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TheRepeat303 days ago(+1)

Stream of consciousness thoughts (long, sorry):

  • very stylish title screen. I like the black translucent ui for each of the buttons
  • config being a separate screen is neat, not many people change this
  • typos in the first text box nooo
  • cool noir theming in the opening scroll. is your twist on "shattered empires" a (magical) crime ring being dismantled? that's a cool angle
  • man the vanilla "speech" sfx for narration messages is annoying lol. in my projects I always replace it with silence, but replacing it with the rtp dialogue speech sfx would work too. I despise the rtp narration one
  • underrated detail - having the two talkers being on the top and bottom but using Erase Message in between. looks very good
  • cool papery speech bubbles, but the triangle cursor is in a really weird spot. like right in the middle of the text
  • "NEW TURN" nice lol. berwick turn order hell yea
  • 1-Handed and 2-Handed are interesting things to list on a weapon. I was thinking it was the weapon type but no they're still swords/axes. wonder how the handedness factors in
  • dang no description for League Armor? that was the item I was most curious about lol
  • Accessory is misspelled. not gonna go over dialogue typos or I'll be here all day but might mention some in the UI
  • Oh man. Foc? Vit? Sprt? Prof? and no descriptions for what they do :( guessing Mag, Def, Res, Wlv? Americo's fe5 wrath substitute using Vit*2% makes me doubt that assumption tho
  • oh you've got that like, stat graph thing, I remember you making that. sick
  • it's cool that Aguara's fe4 wrath tells you in the description how much crit it gives you, must've taken some effort to program that in, but why does it show the stats it doesn't boost also lol. it's so cluttered it circles around from helpful to annoying
  • Charisma's description is misleading, says "all units" but it's only for allies within 3 spaces
  • Killing Cut's info window makes me assume it's Lethality, but its description is "Grants a change to a Full HP Enemy" - wtf does this mean
  • oh damn this map's huge. got some cool tiles here and there. looks like it's split into different biomes. why is a mountain range growing out of gravel in the middle though lol
  • color coded commands? everyone (but Alfonzo) having access to the convoy/Bag? interest piqued
  • damn... vanilla piss yellow enemy range, and can't mark individual enemies... sadge
  • certain units can climb cliffs!! a man after my own heart
  • waiiiiit why do my guys have 3 or 4 attacks lol. is this fibonacci pursuit or something?
  • no realbattle I see. huge shame you don't have a detailed easybattle plugin then. I have one and so does cube on srpgworld. highly recommend. the custom dodge/hit effects are sick though, I remember em from your last entry
  • no exp bar plugin either Q_Q
  • small visual bug - the blinking white selection tile that appears when it's an enemy's turn will appear over the wrong tile when a summoner summons an enemy. looks like it puts the tile over the last enemy unit that moved
  • smart placement of the house. "go for the sorcerers first" is important advice and you have units who can reach the house with their max movement so they'll have nothing else to do but that on turn 1. nice
  • did some math, Vit is definitely Def. good to know all the stats are just analogues
  • hit rates are mega shaky. getting so many attacks per attack is a good fit for this
  • the "selection" tile (or whatever, you know, the tile that shows up when you're selecting a target to attack) being blinking white instead of flat white is cool. I want that plugin lol
  • the dam axe is so much worse than the scissor axe, 1 mt is not worth everything other stat being miles worse. why would i ever use this
  • WTF is with the walking sound on the boars lol. And why are they named Dank?
  • holy shit the titan moves off his gate
  • i got checkmated by the titan and 3 boars lol, had to either move Alisia the myrm back and sacrifice Ruben the archer or move Americo to kill one of the boars and lose Alisia. sacrificed Alisia, her damage was pretty bad 
  • alfonzo is nuts. orko'd the titan
  • oh sick music change
  • WAIT WTF THIS IS A REMIX OF PLAYER PHASE 1 HOLY SHIT
  • 10/10
  • it only changed for player phase tho. not enemy phase. revising to 9/10
  • i gave Americo earth blessing just cause. he seems crazy good, might as well make him busted
  • uhhhhhh so I moved my axe guy to the south with my last action, into the city looking area, and it faded to black, faded back in and a bunch of units spawned, and then it ended turn in an endless loop, completely softlocking me. gg

hadn't saved since turn 1 so basically starting over now. Alisia kicked off by missing 7 consecutive attacks. Great start

