Fire Emblem: Dark Lord and The Maiden of Light

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556

Hey! Just made an account to say that I am thoroughly enjoying your hack! Till now, my highest point of FE universe was Vision Quest, but your hack made me reconsider. Some great points include playable tactitician, who goes beyond being just a generic character that you name to having actual strategy (against a very pretty, headstrong char named after an Indian goddess, for instance), having characters who reek of malice on the face yet are surprisingly good guys (Ronaldo, Alva, Hyle, maybe Chandra etc). All in all I loved the hack so far. End of chapter 14 is Oh.My.God. moment, unlike i have ever had in a FE game.

One question, i have James at level 19.15 at chapter 15-2. Where is a the promotional item for him? Heā€™s just sitting there at 20 strength! I donā€™t want to bench my best guy in what looks like an epic defensive chapter against an unbeatable boss ( from the looks of the pair).

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557

He uses the Fell Contract, I believe.

3 Likes
558

Where do I get this Fell contract? (Or ocean seal), even my Ronaldo needs promotion. He also gained max speed and skill already at level 18.

559

If i recall, you get the first fell contract from a chest in chapter 15x, the one which needs a requirement of having the tactician fight Max in 15-3.

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560

Gave this hack a try. I liked it. Nice to see a FE7 hack for a change.

2 Likes
561

Well, Iā€™m glad youā€™re enjoying it, sir.

and as for the promotion item, as the others said, there is a fell contract in 15x. and alternatively there is an earth seal that will also work in the chapter after that.

562

Created an account just to say that even though Iā€™m only at Chapter 17, this might be my favorite FE-style game ever, even compared to the official entries. Thanks for making this!

2 Likes
563

Hey @TytheBub, incredible hack and story so far, sir. I am in chapter 23-3 and so far I have managed with iron and steel weapons. When can I pull out the big guns? I have been hoarding them so far. I mean, how many chapters are there in this hack?

A couple things I would like to praise are

  1. Gimmicks: Ahribaal route is superb. The gimmick in first 2 chapters of that route are pretty fun to play around. This is lacking in many top hacks and adds depth to gameplay.
  2. Writing : i am yet to see supports and not the type to wait on seize maps to unlock them. But the story is fluid and not forced. Also it explains the lore without wall of text. Good work there.
  3. Growths: hidden growths are SO good. Growths of Ty and Dale were fun. An old man who is powerful but hasnā€™t used his axe and so is rusty in in skill is great to see. Or Egil getting low speed due to his wyverns damaged wing. Superb.
  4. Animation: especially of Orion. Smooth! And promoted avatars crit animation.

Cons i see: (very minor, can be ignored)

  1. Way too many early swordsmen!! : I mean it. All are good units. Orion, Shermie, Horton, Ronaldo, emma. This was the reason I trained Emma almost exclusively in Lance. Early game variety would be better I suppose. Then you had to go ahead and make Arjun same swordsman!! Why?
  2. Ranged weapons: why arenā€™t javelins and hand axes buyable? Hand axes are especially balanced by their lack of accuracy. If you wished to balance the ranged nature, I would have implemented idea used in Eligors spear. They can never double hit there. In a hack where wodao is buyable, lack of javelins is surprising.
  3. Deployment variety: You have made me deploy 15 units in most chapters. So I have trained 15 units. There arenā€™t any mandatory units to deploy, so I have no reason to train others. Some variety would be appreciated. Make me struggle with less units in chapters where many units join. Example, Small army of 7 units fight a battle in chapter 10. Chapter 11 I have to select 7 units from the remaining pool. This is notified beforehand. These two groups reach a common battlefield in chapter 12 from opposite sides and fight.

These are small tidbits and can be ignored. Your game, your rules. I enjoyed it. Itā€™s so far the best hack i have played. Thank you for a fun holiday. I almost donā€™t want to finish the game.

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564

There is no patch for FE7 that lets you add properties to weapons like ā€œcannot doubleā€.

1 Like
565

This hack has definitely done a lot in convincing me that growth rates are more interesting when theyā€™re hidden. When they arenā€™t just wholly given away, the player has to make educated guesses based on other details like the characterā€™s backstory, and I like that design philosophy a lot. Ty is one of my favorites in this regard because discovering his backstory and comparing it with his stats makes everything just click into place in a really satisfying way, and it wouldnā€™t hit the same if you could just check his growths from the get-go.

Personally, my theory about Dale is that heā€™s got bad eyesight and is really near-sighted.

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566

You know, to add to that, I think showing growths has a habit of giving the player a bad or wrong impression on characters.

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567

what??? hell no, i never use bad growths units ever, u always pick the best char for the job since they end up being the strongest chars who will survive on the hardest difficulty in pretty much all FE games.

The only chars who can sux are the healers and dancers since they will never see combat!

1st time i played this game i hated that i didnt know the rates but 2nd time my team was so much stronger cuz i used FEBuilderGBA to check growths and pick the best of the best!

2nd run was the most enjoyable 1.

568

Technically healers will do battle when theyā€™re promoted while dancers can do battle depending on the creatorā€™s imagination. Like Sword/knife wielding Tethys.

