fe6 Fire Emblem: Eckesachs - FE6, but you play as the bad guys!

[Saint Rubenio]

Hello! I'm Saint Rubenio. With my first hack more or less finished, I began to feel the itch to make something again. After some deliberation, I remembered the FE5 boss recruitment hack, and I thought I'd try and do something similar for FE6, a game whose array of throwaway bossmen I've always been fond of for nebulous reasons. I decided to go one step further and rewrite the story as well. Then it got all sorts of out of hand. The end result is a sort of soft overhaul of FE6's mechanics and maps with a brand new cast and story.

Basically, this hack answers the age-long question: What if Narcian hadn't been around to ruin everything for Zephiel?

Features:

- Every single playable character from the game has been replaced by a boss. Hurray.

- The story has been rewritten in its entirety. Follow Zephiel and his jolly cadre of war criminals as they conquer the entirety of Elibe in a tale that is sometimes humorous, sometimes dead serious. I may or may not have gone too far in a few places. The way I treated Eirika in my other hack pales in comparison to what I've done to our boi.

- To fill out the roster, I threw in some NPCs, as well as a few surprise additions from other games to top off the roster. Every game gets a rep. They will put your bossman knowledge to the test. There's even a secret character! See if you can figure out how to get them.

- Conversely, every boss is now a former Elibean playable or ally. Hope it won't be too heartbreaking taking the fight to them.

- Certain characters have had their classes changed or tweaked to avoid having 10 identical generals and zerkers. Don't worry, though, there's still a lot of generals and zerkers. A couple of new classes have also been thrown into the mix. You would be surprised if some of them weren't already visible in other screenshots.

- A bunch of QoL changes, ranging from small to medium. Don't expect massive, game-changing modifications - this is still intended to be a similar experience to base FE6, just with a few of the more annoying aspects hopefully polished out.
This includes: Ambush reinforcements and hard mode bonuses have been removed, seize tile bonuses have been reduced, weapon experience has been increased to 2 when killing an enemy, staves give more experience when used, accuracy has been increased slightly across the board, light magic has been buffed, certain maps have been tweaked slightly (primarily to make them a little less linear or cut down on the amount of boring walking a bit), enemy pegasi have been somewhat improved so Ilia is hopefully less of a joke, supports are faster (but weaker) and the main character promotes sooner.
That's right - this hack is another FE6 rebalance in disguise. I tricked you, I bamboozled you. What are you going to do about it?

- While supports can be obtained, I was unable to write support conversations due to unexpected technical difficulties. To compensate, sprinkled throughout the game are a number of optional conversations that will hopefully give the characters a sufficient amount of characterization. The game will let you know when they start to pop up, and which ones you can get on each chapter. You can also see a list of the conversations in the guide.

- Speaking of the guide, I made a seriously in-depth guide! Check out them spreadsheets. Aren't they beautiful? You might find something... unexpected in there.

- Roy is in this hack.

See? There he is.

Download:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/aurlp4zdwevu25iu6fmwz/Eckesachs.zip?rlkey=k6gw7m0ob84u3zyvbaiposoer&dl=0

Apply patch to a vanilla FE6 ROM.

Inside the ZIP file, you will find the following contents:
- Two patches. The standard one has all UI colors swapped from blue to red and viceversa for flavor (you are playing as the bad guys, after all). However, I know a lot of people hate when hacks do that, as it can be difficult to get rid of the "blue good, red bad" muscle memory from regular FE. Therefore, for those of you who prefer convenience over flavor, I've also included an alternate version of the patch that maintains vanilla's overworld sprite palettes and battle forecast colors.
- The guide. Self-explanatory enough.
- A folder with screenshots of all the character endings, in case any issues occur or you simply want to bypass FE6's annoying "only the units in the final chapter get full endings" gimmick. Obviously spoilers both here and in the guide, if you care about that.
- Readme. Basically just the three sections below, but in a text file.

