#Fire Emblem Rom Hack

[alexissara]

What A Year For Games! Top 10 Games of 2023 For Little Lesbians Like me!

I am on and off again with video games often switching between years where I am really into games and years where I am snoozing but I started to dedicate myself to finding and sharing more sapphic art so people can stop saying it doesn't exist lead me to playing tons more games and wow I played so many fucking amazing games this year it was an extremally hard year to pick a top 10 games. Now these aren't a top 10 sapphic games, it's just the best 10 games of the year, on an objective scale because I am the goddess of this world and there for right. Not all of these games will have come out in 2023, it's games I played in 2023 why limit ones self?

These games are roughly in order by how confident I am to put them on this list but each of these games did something different than me so I wouldn't say that a game is "better" rather than what I got out of it at the end of playing felt biggest.

Stray Gods

It's a musical, it's a video game, it's Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. This game is a really fun little Greek myth story telling experience with an neat interoperation of myth and the characters to provide a fun experience to people with or without attachment to the stories. The dynamic music changing to your choices is a really cool concept although I wish more of the songs were a bop. I also wish the game explored the idea of polyamory like the Greek gods were not monogamous and I see no reason I can't kiss Freddie and Persephone in the same playthrough. What is there though is still compelling, fun, and engaging with a great set of characters across the board romanceable and not.

Pokémon Emerald Rouge

Pokabbie's amazing Pokemon Rom Hack that shows the utterly wild shit possible for Pokemon experiences we could get. It's amazingly fun to do runs of Pokemon where you catch new pokemon, fight trainers and get to then recatch that species to use in later runs. It's a really great gameplay loop that really just uses what's fun about pokemon and allows for a lot of different run customization which leads to the loop not getting stale and makes it easier to find particular pokemon you want. This was my favorite Pokémon experience this year.

Street Fighter 6

Street Fighter 6 has some of the worst monetization to date in fighting games. However, despite that it provided a lot of fun to me this year playing the base game's amazing World Tour mode and in enjoying the greatly designed new characters who I hope become Street Fighter staples. All while making my favorite SF character Juri even better with new interactions, a little bit of progress to her story and more. I hope that World Tour mode encourages a lot of other fighting game devs to step up the single player experiences in Fighting games and I also hope [as seems to be the industry trend] that "modern" controls take over. It was so nice to be able to do all the special moves consistently and more easily feel like I was in control of the game rather than feeling light I was fighting my hands to move out an input.

Drums Of War

I sure do wish a Fire Emblem game came out in 2023, it's been so long since Three Houses and Hopes is amazing but not the SRPG gameplay I came to love. Well if there was a Fire Emblem game I am sure it would have ENGAGED me, wait, there was the amazing Fire Emblem rom hack Drums Of War. Parrhesia utterly killed it with this take on Fire Emblem. The heart of the story being an emotionally damaged lesbian and the dancer with a big secret who fell for her makes for an utterly captivating romance paired with a real "war is hell" story that really does it's best to show you how fucked all sides of this conflict are until the player finally gets to forge their own path forward. Roxelana and Calista would be among my most favorite Fire Emblem lords if I was ranking them alongside all the lords of the series with both characters being utterly delightful and some charming side characters too like Estrelle. The gameplay itself aired a bit on the harder side to what I like but regardless I had a great time with the majority of maps and by the end of it I think I finally managed to get with the curve of the difficulty even if I wish there was an easier mode.

Cassette Beasts

The soundtrack alone would put this game on this list but luckily it has even more than a soundtrack. The whole cast are really charming, I totally fell for Viola and the other characters all have their own special charms. The game has plenty of faults I talked about in my review of it but despite the flaws of the game basically right until the very end where it massively declined for me this was one of the best games in all of monster tamers for me. The DLC was sadly not so great that came out later in the year but I didn't mind giving the extra money to the devs when the core game was so good. The monster taming is fun, the gameplay feels flexible enough for you to find the niche you like to play in and become really good at that niche, it allows for a lot of flexibility from folks who wanna swap partners all the time to people who will find their favorite characters and monsters and stick with them. I really hope the developers keep moving forward with Cassette Beasts and making new strives forward with their concepts because of all the indie monster tamers I've played this is leaps and strides above the rest.

