[FE8] The Fisher King's Heart -- New hack from Curse of Lagdou creator

[DoinThangs]

(From the creator of Curse of Lagdou: Butterfly Eyes)

"You know, the hardest thing
Is to say goodbye to someone you love
That’s the hardest thing

You know, the hardest thing
Is to say goodbye to someone you love
That’s the hardest thing

Every face you forgot
Father’s jaw
They suspend the clock
Another start
Get another chance to love

I hear you now, I understand you lost today to get tomorrow back
But what are the tolls?
That’s the hardest thing we’ve been sold

And I’m not your enemy
Your legacy frightens me
Will I keep it gold or will it spoil
Before I get the chance to grow old"
– Gorillaz - Orange County

The Fisher King’s Heart is a psychological drama-mystery story set in a tiny country teetering on the edge of life and death, of the real and imagined, of kinship and hatred.
The Highlands is a young nation long beset on all sides by larger empires. It borders the Lowlands, a mysterious and ancient land where spirits dwell.

In the Lowlands, your memories and feelings become real.

This is a story for when you don’t know who you are. It’s a story for when you want to be understood. It’s a story for when you want to fight for a better life, in a world infected by confusion and fear.
It’s a story about how the hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love.

Download

(7-chapter demo)

Installation

PC:

1. Download the .ups file from the link above.
2. Acquire a Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones ROM. I can’t tell you where to get these, but Google can.
3. Download NUPS or FEBuilderGBA
4. Open NUPS, then select the .ups file and your ROM (.gba). Patch. Alternatively, open the .ups in FEBuilder and select your ROM, and it will automatically create a patched ROM.
5. Play in a GBA emulator. This hack is built and tested in mGBA, but should work on others as well.

Android:

1. Download the .ups file from the Dropbox link above and acquire a Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones ROM.
2. Download Unipatcher from the Google Play store.
3. Open Unipatcher, select your patch, ROM, and destination, then patch.
4. Play in a GBA emulator. I use MyBoy from the Play Store, but there are other options.

Join the Discord for discussion, sharing your playthrough, bug reports, and suggestions!
If you’re going to play the hack and stream it/record it/screenshot-let’s-play it somewhere, let me know! Every playthrough seriously helps me make the hack better.

Please take the exit survey once you’re done!

Known Issues

• Placeholder text is still present in various places
• Fog vision in Prologue is glitchy
• Restore staff description is broken
• Some battle animations and palettes are missing

Key Features

• Non-random critical hit system
• Bleedout system and fast-paced maps – if you’re tired of redoing moves and slogging through long player phases, this is the hack for you
• Choices in (nearly) every chapter with consequences and secrets
• A cinematic story unlike any other hack
• A lovable, detailed cast of characters, with base conversations replacing traditional supports
• Boss fights featuring unique mechanics

Non-Random Crit System

Curse of Lagdou’s famous flanking-based crit system returns, improved and refined!

• Weapon Triangle Advantage gives 15 Crit.
• Allied units adjacent to the target give 20 Crit each.
• If you have 50 or more Crit, always crit (2x damage). Otherwise, never crit.

Bleedout System

When a player unit reaches 0 HP, they will enter a Dying state. You can revive them with a Restore staff. If they aren’t revived before the end of your next turn, they’re removed from the map and permanently lose 1 level’s worth of stats. There is no permadeath.

Custom Skills

Nearly every playable character features a custom-made, high-impact personal skill.

(and many more!)
Customize your army further with skill scrolls and powerful new weapons.

About and FAQ

This is a solo project by me, DoinThangs, using buildfiles (not FEBuilder).

“When will this project be finished?”

Eventually!

“Does this project have any connection to Curse of Lagdou?”

Nope (though I might put in a reference/cameo or two at some point). Fisher King takes place in an entirely original setting with an entirely original story.

“Who drew the CGs and portraits?”

Me!

“Will you make [documentation] (changelogs, recruitment guide, item location guide, etc.)?”

