Fire Emblem: Requiem - V1.4 is up

[Willie]

hey guys... are there new sprites like in the last promise? and how about a tier list cause the growth chart confuses me...

Yes, there are new sprites, as well as maps, characters, ect.

The overview could show you who's good and not? Otherwise, I don't know.

[felixng2015]

Thanks so much for the overview section! It's very insightful. For some reason I thought Layla would turn out better than Alicia just by looking at the growths chart.

I really tried hard to level her then I noticed that Alicia was better than her in any way and an absolute beast so I replaced her. I prefer Alicia over Ashe too actually. Her magics + Nosferatu=ultra powerful. I was obliterating Shel 1v1 on Normal(Could double for 26 dmg each against him). Have not tried with the new patch yet where he and others been buffed.

Looking at your overviews. My impression that Keiran was quite good but the fact that he can only use one weapon hurts him. I hated Linda but I generally prefer mounted archers due to greater mobility and they also tend to have higher stats so Skye was the obvious option for me by a good margin though I heard Linda was buffed or the Sniper class was?

Generally agree with everything else you said so far.

Edited August 2, 2015 by felixng2015

[Wayward Winds]

I think it's the Sniper's innate crit. boost. I dropped Linda for a couple of chapters due to low deployment counts; she was good but not outstanding. Shortly after I brought her back, I promoted her and she promptly started murdering everything I pointed her at, flier or not, killer bow/death arc or not. She's actually more reliable at killing than my Lords, Laraya and Emilia now (balanced by typical Archer counterattack problems).

It's also telling that I'm having serious problems with Danielle in Ch. 23 right now. She's a sniper, and she seems almost guaranteed to critical and instant kill someone every. SINGLE. TURN. I suspect she's parked on a killer ballista as well, but ouch. This is the first time I've had to stall by leaving some one in her range with the resident crit. cancelling item equipped and wait for her to run out of shots.

My general opinion of Linda vs. Skye is; when they first turn up on the team together, Linda's likely to have better stats due to her time in Val's army, Skye has mobility and possibly better growth rates. If you do use both of them, upon promotion Linda is best for pure (to the excessive extreme) stopping power, while Skye has better versatility given he can equip swords.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Wayward Winds

[Sacred Blaze]

hey guys... are there new sprites like in the last promise? and how about a tier list cause the growth chart confuses me...

Yeah there are, although the quality is probably a bit lower.

Is there something in particular that's confusing that I might be able to clear up?

I really tried hard to level her then I noticed that Alicia was better than her in any way and an absolute beast so I replaced her. I prefer Alicia over Ashe too actually. Her magics + Nosferatu=ultra powerful. I was obliterating Shel 1v1 on Normal(Could double for 26 dmg each against him). Have not tried with the new patch yet where he and others been buffed.

Looking at your overviews. My impression that Keiran was quite good but the fact that he can only use one weapon hurts him. I hated Linda but I generally prefer mounted archers due to greater mobility and they also tend to have higher stats so Skye was the obvious option for me by a good margin though I heard Linda was buffed or the Sniper class was?

Generally agree with everything else you said so far.

Yeah, Layla's best use really is just that she is another mage on the team, considering that there are so few. She might be more useful on a harder difficulty where getting damage matters a little bit more, but then of course she'll be harder to train at the same time.

Skye is definitely a better option for a consistently good character, I'll say. I once had a Linda with 11 Strength as a 20/1 Sniper which is just all kinds of awful especially when her speed wasn't high enough to really balance that out.

And yep, critical hit boost was added and her growths and bases changed very, very slightly.

I think it's the Sniper's innate crit. boost. I dropped Linda for a couple of chapters due to low deployment counts; she was good but not outstanding. Shortly after I brought her back, I promoted her and she promptly started murdering everything I pointed her at, flier or not, killer bow/death arc or not. She's actually more reliable at killing than my Lords, Laraya and Emilia now (balanced by typical Archer counterattack problems).

It's also telling that I'm having serious problems with Danielle in Ch. 23 right now. She's a sniper, and she seems almost guaranteed to critical and instant kill someone every. SINGLE. TURN. I suspect she's parked on a killer ballista as well, but ouch. This is the first time I've had to stall by leaving some one in her range with the resident crit. cancelling item equipped and wait for her to run out of shots.

