It’s admittedly a little bit unclear in the localization, as both are referred to as the Great Dragon who saved humanity. But the Japanese text of her Saleh support states that Myrrh fought in the war alongside Morva, which further explains why both are attributed to the title of humanity’s savior.
5 Likes
Wait…
I’m surprised no one brought this up.
Game breaking glitches! They always suck espescially the ones that force you to restart everything.
not a playtester I see
I don’t mind playtesting it’s just annoying when the game is finished.
One thing I don’t like about Rom Hacks/Fangames is when they implement newer classes like Malig Knight, Witch, etc. And make them extremely broken. While I do like these classes, I feel like they could be a little bit dampened so they don’t outshine your other units.
I actually like the implementation of skills it just makes the game and bosses more fun for me I guess.
Another thing well this is just story wise for both Fangames and Fire emblem but the beast/Manakete species are weakened severely or always driven insane just for the humans to shine like why does this need to happen every game.
11 Likes
I wrote a longer list (which you can view below), but the main thing I’ve come to appreciate is when hacks are fairly open-ended in how you approach them - maps don’t have “one right solution” and you can play past mistakes and not feel punished, ie the likelihood of a softlock from eating a few deaths is mitigated heavily.
I find that some hacks can be too focused on creating a solution that is 100% epic while making alternatives feel bad to attempt or flat out wrong.
I prefer when there are multiple good solutions and what’s ‘optimal’ isn’t so obvious or overpowered compared to other available options - being able to play the game your own way vs. only a developer’s intended way is good IMO.
Detailed list
Things I value:
- Being able to play past mistakes (ie limited forced game overs, not feeling obliged to reset)
- Solutions to maps are open-ended (ie I don’t need to “apply unit X to problem Y” approach to maps. Multiple solutions with varying degrees of efficiency are neat)
- Earnest attempt at writing (ie do you take your story seriously enough that the player will also?)
- Attempts to experiment w/ the formula of FE, especially through pre-existing mechanics (Sword of Heaven and Earth does this a lot)
Things I don’t care for
- Split promo (hard to balance well)
- Too many skills (same as above, lots to manage too)
- Small cast sizes (more units → more opportunities for diverse experiences)
- Reliance on memes/allusion (it’s distracting and cheapens your story if I’m being taken out of it)
- Intentionally designing “bad” units (ie some units will always be worse, but it’s a waste when devs make units intentionally bad)
- Puzzle gameplay (needing to map out the 1 solution for the map is zzz to me. There should always be multiple solutions to a map vs. one obvious one and a ton of terrible ones)
19 Likes
That’s my problem with Rom Hacks where the creator clearly favors or dislikes a character so they intentionally make them bad or amazing
Overtime I’ve come to realize that making a hack harder than vanilla is overrated. Especially making something intentionally more difficult than say FE8 hard mode i guess. Playing a game blind already makes the experience more challenging than if its your third playthrough.
So making something more challenging for the sake will just make it more frustrating to play in the instances you need to turtle or restart because some enemies were too strong, unexpectedly or not. And if a hack is too frustrating then the chances players will finish the project drop from say 90% to 30% if they have to restart.
That said for a bit of balance. Something I really enjoy seeing is attention to cohesion, particularly in maps but also in world/lore logic.
7 Likes
“Enemy turn songs are boring” is not a good point.
Many enemy turn songs are monotonous and boring.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s a good idea to play the enemy turn by skipping it with frame skips because it’s boring.
That’s why in my project I try to be particular about the enemy turn songs.
Only recently have I finally been able to pay that much attention to it.
It’s one of the achievements of achieving Sound Room 1000.
Others are a matter of taste.
Summary
I decided to give a lot of reinforcements in my game after seeing the commentary “games that give a lot of reinforcements are shit games”.
I like Triangle and Support, so I think it’s a good idea to make the values a bit extreme.
I would also like about +10% for Terrain Evasion.
This is because I want players to look at the terrain carefully and plan their strategy accordingly.
I think it would be interesting if the hit rate of all weapons was +20%, so that enemy attacks hit the player as well.
I like that there are events in the game where you can collect things.
You can clear the game without collecting it, but it would be nice if there were rewards for collecting it.
