[FE8] [WIP] Fire Emblem: Fatal Valor (v0.2, 6/13 Chapters Complete)

[Semicolin]

This is my first successful attempt at making a fan project - Fire Emblem: Fatal Valor.

Why I Made This

I wanted to try making my own Fire Emblem game, using what I’ve learned from messing around with the GBA games in FEBuilder, and creating something that fixes the issues I have with vanilla FE, something that I would find really fun. The main goal was to make a short, highly replayable game that still felt like Fire Emblem. Originally, I wanted it to only be 10 chapters long, but I upped the count to 13 as I got more ideas for things I wanted to do.

As for the story, I really just wanted to have a game about an irrelevant antagonistic idiot who kind of just gets in the way of the lives of more prominent figures. I thought it was funny. In hindsight, I could’ve done better to focus on that more but I’m trying my best okay, I’ve never done something like this before.

Screenshots

Current Gameplay Features

• 6 chapters & 20+ playable characters. ~4 to 4.5 hours in length to play all the maps once with animations on and read the entire story.
• Generally unique promoted classes among playable characters.
• A handful of new classes and tons of new items. Stats of existing classes and items have been completely changed.
• All the standard QOL patches (to my knowledge), except for the popup numbers for damage when animations are on. I do not like those.
• Fast scaling. Silver weapons and promoted bosses exist in Chapter 2, siege tomes and status staves in Chapter 3, and multiple promoted enemies are required to be fought in Chapter 5.
• Absurd stat boosters (+5 in a stat).
• No skills whatsoever, not even Vanilla FE8 skills (except Silencer).
• Crit Bonuses upped to 30 and given to all mono-weapon classes, including Wyvern Knights and now Druids.
• Purchasable Brave Weapons and Warp Staves in Chapter 5! Ridiculously difficult to obtain and requires excessive planning but you can get them!
• Prison Break map.
• A bunch of other minor changes that can be found here.

Story

Bryan is a 20-year-old peasant living in the country of Leona who recently was kicked out of his home by his parents for being a complete nuisance. His goal is to become rich and famous across the country and enlists the help of Delilah, a scheming cleric betrothed to the ruler’s younger brother, and Brick, who is Brick, to help him do so. They get caught up in fighting bandits and slowly amass a large group of people who get, often partially unwillingly, involved in Bryan and Delilah’s antics, including Avriel, the experienced archer with a strong moral compass attempting (and often failing) to keep them in line. Will Bryan eventually develop as a person and change his ways for the better (Hint: No)? Find out in Fire Emblem: Fatal Valor!

The plot is meant to be lighthearted and humorous, but not a “meme” hack or anything. I tried to write actual characters who could be liked for their personalities and stories, and weren’t just one-note jokes. This is my first attempt at writing a story that isn’t made with the sole purpose of making someone laugh, so I would really appreciate any feedback on my writing, positive or negative!

Credits

A more in-depth list of credits can be found here.

Portraits by LaurentLacroix, Ghostblade, Flasuban, Goldblitzx, SSHX, BatimaTheBat, Cravat, Kanna, CapybarainSpace, Teevlade, NICKT, FireEmblemier, DerTheVaporeon, Smokeyguy77, Its_Just_Jay, Eden, monk-han, MeatOfJustice, Zeldacrafter64, MegaCowsamMan, TheNobodyArtist, Lenh, RandomWizard, DrGreen3339, Epicer, HyperGammaSpaces, and Garytop. Some editing and recoloring done by me.

Map Sprites by HyperGammaSpaces, BatimaTheBat, DerTheVaporeon, Rasdel, Team SALVAGED, Flasuban, Tordo45, MeatOfJustice, Leif, Teraspark, TAS20XX, Pikmin1211, Pushwall, Glaceo, Ash3wl, L95, ArcherBias, Leo_link, Stormblight, Rexacuse, P33RL355, Alusq, Nuramon, Jay, Ryn, Topazlight, knabepicer, Fates-Blade, WhatIsAnAubin, FE7if, blood, and CelestiaHeart.

Class Cards by SamirPlayz, Spud, Jj09, RobertFPY, Flasuban, GigaExcalibur, Team SALVAGED, Blademaster, Itranc, HyperGammaSpaces, Rasdel, L95, and DerTheVaporeon.

