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relic72

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    Fates: Birthright

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  1. This would probably work, but I do think lionel has a really interesting niche in part 1, since he's an unpromoted non-legendary weapon wielding unit that somehow manages to eke out a niche in the game dominated by 6 mov units that ORKO every enemy by being able to bait enemies away from your sages, so removing provoke might have adverse effects in part 1. Not sure if you could remove it after part 1 but it's something to consider.
  2. Pandan already said some things I wanted to say, but I wanted to go more into specifics. This is good stuff! Toning down enemy critrates sounds good, but really what should be done is they should be outright removed before you have the hoplon guard. Redesigning ch4x is also good, the idea is solid but I think the execution leaves a lot to be desired and with removed fog and the like I think it could turn out way better. I don't think I contested this? I don't agree with this decision but it seemed like a non-negotiable to me so I avoided criticising it. The only thing I said is that because the brave sword can break it is worse, which I stand by. The legendary weapons are so strong I never felt any sort of will to use anything but them on the units that wielded them. And I was only using these units pretty much because anything else was dead weight (aside Lionel, he's cool.) Again, not saying you have to remove this, but it's something I noticed in my experience. Right, so onto the main portion. On status staves, pandan is 100% correct. Restore is the only way to counter them and if you don't have it then you get to be slept and wait around for it to wear off. I pretty much agree with this point entirely. I agree with this as well. I genuinely thought the lack of chest keys was an oversight, and again obscuring info from the player is really not good when you're trying to make this choice. I'd be more okay with it maybe if the game told you what's in each chest and you got to pick, and the items are not of disproportionate value (ie restore staff right before a chapter with sleep). And just like dan said, there are better ways to have an individualized experience. One thing fire emblem already has built-in are randomized growth rates, which already help. Another thing you've already done is include a lot of units (78 units is very impressive, and I'm in full support of that!). This means the player can pick and choose their team from a huge roster of characters, which is not making one but several choices. Now these are more broad, game-wide ways to individualize an experience, right? On a map-by-map basis, what would there be? In my opinion, as opposed to mutually exclusive chests, giving the player a variety of ways to tackle a map is the best way to do this. Give them multiple solutions to the problems you present, provide different paths throughout the map, so that they can choose how they want to tackle it, and because people have different playstyles and the different teams that I mentioned before, they'll naturally get a more variable and personalized experience in a more holistic way rather than the game forcing you to open only one chest on a map with two. When I'm playing a Fire Emblem game and I'm naturally making choices, it's something I pick up on and enjoy, and integrates naturally into the game. If the game is unclear about the fact that it expects me to make a choice between chests in every chapter with them, it feels very strange. Like pandan said, making these very clear choices would be a good start, I guess a good example may be the fates shura/boots choice, which is explicitly presented as a choice in which you have 2 mutually exclusive options This is very vague but I like the idea of this if well executed. I really can't speak on this much since I've only played 9 chapters, but secret events can be neat if hinted towards and branching pathways are cool, like fe6's western isles split. Thought I'd give my feedback on chapters 7 and 8 while I'm here. Ch7: - Why does it feel like all of my units are really pathetic? I have to gang up with 3 of them to kill a single enemy, and a lot of them get doubled in return. I also have no 2 range here so it feels worse. The lance cavalier gets weighed down by irons, also, which feels like an oversight. If it's not, I suggest you buff her con anyways, since getting weighed down by irons isn't fun at all and adds nothing. - This has the same problem as ch1 where the enemy weapon types were chosen with little regard for what the player has access to. Lionel is REALLY good and has WT control, which means he can handle every enemy fine, but I wanted to try to feed my other units, which were 3 swordies and once lance user. I know Shay can uses axes and you could trade lionel's over, but I want to have axes on lionel lol. Starting him with both a sword and