Sacred Contention: A review

[Klokinator]

I wrote this review like, 9 months ago or whatever on SoS, so I'm porting it here. Personally, I'd like to see another chapter of this hack made, perhaps by someone else, that adds a whole new map and a lot of balance fixes to it. Anyway, here's the review for u viewing pleausure.

This is the map of Sacred Contention. Please ignore the white stripe... I can't fix that lol.

I finally beat the FE8 side a few minutes ago. It took me 1 hour and 14 minutes. The premise of this hack is very good, though certain elements of the execution are... ehh... sloppy. For one thing, the FE8 side is ridiculously overpowered. How so? Let's see.

FE7 has one additional unit over FE8, but since you have both Nils and Ninian while FE8 has Tethys, they're about the same.

God units. These are units that are so pwnage it's not even fair. FE7's god units are;

Nergal, Athos (Both have an S rank in all four magics), Hector, Lyndis, Oswin, Heath, Pegasi Sisters, NINO (Fucking supports with 4 people plus almost entirely maxed stats! Best unit on the FE7 side IMO), Lucius (The only character with an S rank weapon, Aureola, but I'll get to that in a minute, Limstella (Not as godly, but with DEF and RES at 24+, not somebody to phuck with) and Dart.

FE8 has;

Ephraim and Eirika (Both are just so ridiculous it's sad, plus Ephraims Siegmund has 1-2 range >.>), Lyon (He's tough as nails), Morva and Myrhh (They have stats off the charts), Marisa and Joshua (Joshua holds an S rank weapon), La'Rachel (Seriously, it's sad how uber she is), ALL Of the paladins are uber bitches, and Amelia is so powerful it took 6 units to kill her off, and she wasn't even on a forest/fort tile... Next is Lute who has Excalibur with +5 SPD and she drops this if you are playing FE7 and kill her, then comes Artur who ALSO wields and S rank tome, Ross is a bitch to fight (Wields ANOTHER S rank weapon), and finally, Neimi, who wields a fucking Brave bow WHAT THE FUCK she's the only person who gets one and Rebecca needs one!

Let's check the unit class lineup.

Lords;

FE7; Hector, Lyn, Eliwood

FE8; Eirika and Ephraim

Swordmasters;

FE7; Guy, Karel, Karla, Lloyd (Who is arguably the best because of his support triangle with Nino Legault and Linus)

FE8; Joshua, Marisa, Carlyle, Ismaire

Heroes;

FE7; Raven, Harken, (Who is arguably worthless because he's slow and underpowered) and Linus (Who is arguably OP with his three supports)

FE8; Gerik and Caellach (Who is somewhat pathetic)

Assassins; (They are pretty much worthless in this hack, except Legault who supports three other units)

FE7; Matthew, Jaffar, Legault

FE8; Colm is your only Assassin, and Rennac is a rogue, but Rennac is the only unit who can steal. I think Colm stole an elixir once, so maybe assassins can steal in this hack. I'll have to check.

Paladins; This one is a biggie. FE8 paladins are vastly more powerful then FE7 paladins.

FE7; Sain, (Max STR) Kent, (Max SKL and SPD) Lowen, (No maxed stats but he has 24 DEF) Marcus, (Your best fucking paladin I'm not even kidding.) Isadora (Yeah she's worthless)

FE8; Amelia (Almost all of her stats are maxed) Kyle, Forde, Franz, Seth (All are much better than any FE7 pally), and Orson. Duessel is worthless BTW, and he's a GK.

Generals; FE7 has the upper hand here in stats, but as you'll see later, all of FE7's upper hand stats are bullified by a powerful bonus FE8 has.

FE7; Oswin of course is the best, then there's Wallace, who actually doesn't suck that bad.

FE8; Gilliam, Fado, and Vigarde. All have a shit ton of DEF and are easily killable with NINO any magic user. However, if you don't have any available, they're a real pain to kill.

Berserkers; Naturally FE7 has better berserkers, but still here you go.

FE7; Dart and Hawkeye. I've never once been able to use Hawkeye in battle because he starts out way behind everyone else. It's a real pain.

FE8; Ross and Dozlol. Ross has a Basilikos though, so don't laugh.

Warriors; They are actually useful against those goddamn FE8 paladins, I'll say that much.

FE7; Barftree, Dorcrap, and Geitz

FE8; Garcia, Gheb, and Binks. Gheb and Binks are virtually useless, even compared to Dorcas and Barftree. That's saying a lot.

