Last Heavenly Throne ~ LHT (8 chapters - CANCELLED)

EDIT: Hey, this is Runa. Sort of got hit with a lot of troubles IRL and stuff, dipped from a lot of things. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself returning to the community any time soon. Figured the least I can do is actually state that the project is cancelled and put up the github in case anyone wants to mess about in its innards. Hope y’all are doing good, have a good year, fire emblem the last heavenly throne 2 :v:


Fire Emblem: Last Heavenly Throne

What is Fire Emblem: Last Heavenly Throne?

Fire Emblem: Last Heavenly Throne is an FE8 ROMhack made using buildfiles. The hack is split into several different parts, as this hack takes quite a bit of inspiration from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. I understand that both Echoes and Radiant Dawn have a bit of controversy when it comes to its gameplay mechanics and story, but I hope that this hack can still be enjoyable both in story and play.

Unfortunately, this hack is currently a work in progress, and as such it is lacking a bit of polish. Some songs from vanilla may be unchanged, and most characters are still lacking non-placeholder mugs! That’s why I’m hoping to post this, and hope for feedback and perhaps even some help. Of course, if people want to play it simply for their own enjoyment, that’s perfectly fine too! That’s what hacks are for.

What is the plot of this hack?

In the continent of Maghmeall, four nations stand.
The Principality of Heichalot, The United Macha, and the Kingdoms of Corbenic and Srughna.
The people of Maghmeall venerate beings known as the Wardbearers, deity-like figures who purged away corruption and impurity, allowing their descendants to live in peace.
The Wardbearers disappeared almost a millenia ago. The year is 879.
Conflict brews in the north, and begins to spread south as Heichalot declares war on Corbenic, encroaching on their border. Macha and Srughna are silent.
In Caer Rigor, a province of Corbenic, a young boy joins the fight against Heichalot’s invasion.
He hopes to do his grandfather, Sir MacCumail proud, and keep his village safe.
His decision changes the course of both Maghmeall’s devotion and fate.

ROMhack features include:

  • A brand new story and continent
  • One complete part, the second in progress
  • Custom soundtrack filled with original compositions
  • Rebalanced weapons and classes, with variety in magic tomes
  • Rebalanced skill system, with an emphasis on personal skills
  • Reworked stat screen, with information on characters that updates as the story progresses
  • Reworked affinity, so now it matters!
  • Characters that don’t leave the plot after the chapter they join
  • A new internal dialogue structure that allows characters to remain relevant to the plot after the chapter they join lol


Known Bugs:

  • Some skill animations refuse to play.

Where can I download this hack?

You can grab it right here!

Credits (if credits are missing, please message me! there's so much to credit and i've been really bad at keeping track @-@)
  • 2WB - a bunch of skill and item icons, item palette, skills, portrait height rework, talitha mug
  • 7743 - item patches
  • Agro - sword/axe knight map sprites
  • Alfred Kamon - wyvern rider animation
  • Alusq - soldier animations, figher map sprite
  • ArcaneEli - wyvern knight map sprites
  • AuraWolf - item music table
  • Author_Pendragon - war cleric map sprites
  • BatimaTheBat - awakening cleric animation/map sprites
  • Beccarte - f!assassin animations
  • Black Mage - f!halberdier animations, skill icons
  • blademaster, skills
  • Blaze - skill icons
  • blood - f!halberdier map sprites
  • Circleseverywhere - ranged animation rework
  • Colorz - debuffs, freeze, dragon veins
  • Darrman - skills
  • Dei - halberdier map sprites
  • devisio - cool bike helmet
  • DerTheVaporeon - snow fields palette, archer/war cleric/war monk/pirate animations, pirate/war monk/war cleric map sprite
  • dondon151 - halberdier map sprites
  • eCut - bow knight animation
  • Ereshkigal - item icons
  • feaw - wyvern knight animation
  • Feier - skill icons
  • flasuban - f!cavalier/sky knight/crownflier animation, f!cavalier/sky knight/wyvern rider/wyvern lord/paladin map sprites
  • Glaceo - Cethern/Talitha/Srihwen mug
  • HyperGammaSpaces - villager map sprites
  • Iscaneus - war cleric animation
  • jjl2357 - staff locks
  • Kaito - item patches
  • Kao - skills
  • Keks_Krebs - assassin animations
  • Kirb - skills, str/mag split
  • Laurent Lacroix - generic boss/female soldier/Jhudiel/Camniel/Marici/Sanjana mugs
  • Leo_link - war cleric animation
  • Leonarth - less annoying fog, staff locks, 256 colour background, skills
  • Levin - setanta/ferdiad/gedeon/talitha/ethniu mugs
  • Lord Glenn - affinity/weapon rank icons
  • Maiser6 - f!soldier/bow knight/trobairitz animations
  • Memestaralbert - Varuna and Nandi mugs
  • Mikey Seregon - wyvern rider animation
  • Monkeybard - skill icons
  • Myst - movement arrow
  • Nuramon - villager animations
  • Peerless - assassin animations
  • Pikmin1211 - skill manual icons, skill icons, bow knight/trobairitz/war monk animation, str/mag split, talitha mug
  • RobertFPY - assassin/paladin map sprites, str/mag split
  • Rossendale - skills
  • SD9K - assassin animations, skills
  • Shtick - DSFE Avoid
  • Sme - Magic Sword Rework, With Us transcription, skills, ASMC Suite
  • Snek - scripted battle numbers, reda helpers, skills, str/mag split, item clear
  • Solum - long hair mage animation
  • st. jack - wyvern knight animation
  • StanH - skills
  • TBA - halberdier/wyvern lord animations
  • Team SALVAGED - cavalier/paladin animations, cavalier map sprites
  • Tequila - range display fix, new chai, show heal amount, skills, str/mag split
  • Teraspark - pal2EA, item effect revamp, monk animations, skills
  • The Blind Archer - sword/axe knight sprites
  • Tordo45 - paladin map sprites
  • vlak - skill icons, aengus/mug
  • Zane - MMB, wind tome icon
  • Zeta - autonewline, skills
  • ZoramineFae - fields/village palette, paladin animations
40 Likes

