Olimar103

Well the good news is that I just finished Chapter 19 today so I'll be able to comment on Chapter 20 hopefully tonight if I get the chance to play. I have run across a few other things I feel the need to point out. For startes I want to talk about the Hard Mode bonuses, specifically the Mini-Bosses. As you can see the Officer Is incredibly underwhelming compared to the generic enemy. I assume this is do to with Hard Mode bonuses not applying to the bosses because of being manually set for Normal Mode. As such, Mini Bosses are some of the lest threatening enemies on the map, while also giving the best rewards. This is taken from Chapter 17, but as far as I've seen it applies to all Mini-Bosses. I assume this an unintentional side effect of the game being balanced around Normal. Next few things are just balance suggestions conveniently all centering around Chapter 17 First off I'm off the opinion that the reward for keeping all the Citizens alive needs to be changed. Because uh, a Rescue Staff isn't going to cut it for the difficulty and amount of effort needed to keep them alive. It's an extremely challenging objective which requires clever unit placement and rescue strats to keep both your units safe and the citizens safe from the enemies coming from all directions. With the bonuses enemies are much bulkier and stronger requiring a good amount of strategy to hold them off. In terms of design for the Chapter, it's brilliant in its difficulty. Every time I died minus the time three Wyverns all hit 20 percent on Vanessa felt like it was my fault for not planning the turn out better. I was able to keep them all alive minus Seth but I wanted to finish anyway to see what the Reward was. Needless to say I was disappointed with a Rescue staff considering that they're now buyable from Jehanna Hall. Considering the reward needs to be balanced around all difficulties it doesn't need to be anything crazy, but giving out a limited Economy item would be nice. A second Pair of Boots or either a Warp or Hammerne Staff would be nice considering the challenge. Hammerne Staff seems the best out of the three, but having more move or another warp could lead to some very fun stratagies. Next is the Armory, specifically that it straight up needs buyable Silver Weapons for quality of life. I know Silver Weapons are buyable from the Prep Armory from at least Chapter 15 onwards, but are not buyable from the overworld at all. Considering Rausten Court sells Gold Weapons the easiest place to add Silver Weapons would be Chapter 17's armory. Final Recommendation is the Shop, specifically the Wrath and Mirage Staffs. Considering the price tag on the items and that it's the late game, I feel that the two staffs need to be buffed. Holy Decree and Sanctuary are extremely useful diving a +10 to Attack and Defense respectively, but the 10 Crit and Avoid that Wrath and Mirage give is not worth it. A plus 10 to a luck stat is nowhere near the guaranteed plus 10 your attack or defense. To be viable I think they need a +30 or +20 to be useful. Thirty might be pushing it but again, its expensive and late game so giving an amazing staff isn't exactly going to break the game's balance. I'm interested in what chapter 20 will be like, but I can see it being a bit of a mess so we'll see. If there's a huge problem with it I'd recommend adjusting the difficulty for just that chapter either through lowering the bonuses to +2 for that chapter, or changing the skills or enemy layout like I33tmaan suggested. The +4 has been fine for the other late game chapters, no need to kill the good with the bad if you want to readjust Chapter 20. Other than those things though the difficulty has remained solidly designed so far. I have to appreciate the genius design in giving Reev the Boots to actually encourage players to play the chapter and not just hole up in treasure room and wait. Granted I did cheese it a little by holing up to get the treasure then warping my god tier Vanessa, but I still played long enough to get all the chests and enemy drops. I'd still call it a huge improvement over the original map though, as other than the treasure there was no reason to actually play the map. I'm excited to check out the new update after I finish my current play through. I'll either play through Ephraim route or test how hard this game is with an Eirika Hard Mode Iron Man. Either way this hack is still such a blast to play! Again thank you for all the Hard Work you've put in!

I have to say, I'm extremely impressed with the quality of this hack. I just finished Chapter 16 and having a blast so far, all the rebalancing done has made for a fresh and exiting experience while also adding some much needed challenge to FE8. There are a few small things I want to bring up though, a guess I'll start with the most important of my feedback, the difficulty. I am only on chapter 16 and playing Eirika route with random growths, so take this with a grain of salt, but I don't see the necessity in lowering the late game hard bonuses from +4 to +2. Nothing in the game so far has had stupid levels of stat inflation. The most noticeable for me was chapter 15, It was definitely a difficult spike, but nothing there was unmanageable. Narratively I think it fit very well, and gameplay wise it was very fun and rewarding to play. Unless the next 4 chapters are hellish, I would say don't alter the enemy stats. Vanilla Sacred Stones is a cake walk even on Hard, so I welcome a little more difficulty. The other things I want to bring up are all animation based. For starters the enemy Griffin Riders in chapter 15 (and I assume in general) will always display their hit animation and sound effect even if they miss. Not really a big deal but though I'd bring it up none the less. The next thing is more of a question really, but would it be possible to have Ephraim use Seigmund in his Master Lord animation? I know FE7 changes the Lords animation when they have their Legendary weapon equipped so I assume its doable, but I know nothing about FE ROM hacking so it may not be possible in FE8. Last thing is just my personal preference, but can you change Eirika and Ephraim's great Lord Pallets back to vanilla? Ephraim new one is ehh for me, but Eirika's pallet just looks really off. Both of their alternate promotions look really good, but the Great Lord repallets seem unnecessary. I think this may be one of the few cases in this hack where I think the philosophy of if it ain't broke don't fix it applies. Other than my small nitpicks, I really want to stress how good this hack is. Just playing through and discovering all the small adjustments to classes, weapons, enemy layouts, skills, and animations has been so cool to both play and experience. Seeing Joshua promote into a fully custom animated sword master, and Tana gaining staffs once promoting to Falcon Knight is just so fun to see. All the custom animations and sprite work added in really helps distinguish this from Vanilla. The small little changes is what really makes this hack for me, lots of things that didn't need to be changed, but were changed anyway. Not to mention that the gameplay experience is really solid, to the point where it feels official in it's polish and map design. The effort put in doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated, and I can't stress that enough. Sacred Trilogy has replaced Sacred Stones for me, whenever I want to play FE8 I will definitely be playing this hack!

You never have to give a reason for including Finn, adding Finn instantly makes any hack good