Maybe, if I can find a way to automate it. People (my previous self included) seem to assume these are relatively trivial to make compared to actually making the hack, but doing them by hand is actually quite a lot of work, especially in a rapidly-evolving project. In the meantime, I would suggest downloading FEBuilderGBA and opening the rom to poke around for stuff like this.

“Aren’t buildfiles really hard to use?”

Not really. The main issue is a lack of documentation and a lot of setup work required. However, the upsides are massive: full Git version control (never worry about ruining your rom with a bad patch or Builder glitch), definitions make it easy to keep track of flags and addresses, text-based eventing is much more efficient, etc.
The main upside, though, is that it’s much, much easier to write and insert custom C code, which lets you do basically anything the GBA can handle. If you feel limited by SkillSystems or are tired of mysterious bugs haunting your rom, I would suggest giving buildfiles a try. Find some buildfile-literate people to help you, though; you’ll need them.

“What are your favorite hacks?”

An Unexpected Caller, Bells of Byelen, and Four Kings.

“What are your biggest creative inspirations? What else should I read/watch/play?”

• The music of Kendrick Lamar, Kenny Mason, Vince Staples, Travis Scott, AURORA, Caroline Polachek
• Ping Pong the Animation
• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Princess Mononoke
• Frieren
• Deus Ex (2000)
• Final Fantasy VI: Brave New World
• System Shock 2
• Silent Hill 2
• Resident Evil 2 Remake
• Akira (manga)
• Blowback Podcast

“Is this hack kind of about 9/11?”

Yeah. Also, free Palestine.

Credits

Link

[Bogart]

this hack good pillow is in it

[Pandan]

this looks dope though. Looking forward to trying it.

[UltraxBlade]

when i open the game, it crashes, reveals all of dointhangs’s personal info, and closes the strait of hormuz

Context

[DrGreen3339]

Imagine if transitioning IRL was as easy as clicking the Gender button.

Also there is a character called Pigeon so it gets my endorsement by default.

[tweetyboy]

So with Base conversations instead of supports do characters still have multiple possible paired endings? Is it like Hag in White?

[Sir_Lancelot]

Wow, looks incredible and with awesome new mechanics! Would expect no less from the one that is Doin Thangs.

Also that pillow animation looks so damn well done!

[KingStaragna]

Oh, HELL yeah. We’re so back.

[Sir_Lancelot]

Maybe spoiler lol

10/10 game fr fr

Jokes aside it is incredibly peak so far.

[ColeTheOne]

Wow I can’t believe they put gender into MY Fire Emblem game!

Jokes aside, this looks neat.

[ZIHanatsuka]

I feel like it’s so illegal to use a character like Pillow. For a legless woman she gains so much speed. 10 pillow out of 10 game.

[ElPinguinot]

damn your new hack looks very cool and ambitious ! Will be sure to check the demo

[Bacon_Eggs]

I’ve played the demo, and this game is unbelievably good and has a story that has its own unique vibe. If you loved Doin Thang’s Curse of Lagdou romhack, you’ll certainly love this hack.

[Steak]

I haven’t played curse of lagdou but… That last faq got me curious… I will try it eventually

[Demeh]

Currently playing through Curse of Lagdou and I was wondering if you had worked on any other stuff. Colour me surprised to see a thread less than 24hrs old for a new project!

Enjoying CoL right now so will definitely check this out at some point.

[BigMood]

As far as WIP projects go, I don’t play 'em. Of the publicly known hacks, I’ve only ever played two seriously while they were WIP. The first was Cerulean Crescent. The second is this.

Fisher King’s gonna slap. Everyone get in here.

[ShirleyVaga]

I know it’s a placeholder but in the prolog the battle pallete the princeling had
is it a custom eliwood one? it sure differs from vanilla eliwood that is for sure.

