A thought experiment, if you will. I’ve recently been watching a few Pokémon and Mario Kaizo videos on youtube, and it made me wonder if it was not only possible to make one for Fire Emblem… but have it be good as well. Obviously there are a lot of difficulties with making one (that isn’t a completely abhorrent mess of design flaws), but I still feel there might be untapped potential in the genre, especially considering the success of Mario Kaizo rom hacks (which, there are genuinely good ones by the way, Hyperion & Invictus being some examples).
I do know of Super Thracia, but from what I have seen or heard, it has some… wild instances of quality, as well as some outright impossible situations later on (could be wrong). The Arden memes are good though.
There are many Kaizo variants across many games and making a Fire Emblem Kaizo requires strategy, luck, and skill to pull off a super difficult map. Even Sun God’s Wrath got a Kaizo version as well, except it’s harder with different units, growth rates, bases, and Chapters that have a super hard winning condition that requires 100% of your brainpower and RNG blessings to have on your side. It’s just my thoughts about Kaizo from my perspective.
I believe a good basis for a kaizo like FE hack would be by creating a map that can only be completed in the most optimal way possible and little room for error, kaizo at the end of the day just raises the skill ceiling so high that you either need incredible luck to pull it off, or be a master at the game.
I’d recommend relying mostly on bases for this though, taking growths into account will only mess with whether or not it’s even possible.
I got pretty annoyed at the misleading objective given by the dialogue for the first chapter, but the gameplay itself was a solidly challenging experience. Closest thing to kaizo fire emblem that I have seen, anyway.
ok but for real, I don’t think Fire Emblem as a game suits the kaizo concept, not even the genre tbh.
I think the soul of Kaizo and why Kaizo Mario worked was the demand for insanely precise execution.
SRPGs for the most part kind of just…don’t have that?
The closest analog I can think of to Kaizo in FE is…actually official content.
FE12 Lunatic and up Prologue, or as we lovingly refer to it in the server once in a blue moon “puzzle emblem”, is just that. It plays out like a puzzle. Instead of being more open ended like most FE or SRPG maps are, the process of making it through these maps feels more like figuring out what the game specifically wants you to do otherwise you’re not winning.
I dunno that’s kind of what I see Kaizo as, and what most imitation modes and hacks of all kinds of games misunderstand about it? Being unfairly difficult is only half of the equation, it’s really about finding the solution to what the game is pitting you up against and executing it via trial and error and the game has to be as tightly and precisely designed as the actions it expects you to take. But in an SRPG format? Uhhh…nah that just sounds inherently stupid because at that point, it’s less about execution and more about bashing your head against the wall until you get the correct sequence of multiple choice answers.
thanks for reading my dissertation TLDR no it’d be stupid and bad and dumb and poopy and dumb