Hi everyone!
Here’s a little project I started over a year ago, a rebalance of Genealogy of the Holy War.
At first it was just for me: I was playing around with randomizers and became frustrated with how in FE4 many weapon types and classes are simply straight up better than others, so I decided to get into Nightmare and change things up.
Eventually I also started to apply japanese patches and even mess with hex editors, so my friend Vivi suggested I post it for everyone to enjoy.
Overall, I think this makes for a fresh experience which is also surprisingly challenging: since many weapons and classes have been improved, the generic enemies are relatively stronger now.
Consider playing this not only if you’re a Jugdral stan like me, but also if you tried FE4 and dropped it due to its dated gameplay.
List of changes
Characters can double slower enemies without Pursuit if they have 5 more points of Attack Speed
Ambush is always active, regardless of HP
Crit rate is shown in battle instead of Level
Weapon weight is reduced by Strength, 1 Weight every 4 Str
Sword skills can be inherited and used by everyone
Capped stats glow green
Skill bracelets now cost 30000 G rather than 40000 G
Deirdre can promote to Sage
Various balance changes to weapons and classes, the whole list is in the Drive folder
It’s now reasonable to want to use Iron weapons or Fire tomes
Foot units get +1 move on promotion, and mages have +1 move
Added some skills to characters with few or no skills, mostly substitutes
Adept to Arden
Life to Adean
Awareness to Claude
Adept to Radney
Bargain to Mana
Awareness to Tristan
Luna to Dimna
Astra to Amid (removed Adept)
Duel to Femina (removed Adept)
Pursuit to Johalva
Adept to Johan
Ambush to Daisy
Adept to Janne
Life to Hawk
Critical to Hannibal (removed Adept)
Sol to Sharlow
Minor adjustments to bases and growth rates (mainly adding Str to mages since now they have a use for it and so their physical children don’t suck)
The .ips file is for a non headered, japanese rom.
Things I'd like to change, but don't know how (yet?)
Axe animations for Dragon Knight/Lord
Luck changes
Half Luck to Hit rate
Lower enemy Crit rate by Luck
Give Luck to generic enemies
Crit without Critical skill with Crit rate equal to half Skill
Minor text edits
Change Skill stat into Dex
Remove “in a pinch” from Vantage description
Credits
Thanks to Lamia for the resources they shared, including the nightmare modules and most of the patches I used
Thanks to Mage Fighter for their help with the hero axe animations
Thanks to Scrambled for the patch to make capped stats glow green
Thanks to the whole team behind Project Naga
There’s also the Japanese community to thank for many binary patches I used, but I don’t speak Japanese and I have no idea who to specifically thank!
This… This is amazing! That is, if the all you exposed actually works the way you intended. FE Holy war is my favorite game ever, so this could be an amazing experience for me. Thank you, Enaluxeme.
Hello! I just wanted to ask a quick question, how does pursuit work in the context of this rebalance? I don’t see it listed in the changes anywhere, and am just wondering how it has been reworked?
Pursuit hasn’t been changed, in the sense that units with Pursuit can make a follow-up attack if they are faster than their opponents even by just 1 point of Attack Speed. Meanwhile, everyone else needs 5 AS over their opponents to follow-up.
Oh, by the way. Are the growth rates and blood bonuses unchanged or did you mess with those too? I know they are not in the list of changes, but you could have forgotten to put them there for all I know (it is a extensive changelog after all).
There are some slight adjustments yes, but nothing major. Mostly it’s about increasing Strength bases and growths to mage units since they actually use it now and to help physical children of magic units.
Notably, Fala blood increases Str growth by 10% and Falaflame gives a bonus of +10 to Str when equipped, with no compensatory nerfs to other stats.
I might compile a sheet with all the bases and growths if people are interested.
@Enaluxeme found a problem. In chapter 1, Dew appears with a steel sword instead of an iron sword, so he can’t defend himself unless I bring him to a castle and buy him a slim sword.
That’s weird. I did change one Iron Sword into a Steel Sword, but it was supposed to be the one used by Diarmud/Tristan. I’ll be able to fix it in approximately 2 hours from now.
I also took the opportunity to take away Adept from Amid’s personal skills. Between Astra and the ability to follow-up without Pursuit he doesn’t need it, and he gets it on promotion anyway.
I just increased every physical weapon’s might by 1 point. This is because armored enemies were too much of a pain to deal with since I buffed their defense. I didn’t want to scale the defense back down since I feel like at least one class line should be able to get to 30 Def, so I just increased everyone’s attack to compensate.
This also makes magic swords a bit more in line with normal weapons when used physically: those swords haven’t been buffed since I made their stats identical to those of the spell they cast at range (so you can actually calculate the combat stats you have at range).
Also, I buffed Midir’s base skill by 2 points. This should make him a bit more reliable while also doubling down on his niche as the more skilled father for Lester contrasted by Jamka’s higher Str and Spd. Poor guy already struggles when he actually hits his enemies anyway.
Just wanted to report that apparently the hand axe for female hero is bugged and freeze when used as range weapon. This only affects radney but in subs only run it’s kinda makes her value dropped than her brother who can use it
Nice rebalance! I see Mage Knights can use Staves in this patch?? That’s pretty neat! This along with Male Mage Fighters getting Staff access that’s pretty fair since Female Mage Fighters could use Staves anyway.
So I assume that means an Arthur with Claud as a father can use the Valkyrie Staff on promotion??? That could be pretty big potentially. Possibly having an Arthur that can revive dead allies, use any other staff in the game and possibly still be a solid combat unit at the same time. All on Horseback on top of that.
