Fire Emblem Romhack Roundup

I began playing Fire Emblem when I was in the third grade, starting with the original English GBA release of Fire Emblem. I have since played every official entry in the series from FE4 to Fire Emblem: Engage (no Fortune’s Weave yet!). This is all to say: I have been a fan for longer than a good chunk of the fanbase has been alive. As such, my tastes and opinions on these ROMhacks may be somewhat different than other, more “modern” fans.

A Word on my Writing Opinions

I’ll talk a little bit more here about writing than perhaps some others interested in ROM hacks might, and I wanted to give readers a heads up about where I am coming from and what my general predispositions are with regards to evaluating storytelling. I come from an English lit background, and am strongly influenced by it, in ways that seem to put me somewhat at odds with much of the fanbase. I am going to be harsher about and more interested in things like thematic consistency, overall emotional affect, and quality of dialogue than I see many fans be. Conversely, I am going to be considerably more forgiving than most fans when it comes to expectations around novelty and internal logical consistency. I would go so far as to express frustration with the fanbase around this. I think the prime example of how I differ here would be my evaluation of the story of Radiant Dawn. Radiant Dawn’s story is widely lambasted by the younger community, and that disapproval is largely centered around one crucial point (extremely old spoiler warning): the blood pact. I am not here to defend the blood pact; indeed, it is a groan-worthy device used to quickly usher the plot along and allow Pelleas to remain sympathetic as the leader of an antagonistic nation. However, one poorly executed macguffin does not a bad story make, and the strong character portrayals and theming of Radiant Dawn work quite well in spite of it. Even more succinctly: I think evaluating art through a “CinemaSins” lens is brutally reductive and soulless, and strongly disapprove of the way much of the community seems to do so.

My Gameplay/Series Opinions

I think this section would probably be longer than anyone would care to read, so I’ll just bullet some of my opinions on the series that are perhaps illustrative of my views.

• The “old game jank” of FE5 and FE6 (crazy staves, ambush spawns) is totally forgivable and sometimes even lovable in retrospect, but largely should not be repeated.
• FE4’s “massive maps, low chapter count” was an interesting and (IMHO) mostly successful experiment, but FE4 scale maps should not appear in longer, >20 chapter games.
• Good map design is much more important than win condition variety or novelty. I would much rather play through 10 well-made route/seize maps than have to deal with a meme objective that is poorly executed (Revelations).
• The preoccupation with LTC as the ultimate mark of “efficiency” in evaluating units/tactics that much of the community follows is arbitrary, unimaginative, and ultimately not reflective of the way 99% of people play FE.
• Related to the above, I think warp skipping maps (and similar cheese strats, outside of maybe some FE5 silliness) is super lame and avoid it whenever not doing a specific challenge that promotes it.
• FE7 is one of the strongest games in the series, and getting a high rank in Hector Hard Mode remains one of the better built in challenges in FE (although it’s certainly imperfect). Lyn mode uber hate is forced.
• Awakening nearly killed my love of the franchise. The idea that “FE was always anime” is technically true but intellectually dishonest. Awakening (and Fates) were very clearly tailored towards a subset of modern anime fans and preferences that are distasteful to many people.
• Conquest’s gameplay was much better than the rest of the 3DS era, but still I think somewhat worse than much of what came before it, outside of a few excellent maps.
• 3H is/was good. From both a narrative and gameplay perspective. I suspect “controversy” around this mostly stems from endlessly analyzing a relatively recent popular thing and parroting content creators.
• There is basically no reason to play FE 1-3 in their original forms. The remakes outmode them almost completely. That said, I’ll go a step further and say there isn’t much reason to play Shadow Dragon anyway, as it’s pretty dull compared to all that came after.

Layout/Design

As simply as possible: I am going to divide these overviews into three sections: writing, gameplay, and design. I will probably have significantly more to say about the first two, as I feel far more qualified to critique those.

