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Fire Emblem - Blazing Blade Plus
Original game : Fire Emblem
Platform : GBA
Author : Mkol103
Release date : 22 June 2021
Category : Improvement
Patch version : 2.0
Modifications : P, O
Downloads : 6342
ROM Information
Database match: Fire Emblem (USA, Australia)Hack description
The goal of this project is to take all the amazing hacks from the Fire Emblem GBA hacking community and put them into the base game experience. These are designed for veteran players and newcomers alike! The changes are designed to be uncontroversial enough so that this isn't seen as an "alternate" way to play the game but an "enhanced" way. The major changes are QOL and bugfixes. The only gameplay changes come from removing localization changes.Screenshots



Contributions
| Contributor | Type of contribution | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Mkol103 | Hacking | Compiling the various patches and reverting the localization changes for the JP patch |
| 7743 | Original Hacking | Creating and compiling the patches in FEBuilder |
| Kantopia | Translation | Documenting the localization changes present in the game |
| Gryz | Hacking | Unit speed documentation |
| Brendor | Hacking | Change Default settings |
Reviews
| Amazing hack, so many much needed features but not a pure QOL | Arathieus | 2023-10-28 | Version 2.0 |
What can I say? This hack is just amazing. I just finished Lyn/Eliwood Hard mode, and all the little QOL additions made a significant and delightful difference. First off, the added health bars. Health bars below each unit are a huge help - gone are the days when your unit gets killed because you forgot they had low health and you didn't hover your cursor over them to double check, especially in large battles when there are so many units to keep track of. I actually disabled the tooltip in the options settings (the one that shows unit information and hp) because I found I didn't really need it cluttering up the screen. Next is the "Danger Zone" feature. When you press select, you see red squares on the field - those squares show every location that can be attacked by an enemy on the next enemy phase (barring a friendly unit dying.) Very useful for double-checking if your healer/dancer is in a dangerous spot. Really wishing the Binding Blade+ hack would get this! Another nice feature is talk bubbles. If an npc on the field can be talked to, a chat bubble will appear next to them when you select your character for movement - that will indicate your character will get the "Talk" option if you move next to them. (I discovered a dialogue option during Lyn's story between Matthew and Serra that I never knew about thanks to this!) Along with the talk bubbles are warning(!) icons. These appear on enemies when you select your character for movement. The warning(!) icon appears if the enemy is holding a weapon that is super effective towards your unit (i.e. Pegasi-Bows or Cavalier-Horseslayer) or if the enemy is holding a Killer type weapon. (i.e. Killing Edge, Killer Lance, etc.) There are other tweaks and improvements, such as AI improvements and several bugfixes, changed default options, holding L before combat to trigger animations on, holding A to increase unit's map speed during gameplay (you could do this before, but you had to complete the game at least once first.) There's also the JP and Fixed versions but I didn't mess with those. There's also an optional Casual Mode which lets your units come back the next chapter if they die. -Suggestions and Complaints- I use the term complaints sparingly, as I want to emphasize how pleased I am with this hack, it's a fine piece of work. But there are a few things I noticed or that could be improved: There's a reason I said this hack isn't a pure QOL, and one reason only. As the previous reviewer, Martze, pointed out, the game gets rid of Lyn Normal Mode's tutorial dialogue and events. For this reason it is questionable to advertise this hack to "veteran players and newcomers alike!" The dialogue and events from that mode aren't crucial to the overall story but are part of it: for instance back and forth between Kent and Sain in the 2nd mission designed to teach you game mechanics "A lance is more heroic, don't you think?" is fundamental to setting up the dynamics of those characters. Newcomers should definitely play vanilla until they get to Eliwood's story. There is a workaround though, I just played vanilla FE7 and then save-swapped to this hack once I got to Eliwood's story, played from Eliwood's story through to completion with no bugs. It would be nice if Lyn Normal Mode tutorials weren't disabled though so I wouldn't have to bother with this. I'm not sure what translation errors they fixed, it's not in the documentation.. but I did notice some spelling errors that were present the original, for example the couple instances where persuaded is misspelled "pursuaded", are not changed. *shrugs* Casual Mode: It seems that if you enable casual mode In Lyn's story and then continue on that save to Eliwood/Hector's story, it will stay enabled even if you select "no" when it asks you. Not really a big deal, just something that should probably be included in the documentation. With all that being said, I cannot recommend this hack enough to veteran players, but the Lyn tutorial thing keeps me from recommending this to new players in good conscience. For that reasoning, I can't call this a pure QOL. A QOL should be a hack that adds to the replayability of an old game without taking anything away from the original, to the point where you have no reason to boot up the original ever again. I'm really hoping the author reads this and fixes the tutorial aspect so that it can truly be a QOL, because everything else about this hack from a QOL standpoint is fantasic. | |||
