The King's Last Wish [COMPLETE]

[Jack_G]

Notable features

• No skills
• 20 total chapters (no gaidens)
• 26 playable characters
• Full set of support conversations that build based on deployment
• General QOL features. Visible growth rates, global danger area, stationary danger area, hp bars, Thracia trading, etc.

Secrets guide

contains spoilers

Chapter 6: Stand outside the old man’s house with a specific item for a reward.

Secret shop: The secret shop is located behind the temple in chapter 18. No member card is required.

Valkyrie Staff: Wesley must kill Harold in chapter 18.

Wesley personal weapon: Talk to Wesley with Osborn in the final chapter.

Charlotte: unlocked by visiting the house in chapter 14 with Gunvald.

Triangle attack: the 3 warriors (Gregory, Grant and Gunvald) can perform a triangle attack.

Difficulties

Easy mode: Weaker enemies, doubled experience and gold is plentiful. Recommended for casual players.

Normal mode: The intended difficulty to play the game. Recommended for a first playthrough.

Hard mode: Stronger enemies, harsher time limits, and gold is more scarce. Recommended for a second playthrough.

Turncount Rewards

Depending on how many turns you complete the game in, you can expect to receive the following rewards in subsequent playthroughs.

200 turns or less: Boots
190 turns or less: Set’s Litany
180 turns or less: Thor’s Ire
170 turns or less: Nini’s Grace
160 turns or less: Filla’s Might

Note that the rewards are cumulative. So, for example, if you completed the game in under 160 turns, you would receive all 5 rewards.

Screenshots

Tierlist Maker

https://tiermaker.com/categories/fire-emblem/the-kings-last-wish-15426873

Available languages

The game is available in both english and chinese, both of which can be found in the dropbox.

Note that the chinese translation is based on v2.06, so there will be differences between the two.

Download the ups file here:

The King's Last Wish

Please ensure you have the latest version.
Current latest version: v2.21

All credits can be found in the dropbox.
Patch to an unmodified FE8 USA rom.

[Blasteroid]

Question is this finished?

[Jack_G]

Yes, apart from supports and any balances that need to be done, I’m only one person, so it’s difficult to know if I have got the difficulty right, so I may adjust it depending on feedback.

[Blasteroid]

Cool Will play it when I have the time.

[cheddar29]

So, I just played through the first few chapters, and although there was clearly a lot of effort put in, I think it needs some serious re-balancing.

Prologue;

Summary

Enemies here are rather strong, though understandable considering the circumstance, as you’re not expected to “win” in here. Gregory isn’t able to do much, since two cavaliers can kill him. The generic player units are weak to the point of barely being able to damage the enemies, so Royce is basically the only usable unit here. It narratively makes sense, but it isn’t particularly enjoyable from a gameplay perspective. I suggest making the generics do more damage and either not including Gregory at all, or changing his and/or the halberd’s stats. Overall though, decent chapter.

Chapter 1;

Summary

Most of the enemies here are just as, if not stronger than the player units. It takes 3-4 units to take down a single enemy. And the damage of the enemies means that if you have 3-4 work to kill say, a merc or armor knight, they’ll now all be at or below 60% HP, leaving them vulnerable to other enemies, of which there are a lot of. The only strategy that really works here is going to the chest room via the broken wall. Once I was able to get all my units inside, I could use Hale/Dale to choke the point and Osborn and Gregory were able to fairly easily best the boss. The main problem with this chapter is it’s linear nature. The only option that doesn’t result in losing one or more characters is running away from the main enemy force. I suggest buffing all the player units here, or weakening the enemies (other than the boss).

Chapter 2;

Summary

The beginning of the chapter is fine, though once the cavaliers reach the Southern area things get difficult. Gregory get one-rounded by some of them, and Osborn can’t double them. Aside from those two units, the only person who can do significant damage is Royce, but he’s locked up and Piper can’t safely free him given all the enemies in the starting area. Shelly’s recruitment could be better hinted at, though I’m sure that most players will try Osborn first since he’s the lord, so this might not be a real issue. Also, if there’s a reward of some kind for keeping all three of the green armor knights alive, it’s currently impossible to get, due to Shelly killing one of them in two turns, before Osborn can reach her. Once I freed Royce, dealt with the cavs, and recruited Shelly, I went to open one of the prison doors to free a green unit (the one with the enemy soldier slowly killing him), and the chapter just ended? I assume this is a glitch, but if it isn’t, please tell the player that freeing them will end the chapter, as there are two chests and a heavy spear from the boss that the player likely won’t have gotten by the time they get to the prison cells.

