Greetings friends! DarkJaden here. This is my latest project that I’ve been working on for a while now. I’ve always loved Marth’s world, his story, and his games. FE3 is probably my favorite way to experience the Shadow Dragon story in an official capacity. But something that always would hit the back of my mind when playing those games is “I wish there was more to this.” The world of Archanea is a fairly standard fantasy setting, but it’s still a rather engaging world. The characters, while fairly flat and underdeveloped as a result of the initial hardware limitations, are charming and endearing, like action figures that you can project onto.
The goal of this project is to recreate the story of Shadow Dragon from my own perspective. This is more than just a 1:1 remake of Shadow Dragon in the GBA Engine (shoutout to Ok_dude who made that incredible hack, featured here.) This is me, smashing my action figures together and retelling the story my own way lol.
Features the .ups file, credits document, and guide feature player bases and growths, and skill info
Guide featuring secrets in-game will be coming (but I do recommend trying to find them yourself )
Changelog
12/04/2024
Fixed a bug where Macellan and Dolph can’t promote with a Knight Crest
Fixed a bug where Minerva can’t promote wit the Master Seal when dismounted
Fixed an error where Boah is impossible to save in Chapter 13
Added a conversation in Chapter 12 that hints at the requirement to speak to Anna before recruiting Jake
Added conversations between Caeda/Marth and Lorenz in Chapter 21 prior to defeating Camus, indicating that you need to kill him in order to recruit him
Added secret event in Chapter 21
Added a related secret event in Chapter 23
Changed some character’s Res/Mag growths to better reflect the pure anti-resistance nature of the originals lol (as a result, the guide is a bit outdated in this regard)
Gave Maria a Prf staff that raises defenses a la Ninis’s Grace that gives her 100 EXP, to account for the fact that Paragon does not affect staff EXP
11/26/2024
Fixed a glitch where dismounted Wyvern Rider (Minerva) couldn’t promote with a Master Seal.
Features
A completely overhauled story, pulling from all sources of Marth’s story for inspiration. (Some dialogue from Shadow Dragon in particular is directly used, because I found it to be pretty engaging dialogue)
A 25-Chapter campaign, plus Endgame, including a new prologue, one brand new chapter, and two completely overhauled maps with different layouts and objectives
GBA mechanics mashed together with Archanea mechanics. Rescue, constitution, weapon weight, GBA-style supports, dismounting, and more are all present and accounted for!
51 playable characters (only 50 obtainable on a single playthrough), very ironman-friendly
One brand new character, and one character not playable in the original versions
References galore! Nearly every character that was cut from the roster (due to GBA’s limitation on party numbers) makes an appearance in some sort of cameo.
Limited skills (unlike my other hack, Project Jade, not every character gets a personal skill, and only a handful of classes and characters actually learn skills through leveling up)
Secret class-change events for several characters
What’s In-Progress?
Supports are completely blank. Each unit has a number of supports that work gameplay-wise, but no support conversations have been written.
I was kinda phoning it in during the last few chapters writing-wise. The game literally just plays the Tower of Valni “congratulations!” message when you beat the final boss cuz I haven’t had the energy to write the ending yet lol
Game balance is still wonky. I haven’t fully playtested the game for balance. So if you notice anything that feels really off-kilter, let me know!
I haven’t played much of FE5, so I’m not entirely sure. But there’s a couple characters who can change class either by engaging in certain talk conversations, or visiting certain villages with that specific character.
I’ve play tested at least the first half of it. My issue is my ADHD keeps telling me to restart the whole game any time I make small changes I playtested the hell out of Project Jade, but having actual players was the most helpful in fine tuning the balance for that one.
Looks promising but I kinda prefer the fe11 portraits over the custom ones cuz they looked weird af so it’ll be nice if it’s fixed but if you prefer it that way that’s fine too. Still this rom hack looks good and it gives the Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 vibe instead of the og/ds remake one.
I love the FE11 portraits Thorn made, but some of them just don’t do it for me (not because of Thorn’s work, but because the FE11 portraits kind of look like ass lol, especially Marth. What were they cooking with that one? Lol)
Yeah, I took a lot of inspiration from FE3 Book 1. I love the dismount mechanic, and I prefer the map designs from that game over FE1 and FE11. Aesthetically I tried to give it kind of a similar vibe with some of the color palettes and map pallettes. Once the game is in a more complete form, I actually plan on releasing a sort of remix version of it that follows FE3’s mechanics more closely: no con for weapon weight, stat caps at 20, that kinda thing
Fair point on Marth’s portrait and I admit that Marth’s and Caeda’s portraits that you made are fine wine though some of the others like Ogma and Wrys are rather questionable. Can’t wait to see the updates and more content of this game tho.
I’m still in the earlygame of this hack and I’ve been enjoying it thus far, but I do have a gripe with the decision to make Wrys unrecruitable in Ch 1. No healer for Ch 2 makes that map much slower than it otherwise should be, as you’re relying on Vulneraries and forts for healing. Sure, we get Lena in Ch 3, but I really didn’t enjoy the healer-less Ch 2.
Also, why was the effect of Caeda’s Wing Spear changed? No hate - I’m just curious.
Minor nitpick, but I noticed two grammar errors: “His Highness” and “Your Highness” should be capitalized, and you keep “his” and “your” in lowercase. Similarly, “prince” should only be capitalized when referring to someone’s name (ie. Prince Marth) and should be lowercase when simply saying the word with no name following it (ie. “you’re right, prince”). Sorry if this is too nitpicky, lol.
Otherwise, I’ve been liking this so far. I enjoy Shadow Dragon and the new story has been very fun to experience. Keep up the good work!
One last thing: at the end of your post, you noted that you’re accepting help for writing the last few chapters and supports. I’d be more than happy to help with writing.
I didn’t make Marth’s or Caeda’s portraits. I did make Ogma tho and I was proud of that one
The portraits I made were Ogma, Matthis, Merric, and Rickard. All the others were from the Repo.
Welcome to FE3 Book 1? Lol I decided pretty early on that Wrys would not be recruitable. FEGBA just doesn’t have enough space for all the characters.
I didn’t want the game to be one Effectiveness Emblem like FE11 is. Wanted to give the Prf weapons a bit more variety that just “good against 90% of the enemies”
This project is something I’ve wanted for a while. Are you planning to do Mystery of the Emblem as well? Regardless I will follow and help this project if i can!
I might! I’m less familiar with Mystery of the Emblem than Shadow Dragon, and I think some of the story changes I made might make Mystery of the Emblem difficult? But who knows!
)
I playtested the hell out of Project Jade, but having actual players was the most helpful in fine tuning the balance for that one.