My general opinion of Linda vs. Skye is; when they first turn up on the team together, Linda's likely to have better stats due to her time in Val's army, Skye has mobility and possibly better growth rates. If you do use both of them, upon promotion Linda is best for pure (to the excessive extreme) stopping power, while Skye has better versatility given he can equip swords.

It's actually just the long range ballista and I don't think that has any critical bonus on it, (not sure though) so that seems really unlucky on your end.

And yep, the way you see it is basically the way I see it. I think it's more just that his bases are higher rather than his growths being better though.

Directly comparing them:

Linda

HP: 55

STR : 45

SKL: 60

SPD: 65

LUK: 40

DEF: 25

RES: 30

Skye

HP: 80

STR: 50

SKL: 55

SPD: 55

LUK: 35

DEF: 30

RES: 20

So he really only wins here growth-wise in terms of HP and to a much lesser extent STR and DEF.

Also, and this question goes out to anybody really.

On chapter 23, who does Danielle (the sniper on the ballista) tend to attack for you? I've only really seen her go for other units when they're particularly weak, but otherwise she tends to just fruitlessly attack Almer all the time.

[Wayward Winds]

It's hard to tell. My team is fairly heavily biased towards squishy speedsters (all falco knights, Katarina, Alicia, Ash, Clare, Laraya), with a few tougher folk, with only Val, Kane and Emilia being fairly tanky. But because I keep getting critted by her, even they usually fall in one hit.

The priority target tends to be Kane; she doesn't bother with Laraya, and I suspect Val and Emilia are not all that attractive targets because of their defense/dodginess. I'm not foolish enough to leave fliers or mages in her range; the one time I forgot, she dropped a critical on Katarina. Instead of Gemma...

("Fruitless" attacks on Almer? Not when it's always a critical!)

[Mekkah]

Hey there! I finished playing Requiem today. Really, really big kudos for putting out a finished hack for the community to enjoy, and one with so many chapters and characters. Just the sheer effort that must've been required to create this much content is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing it.

I'll be writing my thoughts on it below. I know it's not like you're going to be able to do much with them, considering you've said in the OP that you've moved on to other things. But if you were ever to make something like this again, this might be worth learning from? I don't know.

The story: While my attention span was a little too short to follow along with every single detail, it's obvious that you've put a lot of thought and work into this. You didn't just create a story but an entire world, with a history and a future. And it's a world with actual characters living in them, fleshed out through supports (holy shit you completed supports) and talk conversations. You went through the trouble of not just making the lords talk between and during maps, but several other people like Rayden, Josie, Emilia, etc. You made a lot of connections between characters like family relationships, giving them different motives for joining your army. And you gave a lot of screentime to various important villains too, giving them actual time on maps, battle convos with important characters, etc. Also gotta compliment your use of Hector Mode to basically give a proper overview of the whole chronicle and making supports more accessible. Every character even has their own ending, there's some paired endings, some of them talk to Val in Epilogue, and so on...it's all so rich.

The sprites: Lots of hacks re-use or re-splice existing characters and try to pass them off as new characters, which tends to bug me. You (and the people in the credits) have created a truckload of new characters with new visuals, and I can hardly recognize existing characters in them. They are colorful and pleasing to the eye.

Weapon/item names: This is a minor thing but I noticed you kept most old weapons but gave them all new names. I'm not sure why you felt like doing this: it seems like a lot of work and it didn't do much for me. I kept doing a double take cause I thought I was about to face a Killing Edge or some other kind of special weapon only for it to be like a Steel Sword called a Trained Edge.

Now I've gone over pretty much everything but the actual gameplay, and this is something that I haven't seen mention anyone in this thread yet.

The maps: You've made a ton of maps and again, it's obvious you put effort into it. There's castles and outside maps, variance in objectives as you'd expect from FE. I like that you added escape and added a time limit to the final chapter. Most of them are enormous, and I think this is actually the thing that stood out to me as something unenjoyable. Almost every map has the scale of FE7's Cog of Destiny and then some, making them take a really long time. A lot of them also have the rout objective or might as well have, since every enemy is pretty much on the way to the throne/boss. I might be a little indoctrinated by Markyjoe here but I think less is more when it comes to size. I counted the map where you fight Bran and I think I came to something like a 30x20 or even 30x30. I find these kind of maps rather draining and they made me want to take a break from the game when I finished one and the game threw another one at me right after. I think the right way to go about this is to have mostly small to medium sized maps and have the complexity and enemy quality make the player think more, kind of like FE12 did a lot, while keeping some big maps in reserve for mostly lategame for "epic final battles". But if all of the maps are as big as a final battle, they feel ordinary.

