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Fire Emblem: Heaven's Bloom [v1.1 released!]


Roosterton
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1 hour ago, Attila said:

Okay, so aside from the slight issues with the portraits, which I believe have already been mentioned, I finished the prologue yesterday, and I'll go ahead and give my thoughts on it

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Okay so I decided to do my playthrough in the Hard Mode Patch, and I had one main issue; it wasn't hard. The map design was good, and the enemies had nice placements, but their stats just weren't on par for the first chapter. You could double nearly every enemy with every unit, including Hands. Maybe give some of the units specific enemy strings and give them something like Wary fighter so they can't be doubled, as they do have the HP to survive a round of combat. I also may be over-exaggerating it since it's literally the first chapter.

 Regardless, I most of the problems I see with the portraits can be fixed easily, so if you want it done quickly, go ahead and drop a PM or join my Discord server (Linked in every video I post) and the video should be up today around 12 EST, or whenever I decide to get up and post it. (I'll edit with the link).

Thanks for the feedback!

Spoiler

The prologue is mainly intended as a tutorial level; I'm not a huge fan of how most 'lunatic mode' FEs (awakening, H5) frontload crazy difficulty right from the start, before you've even had a chance to plan your team / promotions / resource distribution. I think a gradual curve towards higher difficulties is less frustrating for both newcomers and veterans alike, even on higher difficulties. 

Ch.1 introduces a bit of a frantic side-objective thing, although the enemies still aren't super tough. Ch.3 and Ch.4 is where hard mode really starts throwing serious individual threats at you, and then it scales even more from there.

I'm looking forward to the video! I'll check out your discord for portrait help :)

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1 hour ago, Roosterton said:

Thanks for the feedback!

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The prologue is mainly intended as a tutorial level; I'm not a huge fan of how most 'lunatic mode' FEs (awakening, H5) frontload crazy difficulty right from the start, before you've even had a chance to plan your team / promotions / resource distribution. I think a gradual curve towards higher difficulties is less frustrating for both newcomers and veterans alike, even on higher difficulties. 

Ch.1 introduces a bit of a frantic side-objective thing, although the enemies still aren't super tough. Ch.3 and Ch.4 is where hard mode really starts throwing serious individual threats at you, and then it scales even more from there.

I'm looking forward to the video! I'll check out your discord for portrait help :)

I think I'm on Chapter 13 now, and I have to say the past few chapters have had a major drop in difficulty. Chapter 11 only has a somewhat difficult opening, and then you're basically free to walk around the chapter unopposed, while Chapter 12 all the really tough enemies can't even move while NPC's distract the weaker ones that can. Only hitting the boss (who I put to sleep like every other unit so far, bought three more sleep staves in Chapter 11) provided any difficulty, but map control was so easy I was basically free to do so unmolested. Maybe there was meant to be more waves of monsters? I think there was only two. Either way, the past two chapters were rather easy (maybe that was intentional as the plot sort of seems to support the idea that they're easier battles).

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7 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think I'm on Chapter 13 now, and I have to say the past few chapters have had a major drop in difficulty. Chapter 11 only has a somewhat difficult opening, and then you're basically free to walk around the chapter unopposed, while Chapter 12 all the really tough enemies can't even move while NPC's distract the weaker ones that can. Only hitting the boss (who I put to sleep like every other unit so far, bought three more sleep staves in Chapter 11) provided any difficulty, but map control was so easy I was basically free to do so unmolested. Maybe there was meant to be more waves of monsters? I think there was only two. Either way, the past two chapters were rather easy (maybe that was intentional as the plot sort of seems to support the idea that they're easier battles).

I think your chapter numbers are off by 1.

Spoiler

Chapter 13 (the one with the NPCs) is not intended to be super challenging - I wanted it to be more of a cinematic, RD-style slaughter, and also didn't want players to constantly be resetting and having to rewatch several minutes of long NPC turns.

Chapter 12 (the one in the mountains) was definitely meant to be challenging, though - after the initial brawl, it's supposed to be a rush to seize the castle before the reinforcements mess you up. Maybe I need to make the reinforcements stronger / spawn for more turns.

Thanks for the feedback as always!

Edited by Roosterton
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2 hours ago, Rewind said:

Which characters have paired endings?

Here's the list:
 

Spoiler

Hands / Keena
Hands / Sedry
Hands / Fordra

Keena / Hands
Keena / Sedry
Keena / Cassius

Breyett / Derruk
Breyett / Aminda
Breyett / Janessa

Derruk / Breyett
Derruk / Tayli
Derruk / Aminda
Derruk / Fordra

Tayli / Henley
Tayli / Derruk

Merran / Henley

Gilbert / Sedry
Gilbert / Jerrak

Sedry / Keena
Sedry / Hands
Sedry / Cassius

Henley / Sylvie
Henley / Merran

Sylvie / Henley
Sylvie / Jerrak

Janessa / Cassius
Janessa / Fodra
Janessa / Breyett

Fordra / Cassius
Fordra / Janessa
Fordra / Hands
Fordra / Derruk

Cassius / Fordra
Cassius / Janessa
Cassius / Keena
Cassius / Sedry

Not all of these have been playtested, so please let me know if you encounter strangeness (e.g. text running out of bounds, the wrong ending getting loaded...).

