[FE8] [WIP] The Helios Saga [v0.4] (11 chapters) [~11-13 hours]

[ScarlettsChips]

OMG :0 another ROM hack that’s not even done?! This is my second post on this website so, sorry kind of jumping the gun, but I want some criticism for my first hack, so I can polish it and stuff.

First of all, hi I’m Scarlett! I was introduced to FE when my boyfriend showed it to me, and now I play it more than him lol. We don’t talk about my first FE game…
So here it is my first in progress hack!

Fire Emblem: The Helios Saga - Hack by Scarlett

Now for the big stuff I guess:

• 24/26 units playable
• 11 chapters
• Around a 11 to 14 hour play time
• New items like the rings from FE4
• An Anima Triangle
• Class Revision
• Skills for units and bosses ONLY (I don’t like skills on generic enemies lol)
• Item Revisions
• Units gain skills when they level up! (i.e if they lvl up to lvl 10, they will gain death blow, and if they
  lvl up to lvl 20 they will get another skill. It depends on when you want to promote them.)
• Added Divine Weapons! Weapons that give a unit +5 on any stat. Kinda rare though…
• A save system where you can reset and go back to the last player turn
• Classic and Casual mode
• Not a lot of stuff, but I’m sure it’s something lol
• Lunatic mode for those masochist
• New promotions

-More on Skills-

I kinda talked about it above but I wanna talk about it some more.
Playable units can gain skills if they level up every 10 increments. Say you lvl
up a unit to lvl 10. They will gain a skill. That skill is fixed and isn’t random.
But say you want to lvl up a unit to lvl 20, then you will get a really powerful
skill, but the drawback is that you have to lvl them up to lvl 20 without promoting.
But, when you promote, you can still gain skills with every 10 lvls, it’s just that
lvl 20 unpromoted lvl has a powerful skill. So it’s your choice to choose between lvling
up a unit to lvl 20 or promoting them to get the other skills. It’s your choice.
Idk if people are gonna do that, but the choice is there lol. I hope I explained it
well enough.

Majorly inspired by FE4 and FE5. A story about a prince learning how to respect the
class division that plagues his world.

At the moment there is only 11 chapters including a Prologue at the beginning and two paralogues.
You can tell that I was learning FEBuilder as I was making the game lol.

There’s currently no support conversations and some characters will have supports with
characters that don’t exist. Sorry about that. I’m thinking of fully implementing conversations
when I fully finish the first half of the game. See if you can guess the characters I replaced
with who!

Oh yeah, I forgot. This demo hack is technically the first half of part 1. Similar to FE4/FE6 you will
be controlling child units in part 2. They will have different stats depending on what units have A support with who. No promises though, I still have a rough idea to code that implementation without ASM (I’m not really good at ASM sorry).

Summary of the story

The kingdoms of Zukon, Kadena, Gestern, Deimyr, Almaen would remain at peace in the continent of Helios. Until the Republic of Kadena would break out in a civil war, a war between the peasants and royalty. The peasants and royalty would both commit massacres and genocides that would result in the victory of the Royals. Yurius, the leader of the army, would pronounce himself king and began a process of censorship on the royalty’s monstrosities, only leaving the peasants. The whole country’s Zukon, Gestern, and Almaen would react with disgust and fear that peasants could cause such genocides, they would start repressing the peasants so they would never start a revolution. This would start an age called the Selene Era. In Gestern, peasants would be motivated to rise up and defeat the government for repressing them, the country’s king: Virgil, would try his best to quell it, but was proved to be inadequate. The peasants would take over the castle and pronounce the Common Peoples Republic of Gestern. In the west, the neighboring country Zukon would be terrified that new ideals would be spreading into their country. So they chose to go to war with Gestern and install back the monarchy. Haydn, prince of the Kingdom of Zukon would be growing up during this Selene Era, the fear and disgust mindset towards peasants was quite common so he would also take up the mindset. Haydn would be good friends with the prince of Gestern, Wolfgang. And would be determined to set out to Gestern to save his friend. The King of Zukon, Schulz would prohibit Haydn from helping Gestern, despite the protests from his father he would set out with his trusted knights and prepare to save Wolfgang from the Gestern Revolution.