Battle Animations by Nuramon, BatimaTheBat, 7743, FrecciaVerde, Leo_link, Iscaneus, DerTheVaporeon, tatutachang, TytheBub, Waleed, Flasuban, Red Bean, Team SALVAGED, CelestiaHeart, HyperGammaSpaces, CranJam, Obsidian Daddy, Zoramine Fae, UltraxBlade, Levin64, RJ_Exists, WhatIsAnAubin, UltraFenix, Teraspark, GabrielKnight, SirKnite31, Shin19, Jey the Count, Pushwall, Pikmin1211, St jack, Sphealnuke, Spud, MeatOfJustice, Maiser6, Ukelele, SD9k, Temp, Black Mage, Wan, Orihara_Saki, Itranc, Alice, Teelvade, Jeorge_Reds, ShadowOfChaos, Furious, Saint Rubenio, The_Big_Dededester, Sax Marine, RRSKAI, Aruka, Kenpuhu, Seal, Sacred War, Eldritch Abomination, Feaw, Lisandra_Brave, TheBlindArcher, Isaac, Knabepicer, Jj09, Lord_Tweed, Mexicancactus2911, Greentea, FE7if, BwdYeti, Seliost1, Keks_Krebs, Apolo15, Mikey_Seregon, Skitty, DatonDemand, and Primefusion.

Magic Animations by Mikey_Seregon, BwdYeti, Arch, Blazer, Seal, Norikins, HyperGammaSpaces, Comaythanki, Orihara_Saki, and SHYUTERz.

Item Icons by Batima, Beansy, Zelix, Ereshkigal, Jeorge_Reds, Kyrads, LordGlenn, Seal, Zarg, SmithyGCN, Topazlight, VelvetKitsune, and Windsweep.

Tilesets by Dark and Zarg, with recoloring done by me.

UI by LordGlenn, Cynon, and me.

Music by Pandan, Alice, HyperGammaSpaces, Sme, RandomWizard, DrGreen3339, DerTheVaporeon, Tristan_Hollow, Scraiza, RSflame, Dolkar, A Reliable Chair, Pikmin1211, MeteorSR23, FireEmblemier, Tak, SurfingKyogre, Kaidras, SaXor_the_Nobody, MysteriousDancer, and Dolkar.

Patches by Agro, Brendor, Pikmin1211, aera, 7743, Zeta, FE8 Girls, laqieer, circleseverywhere, gamma, Contro, Sme, jjl2357, Blademaster, Hextator, Tequila, Vesly, Kaito, Zahlman, Stan, Blackmage, Eliwan, The Awful Emblem Team, StanH, PhantomeSentine, Zane, Pandan, Scraiza, Alusq, Celerity910, Gryz, Venno, and SageMatthis. There may be more that I didn’t write down and am therefore missing in this list, so if that is the case please let me know!

Finally, a special thanks to Pandan for his YouTube videos on Fire Emblem design, and for Vision Quest, both of which were huge sources of inspiration for me.

Known Bugs/Issues

• Seren and Michael often have the option to increase their support rank, even though they start with an A Support. This doesn’t seem to do anything.
• Reading through Clementine’s recruitment conversation causes the menu options to disappear afterwards. As far as I’m aware, they’re all still fully-functional, and return afterwards.
• A couple of map sprites, such as female Monk and male Lance Cavalier, have minor graphical issues. These randomly fixed and unfixed themselves over the course of development, and are currently an issue.
• Thieves and Mage Knights play the hit sound effect even if they miss.

Important Notes/Tips

• Weapon Triangle Advantage gives +100 hit. That’s it.
• All promotion items are Master Seals, which can be used on everyone except for Bryan. Promotion does not reset level, and the level cap has been raised to 30. There is no downside to promoting characters whatsoever.
• You shouldn’t have to rush, per se, but most maps will punish you for waiting around in some way.
• You don’t have to worry about keeping characters alive or getting all of a chapter’s rewards. The game is intended to be very ironman-friendly.
• Supports are implemented gameplay-wise but are not yet written (well a few are written but haven’t been put in the game yet).
• Most of the bosses are vague caricatures of people I know in real life, hence their average names, including some shared with existing FE characters. These characters are not meant to represent the people they are named after in any serious way.

Link to patch download.
Link to a site showcasing character stats, the more in-depth credits, and a few other things.

[ShirleyVaga]

I played a little and it is been fun so far . Only thing i could say the music in the first map has some parts that are kinda ear hurting oterwise solid hack.

[Semicolin]

Thanks! I was aware of the music being loud, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix that. I’ll look into it more before the next version I release. I think the only other time the music is too loud is in the Chapter 5 intro cutscene.

[ShirleyVaga]

I would say it’s not the volume it is how it is a noisy or something? hard to decribe.

