Fire Emblem: Liberation Blade is a hack designed to be of medium scope at 14 chapters, not as long as a full FE game but still with the goal of delivering an experience that is as fulfilling as a full length game, with enough options to offer replayability, from the units you choose to train, what class you promote them into, who you support them with, and more.
Unique features include:
Gaiden Chapters with Playable Villains!
- Learn more about the bad guys and their plans, motivations, and actions. If you get tired of it part way through, you can just skip the rest of the chapter and jump right to the end event to get back to the main plot. These do not effect your long-term progress in any capacity.
- All the “story centric” chapters, meaning the Prelude and the Gaidens, can be skipped even if you are in the middle of it via the Advice Tab.
The Advice Menu!
- Accessible at any time, with chapter-specific dialogues that give you hints towards secrets, clarification on game systems, strategy recommendations, and so on. This feature is aimed towards helping my other friend groups that haven’t played as much Fire Emblem as I have, but maybe even long-time vets of the series will find it useful occasionally.
Special Trade Offers!
- Collect Dracorocks from throughout the game, and either keep them for yourself to use or trade them to the merchant Elphenac for valuable items, like getting a Light Brand at the end of Chapter 1, or a Skeleton Key that lets anybody open doors and chests forever. Alternatively, use Dracorocks to gain a massive bonus to your luck stat (some units don’t need that boost, others could really use it).
- There’s one Dracorock per chapter (gaidens, prelude, and endgame excluded), but you will not get enough Dracorocks throughout the game to accept every deal, as some items will cost more than one. These start out quite easy to find, a lot of players will probably obtain all of them in Act 1 without any help, but finding them slowly becomes less obvious as you progress.
130+ New Songs from across gaming, tweaked personally by me!
- Every chapter will have a new Player Phase map theme, to set its own unique vibe. Any given cutscene song is not re-used often, so you’ll listen to a big variety of tracks over the course of the game.
- You also have multiple song choices during the Interludes! As an excuse for me to put in more music, of course.
When two units reach A support with each other, they gain each other's personal skill!
- This feature is still in development and won’t be present in the Act 1 Demo. However, know that everyone’s personal skill and supports are selected with this in mind. So, when you see that romhack soldier with Canto+, and that he can support with the units like the myrmidon or mage, get your brain cooking about the possibilities.
Funny Numbers
This project is, like many hacks, being made by a single person. That’d be me, TrikkiNikki(She/Her). I’ve slowly been working on this on and off since about August 2022, taking breaks as necessary due to school, work, health, etc. The fact that I’ve made it even this far with a project that I initially never expected to share with anybody surpasses my wildest expectations.
Download Links/Folder
Below, there will be a link to a google drive folder, which contains the following:
- UPS Patch. Again, for this first launch you will be returned to the title screen after the Prelude, making it just one chapter for now. Also, you’ll need a UPS patching tool like NUPS to apply it to your legally obtained FE8 US rom. Just go download NUPS, it’s so easy to use.
- Credits Document. For the specific creators of various portraits, animations, patches, and other things made by someone other than me. Please at least give it a glance, if only to put some of these awesome creator’s names in your head. This demo does not contain the vast majority of it, but regardless, let me know if I missed anything!!
- Character Guide (All characters up to Ch. 4) May be slightly out of date due to various updates to the cast I keep making.
- Known Issues Document that is almost certainly out of date. But whatever.
Right now, I have everything up to the first Interlude done. That is 4 real gameplay chapters, the Prelude, and one Gaiden chapter, which is hopefully enough to get a taste for what the rest of the game has to offer. Then the Interlude has some extra character dialogue and lets you preview promotion options and mess around in a temporary Arena, if you are so inclined.
I have a lot of work done on the rest of the game already, but there’s much more left to do before it’s in a releasable state. The next major release is planned to be all of Act 2, which will be at the end of Chapter 9 (and going into the 2nd Interlude), then Act 3 will be the rest of the game. I’m a slow worker but I’m putting a lot of time and effort into refining this, so thank you for your patience.
For more information on the hack, please investigate the tabs below at your leisure. If you have any questions or comments, message me anytime! I’d be glad to talk about myself lmao
Story & Content
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After a group of rangers are forced to scatter, two of them are burdened with the duty of protecting a magical sword with a dangerous power that they don’t understand. We follow Varin and Tazz as they venture to learn the truth of this power, and the “Dark Three” that seek it. As the story progresses, the two and their allies will uncover the truth of an awful incident that lead to their present struggle.
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You will learn about the villains and the heroes in equal measure. They both have some good and bad to them, but overall you should still definitely feel like the good guys.