Characters! (Sprites outdated)

(I hope I’m doing this right)

Haydn: A lord from Zukon, has a great amount of pride for his country. He dislikes poor people but slowly he would learn to be less ignorant and come to help them.

Wolfgang: The prince of Gestern, the neighboring country to Zukon. He would have to retreat from his land due to the peasant revolution, and would vow to end class segregation.

Ida: Haydn’s personal retainer, tries to give Haydn support through his trials and gives her thoughts about his decisions.

Rendall: A dark mage who has escaped from captivity. She has the power of foresight, which gives her a vision of the future. Despite this, she despises it. She wants to save everyone because it’s a promise to one of her friends.

John: A soldier for the organization that caused the Gestern Revolution. He wants to correct his mistakes but continually butts heads with Haydn about class division.

Miko: A child from Kadena. Traveled to Gestern and got stuck in the middle of the Gestern Revolution. She’s searching for his friend Alex.

Milo: The son of Haydn. I wonder if he’s gonna be important later on.

Screenshots! CH 0-6

Screenshots! CH 7-8x

Character Stats

Other stuff

• Vulneraries heal 15 HP and Elixers stay the same

• Changed the promotion gains on classes

• Gave promoted classes new skills (i.e General has pavise and Great Knight has Aegis)

• Great Knight and Knight have +1 MOV

• Added movement skills like swap, as class skills

• Changed the Affinity gains

• Changed how support systems work

  • Units now gain support even if they are 3 spaces away
  • Units can now have 5 characters they can talk to, with only one support having an A rank
  • Units gain support bonuses from 3 spaces away

• Music across all of FE! (And some from Touhou because I like Touhou)

• NEW BG TITLE! (Thanks to my friend for making the text. I’m kinda dyslexic)

• Hard mode if you in to that… Kinda made it difficult so play it with caution lol

• I didn’t change the world map because it already looked like what I imagined Helios to be. Sorry if that bothers you, I’m probably going to change it soon.

• Bows have an average of 2-3 range now

Bugs

Currently don’t know any bugs so please tell me any so I can take care of them.

- Credits -

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I MISSED ANYBODY!
Peerless for item icons
Aura Wolf for maps
MAJOR THANKS TO Character Creator
MAJOR THANKS TO Map Creator
Lord Glenn for Status Screen
My friends for playtesting the beta stages
Spud for Ballista Animation
TBA for Halberdier and Mercenary (F) anim
Pikmin for Magic animation of Roy
Redbean for Celica Animations, and Lilina animations
Teraspark for Ephraim anim and Monk animation
No clicks for Baron Animation
Feaw for Rogue anim
Obs for Julius Animation
Mycahel for Red Mage animation
Nuramon for Villager animations
ARCSYS FOR OST OF FE8, FE7, AND FE6, including past and future games
Sme for music
Pandan for music
Hypergammaspaces for music
SurfingKyogre for music
SaXor_the_Nobody for music
RSflame for music
MrGreen3339 for music
Dethraxx for music
Zoramine for music
Dolkar for music
Tristan_Hollow for music
DerTheVaporeon for music
CivilYoshi For music
BorsDeep for music
Alusq for music
Tamborrino for music
MyseriousDancer for music
Pikmin1211 for music
MAJOR THANKS TO FEbuilder by 7743
Sme for music and for Skill Systems
NwdYeti for Spell animation
Orihara_Saki for Spell animation
MisakaMikoto for Spell animation
Seal for Spell animation
Shyuterz for Spell animation
Mariode for Spell animation
Kenpuhu for Spell animation
Mikey_Seregon for Spell animation
Sokaballa for Battle Screen

Ok… That was a lot of information. Sorry about that. But this was kinda my passion project
for the last 14 months lol, I hope you can like it.