[Fringus]

finished what’s here of this and just wanted to post a little. what’s here was genuinely pretty dope and i can’t wait to see more. especially for a first project its super promising!

notable epic points

brian is funny enough to get his own point. genuinely works super great in this sandbox that i even nuked the last available boss with him.

every combat is fucked up when hes around and i live for it.
unit design in general feels fun, and their extreme highs and lows felt good. though i’d put bosses as being a little bit too chunky even against them.

when you get into the fray the maps are fun, every matchup feels incredibly natural to play into with everyones strengths and weaknesses.

bryan is also a great terrible person, it’s fun watching people have to try and work around this idiot who for the life of him can’t help but make things worse for his own ego. his “really good sword” he wishes for is equally as rocking to use.
cannot wait to see how he could fumble things more throughout all this.

few complaints

i think a good few of the later maps are kinda rough pace-wise. largely just being a bit too big for what they’ve got going on, and the ch1 chest key would be better served as a start in ch2 (since it’s really easy for someone else in a near-end cell to be carrying it. just feels more like it could be a kill boss map.

ch3 reinforcements could be trimmed some, since pace-wise they ended up spawning like right on top of me and another peep and slowing things down.

[MegaCowsamMan]

Just rapped up the entire demo. Here’s what I’ve got for ya.

(Also, I played through with 1 RN.)

What I like

The artstyle with the map palettes and portraits were nicely done, along with the backgrounds and (most) of the item icons. The darker colors were a nice change of pace, especially if you played through FE6 recently again like I did…

The Cain and Abel, so to speak, being an A support married couple was a pleasant suprise. In order to get the most out of 'em, you need them both together, which makes their performance in the battlefield better, but their utility less flexible. I really enjoyed them!

Favorite chapters were chapters 1 and 4. Chapter 1 was a solid opening, with lots of new units, and lots of villages to visit. The mountains around the map was a really neat touch too.

Story wise, the game’s pretty interesting so far, with Bryan being an egotistical jerk most of the time, but not ever to an unreasonable degree, which I appreciate. Delilah has some nice moments, especially in tough situations, and Avriel was a decent foil to Bryan’s rather selfish endeavors.

What I would improve

The enemies in chapter 1 specifically, were very much in need of some sort of buff in my opinion, including the boss.

That’s a lot of zeros, and a lot more HP. I’d suggest bringing down his HP, and bring up some other stats like speed and skill.

Some openings and fade to blacks are a bit rough, but besides those, the eventing gets the job done. I’d polish them up a bit, but its nothing too concerning.

Chapter 2’s reinforcements were a bit late, at least for me. I’d suggest having them spawn a turn or two earlier.

Selani being recruited from a house was a bit misleading, since in most hacks, and in vanilla, those houses only contain text, and never items and new units. Perhaps letting the player know somehow would be a nice fix.

I implore you change the name of the bandits in chapter 4. The Dingus Bandits are really hard to take seriously in a (mostly) serious world.

Bugs/Random Thoughts

Chapter 1’s map music is waaay too loud. If you don’t know how to turn it down, here’s one way to do it:

Go to the Song Table within FEBuilder, and find the song to turn down. Once you found it, select the Song Editor.

Click the Master Score tab.

Head to the volume correction at the bottom of the window.

Now here, change the zero to whatever number you wish to turn down, or up. I suggest turning it down from 10 and 20 intervals until you like the result.

Icarus being level 15 with those stats is rather strange, honestly. Maybe bringing his level down, and, if your worried about him growing too much, just lower his growth rates a bit then. Bit more of a personal thing, but still.

Valeria’s portrait looks kinda bulky for being a mercenary. Jus’ thought I’d mention that.

Alex looks a lot like Alen from FE6. I’d suggest you consider you change his colors at the very least.

Some enemies, mostly the female classes, don’t have battle animations.

In chapter 3, shouldn’t the thief reinforcements be called something like bandits or hunters?

Mario Party 8 is the best. 6 is a close second though.

Brick

Brick is awesome, and is my favorite character in this project. He’s Marty done better I’d say, having a monopoly with axes makes him quite useful, despite his rather poor base stats, especially in skill. However, his incredibly high strength and HP give him good offense, and defense, making him a bit of a glass tank, but giving him the hatchet, and having him read up on that Secret Book, he’ll be really solid.

That’s all I’ve got to say. I’ll keep an eye on this project, as I enjoyed it quite a bit. Take care.

[Sir_Lancelot]

I just finished the 1st chapter and brick died on the 2nd to last turn. May replay it.

[Semicolin]

Thanks for the kind words, and a huge thank you for the info on how to lower the music volume! I’ve never used custom music before and didn’t know how to do anything but import them and change their names in the sound room.