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There will also definitely be a good amount of comedy in there, I can’t stand it when something stays in a single tone for too long.
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Overall, I’d describe it as less of the typical “War and Politics” FE plot, and closer to a D&D Campaign, where you have a group of dorks with a mystery and a problem they need to solve. I’ve spent over 5 years at this point GMing so I hope that skill translates somewhat.
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Content: Some swearing, mostly lighter words like “damn” in order to stay relatively close to the tone of the average FE game. However, there are some uses of stronger language like “shit” every now and then, either during particularly emotional moments or when it is particularly comedically effective. Overall, it’s fairly sparse, but it is there.
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Also, since this is an FE game, there are obviously depictions and discussions of physical violence and death, but if you’ve gotten this far then that’s probably something you’re okay with.
Lots of Various Gameplay Details
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14 chapters planned, along with a Prelude, 4 Gaiden Chapters, and 3 Interludes.
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Over 40 planned playable units by the time all is said and done. There are 17 units from Chapters 1-4 (including a temporary very strong unit).
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Tested On Hard Mode. I’m not entirely certain how hard people will find this game, but it definitely is not nearly as hard as something like 4 Kings. Easier Difficulties has both stronger player units and weaker enemies, focusing more on the former.
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LOTS of new classes, both Tier 1 and Tier 2. Examples include new thief classes for multiple weapon types and a dark mage flier for Tier 1, or an all magic flier and various magic/physical hybrids in tier 2.
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Armor Knights buffed with increased weapon access, as unpromoted ones have Swords, Lances, and Axes now, and Generals also gain Bows. All of these weapon types, especially bows, get some unique options that I think will give a lot of value to these classes.
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Three Branch Promotion, and the class description describes both the weapon options gained and the skill you will get for each promotion option. When you promote, you will get a big bonus to only a single stat. Combined with generally high growths, early promotion is not encouraged in most cases, but allowed if you’re feeling spicy.
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Skills are gained at level 1 of the base class and level 1 of the promoted class, not at level like 5 or 10 something obnoxious and weird like that. If someone, friend or foe, is in (X) class, they will have the same skillset every time.
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Infantry all get shove. Mounted units all get canto.
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More player phase skills than enemy phase skills, to encourage more proactive play.
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Thracia Trading. It’s funny lmao.
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Infinite Durability Weapons. I’ve personally found that I prefer not having to worry about replacing weapons so I can use them freely, otherwise I’ll often hoard my actually valuable gear and use iron swords the whole time.
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Weapon Weight reduced by Con +(Skill/4). It gives the Skill stat a little more value, and it means that heavier weapons slowly get more viable throughout the game and you can phase out the weaker weapons.
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LOTS of new weapons and holdable items, with the goal of making each and every inventory slot count as much as possible. Some of them get sort of unhinged. FEH-lookin’ ass descriptions.
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Many holdable items also negate enemy crits and protect from enemy thieves, so you will have the tools necessary to deal with both such threats.
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Will eventually have full supports, over 70 full chains. There may be some placeholders for some time, but this is a serious endgoal of mine. Plus, I really love writing them.
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Deployment-based support building, limited only to 5 partners and not 5 convos like Vanilla GBA (though still only one A support per character). As it is now, no character has more than 5 partners anyways.
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Characters with detailed descriptions, and PRONOUNS. Dear GOD.
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Pretty intensive cutscene eventing that I think is fairly impressive, if I can toot my own horn for a bit.
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Lots of Boss Quotes. In Chapter 1, both bosses have a battle quote with all 7 playable units. Obviously that isn’t sustainable throughout the whole game, but I would love to get as close as I can to that level of depth with every chapter, and adding a few more to chapters 2-4 is on the to do list. Some of them are very serious character building. Others are stupid memes. You’ll have to find them for yourself.
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Starting Chapter 6, you’ll get a character who can activate Dragon Veins. There will be an option in the Advice Menu that previews what each vein does.
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No enemies will have %-based activation skills that are basically just instakills, like Luna, Astra, Colossus, you get the deal. There are very few cases where player units have access to such skills, but these are only for very lategame recruits meant to be extremely powerful. The only “common” proc skill is Sol, because it is tied to the Hero class.
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Master Seals as the main promotion item, with three “essential” characters having a seperate one. I never liked having to worry about each individual item type that much.
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Standard Quality of Life stuff, like Casual Mode, warning bubbles for effective & killer weapons, etc.
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No Ambush Spawns. Screw them.
Design Priorities
- Making a complete experience within a more compact game length. While I have plenty of lore and worldbuilding for my setting, there won’t be a crazy amount of it in-game because I’m putting as much focus as possible on the characters and centering the pacing of the story around them. So like, there aren’t a whole lot of intricate politics or anything, but it’s not really that important for this.