This was my main gripe with the game, and it's actually my only major one. I'm not writing this to try and get you down because I think this hack is amazing overall, but I wanted to have mentioned it.

Character balance: I have only used maybe 15 characters throughout the game but I had a look at the growths and bases and I think you did a great job. You gave (I think) everyone the same growth total and showed that you understood how important Pow and Spd were to characters, as pretty much everyone has a reasonable growth in both of these areas, just like in The Last Promise. This makes everyone usable to an extent and gives the game a lot of replay value. You didn't do anything crazy with changing class properties from the original other than one small change that I really liked: changing the default weapon level of the secondary weapon gained upon promotion to base D instead of E. Made that weapon actually useful. Personally I got a lot of use out of the Longbow with Marco with his huge str.

Overall I really appreciate you making this and I wish you good luck in uni and all that stuff!

[Sacred Blaze]

It's hard to tell. My team is fairly heavily biased towards squishy speedsters (all falco knights, Katarina, Alicia, Ash, Clare, Laraya), with a few tougher folk, with only Val, Kane and Emilia being fairly tanky. But because I keep getting critted by her, even they usually fall in one hit.

The priority target tends to be Kane; she doesn't bother with Laraya, and I suspect Val and Emilia are not all that attractive targets because of their defense/dodginess. I'm not foolish enough to leave fliers or mages in her range; the one time I forgot, she dropped a critical on Katarina. Instead of Gemma...

("Fruitless" attacks on Almer? Not when it's always a critical!)

Ouch man, that sounds rough. I swear she's only gotten a lucky crit on my characters like twice.

Hey there! I finished playing Requiem today. Really, really big kudos for putting out a finished hack for the community to enjoy, and one with so many chapters and characters. Just the sheer effort that must've been required to create this much content is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing it.

I'll be writing my thoughts on it below. I know it's not like you're going to be able to do much with them, considering you've said in the OP that you've moved on to other things. But if you were ever to make something like this again, this might be worth learning from? I don't know.

The story: While my attention span was a little too short to follow along with every single detail, it's obvious that you've put a lot of thought and work into this. You didn't just create a story but an entire world, with a history and a future. And it's a world with actual characters living in them, fleshed out through supports (holy shit you completed supports) and talk conversations. You went through the trouble of not just making the lords talk between and during maps, but several other people like Rayden, Josie, Emilia, etc. You made a lot of connections between characters like family relationships, giving them different motives for joining your army. And you gave a lot of screentime to various important villains too, giving them actual time on maps, battle convos with important characters, etc. Also gotta compliment your use of Hector Mode to basically give a proper overview of the whole chronicle and making supports more accessible. Every character even has their own ending, there's some paired endings, some of them talk to Val in Epilogue, and so on...it's all so rich.

The sprites: Lots of hacks re-use or re-splice existing characters and try to pass them off as new characters, which tends to bug me. You (and the people in the credits) have created a truckload of new characters with new visuals, and I can hardly recognize existing characters in them. They are colorful and pleasing to the eye.

Weapon/item names: This is a minor thing but I noticed you kept most old weapons but gave them all new names. I'm not sure why you felt like doing this: it seems like a lot of work and it didn't do much for me. I kept doing a double take cause I thought I was about to face a Killing Edge or some other kind of special weapon only for it to be like a Steel Sword called a Trained Edge.

Now I've gone over pretty much everything but the actual gameplay, and this is something that I haven't seen mention anyone in this thread yet.

The maps: You've made a ton of maps and again, it's obvious you put effort into it. There's castles and outside maps, variance in objectives as you'd expect from FE. I like that you added escape and added a time limit to the final chapter. Most of them are enormous, and I think this is actually the thing that stood out to me as something unenjoyable. Almost every map has the scale of FE7's Cog of Destiny and then some, making them take a really long time. A lot of them also have the rout objective or might as well have, since every enemy is pretty much on the way to the throne/boss. I might be a little indoctrinated by Markyjoe here but I think less is more when it comes to size. I counted the map where you fight Bran and I think I came to something like a 30x20 or even 30x30. I find these kind of maps rather draining and they made me want to take a break from the game when I finished one and the game threw another one at me right after. I think the right way to go about this is to have mostly small to medium sized maps and have the complexity and enemy quality make the player think more, kind of like FE12 did a lot, while keeping some big maps in reserve for mostly lategame for "epic final battles". But if all of the maps are as big as a final battle, they feel ordinary.

