Today I bring you a little hack centered around Echidna and the resistance force at the Western Isles, previous to the events of FE6. As the tittle suggest, this is a one-chapter map, were you will play as the resistance force trying to bring down a series of prisoner camps (towns/villages) secured by different bosses.
The hack is, for the most part, complete. Only thing that is missing are the supports, which I don’t know if I will ever implement them, and a hard mode. Now, with all this said, hope you enjoy the hack!
I came up with the idea of this hack almost instantly. After planning several other stories for hacks, I decided to simply go and make a single-map game to teach myself how to use FEBuilder and its different mechanics.
So instead of jumping into a totally new world and lore, I decided to do something that many FE could be familiar with: the Elibe series, especially with the FE6 portion of it, centred around Echidna and the resistance at the Western Isles. She is one of my favourite characters, so I choose her to star in this little project and see how it fares.
Synopsis
At Fort Oakland, the recently promoted Lord Oro comes to visit William, a commander in charge of a prisoner camp, ordering him to bring more Islanders to Mt. Eburacum’s mines. Meanwhile, a little group formed by resistance’s leader Echidna and three other members teams up with a ragtag team of mercenaries commanded by Lamorak. Both groups will launch an attack to save all the prisoners and take Fort Oakland down.
What this hack includes
8 Playable Characters
A sole (yet large) map, with different “villages” to visit and people to save
4 bosses, three for each village, and one guarding the seizing point
+Patches
Circleseverywhere - Chapter Text Converter, Skip Intro cutscene, Skip New game Text
7743 - Tutorial disable
Nintenlord - Easy move removal
Stan - Skip World Map
Tequilla - battle stats with anims off
7743 - Null Move Display
Circleseverywhere - Map Danger Zone
I just played through this and had a good time, here are some thoughts I wrote down as I played.
Thoughts (kind of spoilery for people who haven't played yet)
The music in the opening event never plays (unless there’s not supposed to be any music?)
It would be nice if you installed all of the quality of life patches in FEBuilder
The map is very nice looking. I love the Western Isles tilesets, and it doesn’t look like there are any tile errors
The writing’s good, but there are a lot of small typos and misspellings
The one tile chokepoint covered in forests at the bottom of the map is not very fun, it’s giving me flashbacks to the spirit forest in FE4
All the combat with the mercenary gang takes place in that chokepoint, and it’s not very interesting, just shuffling units around
All the generic units are very weak. They barely deal any damage and almost always get one rounded
I soloed William with Echidna before I even got close to seizing the north village. The huge forests are a big slog to move through
I was able to seize the fort and end the map without seizing all 3 villages, idk if that’s intended or if it’s a bug
The ending text misgendered Echidna
I beat the chapter in ~45 minutes
Overall I think this hack has a lot of potential. It’s an interesting concept and the story is good. Gameplay-wise, I think it would get a lot better if you just cleared up the forests and chokepoints and made the generics a lot stronger.
Thanks for the feedback! I will correct the misspelings in the next update. Plus, rework a little bit the map and buff the enemies.
Also
Once you seize Buliwyf’s village, this is destroyed and leaves you a way to go to the other side, without needing to go throught the forest. Also, yeah… I haven’t figured out a way to making the player “save” the three villages before reaching William. Maybe I will wework that part in future versions.
Finally got around to playing this, and I had a lot of fun!
Below are some of my thoughts on the game, and my impressions of each unit.
Things I thought were good:
-Nice map
-Good difficulty, maybe a little on the easy side
-Reinforcements were fun and spiced things up
-Western isles is cool tileset : )
Things I think could be improved:
-Opening cutscenes felt weird without any music. Consider adding 1-2 different tracks through the whole thing.
-Reinforcements were jarring. At least for the big groups, give a 1 turn warning or something like that.
-The villages become ruins after visiting them. Can’t tell if that’s intentional or not.
-The wagons don’t have any portraits.
-Also, the wagon from the top right village can get killed by just a couple mages. Maybe give it some Res?
Units:
-Echidna; Busted, one-rounded everything, but not invincible. Monks almost killed her. Also, 18 con?
-Conan; Meh. Works fine as a filler unit
-Larum; dancer
-Nancy; Could use a bit more magic, her healing felt really low
-Lamorak; Surprisingly high damage, good overall
-Arrok; “What if fighter…but speed?”
-Gaheris; Wasn’t very accurate, maybe buff his skill? Useful despite map size
-Farina; Very strong, solos the mages. Almost died when bruce showed-up. Where her pegasus : (
Overall, a fun time. I’m excited to see what you’ll make next!
Glad you like it, and thanks for the feedback!
I’m still new to FEBuilder, so I don’t much about adding the right tracks, but I will try to add it in a next update. Same goes for the wagons. About the villages, they are technically “prisoner camps”, so that explains why once the people in it go out in the wagon, they are destroyed.
About the characters, I tried to make both Echidna and Larum as close as to their FE6 versions (stat-wise). Tho, I will have to fix the con for Echidna.
Also
I reserve Farina’s story and how she ended up with Lamorak & Co. for a possible future game.
Hello, bro. I am from Chinese and I tried your hack yesterday. I think it is interesting to explore the stories of the Western Isles, and I hope to translate your hack into Chinese. I’m not sure if you agree or not? I promise not to make any other changes and will declare your authorship.
