Hello, my name is Jason. I have been a big fan for the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem games ever since I first played them on an emulator on my crappy middle school Chromebook. I fell in love with FE7 pretty quickly even though I sucked at it lol. I also ended up playing FE8 and FE6 over time.
While I am quick to herald FE7 as one of my favorite GBA games of all time, it is far from perfect. There have always been certain parts or aspects of FE7 that I just don’t look forward to whenever I start a new playthrough of the game. The game also feels a bit outdated in certain ways, and arguably a bit clunky by today’s standards.
Thus, I introduce my very first ROM Hack, Fire Emblem 7: Reignited! Please, think of it as a rebalance to Fire Emblem 7; an alternative experience to play FE7. As this is my first hack, I have not changed too much from the base game. I did not mess much with the game’s plot or other major things.
As of now, my hack is well on the road to being completed, filled with changes that will hopefully impress both first-timers and veteran FE7 players alike:
With that being said, I hope you look forward to what I have in store so far. I would be very grateful for any feedback you guys may have.
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Increased difficulty on all modes
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Updated map textures and color palettes
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5 new playable characters (support conversations in progress)
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New and previously unused weapons/items
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Increased music variety and sound effects
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100% completion is possible
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Better dialogue and weapon/item descriptions
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Stat adjustments for items, weapons, and characters
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Massive quality of life improvements
- Difficulty
It’s no secret that Fire Emblem 7 is generally considered to be on the easier side of Fire Emblem games, especially on normal mode. Because of this, I have made the enemies noticeably tougher on every difficulty in the game. All enemy class growths total to 280%. Enemies will also gain hard mode bonuses on lyn hard mode and eliwood hard mode. On hard mode, the enemy stats are almost comparable to FE6 hard mode enemies, making for quite a challenging experience.
In addition to statistical gains, enemies also brandish better, more varied sets of equipment. Too often do enemies use the same generic weapons repeatedly, failing to test the player’s knowledge of weaponry. Bosses also benefit from the above as well, becoming increasingly better equipped the further into the game you go.
Speaking of bosses, the final chapter has undergone some radical changes. I won’t spoil everything, but let’s just say that you’ll be fighting many, many more familiar faces… it will be very very hard.
- Updated map textures and color palettes
I have made texture edits to nearly every map in FE7, some minor and others much more distinguished. I always found some of the maps in FE7 to be rather bland or just straight up not looking that good. Despite not having the greatest track record when it comes to art, I do hope my cosmetic touches to the battlefield make each chapter a little more memorable without interfering with gameplay.
Other graphics, such as battle animations have been updated slightly. The color palettes of certain characters have been adjusted and I have activated Kishuna’s normally unused battle animations. Other unused battle animations have also been imported from the other gba FE games (female nomads, female druids, etc.). Previously unused graphics such as weapon icons and cutscene graphics have also been inserted.
The 3 main Lords are much more expressive in their text conversations between each other and other characters. In vanilla, I found that their facial expressions hardly alter, frequently making their appearance hardly befitting the context of the situation.
- 5 new playable characters
All but one of these characters already appear in the story, but now they are actually playable in the game.
First up is Jake, a pirate. Yes, the very same pirate who you see if you visit Anna in chapter 16x. In this hack, you will meet Jake on Chapter 17: Pirate Ship regardless of whether you’ve seen Anna or not, and he decides to tag along on your journey. In a twist atypical of members of his class, Jake sacrifices some speed and strength for some great skill and more solid durability. As for promotion troubles, you’ll be in for a nice surprise later.
Next is Terra, a Sacaen nomad who fled to the Dread Isle to avoid brewing tensions between the Sacaen clans. You can encounter her in Chapter 18x: Imprisoner of Magic as a green unit. She holds the honor of being one of two Nomads in the game and also the only playable female version of the class. She’s not one to talk much with others outside of Sacaens, but she can contribute on the battlefield with her high strength, defense, and skill.
This is a much more familiar face. The very fortune teller who has tagged along with your party for over half of the game, Hannah, is now playable. As soon as it seems like she abandons her fortune telling services in Chapter 23: Four Fanged Offense, she volunteers to continue traveling with the crew in exchange for a guaranteed life of retirement in castle Ostia after the war, bringing along a new invention as she does so. In line with her witty nature, Hannah is an unusual Druid. She is very much a glass cannon with high Magic, Speed, and Luck, but low HP, Skill, Def, and even Res. Her weapon ranks sit at an impressive A rank Dark and B rank Staves.
