do that. Otherwise the middle section has so much range overlap it actively slows you down as you try to pull things from different angles since you don’t realistically have anything that can survive all the attacks that would be taken at once, but also don’t have the movement range to actually do anything on player phase.
1-11
I think you’re about used to me saying that maps are big open fields where enemies wait for you to walk into their range and this map is just that again. Immediately after the prep screen 3 extra enemies show up which is just bizarre and pointless as you can just reset and redo preps to account for them anyways, so it only serves to potentially waste time. Once you reach the boss you get ganked by a lot of spawns including a Sage who takes about 3 promoted units to kill and has a meteor tome (but not equipped for your player phase) and overall just feels like another “haha gotcha”.
Overall
The vast majority of maps are mostly bait and switch with little incentive to ever try to pick up the pace. Units are typically introduced in situations they underperform in which gives a lot of them a bad impression. There are a good few moments that just feel like cheap shots rather than trying to test player skill; at the very least there are warning icons for things with effective weapons (not reavers though).
5 Likes
I’ll read through it all closer in a bit but I wanted to address this one specifically:
Game has to check if Marcius and/or Kelan lived and spawn units based on that, otherwise a generic group of enemies spawn, there might be a better way to do it but for now that’s how it be.
I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible to do before preps
Enemies in cutscenes aren’t permanent fixtures most of the time, and enemies that show up in those sorts of instances would still have to be loaded as reinforcements once the map starts so they still wouldn’t be in the prep screen stuff for you to check.
Is there no way to load something and designate it as an actual unit and not part of a cutscene
I have a few ideas for how to make it work, I’ll play around with it later today hopefully.
VERY FUCKING IMPORTANT NOTE READ THIS
Because of what we did early on (replace the fire wrank with anima) it was showing the fire icon when you got a weapon level for anima. This has been fixed and changed, BUT all anima users won’t be able to use their tomes so YOU HAVE TO START OVER TO HAVE ANIMA USERS BE ABLE TO USE MAGIC AGAIN.
This should be the only time you have to start over, sorry about that but that’s just how it has to be to make it work right.
Update is here, renamed to v0.1 to better reflect that it’s not complete yet. Check the spreadsheet for the bugs that are fixed in this version.
9 Likes
Apparently something messed with the skill index and made everything actually +2 from what it shows in the editor, so all the level 10/promoted level 1 skills are wrong, it’s fixed but the update isn’t going out just yet.
There’s an issue with terrain based avo bonuses to cavalry, so that needs to be investigated and fixed before an update is put out.
That’s just the default in fexna; fliers get no terrain avo or def, cavalry get no terrain avo
1 Like
well regardless I gotta change it
Fixes a few things like class skills being wrong, arbalist not having weapon ranks, falcoknights being weak to horse effective weapons, making stark and grace auto recruit at the end of 1-6, and a crash in the 1-F postchapter.
Also changed is cavalry now get avo from tiles that grant it, as always make sure to check the bug spreadsheet for what’s known and report it if it’s not on there.
Also updated the readme with links to xna framework and .net 4 for anyone who doesn’t already have those installed
4 Likes
How i can play on GBA ?
Find the FE8 Version that was abandoned and either get it on a flashcard or reproductioncard.
I don’t recommend a flashcart or similar, it’s probably going to run into issues running on real hardware, just use an emulator.
The only way is to find an old patch and use that, because the GBA version is no longer being supported.
What is the Patch ? I dont find him, i have downloaded but i dont know what is the patch
You have to find an older version that is no longer being updated then patch that to a rom. Or just use the XNA version that is out.
The sounds come out well but nothing can be actually seen after the dialogue in Ch1.1, when the game actually starts. Also there’s only a black background when they are talking… Did I forget to install something?