Pegasi and Wyverns; FE8 has the bonus of three Wyverns and three pegasi VS 2 and 3 in FE7.

FE7; Florina, Farina, Fiora, Vaida (She's nearly worthless), and Heath (VERY powerful!).

FE8; Vanessa, Tana, Syrene (Tana is the only good one), Cormag, Glen, and Valter. I think Valter might have the pierce attack, but I'm not certain. I haven't seen it if he does.

Bow Users; Keep in mind that on the FE7 side, Geitz is a very good Bow user, but he's not counted because he's a warrior not a sniper/Nomad Trooper/Ranger.

FE7; Rebecca, Wil, LOLouise, and Rath.

FE8; Neimi (Fucking brave bow), Innes (REINFLACHE WTF, I gave it to Neimi when I played as FE8), and Hayden. Hayden sucks lol. But he has a white gem, which is awesome.

God Magic/other users, plus regular Dark magic users; FE8 is king in this round. You'll see why.

FE7; Athos, Nergal, and Canas.

FE8; Lyon, Myrhh, Morva, and Knoll. (Don't lol at Knoll. He's the only dark magic user on the field with a Nosferatu and he's a pain to kill)

Anima Users; I'd love to say FE7 wins because of Nino... but FE8 has Lute... with an Excalibur. Yeah.

FE7; Priscilla, Pent, (Both have physic staves) Erk, Limstella (The one with the beastly DEF), Sonia, and Nino. Always keep Nino supported, and use the thunder tome, and she likely won't die for a long time.

FE8; Selena, (Very good stats, all over 20, but not over 24) Ewan, (Why the fuck isn't he a Druid? And he sucks with his Elfire BTW) Saleh (He's ass), and Lute, who wields Excalibur and gets +5 to her 24 existing speed, for a total of 29. Plus she has 30 MAG)

Light Magic users; Valkyries and Bishops only. There is not a slayer skill.

FE7; Lucius, (the only FE7 unit with a S ranked weapon/tome. And PRF weapons are not counted) Serra (Fortify staff is epic), and Renault (14 MAG = Ew)

FE8; Artur (He has the fucking Luce tome, which > Aureola. Yeah, 25 crit) Riev (He's all right but not great), Moulder (S rank in staves? Why??), Natasha (She has beastly stats but a shitty tome), and La'Rachel (Also awesome stats but a shitty tome)

Dancers and Bards;

FE7 has Nils and Ninian.

FE8 has Tethys. FE7 obviously has a better chance here because you can revive two units per battle instead of just one.

So, upon looking at the unit lineup and their Stats, FE7 seems to have an edge. But, FE8 has a few things that make it way OP.

A shit ton of S rank weapons and tomes, swappable between units as needed, while FE7 is heavy on PRF tomes and weapons, which are locked to each character.

Better god characters. Nergal is beastly, and while Athos and Nergal both wield all 4 S rank magics, it does them no good because they have no good magics to wield. (There is only one luna tome available for each side) FE8 has two dragon characters with omega godly stats, whose only weaknesses are Aureola, Luna, Forblaze, (Bows too?) the lord weapons like Armads and such, and plain old characters with an asston of attack. However, the dragons can usually OHKO any unit they attack, particularly Morva. In addition, While Lyon isn't quite up to par with Nergal... he has Gleipnir. Yeah. He also rapes Athos.

The FE8 Terrain is better than the FE7 terrain. It's easy to take your three FE8 generals and just make a wall and demolish the FE7 characters. Lyon himself is a fking wall lol. On the FE7 side however, you just have a wide open area where you can easily pick FE7 characters off if you're FE8.

In conclusion, Blazer and DH_Ninja went to a lot of trouble, and it's very enjoyable, but it's just way imbalanced. Maybe someday the community of FE7 can try redoing this hack and making it a bit more even.

7/10

I'm too lazy to update it.

[Blademaster!]

Eh... For what this game is, this seems like a fair enough review.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

honestly while i don't think this belongs here, i fully agree with what you said and that i did address in the past.

the FE8 side is just so much more powerful that its nearly showing favorism, even if its unintentional.

Edited March 27, 2012 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[Crimson Red]

^It's more realistic... FE8 is an easier game with stronger characters that just happened to have higher average stats than many of the FE7 characters.

And it can't be favoritism since I love FE7 much more than FE8, and thus I have no motive in making FE8 stronger.