Edited by Roosterton
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13 minutes ago, Roosterton said:

I think your chapter numbers are off by 1.

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Chapter 13 (the one with the NPCs) is not intended to be super challenging - I wanted it to be more of a cinematic, RD-style slaughter, and also didn't want players to constantly be resetting and having to rewatch several minutes of long NPC turns.

Chapter 12 (the one in the mountains) was definitely meant to be challenging, though - after the initial brawl, it's supposed to be a rush to seize the castle before the reinforcements mess you up. Maybe I need to make the reinforcements stronger / spawn for more turns.

Thanks for the feedback as always!

The reinforcements were just a few Falcon Knights and Drgaon Lords (are they even promoted?) that I didn't have much trouble dealing with. They start off so far away from the main action, it's pretty simple to set up someone to bait them and take them out in one turn. Weakness to bows and Dragonpike makes them little to worry about. Was there meant to be more land reinforcements coming from the south that I just didn't trigger for some reason?

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10 hours ago, Roosterton said:

Here's the list:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Hands / Keena
Hands / Sedry
Hands / Fordra

Keena / Hands
Keena / Sedry
Keena / Cassius

Breyett / Derruk
Breyett / Aminda
Breyett / Janessa

Derruk / Breyett
Derruk / Tayli
Derruk / Aminda
Derruk / Fordra

Tayli / Henley
Tayli / Derruk

Merran / Henley

Gilbert / Sedry
Gilbert / Jerrak

Sedry / Keena
Sedry / Hands
Sedry / Cassius

Henley / Sylvie
Henley / Merran

Sylvie / Henley
Sylvie / Jerrak

Janessa / Cassius
Janessa / Fodra
Janessa / Breyett

Fordra / Cassius
Fordra / Janessa
Fordra / Hands
Fordra / Derruk

Cassius / Fordra
Cassius / Janessa
Cassius / Keena
Cassius / Sedry

Not all of these have been playtested, so please let me know if you encounter strangeness (e.g. text running out of bounds, the wrong ending getting loaded...).

Thanks Roosterton. Your hack’s a lot of fun. I like the characters and their dynamics. I wish it was a bit harder though but your mage knight enemies and promoted fliers are scary so that’s on point.

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15 minutes ago, Rewind said:

Thanks Roosterton. Your hack’s a lot of fun. I like the characters and their dynamics. I wish it was a bit harder though but your mage knight enemies and promoted fliers are scary so that’s on point.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! People seem to have very varied opinions about the difficulty, so I don't want to outright make the game harder. Maybe once all the other little issues are ironed out I'll work on a lunatic mode.

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So is the chapter 13 boss supposed to have capped strength, skill, and speed? Because I don't think she is. I might have an older version though.

Edit: Yeah it seems to be a mistake that's happened a couple times in some chapters where the stats have been a little scewed into ridiculously high numbers every now and then. Probably an error with the input of stats, growth rates, and levels of enemies if I had to guess the source. It's really easy to screw that stuff up, especially in FEBuilderGBA

Edited by familyplayer
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Alright, some of these bosses definitely need to be rebalanced. It's not just RNG screwed, this guy can kill any of my units in one hit and he doubles them.

Footage is shit quality, haven't used Visual Boy to record since like 2011 (oh god that was seven years ago) so I just went with all the default settings. All the numbers are visible though.

I mean, I found a way eventually, but it depended on a two 86% hits and a 67% all succeeding. Course I ended up criting in the end anyway, but I didn't want to gamble on that, even though it'd probably be better odds with the Killing Edge, I thought I could kill him with more reliability after the two long bow attacks. But the point is, the reliability there is pretty bad. I guess I'm probably meant to use the Brave Lance one of the paladins drop (but I threw it into the convoy because the unit that killed him doesn't use lances), but even then, I doubt any of my lance wielders could have killed him with the Brave Lance without facing an absolutely devastating counter attack.

Edited by Jotari
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3 hours ago, familyplayer said:

So is the chapter 13 boss supposed to have capped strength, skill, and speed? Because I don't think she is. I might have an older version though.

Edit: Yeah it seems to be a mistake that's happened a couple times in some chapters where the stats have been a little scewed into ridiculously high numbers every now and then. Probably an error with the input of stats, growth rates, and levels of enemies if I had to guess the source. It's really easy to screw that stuff up, especially in FEBuilderGBA

Do you mean chapter 14? (ch.13 boss is a male). That boss is supposed to have higher stats than anything you've really seen so far, but only speed is supposed to be capped. I think I know how to fix it - can you tell me some of the other instances where you've encountered this?
 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Alright, some of these bosses definitely need to be rebalanced. It's not just RNG screwed, this guy can kill any of my units in one hit and he doubles them.

Footage is shit quality, haven't used Visual Boy to record since like 2011 (oh god that was seven years ago) so I just went with all the default settings. All the numbers are visible though.

