Absolutely fantastic hack, started for the funny chickens and stayed for the political corruption. Long live Galeforce Gecko!
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Yeah due to some weirdness with how defence tomes were set, silence ignores them unfortunately.
Well I just finished.
What can I say, it was absolutely amazing. While Iâm a little sad there isnât a absolutely âperfect" ending. In a way, the endings we got were absolutely phenomenal. I liked Orianaâs more, but both were great.
And then the two alternate endings, one was silly. The other very sad. A gane over in all but name. Iâm glad the gane warns you ahead of time to not save over your old save.
I really, REALLY liked how the units who had Prf weapons had only a small number of uses for them, but they refreshed every map. Made using them feel a lot easier. Although I did find a little bit of wackiness you can do. I played on Manster mode, which meant that when I got to the Puncture I could capture enemy units there. For personal reasons (and the danger) I only got the extra Siphon Spear and Fengyan, but still.
Absolutely nothing was going to bring down my Dune with 16 uses of her Siphon Spear. She was instrumental to helping me through The Green Tide and so much more.
3 Likes
About to do another run of this romhack since there is a 2.0 update, i wonderâŚdo all Modes Stack together??
Yes, you can use multiple modes at once.
Iâm thinking about doing one with mending mode. Making whatever special weapons they have be a part of their identity.
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Hey bro been playing the game for a while and I gotta say, I love you definitely one of my favorites too 5 rom hacks, hope you make a new one, one day but yeah rock on bro
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Very fun hack to play, good job my man
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How critical is it to get all side objectives for secret/true endings? I forgot to bring the torch to the ruins in chapter 6, so Iâm thinking about restarting my run here.
not very
Summary
there is exactly one thing in interlude that ties into unlocking the option to go into a noncanon secret ending that you are recommended to save into an alt slot to not ruin your main save when the branch comes anyway, otherwise the stuff in interludes dont generally impact main game ending stuff
itâs not the c6 quest at any rate
Came here on Dani Doyleâs recommendation, liking it a lot so far. Iâm at Irinde II and Iâm just wondering if thereâs a way to reach the chest in Annaâs shop? There seems to be an entrance marker, which makes me assume thereâs some secret passage or something, but I canât find anything.
@Rivian Though Iâm enjoying the writing, Iâve noticed a lot of grammatical errors in the text. I know enough of FE Builder to polish up the text if youâd like.
Also, Iâm curious if youâve ever read the webcomic Unsounded? It features a religion very similar to the Sect of Elis.
there is another event later on that happens if you do not deposit the torch in chapter 6 so youâre actually kinda fine here
Pushing the crate in the warehouse section will reveal the entrance.
I am tallying typos to fix, but Iâm quite behind at the moment. Feel free to post them though (and apologies in advance to anyone else thatâs also posted them.)
Unfortunately, I havenât. Seems pretty cool though.
1 Like
Been ages since I played through this game fully, and I recall there being a Misery Mode-locked dialogue somewhere in the latter half of the game. Beyond that, is there any reason to play that mode besides the challenge of it, and does having other modifiers influence such instances?
What a journey this was.
Cerulean Crescent features the most compelling cast I have seen in an FE ROM hack by several orders of magnitude. Most decent hacks have at least one nuanced and compelling character, the best of the best have two or three, CC features at minimum five even while limiting my praise to just the primary screentime-hogging characters. Most of this thread is filled with praise of Ellerie, but I really want to commend the writing happening peripheral to this character because so much of what makes Ellerie work is how she gels or contrasts with everyone else. Tower and Oriana work beautifully as ideological contrasts to Ellerie, but I also have to give props to Lindros for imposing most of the logistics of the work in a natural way and Mince for being a genuinely good person that also happens to have enabling tendencies because of that goodness. The main cast is just fantastic.
Itâs very normal for FE hacks to scrutinize or deemphasize the moral logic of official Fire Emblem games (which is vaguely monarchist and operates on a tortured form of deontology), usually in the form of explicit subversion of tropes. CC is quite unique in its approach to this because it opts not to interrogate the moral framework of the official games, but to completely excise their moral framework entirely. This is different from say, Hag in White or Drums of War, which repeatedly and explicitly emphasize the cruel reality of the purposefully upsetting conditions contrived. Cerulean Crescent is a game that says every faction wants to kill each other and thatâs more or less all there is to it. The emotional consequences of the gameâs wars are routinely and aggressively downplayed or made a literal joke of, only for the game to surgically employ a particularly somber line out of nowhere to yank you out of the general tone of frivolity. There are serious consequences to the wars being waged, but the game only reveals the true extent of these consequences at the very end, after youâve seen the complete picture and are prepared to make the one genuine story choice the game has. The player is the moral arbiter of the story, in that sense.