axe would be good. Despite this weapon distribution on player side, the map has a lot of lance users. - Related to lionel, he's a horrible jagen as he has provoke, which means there's no way to feed kills to my units. If lionel is in range they will go for him and get one-rounded, so either my options are turtle with the other 4 units (not fun) or solo with lionel (kinda fun but I want to train my other guys). - Even though he's a bad jagen I love lionel a lot, fed him every booster and promoted him at the end of part 1 since he's the only unit there without a legendary worth a damn (maybe elias too), and it feels good to have that pay off by getting this monster unit that can solo everything. - It's not made clear that escape is seize with lord, you want to put some system text clarifying this. - The cavs on the bottom stop attacking the general after a single turn. Not sure if this is intentional or oversight. Ch8: - This map is way too large, and way too sparse with enemies, resulting in there being very little action. You can shrink it down and add more enemies for sure. - Does rapier still have effectiveness? I presume it does but I can't be too sure, so having an indicator would be helpful. - Enemies still have crit on my units - The trigger range for the door opening and boss charging is not clear to me and I felt like it was unfair. I handled it easily, cause, you know, lionel, but I could easily see someone else getting caught off guard by that. It also is weird that it happens so that they're blocking your way to the upper right house, which means you might not be able to get it through no fault of your own, but because the game basically spawned the boss in front of you in your way. I got it fine, but not sure about other players. Ch9: (I didn't actually beat this map, but this is what I have from what I have played of it) - Cool concept, I know it's not new because fe4, but it's nice to see a version of it in gba - Make the new units join in preparations, doesn't feel like there's a story reason for them to join on the map and it lets you manage their inventories and stuff - This is actually a problem with previous chapters too, but some talk conversations can only be initiated one-way. I get why this is but it's not conducive to gameplay at all, and I know of another fe4 inspired hack that benefitted a lot from switching to 2-way talks. Not sure if this is an oversight or intentional, though. Also one of these talks can be done two-way, but you can repeat it, which I think means there's a completion flag that's not being set off. - Make it clear that I need to seize the left castle with system text or the like. It's totally possible I missed the characters talking about it, so it might be my bad, but an extra reminder for this stuff doesn't hurt. Hope this helps and look forward to see your hack on fire emblem universe!
  3. feu thread: https://feuniverse.us/t/fe8-complete-iron-emblem-v1-0-full-length/12539 Iron emblem is a hack designed with the only playstyle bieng ironman (never resetting to restart a chapter, and the run being completely over when you have a game over). Every single unit is a generic, complete with covered eyes and identical mugs, and even no real names! They are all just as strong as the enemies, and nothing more, so using them may be a bit more difficult than the usual FE unit fare. The gameplay and setup of the hack were very inspired by my experiences with fe1/11. The challenge, then, is making your way through all 21 chapters successfully while getting invested in this group of nobodies trying to make their way through a cruel and harsh world of bloodshed and war. I hope you enjoy! Story: The story is a simple tale of a small group of soldiers from the southern country of Boreal winning minor victories in their war with Austral, and the events that transpire on their quest to help the war effort. Along the way, they grow in numbers, strength, and acclaim, eventually performing one last act of heroism. Features: Units send their items to the convoy upon death 50 total units obtainable throughout the game 20 chapters and 1 gaiden to play All the usual Quality of Life improvements (Health Bars, DangerRadius, Growths Display, etc.) A couple new classes Please note before downloading that this game has a special function where if you reset a map after losing/in the middle of playing, the game will automatically gameover next time you try to restart it. This is to encourage the player to play in an ironman way. There are also 2 versions, one with custom menus by WarPath, and one with vanilla FE8 menus. Please pick whichever version you think may suit you better. TO CLARIFY: YOU CAN SUSPEND AND RESUME, OR RESTART CHAPTER IF YOUR LAST SAVE WAS IN PREPARATIONS. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BEAT THE GAME IN ONE SITTING OR USE SAVESTATES. Download: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lf45d1xrqvu4ith/AABoRiYpH3lFzGmkvoet-Gk1a?dl=0 Screenshots Please check the guide!