I mean, I found a way eventually, but it depended on a two 86% hits and a 67% all succeeding. Course I ended up criting in the end anyway, but I didn't want to gamble on that, even though it'd probably be better odds with the Killing Edge, I thought I could kill him with more reliability after the two long bow attacks. But the point is, the reliability there is pretty bad. I guess I'm probably meant to use the Brave Lance one of the paladins drop (but I threw it into the convoy because the unit that killed him doesn't use lances), but even then, I doubt any of my lance wielders could have killed him with the Brave Lance without facing an absolutely devastating counter attack.

This particular case doesn't seem to be one of the strange unit levelling instances that familyplayer was mentioning:

Spoiler

Maletona is meant to be a really hard to beat - you technically don't have to kill her unless you want her weapon. The danced longbow was definitely a good choice to chip her down. Barrier & Purewater are also very helpful if you need to tank a counterattack (I believe you can even stack them on the same unit), and if Tayli hadn't moved yet, you could have moved her into position for Spur Speed so that your faster units (hopefully) won't get doubled and can survive the counter. And yeah, the brave lance would have helped too, especially with Jerrak adjacent for spur strength (+8 damage total).

 

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25 minutes ago, Roosterton said:

Do you mean chapter 14? (ch.13 boss is a male). That boss is supposed to have higher stats than anything you've really seen so far, but only speed is supposed to be capped. I think I know how to fix it - can you tell me some of the other instances where you've encountered this?
 

This particularly case doesn't seem to be one of the strange unit levelling instances that familyplayer was mentioning.

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Maletona is meant to be a really hard to beat - you technically don't have to kill her unless you want her weapon. The danced longbow was definitely a good choice to chip her down. Barrier & Purewater are also very helpful if you need to tank a counterattack (I believe you can even stack them on the same unit), and if Tayli hadn't moved yet, you could have moved her into position for Spur Speed so that your faster units (hopefully) won't get doubled and can survive the counter. And yeah, the brave lance would have helped too, especially with Jerrak adjacent for spur strength (+8 damage total).

 

I'm not sure barrier would have helped all that much given she was doubling most of my units with enough damage to kill them in one hit, let alone two. The only one who could really survive one hit and deal good damage aside from Keena would be Janessa, and spur speed wouldn't have helped her much given her speed is only 14 (she was doubling Keena who had 18 speed, which is the same as what Spur Speed would give Janessa). She's also facing 75% hit rates. The actual boss of the chapter wasn't much better too, his evade is monstrous (50% was basically the best I could do) and he had at least 10% crit chance against all my units. I got really lucky, hitting a crit whit Keena at 50% hit. But unlike this one, at least he doesn't move and the game gives you some warning he's a big deal. Keena and Beyrett have become my MVPs by a pretty large mile. Basically no one else can stand up against these units.

Spoiler

Although now that Cassius has Excalibur and Fodra has Radljost, they might be able to compete. However, nice as it might be for the player, take the crit rate of Radljost, it didn't manage to screw me over against the boss, but it very easily could have. He got about six attacks in before he went down, any one of them could have ruined my day.

 

Edited by Jotari
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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

 

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Although now that Cassius has Excalibur and Fodra has Radljost, they might be able to compete. However, nice as it might be for the player, take the crit rate of Radljost, it didn't manage to screw me over against the boss, but it very easily could have. He got about six attacks in before he went down, any one of them could have ruined my day.

 

This is a pretty good idea, especially since you have to deal with it at the end of a somewhat long and stressful chapter. Will add to the 1.0.9 list.

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2 hours ago, Roosterton said:

Do you mean chapter 14? (ch.13 boss is a male). That boss is supposed to have higher stats than anything you've really seen so far, but only speed is supposed to be capped. I think I know how to fix it - can you tell me some of the other instances where you've encountered this?

Yeah, I did. Woops. Put some pics of examples in the spoiler below.

Spoiler

image.png.8e8c3985dc22d63bee814c9927cfb257.png

5b1056d0d3db7_chap13boss.PNG.c35556c16c3543a14b7eec0a59e64f7f.PNG

For example, the bottom shows chapter 13's boss. As expected, he's got crazy good stats. However, the swordmaster to the right (the top pic), has even better stats and is far more dangerous. He also isn't really worth to kill since you just get a wind sword that you could easily buy from the armory in chapter 12. Btw, there's two bonus master seals that no character needs in the game. Don't know if that's intentional or not, but it gives the player a crap ton of bonus money for the amazing items in chapter 12's armory (like the aforementioned wind sword).

5b1057a7bb3bb_1stexample.PNG.5cfbeaaa0d364b6648561d02e29e17ac.PNG

This is the boss of chapter 14. There were some others I think might have quite good stats compared to my team, but considering the game's PP focus and the nature of the enemies, I understand why they might have such stats. 

5b1058932ef9f_secondexample.PNG.6394ff4bd27f4fbe1522e8a44b48f244.PNG

This is the only other example I saw that doesn't look right. This is a normal healer valkyrie (the one that drops the fortify staff) and she's got capped speed.

2

I might start from the beginning again just to get some more pics of examples.

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6 minutes ago, familyplayer said:

Yeah, I did. Woops. Put some pics of examples in the spoiler below.

  Hide contents

2

I might start from the beginning again just to get some more pics of examples.

Thank you!