This was my main gripe with the game, and it's actually my only major one. I'm not writing this to try and get you down because I think this hack is amazing overall, but I wanted to have mentioned it.

Character balance: I have only used maybe 15 characters throughout the game but I had a look at the growths and bases and I think you did a great job. You gave (I think) everyone the same growth total and showed that you understood how important Pow and Spd were to characters, as pretty much everyone has a reasonable growth in both of these areas, just like in The Last Promise. This makes everyone usable to an extent and gives the game a lot of replay value. You didn't do anything crazy with changing class properties from the original other than one small change that I really liked: changing the default weapon level of the secondary weapon gained upon promotion to base D instead of E. Made that weapon actually useful. Personally I got a lot of use out of the Longbow with Marco with his huge str.

Overall I really appreciate you making this and I wish you good luck in uni and all that stuff!

Thank you. I appreciate the detailed feedback. Although I'm not really working on hacks at the moment, I'm still interested in the idea, so it is helpful to get advice on what I can do better.

And I do see what you mean and agree on the map stuff. You won't hear me say that I think my maps are amazing or putting out my own creations for open-source or something. Some might be boring, but I'm glad that they're not terrible or anything like that.

A couple of the maps were a lot bigger when I started remaking this, so I did tone them down a little bit, (Chapters 15, 16 and 18 were much bigger than they are now for no good reason) but I do know that there are some maps which are still on the larger side, even now. I myself am not particularly fond of the chapter where you fight Bran, but I had like four different versions of it and I after a while just had to go with one of them or be stuck forever trying to make a really good map.

Making maps is definitely something that I want to improve on, because I do have trouble with them, especially when I start off thinking to myself, "I want this map to be complex", because it usually just ends up being a big map without all that much to do on it.

And no, I don't really know why I changed the all weapon names to be honest, lol. I figure I did have plans to do some stuff with the stats but then just changed my mind. Now they're kind of pointless, but changing them back would just be more time wasted.

[Mekkah]

I'm glad what I'm posting is of use to you!

Spoilers for those who haven't finished.

Some other things I forgot: I noticed that you often have enemies stand still until anyone comes into their movement range. This adds to the "long dull map" factor since it means the player isn't being rushed to do anything. I was glad to see that you sometimes included reinforcements or even the time limit, though this was of varying effectiveness. Sometimes the attempted pincer attack through reinforcements worked (final chapter one had potential and the ones in the snow fortress chapter seemed alright, and the chapter where Shel chases you is really good), but sometimes they were simply too easy to ignore or circumvent (Steel Sword Merc reinforcements in a small space with a 1-tile wide chokepoint come to mind).

Sometimes the initially stationary enemies were in very clever formations where you had 2-3 of them completely overlap in range, forcing bait characters to take on a hit from all or most of them in order to draw them out. It's something that FE12 does a lot and it works better than the alternative, where you can bait enemies out one by one and completely trivialize them. Which was an option in Requiem quite a lot, too. Most notably in the semi-final chapter, where the Paladin reinforcements had more range than the boss. The exact same problem occurred in the final chapter reinforcement, where you could bait out one Paladin without having to be attacked by the boss that same turn.

Also I haven't counted but I think this game had at least five overpowered bosses that left the battle midway through the chapter. I guess it was kind of a theme in this game and a way to give them screentime but it felt a bit overused.

On a story note, I didn't really understand what was up with the semifinal chapter bosses being in the ending. They were actually good guys working for Legato?

[Lord of Gabriel Knight]

Yeah they were being magically controlled.

[Sacred Blaze]

I'm glad what I'm posting is of use to you!

Spoilers for those who haven't finished.