| A comprehensive hack that improves many things (and worsens a few) | Martze | 2022-04-21 | Version 2.0 |
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: fixing bugs, correcting mistranslations, and improving QOL on classic games without making any drastic changes is a great service to the community, and these compilation hacks that combine a number of different such fixes into one single, streamlined experience are some of my favorite hacks on this site. I am a big fan of 95% of the changes this hack makes, and on balance, this hack vastly improves the experience over the original game, even with the few small complaints I do have. Hopefully they can be addressed in a future version! These small complaints are as follows: 1) If you are going to unlock Lyn Hard Mode from the start, disabling tutorials has no benefit. In the vanilla game, Lyn Hard Mode is identical to Lyn Normal Mode apart from the fact that tutorials are disabled. Your description says "These are designed for veteran players and newcomers alike!", but disabling tutorials is a decision that negatively impacts newcomers, and for no reason, as veteran players who wish to skip tutorials can simply pick Lyn Hard Mode. Therefore, I would recommend excluding the hack that disable tutorials. Related to that; a few scripted events only happen with tutorials on, and so Lyn Mode without tutorials has a few weird annoyances that can create a bumpy experience for first-time players. With tutorials on, Lyn defeats the Prologue boss with a scripted dodge and 1% critical. With tutorials off, beating him safely essentially requires the player to NOT attack him on Player Phase, but to damage him on Enemy Phase with counterattacks. This is not hard for a veteran player, but it is a fairly advanced tactic to ask of a brand new player on their very first map. Also, in Chapter 1, Sain obtains an iron sword as part of a tutorial event. With tutorials off, Sain does not get this sword. The player cannot buy iron swords until Chapter 3, and most of the enemies fought in the meantime are axe-wielders, so Sain faces Weapon Triangle Disadvantage against them instead of Weapon Triangle Advantage. You can mitigate this somewhat by repeatedly trading Kent's iron sword for a few chapters, which is doable but annoying. Again, both of these things are minor and easily surmountable for veterans, but they add up to a fairly strange, annoying, and unfriendly introduction to the game for new players. I also do not think either of these things were intentional; the game's devs probably did not consider the consequences of turning off tutorials on these two maps. If you do not exclude the patch that disables tutorials, then I would strongly recommend that the boss and the other enemy in the prologue have their strength reduced by 3 on Normal Mode, so that Lyn can survive two hits from them, and for Sain to start with an iron sword in his inventory in Chapter 1 (perhaps even on Hard Mode?). However, I reiterate, I still do think turning tutorials back on in Lyn Normal Mode is the better solution. 2) There is no earthly reason to fix the Mine Glitch. It is almost impossible to perform by accident, and it is only beneficial to the player. There are many uses for it: getting Vaida's spear, making enemies throw away their weapons to skip a hard map or provide free kills to units you want to level up, or simply messing around and having fun. In the base game, where the glitch is unpatched, people who do not want to use it simply choose not to. All you are doing is taking a powerful tool and fun toy away from the player for zero conceivable benefit. Even then, it's easy to circumvent by switching back to the vanilla ROM, as the save files are compatible, so all you are really doing is inconveniencing players who wish to use the Mine Glitch rather than actually preventing them from using it. While I spent most of this review addressing my complaints, I do think it is worth reiterating that 95% of what this hack does improves the game, and I DO recommend this hack in its current state to veteran players as an overall better experience than the vanilla game. I WANT to recommend this hack to new players as well, but with the tutorials stripped out, I can't. If my complaints are addressed, I could whole-heartedly recommend this over the original game to a player at any level. | |||