Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: Fire Emblem: Heaven's Bloom

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 has 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...

Features:

See the https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/83470-fire-emblem-heavens-bloom/ for further information.

Editor's note: There is no readme packaged. The Serenes Forest post has been edited to serve as one.

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 has 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:


[Originally within spoiler tags.]


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.

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:

[Originally within spoiler tags.]


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


[End spoiler tags.]


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
? the people in this threat 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!

(EN: Originally download link)

(EN: Originally screenshot link; https://imgur.com/a/E4Fnd1h)

Changelog so far:


[Originally within spoiler tags.]


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

[End spoiler tags.]

No-Intro Name: Fire Emblem - The Sacred Stones (USA, Australia)
(No-Intro version 20130720-015858)
ROM/File SHA-1: C25B145E37456171ADA4B0D440BF88A19F4D509F
ROM CRC32: A47246AE
ROM MD5: 005531FEF9EFBB642095FB8F64645236