Congrats on the release! Looking forward to trying this out

3 Likes

Nice to see Runa is still doing things.

5 Likes

lets goo its at the top of the page now

Hello friends! Thanks to everyone who voted this project as Project of the Week.
I figured I should make an update post to show where exactly I am in this hack’s progress.
So let’s show some stuff off!

First off, we have some new mugs for two characters: Gedeon and Lalitha! That’s right, Gedeon is no longer Innes. Shoutout to Levin for Gedeon, and Glac, 2wb, Pikmin, and Levin again for Lalitha!

update1

We have some new music, courtesy of myself. Unfortunately, it’s pretty tricky to show it off, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say it’s good.

The next part of this update post may have spoilers for Part 1 in it. If you haven’t played it yet, continue with caution :OOO

POSSIBLE STORY SPOILERS FOR PART 1

The lord of Part 2 has a custom animation! Shoutout to Devisio/Pikmin for the still, and 2wb for further help polishing it.
update2

Speaking of Part 2, two chapters for Part 2 are currently complete, with one in polish state. As well, Part 1 is getting another chapter included, taking place right after the first chapter! There may even be a new character…!

Finally, have an arrangement of various screenshots to show off some parts of the progress!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this hack in some manner, and thanks to everyone who has played it! I’ve been dealing with some personal issues right now that have made progress a little trickier, but I’m hoping to get yet further and finish all of Part 2 out before May. I am debating whether to release Part 2 in halves, along with the fixes for Part 1, so more information on the releases will come soon. Thanks FEU!

12 Likes

Hi sisters

4 Likes

Is Srihwen a staff lord

If so I love this idea

2 Likes

I beat Act 1! It was a fun hack, and I’m glad I had the chance to play it! Now, it’s time for a long detailed review post, because those are apparently a thing.

Story (SPOILERS AHEAD)

I really liked how the story went. The opening parts - bandits, more bandits, Evil Empire:tm: soldiers, more soldiers - were mostly just standard Fire Emblem fare. But then we got 1-F and Cethern’s death, which were both executed really well as a surprise change to the story. I’m really interested in seeing what else happens to the party from here on out.

As for the characters, I didn’t like these quite as much. Many of them just felt like standard FE archetypes. Idealistic lord, caring healer, cocky magician, the works. Although given that it seems like this whole group was basically one giant fakeout, having those tropes in order to subvert them might be the intention. I am interested in learning a bit more about Sadhbh, though. Her whole role, being possibly suspicious and possibly allied, seems interesting.

One other thing that really annoyed me was the names. The generally Celtic style you went for isn’t necessarily bad, but it got really overused, in my opinion. There are like five Caers that all barely get mentioned, and blend together in my mind. I know there’s Caer Ochren, the one that uh did a traitor, but what were the others again?