Chapter 3;

Summary

The quantity and quality of the enemies here is honestly, absurd. The mercs and myrms can one-round most of my units, and the cavaliers have far too much defense, to the point where Hale/Dale can barely do more than 2 damage to them. Because of how many strong enemies there are at the start, I was unable to get to the eastern village before the brigands. However, it seems to be glitched, as they are unable to destroy it, and just continually remain there trying to. This is the first time i was given access to shops, so I put most of my units down there to buy and sort items, leaving Royce to deal with the enemies, because nobody else could. Although the boss warned of reinforcements, I could not has anticipated where they would come from, or how powerful they’d be. 11 Strength, 14 Speed, 11 Defense, with silver swords, and they spawn just below the arena near the shops. Even Royce has trouble with these guys, and they literally one-round everyone else. I tried to has everyone flee north, but with only Osborn and Royce left, I was unable to outrun the cavs, ending in a game over. There’s a lot I think needs adjusting here, chiefly the enemy quality and the reinforcements. Just like chapter 1 and 2, the enemies (other than the boss, who’s ironically weaker than many of his soldiers) should be weakened to reflect the player unit’s better. Now, I’m fine with strong reinforcements, but I recommend having them arrive 4-6 turns later, as it certainly isn’t a small map and even weakened enemies will slow down the player from reaching the arrive point and the villages. Also, maybe weaken them a bit too, perhaps to about the current power of the normal, non-reinforcement cavaliers on this map.

So yeah, that’s all I have to say. I’ll try replaying chapter 2 and 3 to see if I can reach chapter 4 or beyond, at which point I’ll update this with thoughts on later chapters. Regardless, I suggest playing through these chapters on your own at least once or twice, both for balancing purposes and to check for dialogue mishaps and glitches.

Good luck with your continued work on the hack, it may be rough around the edges now, but it’s got good potential!

[dancer_A]

I gave up on Ch1 lol

The prologue, honestly, easy. You gave me 2 brave bows (I can OHKO that sniper before they break the wall and start causing issues) and a 1 tile chokepoint right at the front. Greg is terrible though, he has no reason to be here. I just put Royce on the choke point with all of my units behind him and had archers pick off random units.

Ch1, man. Not fun. I literally can’t damage half of the enemy units and all of them 2hko my units (3 def fighter lol, 6 def 20 hp cavs lol). I could have won if i didn’t miss a Rapier hit on the boss as I just rescue dropped and snuck around the enemy faction.

Overall, balance issues. Severely. I would also seriously reconsider even having the prologue if it’s going to play like that. Maybe it gets better down the line, but if Ch1 is this rough, how am I even going to get to later chapters…

[Jack_G]

Hi man. It seems your main issue is with difficulty, and the issue is not that it has not been play tested, rather that I as the creator know the most optimal strategies for each map and thus couldn’t really grasp how difficult it would be for people unfamiliar with the maps.

The glitches I believe have arised for a similar reason (chapter 2 is a glitch btw, it is by no means intentional). For example, during playtesting, I actually never let the brigands reach the village, so I didn’t know about this glitch.

Overall, it seems the difficulty is reminscent of fe6 hard mode in the early game, which I can agree is overtuned, so I will look into rebalancing the early game. On a better note, chapter 4 is designed to be a somewhat quick and easy chapter to serve as a break between the difficulty, so there’s that I suppose.

But overall, it appears that these maps are only really working as intended if you use the exact strategies that I use, but otherwise it just becomes turtle city or hole up behind the choke point, which is definitely not how I want the game to feel.

Also, I just wanted to touch on gregory, you are supposed to put him in the forest with the halberd on turn 1, he is purposefully tanky enough to take 2 cavalier hits while in the forest and one shot them on retaliation with the halberd. Unfortunately, him being weak is a necessary evil, because in earlier versions, he was stronger, but this just meant that he spiralled out of control after a few levels, and even became stronger than Royce, which is not what I wanted.

But, I appreciate the feedback, and will look into all of this.

[Jack_G]

Yes, difficulty wise, you are the second person to say that it is overtuned. The prologue is designed to be somewhat easier than the following levels, with the difficulty coming if you want the droppable secret book on the boss.

In regards to chapter 1, I will give you the same answer as I gave the other guy, I think the problem is arising due to me being the creator of the hack, and thus knowing the most optimal strategy for each chapter, so I will definitely look into rebalancing.

And the reason gregory is so weak is because in previous versions, he was stronger, but then after a few levels, he snowballed out of control, even becoming stronger than Royce, so I had to nerf him somewhat, however his initially function in that chapter is still there. In the forests, he can tank 2 hits from the cavaliers and kill both of them on the retaliation, with a little bit of healing, he can retreat back upwards and help out killing the armour knights with the iron axe, but like you said, having Royce up north does somewhat trivialise the map, this is intentional, like I said before, the true difficulty is meant to be if you want the secret book.