Spoiler

Apart from the ch.14 boss rolling stupidly well on her autolevels, none of these actually look too crazy - the SM and sage in ch.13 were both meant to be tough optional challenges, but perhaps they should drop better items to make it worthwhile. The capped speed valkyrie isn't too surprising, generic valks have very good speed base/growths.

I'll take a look at the boss base levels and maybe make their stats fixed to reduce randomness.

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I've played through up to chapter 3 (Actually I was in the middle of it and Breyette got killed by a purge, so I quit and came to write this), and I just want to give my feedback. I'm playing on the latest patch (1.09 Hard), and have been jotting down notes as I've played each chapter. They're mostly writing things (which, let's be honest, are mostly opinion based) and bugs b/c I have a hard time judging game play (Like if something's off I usually assume I'M the one sucking, not the game). Warning this is gonna get real nitpicky real fast.

Spoiler

Prologue:
Maybe give the word "Fire Emblem" a special coloring during the opening crawl, if possible? It was kind of weird having it be the same font as the rest of the crawl, but still emphasized on its own screen of narration. The rest of the prologue is well done. It's a nice ease-in to the rest of the hack (as well it should be).

Chapter 1:
Cassius-"I can see the village of Steblyn on the horizon!"-sounds awkward, try "I can see Steblyn on the horizon!"- we can infer the village part from the mention of warm beds and food (Hey, I told you this was gonna be nitpicky).                


Fordra-"Hah! You got it!"- a little too upbeat for a convo about degeneration. a somber "Yes, of course..." works better IMO

Cassius' dialogue in the beginning of the chapter is about Derruk being a sympathizer is a bit heavy-handed. I get that you want to convey that Derruk is recruited with Breyette and not Cassius, but still... Maybe a better way to go about it is to use the hack that replaces Status with Talk (a-la Staff of Ages)

Screen goes black when reinforcements show up its hard to see where they appear b/c of it

Boss Quote is Broken. It fades into convo and fades right out to battle with no words exchanged

Derruk could use a bit of a rewrite. He says he's joining to"Punish their needless cruelty". This sounds like typical FE Lord talk, which Derruk most certainly isn't. Since you gave him the skill "Nihil", I'm guessing Derruk is a nihilist and should come off a little more... apathetic. He says in the beginning of the chapter that he won't put his life on the line for these "monsters". I feel like "monsters" should be replaced with "fools" or idiots". Of course, he has a soft side, which can be later developed through his supports. I dunno, perhaps he wants to join to spend the rest of his meaningless years not fighting for some backwater bandits, not to stamp out their "needless cruelty". Besides, Cassius is killing them all anyways, whats the point in staying with the loosing side? Once again, this writing stuff is purely my opinion

Game play wise, Chapter 1 was pretty well done. Maybe add some non-moving enemies right in front of the boss? My strat was to bring the entire party to the village and turtle in that corner while the cavaliers charged. This meant it took me two turns or so to get up to the boss where literally nothing else was happening.

Chapter 2:

The intro was a bit sudden, but then I suppose it was no longer than it needed to be.
 The objective said "Defeat Boss: Left 25". It was a bit unclear whether this was a boss kill or route chapter, so I tested it and it was indeed a boss kill chapter.

Awkward map tile 2 left and 4 up from the bottom corner of the map

Give an indication that the shamans/ knights won't move (like, manually assign them 0 mov if possible) seriously those shamans could fuck my units up so I was apprehensive about entering their range, and when I did I was worried I'd activate a trigger by attacking them or attacking the knights. That prob cost me a turn or two.

That said having those shamans move (not charge) may provide more incentive to split your party up (Granted, I did so anyways b/c I'm bad at Fire Emblem). The strat for the map would then be to send half your people to the bottom to lure away the shamans so you could attack the knights unabated. This only works (fairly) if we're given information about which units move. Also, maybe someone on the bottom should drop a pure water, so as to kind of encourage this. This may be incompatible with your philosophy about choice of strategy so take it or leave it as you will.

The boss had a special convo with Cassius, but in their second round of combat used his generic boss quote. I don't remember if this sort of thing occurs in the actual game as well.

And lastly I know its been harped on already, but *sigh*, yeah, those mugs. Firstly, it's a little immersion breaking to  have Dormund in your party, or to fight Berguet as the boss of a chapter 1 that isn't vanilla FE8 (Also the bandit that grabs the horses from the stable in chapter 1 looks like a regular soldier which I found funny). Bosses and playable characters should get their own mugs (Bandits/ Villagers/Soldiers can retain vanilla portraits). And what custom mugs there are... just aren't very good, no offense. Look man, you've already done more for this hack than anyone could've reasonably asked of you. Right now you're needed on bug fixing and polishing the writing (I'm using the word "needed" liberally, I mean not to imply anyone is forcing you to do this, which just makes this hack even more impressive).  You aren't in this alone. I know its been mentioned, but you should go on over to the spriter's part of SF and be like, "Hey, I made this hack, and its complete gameplaywise(!), I just need help with mugs/ art assets. I've mocked up a few characters in the a mug creator program to give my interpretation of they should look like, but, well, yeah..." I'll say it again: you're not alone. We all want to see you succeed. I typed all of this out because I want to see you succeed. You've already enjoyed great success with this hack. Sorry if any of this sounded rude, I meant purely for it to be constructive. I cannot overstate how impressed I am that this sort of just came out of nowhere. I'll be leaving more thoughts on the next few chapters as I get through them. Until then!
 


