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Fire Emblem: Heaven's Bloom [v1.1 released!]


Roosterton
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TL;DR: Google Drive link to ups patches (patches for FE8U!!!)

Are you tired of waiting for FE Switch news? Do you want to escape from the bridal Sanaki controversy? Do you need a break from shitposting on reddit?

Look no further than this thread!

A little over a year ago, I delved into the vast and scary world of GBA Fire Emblem romhacking. Today, I'm very happy to announce that my pet project, Fire Emblem: Heaven's Bloom, is complete and playable from start to finish.

Features:

  • 19 chapters (inc. prologue and endgame)
  • patches for both easy and hard mode
  • the FE8 skill system, courtesy of circleseverywhere
  • a character-focused story which takes itself seriously
  • 37 unique support chains w/paired endings for some
  • original map, battle, & boss music, and some original cutscene music (was planning to replace everything with my own but I'm not a composer ;_; might finish this in the future)

The story begins in the Kingdom of Adestria. Hundreds of years ago, Humans competed for survival with magically gifted beings known as 'Fae'. Over time, a breed of 'Half-Bloods' emerged, descended from parents of each race. The Half-Bloods chose to ally themselves with the weaker Humans, and the Fae were destroyed. The Half-Bloods then turned on the humans, using the powers of their Fae blood to subjugate and enslave their magically-inert cousins.

A little over a hundred years have passed since the subjugation. Our main characters are two Half-Bloods: Lord Cassius Malberry and his sister, Fordra. Hoping to find the cure for a horrible disease, they hunt for an ancient Fae tome...

The story is not deliberately edgy, but fair warning: it does involve some mature topics such as racism, (off-screen) child abuse, and (off-screen) torture.

Gameplay-wise, I tried to live by two main philosophies:

1. Give players lots of choices when building their strategy - All promotion items are master seals, so players may promote their characters in any order. Since FE8 was used as a base, branching promotions work as expected. Shops throughout the game usually stock large varieties of strong weapons, earlier than one might expect. Most maps have multiple avenues of approach. Finally, one of the main characters is a staff user with very high magic, and staves such as sleep and silence have had their durability increased, allowing players to make much more liberal use of these dynamic options.

2. Encourage players to use all characters. Some support chains are fairly significant to the development of the world or the backstory, and I didn't want these being missed on the bench. Playable characters tend towards higher bases and lower growths, so it's harder to train a single monstrous juggernaut, and characters can remain relevant even if their exp distribution isn't being constantly watched. Further, the deployment limit is high enough that benching characters isn't necessary. 

Regarding difficulty, I honestly have no idea how hard or easy this game would be considered relative to other FE games. My perception is skewed after playtesting it so much and learning the optimal strats for everything. Easy mode reduces enemy bulk across the board (hp, def, res, and spd), reduces all stats of enemy bosses, and removes skills from some enemies. I would definitely recommend Easy for FE beginners or people who have only played SS/PoR. You can always replay it on Hard mode later :^_^:

Known/reported glitches:

Spoiler

If a player unit that is currently carrying another unit gets killed, the game hangs. This seems to be a problem that others have experienced with the FE8 skill system. Doesn't seem like a huge deal because it's very niche, and people usually reset when a unit dies anyway.

Ch.4 and Ch.5, despite being seize maps, sometimes also end if all enemies get routed. No idea what's causing this. They both have stationary bosses, so if the boss is the only enemy left, I would recommend that you finish buying / visiting villages / etc before killing the boss.

One user experienced Breyett's sniper promotion crashing the game when done in ch.7 (with ranger working fine), but I have not been able to replicate this in either version of the game.

Getting a game over on ch.11 or ch.17 as a result of running out of turns will result in the game softlocking when you restart the chapter to try again. This is easily fixable by closing the rom completely and re-opening it before you restart the chapter.

If you encounter any more glitches, please inform me so that I can look into them! Easiest way to contact me would probably be a DM on twitter (@EAA_Len) or reddit (/u/Roosterton). I admit to not checking these forums as often as I should, but I will probably be checking this thread for a few weeks at least.