  • it's a real shame you can't save anytime except if nobody has acted yet. very easy to forget. for a short jam project like this I tend to prefer unlimited saving
  • why can't i counterattack the boars
  • just realized there was 1 bandit guy I left alive and after I killed the titan again the bandit lost all of his mov. or rather his AI changed to Wait. weird
  • saved at the start of the next turn after killing the titan and then cautiously moved a unit south again; enemies spawned and I didn't get softlocked when it auto-ended the turn. fascinating. loaded my save bc i hadn't killed everything yet but happy i did it for the science
  • not having a healer is rough. wish the vulns healed for 20 instead of 10
  • may I please direct you to my terrain details plugin? it hides Avo 0 for terrain that does nothing, and it tells you how much the terrain heals/damages for :) pretty please
  • also 5hp healing for forts/temples is pitiful with hp stats this big. like 10 or so would've been better and would've saved me a lot of turns
  • just realized the music changed back. :(
  • wait a sec when I entered the second zone and it automatically ended turn it gave back Americo's action (he's the one I moved into range). Last time it didn't do that: the turn ended and he was still waiting. Is it because I used a vulnerary when I moved him in range?
  • oh a shop nice. will be back for that angel robe
  • wait so, potions are 50% more effective than vulns but 66% more expensive? wait a minute it has WEIGHT somehow?? and 1 range instead of self-use?? what is going on with this item lmfao, please give it a description
  • nobody's doing shit for damage to any of these armors except alfonzo and kind of americo. alfonzo is so busted
  • whoops left ruben in front of the ballista. died. unlucky
  • alisia lethality'd two of the armors by the ballista. I take back my harsh words nobody else could kill em that fast (jk she still sucks)
  • gave the earth blessing to Aguara this time, no particular reason. prolly shoulda just given it to alfonzo tho
  • killed the ballista. got a black arrow nobody can use then a bunch of monsters spawned. ok kinda seeing the pattern here. will check back in when I've got anything new to say
  • OH visiting the sanctuary left by the boss gives a revival item. thanks, ruben needs it (wish it had an animation tho)
  • new map theme in the swampy area yay
  • not allowed to take the Black Arrow or Stream Bow out of the convoy for some reason
  • "stavesmith" doesn't sell staves? edit: oh nvm it's a repair shop. what's this good for? vulneraries? weapons can't break
  • oh the house explains it. "repair your staves" ok. don't have any staff users. is this a roguelike type thing where your whole party is randomized at the start? in that case guess I was remiss to say earlier, my team is: Americo the drifter, Ruben the archer, Alisia the swordfighter, Aguara the warrior, and Alfonzo the sage. Learning so much about how this game works on turn 40+ lol. could've used a readme
  • june's excalibur is EFFECTIVE against Aguara for some reason?? there's no mention of it having any effective damage in its info box. 30+ crit is crazy and only alfonzo can safely take her on, good thing I have him ig
  • there's a tile error with the eastmost jewel, opposite the area with the bear boss. the jewel itself is missing and there's just a grass tile there
  • dude the map theme for the desert area is a B A N G E R holy fuck
  • the limited move in sand is a nonfactor for all my units except aguara who is completely crippled by it lol. lucky team comp or is aguara uniquely terrible in this area?
  • again drake sword is effective against alfonzo for some reason. how weird. is it like an elemental thing or something? alfonzo has the metal blessing and aguara had the earth blessing, is that it? (why wouldn't it say so in the weapon info tho?)
  • with the drake sword Alisia finally has a real weapon (strictly better than the scimitar in every way by far except 3 less crt; her bld already offsets the higher wt) just in time for it to not matter since the final boss has insane p.def lol
  • final boss is 1 rng locked so easy cleanup by alfonzo
  • oh nvm 2 more enemies. ez$! ruben oneshot the magic one, nice to finally see some real use from his bow, and aguara made up for being useless in the last 2 zones by soloing Gough
  • finished in 57 turns, took just over an hour
  • eioneous says his "for the time being / i'll follow you closely but unseen" line twice, also wtf is going on here? is this guy an angel? the rough english is giving me some trouble following
  • I started again to check a hunch and realized I'd completely forgotten there was a quiz in the first second of a new game, asking you where you want to start. I must've picked Boar the first time. Tried Snake this time. But yeah the random party thing was right, got Fausto the paladin and Penelope the bard instead of Alisia and Ruben, and the other 3 are the same - I assume just the 2 are randomized then, which means ALFONZO SWEEP. 
  • Tried all the other ones a few times and saw the units you get are determined by the dream you pick.
  • (Rat) Started here again and got Diego with a Needle Spear (kaga saga my beloved) and Harry the high priest who looks busted, plus his infinite range rescue staff looks like it would've been fun. Facing longbows immediately seems painful
  • (Frog) Samara the priestess who gets halved damage immediately (instead of needing an item) is neat and her Dream staff could be fun though 60% is rough. Vanessa the ranger might be okay. High mov stat vs Ruben's chance to move again could be an interesting comparison. This spawn point has annoying chokepoints
  • (Cat) Gisel the dragonrider seems really plain and probably has annoying bow weaknesses I'd have to worry about and Romina gets nice 1-2 range and has nothing else interesting. This spawn point seems pretty decent, though the terrain is pretty restrictive on turn 1, and the excalibur boss was the scariest one so I'd hate to fight her first
  • I'm not gonna lie I definitely lucked out picking Boar first. That is by far the most fun starting position. Imagine picking Snake and having to trudge through sand first (plus that's the spawn that gives you a horse guy), Rat and having to deal with longbows first, Frog and having those annoying bridge chokepoints, or... well there's nothing really wrong with the Cat spawn, that one's prolly also a good enough starting point. Facing the 30 crit tome first is pretty nightmarish I guess. But those other three man. Also none of them had any gimmicks nearly as interesting as the summoners in Boar
  • oh yeah and I never got even close to 10k gold to buy the angelic robe. do I have to sell the boss drops or something?

