Fire Emblem!

I'm now on act five of Echoes and I gotta say, Berkut is even more of an ass than I thought.

 

I also suggest Solo or Duo runs, those are my favorite challenge runs. Obviously not in like, Fire Emblem 4 or 5 because... nooo those games are already wayyyy too challenging on their own, but the rest are great for solo runs.

tbh Berkut was prob my favorite addition to the game. I love well built up villains.

 

FE4 is actually pretty easy as a Sigurd/Celice solo, aside from Julius. FE5 would be a bit of a mess, though.

Personally, I don't find solo runs that appealing; I've been going for more conventional play.

 

So I've been messing around with trying to learn how to make games, and I've always thought that I could do well if the engine was already there, since I'm absolutely shit at programming.

Well, I've decided to go into the wonderful world of making a Fire Emblem Rom Hack. I'll be updating my adventures on this thread from time to time. Ofc my first main goal will be replacing Eliwood with an OP self-insert loooooooooooool, but that'll be a good way to learn how to manipulate... pretty much everything but maps. Once I get that down, I'll work on a larger, self-contained hack, and we'll see what happens from there.

 

@thewispsoftime when you say "well built up" do you mean "completely evil, selfish, and reminding me too much of myself"?

 

hahaha I mean, yeah, Berkut is that, but I'm more referring to the fact that Berkut was an almost constant force with a personality we actually get to know and decisions that are reasonable based on that personality. Too many Fire Emblem games, or games in general, hold back the villain until right at the very end and don't spend any time delving into their details. It's a nice change of pace.

Spoiler: act 5 nonsense

The cutscene where he sacrifices Rinea and the resulting fight against both of them was honestly the biggest emotional moment for me in the game. It was so powerful and well built up, I loved it a lot. Hit a lot harder than the really fucking predictable reveal of Alm and Celica's parentage. I saw that shit literally an hour into the game, it was stupid. Berkut's betrayal, though, was a REAL plot twist, one I didn't see coming, and one that legit changed things. I appreciated that.

 

So I was playing Conquest. I'm right after the chapter where you discover that the Avatar is a Mamkute, which is a super cool idea to me. Something not really approached in the previous games. I personally wouldn't have approached it this way, I would have created a story where Dragons, or Mamkute at least, are more common and so are Dragonstones, which have different varieties, allowing for a wider amount of weapons and a new potential addition to the weapon triangle. Maybe something I tinker with in a rom hack, we'll see.

But I've been p much hating the writing so far. The Nohr are so fucking comically evil, while the Hoshido can do no wrong at all. I like the Hoshido more, simply because the Nohr are fucking assholes who burn down villages full of innocents for no reason and unleash undead monsters on the land. I'm fairly neutral about the Hoshido. I would have liked it if the Nohr King was a more complicated character, and not the dripping essence of pure asshole like he is right now, it would have allowed for some actual connection to the character before you see that he actually kidnapped you as a child(not spoilering that because its both shown on the back of the box and within 30 minutes of the game).

But then there's the moment where both the Nohr and the Hoshido are like "no come with us!" and I said out loud "Oh shit, I get to choose? I legit get to choose? That's awesome!" and I gained some respect for the game for a brief moment.

Then it was destroyed as I went to a screen that said that I couldn't choose to go with the Hoshido because I didn't buy the right game.

The one good thing that this game's plot did so far is locked beyond a fucking paywall.

God I hate the Nohr, and I hate the fucking Nohr siblings, they're creepy and weird. But I guess I gotta fight for them... At least I get to do it for those tiddies.

ETA- If I don't have both games, WHY PRESENT ME WITH THE CHOICE?! You can clearly detect that I don't have both the games, so just push through the choice that's relevant to the game I DO have and don't ruin a great fucking story moment with your paywall bullshit!

 

Well, I finished act five. That was shorter than I expected. Also a little disappointed that I didn't get to have the two teams together until the very end. Oh well. Overall, that was a pretty good game.

 

I'm glad you had fun with it. Do note that there is an act 6 as well.