Full character list w/recruitment information:
 

Spoiler

Prologue:
Cassius, Lvl 1 mage: from start
Fordra, Lvl 1 cleric: from start
Hands, Lvl 1 fighter: from start
Keena, lvl 1 myrmidon: from start

Chapter 1:
Breyett, lvl 1 archer: visit village
Derruk, lvl 8 mercenary: talk with Breyett

Chapter 3:
Tayli, lvl 6 pegasus knight: from start

Chapter 4:
Merran, lvl 6 cavalier: from start
Gilbert, lvl 1 paladin: from start
Sedry, lvl 6 troubadour: talk with Hands or Keena

Chapter 7:
Felix, lvl 12 knight: joins at end of chapter only if you didn't kill any civilians

Chapter 8:
Henley, lvl 12 pegasus knight: talk with Tayli

Chapter 9:
Janessa, lvl 17 wyvern rider: talk with Cassius or Fordra, or joins if she survives to the end of the level

Chapter 10:
Aminda, lvl 1 dancer: talk with Cassius, Fordra, Breyett, or Derruk (before turn 8 )

Chapter 12:
Jerrak, lvl 1 berserker: from start
Sylvie, lvl 1 falcoknight: from start
Orceil, lvl 1 druid: from start

 

Full support list: (* denotes paired ending on A support)

Spoiler

Hands:
Keena*

Sedry*
Fordra*
Cassius
Felix

Keena:
Hands*
Sedry*
Cassius*
Tayli
Fordra

Breyett:
Derruk*

Aminda*
Janessa*
Merran
Jerrak


Derruk:
Breyett*

Tayli*
Aminda*
Fordra*
Felix


Tayli:
Henley*

Derruk*
Keena
Fordra
Cassius
Sylvie

Merran:
Henley*
Gilbert
Breyett


Gilbert:
Sedry*
Jerrak*
Cassius
Merran


Sedry:
Keena*
Hands*
Cassius*
Gilbert*


Henley:
Sylvie*
Merran*
Tayli*


Sylvie:
Henley*
Jerrak*
Tayli

Jerrak:
Sylvie*
Gilbert*
Breyett

Aminda:
Breyett*
Aminda*

Orceil:
Janessa
Fordra

Janessa: (In the process of making this list I actually realized her Fordra/Breyett supports are only one-way, so initiate with the other character. Will fix soon!)
Cassius*
Fordra*
Breyett*
Orceil

Fordra:
Cassius*
Keena*

Janessa*
Hands*
Derruk*
Orceil
Tayli


Cassius:
Fordra*
Janessa*
Keena*
Sedry*
Hands
Tayli
Gilbert



Special thanks to:

  • Jake "Firefly" Turner (@SSBB_Firefly on twitter) for making the first ten maps of the game very aesthetically pleasing.
  • KidCinder for fixing & improving battle palettes
  • Attila for specific portrait help & feedback
  • People who have streamed or done Let's Plays to raise awareness: IrisZ, Shinkou, Attila, Kiederen
  • the players who have provided truly great feedback
  • Every single person who has contributed documentation or other resources to the FE romhacking community, but especially Nintenlord for his event assembler and NGmansion for FEBuilder.
  • GabrielKnight for his hatless mage battle sprite
  • oracle_of_fire and Aviv for their 'sister' battle sprite

With that said, I'm going to stop talking and let the game speak on my behalf!

