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shinespark

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  1. v1.4 is out! Main features below: Unambiguously romantic endings for queer couples. Mainline Enbarr Edition has 19 new endings written by myself, and an alternate download features AdraCat's classic "All the Gay" endings. Many thanks to AdraCat for her support! The full list of new endings can be viewed here Monster rework. Where appropriate, monsters now pull from the pool of new skills added to Enbarr Edition
  2. v1.3 is out! Some topline changes: Branching weapon upgrades. Weapons now evolve from one rank to the next, falling into 3 distinct paths focused on Magic, Power, and Specialty function. 17 branches total, with many brand-new weapons Unique new starter weapons for the lords and Byleth. For an optional boost in early-game power, try stealing them from the other house leaders during the prologue! Budding Talent rework. Most Budding Talents now grant access to a new line of "Swap" skills, which trade one set of stats for another All student characters now have a Budding Talent Authority Personals for the rest of the cast New spells/combat arts/equipment Edelgard's unique classes are now hybrid spellcasters
  3. Thanks, I hope people dig 'em! In my own playtesting they've helped characters feel a little more distinct from each other in combat. I think it does add Hit in the vanilla game, but now that you mention it, the Authority Prowess skill line probably ought to add Hit as well! Something to look into for an eventual next version.
  4. Download Link, v1.3: https://gamebanana.com/mods/394880 Enbarr Edition is a comprehensive rebalance mod for Three Houses, focused on providing interesting tactical tools and creating unique identities for most characters, classes, spells, and weapon types. It's not a difficulty mod or an attempt to "fix" the game's balance, it simply aims to provide a new experience for players familiar with the base game. A spreadsheet of all changes is visible here, but some of the highlights follow: Characters: Classes: Weapon Triangle: Black/Dark Magic: White Magic: Battalions: Installation for Yuzu: Screenshots:
  5. Finished up the Rayman DLC for Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, it's pretty solid! Kinda short, and being locked to using Rabbid Mario and Rabbid Peach the whole time is a drag, but Rayman's moveset is neat and the new clone Spark functionally giving you a fourth party member feels great. Loved that par times made a return in the battles, and adding some simple platforming into the overworld segments really livened up those bits, as well. Also, coming back to Rabbids after dozens of hours of Baldur's Gate 3 really drives home how excellent the controls are in the former. Pretty much every gridless tactics game should be copying the basics of how Rabbids moves.
  6. Played through the new DLC for Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. It doesn't do much to change up the formula from the base campaign, and the new planet isn't quite so pretty as some of the other ones, but the core combat is still great and a couple new stage gimmicks and enemies add some much-needed variety. Notably the cannons that shoot you across the overworld have been incorporated into the levels themselves, and the movement options they afford are a really natural fit with the rest of the mechanics. Also, I never used Mario in the campaign since the original game required you to use him for every single fight, but I tried him out here just to keep things fresh, and it turns out he's utterly godlike. His ability to trigger overwatch shots on his own turn, combined with his ability to earn extra overwatch shots every time he gets a kill, means he can easily attack like 5+ times a turn with a little planning, turning all foes beneath his gaze into dust.
  7. Played through twice on Maddening, I think it's pretty good. It's held back by empty character writing, lackluster character art, boring character/class abilities, rote dominant strategies, nonexistent worldbuilding, and a story that spends quite a lot of time saying nothing. All that said, it's still got solid FE tactical play at its core, there's a dozen or so great maps, and the Emblems are fun to mess around with. It's a competent, safe iteration on the narrative and design ethos of the 3DS games, and that's fine. But I hope it doesn't mean the series has abandoned the messy ambition of Three Houses.
  8. Played through Vernal Edge, a metroidvania with smaller levels you can tackle in any order, like Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. While the exploration and combat elements aren't particular standouts, the platforming and movement are consistently excellent throughout. Almost like tossing Cappy in Mario Odyssey, tons of your moves chain together to allow you to access areas that initially seem far out of reach, and treasure is always well-placed to reward players who experiment with their many options. Constantly asking myself "hey can I go up there?" and finding that yes, you totally can, was a real joy. I also really appreciated the game's efforts to make its movement/speed tech feel approachable for non-speedrunners like myself. Unlike backwards long jumps or mockballs or obscure out of bounds glitches, the core concept behind the tech is super easy to understand and execute: you just divekick straight down into any slope to get zooming. And once you pick up the basics, you start noticing how the level design is constantly offering up little opportunities for you to gain speed and chart a more elegant line through each screen. It's entirely optional, but the low stakes and fantastically zippy payoff do a great job of encouraging constant experimentation, and even when you're not powersliding it's still super fun just to imagine the other paths you could've taken through the levels. And then later on you learn to activate the same boost by wavedashing into flat terrain, expanding the possibilities even further! Basic fights start to drag a bit in the back half, but the game smartly wraps up before it overstays its welcome and is bolstered by a string of great boss fights that carry it through to the end. All in all, it's an impressive debut for the developer, Hello Penguin Team, and I'm excited to see whatever they cook up next! Screenshots:
  9. Rolled credits on Octopath Traveler 2 finally, and I'm left feeling that it's sort of a modern take on Trials of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 3. Which is to say that it's a very pretty, compulsively playable game with a broadly charming cast of characters and almost zero narrative or combat depth. A couple of the more lighthearted stories are simple fun, but all 8 are let down by their mustache twirling villains and the near-total lack of interaction between your party members. The combat runs out of ideas after you've recruited all the characters early on, with even less decision making in its class system than Seiken 3, and can be sailed through all the way to the end by spamming the same couple moves over and over. The open world has perilously few secrets to find, both in the barebones dungeons and the narrow hub-and-spoke overworld, and actively punishes exploration by further flattening the already gentle difficulty curve. The 2 dozen or so towns you discover are impressively varied and lovely to look at, but for me the ability to shake down every villager for resources reduced them to giant compulsive loot boxes. It's never unpleasant, there's always a clear goal in front of you, and you're always picking up more stuff. But there's not much to it beyond the comfy progression fantasy.
  10. Well spotted, yep! Metroid's probably my other top favorite Nintendo series.
  11. Hello, I'm shinespark! Not quite sure why I've never made an account here until now, been reading threads and relying on info from the site for years and years. Like a lot of folks, I got into the series with the original release of FE7 and have been a fan ever since. More than any other series, FE is a gaming constant for me and has helped me weather times of stress and strife. Right now I'm mostly focused on a rebalance mod that I'm making for Three Houses, but I love both the vibrant fanart community and the nitty gritty mechanical side of things, and I've just about always got one FE replay or another on the back burner.
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