Don’t take this as calling LHT’s writing bad. It’s definitely not perfect, but even when it was at its most boring, it was still fun enough to make me want to keep playing so I could see what happened. And in the end, that’s what matters. (I’m not sure whether being spoiled on Cethern’s death made me want to continue more or less. Even knowing it was coming, it was still an emotional scene.)

Gameplay

LHT’s gameplay was fairly simple and fun. It mostly avoided skill bloat, the maps weren’t overly long, and the little unique details like thief-mages were fun to play around with. There were a few issues with unit balance, but you’ve already told me you’re addressing those for Bres and Aengus in particular. It also focused a lot on mounts, which is a neat gameplay feature. And unmounted units didn’t get disadvantaged quite as much as FE4, especially the mages who are strong anyway.

I feel like the party split on 1-4 is a mite mean. If you didn’t send Aengus or Lalitha up to the top route, you’re without Gedeon or the mage’s stealable Elixir respectively. And given that that enemy group charges you, there’s really no good way to stall them until you haul your 5-move armor/thief up there to get the items.

1-F was a really fun chapter, though. I didn’t like having no reward for killing the boss, but the rest of the fog defense was a good challenge that (mostly) didn’t abuse the fog to punish you. You could generally protect Miach and your low-health units from pegasi without too much issue.

Units

Let’s go through my cast. Note that this is from a savestate partway through 1-F, so it doesn’t quite reflect their final stats.
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Definitely the MVP of my run. He’s tanky, hard-hitting, good at doubling, Quintain fixes any accuracy issues from his axes, and also has mount utility. There’s not much of a punishment for using Hand Axes against the occasional spellcaster or archer, too. He soloed basically the entire right side of 1-3, and most of the top of 1-4.
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She’s a fine archer. Mount movement is nice, and combining that with good 2-range is generally fun. She does badly against actual Archers, weirdly, but I was fine with her overall.
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Slightly unfortunate name aside, Lalitha was great! She shares her niche as a 2-range attacker with Ferdiad, but trades movement for the ability to hit Resistance, counter at 1-range, and also pull off the occasional steal (and see in 1-F).
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Due to getting spoiled, I tried to not use Cethern that much, but he’s a great mounted unit who’s not really bad at anything. Also, his portrait is nice.
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She’s a healer who does healing. No more, no less. She can take the occasional hit (from, say, the 1-F pegasus knights) and move well with her horse, which is good.
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He has hit rate issues, but he certainly could be worse. The game’s tough enough that I needed to put all my units to use, but otherwise, I would’ve probably benched him soon (if not now).
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I don’t like using pre-promotes, but Sadhbh was a good one. She’s an early flyer who can kill stuff and cross the lake in 1-4.
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Barely used him. I guess he can kill some swordies on the bottom flank of 1-F? But a little bit of tankiness isn’t worth dragging around a lance-locked, nonmounted unit who gets shredded by any spellcasters.
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Never really did much that Cethern couldn’t. I guess he could double a few fastish enemies at some point? Mostly just used him for chip damage in 1-3 and 1-F.
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The only good thing about Miach is that he has Rally Movement. That’s it. That’s his niche.
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Secondary mage. Not really better than Lalitha in anything, but an extra Resistance-hitting caster and emergency point choker isn’t something I’ll complain about.

Presentation

The graphics were fine. A mixture of obvious placeholders (which are placeholders for a reason) and some legitimately great art. I love the 1-1 gang’s portraits in particular. I’m not much of an artist, but they all look great!

The custom music was probably the highlight of the entire hack. Those player phase themes go onto a list of some of my favorite video game music. In general. You have the musician role on FEU for a very good reason.

Overall, I liked Last Heavenly Throne, at least what’s shown so far! The story is fine, the gameplay has some great chapters, it has a great Axe Cavalier (which I always love), and an incredible soundtrack to top it all off. Thanks for making this hack available on FEU!

5 Likes

Pretty Decent.
I had a lot of problems with this but overall it was good.
Let’s go over my pros with this and cons.