Google Drive link to ups patches

Imgur album with screenshots from the first two levels

Changelog so far:

Spoiler

v1.0.1: (May 23/2018)
Improved portraits for Keena, Breyett, Tayli, and Gallea

v1.0.2: (May 24/2018)
Fixed an error with ch.5 loading the wrong enemy designations (now loads 'Rebels' as it should)
Removed a leftover Sacred Stones talk conversation from ch.8

v1.0.3 (May 25/2018)
Improved battle palettes for Cassius, Fordra, Hands, and Keena, courtesy of KidCinder
Fixed a bug in ch.7 which could cause a crash when units stepped on certain tiles

v1.0.4 (May 26/2018)
Fixed Janessa's Wyvern Lord promotion so that she gains stats other than con
Improved battle palettes for Breyett, Derruk, and Krysner, courtesy of KidCinder
Fixed a bug in ch.10 which could render the village un-visitable
Replaced the droppable Devil Axe in ch.6 with a droppable Battle Axe due to glitchiness between the Devil Axe & the FE8 skill system

v1.0.5 (May 27/2018)
Fixed a potential bug with the ch.11 houses
Added a pathway to the ch.14 map so that it's less monotonous

v1.0.6 (May 27/2018)
Ch.10: Enemy bishops and darting blow archers have had their HP and speed reduced
Ch.10: Aminda leaves the battlefield on turn 8 instead of turn 7
Fixed Breyett's blinking frames

v1.0.7 (May 28/2018)
Hotfix for ch.10 bug introduced in 1.0.6

v1.0.8 (May 29/2018)
Ch.2: Fixed an error where the boss's battle conversation would load the wrong text if he initiates on a generic
Ch.3: Deo's portrait now un-loads properly before the Tayli join conversation
Ch.4: Objective test now correctly says seize
Further cleanup of Breyett's portrait
Orceil's swapstone is now unbreakable

v1.0.9 (May 31/2018)
Updated Cassius' portrait with cleaner shading, courtesy of Attila
Updated Merran's battle palette, courtesy of KidCinder
Updated Janessa's portrait with cleaner shading and a less tomato-like skin tone
Increased the internal levels of various bosses to reduce the effects of auto-levelling, preventing bosses from randomly being unbeatable - temp fix until I make all bosses have static stats
Reduced the crit rate on certain late-game magic to 0

v1.0.10 (June 4/2018)
Updated Gilbert and Sedry's battle palettes, courtesy of KidCinder
Updated Hands' portrait - no longer an unused FE8 asset
Updated Derruk's portrait - no longer an unused FE8 asset
Rewrote the end of Derruk's recruitment conversation
Thunder tome's base crit rate has been reduced from 5% to 0%
Ch.1: Fixed a minor bug which caused the screen to briefly fade out when the archer reinforcements spawned
Ch.2: Reduced the number of shaman/knight guards close to the boss, but they now move and attack the player when in range

v1.1.0 (June 8/2018) [WARNING: Not entirely compatible with previous savegames - see details here]
-Ch.1: map fence tiles fixed
-Ch.1: updated 'Senator Rallmont' to 'Lord Rallmont' - holdover from previous version of the story
-Ch.1: fixed 'hile' typo in the ending scene
-Ch.1: added conditional for Derruk's presence & survival in the ending scene
-Ch.1: added a battle convo between Derruk and the ch.1 boss
-Ch.2: removed the enemy counter from this level because it's defeat boss
-Ch.3: a game over is now properly triggered if Deo dies
-Ch.5: On hard mode, the thief now starts closer to the door, preventing him from being rushed & killed before he can even open it
-Ch.6 boss now has Strong Riposte instead of Impale
-Ch.7: added a convo for the red gem house
-Ch.7: boss no longer shares a name & description with an FE8 boss
-Ch.12: added additional enemies to the turn 4 reinforcement wave
-Ch.13: the named NPC's death now properly triggers a game over
-Ch.13: the named NPC now has the correct description
-Ch.13: added an additional wave of enemy reinforcements
-Ch.14: the ending scene now has more appropriate music
-Ch.15: the ending scene now has music
-Ch.16: an errant map fade was removed from the beginning scene
-Ch.17: the level now has a 12-turn limit; a gameover triggers at the start of turn 13
-Fighter lvl10 skill from Desperation to Anathema
-mastery skill acquisition level from lvl 15 to lvl 12 (dancer: celerity from lvl 10 to lvl 7)
-valkyries now learn Inspiration at lvl 12 instead of Charm (buffs weak Valkyries, + Valk fordra no longer gets charm x2)
-assassins get critical force at lvl 5 instead of lifetaker
-sages get seal resistance at lvl 12 instead of lifetaker
-disabled arena on Hard Mode
-difficulty selection screen removed
-gave the final boss a battle palette
-all weapon hitrates +10 on Hard Mode: meant to reduce strategic inconsistency & make the early game mooks slightly more threatening