As for terrain advantages/disadvantages, that's just kind of coincidence, I was going to make it so you could choose which fortress you're stationed at but it became way too much work (i.e. "I have a life, don't expect ridiculous things from a hobby" amount of work). But, it's probably true...

Anyhow, 7/10 is fair enough, it IS imbalanced and flawed, and I liked your reasoning for why the game is as bad as it is.

[Klokinator]

honestly while i don't think this belongs here, i fully agree with what you said and that i did address in the past.

the FE8 side is just so much more powerful that its nearly showing favorism, even if its unintentional.

There isn't really a "hack reviews board" so I put it in general hacking. It's either that, or posting it in the Sacred Contentions topic, which I don't think exists on SF.

If I were to rebalance this:

-Take all slow units on both sides (IE: 4-5 movement) and place them in front row. Place swifter units in back, where each type has equal opportunity to get to the front at the same time.

-Ross doesn't need Basilikos, that makes no sense. It's not even the right game. I would give S ranked weapons of equal value to each side.

-Take out either Nils or Ninian from the FE7 side, you don't need two dancer types as that's a bit OP. As it stands, FE7 has exactly one more unit than FE8 so that works out better anyway.

-Fix the terrain to be roughly equal for both sides. FE8 has a great chokepoint if they need it while FE7 does not. 1 tile of river can be forded by like, almost everything, while 6 tiles or more of mountain is impassable to nearly everything.

-Group units of the same type together. This is mostly done in an alright way, except that all the Hero and Assassin units on the FE7 side are scattered like motherfuckers.

-FE8 has a mounted unit with a white gem within 2 turns of getting to the nearby armories. Also, even though FE7 has three flier types that can intercept it (Hayden, btw) he's kind of super effective against them so... not exactly viable. FE7 is at least three turns from the same thing, and definitely don't get an easy white gem.

If in the near future I get all the GBA FE classes imported to FEXP, I'll probably remake this. I actually already have a great map made just for that purpose too :O

Edited March 27, 2012 by Klokinator

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

that sounds pretty good actully, also i'd say keep Ninian instead of Nils due to support stuff being in there for her.

which reminds me, i'd would put in Ursula instead of Sonia due to we'd now have all the 4 fangs and sonia is just useless.

[Venusaur]

Honestly it's pretty easy on both sides, FE8 does have it a bit easier but FE7 still wrecks house, especially since FE7 has Hector. You can't go wrong with Hector. Plus, Nergal/Athos are both GREAT at using Fortify, you don't even need the Physic staves.

I also found that Morva is quite weak to magical attacks in general, just swarm him with magic users, as he's near the back line anyways thanks to his garbage MOV. And of course, Lute drops Excalibur on her death, so FE7 eventually gets that.

And as a last aside, Ereshkigal can be given to anyone, IIRC. +15 HP would be a great benefit to any of FE7's bulky units.

[Klokinator]

Ereshkigal is PRF, so it's nergal only. Also, it's nothing compared to Luna, as demonstrated by the video in the OP xD My biggest grips is that FE8's god units, like Lyon, start in the front where they can be at the start and middle of battles, whereas most of FE7's good units like Athos and Nergal start in the back, where they're basically useless until the mid to lategame.

It's really quite easy to win, no matter what side you fight as. If I ever finish my goal of importing all the FEGBA classes to FEXP, I'll finally be able to get my goal done of redoing this submission. Till then, w/e.

[The Spanish Inquisition]

After just trying it with FE7, I found the dancer AI to be worthless(Tethys literally just walled the whole time), which is completely understandable.

And Nino with Excalibur (from killing off Lute) is OP.

If any balancing is to be made, it needs to be done to the AI, not either side. To be fair, I'm pretty sure there's not been much AI improvement in any of the hacks I've seen, so I guess it can't be helped.

Of course, I guess I had prior knowledge from Klok's review (AKA I tried to take out the best units first).

Still I had 30-40 units left by the end.

Now what I want to see is someone do this without taking a loss, even if it means RNG abuse. That would be cool.

Also, Fortify just makes the hack way too easy.

[Klokinator]

Did you notice that the AI for (I think?) the warp and rescue staves are custom? Even more interesting than the whole hack itself, the staff AI is the one thing that really intrigued me when I played the hack.