Switching to gameplay praise; Ellerie is not just a great character in the writing sense, but also most certainly my favorite gameplay execution of a main character in any SRPG. Even before I bring up her skills, Iâd have to say simply just making her a lance/staff unit was an incredibly inspired choiceâit immediate emphasizes her support utility while also allowing her to attack from a variety of ranges. The real beauty of the unit is her refresh ability on adjacent allies after killing a unit, an incredibly powerful effect that nonetheless has to be set up with forward planning and also presents an opportunity cost (she canât use a utility staff if sheâs attacking). This in tandem with her eventual canto was a consistent highlight of the game. The decision of what Ellerie does with her action(s) is usually what decides the battle tempo of the entire phase.
There were other great units of course: the entire opening squad seemed great. But I have a tendency not to use the starting squad in FE hacks because I think it often makes the game too easy. I can say it most definitely would be too easy here. I kept using Ellerie, Oriana and Pomelo, but the rest were benched early. (Gecko was also benched but that was because I simply wasnât impressed with her.) I probably would have used Tower more had I known he gets such absurd numbers with his promotion. Heâs a very similar unit to Ellerie which is probably intentional.
Wisp and Murky would be my other big highlights. Wisp is just fun as hell. Thereâs a few other hacks that do this âassassin that can slip past stuffâ shtick but I havenât seen one that gives them completely obstructed movement, and the real icing (pun intended) is her personal weapon. Murky is my favorite troubadour in any hack by virtue of being the only one I have ever bothered to use. Itâs a very simple thing to just give them a 1 range nuke button but it did immediately sell me on them. Many of the units were very charming/evocative even on a basic conceptual basis. The rock chucking ultra-fast cyclops, the wyvern rider named Francisca who uses a Francisca, the Jekyl & Hyde inspired lich, the awkward summoner with poor self-esteem that creates a statistically superior clone of himself.
To start with my more measured/analytical thoughts, the big one would beâŚwell, hackâs kinda easy ainât it? Not only in play/parameter balance but in basic premise. While I was discussing the game with a friend I described the mid-section of the game as âa fifteen chapter long victory lapâ and thereâs not much poetic license to that statement. You kind of just get the airship and you win. And you never stop winning.
This issue was, in fact, the very first thing that came to my mind when the airship was revealed. Quoting discord-me at the exact moment that happened in my playthrough:
How do we ever lose now, narratively speaking
We have an airship
This is probably why they donât add them in fire emblem
We can just go wherever we want and ignore whatever fights are bad to take
I do to some extent admire the commitment to the idea. Admire how you never nerfed or destroyed the ship via plot. All of the obvious logistical advantages of an airship are repeatedly showcased. ButâŚas a result of this, thereâs no credible strategic conflict for the majority of the story? You are a complete anomaly of force. As the chapters that involve the intervention of the airship also tend to be easy on a mechanical level, there is a likely unintentional ludonarrative here. That of a power imbalance becoming so severe that even the most sadistic of aggressors cannot really indulge in it, the complete deadening roteness of a battle already won. Thereâs a reason why FE stories tend to be underdog stories. The total lack of fight exhibited by the opposition certainly makes the moment-to-moment play of the game feel unique (no one else is doing this, certainly not with such clarity of intent) but Iâm not sure this âunique feelingâ is one that is actually a good thing or cohesive to Fire Emblemâs fundamentals.
As a parting shot, my pettiest gripe with this game is that I kind of hate Krynia. Maybe this is a good thing, as it is rare that hacks ever get me to muster the energy to even mildly dislike a unit via characterization, but in her case it is less like the character is disagreeable and more that the story is heavily contrived in her favor to the extent that it feels aggressively disinterested in exploring any complication of her mutant nature. The characterâs very existence is nothing less than a powder keg for the group but it feels like any and all discussion of the current and potential problems she presents is completely shut down by the insistence of Oriana that she stay. I donât mind characters being extremely obvious liabilities (B. Trayor is peak) or being gigantic jerks but it almost feels like the characters are completely blind to her volatile disease and her tendency to sycophantically cling to those in power.
In general I wouldâve preferred if the characters close to Ellerie, particularly in Ending B, eventually came to interrogate their relationship to Ellerie in a more meaningful and expressly personal way (Mince especially). It felt like way too much weight was being placed on the decision to create a monster army and not onâŚliterally every other obvious evil she presented, especially her tendency to use people as callously as possible and then get away with it with basic superficial niceties/bribery. It admittedly doesnât help that the âmorality of an artificial armyâ shtick was overdone to the point of tedium in Morrowâs Golden Country.