En Garde!

This extremally short little romp is a compelling experience that is just a little bit longer than your average modern block buster. It's a simple and sweet swash buckling game where you play as a bisexual vigilante woman with a big crush on a sexy pirate woman trying to stop the oppressor of the people's evil schemes. Each chapter is like another adventure of Zoro short and puppy, fun and with ever so slight tension but you know the hero will come up on top. It's a really good experience and it has some great accessibility features for folks with reflex issues like me to still be able to enjoy it. The music is staller, the voice acting is fantastic, it's a great package that instead of padding itself out fills every second with greatness.

Luxaren Allure

I am a massive fan of turn based RPGs, I love getting to look at menus and think about my actions, being able to multitask while I play, enjoy a big juicy narrative and so I was very happy to play a JRPG style experience that's all about lesbians. An amazingly fun concept for a JRPG plot where one woman's beloved whom she chickened out of confessing too gets corrupted by an evil power and she is tasked with being the hero to take her out. This gives the interactions and the end goal a sense of uncertainty, will this be a sad case of tragic yuri, will she find joy with someone else, will she be able to save the woman she loves from this evil power, will she submit to the evil herself to be by her side? Everything feels uncertain with just this little angle added to a fairly typical JRPG formula. All while on the side having an adorable romance between a naga and a human girl giving us the good good lesbian sweetness between the dramatic tension.

Baldur's Gate 3

I am so often the contain, the noted hater but not on this day, nay I say, it was pretty fucking fun. The game is flawed, pretty flawed, like it's got a lot or fantasy racism shit I hate, it's tied to an IP I hate, it's got so many bugs that happened on my own run but if there is one game from this list I will probably think of the most and play the most in 2024 and beyond from this year it's probably this game. The games depth of interactivity, the wide breath of options, and the mods, oh the mods, the many many many mods, this game has so much to do and will for a very long time. It's rare to get a truly great multiplayer game and this game also provides that, this is a fantastic experience for playing online with others and makes for really great runs. Then there is the romances, oh the romances are really great, the girls are all fantastic and the side queers are super brilliant too. It's just a really fun video game and it does a good job exploring trauma and different takes on abusive relationships and overcoming [or succumbing] to them.

Thirsty Suitors

What a fucking great game, while the gameplay is mostly quick time events it does an amazing job of making each aspect of the game feel distinct from each other. While skateboarding in general kinda sucks in this game the combat and cooking all feels really great. Then there is the vocal performances and writing which are all fucking stellar. It's really great to see a fully fleshed out and fully real feeling queer woman who has had messy exes of all genders and has done a lot of fucked up things in her time. Jala's road to redemption with her family and exes all feels really great and this is a special story and I realized sometime after there is some level of variance too that I could have seen if I made some different choices. It's really great and even if it's not a dating sim like I thought it might be it's still a really great little thing. Then you factor in all the cool queer brown people in this game and wow, like I felt so scene by this game like the angry mess Tyler is speaks to my little transbian heart, the high fem lesbian struggle with family that Diya has I could feel echoed in my own life, I just, wow, it was great. I am so happy this game exists and I will likely always see this among the best narratives in all video games.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

My game of the year, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood fucking blew me away. In a shocking twist of fate while I complained about a lot of endings this year I didn't like my original ending for The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood either but then that drove me to go from liking the game to loving it as I ran the game again in spite of it, fueled by spite alone I felt a sense of determination, I would change my fate! This thematic fortune telling game where you make your own cards, help people or end up seeing a fate that only hurts them, I knew how to play it, I knew the systems now, I understood how the cards worked, the truth of my powers and the price I agreed to pay and I'd use all of that to make the happiest fucking story possible for Fortuna aka ME. So I dart through the game, I help the trans woman be herself and happy, I get my hot butch girlfriend, I help everyone out with their life problems crafting only the best cards possible to make sure I can give the best fates possible and then I hit the end point, the time to pay the price. I say no, the game says, you have to, I keep saying no, and then I draw my cards again and shape fate and in that I defied fate, made an ending I could be happy with, a better world for all my fellow witches, and so my story ends with my friends back by my side [probably gonna be a polycule] and a whole lot to look forward to. What a fucking experience, what a cool fucking game.