Things to note:
- Units will start to disappear when you have more than 52 recruited characters! I got a bit carried away adding characters, you see. Don't fret, the game will warn you when you get there, as well as tell you how to minimize losses and be able to continue the Zephiel experience unimpeded. I made the warning unskippable, so don't worry about a thing.
- Some reinforcements are still ambush reinforcements because they work with magic and I can't edit magic. That's hacking FE6 for you. Watch out for the lower room reinforcements nobody ever triggers in chapter 6, all chapter 21 reinforcements and the manakete reinforcements in the final two chapters. Nothing I can do, I'm really sorry.
- The animations of playable manaketes don't play the fancy transformation enemy manaketes do. It's the best I could do - simply using the same animations causes playable manaketes to turn into disembodied heads.
- Disregard the ending text crawls. I made an attempt to edit them and only succeeded in glitching them out. Since glitches aside they do not reflect the different story, I decided to leave the glitch in because it's funnier that way. Still, it looks pretty sloppy. I wish I knew how to remove them outright.
- The new water affinity slightly glitches the stat screens of units that have it. It's not a major bug, merely a cosmetic one. I suggest you just ignore the hearts.
- Remember that useless village in Sacae's first chapter that was incredibly difficult to save, and then rewarded you with an eclipse tome of all things? Yeah, it has a better reward now. Much, much better. Consider that when picking your route.
- I urge you to yell at me about any issues you encounter - if there's something I learned in my first hacking experience, it's that no matter how clean you think your hack is, someone else will always end up finding something you overlooked. The hack has been playtested in mGBA, VBA and John GBA.

Tier list maker: (Obviously contains spoilers for the playable cast, if you care about that)

https://tiermaker.com/create/fire-emblem-eckesachs-fe6-but-with-the-bad-guys-tier-list-16617653

Special thanks to
@Shaky Jones for the original round of playtesting, as well as tons of feedback and suggestions. The hack wouldn't be where it is without him.
@Jotari, @Pengaius, @ranger016 and @Bad_At_Fire_Emblem for the final round of playtesting, where they uncovered a myriad issues I never would've noticed, and provided some more feedback and suggestions.
Shuusuke the Fool at the FEUniverse discord for helping me to fix Sommie's animation.
Vesley at the FEUniverse discord for helping me to fix the "enemy talks to Zephiel to recruit themself" recruitment event.
7743 for creating FEBuilder, without which making hacks would be a far, far more difficult undertaking. Thank you so much, you are so cool.
Gringe, for his awesome FE6 localization, which I've played more times than I can count and used as a base for my hack.
All the awesome folks in the FE community, credited below, for their gracious contributions in art assets and the like.

Credit where credit is due:
Chain sword general by Knabepicer
F Warrior Reskin Repal by Temp
F Warrior map sprites by FEGirls
Short haired F fighter by Black Mage
F Fighter map sprites by Alusk
Axe and Handaxe wyvern rider by Mikey Seregon, Alfred Kamon
Axe and Handaxe wyvern lord by TheBlindArcher
Player dragon animations by SHYUTERz
Units that do not apply hard boost patch by Tequila
FE6 battle stats with anims off patch by Phanfan (original by Tequila)
Insert a contiunation judgment in battle BGM by 7743
Playable Demon Dragon animations by SHYUTERz
Fixed FE7 fem sage by Shin19

Anything not listed here, including all custom portraits and Sommie's animation, was made by me. I'm no big-shot artist, so please excuse the quality of these. I just enjoy making portraits from time to time.

Edited January 7 by Saint Rubenio

[ping]

I'm just glad that there seems to be a canonical Sommie outfit now.

As you know, I'm kinda committed to playing other Fire Emblem games right now, so this'll have to wait a bit, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

[Saint Rubenio]

40 minutes ago, gnip said:

I'm just glad that there seems to be a canonical Sommie outfit now.

I don't know about canonical, but it's the one I like. Sommie's little top hat >>>> everything else. Even the bold brows.

40 minutes ago, gnip said:

As you know, I'm kinda committed to playing other Fire Emblem games right now, so this'll have to wait a bit, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Of course, of course. Meißen comes first. When you have the time and the will, feel free to try this thing out.