Closing thoughts:

The most interesting parts of this game are the mechanics, especially the berwick turn order and the strange pursuit mechanics that I never quite figured out. The dream choice at the start is also very interesting - it changes not just which of the challenges you face first, but also swaps out 2 of your 5 party members. Very interesting and probably leads to interesting replay value. I do wish there were an End Turn button like what Berwick Saga has - several times I had nothing to do with half my units while someone else was playing catchup or healing on a fort tile (5hp at a time...), and then sometimes Ruben would proc his skill and I'd have to tell him to wait AGAIN... minor annoyance but still an annoyance

The most fun part of the game is in the first few turns, which was pretty good at getting me to use everyone. As it goes on though, my party came to totally outclass the enemies outside of a couple of bosses and I was able to pretty much just hold forward. And boy is there a lot of holding forward. This is another entry with an enormous map and a huge amount of dead turns spent walking. I respect the times the game automatically repositioned my army after an event in order to either a) prevent an unfair ambush spawn situation, b) get my units to where they needed to be faster, or c) set up a more challenging position to face the new group of enemies - that was a good design decision I was always happy about whenever it happened.

At a certain point I was wishing I'd been given a bigger party to tackle multiple challenges at once, but towards the end I started to think that might not have been better. I'd end up walking, say, 10 units per turn across the map instead of just 5 while repositioning between zones. But at least I'd have been able to tackle multiple zones simultaneously, which might've saved time, maybe. In any case, my gut feeling was, this should've been shorter. I think the optimal experience for me would've been: start Boar, finish Rat, and then stop. After that the game was pretty much just walking. Would've missed out on the banger song in Snake though. Having different music for each zone was a great idea.

There was almost no story outside of the start and the (surreal) ending; it didn't get expanded on much, but I liked that the twist on the jam prompt was a mafia "empire" instead of an actual government. Points for creativity for sure. The spelling and grammar were very rough throughout this game, but it was mostly understandable.

This was a pretty interesting entry with a neat hook. Overall, solid! The units, skills and weapons could be cool in a full game, since they're all pretty distinct. Thanks for making this, and for hosting the jam!

My tier list of the units I used, ordered within tiers:

  • S: Alfonzo
  • A: Americo
  • B: Ruben
  • C: Aguara, Alisia

The gaps in competence were pretty vast except for the worst 2 units. Aguara was more useful for the first few zones and the ending, but was completely useless in Snake and Cat while Alisia performed well in those. Alisia only performed well in Snake, Cat and Frog, and was pretty much a liability in the others. Americo was good at everything except killing extremely high p.def units - and countering at 2 range I guess, but his bulk was so good it usually wasn't a big deal to take a hit and kill on the next player phase. Ruben was almost always tripling enemies safely from 2 range and proc'd his movement star skill at several useful times, but he also often didn't kill things even with tripling so he's between Americo and bottom tier. I don't think I need to expand on why Alfonzo is busted as hell. He oneshots enemies early on and twoshots them later. Even the bulkiest bosses are 3-4hko'd. He's relatively frail I suppose, but only relatively. I'm sure he could solo the game without too much trouble.

Also, how about that softlock!

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Anarch16Sync303 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

Thanks for all the feedback man, I really appreciate all the positive things you noticed. There is a lot of things, so I will just adress a few that I feel like explaining a bit.

Indeed, I went with a "criminal empire" kind of deal, glad you liked the opening scroll, is a lot of text to read and I have been thinking on some ways to make it less "text heavy" but I also think is does a bit of rug pulling, because it can make you think that the map is gonna be palying out the events described but then is a completely different thing :D (I don't think you noticed it, but the report changes slightly based on the party picked)

I'll take note of all the bugs and give the script and descriptions another revision. Man, that nasty infinite new turn loop is a pain, I though I had squashed all intances of it. And sadly is part of the reason there isn't an End turn map command, it has the nasty issue of bugging the turns. Also Alfonzo not having access to the bag is also a bug D:

 Regarding not being able to take out weapons from the bag, I hacked together an equipment system, so you can only take out weapons if can use them (and have  "free hands", ie you have to store your bow then take out the new bow)... thinking about it, I should make the convoy allow you to trade the item directly.