But, it appears that the early game difficulty is similar to binding blade hard mode early game, which isn’t fun I will admit, I will definitely fix the early chapters.

[Xilirite]

I haven’t played this hack, but I’ve seen somebody else do it and their testimony is similar to that above. I think you need to recognize that fire emblem is, first and foremost, a strategy game, and needs room for a player to strategize; if maps are designed such that your units can only barely beat a chapter if you play nearly perfectly, then the player has to either intuit that perfect play immediately or else be forced to give up a unit. Even with perfect play, you could easily miss an attack that you had no choice but to attempt. If you want players to feel like they’re fighting against overwhelming odds, you need to find ways to do this that don’t involve literally overwhelming them.

I’d recommend playing the map in multiple different ways to make sure that you can still beat the map smoothly if you make a small mistake or don’t have the best units in the area or are missing certain pieces of equipment, and also more importantly looking for playtesters beyond yourself (the FEU discord is a good place to do this)

[Jack_G]

Thank you for the advice, and what I will say is that the maps were by no means intended to be as difficult as they are, it’s not that they are intended to only be beaten with a certain strategy, but rather that those circumstances have arisen because of me being the hack creator and playtesting with those strategies in mind. I will certainly try joining the discord as it seems other playtesters may be needed. Thank you for the advice.

[Contro]

I played up to chapter 3 (I saw the killer axe boss and noped out).

Prologue

The prologue took me a couple tries, among them was a reset due to a 2% crit because the longbow archers had very high skill and Gregory had low luck.
In this chapter, you either are trying to figure out what you need to do (my first thought was to move the Royce to intercept the sniper) or you’re just doing a cav murder loop because you found the best strategy. There doesn’t seem to be an in between that feels good to me.

Chapter 1

I killed everything in chapter 1 albeit slowly. I had to use Gregory to bait some enemies, walk back a little and use a vulnerary, then repeat. After all that, I spent the next two turns walking to the throne room while Piper grabbed the chest then just killed the boss with Gregory as he was the only person who could do it reliably.

(I will be honest, before I played this chapter, I was told to just walk up to the broken wall and kill the boss while ignoring most of the map. Considering a rapier is in the chest right next to the wall, I had a hard time deciding if I actually was supposed to skip the map or not.)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 was a bit better at the start, though once I got to the part with the silver lance armor knights, gameplay came to a standstill while I hit the armors with magic for 8 damage per turn. Gregory managed to clean up after a bit though.
I didn’t bother going for the treasure since I didn’t have enough healing to deal with the boss and mercs.

(I also tried escaping without rescuing Royce and to my relief, you can. If Piper were dead and this was a full party escape, I’d have been screwed.)

You mentioned that Gregory was nerfed earlier because he was too strong. Honestly, I think he’s perfectly normal. Everyone else except for Osborn and Royce is just really underwhelming.

Hale might be fast, but his low damage output results in him doing like 4 points of damage to an enemy on average.

Dale can get one rounded for being slow. And despite having more strength than Hale, he still deals like 7ish points of damage to most enemies. Which doesn’t feel nice when enemies have like ~24 HP.

Piper is a thief, and that’s about it. She’s got use outside of combat so she’s fine.

Monty did about the same about of damage as Dale though he could maybe get a tiny bit more damage if he doubles with an iron bow. Dealing damage from 2 range is very helpful when enemies deal half your health in one hit.

Shelly felt really bad as she wasn’t a good answer for the one enemy type you’d think a mage would be good against: armor knights.

I think Gregory is the best unit because he can take more than one hit before dying as well as deal decent damage. Everyone else is struggling to do double digit damage against enemies with ~24 hit points even with every advantage possible (outside of effective weapons) while also dying in two hits resulting in me wanting to draw my units back instead of thinking of how I can safely push forward towards the goal.

If my other units don’t feel good to use and won’t get the job done, I’ll just continue pouring resources into the units that do. And given the level differences between enemies and player units, it’s not really surprising Gregory reached level 10 at the start of chapter 3 for me. He has a clear job, and he did it well, so I used him.

I also noticed hit rates being very low resulting in a lot of misses during one of the many moments I couldn’t afford to miss once. This happened even with weapon triangle advantage.

Well, those are my thoughts. Probably about the same as everyone else’s, but I hope you got something out of it.

I look forward to seeing this hack improve as time goes by!

[Jack_G]

Hello, thank you for the feedback. While you are correct in that your feedback is similar to everyone elses, it is appreciated, because most people seem to have taken different approaches to the maps, with the common consensus being that it is too difficult, I am hoping this means the issue is with the enemies being too strong rather than with map design (which is good as it is quite easy just to tweak enemy and player stats). You also mentioned low hit rates, and I am inclined to agree. When I have been retesting the maps, the low hit rates combined with extremely strong enemies is giving me fe6 hard ch4 vibes, and I know for a fact everyone hates that map lol.

