Happy International Hack Release Day, everyone! Since I’ve already outdone any other joke I can make on this site, I am instead choosing to do the funniest thing of all and take the community name for April Fools completely literally by releasing a fully-complete fully-serious minihack I’ve been sitting on for… gods, two years now? Once upon a time, this was supposed to be a MARTH entry (yes, MARTH, not CELICA or SIGURD), but I ran half a year past the deadline because I was putting too much work into it. Anyway…
Fall of Shambhala is a one-chapter challenge hack, and a prequel to my first full-length project, Three Legacies. Set at the end of the war in Fodlan in a timeline where all the House Leaders united, play as the doomed remnants of the ancient civilization of Agartha as they make their final stand against the soon-to-be-legendary heroes…
Features
Challenging gameplay, pushing the powerful tools at your disposal to their limits!
Use summons, siege tomes, skills, and status effects to fight back against the enemy’s overwhelming advantage! Weapons and most staves are unbreakable – there’s no need to hold back!
Modern Danger Radius highlighting with Select, with bosses’ ranges automatically highlighted each turn!
Far more custom graphics assets than a one-chapter hack deserves, including mutliple original animations!
Optional conversations and battle quotes for the entire playable cast!
Happy to see this Mini Hack getting it own FEU Page. I remember finding this hack on FEU Discord server #playtest channel. The Animation, The Portrait and Unique Skill is really good on this one. I hope everyone give this Mini Hack a try
This was certainly uh something. I fully admit every time I play a romhack or FE in general that I am bad at Fire Emblem, so my experience may not encapsulate another person’s experience, but this didn’t pull any punches from what I felt. I lost on turn 4 (I think?) after one of the escapees got got by a wyvern rider which I didn’t have the units to check, but I already knew I was going to lose at that point, characters were dying by the dozens every single turn. I had lost both Bias and Pittacus, both of the cavaliers, and Nemesis and the cantor by then. This was on Normal difficulty for clarification. I imagine I need to figure out how to use the units given better (I was unable to sweep up everyone in front of the throne on turn 1 and had to Sleep the last one to avoid a game over, I assume you’re supposed to be able to clean them up), but I’ll win. Eventually.
Overall, though, what I got to see before my unfortunate demise was great. Loved the unique animations, they all are really cool to watch and have a lot of personality to them, and I didn’t encounter any bugs or errors aside from a missing period in Felakhos and the horse archer’s talk convo (didn’t catch it in a screenshot sadly, only realized it was missing when I already clicked A). All the player units having battle convos is a cool way to introduce them a little when we get all of them dropped into the battlefield without prior introduction.
Assorted thoughts
I love the music, but honestly, I am not sure if Apex of the World really works as the map music? For what is supposed to be Agartha’s desperate final stand, it is way too optimistic and triumphant. It works for the heroes in this case, yes, but you’re fighting against them here. Something more depressing would be more fitting in my opinion (though I am not sure what is there to select from the 3H tracks converted to GBA soundfont, at least those I am aware of)
Claude desperately needs a chin. I am not going to comment on the portraits because I myself am hardly a sprite artist and they do their job, but this came to me as soon as I saw him.
I feel like Rhea’s portrait should be lifted up? This is very much a nitpick, but she looks as short as Edelgard or a child unit here, while canonically she’s fairly tall.
Elys’s parents wield her weapons that’s so cool raaah
So from what I understand, Liana can only use staves after a conversation with her husband? At least that’s when I could start using it (I couldn’t use it on turn 1) I’m not sure if it’s communicated anywhere, because it was very confusing to me and I thought it was a bug.
I’m not sure on Nemesis’s pallette, honestly. Flesh-colored armor trim is weird
Why is Cornelia still named Cornelia and not Cleobulus? None of the other Agarthans are using their disguses or disguise names, and it seems pointless to be using Cornelia’s face and name at that point, she isn’t fooling anyone. I’d also ask why Cleobulus, Solon and Kronya are still alive, but I assume this has to do with Three Legacies lore.
Dire Thunder doesn’t seem to hit the unit in the core, rather next to them - on 2 range at least. This is fully a nitpick but it was odd to me.
Love that Shamir’s death convo takes into account whether Catherine is dead (though I don’t really ship those two myself :shrug: ). In general I found the battle quotes and unit conversations good.
Thanks for giving it a try and thanks for the feedback! Difficulty is definitely on the high end, you’re welcome to lower it to easy if you’re struggling — it still won’t actually be easy lol. I’m known for my minihacks being rather tough.