Some other things I forgot: I noticed that you often have enemies stand still until anyone comes into their movement range. This adds to the "long dull map" factor since it means the player isn't being rushed to do anything. I was glad to see that you sometimes included reinforcements or even the time limit, though this was of varying effectiveness. Sometimes the attempted pincer attack through reinforcements worked (final chapter one had potential and the ones in the snow fortress chapter seemed alright, and the chapter where Shel chases you is really good), but sometimes they were simply too easy to ignore or circumvent (Steel Sword Merc reinforcements in a small space with a 1-tile wide chokepoint come to mind).

Sometimes the initially stationary enemies were in very clever formations where you had 2-3 of them completely overlap in range, forcing bait characters to take on a hit from all or most of them in order to draw them out. It's something that FE12 does a lot and it works better than the alternative, where you can bait enemies out one by one and completely trivialize them. Which was an option in Requiem quite a lot, too. Most notably in the semi-final chapter, where the Paladin reinforcements had more range than the boss. The exact same problem occurred in the final chapter reinforcement, where you could bait out one Paladin without having to be attacked by the boss that same turn.

Also I haven't counted but I think this game had at least five overpowered bosses that left the battle midway through the chapter. I guess it was kind of a theme in this game and a way to give them screentime but it felt a bit overused.

On a story note, I didn't really understand what was up with the semifinal chapter bosses being in the ending. They were actually good guys working for Legato?

Yeah, what Gabriel Knight said. Magic manipulation of their bodies or something like that, basically. At the beginning of the chapter, I believe Ash should have said something about it?

And thanks for more advice. I will try to keep this in mind for the future.

On your point about the bosses leaving midway through the chapter, yeah, it probably was used too often. If I had made more splices for bosses, I wouldn't have done it as much and instead just had an actual boss on the stage, but as it was I at least tried to make it serve some sort of purpose, with the Assassin's appearance being relevant to story progression (if only minor) and the Sniper's presence stopping you from easily taking out the other ballista.

The assassin boss in the early-game escape chapter of Ash's mode can be killed, although it's more trouble than it's worth and your reward is only a Elixir and getting an easier boss on chapter 17. It's really not worth it to be perfectly honest, but I figured someone might do it.

EDIT: I also realised just recently though that I hadn't properly playtested this event, thanks to someone pointing it out, so there are actually some errors should anyone do that at the moment.

[Bimugen]

So I'm still on chapter 6 ( I move slow ) BUT I really love the game so far. I like some of the sprites, but I can kinda tell some of the are re-pourposed characters (Drake is p much Marcus in a knight suit and Andrei is a re-color of Eliwood's ancestor whateverhisnamewas) but I guess I'm just a snob when it comes to stuff like that. But I can seriously appreciate some other sprites, such as Nella who I think look amazing. I also like Kerian's sprite (his hair is weird but the hair was weird on the original sprite too so whatever) and I really like some other sprites who are really simple and they dont have this big amount of over-design I see alot in some fan-works. It's very true to the classic FE style and I really love that.

[Sacred Blaze]

Well, I'm glad to hear that you like some.

But yeah, spriting (and graphics in general) is not one of my strong suits, so keeping it simple was all I could hope to do.

I think someone else before also said that they liked Nella's sprite a lot, which I find kind of odd because there actually isn't all that much to it.

It's just Yuno/Juno (whatever her name is) from FE6 with various hair parts and Ursula's (FE7) arm. I guess people just don't remember or know her that well?

Anyway, I hope you keep at it.

[Wayward Winds]

So, finito. Not counting reloads, it apparently took me a little over 36 hours to beat (note I never turned animations off or skipped scenes, so that will acount for some of the time). That seems longer than an official FE!
Do you need/want closing stat screens? IMO, the hack as a whole is pretty well balanced; there are a couple of niggle points that I'll cover a little lower down, but it was rarely stupidly easy or stupidly unfair.

Anyway, time for the detailed feedback.

Plot:
To be honest, I'm sick of FE plots that start off as "evil empire/duchy tries to conquer the world for no justifiable reason", then transition to "Wait, there's something occult and much worse lurking in the shadows preparing to turn the continent to ash". That's one reason I prefer FE7 over the rest of the official FEs, because it tries something utterly different. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this story. It's probably because you've entwined the main plot with so many personal connections; I've already admitted that Florence worked well for me, and your villains were a whole lot more characterised than just the usual "evil overlord we need to stop". It did get a little repetitive to see bosses decide you were getting too close/getting bored/being chased off by Kenrick, but the smaller number of named opponents meant that each one was far more of a character than FE's usual one shot, one dimensional villains. I would have liked to find out who that berserker was in Ch. 23, but I guess you had to have one "anonymous mug" somewhere. (That said, was his name "Logan"? Sneaky if it was...) Apart from him, and a couple of minor characters in Val's arc, they all had connections to your side, they all had a backstory. They were all properly fleshed out. Hence, I liked 'em a heck of a lot more than Batta the Beast or Glass.
So, generic-y plot by FE terms, but because it's done with proper characters, it works well.

