IDeas for FE7 Romhack

[The Black Pot]

I'm putting together a romhack of FE7. The original idea, which is currently completed, was to make a complete version that eliminates the route splits so that the player can do all of the chapters and recruit all of the characters, with limited story rewriting to maintain story flow (IE do both versions of Pale Flower of Darkness and recruit both Harken and Karel, do both The Berserker and Valorous Roland). Before I share it in Fan Projects, I'm putting together a second version that implements gameplay tweaks and rebalances, to be released as a separate patch so that any interested in just the story overhaul don't have to put up with my other potentially flawed ideas. I was hoping to get some feedback on the following potential ideas.

 

Overhaul of staves: This one is largely inspired by White Magic in 3h. Essentially, I can remove staves as a weapon class and turn them into Light (Heal, Mend, Restore, Recover, Physic, Fortify, and Hammerne) Anima (Unlock, Torch, Rescue, and Warp), and Dark magic (Ward, Berserk, Silence, Sleep,). Clerics would be turned into Monks, and all magic classes would be able to use both the tomes and the staves of their respective weapon types, though they would not gain anything new on promotion and would not be able to access the staves of the other type.

With this system, there wouldn't be any more need to level purely as a staffbot, since even Serra could throw around Lightning right out the gate and magic users could provide staff utility before promotion and wouldn't need to grind weapon ranks to contribute offensively after promotion. Erk, Lucius, and Canas wouldn't need to grind staff rank on promotion as they would simply be using their existing weapon skill. This would also likely better distinguish between the otherwise very samey magic classes, with each of the class trees having something distinct to offer. The obvious downside would be that Sages and Druids would lose their ability to heal and Bishops and Druids would lose their ability to use non-healing staves.

Valkyrie is something that needs more consideration with this system. My current idea is to allow it to use 2 or maybe even all 3 types of magic, but limit it to the E rank tomes for offense, to offset the greater staff utility and mobility. Adding all 3 would it maintain the current level of staff utility, but runs the risk of excessive magic triangle control... for what that's worth and with only Fire/Lightning/Flux available.

Still very up in the air with this one, and this is where I would be hoping to get the most input.

 

Class Changes: I' wanted to increase weapon diversity so that each combo of weapon is represented. I also wanted to reduce the flexibility of Paladin and improve that of General. General gets Swords, Lances, and Axes and Paladin loses Axes, similar to SS. Since Paladin is now Swords + Lances, Falcoknight and Wyvern Lord are changing to Lances + Bows and Lances + Axes respectively. I'm really torn on Falcoknight since I haven't found any good Bow Falcoknight or Kinshi Knight sprites for GBA and I'm nowhere near competent enough to whip one up, so I'm just using the javelin animation as a placeholder (like a really really big arrow, I guess...). Buuuuut it's either that or an overlapping weapon combo + an unused combo. Either swords gets no flier or bows get no flier. Assassin is the only exception to this line of thought, as it is still swordlocked. To compensate for having poor combat, it's utility will be improved by getting 7 movement, Canto, and not losing the ability to steal, for the like 2 times there's something to steal after the class becomes available.  I'm also making Soldier a real class and adding Halberdier as it's promotion. Sniper and Halberdier will get the same critical bonus as their fellow weapon locked classes.

 

Character Class Changes: Some class lines we get multiple representatives of, while others we get only 1. Lowen would become a Soldier and Legault a Halberdier (we hear so much about his fighting prowess, but he's just a Thief...). Eliwood is getting Lances so the three lords complete the weapon triangle, his first chapter will see the bandits converted to Myrmidons and Mercenaries so he and Lowen aren't facing disadvantage the whole way. Either Farina or Fiora, leaning toward Farina, would become a Falcoknight as the class is otherwise completely unrepresented. Isadora would become a Valkyrie and Karla would become a Nomadic Trooper for the same reasoning.

 

Character Stat Changes: Token in any rebalance. All characters that join as unpromoted foot units will have an updated growth total of 315, all unpromoted mounts will have a total of 280, and all promoted characters will have a growth total of 245. Nino will have a total of 350. This still results in a difference of 5% per stat between groups. Most characters were already at or near this anyway, though most infantry got a buff from this and Florina especially went quite a bit down (her growths are weirdly high for such an early joining unit and a flier...). The hope being that you have some sort of reason to use some infantry instead of leaving this game another mount emblem.

