I’ve started isekai emblem and i’m enjoying it, but i still cant get over how much i love this hack <3333. Have there been fan works for DH, and if so, is there a central place to view them? googling doesn’t seem to yield anything :(((
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lmao no, this a relatively muted work that’s composed entirely of free-to-use assets. I’d be astounded if there were any fan works.
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Just beat the game earlier today. Had a great time, the hit rates are a bit lower than what I’m used to but nothing I can’t adapt around, and I enjoyed the story. Also got attached to a couple of characters.
I told sigmaraven this already in person but I want to put it into the thread too because I think there’s some very inspired highlights in unit design. They’re both spoiler characters so I’ll put it under a spoiler.
Inspired unit design
Shozhou
Shozhou’s first appearance has him summon a whole army of summons, which is really cool and also in lore time-consuming, so that’s why he can’t just do it on command. He later shows up to temporarily help you when the Cardinal turns out to be evil, and then shows up again for good when You undergoes the trial, this time bringing unique gameplay of two extra summons, which are green but you can optionally turn blue. Of course, I kept them green.
As a former Herald Shozhou in theory should know how to use light, but his class doesn’t have access to it, and very intentionally so–to show his complete contempt and rejection of the light ways. He shows up in C8 with Luna and then the trial with Luna and Nagalfar, which is his in-story-mentioned anti light magic, implemented in-game as a reaver tome. Luna as his starting weapon–and even mentioned once in dialogue, is good for magekilling and ties into his revenge.
Laguna
Laguna gets gravely injured during Eskima’s villain reveal, and had to go recuperate in hiding. When she joins, she has very low stats, but all 4 S ranks in magic. At first I thought she’s just kinda CC Nerysa-core (but with no powerstaff) and only deployed her during the high deploy maps as another filler staffer, but then during a piece of dialogue she was telling someone else that she should recover fast enough. This led me thinking, wait, what are her growths actually? Are they actually super high? So I consulted cromarbot and, not only are they super high, but they’re mostly over 100. Now, while I don’t normally use ests, largely because I don’t think the payoff is worth it, even I can’t resist the allure of multiple +2s and Laguna’s setup is both really good gameplay-story integration, and given the kind of weapon access she has to, levelling her isn’t terribly hard. If I ever do a second run of DH I’ll be sure to level her as soon as I get her.
Anyway my favorite character on aggregate is Lawrence (though Shozhou gets an honorable mention). I also enjoyed his unit design – his bases are pretty bad, but he gets a ton of free deploy during a time where it’s pretty all-hands on deck and literally everyone but Taiga has bad damage so he’s not like, remarkably worse, and he has lower class power so his exp gain is fast and his growths are good and he ends up snowballing into a carry pretty well.
I went and read his supports in the support room and I enjoy him as a person also. It does also help that he shares a few similarities with Kolbane which if you’ve seen anything in the dream of five thread you know who’s my dev favorite haha
so there’s a bit I run where I do degen-ass runesword strats whenever a hack lets me, and one of Lawrence’s promotions lets him get swords. Even without this bit, it’s a good option for him, because D swords gives him Night Blade access which lets him hit res at 1-2 and he’s actually a bulky enough unit to frontline to take advantage of it hitting other melee units in enemy phase. But, because of my runesword bit
I present
Runesword is an A rank sword, btw, and I’m the type of person to end maps whenever I can end maps, so this isn’t farmed on reinforcements.
Also I drew Lawrence
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Words eaten in record time.
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well hey it was true (maybe) when you said it
i just made it 2 months after
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This is great, I love your art of Lawrence!! I’ve replayed DH earlier after learning of the same things you’ve shared about those 2 characters, as well as other optimal characters.
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On that note I would highly recommend playing one of the NQR team hacks (Homecoming released very recently) if you’re a fan of hacks with a larger focus on story or art (lumi being the artist of the team).
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Just finished a fanart of You! Tried to make her look fiercer and more determined than base Rimurin, also took some inspiration from her unpromoted battle sprite.
I drew this in my phone using Ibis, I wanna try drawing her again but with my pentab next time!
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103.3% complete!? This has to be the most complete ROM hack of all time.
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It’s 103.4% now I forgot to post some fixes from when Lumi played.