Overtime I’m going to update this hack in chunks… For example I’m gonna update this hack every 3 chapters I have done and tested by my friends. That way you can get more content! And I get more feedback to improve them! With bug fixes, those will be in small patches separate from the big updates, so please let me know about any bugs that show up in your save, so I can be sure to fix it :D. My goal is to update this thread every 3 months with 3 new chapters. That’s my goal anyways, I don’t know if I’m gonna be committed to it lol.

If there is any criticism that you can shoot my way, I’d gladly appreciate it, whether it’s story or gameplay, I’ll gladly thank you for it. I want this project to be as good as it can get. If you can give me information about how I should do this or that, it would be awesome! Anyways, thanks for having me!

Changes

2/24/23 - Changed the palette for the portraits to be more FE, added a new class, changed a unit’s class, changed the cavalier’s animation, nerfed Akira, buffed Ida, changed growth rates on some units, and nerfed Liszt a bit. Let me know of any other problems.

11/2/23 - Hi I’m back, I’ve just been dealing with college and basic life issues lol. Okay I’m here to give a MASSIVE (I hope) update to Helios Saga! 4 new chapters BUT! I added a bunch of graphical improvements to the sprites and other graphics. Also different music was added I think I don’t remember lol. Also also, I fixed the story a bit and changed some of the dialogue. Instead of being a main story about nobles and peasants, it’s a more thematic story about coping with loss. I also changed the first chapter to be smaller because replaying the game during playtesting was getting annoying lol. I at least like this new one, but tell me if I could make any important changes to it. Also added multiple routes (kinda) it’s more of not getting into a paralogue without a certain character. Another thing is Lunatic mode! Have FUN! Also made hard and normal mode a bit easier. Finally, I may have buffed/nerfed every existing unit. And I kinda don’t remember doing who and what so just trust me when I say I buffed and nerfed every unit. Okay finally, SO SORRY for taking so long to update this hack, 9 months I think… Also, you should expect the next update to be a LITTLE quicker, because most of the time I spent was on the graphics and music, I believe all I need to do is work on the chapters and dialogue (ugh dialogue). Anyways, thank you so much for following this game so far

NEW UPDATE 11/2/23

Helios Saga v0.4!

Dropbox - Helios Saga v0.4.ups - Simplify your life
Make sure to use mGBA for this hack. Specifically 0.9.3 for the least amount of bugs.

Thank you!

[cheddar29]

Hey, always good to see new hackers!

I only played the first couple of chapters, so I’ll mostly be talking general stuff.

Maps;
The maps are very big. This isn’t always a bad thing, but here I think it makes the game feel more slower and dragged out. In future hacks I recommend trying to work with smaller maps early on.
(tbh, the maps in my first hack are also rather big, I get it)

Units:
There seems to be a quite large imbalance in unit power. Akira can one-round almost every enemy in the prologue, as can Liszt (though she lacks as much movement). Hadyn’s growths seem good enough to make him stronger later on, so he’s probably fine. Hasan and Ross are both underwhelming, but seem at least serviceable early game. I don’t think Ida has much of a purpose though, Akira does everything she does, better, and Akira can attack. Stats tend not to matter much when all you can do is heal, despite Ida’s good growths.
(The unit stuff could be affected by the difficulty, of which I chose Normal. Some or all of these things may not apply to Hard mode.)

Sprites:
They all have pink skin. Try using these skin palettes from the repo: FE-Repo/Blade's Skin Tones (For Spriters).png at main · Klokinator/FE-Repo · GitHub

Also some of the portrait and battle colors don’t line up. Fe: Hadyn has red armor in his portrait, yet blue armor in his battle animation. Not sure how widespread this is.