 

Less Terrible Bows: Almost all bows would be given 2-3 range, so that they have some reason to be used. Short bows would remain 2 range, but would receive higher power while maintaining high accuracy and low weight. The Longbow would be treated similarly to Blades, with higher might and lower accuracy.

[eclipse]

Lovely.  Next time, put it in the right place.

[mangasdeouf]

I suppose it's dead, but I second this. Maybe I could finally play the full game, since I really don't like it divided like it is, with multiple route splits (in my longest playthrough I went until Eliwood and the axe lord gathered and nearly to their gathering with Lyn). It's really too long and you face too many roaster changes for me to enjoy. I feel like I shouldn't raise anyone since I don't even get to play them, get sent wherever the game wants me to without justifying having 3 groups (while Eirika and Ephraim shared the same army after chaper 8 and the route split).

The magic changes seem really interesting, just like giving the same growth number to each character of each class (even though you can't reall do it for dodge tanks since luck is really much less useful than def for example, or skill than hp etc.) I think you could set a value of skill/luck per point of str/mag/hp/def, like 0.6 str per skl and 0.5 hp/def per luck, it would make things more balanced (having 30 luck isn't half as useful as having 30 def).

Make foot units better at combat than horsies would really make them the go-to choice while cavalry could flank or be utility units, like they should have been since the beginning (a cavalry charge is fearsome, but when it's broken, cavaliers are not much more dangerous by themselves than foot soldiers, and you can make them fall and kill them easily while a foot unit will be firm on its feet, the only point of cavalry in the rage of battle is for their horse to hit their surroundings, but Fire Emblem doesn't have a divided animation/damage for mounts and riders so...).

I also agree with bows, I feel like if we didn't have bow weakness on flyers we could even put bows with real war aptitudes (bows don't only attack at 10 metters, they also attack from 50+ metters with English longbows having fearsome range, which would make some 5 tiles range normal bows and 7-8 tiles longbows in FE gameplay) and magic could have been AOE (seriously why does a gigantic meteor crah in the middle of battle just to hit 1 ennemy?) with turns of casting and turns of cooldown (a magic-adapted version of Laguz gameplay-wise with power spikes and weak turns) with probably movement restriction while casting, but it's an entire other story, still magic shouldn't be limited to 1-2 range either, especially destruction magic which is global scale.

[DarthR0xas]

7 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

Maybe I could finally play the full game, since I really don't like it divided like it is, with multiple route splits (in my longest playthrough I went until Eliwood and the axe lord gathered and nearly to their gathering with Lyn). It's really too long and you face too many roaster changes for me to enjoy. I feel like I shouldn't raise anyone since I don't even get to play them, get sent wherever the game wants me to without justifying having 3 groups (while Eirika and Ephraim shared the same army after chaper 8 and the route split).

I'm sorry, maybe I'm not understanding this, but what are you on about? There are route splits, but none of them change the roster or divide the cast. Once a unit joins, they're joined for good. Unless you're referring to Lyn mode? But all of those characters come back in Eliwood and Hector mode. You don't need 3 groups, because the cast isn't separated like that. And while there are some small route splits, and by small I mean, literally one chapter depending on your lord's level, your group isn't split up, it only decides whether or not you get Wallace from Lyn's mode or Geitz. The cast never splits up, you can always use the units that you have recruited as long as they don't die. This isn't Radiant Dawn. Also if your "Longest Playthrough" didn't even reach Lyn's return, then I really don't think you can understand the intricacies of this game. It just kinda seems like you're basing your opinions on these proposed changes, based on other FE games, not on FE7. Granted, they are some neat ideas I'd like to see, since it'd be interesting to see in action, but it just seems that you don't understand the game at hand.

[mangasdeouf]

1 hour ago, DarthR0xas said:

I'm sorry, maybe I'm not understanding this, but what are you on about? There are route splits, but none of them change the roster or divide the cast. Once a unit joins, they're joined for good. Unless you're referring to Lyn mode? But all of those characters come back in Eliwood and Hector mode. You don't need 3 groups, because the cast isn't separated like that. And while there are some small route splits, and by small I mean, literally one chapter depending on your lord's level, your group isn't split up, it only decides whether or not you get Wallace from Lyn's mode or Geitz. The cast never splits up, you can always use the units that you have recruited as long as they don't die. This isn't Radiant Dawn. Also if your "Longest Playthrough" didn't even reach Lyn's return, then I really don't think you can understand the intricacies of this game. It just kinda seems like you're basing your opinions on these proposed changes, based on other FE games, not on FE7. Granted, they are some neat ideas I'd like to see, since it'd be interesting to see in action, but it just seems that you don't understand the game at hand.