Cons (Spoilers ahead)
  1. Extremely hard near the end. I had most of the cast left and all but the required ones died on the last chapter. (I was playing on normal) Mostly just saying to fix 1-f but the two chapters before that were really tough as well to get by. It was pretty funny to see only Miach alive at the end though.
  2. Weapon Ranks. I know this may be somewhat of a nitpick but some characters just had really poor weapon ranks to the point where it was annoying. Mainly Sétanta.
  3. Clearly superior units. This mainly applies to Ferdiad, Bres, Gedeon, and Miach. The rest are fine but these poor souls really need a buff to something. Ferdiad just can’t take a hit and has extremely poor speed. Bres is passable but somewhat limited to just fighting axe units. Gedeon has awful survivability and is overall just a worse Sétanta. Last and 100% least is Miach, while the rest could have use all he is useful for is being a Rally Bot, he does his job well but overall just doesnt have much else going for him.
Pros
  1. Good Maps and Enemy Placement. Not much else to say.
  2. Good changes to the weapons & Good new weapons.
  3. Decent Story. Pretty by the books but it works well for what it is.
  4. Decent Characters. None of them got on my nerves and most were pretty decent if a little bland.
Overall

This has a lot of promise. I wish to see it grow into a great fire emblem game. If I had to recommend stuff however, I would have to say this.

  1. Turn down the difficulty. The game gets hard as I mentioned before, so lower the enemies overall growths or something to tone them down, at least for normal mode.
  2. Fix a couple of the characters. Once again I already mentioned this, moving on.
  3. Do what you like. Don’t let people drag you down from completing this. Good luck.

It’s been a minute since I posted but I wanted to give my thoughts on this. Hope I didn’t screw up.
-Kaiden

3 Likes

Since it’s been almost a month, I figure I’d give another progress update! I’m still dealing with a bunch of issues that make motivation for progress a little trickier, but I’ve still tried to get a bit done this month! There may not be as much as last month, but I’ve still been working! :OOO

I guess I should start by saying what exactly I’m working on currently. Part 2 is not what I’m working on right now, and its progress is close to the same as it was last month. I’ve been trying to polish Part 1 as much as I can, with feedback from the community (shout outs go to @RandomWizard, @KaidenMelon, @Tequila and @anon64156711 for their helpful feedback, there were others of course but those are the ones I remember). A huge part of that polish is reformatting all of the text currently in the game to no longer use AutoNewLine. I love AutoNewLine, but after using it for a while, I’ve weighed the benefits and downsides for having it in my hack. And after some thinking, that has led to me having to redo all of my text. Luckily, I was already planning on doing a bunch of dialogue rewrites, so it’s not as bad as it could be! However, it is a bit tedious, and I’m trying my hardest to get through it!

Okay, now for the stuff you actually came for. Here’s some new mugs for the dastardly defense tank siblings, Aengus and Ethniu! Thanks to @Levin64 (god bless his soul) for Ethniu, and Vlak (don’t know your forum name sorry!) for Aengus!

update1

potential spoilers for part 1!

There’s not much else huge besides the mugs right now, so instead I’ll show off some small things that have been added into Part 1!

Thanks to everybody for your support! I’m hoping that I can get to a good place in March to get some heavy work done (at least before Animal Crossing comes out and takes over my entire life). Hopefully a release will be sooner than 20XX!

14 Likes

Nice, Runa! Hack polish is a dastardly foe, good luck.

Def want to playtest this at some point, so I, too, can bask in the glory of Malkuth I.

3 Likes

I like how everything has been going. Those portraits looks pretty nice as well. Rewrites and stuff can take awhile I hope you feel like you’ve accomplished more before you enjoy Animal Crossing.

1 Like

seems promising…

wait, your sibling get caught so you (IDK if my eyes deceived me at the script) went a random fort instead of saving her?
and the jeigan’s name is good , teach me how to pronounce this shxx,

how much do you like the word youse that double typo…
maybe add ’ if it is a slang thingy
and what is Mayhaps lol fusion words

and portraits are too much like a reskin… maybe you can fuse different portraits from vanilla?

They’re just placeholders, it doesn’t matter what they are since they’re getting replaced anyway.

4 Likes

i looked it up to make sure it’s a real word and realized it’s mayhap, not mayhaps :L

Nani!?? And just played final chap big oof to end here yet…

I played through the entire public release on my twitch stream! Normally I plan to add a written review section when playing hacks, but I honestly had very little to criticize while playing blind. My entire playthrough and commentary is available through this vod:

I just want to finish by saying I very much enjoyed the current release of LHT, and I highly recommend that other people consider trying it.
Hack Good.

7 Likes

Today on the list of things Runa is doing instead of being productive:

spectre
rescue
warp

(shoutout to vlak for icons)

12 Likes