Board 8 > Recommend me Fire Emblem Romhacks

(+) Yeah! (+)

After playing through Radiant Dawn+, I got the hankering to try out some more Romhacks for FE, not realizing what I was getting myself into. They have an entire self described E3 event every year JUST for FE Romhacks? Hell.

I just played Dark Lord and the Maiden of Light, because despite the terrible name it seemed like the most popular newish release, and as I enter the final chapter I'm frankly blown away how, other than a few edgey lines of dialogue, it really just seemed liked a completely new GBA FE game.

Now that I'm about to cross the finish line, I find myself in the opposite position from before, where I had a hack that seemed like the clear one to play, and now there are, like....dozens to chose from after going in one layer deeper. And the next big Radiant Dawn. thing, Daybreak, doesn't have a date yet (also apparently they're only JUST now finally putting out a way to do jacks for Path of Radiance? Don't know what's up with that considering there are people out there missing Engage).

well there's Tales of ChoHakkai, which was made by a GameFAQs user based on users/in jokes from the RPG board here.

I enjoy randomizers every once in awhile. Could try one of those.

I never really got into playing fangame romhacks though.

I'm mainly looking for actual, like, real narrative romhacks rather than remixes or in-joke/meme stuff, yeah. That's very cool that there's a GFaqs one, though!

Well, damn, I came in here to recommend Dark Lord and the Maiden of Light because it's excellent and no one ever seems to have heard of it. For once, someone's ahead of me!

Backup recs would be Lonely Mirror and Vision Quest. I haven't played through many chapters of either, but they're pretty well regarded and what I have played is very promising.

I've been seeing Vision Quest mentioned!

One that has caught my eye is The Sun God's Wrath?

Someone I'm familiar with on another forum made Drums of War, which I highly recommend

Are they any FE romhacks with decent writing? Doesn't have to the next coming of Tellius or Genealogy, but something at least above Fates or Engage.

The writing was fine in Dark Lord! The only thing that really took me out was the occasional swearing.

I would even go so far as to say the Dark Lord writing would be threatening to be included in the upper half of a ranking if you included it among all official FE games. Its biggest flaw was its late-game map design.

Biggest problem is the dude sure hates to give you throwing weapons.

Hand Axe is a legendary item up in here. When you get a 10 use Tomahawk at the very end they treat it like the second coming.

....Though to your point, I am seeing Final-2 now and I wanna go to bed and pretend it was a dream.

I'm going to keep this to just a few, partially because there's several hacks I haven't played in quite a well and thus don't remember well (like I saw someone recommend Lonely Mirror, and I recall enjoying it but I couldn't tell you a thing about it now). I'll stick to my absolute favourites plus one other.

Souls of the Forest - A hack that is very fond of lopsided stats and big numbers. Characters often have crazy growth spreads like 100+ in some stats and 0 in others which tends to guarantee they fulfill their niches but don't overspecialize and makes stat boosters extra important to give characters the extra points they need to be great (some characters have a high base in a stat they have terrible growth for, so a Speedwing for example can be huge for a unit with that setup in speed). Weapon stats are higher and the HP cap is 80 so there's a lot of damage getting thrown around and eventually even the bulkiest units can only take so many hits because enemy attack gets well above the defense cap, so you can't just casually tank it out, though you can do a lot of tanking by taking advantage of the reworked weapon triangle. The bonuses are much higher, there's extra potent reaver weapons and most classes can only use one weapon type so units have clear cut good and bad matchups. The map design is generally great. This hack is technically unfinished, in that there's a late game route split where currently only one route is finished, but you can play that route all the way to the end. The writing is generally pretty solid, though it's a bit too wordy at times (ironic given how much I'm typing here...)