 Also, the stat rename, while can seem a bit superficial because they work as their original counterparts in principle, most of them have some  reworked functionality, for example if you track P-Def and Vit, you will notice is not a simple 1-to-1 relation (even accounting for equipment P-Def bonus), same with all other secondary stats. I need to add goinza's bottom window for the stat description part, but I'm really really conservative when adding QoL plugins, so I go slowly adding them project to project. (I actually had your big unit map windowin the previous and forgot to copy it into this project) and yes, Fibonacci persuit is at play here :D

But I love your comment of finding out stuff by turn 40+ because that is the kind of design school I go for, I'm really not into the whole "explain every mechanic and feature of your game outright" I want to make the player find out stuff on their own as they get more into the game, I guess is a kind of old school thing. That is the mindset that inspired making the first choice kind of "I have no clue what this does" for the first time playing, but it easily makes sense for replays if you pay attention while playing.

But it not always works, I actually removed the effective description on weapons to make finding out what weapons work against what, mix into that replay value and that makes the boss weapons underwhelming at first sight. :( But if it make you scratch your head a bit I guess I kind of achieve my objective lol. And I'm not really always logical with it eaither because I do have that Skill info extension of Marky's Skill info window plugin explaing skills in depth haha. I need to work on picking a side for everything I guess.

On the ending, Eioneous is a demigod, he is a playable character in Rookie's Day that works as a FE3 Manakete, and all the feedback I got regarding him was that he was really busted and why did a mercernary company had a Demigod around? (Because he was barely adressed on that game's plot) so I took the chance to explain that in the ending as a "post-credit" scenes kind of thing, shameless plug to another Americo game is shameless ;)

PD: Dank Boar... is a Dankboi reference, I just like that guy it makes me laugh lol.

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TheRepeat303 days ago

I skipped the opening scenes when I tried out the other dreams, so no, I didn't notice the story changed. That's cool

I suppose I understand the appeal of leaving surprises in the game and not wanting to be too hands-on in explaining every small detail, but my comment about learning basic things about the game 40+ turns in was definitely meant as a dig at the game haha. Maybe now that I've beaten the game I'm allowed some answers? :)

  • What is 1-Handed vs 2-Handed? Is it just flavor?
  • What were those weapons effective against? Class? Weapon type? Element? (While I'm on the subject I want to *strongly disagree* with the notion of not showing what a weapon's effective against. I mean why show Mt at that point, or anything about it at all? Just keep it a secret, players can figure it out if they pay attention! I don't understand the appeal of this idea at all)
  • Is the map theme in Snake an original? I want a 1 hour loop of it lmao, it's fucking amazing
  • Do you have a preference (or favorite) of the 5 dreams as a starting point?
Reply
Anarch16Sync302 days ago (2 edits)

1-Handed and 2-Handed is basically a limit on weapons, shields and staves to equip. For example, Americo has a 2-handed sword, so he can't equip a shield or have another weapon in his inventory.

Meanwhile, 1-handed stuff allows to have off-hand equipment, examples in the game are Spear (1-handed) + Shield, Tome + Stave, 2 Staves, 2 swords and 2 axes (didn't get around implementing dual-wielding tough)

The boss weapons are effective against the blessings, following an elemental theme like you though :D You were on the right track. The secret idea, is part of the megaman inspiration for the map "kill boss-> use boss weapon" loop, it just wasn't executed that well on the current version :(

Each of the zone themes are original pieces by Forester, same with the title and ending theme. He also made the 16-bit player 1 remix. He is awemose like that, I will make sure to bother him about making the ost availible somewhere for people to enjoy it.

  I cannot really say I have a preference of a starting zone, I tried to make each starting zone have a different feeling, but truly the only one with a strong gimmick is the Boar/Earth zone, because that one was the last one I made, also is the most consistant as a starting position even if the party is really limited healing wise. If you begin in another zone, the necromancers are actually a wildcard, because they can revive any mob from a previous zone.  

 The desert zone is actually another strong inital position, the bard's refresh  works like FE4 so you can move pretty fast if you play with turn order and positioning, so it's not as bad as it seems at first.

Also, I love all my units, I just cannot pick favorites hahaha

Oh, I forgot to mention, Potions are meant for healing other people instead of yourself like vulnearies do, so they are the go to for parties with no healing. And the Angel Robe is bait for hoarders, because you need to kill everything and sell all boss weapons to get to 10k gold... is a dick move, I know.

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