Actual ROM Hack Reviews

The Last Promise

This is probably the most well known ROM hack in FE history, and so likely needs little introduction. For the uninitiated, however, The Last Promise is a large scale FE7 hack known for being the first (Western) completed, largely successful project of its scope and quality, dating back to 2012. It features 40 (!) playable chapters, including gaidens, and a cast of 43 recruitable characters.

Writing

Firstly, the bad: the writing in The Last Promise is awful. I don’t mean to be harsh in my assessment here, but the most praise I can give The Last Promise’s writing is that it manages to craft a solid (if slightly derivative) setting and follows a mostly coherent path towards its conclusion. Furthermore, the dialogue does improve throughout the game, going from laughably bad at some points in the early game to mostly serviceable later on. Beyond that though…it’s rough. Characters have semi-realistic personalities, but there is never even close to adequate explorations of their backgrounds and motives. They feel like (exaggerated) real people, but people you talked to once in passing, not people you really know. “Sympathetic” antagonists are never made believably sympathetic as they carry out their duty to the evil empire, and unsympathetic antagonists are mustache-twirling levels of unseriously evil. Even worse, a couple of antagonists try to yo-yo back and forth between those two extremes based on late-to-the-table plot revelations. Their shifts are completely unconvincing to the point of being confusing to the player. Support conversations exist, but most of them amount to little more than two characters greeting and saying goodbye to one another. Even the better ones largely do little to establish depth or explain why a character is a certain way, only emphasizing their already evident surface level personality. The criticisms of the game’s writing that I disagree with are those about its verbosity. I’ve seen copious amounts of online complaints about The Last Promise being too long winded, but in truth I think that only applies to the endgame. It drags on, trying for a long, emotional farewell that the game’s narrative frankly isn’t high quality enough to justify. Otherwise, I find the length of the story sections in the game perfectly acceptable. I am, however, 33 years old and lack any diagnosed attention disorders, so I may have more patience than much of the community.

Gameplay/Design

As for the good, I am happy to report that the answer is “most other things”. The game is divided into two sections, much like FE7, with most of your units disappearing at the end of part one and rejoining later. This, like Lyn mode, can lead savvy players to creating super soldiers that trivialize the game for a bit after rejoining, and also creates a few winners and losers in terms of rejoin time (somehow, this game’s nomad has Rath syndrome even worse than Rath). That said, part one is much less of a hand-holding tutorial than Lyn mode, and indeed I think is actually a little harder than some other parts of the game. Expanding on difficulty, I wouldn’t consider The Last Promise to be a particularly difficult game, however the difficulty is somewhat uneven. In particular, there is a large dip in difficulty in the midgame once your units really begin to ramp up in part two (especially if you are doing the gaiden chapters). There is also an abrupt spike in difficulty around chapter 24/25 that can could definitely give the player difficulty whiplash: maps went from an easy first-try breeze to making me carefully plan and restart a few times. The bosses in the late game also venture into “you’re playing a ROM hack now, punk” territory, with enemies being given special classes and caps that would make Lyon and Nergal look like children. Luckily, you are also given some very powerful tools and units in The Last Promise, and I never found any of them prohibitively tough.

In terms of the cast, The Last Promise does an impressively good job at balance. There are a few remarkably good/bad units (Logan springs to mind for the latter), but for the most part everyone is either usable long term or has a niche, and the game does an excellent job at balancing “growth” units and pre-promotes as well. There are a few early game pre-promotes that fall off hard, but mostly they follow in FE7’s footsteps by being Just Good. For the growth units, it does better than FE7 in allowing for the weaker, early join units to have space to compete. It does so mainly by giving them better growths/promotion availability. Most importantly, many of the units in The Last Promise are just fun to use. Cia in particular I find so much more enjoyable to use than most GBA mages. Liquid is a super fun berserker with a cool (if somewhat superfluous) hidden personal skill, and shows the rare successful execution of a growth focused unit that comes as a pre-promote. Kelik makes other footlocked sword units weep with jealousy. Karina is Miledy in a game that has other actual good units so that you don’t feel guilty for using her, or forced to use her. I could continue, but suffice it to say that I think this is one of The Last Promise’s big strengths.