For real, FE7 gets me bored even faster than FE6, that's saying a lot. I find most units to be nothing special, the chara design is very poor and the stats are not appealing to me. Thieves who can't promote before 2/3rds of the game and then loose their stealing ability? No thanks. Most units having poor bases and growths like in FE6? No thanks. Forced tutorial until you've cleared a large annoying part of the game in easy mode with ennemies who are mostly ridiculous? I'd rather play Fates and have 5 chapters disappear just by clicking the choice, while the first chapters actually contribute something gameplay/story-wise (for what Fates' stories are worth LOL) and present an actual difficulty tactics-wise (like chapter 5 not to get killed by dragon killer sword while keeping your weaklings, Rinkah who's permanently in WTD and takes 95% of her HP in 1 magic attack and Kaze who deals 0 damage and get 2 shot by mercenaries, alive.

FE7 is so damn long to even start that I get asleep before I finish a single chapter so I end up rushing it before falling asleep and the next time I play it I don't remember what I did the last time. I feel like playing a French MMORPG called Dofus, where there are many things to do but everything feels so like it's always the same, like farming the same thing again and again, that I get bored in no time. I didn't even reach the most interesting part of FE7 in 4 years of trying to play it. Barely reached half the game.

If you make the gameplay interesting, at least I could enjoy the game and finally see what's hidden behind this ton of boredom the early game throws at me repeatedly.

[The Black Pot]

Not dead! Still plugging away at it, and glad that someone out there thinks my harebrained ideas have potential.

[Zuda]

For the rebalancing unit part, you can do as you want, but for me, have some great character and bad unit is something good in fire emblem.

This game is not really hard, so it's not like you can't use bad unit, and even only bad unit in your team. Use for once bad unit can be a challenge for exemple, or if you don't know the game, you need to lvl up your character and find that this guys is really shitty, and bench it. And personnally, I only play in Iron man playthrough, so shitty character make sense. When you lose a good character, you replace him with a less good one.

And the sum of the growth rate is not something pertinent to balance your unit. You could have a very low pourcentage growth some and be really good, or high sum and be really bad. For exemple, Lyn, even if she is my waify and have high growth, she is a shitty unit because of his class and no enough growth in str, def and hp. In this game, you can have max skill, max luck, max res and max def, if you don't have speed and strenght, you are useless, because speed is the best stat and strenght is the second one. Luck and skill is pretty bad.

The idea of rebalancing is great, but it's not just a story of growth and base stat. It's the balancing between class and weapon you need to change, and also the ennemy unit. In FE7, you fight an hordeous of shitty unit. So a good character is just a character which 1OR ko an ennemy, and can coutterattack at 1-2 range, with enought survavility. So if you are 2 range locked only like archer you suck, even with 999999 in each stat, if your 1 range lock like the sword class is a bit better but you still suck. And other than that, if you have a horse, if you can fly, you are top tier unit (because the ennemy are so bad than an average speed and str is enough most of the time)

So if you want to rebalance that, just nerf javelin and hand axe. Make them less precise, more heavy so if you use it you will be double, so you would need to be protected and not in the front line. Archer must be the only realiable way to hit thing at 90% hit, with mage. Just buff the ennemy and decrease their number, in order than 1OR KO become hard, so cheap damage will become neccessery, so the role of an archer would be less useless. Reintroduce the triple effectiveness, and an archer could kill a pegasus knight in 1OR. Make the ennemy faster and add them a luck stat, so the sword master with really high speed would be not overkill (that would compensate their shitty str), and the will become more dodgy, so precision would become more usefull (so sword and archer would become more usefull).

Make the game harder, with less ennemy, but threatning ennemy, so the best strat would not be put a paladin with a hand axe and wait that all the ennemy suicided on him. Otherwise the only thing than make a unit better than another one would be mobility.