I, uh, spoiled myself on the fact Ash doesn't make it out of the finale in one piece, but ultimately I don't think that spoiled the emotional impact. In a way, it actually added to the aura of helplessness in the face of fate. I'd have liked there to be some obscure, non-canon way to save him, but in a way it's better this way. War (and life in general) isn't just sweetness and rainbows. The best of intentions, the best of spirits, aren't always enough. It's refreshing to have an FE story end on a bittersweet note.
Alicia's chronicle is also a nice idea; hello backstory! I always enjoy backstory! (No, that's not sarcasm. It's probably best that it's not shoved down peoples throats in the main story though, some people object to a wall of text that doesn't have much bearing on the immediate plot.)

Not really plot related, but it's also a nice change to see someone who doesn't limit themselves to sentences that fit into two lines of text. Granted, it prevents you from seeing the whole sentence at once, but it also allows more freedom and more eloquent dialogue.

Graphics:
For a bunch of splices, the mugs are pretty darn good. There are a couple which look a little odd, like Meredith and her (to me) mismatched eyes, but on the whole, good job! I've also already stated that (bar one horse), the palettes used for the units are pretty pleasing to look at. Pity we only got to see Tiomare colours twice...
And here's the proof that custom built battle sprites aren't a necessity for a quality hack.

Music:
Not much I can say here, given that it's all FE7 stuff. But it proves that fancy custom music isn't a necessity for a good hack. And thank you for only letting Wind Across the Plains play in the prologue, I absolutely detest that track!

Maps:
The Northern Isles are apparently Elibe, given we visit the port at Badon...
In general, the maps are pretty good looking, and there's a nice amount of variety. No desert chapter, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I will admit to not being much of a fan of indoor maps, so barring the last three chapters I wasn't too impressed with any castle maps. That's not your fault though; it would take a lot to make me like an indoor FE map, given that there's not a lot you can do with those tilesets to make 'em unique. That said, I did like Ch. 22 (nice and challenging, even if the layout of that place didn't make much sense - thank you for permanently stopping the blizzard a few turns in!), Ch. 23 (as much as Danielle's ballista perch had me cursing, it really added to the map's stronghold feel - and this is what I consider an "indoor" map done in a unique fashion), and the finale (I didn't really get a prison vibe from it, but it certainly had a different look and feel from the usual maps made with the Dragon's Gate tileset). And most of the outdoor maps looked nice and played reasonably well. I particularly liked Ch. 4 (against Kane and the Remnant) and Ch. 21 (where you meet Thelma).
But I agree with Mekkah that some of the maps are a bit on the large side. I kind of lost my drive for a bit at the midway point, because the maps of Ch. 14 and Ch. 15 in particular sort of dragged on with not a lot happening in the first, and the second having that damn rain slowing everything down! But things did get better again.
Now, a couple of maps that were iffy for various reasons; Ch. 6 was an overly long slog where the challenge expired midway (see below for details), then there's Ch. 16 where you recruit Laraya. On the whole, this was a nice challenging map with the fog of war thrown in (though Laraya was never at risk for me), but it falls a little flat come the end. Spending turn after turn hunting enemies in the top right corner slowed things down to a crawl once the main part of the level was done. No real risk (providing you don't take your fliers that way), just a slog of a mopping up exercise. Then there's Ch. 17, which has you racing to stop Emilia getting herself killed. I know it's a last stand and all, but her survival is a bit too much on the luck-based-mission side of things. I rushed my fastest (peg knights, cavaliers etc.) units for her position without even stopping to properly kill the enemies in the way (mopped up by the slower units following behind), and I still saw her smashed a few times before I even rounded the top end of the map. I suspect the problem lies more with her allies pitiful AI; handaxes against mercenaries/myrmidons that you have no chance of hitting, just because they can't counter, is a terrible move. Guess what they kept doing. Cue the enemies smashing them to pieces on their turn. In a similar fashion, I had trouble reaching Thelma in time. In that case at least, I could have sent fliers over the mountains, but it was still annoying to see her equip her fury on one turn, heedless of the four mercenaries ready to smash into her the next. Still, at least you have the option of influencing that fight, whereas there's no bypassing the walls between you and Emilia.