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Sigma is this lawrence normal
End of chapter 7 btw
Having 8 deployment slots in one map, then having 2 new units join, then seeing that the following map still has only 8 slots is diabolical smh
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let’s gooooo lawrence run
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I did not expect the map with 2 tile vision fow, swarms and anti turtle reinforcements to actually be pretty chill
Imagine if the enemy ai was aggressive instead of only being able to attack when not moving
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they have fog too
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Made an account just to ask this
Has anyone ever finished this game with 0 ally casualties?
like, no green unit deaths or player unit deaths?
i guess they’re asking about if anyone did 0 casualty ironman or something bc im p sure most of us just reset when someone dies
All player units recruited, all player units accounted for when the final mission concludes
oh yeah people 100% have done fullrecs of DH. isn’t that hard anyhow since most recruits besides maybe one or two can be semi-readily missed
I beat the game while fulfilling (almost) all side objectives, on hard mode. Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage to recruit every single character. I have no idea how to recruit Carmichael, seeing as he’s an aggressive unit that didn’t stop attacking even after Horace and Hartmann talked to him. I also did not defeat Breunor in the map where he’s a boss in time.
Units that carried
He got 1 speed level up early game and started popping off up until the mid game. His support conversations were sweet and his ending with You is even sweeter
Unfathomable performance after promotion, still incredibly good before that. Can never go wrong with a mounted healer
The large maps and lack of deployment slots sucked for her early game, but being one of 2 or 3 units that can actually enemy phase more than two enemies at a time let her snowball
I knew something was up when she was level 1 and had atrocious stats
I thought she was basically the game’s playable manakete. Got a pleasant surprise when I saw that her level capped out at 10 initially
I like berserkers. I’m glad I managed to get the early ocean seal. Man do i wish berserkers had crit boost in this game
I also like playable GBA soldiers
Jokes aside, soldiers gaining levels faster than most other classes and lances being pretty good in general turned him into my best unit 4 chapters into the game. Pierce was a nice addition, I guess
Cavaliers and tanks are incredibly good in this game, and this guy fulfills both
Arguably the strongest unit I had in the playthrough. Bows are really really good in this game and she had plenty of maps to grow and catch up with my stronger units when she joined
Thoughts about the game
There will obviously be spoilers down below.
The game’s story is straightforward, easy to follow and engaging. The main villain using faith and religion to gain political and military power, subsequently manipulating nobles and generals, even in Raudel, using “heralds” was pretty ingenious. Seeing as there have been multiple heralds tasked with sending messages to other countries throughout history, it is clear that this cycle of fearmongering and manipulation spans multiple generations. Fortunately, said cycle ended when Shouzou, the previous herald, managed to make his escape.
Shouzou is a well written character, and I enjoyed seeing him talk whenever he appeared in cutscenes. Seeing as he was trained to be the previous generation’s herald, he should normally be adept at wielding both light magic and swords, but him adopting dark magic after getting “assassinated” and a light magic reaving personal dark tome was great story-game integration to show his contempt for Verius. Him eventually warming up to the current herald’s cause was not rushed whatsoever, and he does care about his retainer and the main characters even if his words may say otherwise. He’s a complex character with a simple goal, and I think Sigma did a good job writing him. By far the character that I liked the most. I wish he was great at combat like my other units, though 
While I do not believe there is any other character that comes close to him, seeing You become more resilient and less naive throughout the game was still pretty enjoyable. Her battle conversation with the bishop that trained her to become the new herald was really, really cool. Ludo unexpectedly contributing to the plot like 10 chapters after his recruitment was a nice addition, although I think nothing would change if you didn’t recruit him or got him killed before the midgame.
As for the gameplay, the difficulty wasn’t anything daunting, even though the hit rates were pretty lower than what I would’ve liked them to be. Still, nothing I couldn’t get used to. The maps are large and the enemies put up a fight with various weapons and combinations. Figuring out how to deal with each group of enemies was fun. One thing I don’t like about the game is how money and shops are distributed across the early game. Money is tight at that point of the game, and there aren’t many statboosters or gems to acquire. Despite that, there were still consecutive maps that had shops and armories that I couldn’t make use of because I:
A. Didn’t have enough money to buy everything I thought I needed to progress.
B. Was afraid there could be a better shop in the following map, which would mean spending money now would be a waste.
It, fortunately, got better in the mid to late game, especially after I chose the silver card in the intermission map.
Oh, also, there were a few stationary enemies with movement ranges that implied they were aggressive/moved towards you when you were in their range. Some of those enemies are the warriors in the Verian map where we kill You’s and Shouzou’s mentor, and some wyverns in the second to last map. There was also a Druid with a movement range that implied he was stationary, but actually had aggressive AI in the map where we kill the Mageblight druids and pacify Cassie.
Despite this, I still recommend this game for anyone that’s willing to try out new rom hacks. It’s very solid, and a tad bit harder than vanilla FE8 hard mode. I might replay it one day because there are some characters i wanna learn more about and use, some boss conversations I wanna see.
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