Mechanically, The Last Promise is FE7 with some extra classes and very slightly adjusted class caps. Pretty universally, those extra classes are very strong, and those adjusted class caps are buffs rather than nerfs. Personally I think this is fine, as I’m much more concerned with quality than novelty, but I know some people want something that pushes the envelope a little more when playing a ROM hack.

When it comes to map design, I think The Last Promise generally does a good job, but there are a few stinkers. Notably, chapter 26 is overly large (but impressively ambitious in all that it does), and chapter 20 pretty badly overdoes the “trek through mountains vs flyers” trope. There are also a couple of maps that you could argue as being somewhat lazy, such as the one that is FE6 16x/Tower of Valni 8, but upside down. Mostly though, the map making here is solid, and arguably the biggest criticism to be had is that it’s pretty safe/doesn’t really do anything crazy til the late game, similar to how the game works mechanically.

As an aside, some of the game’s gaiden chapters and sidequests are inscrutable to the point of “you will miss this every time on a blind playthrough”, which I think as a choice on its own is neither good nor bad (how anyone found Stefan in FE9 remains a mystery). It warrants pointing out, however, and luckily there exists a spoiler-free guide on how to not miss them. It is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WyGxJblGFT6k0MRylAJCcBcRtbS4ldQa/edit

It is also worth mentioning that The Last Promise features a significant postgame section, in which all of your units are reset to their join levels/stats and must be re-recruited by defeating them in a series of trial maps (called “stars”) accessible from a hub area (the “constellation”), as well as some characters not recruitable in the main game. This hub area also features shops, an arena, and a special “galactic arena” challenge that pits one unit against waves of enemies. This postgame, in my opinion, is extremely neat but also extremely frustrating. It’s so neat because it is pretty well fleshed out, and stars 7 and 8 are legitimately cool and challenging (assuming you haven’t grinded your units to max level already before star 7). It is frustrating because grinding up your units from zero at the start is very tedious, and all but requires hours of arena abuse. The worst part of it, however, is that stars 9 and 10 are gimmick maps after getting the player excited to play the “real” post-game, and clearing star 10 congratulates the player and challenges them to complete two final challenges…neither of which were ever completed. Furthermore, is it possible to soft lock yourself by entering a star too early/weak and not being able to complete it (probably star 7), as there is no retreat option. I consider this lack of a way to bail out to be poor design, but I also admit that having to figure out star 7 while underpowered was probably my favorite experience in The Last Promise postgame.

Art/Music

For the music, The Last Promise features no original music, and instead uses a variety of tracks sourced mostly (entirely?) from non-FE video games that have been adapted and rearranged to use the GBA’s soundboard. Most of these sound, in a word, fantastic. I was thoroughly surprised and impressed at the music here, and found myself adjusting the volume up, rather than down how I often do, multiple times while playing. I recognized several of the tracks played (albeit most not by name), and enjoyed every one.

The art also warrants a section. I have read some criticism of The Last Promise’s art, notably of Kelik and Tekun’s design and animations, dismissing them as being very “edgelord”. I don’t necessarily disagree with that statement, but I will remind readers that Rutger is a real character in a real GBA Fire Emblem. And Navarre exists. Myrmidons have always been edgelords. Those critiques aside, I think the art and portrait work in this game is broadly quite good. Some of them very clearly echo mainline FE characters, but that isn’t always a bad thing. As for the animations, Kelik’s are neat and Tekun’s are…passable. They are indeed choppy compared to the sublime fluidity of something like the GBA swordmaster crit (my animation friends tell me they lack mastery of something called “institial frames”), but on the whole I think are good enough that the project is better for having them.

In conclusion, The Last Promise is the giant upon whose shoulders other ROM hacks stand. It is by no means a perfect giant, but it is a giant nonetheless. At nearly 1am, after finishing star 10 and realizing that I had sucked out all the marrow the postgame had to offer, I felt…empty. As though I had lost something that had come to occupy a favored space in my days. The kind of feeling I always get when finishing a long, good piece of art, and that is high praise indeed for a ROM hack.

