My thoughts after beating the game and some criticisms (mild spoilers)

[HOPES AND DREAMS COME TRUE]

Took me 38h on Normal/Maniac, overall really enjoyed it. Fulfilled its promise of being an FE clone. I loved the characters, they all felt distinct without being tropey. Eden is authentic and likeable and Balastar is a great villain. Francisco's dumb brash persona against Robere's composed manner and Robin's carefree personality were great contrasts. What I really enjoyed is the dynamic between the allies and how much conflict there is, Eden and Klara towards the second half disagreed on so many things it was refreshing to see the good guys also splintering. Felt very realistic, rebellions are often made of multiple competing factions.

Shoutout to my boy Albrecht, best bro in the series (You see the trees, I see the forest).

The plot isn't as strong as the characters, but the overall war narrative functioned, albeit uninteresting. The whole Eidoon gimmick is probably the weakest part, the lore was never expanded on and it just felt tacked on.

Presentation's rough around the edges. There's a delay when tabbing through characters on the menu that's extremely annoying. The UI is clunky, changing equipment/spells feels like it was designed for controller, not M+KB. Especially when you're trying to switch formation on the battlefield it's extremely clunky opening up a list and scrolling through. Save system needs a huge rehaul. You should have a way to save in battle instead of just "quit-and-continue" option. I had to restart a whole fight because Eden glitched out in the end.

Gameplay is solid. I love FE so it's no surprise. Unfortunately, while the gameplay is extremely similar to FE, the few changes it makes are for the worse. The weapon/armor triangle is not nearly as intuitive as the weapons triangle and it's fairly irrelevant. You just end up blasting people with magic or trying to avoid counterattacks. Limiting magic to X uses/battle is anti-fun but probably needed since Magic is kind of OP. Classes desperately need more variety, the upgrade path should split earlier than chpt 16 so you get more options earlier.

Which brings me to my biggest criticisms with the game: characters don't have enough to differentiate them. There's almost no inter-class variety. Franciso or Eden or Bolislav/Ralph make almost identical vanguards/templars. Andrea or Klara make almost identical assassins, all the archers are the same, etc. A lot of the classes are also very similar. Marksman/ranger are almost identical (Assassin is basically a glorified archer also). Vanguard/Templar/Berserker are similar tanks except that Templar's way better and Berserker kinda sucks. The melee gimmick between Magic knight and sorceror isn't a meaningful difference.

Once you play a class, you've played every character in that class. This is the biggest reason I've decided not to replay the game.

The game's balanced to monotonous degree. Every character has almost identical stats. All your offensive physical units have near-identical phys attack, all your mages have near-identical mag attack, your tanks have near-identical def. You're never going to one-shot an enemy and you rarely need 3 hits to kill an enemy (except bosses), so 90%+ of enemies end up dying in 2 combats. It just feels dull after a while. Compare this to FE, where many units can double and ORKO enemies, and crit characters can reliably pull off crazy kills out of nowhere. FE's gameplay just feels more dynamic.

The elemental system is perhaps the only good innovation from FE. I loved electrocuting a group of enemies or freezing a boss. Fire ended up being kind of weak but that's the price I suppose.

Difficulty was fair on Normal. A bit too easy at the beginning and towards the end but overall good. There's some difficulty spikes after the time skip, chpt 17-19 were the hardest fights by far. Chpt 18 in particular is egregiously difficult and very poorly designed, I agree with everything said in that other thread.

Overall, solid first Western attempt at making an FE clone. Really liked the characters, and while the gameplay feels samey and is too balanced to the point of monotony, I'm enough of an FE fan to still enjoy it.

[FumeKnight]

Have you found the side quests "My Brothers Keeper" "The Winds of Change" and "No stone Unturned." I beat the game and never found them and I'm trying to get the achievements.

Also how do you KILL Balastar at the end not just DEFEAT him?

[steelmidnight]

I think they are planning a NG plus, and reworking some stuff, as well as adding new classes and characters. Looking forward to seeing what they do.

In my own review, I said that grinding should be an option in this game to explore crossover-skills/combo builds. And I think some more class skills should be added as well to differentiate these classes from each other (And if you can grind up, explore even more option).

I was just thinking, that one "smart" way to do this, would be to add a camp "practice battle" area, where you could set up a force against your reserves (like in tactics ogre) HOWEVER have it only give weapon/skill/armor exp. Not actual "Levels" if you know what I mean.....That way you could explore different builds without becoming too OP for the story.....

Mount variety would be nice, especially maybe a monster mount or armored mounts.

Flashy finishing moves/criticals would be grand!

The rapport system SERIOUSLY needs work. So you can 100 percent the game in a playthrough.

Gore would be fun, as its a more realistic looking game than FE and would fit.

These, imo, are the ONLY flaws in an otherwise masterpiece.

[johntfz]

Originally posted by Fairbrother69:

Have you found the side quests "My Brothers Keeper" "The Winds of Change" and "No stone Unturned." I beat the game and never found them and I'm trying to get the achievements.

Also how do you KILL Balastar at the end not just DEFEAT him?

side quest u need get characters' rapport level,some of them has level reward to unlock side quest. by the way how to defeat Balastar? i get kill ending. is that something about the choice before or just the last battle ?

[Aestrea]

Yea, i agree that all the characters are basically the same. They try to differentiate them with the perks but those perks are so insignificant that they may as well not exist. All those passive bonuses from equipment are also just garbage since the calculation for guarding and criticals are so low that they are not worth looking down at the middle of the screen when calculating your attacks.

[mindless]

Originally posted by Aestrea:

Yea, i agree that all the characters are basically the same. They try to differentiate them with the perks but those perks are so insignificant that they may as well not exist. All those passive bonuses from equipment are also just garbage since the calculation for guarding and criticals are so low that they are not worth looking down at the middle of the screen when calculating your attacks.

You are wrong, my tank with staked guard was very tanky.
Don't forget about aidie effect from inactive characters, so passive bonuses + right aidie effect will do a lot.

[i dnt play this game]

Yeah this game's too balanced for it's own good. This is kind of what you get when FE fans make a "balanced" game without understanding why FE's "imbalances" make it an interesting game. Units having lopsided strengths and weaknesses add replayability to the game. Yes it's great that having replacements is easy in Lost Eidolons in an iron man game, its just boring. You don't get any dopamine from a new recruit because you know they are identical to the last(with some exceptions). Pretty sure growths are standardized as well.

[ODS Orbit]

Thanks for the feedback! As for bringing the part up about stats being linear and characters being too "samey" with stat distribution, a lot of players have actually given this feedback. One interesting idea that I've seen people mention is being able to randomize level up stats on a New Game+ run and I actually like this idea. If there are more who feel the same, we'll definitely review it.

Feel free to vote for it here on our Feature Upvote board!
https://losteidolons.featureupvote.com/suggestions/338154/add-randomized-character-stats-to-new-game-option

[i dnt play this game]

Yeah I don't think it should be a NG+ only thing though. Just make it a setting in general, on top of forcing ironman mode with it. I'd rather not have this tied to a NG+ for obvious reasons. This would be much more fun on a fresh save.

You now have a third setting along with permadeath/difficulty.

Lost (RNG stats/growths) / Known(Normal mode). Actually I think units should have their own standardized growths.

It would also be interesting to randomize the appearance of recruitable units, but I think since some are tied to the story it's not feasible.

[ODS Orbit]

I can see what you mean by adding it as just a general option just like adding the Turn Limit feature we added. I'll add that in this Feature Upvote Thread. Just make sure to vote so that it gets more visibility. The more votes a suggestion gets, the more it will likely get priority.