v1.1.1 (June 10/2018)
-Ch.7: Fixed completion flags on houses/seize point, should no longer randomly become un-visitable
-Ch.7: Fixed a bug which was causing the armory to not sell all of its weapons
-Fighters now get Intimidate at lvl 10 instead of Anathema (anathema caused way too much listed crit on mid-game enemies)

v1.1.2 (June 14/2018)
-Ch.1: (hopefully) Fixed the text-overspill in Derruk and the boss's battle convo
-Ch.17: Janessa's battle convo with the boss now loads the proper text
-New portrait for Gallea
-Swapped the energy ring in a ch.6 chest with the speedwing dropped by the boss of ch.15 (so that the player no longer gains back-to-back e.rings in ch.6 and ch.7)
-Merran: speed growth raised by 5%. Merran's lackluster speed was crippling him more than it was intended to.
-Cassius: sage promotion now grants +1 spd. Sage is somewhat worthless if Cassius misses his doubling thresholds; improves his consistency in this role.
-Keena: assassin promotion now grants +1 movement. Legitimate alternative to swordmaster?

V1.1.3 (May 9/2020)
-Slight re-wording of some paired endings to fix text issues (Breyett & Derruk, Keena & Sedry)
-Gave Felix a less garrish palette
-Fixed a typo in Janessa & Fordra's A-support
-Fixed an issue where Janessa & Fordra's support trigger was one-directional
-Fixed an issue where Janessa & Breyett's support trigger was one-directional
-Fixed an issue where Merran & Henley's support build rate was inconsistent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Roosterton
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2 minutes ago, Radicre said:

Congratulations Len, I'll definitely play it.  What's a good goal to shoot for for LTC ;)?

I have no idea tbh. With fast-ish (but probably not 100% optimal) strats I could do most chapters in 5-10 turns, but I never counted from start to finish. Report back to me!

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2 minutes ago, Dandy Druid said:

are there any videos of this game or a link to a character list?

re:videos - not at the moment; my streaming / recording equipment is really awful and I don't want to embarrass myself with that. Hopefully I'll sort that out soon and put something together, or if somebody else plays it they're more than welcome to stream it!

A character list is a good idea - will add to the OP.

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16 minutes ago, Roosterton said:

re:videos - not at the moment; my streaming / recording equipment is really awful and I don't want to embarrass myself with that. Hopefully I'll sort that out soon and put something together, or if somebody else plays it they're more than welcome to stream it!

A character list is a good idea - will add to the OP.

Thanks for adding it! Some of them have really interesting recruitment methods. I hope an FE Tuber sees this and picks this up as a project!

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Huh.  I might give it a little try.

Are there only Easy and Hard Modes and no Normal Mode?  I would prefer to play whichever one you consider the "standard" difficulty.

Edited by Von Ithipathachai
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Oh nice. It's very cool when hacks pop out of nowhere, since nobody played it before it's a fresh new experience. I look forward to playing it later.

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When you say FE8 skill system, what does that actually mean? Just the standard Sacred Stones classes, or new classes with skills? Or even just skills on classes that didn't get them in Sacred Stones?

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5 hours ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Huh.  I might give it a little try.

Are there only Easy and Hard Modes and no Normal Mode?  I would prefer to play whichever one you consider the "standard" difficulty.

I would consider Hard to be the 'standard,' but I would also recommend playing in the "reset-on-death" style if you pick Hard. Losing units may make it very hard to complete the game.

4 hours ago, Skeeth said:

Should toss in your TL;DR which game to patch. had to scan the post 3 times to find a mention of it

My bad! Added it now; the base rom is FE8U.