Vision Quest

A massively well known (and liked!) ROM Hack is Fire Emblem Vision Quest by Pandan. Featuring a 4 part story, a major army split, over 40 chapters, and over sixty(!) characters, Vision Quest (VQ) is arguably an even more ambitious work than The Last Promise was. I frequently see VQ recommended as a “first ROM hack”, with supporters citing its generally high quality, lack of major weaknesses, and relatively “vanilla” design as reasons why it should appeal to newcomers. For the most part, I tend to agree with that assessment, and thoroughly enjoyed my time in Yaska.

Writing

First off: the writing here is heaps better than the previous ROM hack I played (The Last Promise). Indeed, it is good enough that I feel I can delve into specific critiques and praise, rather than just saying “it’s bad but did these things okay I guess”.

The first major critique I have for the writing here is that it often over-emphasizes characters’ station/origin, especially early on. Nobles speak in a flowery, pseudo-Shakespearean dialect that feels stiff and unnatural, but revert to “normal” modern speech at various points. The writing for this dialect feels uncomfortable and unnatural, to the point that I was relieved when characters would speak normally. Luckily, this mostly gets discarded early on (with the important exception of one character, whose pompousness is plot-relevant and well-executed). This cannot be said for the country peasantry, whose hayseed-isms are at times a touch grating (and I say this as a native Kentuckian). The main character and especially his little brother are relentless with this, and unlike with the nobles it does not abate as the game continues. That said, they are fine characters otherwise, and I do not wish to make this problem seem larger than it really is.

My second criticism is with how the game begins. With as little spoiling as possible, the game begins with a group of peasants struggling under the yoke of oppressive taxation, who turn to crime in order to get by. These crimes are later viewed as a sort of Robin Hood-esque set of actions, but the game does a very poor job of communicating this at the time. I am sure the game was trying to be a breath of fresh air by depicting the desperation of poverty over the typical “lord” archetype common to FE, but I admit that I had qualms about performing home invasions in the early game. Overall, I found it harder to sympathize with the cast than I should have initially, although it did get better as time went on.

Next, while I defended the general length of The Last Promise’s story interludes, I do think VQ’s were excessive at times. None of the writing in these sections was bad; in fact I think it was generally strong. However, there were times it felt like someone forgot they were writing for a video game, and the time between clearing a chapter and getting to the next prep screen was unacceptably long.

My final critique for VQ’s writing is the way it ends. The game’s epilogue (and special bonus gaiden) heavily imply a sequel, and the game does a great job of building intrigue towards the parts of its world that would be explored by one. That would be great…if a sequel were ever coming. Eight years after initial release, and six years after the most recent patch, work on the sequel has been canceled for a long time. VQ is an incredibly ambitious hack, and I do wish the creators had had the foresight to realize that completing both it and a similarly scoped sequel was a long shot.

In terms of what the writing does well, I would like to highlight the massive cast of diverse and interesting characters. With over 60 playable, it features a cast larger than any official GBA FE, and does a good job of making each character feel real, with quality (albeit generally short) supports and join conversations that give the player an immediate strong impression of what the character is like, without relying on too much heavy handed exposition. I will additionally highlight the character of (super minor spoilers) Titus as probably the standout of the game. His moral compass is no where near as strong as the protagonists’ (either the main one or part 3’s), and he is frustrating at times, but he is flawed and fun in extremely believable and convincing ways. He reminded me of a more realistic, (much) less vile Griffith from Berserk, and I greatly enjoyed following his arc, even if I was able to call its destination fairly early on.

I will also point out the general storytelling of mid to latter first part and early third part as high water marks. While the story does strain slightly under the weight of all its threads in the final act, and part two does meander a bit, the best sections are probably more tightly and enjoyably written than any official GBA FE. The plot is compelling, the characters strong, and the politics less sanitized than in the official games.