 

Also worth noting that while Act 6 is pretty rad, it's not a huge amount of new postgame content. Basically comparable to Creature Campaign in FE8.

 

Updates on the rom hacking:
I've made some custom classes, and tweaked a lot of the existing ones. Fire emblem already has a small amount of balancing around the idea of mobility vs. defense, and my focus was to rework all of the classes into that kind of format.
I segmented the classes into weapon types, then into mobility and defense, and here's the classes I came up with or tweaked.

Sword - Defense: Mercenary
Lance - Defense: Knight
Axe - Defense: Fighter
Anima - Defense: Evoker
Light - Defense: Abbot
Dark - Defense: Warlock
Mounted - Defense: Lance Knight
Flier - Defense: Wyvern Knight
Archer - Defense: Arbalest(formerly Archer)

Sword - Mobility: Myrmidon
Lance - Mobility: Soldier
Axe - Mobility: Pirate
Anima - Mobility: Sorcerer(Formerly mage)
Light - Mobility: Monk
Dark - Mobility: Shaman
Mounted - Mobility: Sword Knight
Flier - Mobility: Pegasus Knight
Archer - Mobility: Bow Knight

The Defense classes all have a focus on high health, high defense/resistance, and high damage, but low speed, skill, luck, and movement
While mobility classes have a focus on high speed, skill, luck, and movement, but low health, defenses, and somewhat low damage

There's also the Support classes
Cleric
Dancer/Bard
Thief

These all have low stats in general but offer non-fighting actions. Mostly unchanged.

If you guys got any ideas on how I should change this, things I should add, or ideas I should consider, I'd love to hear them!

 

I think I won Heroes.

(He just teleported there on his own with Wings of Mercy. And then was stuck. Forever.)

 

I've had a couple of similar experiences.



The second one wasn't even Leo's own fault; Minerva just picked him up and put him there.

 

I don't get it, why can't they move?

 

In Heroes, mounted units can't move through forest tiles. So if they somehow end up stuck behind one as a result of either a teleporting skill or an assist, they're screwed.

 

That sounds like garbage and doesn't make sense.

 

It works in context. To account for the tiny maps, characters normally have only 2 move and need all of it to move through a forest tile, so any movement cost wouldn't make cavalry worse at moving through them than infantry units are. And it's very unlikely for a cavalry unit to get stuck behind a forest; it just happens occasionally on a couple of maps when the AI makes a really bad move.

 

Yet another update on the romhack!:
So I made a whole spreadsheet of the details of the new classes I made, including promotion classes. Again, most are tweaks, classes like Cleric and Thief are pretty much entirely unchanged, but there's a good amount of new stuff.
Here's the spreadsheet if you're curious: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1emNN3Uf-wvPT4Zb8J682f5hWQFKTPc4TGm2_9HUmRFQ/edit?usp=sharing
On top of that, I've mainly been busy with creating new map sprite animations!
This is the bitmap for the Sword Knight, a small change on the cavalier.

This bitmap is for the Occultist, and its a bit more of a change as well.

I also have the bitmap for the Abbot done, and I'm currently working on the Conjurer. After that, I have to do the Arbalest and that should be all the completely new map animations for the 100% new classes.
I will be updating these bitmaps over time, ofc, I can already see some potential improvements.
I'd love to know what you guys think!

 

Question- why change Archer to Arbalest? Is there a significance behind the renaming? Also, why is the split described in the previous post between defense and mobility rather than defense and offense?

 

I changed Archer to Arbalest because I wanted Archer to be the more general term for both Arbalest and Bow Knight, also it just sounds more thematic to the new stats imo.

As for the split in focus, that's actually something the game does already, I'm just expanding on that. For instance, the Knight class has the lowest movement in the game, 4, cannot pass over mountains, and is heavily slowed down by forests, but has the highest base defense and some of the highest defense and health growths in the game. In contrast, the Pegasus Knight is the most agile character in the game, but is not only weak to arrows specifically, but also has very low defense and base health.

Offensive stats are somewhat tied into this as well, and I've pushed to make the split include that too. Raw damage goes to Defensive units, while things like skill and speed go to the mobility units.