3 hours ago, Chocolate Kitty said:

wait but where are the screenshots D:

I'm hoping to get to this shortly! Didn't want to delay the release just to comb through and hit printscreen a bunch.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

When you say FE8 skill system, what does that actually mean? Just the standard Sacred Stones classes, or new classes with skills? Or even just skills on classes that didn't get them in Sacred Stones?

It adds 3DS-style skills to FE8. Here's a link with more details.

Edited by Roosterton
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1 hour ago, Roosterton said:

I would consider Hard to be the 'standard,' but I would also recommend playing in the "reset-on-death" style if you pick Hard. Losing units may make it very hard to complete the game.

My bad! Added it now; the base rom is FE8U.

I'm hoping to get to this shortly! Didn't want to delay the release just to comb through and hit printscreen a bunch.

It adds 3DS-style skills to FE8. Here's a link with more details.

Are there any non gameboy classes?

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4 minutes ago, MagicCanonBalls said:

Is there limit on support? 

I am on chapter 4 and I like it so far. Though I definitely got RNG screwed when two of my lvl ups only increased HP...

The usual 5-support limit from the other GBA games is still present here. I considered increasing it, but then it would be possible for characters to have multiple A supports and that would probably mess with paired endings :huh:

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I've played up to Chapter 5 and so far I like it.  It's nice that the Fighter character is actually fairly good for a change.

My only significant issue with it is a few character portraits.  The scar over Keena's eye looks awfully fresh, and a few pixels of her eye seem to be transparent (most noticeable in outdoors scenes).  Breyett and Tayli don't appear to have any sclera, and Tayli's eyes in particular are ...difficult to look at.

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2 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

I've played up to Chapter 5 and so far I like it.  It's nice that the Fighter character is actually fairly good for a change.

My only significant issue with it is a few character portraits.  The scar over Keena's eye looks awfully fresh, and a few pixels of her eye seem to be transparent (most noticeable in outdoors scenes).  Breyett and Tayli don't appear to have any sclera, and Tayli's eyes in particular are ...difficult to look at.

Thanks for the feedback! The characters who join early were the first ones I did, so I was even worse at it back then. I'll take another look and try to clean those up.

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Hey, feedback time from me, I've played only the two first chapters yet, but I think I can give some feedback here.

Okay, where do I start...?

First of, thumbs up to the story, it seems interesting and runs away from the classis Fire Emblem trope thing.(But unfortunately would had to have a bandit chapter. :| ) I liked the first map a lot, but the second one was kinda meh to me. 

Portraits are... Bad, yeah, I mean, not wanting to be rude, but they've problems all in all. I know you probably isn't good with spriting neither creating mugs, but try to stick with the default palette for colors, I mean, your skin tones vary a lot and some doesn't even looks like skin tones.(Suppose you needed a black skin tone, you could use cormag's skin tone from the default game, a white skin tone, used eirika's and so on) Also the oultine colors conflict beetween themselves and that's a bad thing. I've also noticed some people have heads bigger than others.

Since you probably can't fix these portraits by yourself, I suggest you to do the same thing Sacred Blaze did years ago, when he also came kind of out of nowhere and just posted his hack, like you did now(I guess). Create a topic like this: on the sprite section. Asking people portraits for your game. Since it's a complete project, I'm pretty sure experienced spriters would be glad to help. And honestly, this hack has potential, if it weren't for the portraits problem and the issue down there in this post.

Now I start my biggest problem, the reason I could not continue playing it rushed, like I always do with hacks. The Soundtrack, god dammit, I know it's good pitched and it sounds good actually, but it doesn't fit a map theme and hearing the classic's fire emblem theme all the time sucked, to me at least. And I'm not much a fan of setting the BMG music into off and just play other music in the music player, but I guess I'll have to do it for this hack :|

And lastly, I've fixed Fordra's mug for you, use it if you want.

zmdtio1.png

I really don't like the white color: 

GBTkO5V.png

Good luck bro. I'll come back after I get through the entire game.

