Hello, I wanted to make a discussion topic for this video that came recently by my youtube reccommended and I keep seeing it there. Its a rebalance rom hack of fire emblem 7 touted as the PERFECT fe7 rom hack. Was wondering the communities thoughts on it besides in the youtube comments. For me it seems pretty vanilla rebalance wise, with not all that much different or special, but thats with my experience of what I’ve seen so far in this community and what I have played in general. I really just wanted to hear other people’s thoughts about it, and what everyone thinks.
Interesting. I like the approach of doing small changes instead of massive overhauls. I’m not big on FE7 but I’m curious to see how this plays! Definitely worth a shot!
Eh. I dislike most of the map changes, due overcompensating and not making any sense in the larger scope of those maps. Could also say the same about some of the weapon changes.
(Also I gave Wallace an Earth Seal three years ago, without feeling the need to justify it but then, most of their design philosophy is a stark contrast to mine even when some outcomes converge.)
Seeing random Assassin generics in VoD makes me wonder though.
I just started watching a YouTube video about this! This may feel like an average or another rebalance Fire Emblem Blazing Blade romhack to some fans, but I think this might be peak to comparison to that Project Wildflower hack. I’m gonna play this on my Nintendo 3DS or on my OpenEmu or mGBA emulator
His Pokemon hacks are pretty solid, so it’s nice to see something similar for Fire Emblem. I checked out the Github, and a lot of the improvements his team incorporated were of course based on work already done by FEU’s members. Everything looked like it was properly credited. Still, it would’ve been great for SmithPlays to post it here himself and for his team to give proper acknowledgment in the hour long YouTube video to the FE hacking community that has been here for many years.
I really wish there were more rebalances for FE6 and FE7. Most of them have either been canceled or removed. That said, I also think the Pokémon rebalances by this creator are quite well done.
He actually does in the really long google doc associated with the project, but I do think he probably should have mentioned it in the video, especially with the custom animiations that he used, I feel like it would be easy for people to mistake that as his own work
I’ve actually saw it released on Romhacking-net as well.
As soon as I read this on the list of changes:
I immediately knew that the hack would be a bit iffy, doubly so when it’s self-proclaimed “designed with the philosophy of what is referred to as the “perfect” version of the game.”
Perfect is a very, very strong word, that’s also subjective from player to player on what can be considered as the ‘perfect’ version of a game. So again I already immediately knew that there would be discussions surrounding it’s balance choices.
Kinda funny when on the list of changes it also mentions rebalancing Hector Hard Mode, which I assume would be removing the elements that make you lose a run with no fault of your own (for example HHM Living Legend and Battle Before Dawn, when the game just decides to kill off Pent/Jaffar due to them getting hit with low rolls, meaning GAME OVER).
But then leaving generic Assassins? Insta-killing your units? What difficulties are they on?
Regardless I’m not actually immediately dunking on the project and condemning it as being a waste of time etc, can definitely be fun to play, and the credits seems to be in order on GitHub.
It’s just I’m already aware that throwing the word ‘perfect’ around to describe the hack, is simply a very clear-cut case of advertisement tactics.
Pairing down some annoying elements like rain in the Lyn chapters and then making others more annoying like poison and Killing Edge Assassins in all versions of VoD are certainly choices of all time.
this just looks like a dime a dozen rebalance hack made for his audience that dont know about FEU and assume that he made the crap in it himself over a load of hours, when we all know that it was made quicker than a full hack due to its nature as a rebalance, this is slop with a nice presentation and i’d wish the comments would stop glazing him
700 hours arguing over whether or not to add 3x effectiveness
300 hours trying to fix the Geitz spelling error in the docs (failed)
500 hours attempting to figure out how to edit a map
1000 hours ideaguying
2 hours spent in FEBuilder
Realistically “The Team” in this case includes all the playtesters and all the time ideaguying but I feel it’s really disingenuous in the way he states it since it’s clearly meant to draw on this idea that every idea in the hack is the most well thought out change ever
1-2 shortbows
It’s also annoying how much he hypes up the PERFECT and DEFINITIVE “way of playing FE7”. I know he does this for all of his work and it’s clearly meant for the algorithm but it’s definitely irritating and makes me want to judge every aspect more critically if he really wants to double down on the claim.
It’s especially bad when he claims in his videos and in the doc that he is trying to be faithful to the FE7 feel but then makes a bunch of changes that definitely don’t replicate the FE7 feel at all.
Again it’d be one thing if he were more humble about all of this (I guess being humble doesn’t make content) but something bothers me about big content creators doing stuff like this.
Now if he made this with the mind of, say, making an FE7 edition that aimed to change the way people play the game, then I would’ve believed it a bit more, but for some reason he still wants to stick to the Ethos that he’s being faithful to the games and trying to bring back childhood memories which ends up with me just not liking the guy for being real sleazy, intentional or not.
A lot of the changes feel like nothingburgers especially for certain units. Hawkeye gets +1 speed to “help him compete with enemies”, but anyone who understands how enemy scaling works knows that the +1 speed ain’t doing shit especially with hard mode bonuses thrown into the mix. The changes towards weapon durability are also baffling as durability went up with weapons but, their cost per use remained the same, making them more expensive like they couldn’t be bothered to think of a reasonable cost per use of the weapons. Wind Sword and Wo Dao are also just like effectively the same thing, prfs for myrms/swordmasters. But like why did Wo Dao have to get 1-2 range AND 40 uses that’s insane.
I think it sucks that he didnt really give much attention to the hacking community that provided him with pretty much everything. Like, not even a page on FEU? Really? It just rubs me the wrong way. It feels disingenuous, but at least things are credited.
But yeah, as was said before this just seems like another mid FE7 rebalance. Which kinda makes it sting more that this guy thinks he made the “perfect” fe7 hack, gives the lack of an feu shout a feeling of cowardice more than anything. That introducing his audience to FEU, where more hacks are on display that do more and better (even in the realm of rebalances) would jeopardize the perception of his own hack by casual audiences.
Maybe I’m overthinking it a bit, but regardless it feels pretty tonedeaf to anyone in the community.
I’m not interested enough in FE7 to bother playing a rebalance that has such… “miniscule” changes, I guess. Would need something much bigger. (Would like recommendations since I never finished vanilla FE7)
But yes the whole “perfect” thing bugs me too. Same reason why I’ve avoided playing PureRGB, a Pokémon rom hack by a self proclaimed “purist”. I love tranformative art like Rom Hacking, but describing your interpretation of someone else’s art with terms like “perfected” and “pure” is a great way to alienate me, and other people evidently.
but then, most of their design philosophy is a stark contrast to mine even when some outcomes converge.)