  4. Normal This is cool and fine, however... This is kinda bullshit. He's not just "incredibly difficult", he ONE HIT/ROUND KO'D EVERY SINGLE UNIT I HAD, ON NORMAL MODE. Again, I don't want to come off as mean, but this really tells me that you're not considering any other experience but your own. Just because he is hard does not mean he needs to instantly kill every unit I have with no option for winning besides resorting to savestating. Again, this was normal mode, not hard mode. And I tried to not use savestates, I really did, but when my best, most overpowered units are getting one hit and have 50 hitrates to do half damage in return, I don't have a choice. I'm not going to sacrifice them all onto him just for a chance he dies, and if everyone dies? Guess I gotta restart the map from the start. How am I supposed to know Ch6 is easily soloed by Sinclair, or how to go about it? And again, I had to savestate to beat ch6 boss (I did try through chapter 8, but I don't have much additionally to say besides what I've already written). You get Solum on TURN 2, WHICH IS AFTER YOU START. This means a blind player has no idea this happens at all until the map has already started and is going. The map has chests on both sides, which is telling the player, hey, you need to split here. I'm going to take a break here to go more in depth with something I think is important for this project. Again, looking through the thread, it's clear you haven't gotten much feedback, which is unfortunate, considering the time and effort you've put in and the clear potential the project has! But this isn't a justification for tuning out players. I'm glad you find my feedback useful, but it's really important to not instinctively jump to handwaving complaints in general because you don't see a problem with it. As a fellow developer, I get what that can be like, since your knowledge makes it so that you might not be able to understand what other people are experiencing. However, it's important to notice that an intimate knowledge of the game essentially gives you a huge blind spot in problems you can actually see. This isn't to say your opinion doesn't matter, but that if you want the game to be enjoyable to others (and it's fine if you don't!), their considerations might be more important than your own as people who don't know the optimal strategy or how the game does certain things. I actually did watch your LP up until 4x, where I saw you avoid the top path because "you might get ambushed". This makes sense to you, but again, you are the one who placed the enemies there. You designed the map. I don't know there are 5 enemies waiting to kill me and not even a chest key for my troubles. So back to discussion of chapter 6, the boss is similar to ch5. He's similarly very powerful (he didn't OHKO exactly one of my units, the fighter, because I fed every single booster to him, and he survived on ~4 HP?, and had hitrates in the 40s.) I actually did not have to savestate abuse to beat him, but this was because I got incredibly lucky, with 3 shaky hitrates hitting and him missing 2 times. Alright, so. This is the part that really ties into what I was saying before. How do I know if the chests are worth the trouble? As the blind player, I do not know what is in them, unlike you, and this is frustrating. I understand that this is a theme, but there are better ways to implement it in the game. Probably the most egregious instance of this is the "choice" between the chapter 5 chests. One of them has a brave sword, which sounds good, but isn't great when you realise that it's weaker than legendary weapons and can break. The second, is a restore staff. Now, in the next chapter, which has 2 status staves, the choice is obvious, no? Obviously you would risk not having a brave sword for the restore staff. Nothing wrong here. But wait. I don't know which chest has the restore staff, or even that there is a restore staff, or status staves next chapter. I would have to be looking in builder to know this sort of thing. So instantly, what seemed like a cool "risk" or "choice" immediately becomes irrelevant because the game is obscuring information to the player in an unfair way. And it's not a positive risk, where you try something neat and get rewarded or punished, it's a risk that makes you feel bad and makes players dislike the game for showing them 2 chests but not giving them the tools to open both. There are better ways to force risks, like anti turtling incentives that make you try to rush to get something before it's gone, encouraging risky play. In this way, the player is encouraged to try out a risky strategy of their own free will. Now, I assume the low % crit chances factor into the risk themes, right? However, this isn't a game where characters come back. They die, permanently. If on chapter 2 I can face a crit chance on the boss with the literal only unit who has a *chance* of defeating him. This means, if I am unlucky, I just have to start from the beginning. The game doesn't respect my time. Risk in Fire Emblem is really cool, but there is almost always some way to mitigate it. Low % crits are just bad, especially with no hoplon guard, because it means you can play normally and the