 



 

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1 hour ago, TheRealRickshaw said:

I've played through up to chapter 3 (Actually I was in the middle of it and Breyette got killed by a purge, so I quit and came to write this), and I just want to give my feedback. I'm playing on the latest patch (1.09 Hard), and have been jotting down notes as I've played each chapter. They're mostly writing things (which, let's be honest, are mostly opinion based) and bugs b/c I have a hard time judging game play (Like if something's off I usually assume I'M the one sucking, not the game). Warning this is gonna get real nitpicky real fast.

  Reveal hidden contents

Prologue:
Maybe give the word "Fire Emblem" a special coloring during the opening crawl, if possible? It was kind of weird having it be the same font as the rest of the crawl, but still emphasized on its own screen of narration. The rest of the prologue is well done. It's a nice ease-in to the rest of the hack (as well it should be).

Chapter 1:
Cassius-"I can see the village of Steblyn on the horizon!"-sounds awkward, try "I can see Steblyn on the horizon!"- we can infer the village part from the mention of warm beds and food (Hey, I told you this was gonna be nitpicky).                


Fordra-"Hah! You got it!"- a little too upbeat for a convo about degeneration. a somber "Yes, of course..." works better IMO

Cassius' dialogue in the beginning of the chapter is about Derruk being a sympathizer is a bit heavy-handed. I get that you want to convey that Derruk is recruited with Breyette and not Cassius, but still... Maybe a better way to go about it is to use the hack that replaces Status with Talk (a-la Staff of Ages)

Screen goes black when reinforcements show up its hard to see where they appear b/c of it

Boss Quote is Broken. It fades into convo and fades right out to battle with no words exchanged

Derruk could use a bit of a rewrite. He says he's joining to"Punish their needless cruelty". This sounds like typical FE Lord talk, which Derruk most certainly isn't. Since you gave him the skill "Nihil", I'm guessing Derruk is a nihilist and should come off a little more... apathetic. He says in the beginning of the chapter that he won't put his life on the line for these "monsters". I feel like "monsters" should be replaced with "fools" or idiots". Of course, he has a soft side, which can be later developed through his supports. I dunno, perhaps he wants to join to spend the rest of his meaningless years not fighting for some backwater bandits, not to stamp out their "needless cruelty". Besides, Cassius is killing them all anyways, whats the point in staying with the loosing side? Once again, this writing stuff is purely my opinion

Game play wise, Chapter 1 was pretty well done. Maybe add some non-moving enemies right in front of the boss? My strat was to bring the entire party to the village and turtle in that corner while the cavaliers charged. This meant it took me two turns or so to get up to the boss where literally nothing else was happening.

Chapter 2:

The intro was a bit sudden, but then I suppose it was no longer than it needed to be.
 The objective said "Defeat Boss: Left 25". It was a bit unclear whether this was a boss kill or route chapter, so I tested it and it was indeed a boss kill chapter.

Awkward map tile 2 left and 4 up from the bottom corner of the map

Give an indication that the shamans/ knights won't move (like, manually assign them 0 mov if possible) seriously those shamans could fuck my units up so I was apprehensive about entering their range, and when I did I was worried I'd activate a trigger by attacking them or attacking the knights. That prob cost me a turn or two.

That said having those shamans move (not charge) may provide more incentive to split your party up (Granted, I did so anyways b/c I'm bad at Fire Emblem). The strat for the map would then be to send half your people to the bottom to lure away the shamans so you could attack the knights unabated. This only works (fairly) if we're given information about which units move. Also, maybe someone on the bottom should drop a pure water, so as to kind of encourage this. This may be incompatible with your philosophy about choice of strategy so take it or leave it as you will.

The boss had a special convo with Cassius, but in their second round of combat used his generic boss quote. I don't remember if this sort of thing occurs in the actual game as well.

And lastly I know its been harped on already, but *sigh*, yeah, those mugs. Firstly, it's a little immersion breaking to  have Dormund in your party, or to fight Berguet as the boss of a chapter 1 that isn't vanilla FE8 (Also the bandit that grabs the horses from the stable in chapter 1 looks like a regular soldier which I found funny). Bosses and playable characters should get their own mugs (Bandits/ Villagers/Soldiers can retain vanilla portraits). And what custom mugs there are... just aren't very good, no offense. Look man, you've already done more for this hack than anyone could've reasonably asked of you. Right now you're needed on bug fixing and polishing the writing (I'm using the word "needed" liberally, I mean not to imply anyone is forcing you to do this, which just makes this hack even more impressive).  You aren't in this alone. I know its been mentioned, but you should go on over to the spriter's part of SF and be like, "Hey, I made this hack, and its complete gameplaywise(!), I just need help with mugs/ art assets. I've mocked up a few characters in the a mug creator program to give my interpretation of they should look like, but, well, yeah..." I'll say it again: you're not alone. We all want to see you succeed. I typed all of this out because I want to see you succeed. You've already enjoyed great success with this hack. Sorry if any of this sounded rude, I meant purely for it to be constructive. I cannot overstate how impressed I am that this sort of just came out of nowhere. I'll be leaving more thoughts on the next few chapters as I get through them. Until then!
 