Miscellaneous gameplay stuff:
One thing that bugs me; you get 10,000 gold (?) on liberating Olva. But I don't remember a single shop from that point onwards, exluding the secret shop which you may not even see if you fail to get the gaiden chapter it resides in (or like me forget to leave your membership card on a fielded character/in the supply convoy). Now, I did a bit of storage trickery to carry over pretty much my entire inventory from Val's mode, so I wasn't too short of gear on the whole. That said, I did run short of javelins and trained/steel weapons, meaning I was forced to dip into my heavier/special weaponry reserves earlier than I would have liked, and my staves were starting to run out. I can understand the lack of shops for the last three chapters, but is the chapter you meet Thelma in really that removed from civilisation? It just seems odd that you get all that cash, but don't get an opportunity to restock your regular equipment in the 5 (6 if you get the gaiden) chapters from there to the end of the game. Not to mention the fact your last shops were in Ch. 18 if I recall correctly.
Characters are nicely balanced; I went for some deployment choices that were a little unorthodox (Linda instead of Skye - I've never had a good experience of nomads, they're too easy to squish for me, but archers tend to be damaging at the least. Once Linda promoted, I never regretted deploying this bow-myrmidon), I dropped Andrei when he developed axe magnetism (besides, Val outclassed him in pretty much every way), my axe users were basically Kane, Meredith and (later) Thelma... I developed my force round fast moving or versatile units. But that Meredith and Pamela kept up with the units I'd been training since the early game shows how well they're balanced (Pamela actually overtook Nella, whose strength was, shall we say, lackluster. Being fast enough to double anything doesn't mean squat if you deal 5 damage a hit in the endgame!)

Reinforcements: Ch. 23's method of waiting on spawning reinforcements only where you unlocked their section of the map was a good way to retain challenge while not having to worry about different play speeds. If it had been on the standard turn count trigger, I'd probably have seen reinforcements spawning up top before I even cleared Danielle, given I had to stall for 5 turns until she ran out of critical ballista bolts. That said, the chapter in Val's mode where you first meet Almer and Layla (Ch. 6) did show that sort of thing; I got hit by the last reinforcements roughly as I reached the halfway point on the map, and I was moving as fast as I could. I just got body blocked by the enemy a lot, so the last part of the chapter was more than a bit uneventful.

All in all, an excellent hack. A few areas that could be improved, but I prefered this to many official FEs.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Wayward Winds

[Sacred Blaze]

I'd be interested in some screens if you're willing to provide.

And thank you for the detailed feedback, once again.

[spoiler=Responses]

I'm glad that people are enjoying the extra stage on Alicia's mode for the backstory. I actually did originally did have all of that summarised as some big wall of text at the beginning of the game, so I guess I dodged the bullet on annoying some people who had to mash through all the text that was there. Once again, I definitely wouldn't have had so many bosses disappear between stages if I wasn't so lazy :P

The chapter 23 berserker isn't who you guessed, but he is related to information given in the extra stage. Kane's battle conversation with him and a conversation with Isaac on the same stage shed more light on that.

Glad to hear that about the splices. I am aware that some splices have some slightly off elements on them (I should probably fix them at some point, honestly.) although I don't think Meredith's eyes are one of them. She just has Isadora's eyes, if I'm not mistaken.

I actually do know how to do all the music stuff, but I just figured that trying to find soundtracks that were suitable and replacing a bunch of songs could take ages depending on how picky I chose to be about it. Plus, if I added in songs that people hated it might just get annoying, even more than Winds Across the Plains. (which I hate too)

On the maps and I'm glad you went into detail about this:

I'm starting to see that I need to get a lot better at indoor maps for one thing, seeing as they seem to have the most problems being pointed out to me. Similarly to chapter 19, chapter 6 has undergone many re-designs and yet still aren't that great examples of stages.