game will just flip you the middle finger if it chooses to. You can plan somewhat around misses, or low % enemy hits. But 1% or 2% crits? they're so strong and so uncommon that you can't really plan around them and ultimately just get screwed over through NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN. This also relates to chest keys, since the game is not making you take a risk, it's making you choose blindly in the dark when you have no knowledge about anything. In FE, generally, a skilled player will be able to obtain everything in one run. However, here, it means both skilled and non skilled players are both screwed over. Choosing between 2 chests where I have no knowledge isn't a risk, it's a boring choice. Risks are exciting and interesting, but picking randomly, looking in builder for the right choice, loading a savestate and picking the correct item is uninteresting and dull. To cap this section off, I'd like to say that a "main theme" isn't an excuse to not respect the player's time. If you have a theme that you want to implement through gameplay, you don't sacrifice the fun of the game for it, you try to integrate it into the game's fun aspects. I didn't pick up on the theme of risk, it just felt like the game was being really unfair towards me, which again, you can create a feeling of being unfair without being overtly unfair in a way that explicitly harms the player experience. This is more of a miscellaneous complaint, but like, there's seriously not a single mounted unit for all of part 1? I saw dismounted peg knight and paladin and assumed you'd get to play an outdoor map with them at some point, but the game just doesn't give it to you. What's up with that? Not a big deal, since I can just bench the peg and the paladin is great even dismounted, but it feels a bit misleading. Looking forward to it and glad I could be of help. I realise that this post in particular seems really brutal, but I don't want to lie about my experiences with the hack, and not calling out these sorts of issues wouldn't result in any improvement. Again, I really don't mean to discourage you, and I'm not trying to say I dislike you as a person, since you seem like a pretty cool dude. But it's important to correct egregious mistakes so they don't become constant complaints, and I know that I'd need something like this to push me to change what's bad about my own hack. Let me know if you're curious about any specifics and I'd be more than happy to answer your questions. EDIT: Again I'd like to recommend posting your hack on fe universe. The people there are a lot less kind with their feedback, but getting more in general would be great for improving this project, and you'd find more people who enjoy it and let you know, which can be a great motivator. In general, the fe universe community is great about helping out new hackers, and a fully complete project will attract a lot of attention there. SerenesForest as a platform for releasing and talking about hacks is far less active than fire emblem universe, which I think has resulted in your project not getting the sort of traction it deserves.
  5. Alright, I've played through till chapter 5, and I'm going to put the hack down for the time being. Will be giving chapter-by-chapter gameplay feedback. If you want more specifics or detailed explanations of specific points, please, ask and I'll be happy to answer! Ch1: Probably the best chapter overall, I'd say. Even so, there's a lot of minor issues that I think can be easily corrected. - You're constantly facing WTD with no way to mitigate it, the monk has WTD on mages and the sword units have WTD on every lance unit. Change the lance units to sword or axe units. - There are only 3 units, making the chapter relatively uninteresting. This is since I'm really limited in what options I have each turn, and 3 units means things feel very repetitive. - the map is way too big, meaning you're spending most turns just walking around and doing nothing Ch2: - Again, this map is wayyyyy too big - The purge sage spawning so you have to be in his range is mean - enemies spawning in the middle of the player turn is mean - The pacing is all over the place, I have to beat the initial enemies, then go all the way left and take out the reinforcements just so I can actually unlock the door, then go back right and kill the reinforcements, then go up, and the map is mostly empty space. You'll notice that this complaint comes up a lot, that the maps are a lot of empty space. Most turns I'm not even doing much combat. - I'm going to bring up the enemy having crit again, and again, and again, because it really sucks. The boss can possibly one hit KO the only unit that can beat him, which means you can just die and get softlocked cause of a 2% chance or something. Again, even generic enemies have way too much crit, which means your units can just be gone through no fault of your own. - Opening 4 chests with 1 key takes a long time, I don't think you need 4 chests, but this is a really minor complaint - The enemy formations are really odd, and they feel more like they were put there to be aesthetically pleasing squares rather than to serve the map. Spread your enemies out a bit. - There's too