Bells of Byelen - If you like Thracia mechanics, this is the hack for you. Capturing, fatigue, it's pretty much all here along with the same 20 stat caps. Units in this hack can be extremely creative with unusual personal skills and weapons. Map design is generally great and has a few really interesting ideas in it, though not all of them land perfectly. This hack was made "telephone" style where different people worked on each chapter, so you basically see all the best ideas of everyone involved getting put forth and none of the "fuck, I promised 24 chapters and I only have 18 good ideas" type stuff. Does result in the story sometimes feeling like its repeating the same character beats, though overall it's way more coherent than you'd expect from something produced this way.

Cerulean Crescent - This hack is pretty wild. Personal weapons in this hack have very few uses but they repair themselves every chapter and often have very strong effects, so you're encouraged to get full mileage out of your best tools on every map. Combined with personal skills and you get some very interesting units, like the mage with Lunge who has a 3 use personal siege tome that can't do damage but does refresh him upon use, letting him basically kidnap an enemy and rewarp himself to act freely wherever they were. The game is generally more about going nuts with all the crazy mobility and offensive tools you have than anything else, it's not particularly hard but puts up just enough of a fight to make it fun to figure out how you can break it. The writing in this hack gets a bit weird at times but otherwise is easily the best I've seen in any rom hack. Many characters stay relevant to the story long after they join your party and there's a great sense of them having their own agendas. Even the actual series never really does it on this level. The main character is hard to describe briefly beyond saying she's not a standard Fire Emblem lord by any means, and is probably the highlight of the whole thing.

The Last Promise - If you're getting into FE hacks you'll inevitably hear about this one or see it referenced. It was basically the first hack to be a full new game rather than just an adjustment to the existing ones. It shows its age (notably lacks some quality of life features modern hacks like the above have, like checking growth rates in game) and the writing has always been a meme, but the gameplay is actually pretty solid. I'm not recommending it anywhere near as strongly as the first three, which I genuinely love, but if you play enough hacks you'll eventually want to play TLP just to see where it all began, because it's pretty impressive an actually enjoyable hack was made largely by one teenager years before "new game" hacks really became a regular thing.

Got a bit carried away on the writeup length maybe <_<

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I'm mainly looking for actual, like, real narrative romhacks rather than remixes or in-joke/meme stuff, yeah. That's very cool that there's a GFaqs one, though!

def vision quest then, it was a solid FE experience

I was going to say Vision Quest but I guess that's already up there.

I would also recommend Andaron Saga, but the creator got super canceled so I'm not sure if that bothers you. Shame, because otherwise it's really good.

It's definitely not a traditional FE game, but I recommend Elibean Nights. It's basically a series of vignettes that tries to bridge the gap between FE7 and FE6, without touting itself as canon (there's a framing device where the whole thing is a series of stories being told by traveling bards). Most of the chapters are self-contained, but sometimes they'll connect to a sequel tale with some characters carrying over. You don't get as much of the unit development or army management stuff as a real FE though.

The Morrow's Golden Country has a Radiant Dawn-style structure where each part focuses on different character groups until they all merge up at the end. I'm a particular big fan of Viridian's part, which is right before the endgame. It's really long, though.

Some of these I had seen searching and some of them I had never heard of at all, so this list doc is certainly growing, thanks all! Little worried that the one that caught my eye the most hasn't even come up, but hopefully that's just people not having the time to try everything rather than it being bad lol.

Grand_Kirby posted...

I would also recommend Andaron Saga, but the creator got super canceled so I'm not sure if that bothers you. Shame, because otherwise it's really good.

As someone who watches all of older Mekkah vids, I am very familiar with Mangs. This is....not surprising, lol.

Vision Quest is solid, for sure. I also enjoyed The Four Kings, another FE8 hack.

Grand_Kirby posted...

I was going to say Vision Quest but I guess that's already up there.

I would also recommend Andaron Saga, but the creator got super canceled so I'm not sure if that bothers you. Shame, because otherwise it's really good.

Just to add to this, he got super cancelled well before he even made that romhack.

Yeah. A while back I got recommended a video of his on Youtube, and I watched it and liked it a lot. From there I saw the video about his hack and downloaded and enjoyed it. It was exactly the sort of thing I was looking to play on my phone while commuting at that time. Then when I searched for discussion about it I saw all the comments about what happened and I was like, "Ohhh... shit". I felt kinda bad about it.