 



 

Thank you! Nobody's really given me comprehensive writing criticism yet, so I appreciate this a lot. 

Spoiler

Fordra's "hah, you got it!" is meant to contrast with the seriousness of the situation, to show that she (and Keena) have grown used to this routine and are comfortable making some light out of it, as awful as it is. In their minds, it's absurd that Cassius would suddenly stop caring for Fordra, so when Keena says "let me know if that changes" it's tongue-in-cheek.

You're absolutely right about Derruk, his final joining line is quite out of character. I will give this a rewrite.

Glad you noticed the broken boss-quote and screen fadeout for the reinforcements, I was very new to FE8 eventing when I made this level but they should be an easy fix now.

I've been thinking about the non-moving knights and shamans in ch.2 for awhile and not sure how the best way to approach them would be. I originally envisioned the player not splitting up, rushing down one path while trying to keep ahead of the waves coming from the other path and needing to break through the line of unmoving tanks before reaching the boss. In practice, that ended up being more difficult than I'd like for a chapter so early in the game, and the enemies were nerfed to the point where 'rushing' is no longer needed, so the knights and shamans are just kind of... there. I think I might reduce their quantity, but have them attack when players enter range, with overlapping threat ranges so that you have to approach carefully.

I've also went ahead and (finally) made a thread in the spriter's section, so hopefully the game starts to look a bit nicer in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoy the rest of the hack!

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So I just finished the game, and let me tell you, it was a wild ride.

I played through hard mode and the progression of difficulty went pretty much as an ascending curve.

It started nice, nothing too strange when it comes to hard modes: you had to think your moves properly or you would end up losing a unit, your common stuff.
Then the mid-to-end game came and boy, thinking your moves wasn't enough, you really had to be careful because enemies actually had threatening hit rates with skills that added a lot to their damage, which meant that you couldn't rely on WTA and dodge-tanking to go through a chapter.

And then the final chapter came, and the final boss had like many different ways to stay decently healthy while being a problem with its attacks as well (keeping it vague as to not spoil too much).

 

Putting aside the things that had been already said, as in aesthetics and other stuff, the hack was pretty challenging and fun, while keeping it at a decent length.

 

Once it has been revamped I would play this again to try the other promotions for the units and see how it changes.

 

Really good job and hack m8.

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1 hour ago, TheUltimateChaos said:

So I just finished the game, and let me tell you, it was a wild ride.

Thanks you so much! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it, and that the difficulty curved out nicely in your playthrough.

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Reached the end. Here are my overall notes.

-Story was okay. Nonthing amazing, but also far from terrible. The supports on the other hand, were absolutely great. Really eager to see more. Curse that five support limit! I know you said earlier that you only had the overviews saved, but couldn't you rip them from the rom or something?
--Addendum, I like the title, but the name drop in the story was atrocious. Just leave it as the Final Chapter name.

-Lay off on the siege tomes a bit in early game. It's nice that there's some droppable Boltings to try and strive for, but it seems like every map has a mage somewhere about to ruin your day by bolting your weaker units. It never did actually screw me over, but it meant a lot of times where there was a 20% I'd fail the level, just because there was a bolting mage somewhere on the otherside of the map I hadn't accounted for. There's a reason they're used sparingly and only in late game throughout the series.

-Already addressed, but give the Swap Stone infinite uses. I never actually did run out of uses on it, despite using it much, but the player does feel a twinge of waste whenever Orciel pointlessly doubles with it.

-Hands speed is so bad, he'll basically never use Desperation. Either give him a different skill or a bit of a speed buff.

-Those units defending Janessa during her join chapter, the ones that'll inevitably die because of their poor hit rates and crit evade, it'd be kind of cool if they were actual characters. They already have a bare amount of characterisation and the playable cast is kind of small. Though I guess you want some kind of Genealogy Style full deployment and they might push that limit a bit (and also ruin the difficulty curve of all succeeding maps). Still, I'd like a Shaman so I have the option of summoner and it could also be a good way of introducing Sylvie before she's recruited.

-On that note, the three bosses during the riot chapter don't have faces either. I think they should. They're certainly memorable enough in terms of gameplay.

-Favorite Chapter was probably chapter 8, the one with the Pegasus Knights and Wyvrens. It was tough due to their high movement and miracle protection, but they also didn't hit that hard so it was also manageable. Their ability to Triangle Attacks also still made them threatening and giving a lot of focus on who to take out on player phase. The bosses were also really powerful, but also not impossible to deal with due to being fliers, and even though they were optional, the fact that they all had Master Seals was a large incentive to take them out. As I said before, another axe user would have been very much appreciated however.

-A lot of bosses seem to be over powered, yet sleep also trivializes all of them, at least until you encounter some mage bosses late game, which face the problem of being nigh unbeatable (as I made a video about). I'm not sure if the stats I faced were a glitch or intentional, but it should be addressed, because some of them are beyond unreasonable.