Back in the SNES days, FE had a lot of traps that first time killer, but recently it seems to have decreased.
FE is a game about organising large armies and waging war, so very often the hero is on the side of authority, such as royalty or nobility, which I personally don’t like.
It would be interesting if there were more stories with dark heroes.
It’s war, so it’s murder, but I don’t really like the grotesque expressions.
Even in FE8, Olson’s wife is treated quite badly.
I think the weak last boss is a bad thing in GBA FE.
All the bosses in the official works have a way to be defeated in one turn.
I hope they can withstand at least one turn.
The process of sending turns in vain to achieve Support is not fun, so if a Base Map is to be created, it would be good if that map could get a lot of Support points.
It would also be nice if there was a mechanism to get rid of Supports through divorce patches.
I like my heroes to be a bit slower in Promotion.
The protagonist is active in the beginning of the game, retires in the middle of the game to raise his friends, and then Promotions in the second half of the game to get back into the first army.
This is because if the protagonist remains strong all the time, there is less reason to raise other friends.
I like the story of the apprentice who surpasses the master, as in the legend of ‘Deiran no Honour 出藍の誉れ’.
That said, though, I think Roy’s promotion in FE6 is a little too late.
It is interesting to have flying units from the beginning to broaden the range of strategies.
12 Likes
I would say one thing almost no game or hack got right imo is Inventory management and weapon durability.
They are always a chore, and the games throw enough money or items at you for it to never matter.
And on a first run there’s a tendency to hoard because you never know what you might face later (relevant video). Especially when it most games Iron weapons do the job fine until super late game anyway.
It just becomes a game of boring inventory management due to limits and “i am afraid to use this super cool thing because who knows what’s coming later”
The only game imo that almost got Inventory management right is Fates. Removing durability and adding drawbacks instead was a really good decision, and makes you actually think when to use certain weapons and how to deal with drawbacks (Especially on higher difficluties). The game only really fumbled with how it handled forging, and even then, not only is it harder to go above +3 without hacking/save editing, to make Iron weapons as strong as Silver weapons you need to pay double the money (8000 for forged Iron vs. 4000 vs Silver), and there’re better ways to use that money, especially in Conquest.
TL;DR: Removing durability in Fates was a step in the right direction, and people are unreeasonably afraid of the debuffs that had alot of workarounds especially due to how strong Fates base gameplay is. Did you know that the dual attacker doesn’t triggers debuffs and that it can be used to clear em sometimes?
Chapter based durability ala 3H magic or easy repair ala FE4/3H is also something that i am fine with. Another thing that could work is making Iron and Steel weapons (with some kinda drawback) have no durability (so you don’t have to keep micromanaging the low use ones or fill the inventory for later) and make effective and stronger weapons have them.
5 Likes
Something that I love is when the main character (s) interact (s) with the people they recruit throughout the story.
I really dislike it when people are recruited and then never speak again outside of supports.
Moreover, something that I’ve been noticing with the vanilla games is that sometimes support convos end abruptly, which is really unsatisfying and grating.
Give me a game/hack where the protagonists interact with their recruits every now and again (or just have the latter appear in cutscenes) in a realistic way as far as the beginning and middle of the game are concerned, and I’ll be a happy camper in that regard.
12 Likes
I don’t think “too many” is really the right way to think about whether skills are a good or bad thing. I’m not a fan of skills on generic enemies (outside of some classes having a class skill (I can take Bowrange +1 on Snipers for example because it’s something I can just get used to when I see a Sniper and doesn’t make me memorize the skill layouts of a bunch of faceless enemies)). I’m also not a huge fan of switching around to different classes to get skills as in Awakening, Fates, and 3 Houses because it just becomes busy work (and going for optimal builds in 3H feels like building a clone army).
But I do like it when skills are used to give units unique builds like in the Jugdral games, and the number of skills it takes it takes to achieve that build isn’t as important as how that build affects gameplay. I’m assuming criticisms of “skill bloat” are mostly directed at hacks where every unit, including generics has 4 or 5 skills, but I think characterizing the problem as “too many skills” might make new hackers afraid to try certain character builds.