Have gotten my hands on almost all of these, haven't booted any up yet though.

I can't actually find an Andaron Saga download in the first place, which....maybe a sign lol.

It's funny to me that the first full overhaul hack I played was of FE7, and almost all of these are FE8.

It's 4AM and I am very tired.

But I played a chapter or 2 of each of these (3 for VQ) other than the one I couldn't find at all, and now I have a problem: I want to play all of them now lol. I did not expect all of them to be appealing in very different ways. Will talk more after work tomorrow I suppose.

Sun God's Wrath, the one I picked myself, I should probably not be surprised was the one that popped the least lol. It certainly seems like it could be good, has a lot of unique art and sprites, and some weird aesthetic conee, but this is a game that is supposedly a sequel to a romhack that was bad, and despite it looking like I don't have to play that one it definitely means I'm not grabbed as fast. There's still something here though,.the game heavily encourages Thracia capturing and temporary units that can be used to do so. It also have the Growth Scrolls, which is always fun, wish they would bring those back lol.

Vision Quest.....is really grabbing me, narratively. It's super early but the writing feels strong (other than maybe less nobles talking about cheese and wine lol), it's not a complicated narrative but it's a departure from the usual FE fair. I.like all the conversations between units you can have that aren't supports, and the abilities for each character seem meaningful without being too crazy. This MIGHT be the one I go with first.

Cerulean Crescent is fucking wild. There is SO MUCH going on here, but more than anything I can appreciate how legitimately funny this is without being memey. It wasted no time even in the tutorial, which is...an INCREDIBLY efficient tutorial to show off what this game's mechanical vibe is going to be. I still don't understand Lunge, like I get what it does but it doesn't always work? It's unclear what "does not work when move is --" means. Music is great, art is great. Right away after the first stage you have so many items that effect characters to use, whether it's raw stats or growths. You get what appears to be a trainee unit immediately, you get an item you can use on anyways that gives +1 to everything but then -9 Luck (which, I mean, the trainee units has 10 luck and over 100% luck growth, so the choice is clear), a mini Angel Robe and another item to give +5% growth to every stat for a character of your choice. I hope they continue rolling out items like this, with pros and cons. I haven't played the second stage though because the shops in it are INCREDIBLY daunting lol.

The Lonely Mirror seems like the most traditional of these narratively and gameplay wise, at least initially, but the presentation and portrait work is very good, so that's not a bad thing at all! Dark Lord was as traditional as it gets and that was great. There's not really anything to SAY about this one initially, but that could change. The Lord seems fun which is always a plus lol.

Drums of War......I played this last, which was a big mistake given what it is and what time it was. I did NOT expect to get half a Genealogy chapter to start here, those FE4 castles on the map weren't fucking around (though they don't function, I imagine actual Geneology Romhacks are probably....difficult). But like....WOW. Advancing through this big map, gaining one unit at a time. It starts with the main characater being over leveled, but by the end everyone else has caught up. I sat there for like 7 minutes after beating it deciding what choice to make regarding taking the money or the character. There's no obvious resource I can go to for something like this to find the answer, I had to go with my gut! The potential here seems wild. I guess my only worry is...the basis for the plot seems strong, I'm a bit worried about what the actual politics here are going to be lol. May just be paranoia lol.

Souls of the Forest, feels pretty traditional immediately, but it sounds like this one starts to fill it's niche on a slower burn. Already experiencing some of those wild growth spreads lol.

Those are all the ones so far, was going mostly in order here so there's still a few more to boot up.

Also regarding VQ, I actually restarted this one midway through chapter 2. Was feeling like the tuning was a bit off and remered the difficulty descriptions, and lo and behold it only took a minute of searching to find people saying normal mode was harder than most hard modes, and easy was harder than most normals. Not like a challenge doesn't interest me, but wanna do these in a more standard difficulty level when I can.