And while Iâm reading through some of the other comments I may as well necro my way into some common points about the hack:
- I didnât really find the names, general aspirations and status of specific factions confusing. What I did find confusing is the question of âwho is subordinate to whoâ in many situations where alliances existed/were formed. In particular, it seems like the Guild should have had a way stronger presence in the story given the power they apparently held.
- Another thing about the factional conflict is that the story kept introducing snotty nobles that expected extreme obeisance from others but I donât know where this attitude could even be stemming fromâthis is clearly not a world where the aristocracy hold tremendous influence. Everyone and their mother completely ignores class-based decorum. Even military command isnât taken seriously. Obviously the real reason this happens is because snotty nobles are easy comedy but like, when every single person in the universe ignores your made-up social customs, it doesnât make a lot of sense to keep demanding them.
- Berd was more than fine as a player unit. I donât even recall him missing an attack. Not sure why everyone is low-tier posting about him.
- Iâm not sure if the use of Oblivionâs Joy was a direct The Last Promise reference but that whole chapter definitely felt like an homage to the JRPG-type grandiosity of that era of hacks.
9 Likes
Interesting read, and Iâm glad you enjoyed it!
Funnily enough, this is actually intentional! In most fire emblem mid to late games, the playerâs army has become an unstoppable force of nature, and the fact that Ellerie steamrolls her enemies throughout the mid-late game storywise was meant to be a cheeky nod to that. (Though to be honest, this is kinda true from frame one. Hard to reinforce an underdog narrative when the core gameplay premise of CC is the player units having such a advantage over enemies!)
Thatâs an interesting point. The monsters was the tip off point, but only Tower really goes off against Ellerieâs previous stunts. The rest of the main cast really couldâve discussed this more.
While I definitely did have an overabundance of snotty nobles because I find them funny, I figured the Mainland would be a place where they hold real power instead of the sad excuse they are on the Crescent. Hope to explore a bit more of that in my next hack actually.
5 Likes
Unfortunately there are too many to list via screenshot. I plan to compile a text archive eventually, so I can point them out more easily then.
Anyway, finally finished! Quite the ride. I recall seeing an early post on this thread comparing the setting to Dungeons & Dragons, and I definitely got that vibe. There is something really appealing about a post-apocalyptic world filled with unfathomable magical effects people barely understand; itâs a constant whirlwind of mystery and intrigue. At the same time, I really enjoyed the metacommentary on that genre with Quilanâs speech at the end. In particular, her jab about the desire to commit violence without moral repercussions hit pretty hard, since that is a huge unspoken motivation for many of these set-ups and violent video games in general. I also loved the contrast between the fights against the Tide and the political conflicts; the whole theme of people choosing to divide themselves when they should be uniting against an existential threat was, uh, painfully accurate to real life.
I also appreciated how scathing you were towards nobility and monarchy. As a passionate monarch hater Iâm frequently annoyed and disappointed by FEâs bootlicking monarchism, and itâs the main reason I bounced off The Morrowâs Golden Country. I actually squealed with joy when Ellerie pointed out noble houses are just the result of some warlord who managed to secure a dynasty, because yes, thatâs all nobles really are! At the same time, I appreciate the nuance of showing how the meritocracy of the Crescent isnât perfect either, demonstrating that there is appeal to unified rule as well. These poor shmucks arenât going to have any genuinely good governments until someone figures out democracy.
The writing was also just incredibly funny. I was immediately hooked as soon as I read âStill incapable of healing the userâ on the Heal staffâs description, and your continued lampooning of FE tropes and mechanics never failed to deliver. Making all the descriptions in-universe thoughts from the protagonistâs perspective was also a really neat idea, and I was always excited when I encountered new characters or classes to see what Ellerie thought of them. I was also very impressed that you made alternate descriptions for the other protagonists â not just Oriana, but even one-offs like Rosetta and Vermillion. That shows a real attention to detail and love of the game.
Gameplay-wise, the broken characters were fun, but I do have to second the opinion that the game felt very easy (though I admittedly played on normal mode). By the midgame I felt like I was fighting every battle the same way and rarely needed to really use my brain, outside of maybe a few complex maps like 24. Everyone was able to steamroll enemies so easily, and Tower and Chixin were such defensive beasts I didnât really need to fear retaliation either. It might have been more interesting to give some enemies busted personal skills as well to even the playing field. (Rosetta sort of does in the final map, but itâs still pretty easy to overwhelm her.)
I actually liked how this steamrolling extended to the narrative, though. Iâm a sucker for competence porn, and it was really refreshing to see a protagonist who is a genuine tactical genius instead of one who just marches in and hopes for the best. Every one of Ellerieâs victories really did feel earned. I also disagree that the airship trivialized the narrative; I think you did a good job of contriving emergencies and downsides at points where it would have otherwise trivialized encounters, especially in chapters 18 and 19.