-The deployment cast is so big and the game short, that the level 15 skills are mostly wasted. I'd adjust them so you can get them at level 10 promoted.

-I liked the idea of the final boss, but I found the fact that he warped around the place really obnoxious. I guess the idea is that you're meant to slowly whittle him down each turn, but he recovers so much HP, that approach was basically impossible. I just organised my army where I knew he'd be (as his warp pattern is always the same) and then one turned him. It was still a nice challenging battle, as one turning him required careful use of Holy Water, Supports and Skills (Sedry's Super Resistance was vital), but the warping really didn't add anything. If he just remained stationary with the pressure being on from his HP recovery and the oncoming monsters, then it would probably be better than 90%~ of the final bosses in the series. But with the warping, it's just sort of annoying. At the very least make it so the distance between his warp points are smaller so I can actually get a significant number of units close to him to deal more damage than he recovers (Renewal seems to encourage the one turn kill rather than the battle of attrition, as he has something like 150 HP and recovers a third of it at the start of his turn).

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

feedback

Thank you!

Spoiler

The swapstone is (or should be?) unbreakable as of 1.0.8.

I think the earlygame siege tomes are the source of most of the difficulty in those levels, and especially in ch.3 / ch.5 they serve to stop the player from just turtling (although I suppose the treasure also does that).

You're right about Hands. The skill can work okay if you promote him to a Hero, but as a Warrior it's completely useless. I'll see what it could be replaced with.

You're also right about the level 15 skills being hard to get, but I don't think this is entirely a bad thing - Since you can only get a few units to level 15 promoted, they end up being kind of like the PoR Occult skills, which are very powerful but you have to choose which ones to get. Maybe level 12 would be a better middle ground.

The overpowered lategame bosses have been slightly nerfed (they gain less autolevels), and at some point I'm going to make their stats fixed rather than autolevelled to prevent them from randomly becoming unbeatable.

I think the final boss becomes a bit too easy to 2-turn if he stays stationary or warps a smaller distance, as you can just nuke him t1 with high-res damage dealers and then finish him on the next turn with the same group. I don't mind players using a 100-0 kill strategy which requires memorizing his warp pattern and getting everyone into position, because as you said, you still need to organize everyone to where he will be while dealing with the monsters.

I know the title drop seems really cheesy, but I actually hadn't decided on the game's title until I wrote that cutscene and wanted a metaphorical way to describe things. Maybe the fact that the cutscene came first makes it even worse, idk :P: 

The story & writing aren't set in stone by any means, so I'd be happy to hear more specific critiques about it if you want to drop me a PM. I'm already thinking about splitting up the (incredibly long) cutscene before ch.16 and disseminating that information at other parts of the game, since right now it feels too exposition-dumpy.

 

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9 hours ago, Roosterton said:

Thank you!

  Hide contents

The swapstone is (or should be?) unbreakable as of 1.0.8.

I think the earlygame siege tomes are the source of most of the difficulty in those levels, and especially in ch.3 / ch.5 they serve to stop the player from just turtling (although I suppose the treasure also does that).

You're right about Hands. The skill can work okay if you promote him to a Hero, but as a Warrior it's completely useless. I'll see what it could be replaced with.

You're also right about the level 15 skills being hard to get, but I don't think this is entirely a bad thing - Since you can only get a few units to level 15 promoted, they end up being kind of like the PoR Occult skills, which are very powerful but you have to choose which ones to get. Maybe level 12 would be a better middle ground.

The overpowered lategame bosses have been slightly nerfed (they gain less autolevels), and at some point I'm going to make their stats fixed rather than autolevelled to prevent them from randomly becoming unbeatable.

I think the final boss becomes a bit too easy to 2-turn if he stays stationary or warps a smaller distance, as you can just nuke him t1 with high-res damage dealers and then finish him on the next turn with the same group. I don't mind players using a 100-0 kill strategy which requires memorizing his warp pattern and getting everyone into position, because as you said, you still need to organize everyone to where he will be while dealing with the monsters.

I know the title drop seems really cheesy, but I actually hadn't decided on the game's title until I wrote that cutscene and wanted a metaphorical way to describe things. Maybe the fact that the cutscene came first makes it even worse, idk :P: 

The story & writing aren't set in stone by any means, so I'd be happy to hear more specific critiques about it if you want to drop me a PM. I'm already thinking about splitting up the (incredibly long) cutscene before ch.16 and disseminating that information at other parts of the game, since right now it feels too exposition-dumpy.

 

Re: The level 15 skills, I only got a single character to Level 15 (Breyett) and his skill was Bow Breaker. Which would be good for a kind of meta game Apotheosis event or PVP, but in a campaign, it means there's like five monsters that'll have a hard time hitting him. More than just a bit underwhelming. And it's not like I was dispersing my exp too widely either, most of my characters ended the game at around level 6-8 promoted. Maybe I could have stood to promote a little earlier, I was using every new Master Seal basically right away, but some times I wanted a character to get that last 25exp for a level first. But for my style of play, at least, the level 15 skills basically didn't exist. If the level was reduced to 12, then only Cassius and Fodra would be the characters joining Breyett with a Level 15 skill.