Biggest takeaway is that it's always disappointing when you hit select on the stat screen and don't get those growth rates, lol.

If anyone does know how to get Andaron Saga, I would appreciate it. Despite the shakey origin I do want to at least try it, it sounds like it's well regarded when separated from it's creator.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I still don't understand Lunge, like I get what it does but it doesn't always work? It's unclear what "does not work when move is --" means

You can't use Lunge on an enemy that can't move. Enemies who can't move have "--" on their stat screen where the move stat would normally be.

OHHHH OK, gotcha. So that's an anti boss warp thing I assume but it does mean there's stationary enemies it doesn't work on as well.

Got the rest of what's been mentioned here to try later. Also grabbed one I'm swing a lot of praise for called The Dream of Five.

Seeing there's some super well known hack called Deity Device which is supposed to be a huge deal, but the creator delisted it themselves?

Edit: also grabbed Justice & Pride. I haven't actually grabbed The Last Promise since Panthers isn't the only person I've seen say it's more noteable for it's legacy than as an actual game.

I remember the name Deity Device and that I was interested, but that was years ago and I definitely don't recall any details about it or what might have happened to it.

I played and enjoyed the last promise. I think vision quest is better though

Thanks to this topic I'm now playing Dark Lord and the Maiden of Light too.

I still plan on continuing Engage, but no Somniel stuff + available on my phone means it's just easier to pick up and play.

Just saw Dark Deity 2 is coming out....today?? I haven't even played 1 yet! Hell, I didn't know they were even doing a sequel.

Gheb Fire Emblem

/s

I have a dream FE hack I have imagined from long before this, of Seinfeld Emblem.

Purely for Armor Knight George in his Gore-Tex jacket.

https://youtu.be/lt6KRKHpKhY?si=8eFHz0LnTL9lV2W_

Tell me that's not an Armor Knight.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Just saw Dark Deity 2 is coming out....today?? I haven't even played 1 yet! Hell, I didn't know they were even doing a sequel.

nice, I just bought it

Starting tonight's session, and let me just say it has never been more obvious about what game is the primary influence on a hack than the horrible growth rates across the board and indoor penalties for mounted units up front and center in Bells of Byelen.

just played dark deity 2 for 4 hours, its a pretty great game so far, would def recommend to any fire emblem fans

Is it a direct narrative sequel or a separate game from the last one, like, well...Fire Emblem sequels lol.

I never played the original so I'm not sure. I would guess a sequel based off of some of the character interactions

Man this topic is messing with my head. I always play a hack through from start to finish before starting a new one, the only time I stop is if I'm not really liking it much. Seeing someone whose approach is to start like six different hacks all at once is making my brain start swirling and I'm not even the one doing anything.

Given how many I'm playing tonight it's only gonna get worse!

I'm going to pick one at a time after of course lol. I don't have the patience to bounce between a dozen roms consistently.

I do have like 15 copies of "Sacred Stones" on my PC now, which is fun.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I haven't actually grabbed The Last Promise since Panthera isn't the only person I've seen say it's more noteable for it's legacy than as an actual game.

It sounds like someone can't handle the weight.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I have a dream FE hack I have imagined from long before this, of Seinfeld Emblem.

Purely for Armor Knight George in his Gore-Tex jacket.

https://youtu.be/lt6KRKHpKhY?si=8eFHz0LnTL9lV2W_

Tell me that's not an Armor Knight.

Jerry and Elaine keep "tink"-ing.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Is it a direct narrative sequel or a separate game from the last one, like, well...Fire Emblem sequels lol.

IIRC it's a direct sequel. I never did play the first but the new one looks good, and in speaking some with the developer it sounds like he's learned some lessons on the things that were most criticized on the initial effort. Will have to get to it one of these days.

Time to go over this batch! I have to imagine I'm just gonna settle on one now, unless something else of major note crosses my eyes.