I’ll fully admit to some of the portraits being a bit old and crusty, with Rhea and Claude being the obvious most in need of replacement — they’re old mugs I made early in working on 3L and never got around to redoing because there were always higher priorities. The Agarthans are the focus here, so they got the high-effort graphics lol.
With regard to Cornelia still being Cornelia, her talk convo with Kronya explains that she prefers this to her original body — she’s the only disguised Agarthan we never see revert to true form in either Houses or Hopes, so I decided to add this detail in part just to justify keeping the recognizable design. It also gives some variety in how the Agarthans view such things — Kronya’s response in that convo is basically “stay away from me if you’re going to look like that”, as she like many others is disgusted by having to pose as a surface-dweller, but Cornelia/Cleobulus doesn’t care. (Also, there’s a point in Hopes where, likely due to translation error, Thales refers to Cleobulus as a “he” which spawned a wave of trans Cornelia headcanons and I figured it would be fun to leave that interpretation on the table.) As for why they’re still alive, it’s an alternate timeline so things went differently and I wanted to have all the big faces here. Kronya has a battle quote with Jeralt that explains Yuri interfered with her assassination attempt, so that’s a big divergence point.
If Liana can’t use staves on turn 1, that’s definitely a bug and one I don’t remember running into… You sure you didn’t just check with nobody damaged? I do recall global-range Physic having some slight visual jank but the targeting always seemed to work fine in testing…
Dire Thunder anim is a case of me going “it works well enough this way so I’d rather not import two versions of the anim just to have the ranged attack be slightly better-centered”. And with regard to Nemesis’s battle palette, skin-colored armor trim is kind of just a necessity with a lot of animations due to the game’s color constraints, you just don’t notice it with the vanilla white skintone — honestly, if someone was going to call out his palette for being weird I would’ve thought it would be for the red bits, which was me breaking the usual Hero anim paletting rules a little to go for that “unstable evil magic sustaining him” vibe.
So not problem there, I must have been not checking where I was placing her.
Ah, I see, makes sense. I may have been able to see that if I didn’t lose and had no questions then. I’d still maybe keep the Cleobulus name but Cornelia is fine in this case I suppose.
Yeah that one I’m aware of. For what it’s worth, if I recall correctly Cleobulus’s unused data in 3H has him as male, the name is also masculine (as opposed to, say, Kronya) and I doubt there is a gender restriction for Agarthan disguise tech so I personally just kind of accept it lol.
Oh, I didn’t even pay attention to that, I did see the reds but I assumed it was just usual secondary sprite colors. That’s pretty cool.
I did plan to maybe switch to Easy, but I want not to disappoint the proud civilization of Agartha by giving up so quickly, so I will do some more Normal attempts later and if I still can’t crack it I will see what I can do.
Tried this last night, was really fun, very difficult tho, as others have mentioned. Is this hack meant to be beaten deathless, or is it sometimes going to be helpful to sac units for tempo/to keep your important dudes alive?
Will definitely need to lower the difficulty more since I played too defensively in previous attempts (and also neglected to realize what some skills did, so my failure’s fully on me) but it still stands that I’m enjoying my time with this—especially straight off the heels of a five year-overdue replay of 3H!
I enjoyed the character conversations pretty quickly conveying dynamics to the player and how each one plays, not to mention how much pressure the map puts on you to not stay complacent. Myson and Thales are my favorite so far, of course. A NosTank lord is so fun to play as. Would absolutely recommend to anyone who’s a fan of the 3H world and high-pressure gameplay.
It’s a one-chapter hack where most of the playables canonically die at the end. You should try to keep units alive to the extent you can because losses make future turns harder, but deathless is neither required nor expected (though it is doable).
My minihacks in particular are known for being extremely difficult – I pull no punches when designing in a context where deaths are acceptable, units can’t get stat-screwed, items can’t be missed, and there’s no concerns over difficulty curves and long-term burnout. 3L isn’t like, a walk in the park, but it’s a much more normal difficulty level and considerably easier than this or Spaghettimancer’s Apprentice.
Yeah both this and sppaghettimancer sure feel taunting id say spaghettimancer more with its unique skills and all.
good to hear 3L is much more normal
I still gonna try again to beat this one as I really like the premise.
As a Three Legacies enjoyer, I’m pretty excited to play it!
it’s an alternate timeline so things went differently and I wanted to have all the big faces here. Kronya has a battle quote with Jeralt that explains Yuri interfered with her assassination attempt, so that’s a big divergence point.