[Pengaius]

Use Erik, this sad wet little man only believes in his own strength stat, he can get one rounded by generics in his join chapter I gave him speedwings and you should too.

Also you should kill off Tick to not reach the 52 character hard limit.

Anyway good hack fun, funny, deliciously f*cked up at times, competently written too, and with such a dashing author too. 

Well thats enough stroking Ruben's ego from me (for now) you should play this hack and ptaise the good herr Saint as well.

[Jotari]

I will reiterate that it's quite well written. The gameplay is mostly just Binding Blade with some less obnoxious maps, but that's a good thing because Binding Blade has great gamplay.

[Shaky Jones]

7 hours ago, Pengaius said:

Also you should kill off Tick to not reach the 52 character hard limit

11 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

@Shaky Jones for the original round of playtesting, as well as tons of feedback and suggestions. The hack wouldn't be where it is without him.
@Jotari, @Pengaius, @ranger016 and @Bad_At_Fire_Emblem for the final round of playtesting, where they uncovered a myriad issues I never would've noticed, and provided some more feedback and suggestions.

The Saint Rubenio employer experience:

Saint Rubenio to all of us post playtesting:

[Saint Rubenio]

10 hours ago, Pengaius said:

Use Erik, this sad wet little man only believes in his own strength stat, he can get one rounded by generics in his join chapter I gave him speedwings and you should too.

Hey, I did buff his skill after the fact, so he can at least land that powerful hit before he gets blown to smithereens on the counter.

10 hours ago, Pengaius said:

Also you should kill off Tick to not reach the 52 character hard limit.

Kill Martel instead.

10 hours ago, Pengaius said:

Anyway good hack fun, funny, deliciously f*cked up at times, competently written too, and with such a dashing author too. 

Well thats enough stroking Ruben's ego from me (for now) you should play this hack and ptaise the good herr Saint as well.

Thanks man. I appreciate the praise. Especially the part where you tell me I'm dashing.

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

I will reiterate that it's quite well written. The gameplay is mostly just Binding Blade with some less obnoxious maps, but that's a good thing because Binding Blade has great gamplay.

I reiterate my appreciation! You are responsible for no less than three characters in the final version, so feel good about that.

3 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

I knew it.

3 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

The Saint Rubenio employer experience:

Yeah, more or less. Never forget the Ostian Singularity, Shakes.

3 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Saint Rubenio to all of us post playtesting:

Hey, without all you guys' help the hack would be a broken mess with like half the playable characters.

...Perhaps it would've been for the best, but it's too late now. You gotta live with your decisions.

So yeah. Have some beans.

[Jotari]

19 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I reiterate my appreciation! You are responsible for no less than three characters in the final version, so feel good about that.

And in return, you gave me the desire to put more appreciation of minor bossmen in my own fangame inspiring the recruitment of several characters.

[Saint Rubenio]

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

And in return, you gave me the desire to put more appreciation of minor bossmen in my own fangame inspiring the recruitment of several characters.

Now Ruben can say he's playable in two games. How many other characters can say that?

[Saint Rubenio]

V1.1 released! Same download link.

• Fixed an issue where attacking Sue at melee range softlocked the game.
• Updated the guide to include the exact affinity bonuses.

[Saint Rubenio]

I made a mistake when uploading the latest pack and didn’t include the standard version of the 1.1 patch. It’s fixed now!

[Saint Rubenio]

v1.2 released!

• There may have been an issue with global flags that made the secret unobtainable, among other potential issues. I think. I could use some confirmatoin here - If the wrong unit appears in chapter 15, or you fulfill the secret requirements but don’t get it, please make sure to update to this patch. If the issue persists, let me know.

[Saint Rubenio]

WARNING: I should’ve thought this through earlier, but due to changing some global flags, if you update to the latest patch in the middle of a run, it can cause issues. Do not update if you’re between chapters 9 and 15, as it’ll cause problems with the appearance of one of the recruitables. Also do not update if you’ve already fulfilled the secret requirements, as the change in flag will render the secret unobtainable.