The characters were generally extremely good, to the point where I was disappointed I couldnât use all of them. (I generally prioritized the monster characters, and you get so many that it forced me to bench most of the human cast. Incidentally, the chickens are busted, lol.) I loved all the little conversations and subplots between the minor characters and the walkaround segments in general. One of my biggest complaints about mainline FE is how sectioned-off support conversations are from the main plot; I much prefer setups like this and Tellius where side conversations are just available to you for free.
Anyway, time for Ellerie Discourse.
Spoilers
She is an amazingly nuanced character. I kinda expected you to pull a Game of Thrones and Flanderize her into cackling evil to beat it over the playerâs head that sheâs the bad guy, but she still presents plausible and reasonable arguments for her actions even right up to the end. Given how she reacts to Towerâs betrayal (and her own death if you choose that route), I am willing to believe she truly thought using the war golems was the right thing, even though itâs objectively monstrous. You didnât take the easy way out by making her clearly evil and easy to hate, which I really appreciate. Real evil rarely takes the form of cackling villains with neon signs telling you theyâre evil; evil can be people you love who have done genuinely good things, but who still need to be stopped regardless.
Personally I think the point where she crosses the line isnât the war golems, but starting the war with House Heron. Every death from the war is on her shoulders. Even her justification to use the war golems rings hollow with this knowledge â she wouldnât have to be burying her soldiers if she hadnât sent them to war in the first place.
One detail I find interesting is that she uses the exact same justification for this as Rosetta does for betraying the Princess â that the outcome was inevitable, so she has no moral culpability. It frustrates me that she canât see her own hypocrisy, but thatâs also very realistic.
I felt like the endings were too much of a downer, though. No matter what you do the world is ravaged by war and tyranny, and most of the characters either die or resign themselves to miserable fates. For a story that was mostly lighthearted up to that point, it felt too jarring of a tonal shift.
I have to say I think Ellerieâs ending is better overall; I got the sense they were presented as whatâs best for the Crescent vs. whatâs best for the Mainland, but even in Towerâs ending the epilogue cards make it clear the Mainland collapses into civil war even without Ellerieâs involvement, so Iâd rather at least one place in the world is stable.
Remaining questions:
- Who is Dreadlich III? I kept expecting them to be recruitable but they never did anything. Just an Easter egg character?
- Whatâs the deal with Hightide? I expected it to be a postgame dungeon or something. Sequel bait?
- Whatâs up with Muoxingâs messages? I expected them to result in a sidequest, but nothing ever came of it. Did I miss something or are they just for flavor?
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As usual, Iâm grateful for the praise! Itâs kind of funny that I went in with DnD inspirations because I wanted to make something difficult to the typical focus on war and politics, and ended up heading in that direction anyways because I found that much more enjoyable to write. The illusion of choice.
Honestly good point, it probably got a lot less mention than it deserved. Doesnât help that Tower and Oriana and canonically the only people who know about this.
Unfortunately, Iâm just not going to be satisfying answers for these.
- Dreadlich III is one big joke and has no inherent meaning.
- Hightide is simply a location that was planned but didnât fit into the narrative, so itâs just used to represent the Pluckerâs influence.
- Muoxing unfortunately is just a meta thing.
You picked a really good time for this, because Iâve just caught up to all reported typos in the discord typo channel and am about to finish up stuff for the next update. Hopefully, mostly typo free after this one!
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Bug and Typo Update as promised, like half a year late!
With some more generous portraits for the famous Levin for some of the crowd âfavouritesâ.
Major Bug Fixes:
- Pluckier gaidens now still happen if Pluckerâs Gift is in Orianaâs party
- Give All now works above 100 items in the convoy
- Stopped possibility of over unit cap if Chixin is dead
- Hostile NPCs can no longer be moved through (thanks Ultra)
Minor Bug Fixes
- Flux is now properly D rank and not D.5
- Rondel dagger no longer has chest key function
- Rewrote berd skill to no longer have wrong AS
- Ship physic should work (but only for new saves)
- Ch20 secret house now works
- Fixed ch14 event if Fran/Ray dead and no one catches
- Fixed corsair animation bug for handaxes (ultra rare find)
- Dazzledart can shove
- Ch20x now has the item menu
- Ch20x-2 elixir house now has proper text box
- Plucker gaiden 3 uses right ID for end event
- Bug in waterfall where Ellerie eventing messes up
Bugs Iâm Writing Off:
- Break weapon to activate skill bug
- Anything to do with stairs
Bugs in Limbo Because I Canât Replicate Them
- Manster Mode ch3 issue with capture
Typos of course.
if you see any typos you reported and are still in the game, you have the right to call me a stupid idiot.
As usual, please continue to report typos and bugs if possible. I may be later as hell in acting on them, but Iâll still try.
13 Likes