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22 hours ago, Roosterton said:

Thank you!

  Reveal hidden contents

The swapstone is (or should be?) unbreakable as of 1.0.8.

I think the earlygame siege tomes are the source of most of the difficulty in those levels, and especially in ch.3 / ch.5 they serve to stop the player from just turtling (although I suppose the treasure also does that).

You're right about Hands. The skill can work okay if you promote him to a Hero, but as a Warrior it's completely useless. I'll see what it could be replaced with.

You're also right about the level 15 skills being hard to get, but I don't think this is entirely a bad thing - Since you can only get a few units to level 15 promoted, they end up being kind of like the PoR Occult skills, which are very powerful but you have to choose which ones to get. Maybe level 12 would be a better middle ground.

The overpowered lategame bosses have been slightly nerfed (they gain less autolevels), and at some point I'm going to make their stats fixed rather than autolevelled to prevent them from randomly becoming unbeatable.

I think the final boss becomes a bit too easy to 2-turn if he stays stationary or warps a smaller distance, as you can just nuke him t1 with high-res damage dealers and then finish him on the next turn with the same group. I don't mind players using a 100-0 kill strategy which requires memorizing his warp pattern and getting everyone into position, because as you said, you still need to organize everyone to where he will be while dealing with the monsters.

I know the title drop seems really cheesy, but I actually hadn't decided on the game's title until I wrote that cutscene and wanted a metaphorical way to describe things. Maybe the fact that the cutscene came first makes it even worse, idk :P: 

The story & writing aren't set in stone by any means, so I'd be happy to hear more specific critiques about it if you want to drop me a PM. I'm already thinking about splitting up the (incredibly long) cutscene before ch.16 and disseminating that information at other parts of the game, since right now it feels too exposition-dumpy.

 

So thinking on that stationary final boss (and just generally experimenting with Fire Emblem GBA Builder), I concluded that a counter attack could be avoided by making him attack with a siege tome on player phase. Of course, that runs the problem of him being stuck with said siege tome on player phase, so no knowing how to make him swap weapons at the end of the turn, I worked around it by giving him multiple 1 use tomes that get restocked at the end of the turn (so he'll always break it and default back to his main weapon for player phase). Here's the result.

I actually found it harder than the warping version, as I was forced to fight him on the adjacent res boosting tiles, which meant Breyett couldn't do sizable damage with the Brave Bow. All my physical units suffered too much damage to be useful, so I was forced to just use Cassius and Fodra to deal damage. I did get into a comfortable routine (and then messed up by forgetting about Breyett), but that's also without any reinforcements to apply pressure. I had to use most of my army anyway between rescue chaining the weaker units out of his 1-3 range, with monsters constantly spawning and the boss having 1-10 attack, it could prove to be very challenging.

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32 minutes ago, Jotari said:

So thinking on that stationary final boss (and just generally experimenting with Fire Emblem GBA Builder), I concluded that a counter attack could be avoided by making him attack with a siege tome on player phase. Of course, that runs the problem of him being stuck with said siege tome on player phase, so no knowing how to make him swap weapons at the end of the turn, I worked around it by giving him multiple 1 use tomes that get restocked at the end of the turn (so he'll always break it and default back to his main weapon for player phase). Here's the result.

 

Spoiler

This is actually a really cool solution to the 'stuck with a siege tome on playerphase' problem. I wonder if there's a way to get rid of the 'was pilfered' notifications when he restocks his siege tomes, though.

That said, I think I still prefer the warping dynamic, since it breaks up the monotony of just whacking him with Cassius & Fordra while everyone else fends off reinforcements. It also might be kind of frustrating/RNG dependent to have him instantly blow up anyone who so much as takes a hit against the monsters.

You've given me something to think about for sure, but I'm going to hold off on any changes until more feedback on the final chapter comes in.

Also if you could please edit that post so that the video is under a spoiler tag, it would be much appreciated!

Edited by Roosterton
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7 hours ago, Roosterton said:

 

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This is actually a really cool solution to the 'stuck with a siege tome on playerphase' problem. I wonder if there's a way to get rid of the 'was pilfered' notifications when he restocks his siege tomes, though.

That said, I think I still prefer the warping dynamic, since it breaks up the monotony of just whacking him with Cassius & Fordra while everyone else fends off reinforcements. It also might be kind of frustrating/RNG dependent to have him instantly blow up anyone who so much as takes a hit against the monsters.

You've given me something to think about for sure, but I'm going to hold off on any changes until more feedback on the final chapter comes in.

Also if you could please edit that post so that the video is under a spoiler tag, it would be much appreciated!

Of course, it's just ideas to play around with. Another problem is that if you make him use his main tome several times in a row some how, then his number of Siege Tomes can exceed his inventory, which brings up a weird error where he has to send one to the convoy, your convoy. Which obviously shouldn't be the case. I really wish there was a skill in Fire Emblem proper that allows unit to swap to a weapon they can defend themselves with.

Also I can't seem to edit the comment. Serenes is glitching on me saying it's too old or something. Sorry about that.

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