[DoinThangs]

I think it’s a repal, but I don’t remember offhand lol

[Sokaballa]

Hey @DoinThangs , I don’t often get the opportunity to play WIP hacks (don’t get much time for FE at all these days), but I was able to play through the first 7 chapters. Wanted to provide some quick feedback where I could. As a TLDR, I really enjoyed what I played and think it is on a great trajectory. My thoughts were mostly gameplay based as I was kinda skipping through the story.

Crit System

I know it is a feature that showed up in your previous hack (I played through the first few chapters of CoL a while ago), but I really think the crit system really flourishes here. I think this is in large part because enemy units (especially undead units) hit especially hard, creating much more incentive to deal with them on player phase. Certainly a good aspect.

It was also my impression that you have smartly identified a potential risk that comes with the crit system and have added time pressure in later chapters to combat it (sometimes soft timers, sometimes hard timers). Death-balling, given that the crit system banks on having a lot of units around enemies, could become a grossly powerful tool if there were no urgency.

On top of this, it seemed intentional that player units almost universally have low DEF and high HP, aside from Hunter and Teacher. I like this aspect because it is likelier to keep enemy danger longer term in the game, but I felt some early-game, high HP player units still seem to mitigate the danger a bit too much. Often it still seemed like the best strategy was to bait with tanks and clean on enemy phase (which honestly is a stable of Fire Emblem, don’t get me wrong). Hunter could have been the most egregious version of this, but I also think it was smart to have Hunter be a bow unit to offset given that he can’t retaliate at melee range.

All that is to say, I really did enjoy the crit system and think you’ve handled the balancing of it really well. I think the time pressure helps mitigate potential pitfalls, though high early HP values could cause some enemy inflation down the line (the Chapter 7 boss has over 40 strength with the Silver axe as an example).

Player Skills

I enjoyed player skills being high impact, either through weapons or actual skills. Some made stronger impacts than others, however. Hero’s gender swap is interesting and encourages switching, but the male version doesn’t really provide great utility unless you have a downed unit because of the sword that heals nearby units on kills. Pillow is a really interesting unit that was my favorite to play given the multitude of options and strategies (though being able to use her spirit as a bait was very powerful). The only skill that felt less useful was Gale’s, and I wondered if it could have leaned more into the hit rate buff instead of the avoid (maybe +20 hit to nearby units). It would also serve as an opposite to Storm’s skill and it might make it more appealing given some slightly shaky hit rates of certain units.

Bleeding Out

I really liked the idea behind the bleedout system and it pairs well with the early game given the often full deployment. However, I didn’t find the threat level of the game terribly high in my ironman run (death balling is a really strong tactic), and to complicate matters, the bleedout system inherently encourages more death balling to stick by potential downed allies. I thought the game might benefit from a slight increase in difficulty to end up presenting more bleedout opportunities. Having said that and the thoughts above, and I wasn’t sure the difficulty level you were intending, the game was often well balanced and was fair (though the deceptive left/middle/right options in Chapter 5 felt a bit cheap and could throw a strategy pretty hard).

Economy

Money felt fairly liberal and I really enjoyed the arena chapter and having to budget turn by turn. Pigeon’s use is almost mandatory given the number of chests and doors (and the fact that most chapters have something worth stealing), but a flying thief was a fun utility for her. Weapons in the early game felt impactful, especially the armory and things weapons found within like the hammer and swordbreaker. I also appreciate that ranged 1-2 options have slightly less utility at range because of the crit system, but hand axes and javelins are still really, really useful.

Luck Stat?

With the crit system being changed, do you have any plans to change the utility of the Luck stat? It looked like the Luck formula was unchanged and as a result, carries very little weight. I thought a potentially interesting change, if it were even possible, would be to add half a point to each growth rate for every point in luck. Have 10 luck? That’s an extra 5 points for each growth rate.

I really did enjoy the hack and thanks for putting it together. Music was great and things were easy to read. I think it will be a really good project when it is finished and wish you luck as you continue to develop it!

[DoinThangs]

Awesome, glad you liked it! Thanks a ton for the detailed feedback.