much 1-2 range when I don't have any counterplay cause everyone who can counter at 2 range dies in 2 hits, and if I bait using anyone but the general (who is extremely slow thanks to 5 mov), then they take a lot of damage and it feels really bad. This is a recurring issue across the hack as well. - Why do I have to bench units in chapter 2 Ch3: - Why do I have to bench units in chapter 3 - I like that I get preps so early. The weapons in there are insane, though. I didn't make much use of it since I was going through the hack very fast, but I can see someone buying a handaxe or two for the general and just going to town (later, as he's not available here, of course). - Again, a lot of dead space. Turn-by-turn, I was doing almost nothing for 8 turns, and then had to do a lot of combat on turns 9 and 10, which meant the pacing was super weird and on the last turn I only lived from misses because there is just too much 1-2 range. Shrink the map down, for sure. - The boss has crit on the sage, so you can just die trying to get the master seal. I didn't bother, but if someone had, this would feel horrible. - Generally the issues here are repeats from previous chapters so I don't have much to say. Ch4: - Why do I have to bench units in chapter 4 - Why are there so many longbow archers? They aren't really fun to play around, so I'm forced to just slowly turtle my way around their ranges. - the chapter's pacing is super off, since I can kill all the throne room enemies wayyy before I get there, and the enemies again are really oddly spread, with most of the map being super empty with small clumps of enemies near the bottom right - Not much else to say again since a lot of the issues are repeated. Feels like the map having only really 1 objective and you being able to go in a straight line makes it less interesting. Ch4x: - By far the worst chapter in the game, fog + extremely low deploy is a bad combo. - On that note, I get why storywise, but you need to let me deploy at least 4 units. 2 is far too few. - Because I have so few units, managing inventories is painful, even with convoy access. The door near the beginning doesn't need to exist. - Going back to fog, why is that here? It doesn't add anything to the map and frustrated me more than anything else. I didn't see a really strong story justification either. - There's no chest keys here which means I'd have to use my leftover one from chapter 2 to unlock only one of the chests, which feels bad since I don't know what's in them. - Apparently windcutter can't be equipped, might want to look into that. - Why are there chests if you're going to punish me for going towards them and don't even give me a chest key? - This one mostly has the same problems as 1 with regards to low unit numbers, and is very linear, since you have 2 paths but not enough units to split. - Why are there so many lance enemies, particularly at the beginning when I haven't even recruited the paladin? Ch5: - Right off the bat, this boss is the worst of any boss in the hack. I'm not ashamed to say I savestated and rigged to beat him. His offenses are way too ridiculous and your hitrates on him are unreliable, and on top of that he can crit you. This boss is ultimately what got me to stop playing. - I like the idea of lowering the water level, but it doesn't really change anything about the map. - Once again the issues with enemy formations and the map flow being odd persist. - It's very linear - There's one chest key but 2 chests?? Is this intentional, because it feels pretty bad to only be able to get one chest and not know what you're getting. Now for some general critiques: I don't know if this was your intention, but past perhaps chapter 3(?), every unit who isn't either the lord or one of the busted prepromotes becomes entirely useless to the point where I actually do want to not deploy anyone but them, which solves the deploy problem, I suppose. This also, funnily enough, results in the dancer being far less useful, since most of the maps are walking around 6 mov units and you don't have a way to rescue chain her. Some talk conversations are one-way, unsure if this is a bug or intentional. The prepromotes you get are way too good. I know I just said this, and the intent is that they are good, but often they are the only solution to the map that is palatable and basically make a lot of stuff irrelevant. The legendary weapons being infinite use is silly too, since it means you don't use anything else, and there's no opportunity cost to using these insanely overpowered weapons. That's all I can think of at the moment, again let me know if you have any questions, and I once again wanted to say that the scale is impressive. It felt like stuff was going pretty fast, but I was only at chapter 5, so I'm sure there's a lot more stuff to come. Sorry if I came off too negative here, too. I don't want to discourage you from improving the hack or keeping on hacking. EDIT: Forgot to say, you really should post this on fire emblem universe! There will be a lot more people playing your hack and giving you feedback there. I can tell you're the only one who has really played the hack extensively, so getting more diverse opinions would be a good thing.