The last writing quirk I will note is the characters’ tendency to discuss food. If you read about VQ online, you will not get very far without someone mentioning how much cuisine is discussed. Indeed, I can think of at least a couple of characters whose biggest identifying personality trait is “likes X food”. Some people seem to take great issue with this, but I personally felt that it was charming. Even more, the games seems plenty self-aware of what it is doing here; without spoilers, there were times when food came up in later chapters where I felt the corners of my mouth involuntarily upturning into a grin, knowing that I was being winked at by the writer.

Gameplay/Design

For gameplay, VQ is, in a word, strong. There are very few (if any) “bad maps” in the hack, and the character balance is incredibly good for a cast this size. There are a lot of fog of war maps, which is sure to be a sore spot for some, but I found that most of them were well executed and not overly sadistic in their enemy placement. As for the difficulty, I played the game on the recommended “Normal” difficulty, and found it to be considerably harder than most mainline FEs’ hardest setting, but never intentionally and lazily unfair like Lunatic+/Reverse or Shadow Dragon’s H4/5, for example.

Something that I will point out for the gameplay is that I enjoyed the way VQ balanced the game around unit types by making the enemies heavily employ effective weaponry. Weapons like horseslayers and hammers are very common for the enemies to hold in VQ, and most villages you would visit for an item are guarded by a bow user, giving fliers less dominant utility. Typically, I think the obvious way to balance units so that high movement units are less dominant is to make them worse at combat, but that also has the side effect of making them less fun to use. In The Last Promise, this was done in part by giving them worse caps (they already have the worse caps in official games, but they are basically irrelevant there), and making the late game enemies strong to the point where caps matter, but the problem with that is that it only matters in the late game. I prefer VQ’s method because it helps effectively balance units while introducing a layer of strategic depth for the players’ plans and deployments. That all said, I still found fliers extremely strong/useful throughout my playthrough (I regularly deployed three), but probably used cavalry less than I have in a long time. As an additional note, the anti-armored weapons are relevant here primarily because VQ Knights/Generals have 5/6 move, and it the presence of such weapons helps make them merely “great” rather than “overwhelming”.

Another point of interest in VQ is the prevalence of stealable items. In almost every map in VQ, there will be at least an enemy or two with a desirable item in their inventory waiting to be stolen. Typically, these items will be nice-to-haves, but occasionally can be high priority, which I think is a great distribution. I do not have an incredible amount to say here other than that I think this is a nice tactical wrinkle to introduce, although I did resent it occasionally when I was pressed for deploy slots.

Another notable gameplay feature of VQ is the relative poverty of the player. The game is much stingier with gold than any official FE, and I felt more pressure to be careful with money than I do any time other than trying to S rank HHM in FE7. Tying into what I said about stealables, this further encourages you to deploy thieves, as the random red and teal (a VQ invention worth only 1000 gold) gems that enemies carry to swipe can be pretty important.

As for critiques, I will get the biggest one out of the way first, because it is one many others have made before me: VQ is very determined to make you play FE the “right” way. And by that I mean: rushing the map objective, because FE forum users have determined that it is the mark of efficiency over years of discussion. Occasionally, it does so by placing an explicit turn limit on maps, but in truth those are almost never relevant: the actual stated turn limits given to the player are very generous, and I am not sure if I felt pressured by one even once during my playthrough. Instead, it mostly does so by spawning in reinforcements that will almost certainly kill you if the map is not cleared quickly enough, and it overuses this mechanic to the point of growing predictable and tedious. In part one in particular, almost every map that does not have an explicit turn limit spawns either a juggernaut boss or waves of powerful units if you do not clear it fast enough. My “natural” play style in FE is to seize control of the map very quickly and then play slowly in order to make sure I get all of the items, feed exp to my preferred units, etc. This was beaten out of me in short order, and I finally accepted around chapter 5 that I was going to have to just clear the map ASAP in most situations. Because I was going to be in control of the map anyway, it wasn’t a huge adjustment, but I can see it being excruciating for anyone used to playing truly slow. This is not inherently bad design, but I found it overused, especially because it is often the only source of difficulty in a relatively difficult game. Indeed, none of the bosses in VQ are terribly tough, and rarely is there a specific enemy on the map with a weapon or skill that gives the player much trouble. In more maps than not, virtually all of the real difficulty is in the time constraints, and at some point it grows old. Continuing this theme, almost every stationary boss in the game eventually rushes you if you do not kill them fast enough (some rush you pretty early, some pretty late), and by part two I stopped wondering “if” it would happen for a given map, and instead started thinking about “when”. Time-based patterns like these happen so much that I started to look at maps with the “Survive” objective as reprieves from the sprint, whereas in most FEs they are notoriously either slogs or the hardest chapters.