- Making skills less scattershot and more consistent. My experience with skills in like Awakening and Fates is that they don’t end up making interesting tactical situations, like oh cool, Indoor Fighter, riveting. So I’m focusing on skills being impactful and consistent without being too strong or annoying. Conquest pisses me off because of stuff like Archers with Counter.
- Decent room for Replayability. I considered taking the the SoV route and focusing on a smaller cast, and while that does have its advantages, I think I prefer having room to let the player choose who to bench and who to prioritize, so then on alternate playthroughs they can make new choices. The three-branch promotion should contribute to this too.
- A nice middle ground between Unit Uniqueness and Unit Redundancy. While no two recruitable starts in the same class, you still get quite a few thief classes, quite a few cavalry, and quite a few of any given weapon type. So while some characters can do a lot of the same things, they won’t do it in quite the same way, and that is how you will have to weigh the options
Potential Feedback?
Obviously I welcome any notes you have to leave, but I’m curious to hear about a few things in particular:
- Difficulty! Is it too easy? Is it too hard? What other games (preferably romhacks or generally other strategy games) would you personally use as a reference for desired difficulty? I’m designed around hard, but I wouldn’t say it’s the “intended” difficulty, since it’s more like I wanted Hard to be for people who play a lot of romhacks, and then Normal is for more moderate FE players, and Easy is for everyone else (for my gamer friends that play little to no FE).
- Writing! Does it make sense? Are the characters likeable (even if it is in a “you love to hate them” sort of way)? Is it engaging/interesting? If there are any rough spots, what are they? If you have an interest or problem with a particular character, I’d be glad to talk about what I was going for.
- The Advice menu! Is there anything I should add for any given chapters? Anything that would be helpful to include?
- The Prelude! I’m not certain on how I feel about this one. Gameplay wise, it’s definitely not nearly as good as the rest of the game and it could benefit from just a complete rework or downscaling. But I also think it’s kind of awesome, and including the option to just skip it and any other story-focused chapters gets around any potential issues just fine, but it’s also admittedly a band-aid fix and the ideal scenario is that it is just… more fun to play. Your thoughts?
- Skills. Are the class skills making things more interesting? More annoying? Would the game be more fun if there were less skills, or if the generics didn’t have them?
What's Next
Rough plan for moving forward:
- As said previously, he next big update I have planned after that would be once everything is finished up to the end of Chapter 9, then the final version would be uploaded once the rest of the game is completed, save perhaps I might save whatever supports I have left to write for one last update or any other refinements.
- I’ve been debating with myself about trying to port everything I’ve made into a more updated version of SkillSys, or maybe even Buildfile (which I still don’t understand that well), but I know that’s probably not actually a great idea. Chalk it up as a solid “maybe” for now.
- I have a pipe dream of making a route split, but I’m keeping that idea in the cage until I can finish the damn thing in the first place. I will keep the scope of this project under control, damn it.
- If you want to stay updated on this project, you can hit the bell on the right side of the webpage. I know I didn’t know what this was for until making this thread.
- Alternatively, you could subscribe to my YouTube channel. I know, I know, I’m kind of shilling here, but aside from the initial posting of this, I do actually plan to post on my YT whenever a big update for this project comes out, so it is an option. Plus, I am getting real close to the point where I can get ad revenue from my videos, so I’d appreciate the help.
https://www.youtube.com/@trikkinikki6843 - As for a time frame? I have no time frame. Between job hunting and my own various projects I have going on right now, it’s frankly a miracle that I get the time and energy to work on this. I also tend to work very slowly because I have to try to get everything juuuuuust right. I appreciate everyone’s patience and support while I try to handle these things.
Major thanks to everyone outlined in the credits doc for their art/patches/etc. (which you should at least glance over to get their names in your head, they deserve it!), but I want to give some very special thanks to:
- 7743, the legend, for making FEBuilder in the first place
- RandomWizard, who revamped the chapter 1 map and made it look awesome!
- My earliest playtesters and sources of feedback for this Act 1 Demo, SherlorcaFan, RandomWizard, Rivian (who was subjected to having his whole convoy filled with gems because my code messed up), and my bf who isn’t on FEU lmao.
It’s been very nerve-wracking for me to get to the point where I’m willing to share my work, I currently feel like a tiny possum trying to navigate a crowded Wendy’s, but I’ve really been pouring a lot of my heart and soul into it like many others have and I hope some of you look forward to what’s coming down the line!
Thanks a bunch everybody!