Just to get it out of the way, Justice & Pride I blinded off basically right away, didn't even get to a real map passed the prologue. The writing just wasn't doing it for me. I think any attempt to make something like this is astoundingly impressive, but I don't think I'll be racking this one unless someone gives me reason to otherwise.

Similarly, Code of the Black Knights didn't work for me out the gate either, which is a shame because it seems like all the animation and combat assets in this game were made from scratch, which is wonderful, but I'm just not coming with this one here.

One of the games I tried was a demo of something newer which isn't out yet, Dreaming of Other Twilights. This IS DEFINITELY early, some animation bugs and weird cutscene transitions, but feels like this could end up being a real deal. It seems....overtuned, difficulty wise, but it's v0.3 and only has 4 chapters out so gotta give it some slack.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/c/c6318c06.png

Bells of Bylen, yeaaaaaaah this is Thracia. I was questioning my interest in this before downloading, but it didn't register to me that the game would still be a single narrative even if the stages were telephone developed. Thought is was gonna be 30ish unrelated chapters lol. Pretty interesting start to the game with the prison right out the gate, lots of capturing too! The timer and item shuffle on the first stage definitely results in you hitting the ground running.

Four Kings has a pretty funny start here, one of your main Lords just being a total asshole and basically having you be the "bad guy" right off the bat. I'm sure it'll twist into a Luke Fon Fabre adjacent situation at some point, but can't say I'm on board immediately lol. Showing what I assume is a huge chunk of the playable cast coming to join you and then having all but one of them leave because you're a dipshit was fun.

Morrow's Golden Country has me VERY interested. Similar color pallet to Cerulean Crescent which I like, unironically think having the full bios all the way down to preferred pronouns is fun lol. Clearly going for heavy diversity here (which a lot of these do which I like, but it seems more pronounced here...no pun intend, but even besides that I was pretty sold on the basic but particular prologue map and what seems like one of the new in depth implications of the skill system. Very curious how the Radiant Dawness of this one goes down, already nailing that part of it with the base conversations.

Dream of Five, this seems like a REAL potential winner to me, not sure why it's clicking so much but the story has me interested. Feels pretty similar to Vision Quest in why I'm drawn to it, actually. Some really good spritework and animations here, too. This is near the top of the list so far.

Finishing it off with Sacred Echoes, which is definitely the strangest one I played in how not strange it is! A DEMAKE of the REMAKE Shadows of Valentia. I am absolutely stunned by what they've done here. This is without a doubt the best LOOKING mod so far, with the most impressive assets and music and animations. Yes, it's all based on Echoes, so it's not like I can give them a half credit for story, but it's still whole made by the creator here. It also says they've redone and created new maps (Echoes was the best 3DS FE game as we ALL KNOW, other than having some unfortunately bad maps), as well as added new characters (I stopped at stage 3, but they added a new Thief), and retooling the dungeons into actual stages for...obvious reasons. But, like, they still have the fountains and prayer statues inside those stages themselves! It's all here and then some, even more feature rich than the 3DS game, including the option to share convoy between Alm and Celica.....that said....even though this is arguably the most impressive release so far, it's also way down towards the bottom of the list I'm priority because at the end of the day it's still a game I already played lol.

So now I just got a decide. I didn't think it would be this difficult.

Surprising even myself, I'm pushing forward with Morrow's first. Maybe it's my Tellius love lol. Having PoR style supports is a big part of it, since I typically see like....4 or 5 support conversations in an entire playthrough of any given GBA game (I know at least one of these other games said support building was based on deployment rather than adjacency, but can't remember which), so I imagine I'll inherently get easier access to the character building in this one than the rest. Lesbian Mage Lord doesn't hurt!

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Lesbian Mage Lord doesn't hurt!

You had my attention but now you have my interest

The characters have all been strong in general 5 chapters in! Even the ones who have barely had any lines seem good.

That hack's writing kind of drove me crazy with all the ellipsis spam in every conversation. I found the story pretty engaging early on but I didn't like the latter part of it at all.

As a Ryukishi lover I can handle ellipses for days.

Dammit now I can't stop noticing them lol