Yeah, I can agree that Ch.6 could probably do without taking a massive drop in difficulty at that halfway point. I wanted it to get easier so as to give Layla some easy training if anyone decided that they wanted to use her, but it probably goes way too far into as you said "an overly long slog". Not to mention that there aren't even that many enemies to really allow her to get that many kills in the first place really.

I've never actually had that much trouble getting to Emilia on chapter 17, (she definitely has died a few times) but I can understand what you're saying here. I'm still collecting ideas that I can address in another new patch so I'll take this into consideration.

Adding another shop on that chapter does sound like a fair idea. I do find myself having to buy in bulk on chapter 18, which isn't exactly always the greatest of options when there a quite a few chests to get on the very next chapter.

And yeah, the pre-promotes are generally quite good. I'll soon address them in my character overview section, but unlike Josie and Rayden, they can actually perform just as well as your trained units can, although their stats might generally be a bit lower and balanced.

[Bimugen]

Also were you the one who did Marco's battle sprite? It's very fluid and interesting, but I was kinda surprised he got one. Was there something in particular that made you want to give him a unique sprite?

[Sacred Blaze]

Nah, I didn't make that one. It belongs to Mageknight404 (who I'm now realising I have not credited. Oops. O_o) It's supposed to be kind of like the FE10 fighters, if you know them.

I chose to use it just because it makes more sense for the amount of armour my axe fighters are using. I would have used it for the enemy fighters too, but then i think it might have caused some palette issues elsewhere.

EDIT: The final set of characters have now been added the character overview section. As I've said, I have less experience with these characters, particularly the pre-promotes, so this last update might not quite be up to the same quality. Anyway, if anyone feels like there's something else they want me to give my opinion on about the characters, just tell me and I'll try.

For one final note, I generally consider there not to any really terrible units in this hack, so whilst you might not want to choose the worst possible team, it shouldn't really cause you any major problems to use some of the worse choices.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Sacred Blaze

[Machao of South]

one question: for unlock the hard mode, I must beat the game once?? cuz i really want to start with hard mode right away. is there anyway to do that ?___?

excellent hack btw, very great job

[Sacred Blaze]

one question: for unlock the hard mode, I must beat the game once?? cuz i really want to start with hard mode right away. is there anyway to do that ?___?

excellent hack btw, very great job

Yeah you would have to beat the game all the way through once.

I'm guessing that there probably is a way to have hard mode unlocked from the start, but I don't know it. The only thing I could do at this stage is to put a save file that's already completed it into the download, but then you'd have to start from the beginning again. (I think so, anyway)

If that's not a problem I can do that though.

Edited August 7, 2015 by Sacred Blaze

[Machao of South]

Yeah you would have to beat the game all the way through once.

I'm guessing that there probably is a way to have hard mode unlocked from the start, but I don't know it. The only thing I could do at this stage is to put a save file that's already completed it into the download, but then you'd have to start from the beginning again.

If that's not a problem I can do that though.

yeaah plss plsss plss send me the file save. cuz i really want enjoy this wonderful hack in hard mode without any spoil. i'm in chapter 18 right now but i dont mind start over again.

one more question: in final chapter how many character i can bring to field (except must-play char, though)?? i want to make sure no waste any time training but cant use in final chapter due to limit. thank you soooooo much

[Sacred Blaze]

Alright, well it's done. Just redownload from the front page and re-extract and just take the save file.

You can bring 14 characters into the final. (11, not counting the lords)

I don't think it should, but let me know if the save file causes any problems.

[Machao of South]

the file save work fine but... i just check the prologue and chapter 1 and dont see any change about enemy stat and number. maybe it change later in the game??

[Sacred Blaze]

It's Ash's mode that has changes, not Val's. Most of the changes don't kick in until the late-game part of that mode as well. (roughly just before where you were on your previous playthrough) I've not actually done that much anyways. There are some small reinforcement changes on some maps. I might do some more changes later, but I wanted to focus more on just making the normal mode work first.

[Sacred Blaze]

EDIT: Accidental double-post

Edited August 7, 2015 by Sacred Blaze

[Luminar]

hey sacred blaze im stuck on chapter 13... where do i escape? south of the chest or to the southwest? i tried all 3 areas... does it have to be every unit or just ash or alicia?...

[Sacred Blaze]

You have to escape with Ash, if I'm remembering correctly.

The escape point is below the single pillar where the two knights were. The part where the maps extends out to.