My other major “critique” is that because the units are so well balanced, I sometimes found them a bit less fun to use. That is to say, there are very few units in VQ that are considerably stronger than the rest, and the growths are generally low enough that very few units are proof against being RNG screwed. There are exceptions to this, of course (Storch, Helga, Waluyo, and early game Titus are all difficult to go wrong with), but in general the player should be prepared for units to have the potential of not working out, and may have to cut or replace them later. It is said that this trend, along with the game’s cast size, is in part to make it ironman friendly. That said, I think the game still generally rewards using growth units, and the home grown equivalents will usually be superior to the alternatives the game provides later on. This is doubly true in the endgame, as VQ does not give you very many units with truly endgame worthy bases, and most of the lower leveled pre-promotes have very poor growths.

As an addendum to the above, I will say VQ has the best and most fun execution of the Est archetype I have ever seen. The Est of this game (her name would be minor spoilers) joins as a level 5 monk in a chapter about as late as Nino, with similar bases and in a much more difficult game where maps have consistent time pressures for their completion. That would suggest to most players that using her would be a nonstarter. However, she also has substantially better growths, an innate Paragon skill that grants double experience, and a ludicrously powerful personal tome with sixty uses. By the end of her first chapter, she goes from a total liability to lightly contributing. By the end of her second chapter, she is a powerful member of your army, and only gets better from there. She does require some early handholding, but unlike most Ests she graduates from that stage at a fast pace, and the payoff for using her is real to the point that you could argue doing so as being optimal.

Finally, I will say that the last two chapters in VQ are a little bit disappointing. In short, they are just kind of easy, with disappointingly weak bosses and a lack of any real novel challenges. The final chapter features a lot of status staves, but the game showers you with restore staves before it and gives you multiple prepromotes with high staff ranks to go along with a very generous number of deployment slots. The final boss in particular is a bit of a pushover; I hit him once with a siege tome and then one rounded him with the aforementioned Est unit with no support bonuses or boosts.

Art/Music

For the assets, the custom sprite and animation work done in VQ is fantastic. There were updates being made to this game almost two years after it was “completed”, and the love and care shine through here strongly. Every sprite here looks great, easily on the level of official GBA FE games, and the custom animations are so smooth that it is difficult to believe they were fan made. My only real criticism here is that the armored mage knight/baron class’s magic casting animations are a little awkward (they are just normal knight/general animations but without a weapon), but other than that, virtually flawless. I could gush more here, and the game would deserve it, but instead I will recommend you watch the “gladiator” animations for yourself and see what I mean.

The music in VQ is, like other hacks, sourced mostly from other games, but sounds great on the GBA soundboard. The use of the Yoshi’s Island boss music on enemy turns/actions in particular is a highlight. The music here is generally a bit more subdued than in TLP, and I did like that game’s choices a bit more, but all in all I still very much enjoyed the arrangements here.

In the end, my primary feeling upon finishing Vision Quest is one of frustration. Not because it had unrealized potential, but because it promised a sequel to an incredible game that will never come. Still though, I remind myself of the old cliche: don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. Vision Quest has a couple of issues here, but don’t let my quibbling fool you: It is a triumph of the highest order, and I give it my strongest recommendation.