Following Hannah is the fourth and most irregular of the bunch. Present for only a single chapter, Murdock may join you in your attempt to defend Zephiel in Chapter 26: Battle Before Dawn. He’s a powerful prepromoted General with great HP, Strength, Defense, and enormous Constitution. However, he will not be convinced easily. Suspecting something strange at hand and finding the orders he was given to be suspicious, Murdock defies his king’s orders and heads towards Zephiel’s manse, following his own accord. He will show up with a small detachment of Soldiers several turns into the battle. He can be reasoned with by talking to him with any of the three Lords, but only after someone has engaged Murdock in a round of combat. Murdock can be a useful ally in this otherwise tough chapter. He even has growth rates, although again, his contributions will be no more after this chapter. It is not required to keep him alive, but it is recommended.
Lastly, and perhaps most deserving, is Uncle Jan. His inability to be recruited in vanilla FE7 always irritated me to no end, given how reasonable it seemed in his dialogue with Nino and others. To recruit him, the player must have played through Chapter 26x: Night of Farewells. Then, in Chapter 27: Cog of Destiny, the player must deploy Nino on the map. With this done, Jan will appear at the start, resolving to not run away and help Nino build a new family. Despite being a late joining, unpromoted Brigand, Jan does possess some potential. He has massive growth rates overall, nearing a 400% total, although most of it is geared towards defensive stats. This reflects his cowardly nature, with his massive speed, luck, def, and even good Res growths standing out in particular. His offenses are comparatively average. Even his base stats are high enough to contribute something for his join time, and he’s fast enough to not get doubled by even the infamous hard mode Valkyries. As for promotion, Brigands now also promote using Ocean Seals. Finally, he’s a playable Brigand! Who doesn’t like that?
- New weapons and items
I’ve added several new toys to play with; some new, and some normally unobtainable within the game. Some weapons return from older games, such as Aircalibur, while others like the Runic axe are entirely new. Other unobtainable items like the Wind Sword can also be found.
- Music and sound effects
Some sound effects have been added to battle animations that lacked them previously. Additionally, certain vanilla and new bosses have different battle music themes. More sound effects are also added to cutscenes.
Some of the music played on certain chapters are now different.
- 100% completion
By technicality, FE7 is actually not possible to 100% complete without the use of external tools. There are normally 2 songs in the sound room that cannot be obtained within gameplay, but only by use of the Mario Kart Double Dash bonus disk. While this is arguably the stupidest thing to be unhappy with on the entire planet, I still believe that being able to make the true 100% completion of FE7 achievable is a good thing, no matter how nonexistent the real reward is. Now, the 2 songs are unlocked last, after every other song in the sound room has already been unlocked.
- Better dialogue and descriptions
Being originally from Japan, the international versions of FE7 are not without text errors. Thus, I took it upon myself to fix every single localization, grammatical, and translational error within every possible support conversation, cutscene dialogue, battle quote, or map event that I could find. This also fixes the confusion of Nergal not referring to Aenir as his wife’s name instead of a location.
In a similar vein, weapons and items have had their descriptions updated to be more specific, and most importantly, more accurate. For example, the Rapier, Mani Katti, and Wolf Beil now correctly state “Effective against knights, cavalry.” instead of stating it’s “good against infantry”, erroneously implying that they are effective against any foot unit. Meanwhile, Vulneraries now state the exact amount of HP they restore, Mines state exactly how much damage they deal, and the dancer rings list the exact stat bonuses they grant for one turn.
- Adjustments to weapons, items, and characters
All bows have had their might increased by 1 and their hit increased by 5. Combined with the reduced might of Javelins and Hand Axes (-1), this should make Bows highly competent, at least at a distance. The short bow is reworked to allow attacking at close range, but might and accuracy have been lowered slightly, along with removing its crit bonus.
Blades have slightly better accuracy, marginally higher might, and slightly less weight. Don’t get complacent though, they’re still much heavier than other swords. All steel weapons have marginally decreased weight. The Slim weapons give a small bonus to crit; it’s not as high as Killer weapons, but it’s high enough to the point of being a realistic possibility. Additionally, their might has been increased slightly.
The Devil Axe has received a bevvy of buffs that would be very time consuming to list here. Ultimately, it is more reliable and practical to use. Despite this, if you still don’t want anything to do with it, you can sell it instead for a much higher value.
Poison weapons have significantly increased might and hit, although not as much as their regular Iron counterparts. The poison status condition itself is also deadlier, dealing a minimum of 5 damage per turn. To compensate, the amount of enemies wielding Poison weapons have been greatly reduced in order to reduce annoyance.
Vulneraries now heal units for 15HP. Even as early game healing items, I find that 10HP tends to lose its value pretty dang quickly, especially after the player gains access to more reliable forms of healing. Mines also deal 20 damage instead of a measly 10, although I think you know what most players actually use them for…lol.
Healing staves give slightly increased exp and weapon exp. It might not seem like much at first glance, but any amount helps level up your unpromoted healers quicker.