Story:
I am no expert in regards to writing, but I suggest you find some synonyms for “Peasant” and “Noble”.
So far the story seems like typical FE shenanigans, not a huge fan but it works.

Overall, it’s a decent first go-around. Good on you for seeking criticism this early, I think it has a lot of potential, though it is definitely rough.
Hope you can make use of what I’ve said here!

[ScarlettsChips]

Thank you so much for playing my hack and thanks for the the comments you made.
Yeah, I think I understand what you’re talking about in character balance, I think Liszt starts off too good as a starting unit so I might change that. Akira is like you said “a better Ida” I think that what invalidates Ida so much, so I tried to compensate for Ida with good growths. I think I’ll try to make Akira less useful or put her recruit later on. Also yeah, the maps are kinda big, sorry. I was going for a FE4 vibe but I kinda got carried away, that’s why I added the save feature so it’s not frustrating screwing up. I also like how big maps feel when you finish them, it gives “I did it” vibe and I kinda wanted to give that feeling to the player. Also I agree that Hasan is underwhelming, Ross is more of a joke character because of his growth in HP being high and every other stat being low. Hasan is probably a character I need to work more on, I agree with that. In response to the sprites, that’s more of a limitation of how the palette works on Eliwoods animation, sorry about that, if I could change it I could, (I could make his portrait have blue armor to match it). About the pink skin, yeah I agree with that, thank you for giving me that skin palette guide though, that helps a lot! For the writing, I agree that I say peasant and noble a lot, kinda bad at english lol. I’ll try to use more synonyms for those words (by the way the game says those words a lot so I probably will have to lol). Also yea, it’s a typical FE story, I just tried to make the lord as repulsive as possible with some good points, and then he gets character development. Thank you for your response and criticism though, it’s something that really helps. And thanks for saying its decent lol, I legit thought I made garbage when I was done for a while lmao. Thanks for playing it!

[ScarlettsChips]

I tried using the skin palette image that you sent me, can you tell me if this looks good?

I don’t know if I need to change anything because I’ve been used to the one I’ve had now for so long lol

[cheddar29]

Looks solid, skin looks more natural.
I’m not much of an artist, but I think the rest looks good too.

[ScarlettsChips]

Alright updated the hack these should be the changes unless I miss some lol,
Changed the palette for the portraits to be more FE, added a new class, changed a unit’s class, changed the cavalier’s animation, nerfed Akira, buffed Ida, changed growth rates on some units, and nerfed Liszt a bit. Let me know of any other problems.

[ScarlettsChips]

11/2/23
Hi I’m back, I’ve just been dealing with college and basic life issues lol. Okay I’m here to give a MASSIVE (I hope) update to Helios Saga!

4 new chapters BUT! I added a bunch of graphical improvements to the sprites and other graphics. Another thing is Lunatic mode! Have FUN! Also made hard and normal mode a bit easier.
(LIKE THISSS)

ADDED BLINKING ANIMATIONS!!! They kinda look meh but they look cool when they blinking

Also different music was added I think I don’t remember lol.

Also also, I fixed the story a bit and changed some of the dialogue. Instead of being a main story about nobles and peasants, it’s a more thematic story about coping with loss.

I also changed the first chapter to be smaller because replaying the game during playtesting was getting annoying lol.
(HERE SOME OF IT!)

I, at least like this new one, but tell me if I could make any important changes to it. Also added multiple routes (kinda) it’s more of not getting into a paralogue without a certain character.

Finally, I may have buffed/nerfed every existing unit. And I kinda don’t remember doing who and what so just trust me when I say I buffed and nerfed every unit.

Okay finally, SO SORRY for taking so long to update this hack, 9 months I think… Also, you should expect the next update to be a LITTLE quicker, because most of the time I spent was on the graphics and music, I believe all I need to do is work on the chapters and dialogue (ugh dialogue).

Anyways, thank you so much for following this game so far![A] (oops I need a break)