569

This is a great hack, on chapter 18 and loving it a lot. However, thereā€™s a bug (at least for me) that happens after killing Raum and Orion goes ā€œCome on, letā€™s get out of hereā€. Once he says that, the music fades out and the game lingers on a black screen. I have the latest version and I checked the bugs section to see if anyone else had my problem.

570

Hello ! I just made an accout to give feedback for this hack, but Iā€™ve been playing FE fangames for a while. In total, Iā€™ve played TLP, Requiem, OCA, Vision Quest plus some others that I didnā€™t like and never finished. And I have to say, Dark Lord and the Maiden of Light is the best by far. Itā€™s the best FE GBA experience there is currently, in terms of plot, characters, map design and difficulty. I finished the game yesterday and I will start a second playthrough on Iron man right away, itā€™s just that good.

What I liked the most in this hack is that itā€™s Fire Emblem in its purest form : a great cast of loveable characters, a great plot, cool maps that challenge you without being unfair, and just a lot of fun. This game proves that you can stick to the basics (no visible growths, skills and extra mechanics) and still make a great game. Without exageration, I would say this hack is on par with my favorite games in the main series, and I recommand it to anyone who hasnā€™t played it yet.

Details I especially liked :
-villains all having compelling motivations, while still being evil enough to want you to defeat them
-extra dialogue for the Freesia/male avatar support
-actually, Freesia in general, sheā€™s a great flawed character who makes the plot feel much more personal
-character combat reflecting their personality
-Deep lore thatā€™s not dumped on you but revealed through supports and events
-Bows finally being useful because they hard counter some powerful enemies and are the only common physical 2 range
-item scarcity making inventory management relevant without being a chore
-badass bosses (especially the boss of ch23 and the final boss)
-map variety with great gimmicks

Balance wise, this hack is a masterclass and every unit feels unique and fun to use. The only really bad unit I trained is Chandra : I wanted to see if she had a paired ending with Orion. Even after using her the whole game, she was still really bad and was one shot by any boulder. Tbh Iā€™m a fan of FE6 like balance, where not all units are good so itā€™s not even a flaw, but sheā€™s pretty important to the plot and I wish she didnā€™t die so often while support botting Orion.

I donā€™t have much negative feedback to be honest because I mostly loved everything. There were still a few typos in the text but nothing too serious. Playing on Visual Boy on android, I had a few visual bugs : sometimes closing my phone during a map made some enemy units show a wrong map sprite. But Iā€™m pretty sure itā€™s caused by the emulator.

So thanks Ty for this incredible experience, and Iā€™m looking forward to your future projects. I may do another post with more detailed feedback for each character I used but tbh it will mostly be ā€œthey were good, I liked the supports, I had funā€ all the way lol

5 Likes
571

Is it possible to add a fixed growths version of the hack?

I prefer getting the average unit, rather than gambling on if someone will be good

572

Well, hey, Iā€™m really glad you liked it so much. Thanks for the info as well, but yeah that does sound like an emulator thing.

Thatā€™s a pretty interesting idea but Iā€™m sorry to say, Iā€™m not really sure how Iā€™d go about doing that.

573

depending on your skill level, someone already made a fixed growths patch for fe 7 called Tony Patch; you may be able to mess with it to get your characters to do so. its a very fun hack, i just dont want any of my units to end up useless

574

Made an account just to comment, currently at around the halfway point as of this comment but I do know information about later chapters.

Pretty enjoyable as a romhack, Lady Luck was even on my side since I surprisingly maxed out Str, Skl, and Spd on Fiana, Horton, and Shermie before promotion. (most surprised about Fiana since I saw that her growth rate was 40% in Str, so I practically got super blessed).

Only two real criticisms I frankly have. One and my main criticism is the noticeable money scarcity. Since thereā€™s no arenas out there, you basically have to rely on mainly any of the gems and anything expensive you donā€™t plan on using. Wouldā€™ve been nice if you just gave the player a large sum of money at some point for whatever shopping you need since money scarcity just seems to be a real issue in this romhack. At least in my POV.

Second, the promotional items. Theyā€™re sort of slightly lacking in numbers, and it wouldā€™ve been nice to have more Earth/Master Seals. Tho this might be/is technically minor as well.

575

Hello, I have made this account just to talk about this hack. It is my first time playing a hack and it is probably the best Fire Emblem game I have ever played. I am currently on chapter 21 Kotan route.

I like everything about this game, from characters to chapter design, and I would like to share some things that slightly bugged me. They are all very minor except for one. There could be some minor spoiler:
-During the cutscenes there are some npcs that look exactly the same. In chapter 10 there are two bandits clones onscreen at the same time.
-In the ā€œpick unitsā€ and ā€œtradeā€ menus, when I select a character and scroll through the them, Kathe gets skipped.
-What happens to Yotsmung after chapter 18? It looked very interesting as a weapon.
-While all chapters felt very well tought out, chapter 21 Kotan route is a nightmare. It is the only chapter I find unfair. It is not even funny, it is just frustrating. I was very happy of no ambush spawn, until this chapter.

That said, congratulations to you @TytheBub , this game is amazing. The characters are great (I only dislike Wren and Dariusā€™ mugshots, their personalities are fine), the story is compelling and the chapter are, again, well tought out. I am having an absolute blast playing. I am positively surprised of how well you balanced the game and the roster; no character is close to unusable, they all have at least one niche. Will we ever see the map of Brauma?