Hi folks. I’m the creator of FE8 Psychic Emblem, which was a gameplay overhaul of vanilla FE8 that replaced the 4 physical weapon types with additional elements alongside Anima, Light, and Dark, and implemented a Weapon Heptagon between them for combat advantage.
I’ve recently decided I want to make a short ROM hack with this basic premise in mind (the weapon triangle will be more traditional – more on that in the first bullet), and here are my goals and design philosophies for it:
- Swords, Lances, Axes, and Bows will be replaced with Fire, Ice, Wind, and Thunder. There will be a Weapon Square between them in the order I named them: Fire > Ice > Wind > Thunder > Fire. I wanted to go with a style that resembles the traditional Anima Triangle from Jugdral and Tellius, since most people are already familiar with it and it’s easy to remember. There is a chance I’ll rename Ice to Water and swap its position in the square with Fire.
- I may rename the Anima weapon type to Earth to differentiate it from the other elements, but its interactions with Light & Dark will be the same as the classic Trinity of Magic we all know.
- The Lord will be a Dancer/Refresher, probably with a generic Tactician/Brammimond portrait. If I learn how to give the player the option to name them, I’ll include that.
- You will be given 28 other units right from the start of the game: 4 for each respective element as their weapon type. They all start at level 1 and have unique base stats, growth rates, and a personal skill. They do not have promotions but the level cap will exceed 20 and stat caps will most likely exceed 30. I’m expecting to set HP cap to 60 or higher, but I’m not sure if that will be necessary.
- All weapons have infinite durability, and you will be given all obtainable weapons right from the start of the game. Every unit has a personal weapon and can wield any generic weapon from their own element. I’m planning for there to be 3 generic physical weapons and 2 generic magic weapons per element. You will be given at least 2 copies of each from the start of the game.
- Including the Lord, you will only be able to deploy probably 6~9 units per chapter (too soon to know for certain).
- There are only two Staves in the game: Physic and Rescue. They have infinite durability, you will be given at least 5 copies of each at the start of the game, and every unit except the Lord can use them.
- The chapters will be relatively small to medium sized. I personally don’t like overly large maps in Fire Emblem, because I hate having to press Wait too often and slogging across long treks is a pain in the neck. The general map design philosophy will be that you have to split up your army and send units to different parts of the map to complete multiple objectives, some mandatory and some optional. Depending on the difficulty, there will be more pressure on the player to act quickly.
- The only rewards, i.e. from chest loot, shop purchaseables, and enemy drops, will be stat boosters & gems/gold.
- I haven’t decided how many chapters there will be, but probably between 8 and 15. It will be a fairly short and condensed adventure.
- I am not planning to write an original story, and there will be no cutscenes. I’m thinking of making the map tilesets very different from each other to emphasis the fact that there isn’t a story, and there’s no rhyme or reason to the biome shifts from chapter to chapter.
- The 28 playable units will all be characters from the Fire Emblem series. I’m not particuarly expecting to have unique battle animations for every character I’d like to include, but if they exist I will attempt to use them. I will of course credit the artists of every fanmade portrait & animation I use.
- Each unit will have a global-range A support with each of the other units from the same element as them. Support bonuses will of course be greatly nerfed from vanilla FE since you can stack so many of them from any distance. The purpose of this is to encourage an alternative playstyle that goes against the grain; conventionally, you are rewarded for including as much elemental variety as you can in your deployed army. My intention is that I also want there to be a viable option in which you “commit” to one or more elements by training as many of them as you have deployment slots for. I’m a huge fan of elemental commitment, and I love doing monotype runs in Pokemon games. I believe this will also increase the game’s replayability by increasing the potential teambuilding permutations. Ideally, this will create a personalized Fire Emblem experience that is unique from what the main games have to offer.
I have attached a few excel screenshots of what little planning progress I have so far – it’s still very early.
When calculating growth rate totals and base stat totals, I am treating HP, Skill, Res, and Luck as being worth half as many points as Str, Mag, Spd, and Def.
Units whose personal weapons only have 1 range will be given slightly higher base stats & growth rates than characters with 1-2 range personal weapons. I’m expecting to rebalance their stats further based on how strong their personal skills will be.
I’m still deciding on the effects attached to many weapons, and a lot of their stats in excel are just placeholders for now.
If you guys have any personal opinions or feedback about this project idea, I’d be glad to hear them.
It’s not my expectation or particular objective that anyone will be helping me to develop this hack, but if people are interested and want to have a hand in its creation, feel free to reach out to me.