Also, I've beaten it on both sides without losing any units. That's the funnest challenge ;D Pretty easy when you have Nino and Nergal tanking up front. Or even Amelia and Lyon. Actually, for FE8, all you need to tank is Lyon and you give him Knoll's Nosferatu, makes him almost immortal, until it runs out of uses or if he somehow misses lol.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

i managed to beat the game with only losing three units on each side.

speaking of, i think what also makes it easy is that for FE7's side, Serra's AI uses rescue instead of fortify so you never have to worry about it.

for FE8's side we have L'archael doesn't move until someone gets in her attack range, so once again the fortify user doesn't pose a problem.

i feel like the biggest unbalance with fortify is that your side is the only side that really makes use of it.

[Klokinator]

There is currently no known AI that makes use of Fortify or Latona. Back when SoS was FEU, Ryrumeli and I performed many tests to confirm that as well. We also came up with a more "fuller" understanding of how the AI system worked. I'd have to hunt through the archives to find it though and I'm prettyfuckin'lazy.

[Anouleth]

Ereshkigal is PRF, so it's nergal only. Also, it's nothing compared to Luna, as demonstrated by the video in the OP xD My biggest grips is that FE8's god units, like Lyon, start in the front where they can be at the start and middle of battles, whereas most of FE7's good units like Athos and Nergal start in the back, where they're basically useless until the mid to lategame.

lrn2rescue

both staff and chain

[weso12]

Also I could be remembering wrong but I remember one the FE7 characters (think it was Karel but could be wrong) could be brought over to the other side (with Colm or Joshua? I think) my memory is a bit lose, it only happen once and the characters used the wrong mugs in the dialogue, so it might have been a glitch

So another advantage FE8 has IIRC

Edited March 28, 2012 by weso12

[Klokinator]

WELL, there may be a leftover Talk event from FE7 possibly in there, where you talk to Karel with a certain character to recruit him. I haven't played that particular chapter of FE7 more than 2 times, and not in over 4 years so my memory is extremely rusty. But if the recruiting character (Colm?) is in the right character slot, that's certainly a possibility.

[xblade]

it's funny but it's so easy you can win with ether side. and i find lyn the most overpowerd unit anyway put her in a forest and lets see people kill her. but on another note i would like in the future the fe6 cast in there, either as a three way battle or swaped with another team. maybe it can be a bit harder it's way to easy.

[weso12]

Actually found the combination again, its Saleh needs to talk to Karel (though the convo has a mug of colm and says it Marisa though it could just be a problem with my ROM) and its seem to be programed for this game

Edited April 10, 2012 by weso12

[Klokinator]

Use the media tags, and you can only have one embedded video per post just as a forewarning.

[C7K]

Couldn't that be the conversation between Marisa and Gerik? I think you recruit Marisa with Gerik in FE8.

[Crimson Red]

There are several conversations where you can recruit characters from the other team. They apply to both teams, i.e. both games can recruit characters from the other game. Sadly I don't remember the specifics and it should probably be Marisa's portrait there, not Colm's, but I likely messed up and never remembered to fix it (I wouldn't call it a "glitch" as the game still works fine and it's only one small byte that needs to be changed, properly...).

I think Nergal and the evil bishop dude have a talk too, but that's all I remember... it's been so long.

EDIT: Yeah, and another few bytes to make it Marisa who recruits Karel, not Saleh. Meh, this is back in the day where betatesters didn't exist and hacks were full of glitches >_> I really wish I had time to fix it. oh well...

Edited April 15, 2012 by Strawhat Luffy

[weso12]

There are several conversations where you can recruit characters from the other team. They apply to both teams, i.e. both games can recruit characters from the other game. Sadly I don't remember the specifics and it should probably be Marisa's portrait there, not Colm's, but I likely messed up and never remembered to fix it (I wouldn't call it a "glitch" as the game still works fine and it's only one small byte that needs to be changed, properly...).

I think Nergal and the evil bishop dude have a talk too, but that's all I remember... it's been so long.

EDIT: Yeah, and another few bytes to make it Marisa who recruits Karel, not Saleh. Meh, this is back in the day where betatesters didn't exist and hacks were full of glitches >_> I really wish I had time to fix it. oh well...

I noticed the Karel convo on accident while playing a long time ago, and loosely remembered it and found it again

Decided to test and show off the converation that, Riev and Nergal have

I am going to test out some more conversations so far noticing that the characters that are recruit have no supports and the characters are similar in theme I'd check the event data but I have no hacking knowledge (other than codebreaker codes) what so ever

[Crimson Red]

And I'd check the event data but I don't care enough to >_> I'd probably do it if someone annoyed me enough to but that's a bit extreme, haha. Good luck finding them, your observations so far are pretty accurate I think...