If neither of these applies, feel free to update and keep going. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

At this point I think I have confirmed that global flags don’t work properly pre-1.2. Turns out when you reset they somehow vanish. I didn’t think to try resetting when I ran my tests, so everything appeared to worked correctly. I’ve switched over to different flags that I believe work better, but we’ll see how that pans out.

Update as soon as you can. Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience.

 

...Also I forgot to update this thread when I pushed v1.3. It's a thing lol

Edited October 9, 2023 by Saint Rubenio

[Saint Rubenio]

v1.4 released!

• Hopefully fixed an issue with chapter 22’s ending cutscene.
• Slightly tweaked the hair on Zephiel’s combat palette. Highly experimental.
• Fixed a route goof in the guide. Seriously, why do people call them route A and B? That tells me nothing about which is which, why not call it E for Echidna and B for Bartre…?

[Saint Rubenio]

v1.5 released!

• Added two new conversations: Orlo and Windham in chapter 15, Slater and Peggy in chapter 14.
• Mary and Orlo, Sigune and Daniela no longer support each other. Orlo now supports Daniela and Mary now supports Sigune.
• Carlyle can now be recruited without accessing chapter 16x. Guide has been updated with details.
• Very slightly raised Zephiel’s skill and speed bases, as well as his speed growth. It’s a very small increment, I don’t want him to feel perfect in every stat, but 4 probably is too low a speed base lol

[Saint Rubenio]

Lost is streaming the hack! Check it out if you like.

 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Lost is streaming the hack! Check it out if you like.

 

Did you reach out to him or did he just find it randomly from this one thread? Or are you advertising in other forums?

[Saint Rubenio]

Just now, Jotari said:

Did you reach out to him or did he just find it randomly from this one thread? Or are you advertising in other forums?

The hack's also on FEUniverse, he found it there.

[Saint Rubenio]

v1.6 released!

• Fixed a cutscene that contradicted Guinivere’s role in the earlygame.
• Added a warning for the wyrmslayer reinforcements in chapter 8.
• Delayed the appearance of the upper reinforcements in chapter 8 by one turn.

[fenrir99]

Did you use the newer translation patch as a base? I think that effs supports up completely, by having one of the flags out-of-place. Supports are easier to mess with in the original.

EDIT: Story-wise, why on Earth does Zephiel bring Idunn with him anywhere? xD

Edited November 7, 2023 by fenrir99

[Saint Rubenio]

9 hours ago, fenrir99 said:

Did you use the newer translation patch as a base? I think that effs supports up completely, by having one of the flags out-of-place. Supports are easier to mess with in the original.

Yeah, that was my mistake. Sadly, by the time I got around to thinking about supports and realized my error, I had already gotten to the end of the game. Too much stuff to redo in a new ROM at that point.

9 hours ago, fenrir99 said:

EDIT: Story-wise, why on Earth does Zephiel bring Idunn with him anywhere? xD

Well, why does every FE protagonist join the battle themselves? Real commanders lead from a tent so they don't get murdered in a random skirmish lol. It's the kind of thing you just kinda have to accept because it's cooler this way.

[Jotari]

Idunn is a powerful tool to have on the battlefield since she spawns war dragons. Sure that's only represented in gameplay with Ain, but I'm pretty sure the script suggests she's doing it in general.

[fenrir99]

Fair enough. x3

[Saint Rubenio]

v1.8 released!

• Tick and Raith now have a support together, replacing Tick’s support with Mieu. Mieu now supports Sommie instead.

I can’t believe I hadn’t given Raith and Tick a support together. They have the first optional convo in the game, they are established to be family, I was told earlier in the thread that they don’t suport and it still took me until now? For shame, me!

[Saint Rubenio]

1.9 released!

• Fixed a couple enemy palettes that were still incorrectly colored on certain rare enemy and allied unit types.
• Zinque now gets hard mode bonuses if recruited on chapter 13.
• Goddess icons now raise luck by 4 points instead of 2.