9 Likes
It depends on how it’s done imo. Awakening on L+ for example is bs. Three houses on maddening giving class based skill works, but is a boring addition.
Conquest on the other hand does it almost perfectly imo. Not all generics have skills, but those that do serve a purpose. Lunge is there to break your formation, poison strike so you can’t just yolo tank with your highest def unit, counter on some archers to test your attack stance positioning, Blow skills so you don’t just enemy phase tank these units, etc. It’s something i really love and wish more hacks look at Conquest as an example on how to do skills on generics instead of going skill spam or “skills bad”. Conquest ofc has an UI fit for enemies with skills, but i think a good solution in gba hacks is to highlight the genrics with skills in some way to tell the player “check that guy out”, especially since hacks UI has been getting much better.
Berwick Saga also has alot of generics with abilities and skills, and imo it adds to the fun.
Imo, it’s kinda a waste to make generics just numbers and only bosses having skills. Right use of skills on generic can spice maps to make em really interesting and challenge without jacking up the stats to the max.
9 Likes
Time for a rousing round of “more things that I recently learned that bother me”.
Capping both promoted and unpromoted unit stat caps to 20, then giving me a level 5 unit with 17 strength speed and skill with good growths in all of those catagories (70, 50, 50). It just seems pointless to give a unit good growths if they can’t capitalize on them with their class caps being completely dicked over like that.
redundant skills, why give snipers bullseye+ they already don’t exactly miss so whats the point. Especially when you start giving bosses Tower Shield+ making them completely pointless.
Stacking a bosses Avoid is also crap imo, when the players average hit is is 150-ish with supports makeing a boss have 206 avoid is crap. And even more galling is having a new unit show up specifically just to kill them with a weapon that was made just for it.
Overly large maps that are bug for the sake of being big. I get that you may want to get creative with maps but think about what units the player has, if they only have 1 cav don’t make a big ass open field that takes forever for literally the rest of the army to cross.
Randomly effective magic. I understand some people really like the Tellius games but come on. If you really want to look at how magic should work in FE Fire magic should be effective against footsoldiers not cavs, thunder should be effective against cavs and armor, and wind effective against anything with wings, light AND dark should mostly cause their targets to have -hit since they are being blinded, and finally healing magic would take more than one turn to work since sever games imply it only accelerates they bodys natural healing abilities.
Further, the Anima triangle makes no goddamn sense. Fire is a direct result of Lightning, wind usually causes fire to spread, and the heat caused by fires can cause dry thunder to occur.
And to wrap this backwards onto skills for the end here.
Just mark a few random generic enemies with the name “Veteran” and them having a few skills or higher then usual stats makes sense since they are veterans.
Till next time when I eventually find more varying things that irk me.
That’s why for me, the triangle should be a pentagon, with the addition of earth and ice/water magic
Wind=> Earth => Fire => Ice => Thunder => Wind
Light = Dark
It’s not perfect but there is some kind of logic
Its more of a fundamental issue caused by the first tellius game not having dark magic and how it impacted the magic structure.
To me having an Anima triangle in any given hack just complicates magic more than it needs to. Since now you’ll have to watch out for what specific tomes the anima mages have, since your mage may not have good hit due to the difference of how much the disadvantage the hack maker gave.
Then again I also have varying ideas on how the 3 schools should be handled.
But I still stand that if you want the anima triangle you really shouldn’t have one of either light or dark magic to simplify the magic down a peg.
Edit:
Oh, and it also gets worse if you decided to split anima mages into the three types.
I mean with some spitballing you can break down dark magic into 3 schools as well.
Lunar Shaman: specialises in anti mage combat due to tomes ignoring res.
Drain Shaman: higher physical defense due to their tomes draining the health of their enemies.
Dark Shaman: while dealing magic damage their tomes usually also inflict a minor debuff that can cause their opponents to suffer ( poison or -2 to various stats)
Its really light magic being directly tied to “divine” aspects that makes trying to do a light triangle kind of impossible.
If I had to guess I’d say the roots of the anima triangle go back to FE4 being the first game to have a weapon triangle and the devs wanted magic to have the same mechanic. The relationships work the way they do to make Foreseti strong against Reptor, Bloom and Ishtar and weak against Arvis (to discourage using Forseti against Arvis).