Edited by Yang Kai
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Liking it so far uwu
 

Spoiler

i like that you let hand axes not be garbage with hit ratio 
and the skills are awesome 
 

Thanks for making it, would love to see more from you I guess uwu

EDIT: sorry for the weird "format" i'm new and didn't want to spoil any gameplay things or w/e qq

Edited by Princess Lilly
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5 minutes ago, Yang Kai said:

And lastly, I've fixed Fordra's mug for you, use it if you want.

zmdtio1.png

Now compare with the original and say which one looks better into a fire emblem game: 

GBTkO5V.png

Good luck bro. I'll come back after I get through the entire game.

I think the point of Forda's mug is to look sickly and weak, in conjunction with her disease. I would rather this mug be kept, because it conveys good storytelling through a means other than text.

(If it were up to me, I'd have Forda have a unique skill which represents the disease as well, but what do I know?)

Anyway, I'm up to chapter four. Too early to call one way or another, but I like everything I've seen so far.

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5 minutes ago, Walker said:

I think the point of Forda's mug is to look sickly and weak, in conjunction with her disease. I would rather this mug be kept, because it conveys good storytelling through a means other than text.

(If it were up to me, I'd have Forda have a unique skill which represents the disease as well, but what do I know?)

Anyway, I'm up to chapter four. Too early to call one way or another, but I like everything I've seen so far.

Well, sorry for sounding out rude >.>

But anyways, there could be other skin tones used to represent Illness:

YdAYQvD.png8pfRdAy.png8iONdu1.png

And all three of these looks good. :\

 

AGonJ0f.png

[/spoiler

Edited by Yang Kai
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12 minutes ago, Yang Kai said:

Hey, feedback time from me, I've played only the two first chapters yet, but I think I can give some feedback here.

Okay, where do I start...?

First of, thumbs up to the story, it seems interesting and runs away from the classis Fire Emblem trope thing.(But unfortunately would had to have a bandit chapter. :| ) I liked the first map a lot, but the second one was kinda meh to me. 

Portraits are... Bad, yeah, I mean, not wanting to be rude, but they've problems all in all. I know you probably isn't good with spriting neither creating mugs, but try to stick with the default palette for colors, I mean, your skin tones vary a lot and some doesn't even looks like skin tones.(Suppose you needed a black skin tone, you could use cormag's skin tone from the default game, a white skin tone, used eirika's and so on) Also the oultine colors conflict beetween themselves and that's a bad thing. I've also noticed some people have heads bigger than others.

Since you probably can't fix these portraits by yourself, I suggest you to do the same thing Sacred Blaze did years ago, when he also came kind of out of nowhere and just posted his hack, like you did now(I guess). Create a topic like this: on the sprite section. Asking people portraits for your game. Since it's a complete project, I'm pretty sure experienced spriters would be glad to help. And honestly, this hack has potential, if it weren't for the portraits problem and the issue down there in this post.

Now I start my biggest problem, the reason I could not continue playing it rushed, like I always do with hacks. The Soundtrack, god dammit, I know it's good pitched and it sounds good actually, but it doesn't fit a map theme and hearing the classic's fire emblem theme all the time sucked, to me at least. And I'm not much a fan of setting the BMG music into off and just play other music in the music player, but I guess I'll have to do it for this hack :|

And lastly, I've fixed Fordra's mug for you, use it if you want.

zmdtio1.png

I really don't like the white color: 

GBTkO5V.png

Good luck bro. I'll come back after I get through the entire game.

Thank you for the honesty! I really appreciate it.

There are multiple different map themes throughout the game - if it's bothering you for now, it does change to something less-classic-like starting at Ch.6. I wanted the starting map theme to evoke a nostalgic feeling, but you're right that it's a bit unfitting and also not really done in other FEs. I might have another look at this if I ever go back and do the rest of the music.

I think I see what you mean regarding the head sizes and outline colors on portraits. I'll see if I can fix the worst offenders here, if not then yeah I'll probably make a thread.

Re:Fordra's mug specifically, Walker is correct: she's deliberately pale because of her illness.

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