I have been informed of a couple of glitches, but they were relatively easy to fix, and I am currently in the process of trying to balance some of the early game chapters, and I will update this page and the dropbox with the new ups once I have completed the changes.

[Jack_G]

Hello, everyone, I have seen all of your feedback and have made the following changes accordingly (there is a new link in the main post leading to v1.1).

Bug fixes:

• fixed a bug where opening one of the doors in chapter 2 completes the chapter (don’t know why this happened, sometimes febuilder just switches around pointers for whatever reason).
• fixed a bug where the brigands in chapter 3 didn’t destroy the villages properly.
• fixed a bug with shelly’s battle quote with the boss didn’t activate properly on chapter 2.
  Thanks to @cheddar29 for bringing my attention to these bugs.

Balance changes:

• Gregory + 1 luck
• Hale +1 strength, +1 speed, +1 luck
• Dale +1 strength, +1 speed, +1 luck
• All enemies have received -1 to all stats (not including bosses)
• All enemies have received -1 to their level (not including bosses)
• The boss of the prologue has been reworked. He now does 2 less damage, but has 10 higher hit.
• The eastern cavaliers on chapter 2 now wait 1 turn before moving.
• 1 less defense on all cavaliers (in addition to the -1 that all enemies got).
• cavalier reinforcements on chapter 3 have been replaced with armour knights (edit because I forgot to mention in original post).

These don’t seem like huge changes, but when I have play tested, I can assure you that they make a massive difference.

Also, if you are interested in helping out with playtesting, I will be making a thread on the feu discord for those that would like to offer feedback.

[Yasako]

2-3 less defense on every cavalier sounds like it would REALLY help with the tink people are complaining about.

For what it’s worth, I like Puzzle Emblem… during early game, when the chapters are small and short. These chapters are lookin’ kinda big, which leads to players overlooking optimal strategies due to information overload from the get-go. It’s why I didn’t finish FE4 chapter 1 for a LONG time before I just sat down and played it and it was easy.

[1_2_3]

On chapter 5x, not only is the chest on the right unable to be opened even by the thief’s lockpick, the map itself is also not really winnable, since nothing happens when any unit selects the escape option on the proper escape tiles, including the lord. Oh and also, even after the pegasus knight has recruited the fighter, she can still talk to him again on subsequent turns to retrigger the recruitment convo. This also seemingly causes the boss of map to repeat his lines on the enemy phase after (except uh, his generals do not actually move still even afterwards, unless you already provoked them in their range. As an additional point here, I would personally suggest not having the generals move until that point, it makes attacking other generic enemies from the edge of the wall a non option as you’ll aggro a general (or possibly more?) and make it trickier to recruit the new fighter). Oh and as a last, potentially very concerning issue, for some reason certain tiles on the map (most of them, really) seem to be tiles that give an innate +10 res to those standing on top? It makes your mage be so much less useful, though it can also potentially reduce the enemy mages’ threat level.

[Jack_G]

Thanks for letting me know, I will look into what you have told me. The escape tiles are designed to only work after talking to the fighter, so I assume you didn’t try to escape before talking to him? +10 res and chest should be an easy fix. This is an oversight on my part as chapter 5x was actually added right at the end, the original draft did not include chapter 5x, and thus it has recieved less playtesting than the other chapters, so I appreciate the feedback.

[Jack_G]

Hello again, some more glitches and oversights have been discovered by @1_2_3
I have implemented the following fixes, so please ensure you have the latest version:

• fixed an issue where the generals did not move in chapter 5x after the boss dialogue.

• fixed an issue where you could speak to grant more than once in chapter 5x.

• fixed an issue where tiles gave +10 res in chapter 5x.

• fixed an issue where you could not escape in chapter 5x.

• changed the backdrop of chapter 5x.

• On chapter 2 and chapter 5x, now the chapters are only cleared if Osborn escapes (other units can escape but there will be no reward for doing so).

• I also added some new support conversations (I will most likely slowly trickle them in alongside bug fixes/balance changes).

[JrpgAddict]

wish u would add Completed in the title so ppl know to actually try this hack and not skip it thinking its not yet complete

[Jack_G]

Thanks for the tip, will do.

[1_2_3]

Oh yea your fixes worked, I was actually able to beat ch5x without issues…except for one more potential one; you can actually kill grant while he’s still an enemy, without it causing a game over (and it’s especially bad given he’ll attack anyone in his range); effectively also making the escape points unannounced and making the map not winnable still (?) Having his death be a game over for that map only should suffice for this.