The dancer rings cannot be repaired with the Hammerne staff. The Warp staff also cannot be repaired with the Hammerne staff, and a Hammerne cannot repair itself (it’s not possible to obtain more than one Hammerne even in this hack by normal means but better to be safe than sorry).
Light magic as a whole has been buffed. All light magic tomes have lighter weight, even higher accuracy, and marginally increased critical bonuses. Almost all dark magic tomes have had their weight reduced significantly and their accuracy raised by a decent amount. Normally, most dark magic outside of Flux and the occasional Luna were either too heavy or inaccurate to be realistically useful.
Characters who are generally considered to be underpowered or bad relative to the rest of the cast have received some adjustments. Mainly, their base stats have been improved in one way or another. Their growth rates remain unchanged for the most part, and if they are, it is not so much that it completely changes the function/identity of the character. While I am not attempting to achieve perfect balance among all the units, as that is both mathematically impossible and not as fun, I do want to make it so that even the worst units can be used without feeling like you’re hitting yourself.
Nino, in particular, has received some pretty drastic changes. I would consider her reputation to be divisive, it is clear that most players agree that she is just not optimally good. Although my changes arguably still don’t make Nino anywhere close to “viable” or even good, I did have the goal of making her more appealing or fun to use at least. After all, isn’t that what drives people to train this character in the vanilla game anyways? The list of changes includes:
- Unlike other mages, Nino can use light magic. This fits her both personality wise and her talent as a young prodigy.
- Nino has accelerated exp gain as a Mage, on par with the same rate as thieves. She does lose this quirk upon promoting to a Sage, as a promoted Nino should ideally be able to handle her own, so consider when to promote her.
- She has even more massively inflated growth rates, tying with her Uncle Jan for a ridiculous 380%. Her defensive growths are still not that high, but all other stats are more likely to result in some very satisfying level ups (ding! ding! ding! ding! ding! ding! six stat level up).
- Nino gains an immediate C rank in Staves upon promotion.
- Nino starts with a Thunder tome instead of Elfire in Battle Before Dawn. This will help her to not potentially get doubled or destroyed as quickly.
- Nino’s base stats, including Con, is increased by 1. I know Con doesn’t have many standards as a stat, but being weighed down by even Fire before promotion is just annoying, especially for a growth unit.
However, her base stats have hardly changed otherwise. Please put down your torches, I only keep her low bases because I believe it’s simply a part of the character. I think buffing her bases too much would make Nino lose the charm of being the whole “zero to hero” character.
Nergal’s tome, Ereshkigal, has been made into a personal weapon. Don’t know why it wasn’t like this in the first place.
- Quality of Life improvements
- All difficulty modes are patched to be unlocked from the start.
- Merlinus gains more Movement after promotion, along with some stat boosts. (6 movement when promoted, gains 5 HP and 2 Def/Res upon promotion)
- Merlinus can have his own item inventory and trade with other units even during the heat of battle. This also allows him to visit villages and obtain items without the drawback of not being able to withdraw them from his inventory until the following chapter.
- Master Seals (renamed from Earth Seal) can reclass all non Lord classes, including Thieves, Pirates, and Brigands.
- The number of available promotional items have been increased and dispersed throughout the game. You won’t need to worry about the Ocean Seals or Fell Contracts as much. In particular, a Knight Crest is dropped by Darin in the Dragon’s Gate chapter. An Ocean Seal is also dropped by a Pirate in the Dread Isle and another Ocean Seal is stealable in Night of Farewells. An earlier Fell Contract is also dropped by Linus/Lloyd during their first encounter in Four Fanged Offense.
- Ocean Seals and Fell Contracts only sell for 5000, same as other promotional items.
- All promoted classes start with at least D rank in their newly gained weapon rank, with few exceptions. No more starting at E Staves for Canas!
- All unpromoted healers gain an immediate C rank in their new weapon type upon promotion. This is an attempt to compensate for at least 10 levels of being unable to fight, and thus being unable to raise weapon rank.
- The Member Card and Silver Card are unsellable, as to prevent accidentally selling them (and thus locking yourself out of secret shops or a nice permanent discount).
- Shops and Armories have better loot for sale. Secret shops have especially lucrative item selections in stock, making each of them more considerable to pay a visit.
- Certain battle animations for specific classes have been sped up slightly. Smoother pacing, same great pixelated action!
- Bartre only needs to be promoted to get Karla to appear. He doesn’t need to be any higher than level 1.
- A Glimpse in Time can be unlocked without the need to play Lyn’s tale. The requirement of playing Hector’s tale and killing Kishuna in the previous chapter is still necessary. Speaking of which…
- Kishuna is less impossible to kill in Imprisoner of Magic. Kishuna is notorious in his first appearance for being both ridiculously durable and dodgy. I’ve decreased his evasiveness and durability by a good amount and even added a droppable blue gem on him to really encourage players.
