I am wondering about the story and the character roster in Sacred Stones seems to be too easy and the number of characters total in the game seems to be too lackluster. Is there any kind of improvement that Sacred Stones need like World-Building, characters that can be nice additions in both Eirika and Ephraim route without having the same characters be at Ephraim’s side instead of being on the canon side of Eirika’s route?
Sorry if the discussion does not hold your cup of tea and maybe misleading, I’m new to making a community discussion. So don’t go hard on me.
Yeah there’s definitely a lot that can be done to help improve Sacred Stones since it’s pretty barebones compared to what came before and after it.
Unsure if it is a game that needs a remake as badly as others, but if they did do an Echoes style remake of Sacred Stones, I think they could do more to flesh out Magvel since it’s pretty barren. The balance would be great to change up, but I doubt IS would do anything significant in that space.
Sacred Stones strikes me as a game that was developed in a rush. I believe it came out only 18 months after FE7, and Nintendo was in the process of moving away from the GBA in favor of the DS. I think the biggest potential that a remake would have would be to have both Eirika’s and Ephraim’s routs be played in a single playthrough like in Gaiden. I would add a few more chapters of Ephraim fighting in Grado before he and Eirika reunite the first time. This would pretty much require that a whole new roster of Ephraim units be created as most of the rout split units make more sense on Eirika’s route. Of the existing units, I’d only have Tana and Amelia go to Ephraim as well as have him to be the one to rescue Natasha instead of Eirika.
Don’t know if I can of use to you. Have no experience with any of the FE Hacking within the community. The only thing that I’m good at is Moral support.
The potential of FE8 getting the Echoes Treatment would be very useful if Intelligent Systems revisits Magvel with world-building and more original characters that haven’t appeared in the OG FE8 like how Gaiden gave introductions to Faye, Berkut, Fernard, and Rinea.
The original characters gave new light for Fire Emblem Gaiden as being the Black Sheep of the bunch and given a moment to shine in a modern retelling of the original.
I actually think its ripe for a remake. Unlike other older games, its a standalone entry and I think they could flesh out certain parts of Magvel like Carcino and Rausten.
Also in my very biased opiniom, FE8 has a lot of iconic characters and moments that would be awesome to see brought to life with things like voice acting and cutscenes.
My biggest concern is that SoV and 3H could have both used a little bit more challenging designs, and SS is already known as one of the easiest games in the series, I would like to see them make an improvement on that front for a remakw.
in terms of the story, I think it’s one of the best in the series, in fact, it’s the best in the series for me.
Much like how everyone misunderstands gen 3 pokemon’s story as a run-of-the-mill silly story with cut and dry villains, the sacred stones needs to be looked at closer in order for the story to be fairly looked at.
Most of the smaller plot points in the game deal with the game’s core theme of not being able to let go of the past, the most obvious example being Orson, however, there are also other parts of the story with this theming, Cormag wanting revenge on Eirika then eventually Valter for killing his brother, Eirika not being able to let go of the fact that Lyon is dead, I can keep going but I think you get the idea.
The character roster in my opinion doesn’t really need tweaking, the game is built around what you have, and adding any new characters has the chance of messing with the story, in terms of worldbuilding I don’t necessarily think Magvel needs to be expanded on, the story isn’t about Magvel, it’s about the people in Magvel. The original game does a clear enough job of establishing the world and its people that everything the characters do and say has context within the world, the place is reasonably fleshed out when looking at the supports in the game and paying attention to the dialogue.
the game’s difficulty is only really seen as easy because Seth can massacre the game from the start, but I’d like to point you in the direction of another game where a mounted unit you get in the prologue can solo the game…
FE4!
Yeah, no one complains that FE4 is too easy despite the fact that it’s arguably easier to dust the game with Sigurd and Seliph than it is with Seth in FE8, this is likely either because people are either unfairly putting FE4 up on a pedestal it has no right being on, or that interesting and unique gameplay features make people forget about the difficulty of the game they’re playing.
I’d personally take the three houses concept a step further in a fe8 remake, have the player be able to walk around in the different towns in the game, this will make the game feel unique without subtracting from the game’s original intended way of play. Of course, you could always go with the boring answer of ‘just put in maddening’ or any other stupid unfair and not playtested difficulty, that will stop those who only care about difficulty from complaining the game is too easy as they go back to playing fe4
While I think that a remake would be nice, I don’t think it will REALLY be needed until the GBA style no longer holds up in today’s day and age, and it still holds up very well.
in my opinion, the only strong points that FE8 has over the other 2 GBA titles are mainly the expanded promotion options, and the world battles that allow you to grind exp for min-maxing the units you like the most( but even that is debatable, because you can either like it or not depending on your point of view regarding exp gain and strategy in the long run ).
FE6 and FE8 were pretty bare bones in terms for story, at least that’s the impression they gave me. there wasn’t much development in terms of concepts and myths, except for the classic “hey, there’s bad guys to take care of, let’s go save the world because, you know, we’re good guys!” kind of story wich has been seen over, and over, and over again a million times in other JRPGs.
to be honest, i prefer FE7’s story way more because not only it provides 3 different sides of a story, but it also expands the previous lore from FE6, giving it more depth overall.
to me, that’s the one out of the 3 GBA titles that deserves a remake the most, but hey, that’s just me of course.