I’ve never run into a class not having battle animations when testing. I know you might not remember, but is there an instance of a battle animation being missing that you can give me so I can check?

I will definitely change the house Selani is recruited from into a village. I was going to, but didn’t because it would get in the way of the boss fight if you went the left route, somehow forgetting…I could just move the village further left. I’m definitely going to do something about the reinforcements in the chapter, because story-wise they make no sense to be there.

Alex uses a similar portrait to Alen because in real life, we have a joke between us (that I don’t remember the origin of) that he looks like Alen, though I’m not opposed to changing his colors a bit.

The Thief reinforcements in Chapter 3 use the same name as the enemies because they were supposed to be lockpicks on their side gathering their equipment and leaving in case the guards were defeated. I can make that more clear in the dialogue.

[MegaCowsamMan]

@Semicolin

I’ve never run into a class not having battle animations when testing. I know you might not remember, but is there an instance of a battle animation being missing that you can give me so I can check?

Seems I forgot I turned off the animations for some characters. My bad.

@Semicolin

Alex uses a similar portrait to Alen because in real life, we have a joke between us (that I don’t remember the origin of) that he looks like Alen, though I’m not opposed to changing his colors a bit.

Yeah, that’s fair.

[Sir_Lancelot]

alright, I’ve replayed the 1st chapter and saved brick the buff bro. I’m now on chapter 2 and I checked through the green units to recruit, not expecting anything crazy. I then saw the luck stat on Camerson and lost my mind.

[Semicolin]

Version 0.2 of Fatal Valor is out now! Unfortunately, after almost five months, I’ve only managed to add a single chapter to the game. The reason for that? I decided to completely overhaul nearly everything from the first version I released.

I did this because this was originally supposed to just be a quick project to try out making a game in FEBuilder, but I evidently ended up putting a lot more effort into the game, so I decided I’d put in the extra effort to make the game as good as it could be (in my opinion. Man, I really hope everyone else also considers this an improvement. That would suck if I went through all that effort only for it to be worse than v0.1…)

Because of just how much has been changed, it won’t be possible to continue using saves from v0.1, sorry. I don’t expect anyone to want to play through the fairly-changed-but-still-largely-similar chapters 1 through 5 if they already did so in v0.1. If you want to play from chapter 6 onwards in the next version, let me know and I’ll probably make a “bridge patch” to start with characters and items ready for that portion of the game.

So, what has been changed, anyway?

• Completely redone player and enemy stats, with both generally having higher HP and offense but lower defenses. Generic enemies are far stronger in general, but so are most player units.
• Class-specific caps have been removed because I wanted characters’ stats to be determined by their bases and growths, and not limited by the class they’re in. However, I also raised the maximum for all normal stats to 40! Excluding statboosters, you will very rarely see anyone actually hit that point in any of their stats, though. I think the only characters who on average will hit 40 in a stat at Lv. 30 promoted are Brick with STR and Selani with SKL and SPD.
• Dozens of new weapons, with some replacing existing ones.
• More distinct weapon types. Iron Swords vs. Axes are now a difference of 6 might and 30 hit, for instance. There’s now more unique weapons in each type, too. The only ones shared between them are now the basics, killer, and brave weapons. Axes are now locked to 1-range, and there are way more tomes of all three types.
• Personal weapons given to a handful of characters. The infantry-effective Short Bow is now locked to Avriel.
• All existing maps have been changed to some extent, mostly chapters 3, 5, and especially 2. That chapter has been downsized, and is much slightly less long and tiresome, with no backtracking because you start in the top right corner instead of in the top left which was a stupid design decision I don’t know why I made.
• A partially-rewritten story. It’s mostly just small line changes here and there, aside from Chapter 3, which was almost-completely rewritten - for two reasons: I thought the phrasing and dialogue around the “wish” thing was very off, and wanted that to be an actual plot point, and I found Vicent to be a pretty dull villain and wanted to change him up.
• Hard Mode is actually tested and playable now. Normal Mode is still the “intended experience,” but Hard Mode is more than just stronger enemies…in fact, enemy stats are entirely unchanged between Normal and Hard.
• Weapon triangle advantage gives 100 hit instead of 50. This pretty much makes a difference to Brick and nobody else.
• Bugfixes: Save slots are always the right color, being unarmed no longer counts as having a sword for Weapon Triangle, and you no longer lose if the last unit remaining in an escape map is killed (a bug I only discovered recently).
• Improved Credits: Item Icons are displayed next to their creators and the Patches are neatly put in a table like everything else.
• Many other minor changes.

Screenshots of new stuff