Fire Emblem The Prophecy Of Flames

#1

Greetings, reader! I am XPGamesNL and this is my very first Fire Emblem Rom Hack that I have been working (way too long) on. Fire Emblem The Prophecy Of Flames is a Rom Hack of Fire Emblem 8 The Sacred Stones. It is still a work in progress but I will share screenshots of maps and some story elements if I can! (Of course the story elements won’t contain any spoilers.)

Title Screen

If a patch of the rom hack becomes available, you can find it here:

Feuniverse
Prologue map

The story is about a young lord, Tim, whose parents died in a tragic war. Nonetheless he has lived a favourable life on the continent of Mirvania and in his kingdom: Gemania. Until he is ready to ascent the throne, Michael (his guardian) takes his place as king. The war may have ended years ago when he was still an infant, the scars of that dark time still remain. When another war breaks out due to jealousy, hate, sorrow and grief, Tim is faced with the biggest challenge of his life. Little does he know, that the war uncovers the truth about him and the continent he has lived on…

This hack will (most likely) feature:

  • A story that goes from prologue to chapter 21.
  • A world map with creature campaign and three dungeons to explore after you complete the game. The dungeons will serve as side stories and will allow you to fight the final boss again.
  • The cast will be bigger than Sacred Stones’ cast. At the moment it has around 70 characters.
  • The game will switch hard mode with special mode. Special mode will switch some characters to make the game harder. For an example: The game might switch a paladin with a halberdier, giving you less weapon types to work with, less movement and maybe even worse base stats and/or growths.
  • A route split with edits to the story depending on the taken route.

A thank you to the people who have provided resources for the hack! This list contains the names of people who have provided materials for Fire Emblem Rom hacking which I have used. (If you are missing from this list please let me know! I would like to have everyone credited for their hard work!)

  • Nintendo
  • Intelligent Systems
  • P33RL355
  • Alfred Kamon
  • MK404
  • Pandan

If you have any questions or tips, I would like to hear from you! This is my first Fire Emblem Rom Hack after all and I would love to hear from you!

8 Likes
#2

May I ask roughly how much of your project is finished?

1 Like
#3

The project is around chapter 15 of Eirika’s story gameplay wise. That includes map and roughly all the characters I want to have on the maps. The story is in a very early stage, because it takes a lot of time and I want it to be of a decent quality. It is currently only at the prologue, but it is getting there.

2 Likes
#4

Welcome!

Question for you - 70 characters are a lot and is over the limit of what the game can handle. The cap is 50 playables in your party at any one time and 62 is the hard upper limit.

Maybe someone with more experience on the tech side can fact check me, but you may run into issues if you make the cast that large (I know I did)

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#5

Thank you for your comment. Haven’t looked at a party with 70 members yet, so it might become a problem. At the moment I have not had any issues yet, but I will be on the lookout. Might remove some characters from the game if the cap becomes too much for the rom to handle…

#6

I think the primary issues have to do with supports, battle records, and endings, but I don’t know the full implications of this.

Figured I’d give you a heads up!

Good luck with your project.

1 Like
#7

Thank you very much!

#8

A large cast, huh? I love me some large casts. My interest is piqued.

2 Likes
#9

Apart from the technical issues Pandan pointed out (which is what I’ve been told is true by Sme as well), there’s also the fact that Radiant Dawn does something similar. Suffice to say it did not work out well for Radiant Dawn to have the vast majority of your cast sitting uselessly on the bench and that was a game with 19 more chapters of story than yours has. Even if we’re to assume one person dies per chapter in your hack, that would mean there are 58 characters by the end. Consider the fact that the most games tend to deploy is 18 characters (which is still a great deal on its own) and you have 30 characters that serve absolutely no purpose. The golden rule I tend to see in regards to vanilla FE (Even Radiant Dawn) is that the cast of playable units tends to be around 150% of the number of chapters you have. As such there really isn’t room in your hack for anything more than Sacred Stones’s cast if you intend to stick to the chapter limit of the game.

1 Like
#10

Always fun to see a new project! This one has caught my eye, I’ll have to check it out.

1 Like
#11

Thank you for your advice. I did also count the units you get after completing the game in the number of 70, but I don’t think that will fix the problem of having too many units. I’ll see which ones I’ll let out of the roster. Maybe they will be playable if I ever decide to make another hack.

#12

Including Creature Campaign units there are still only a max of 45 in Sacred Stones.

1 Like
#13

Sacred Stones has one of the smallest rosters in the series, may I remind you.

2 Likes
#14

It also has probably the smallest chapter count of any game in the series as well. That’s why its roster is so small.

#15

I think a large number of characters can be healthy, regardless of if they will be expected to be used. Obviously a bunch of bench-warmers that never do anything but take up space is pretty bruh, thus the Tellius issue. Every unit should at least be useable should one want to use them, but not necessarily on the same level as your better units. Not everyone wants to try to run every fire emblem game iron man’d with the best units possible to ensure best possible odds. Sometimes you want a wacky, lesser character.

Saleh is indeed there in case your epic funny Lute breaks her last string, for example. However, he’s also there in case you want a sage classline unit with a bit of a different flavor.

Plus, y’know, if the story calls for a lot of characters, then good for the story.

2 Likes
#16

These statements contradict each other.

#17

And this one puts a neat little bow on it. The two are only seemingly incompatible because IS can’t balance even a roster as tiny as FE8’s. There’s a difference between a unit you could but don’t want to use and a unit you’re only using because you got screwed over in a draft/for meme value.

#18

It’s a single player game. It’s very much possible to balance the roster just fine. Just look at Pokemon. You can easily beat the game with all ZU tier mons the same way you could beat any given Fire Emblem game with low tier units. The problem is that overloading the roster with low-tier units is just bad game design. You only have so much game time especially when your hack is as long as vanilla Sacred Stones.

#19

I think that with enough playtesting, I can strike a balance. A reason for making the roster so big, is because I have added a few extra classes and I want to give the player the option to get every class in the game. If they get every class they can find out which classes they like and they could use that knowledge for replaying the game. Two goals I want to reach are replayability and giving everyone something they would like to use. That is why I have various pre promoted units present in the roster: if you like em, you can use them.

Also, I think that a bigger roster will give you the feel of an army. With more units it feels like you’re commanding an army. Naturally, I need to make the enemy army big too. You can only deploy 50 enemies on a map though.

2 Likes
#20

Yes, so just put them on roughly the same level; I think it’d be bad and really boring design if all units in your game were perfectly balanced with one another, and something of a pitfall of a design choice hackers think they need to do.

Also, don’t even think about comparing Pokemon to good balance, lol. So many Pokemon are nearly unusable in the metagame, sometimes even in postgame challenges like the Battle Frontier. But, I digress.

I feel like this project won’t suffer if it hits the cap of some 50 units. While I do agree that it could do with some extra heft, I don’t see it as a big deal to have a lot of units and not as many chapters if the game design is adjusted around it. In fact, it could be cool if it’s done properly.

1 Like