  6. This definitely makes sense, but going into it, the player will not understand this, and talk not taking an action is a standard in most romhacks these days. The reason I noticed at all is because one of my strategies relied on the mercenary rescuing someone to protect them, and I thought I'd just get the talk that turn and rescue after that, which resulted in the unit dying. I don't think this is such a big deal that you couldn't afford to install the patch, to be honest. In addition, something I noticed was that way too many enemies have 1% or higher crit chances on your units. This means the player can randomly die through no fault of their own and there is no way to mitigate it, so I'd recommend reducing crit on enemies or giving player units more luck, as it can feel extremely unfair to most people. I luckily didn't have this happen to me but I can tell you that I'd be pretty annoyed if it had. I can see how this would make sense to you, but it made absolutely no sense to me. If you want to show their status in a way that doesn't confuse people unfamiliar with your game's world, it can probably done through their character descriptions or something like this. Either this, or you have to establish what a knight sword in their inventory means before the player sees it. It's not really an issue, to be clear, but I feel like a lot of people might feel the same way as I do in that it's very unclear why this was done. My assumption that it was a bug may have been premature but it was my immediate thought as soon as I saw it twice. Thinking about this also might help with stuff that could be unclear down the line as you've assumed a level of knowledge about your game that not many other people have (this isn't a bad thing, it can happen naturally when you don't get much feedback! I've experienced it too!), so it's good to be more aware of your blind spots.
  7. So, I've just played the first two chapters. I realise this isn't a lot, but I have some things to say. First of all, congrats on making such a large hack with so many chapters and characters all yourself! Probably my main point of feedback is that you are missing a lot of Quality of Life patches. A lot of these can be found in updated skillsystems, but some can also be found independently. Here's a list of some big ones I could think of immediately that need to be added. Select to view enemy ranges HP bars Gamespeed/Textspeed default to fast talk doesn’t take an action Next, I wanted to note some bugs. Both the monk in ch1 and the trainee in ch2 come with an extra sword in their inventory for some reason, and I'm assuming this is unintended. Another thing I noticed was that the door in ch2 that is supposed to be locking away the woman just doesn't exist, and the guard isn't holding a droppable door key either. I have some gameplay feedback, but I'd like to save that till I've played more of the hack, but I do have some immediate story feedback. The opening exposition dump about the continent and all it's countries is unnecessary. Personally, my eyes glaze over as soon as I see this stuff, and I know other people feel the same way. I'm not saying you are bad at writing, but something that is important when introducing a player to the hack is to get them into the action as fast as possible. I didn't process anything in the exposition dump, since I was having all these names thrown at me with no idea why they're important. Boil it down to what is immediately relevant (ie, this country invaded these countries, we meet our lord from country x in the year xxxx, then you get into the dialogue and then the gameplay. I'll continue playing and taking notes, and let me know if you have any questions. Again, really impressive that you put this all together in the first place.
  8. Wow, this concept seems really unique and funny! Definitely seems like something to check out if you are a bit sick of more traditional games.
  9. Big fan of this hack, really impressive how long it is and just how much content was able to be stuffed into a single rom! It's not perfect, and I do have some gameplay qualms, but man this is really something to behold! Everyone should try it out, even if it's just a little bit. 1-1 is a great opening map, at the very least.
  10. Will there be a sequel? Or only continuing to update this hack?
  11. I had no idea this hack existed! I will try it soon. Are you open to feedbacks?
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