Alright, I’m posting this after having played uh, 5 chapters? Since chapters 5 and 6 have issues.
First, the gamebreaking things. Chapter 5 can’t be played, as when you stop on the dirt tile to open the storehouse, the game plays this dialogue and immediately goes to chapter 6.
Secondly, Chapter 6 is unplayable. First of all, the map has no enemies on it.
Then, there’s the problem of crashing. When I moved a unit into approximately this space, some dialogue played and the game completely crashed, rendering me unable to progress further.
Next, I guess I’ll go over story? I’m not a story guy at all, but I did read all the dialogue.
Story
Overall I didn’t think it was offensive or anything, but I was a bit confused near the beginning, but you do a good job of getting the player to understand what the general gist is without having too much infodump up front. However, I feel like there is context missing, which you provided some of in the post, but isn’t in the game. Overall it feels very simple, just going from place to place, which is fine. I’m assuming there’s more going on later. Looking forward to that.
Here’s my overview for each chapter.
Prologue
I really disliked this map, as it feels very much like a reskin of the Lyn mode prologue. I understand why it might be like this, but most people playing hacks are more experienced, and thus don’t need anything like it. I just sat on the forest for turn 1 then went and sat on the other forest to kill the boss. In the end, I think you’re intending for some stuff to happen that doesn’t, since the dialogue with the protagonist talking to the green soldier abrupbtly cuts off with nothing happening (I assume she kills him). I’d recommend cutting this chapter entirely, since you could just summarize it in chapter 2 or 3 and there’d not be much lost.
Ch1
I’m glad to be getting a few more units here, but the map is again laid out in a way that’s a bit too simple in my opinion. I noticed it’s still 2x effectiveness, which isn’t a problem for the archer here, but should still just be changed. However, for the soldier, I was really surprised that he seemed almost useless on this chapter, especially seeing as the lancereaver cav really destroys him. Might want to consider changing that.
I also expected the boss to move, as they were a pegasus knight. I believe there should be something that allows you to display stationary AI when checking enemy ranges, so consider installing that. Though personally, I’d just have the boss here move, as it’d make the map more interesting.
Ch2
I’m a big fan of an early cave chapter as an idea, but the execution here leaves something to be desired.
There are a couple major problems here that I don’t think are too difficult to sort out. The first I’d say would be the fact that the map is not terribly interesting to navigate, as the entire thing is a 1-3 tile corridor, where I’m mostly just putting Valeria to the front since she one rounds most things and there are no lance enemies to be afraid of. I think the soldier is much better utilised here though, since his defense is nice to have. The layout is just a bit uninteresting.
The second problem I have is something that is a bit controversial, but I’ll throw it out there for you. I think you should have more units here, since having three units feels very boring to play with at this point in the game. Of course, it works for how the map is set up, but the tight corridor setup is not the best, as I mentioned.
The boss of this chapter also has the same mug as the previous chapter, not sure if same name, but that might be an error?
Overall, I think the map has potential and I am looking forward to seeing how it looks in the future.
Ch3
First off, you want to clarify the objective. Escape has had many different incarnations throughout the series and romhacks, so I’d advise system text indicating that it’s functionally identical to seize.
This map is definitely very unique, with a section for shopping and a combat section. However, there’s a bug with it, where if you move a unit into where one of the red units is supposed to be, they will be moved along with the rest of the red units, which resulted in this for me.
I had to reset the map because of this, so you’d probably want to be moving the units by ID instead of position.
Then, onto the premise of the map. The part for shopping is nice, but the map doesn’t provide a clear indicator of where or when the enemies will show up, and there is no convoy, which shouldn’t be happening. I don’t know if this is intentional, but there’s no reason not to have a convoy at this point. I am glad to have two new units here, and they’re both decent. However, I don’t think either of them have a vulnerary? So now I have to go back to the store to get them vulns and the girl a thunder tome. I don’t know how you’d avoid this to be honest, but it feels strange.
Then, the combat part of the map.
This area is far too open to be interesting, in my opinion. Put some walls and forests here and there and make sure the enemy formations acommodate for them. Like I said earlier, the enemies showing up kinda catches the player off guard, so if they’re in a disadvantageous spot when the enemies spawn, they’ll probably have to reset. In addition, the captain appears a bit too late, I think. The player is told that the pirate wants to speak to the captain, but the captain isn’t visible till one turn later, which confused me.
The main problem here is just conveyance, and with that addressed, this unique map would be great to play, I think.
Oh, and on the writing side, Louis spells his name wrong.
Ch4
Just an aesthetic thing, the color of the castle is very strange and a bit too light overall, I think. I thought it was fog at first, haha. It doesn’t affect the gameplay whatsoever though, so lower priority.
Right off the bat, the enemies don’t actually appear until turn 3, I believe? It’s later into the map, and I don’t know why. The boss also doesn’t show up at all.
During the entire map, I only had to move my units once, since the green units took care of almost everything. If I’d gotten a bit luckier, I might not have needed to move my units at all. This also results in the enemy and green unit phases being extremely long, since there are just so many enemies and green units fighting. The map doesn’t need to be this big with the amount of player units you have, so making it a bit smaller while also reducing the density of enemies and amount of green units would help.
The reason I didn’t move at all are twofold, the first being that there was nothing that made me want to move. If there was a chest to loot or something, or the boss showed up with a droppable item, I’d want to fan out more. The second reason was just that the green units were more than capable of doing everything themselves, and there were too many enemies for my units to handle anyways, so it’s just easier to sit in the initial room.
I like the idea of being on the side of bandits and having green bandits fighting alongside you, so definitely keep that, whatever you do. Just tweak the map a bit.
And that’s it, since I didn’t get to play chapters 5 and 6 properly. Whatever I said here, I want to let you know that I don’t hate the hack or anything, and I’d like to see it improved.
Also, I believe the reason you haven’t been getting any posts in the thread is because you haven’t been replying to it regularly, yes. Without replying to the thread, it gets buried and no one really sees that, so you should be doing it more often.
Wish you the best on your future endeavours! I’d love to give the hack another try once chapter 6 is fixed.