[FE6] Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade - Purple Version, my first ROM hack and a fully complete one!

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Hello! Name’s Shiv. This is a ROM hack of FE6 made completely by myself from top to bottom. It’s also my first ROM hack that I took three months to make. I want to initially thank the Fire Emblem Universe community for the handful of questions I had when I was in the process of learning how to use FE Builder. This ROM hack is just an altered version of vanilla FE6 you could say. With 50 playable units, 90% of the cast being changed and new, every map being slightly or significantly changed, and so much more.

The game is slightly unstable, but is completely playable from start to finish with only the occasional softlock. It’s recommended to save state every couple of turns or so, just to be safe. I did my best is resolving as many errors and issues as I can, but still a small few remain.

Here is a download for the patch and patcher you can apply to your vanilla FE6 rom. I of course cannot provide a vanilla FE6 rom.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IEhMwqBnrqUXYXMnOsSLmRSuId8BCFHl

Some changes and additions are:

21 new weapons
Rebalancing of some weapon types
Changes to consumable items
Throne stat changes
Bosses have all their hard mode stats
All maps have be altered, either slightly or significantly, depending on the map.

And much more!

If you want a fully detailed list of all the changes made to the game, there is a document here you can view. I strongly recommend viewing this if you decide to play it.

I’d like to take the time to give credit where it’s due. All map sprites, portraits, battle sprites, item sprites, and weapons sprites are credited to the people on these sites that generously shared their work to be used publicly. The only hand I put into it is that I recolored the sprites to my liking.

Battle sprites and animations: https://emblem-anims.herokuapp.com/

Character portraits and map sprites: Communal FE Portrait collection (GBA)

I am open to any comments, advice, suggestions, and rationally constructed criticism of the game so I can help better improve it, as it is in its infancy stage. The best way to get ahold of me is through Discord at Shiv#9664.

If anyone does decide to play this, let me know! I would be tremendously grateful to anyone that decides to even give a little peek at this game.

Lastly, I got two of my irl friends playing this game along with me in an episodic series on YouTube, just in case you wanted to view gameplay of it before actually downloading it and playing it for yourself, since there is no trailer for this game.

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Downloaded the patch, chapter 1 changes seem pretty cool. Just a few quick things, none of which are super important.

  1. The bronze axe’s text is cut off for being too long. Maybe change it to something like “High durability, cannot crit” or just “cannot crit” as the durability is shown
    Edit: The hammer has the same issue. I would just say that it’s effective against knights. The effectiveness against generals is typically assumed
  2. Eliwood doesn’t have his D lance rank in the growths sheet
  3. There is a fighter on the east side and one on the north side of the first map with a swordreaver he can’t use
  4. Damas felt like a bit of a slog to fight, likely due to the fact that he has +2 def over the og version due to the gate. The swordies dink him for like 2 damage a pop, and he nearly one shots them in return. I would reduce his defense by 2 or 3

Looking forward to playing more

Final Map advice (spoilers, of course)

I went ahead and looked at the final map through Febuilder, because I was sorta concerned when I saw you recommend that all 50ish units be trained. First off, the final map doesn’t seem to require anywhere near 50 units, I would say it’s quite fair with 15-20 on the player’s side. Second, if you want to make it so that all the units are necessary, you should probably stick to a smaller group of really powerful enemies. From experience, when I see 50 enemies with okay gear and decent stats, I immediately break out the juggernaut to just kill them all on enemy phase. It’s unfortunately just not super interesting combat wise in games where it isn’t balanced (like Fe4). Something like Light from FE7 or the Awakening desert map with Aversa are good starting points for maps that revolve around a small group of powerful enemies. Also, do note that Roy one-shots Idunn unless you significantly change the defense values or the Binding Blade (which you might’ve). Final thing, if you are going to make it basically required to train all the units, you might want to look into increasing the amount of units that can be deployed in most chapters, as a rotating army is sorta hard to do in FE6.

I’m sorry if that came off as harsh, but as the final map currently stands, it doesn’t seem to achieve what you want it to. Obviously, you know your game better than I do, so take all that with a grain of salt

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First off, thanks a lot for giving it a look and try! I appreciate it.

  1. I’ll definitely look into trying to shorten some names and descriptions to some items to avoid those ugly cut off points visually. Thankfully they’re easy fixes.

  2. I’ll fix that sheet regarding Eliwood’s weapon rank, thank you for pointing that out.

  3. Some early game units are unable to use the weapons I’ve equipped them with. I really don’t know what causes this but I’ll do my best to fix it. Thankfully once you get to the later half of the game it is much less of a reoccuring issue.

  4. Damas might be too tanky yeah. He simply has his hard mode stats but the throne might make him a bit too sturdy, even though now he’s less dodgy.

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Tell me something is indeed purple.

BTW maybe add some photos to let people see what is the hack about?

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That’s a good idea, thanks.

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Played a little bit more of it (up to the map where you get Lisa/Lugh and Ling/Chad, and I think Alexander and Lisa seem a bit too similar. They have really similar base stats, the same anima rank, and most of their growths are within 5-10% of each other. I would maybe look into either changing one of them into a different class (dark mage, perhaps) or just changing their growths to make them both stand out a bit more (maybe one is strong and the other is tanky, or something like that)

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Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll adjust it so both of the mages are more differentiated from each other through stats.

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Map Sprite & Battle Animations aren’t matching.
Like Armor knight using zelgius animation cavalier using Knight lord animation.
Mario Doesn’t seem to have a moving map sprite.

Screenshot_2022-06-11-11-50-37-88_1c32051bceab2dedffe959d24a28f3ed
Screenshot_2022-06-11-11-50-37-88_1c32051bceab2dedffe959d24a28f3ed1920×886 164 KB

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Found a bug on my end- attacking enemies with Kea at 2 range softlocks the game (she attacks like normal, but the experience bar never shows up following combat). This doesn’t happen every time- the first time I noticed it she was attacking an armor knight. Turning animation off seems to fix that.

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Can’t say for sure, but I’d hazard a guess that this isn’t a bug and is instead a design choice on the author’s end.

I can only speak for myself, but I like the changes I’ve seen so far. Although I agree with you on the issue of Mario’s map sprite.

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Yeah, I noted that in the Google document that I recommend disabling healer animations as it can potentially softlock the game. I have no idea what causes it, but I am aware of it to warn other players at least.

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You are correct, it was intentionally designed that way. As for Mario on the map sprite, it does turn invisible sometimes yes, though I’m not sure how to fix it. Thankfully Mario is still completely functional.

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Didn’t see anything about it on the google doc, so I’m assuming thieves don’t promote.

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removed B route

So you have chosen death.

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They do not, but i really wish i knew how to implement that into FE6.

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I think there are some patches out there that let them promote. I might be wrong though.

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To make thieves promote, just create the new class and the promotion item.

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I’d recommend adding an obtainable anti-cavalry weapon to chapter 4. Erik’s defenses are so high (when the gate bonus is taken into account) that Roy’s rapier is the only way to take him out without chipping away at him with magic.

Just a thought.

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I checked and both a halberd and horseslayer were both obtainable from chests in the previous chapter (Chapter 3) to help out with the upcoming chapter 4.

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My bad, I think I just forgot to equip them. Wish I’d remembered…

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