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 girlfriend showed it to me, and now I play it more than her 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
-Big Features-
- 25/27 units playable
- 13* chapters
- Around a 12 to 14 hour play time
- New items like the rings from FE4
- Items like shields from FE15
- 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.
Overview
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 13 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).
Design Philosophy
My design philosophy is mostly focused on the story and characters on this hack. That would mean characters will have their flaws, strengths, etc. They (mostly) won’t be generic units that have one dialogue box. Most of story is already written but as I’m making a chapter I MAY (a lot of the time actually lol) change course to a different scene or story. So most of the story can seem unorganized until I get it organized lol.
This also means the gameplay is focused on the story and characters. For example, if a character is a pacifist they would have the skill “Mercy” and so on.
So tldr; most of the focus goes to the story and characters and second goes to the maps and gameplay.
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.
Character Stats
Character Recruitments! *Minor spoilers*
Automatically recruited in Prologue
Automatically recruited in Prologue
Automatically recruited in Prologue
Automatically recruited in Prologue
Joins on Turn 2 in Prologue
Joins on Turn 2 in Prologue
Joins on Turn 2 in Prologue
Automatically recruited in Chapter 1
Automatically recruited in Chapter 1
Automatically recruited in Chapter 1
Automatically recruited in Chapter 1 (Will leave after Chapter 2)
Automatically recruited in Chapter 1 (Will leave after Chapter 2)
Joins after visiting the village on the top-right in Chapter 1
Joins after being talked to by Rhinehart. Spawns on Turn 3 in Chapter 1
Joins after being talked to by either Haydn or Miko in Chapter 2
Joins after being talked to by Haydn. Spawns at the top of the map on turn 8 in Chapter 2
Automatically joins in Chapter 3
Automatically joins in Chapter 3
Joins after being talked to by Haydn in Chapter 3
Joins after being talked to by Rendall. Is at the left side in the forest in Chapter 3
Joins after being talked to by Miko. Is at the bottom, near the right ballistae in Chapter 3
Joins after visiting the village on the top-left in Chapter 3
Automatically joins in Chapter 4
Automatically joins in Chapter 4
Joins after being talked to by either William or Haydn. Spawn at the bottom-right on turn 15 in Chapter 4
Joins after being talked to by Chopin in Chapter 4
Joins after being talked to by Chopin in Chapter 5
Joins on turn 2 in Chapter 7
Automatically joins in Chapter 8
Screenshots! CH 0-6
Screenshots! CH 7-8x
Some Changes
- 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 (MAX B-rank), with only one support having an A rank
- Units gain support bonuses from 1 space away
- Music across all of FE! (And some from Touhou because I like Touhou) (Most of the music comes from the Music Repository!)
- NEW BG TITLE! (Thanks to my friend for making the text. I’m kinda dyslexic)
- Lunatic mode if you in to that… Kinda made it difficult so play it with caution lol
- 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
Scraiza for ASM
Etc.
Ok… That was a lot of information. Sorry about that. But this was kinda my passion project
for the last 20 months lol, I hope you can like it.
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!
Schedule
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.
I’m mostly going to be focusing on the story and characters first… This would mean that gameplay and playtesting would come second. So please give me criticism on how the difficulty is and how I can make it more balanced.
Supports however… Will be coming much later, I would say after part 1 is done. Once supports are done with part 1, I will start on part 2 then finish the supports for that part.
I am thinking of doing an aftergame where you can explore the map but I’m very on the fence about this so idk
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![A](oops I need a break)
6/16/24 - Hi sorry about the wait, same issues as before but because I finished my semester with college and stuff I spent some much needed time on this hack. This update is not much but it includes 2 chapters after chapter 8x. I also added many graphical additions which were really needed. Also also, fixed and added new dialogue to each chapter (most chapters i think). The story was also tweaked a bit and was given some subtlety. There was also the removal and additions of cutscenes that can make this hack more unique and stray more away from vanilla FE8. New characters are also introduced either, beginning of the story or middle of the story. And several graphical changes with character’s portraits (Haydn has blue eyes! YAY). There is now a world map that reflects the countries a bit more than Magvel ever did. And several characters were rewritten. Also some items were reworked, for example, Miasma, now makes it where both player and enemy can’t double. Since this update is mostly graphical and musical changes, its only going to be updated to v0.41. Thank you so much for following the game so far!
6/16/24
Small little update since I forgot to fix some bugs left in the v0.41 release (Bugs relating to the bishop class mostly). Changed some of the dialogue and changed some of the music. A very small update The version will still be called v0.41.
NEW UPDATE 6/16/24
*PLEASE READ:
It’s highly recommended to keep Maria alive until chapter 8, then talk to her. If you don’t then you can’t go to chapter 8x. The game would end, and then you will be sent back to chapter 8 and can’t continue to chapter 9 and 9x. This is because I haven’t coded in the alternative route for a major character’s death if Maria is dead or not talked to in chapter 8. So it’s highly recommended to keep her alive till that point. I’m really sorry about that.
Helios Saga v0.41!
Dropbox
Make sure to use mGBA for this hack. Specifically 0.9.3 for the least amount of bugs.
Thank you!