Edit: And make Tine strong against Hilda.
1 Like
Official and unofficial FE Games likes and dislikes by Lukirioh!
I like …
Blue haired lord
Main lord with rapier supremacy
alternative non main characters lords with other types of weapons
Avatar Character that ISN’T the lord of the game
Powerful, unique and UNBREAKABLE weapons ( also I need an exclusive one for the lord )
Many Routes/Paths like Scared Stones or If / Fates
I do like Childrens but not Marrying ( I like the way they are in Holy War or if they appears as Lucina does)
Armored Dancer ( i mean the dancer can attack. No matter the weapon )
I like when the dancer dances for all the nearest allies and not for only one
i like eXtra chapters but if they don’t need to have a certain amount of recruitable units like in FE1
I do like skills but not the skill system ( I mean i like the way certain classes has certain passive or active skills like FE8 but I don’t like so much the FEA skill system . I hate If/Fates skill system … I can accept FE4 skill system )
i like personal skills but not for all the characters
I like breakable weapons but i accept unbreakable ones like FE Echoes.
i like different promo items instead master seal for all. I also love certain items for each promo. I don’t remember that patch’s name.
i like the promo tree instead of just one promo per class
i like extra promo for certain classes like FE8 trainies and FE Echoes
i like large range for bows instead 2 tiles range.
i accept marriage only if there is an avatar and just for it
i like giving experience for all characters after battle like FE Echoes
I like to have a secondary base class like Fates / If
i need a recruitable cute manakete girl ._.
i need an edgy long haired myrmidon.
i do like pegasus sisters and tri Knights/Generals attack
i like recruitable bosses °w°
i love fake endings I mean the final chapter and the endgame chapter
i like support based on c b a ranks but without 5 limits like FE8 I prefer it as FE Echoes
I LOVE to travel the map and battle extra maps for gathering experience
I like the Begining and powerful Paladin and the two cavaliers
i accept mounted promo for Main lord but i prefer without it
I like at least one recruitable beast morpher
I love new and custom classes :3 but i like the vanilla classes v:
I like the circus if it doesn’t kills your unit ( like in FE4)
I don’t like FE4 big maps
i don’t like a evil final boss cause yes … i mean if it is so evil please explain how it becomes evil in the story
i like monsters classes (enemy or not)
i like already paired recruitable units like Zeke&Tatiana or Pent&Louise.
i like traditional wrapping triangle (lance > sword> axes) and rest appart of that triangle and I like Magic triangle too but i can accept all magics as only one type of weapon or i also can accept anima magics separated.
i love permanent death but i accept if you make it optional
i like the Gaiden magic system but i would prefer it if it doesn’t consumes the unit life … I would like if it consumes other stat
i like paired units but i prefer if they have normal support in game
i don’t like NO DAMAGE i like at least 1 point of damage if the equation it’s equal 0
i love custom screens , palettes and sprites :3 (hacks obviously)
i HATE that FE6-7 carrier unit
i like personal weapons for certain non main characters
i like weapons that can be used as items too like FE Achaneias Gladius/Gradivus.
i like creepy stories and important deaths but i also like funny moments in the same game
please if some character it’s a mounted unit in his base class and it refers his pet in support conversations please don’t let it Promote to other pet mounted class (poor Chercher’s Minerva)
if you are making a hackrom please Break stereotypes. Yes I love to have common parameters that vanilla games has but sometimes the unique things that you improve in your hack makes your project more recognizable for the communitya
Sorry for this long list. I hope it helps you at least a bit. Thanks for reading. Lukirioh
3 Likes
The only thing funnier is no one has tried to do a magic Triangle attack, which really only needs a mixed twister into thunder into elfire pillar to work as the combo.
You could probably work out an Anima-Light-Darkness combo using some stuff from the repo as well.
1 Like
There’s an enemy Triangle Attack of mage sisters in fe4 but I would love for a rom hack/Fangame to do it too.
More male pegasus knights!! Like make a new trio of siblings with a brother who does the triangle attack. I was so disappointed Subaki didn’t do it in Fate.
3 Likes