If you want to help me enjoy more art then consider checking out my Patreon or Ko-fi .and giving me a little bit of cash so I can do more of this kind of writing but also like make lots of my own art, art is hard to make and costs money and like maintain my chronically ill and trans body also takes money so anything helps, thank you.

[staneetrashee]

im editing a fe7 rom for my friend to make him just. question existence. it'll be kinda easy and simple but would y'all like me to lp it?

[jebbeesketches]

I've been playing FE8 and something is a little different...

WHO IS THIS---

Well this is my boy Jasper, I put my OC into FE8 for fun and Because I wanted to try ROM hacking :3!

Rom hacking is HARD. but with FE builder it was pretty simple, once I understood everything lmao

Also here are his stats (I accidentally gave him base 16 speed whoops...)

[elsarochelle]

🔮 New Video 🔮

It's Sacred Stones, but we're the bad guys.

[sharpeylogic]

Octopath Traveler in GBA Fire Emblem: Hired Help

Credits to Markex133 for the Tressa portrait. All assets from Klokinator's F2U Repository: https://github.com/Klokinator/FE-Repo.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

on my knees begging and crying people to try out FE hacks and fangames. it's such a vibrant community and people are making so much cool shit that should get 10x the attention it does. there's your gritty political tale about a veteran army captain who turns traitor to bring her squad home, also she's so incredibly gay. there's also a game about d&d style adventurers, featuring a playable chicken, a pirate who can summon a landboat, and iosaf, the best cyclops around. there's a fangame set in a full-dive mmorpg featuring gamers and a catgirl streamer.

the current community hack is set on an archipelago of floating islands, and it's about a merchant lady who decides to become a sky pirate and search for the legendary treasure, the fire emblem.

!!!

[theblimpfruit]

My Fire Emblem hack that I've been working on for a few years just released, take a look if it interests you!

[sacredechoes]

Sacred Echoes - v1.1 Release

The Valentia demake returns, with new features, a host of bugfixes, and a full Spanish translation!

Added in this update are:

All 46 fully playable chapters, 8 dungeons, and 1 side chapter in both English and Spanish patches

Options to customize your playstyle with growths configuration and RNG settings

Pitchforks to customize your team and max out your favorite units

New CG graphics

Better UX for equipping and unequipping rings, shields, and accessories

Several new music tracks

Turn count tracking across your entire run

The game is now available on FEUniverse!

[marlowedobbeart]

Mods are asleep time to share my videogame: ✨FIRE EMBLEM: GILMORE GIRLS EDITION.✨ That's right. I made a 1-hour FE8 mod about Gilmore Girls for the literal millions of people who are fans of both franchises. (👇🏻Play it now!👇🏻) https://marlowedobbe.itch.io/fegilmoregirls

[godmodebeginswithlesbians]

see, my main issue with totk was not that it was bad. it wasnt! not really, anyways. the game is beautiful, and absolutely miraculous in construction. (how the hell did they get the physics to work???)

my issue isnt even the plot, not completely. see- i liked (most of) the individual components of the plot. (i didnt like how they handled ganondorf, but i dont like how they handle ganondorf in any of the mainline games, so that point is moot)

its the way the plot was put together, i think. where it wasnt clumsy, it tended to retcon prior games (even botw!)

"and, oh," you say. "that doesnt matter, the timeline was pushed by fans and was never intended by-"

BZZT! WRONG! INCORRECT AND FALSE!

after the first game they made zelda 2, the direct sequel. alttp was intended as a prequel to the first one. ocarina of time was a prequel to alttp, majoras mask, wind waker, and twilight princess all followed, intentionally. phantom hourglass, spirit tracks, those followed wind waker, obviously. all the other games i could start to see your point. (and yes- that includes sksw, botw, and totk)

tangent aside! i did like totk, in pieces. i just think its kinda clumsy, taken as it is.

[cenijoarts]

Early game Vision Quest girls :)

[alexissara]

Drums Of War Review

Drums Of War is a Fire Emblem romhack Roxelana, Calista and their band of soliders as they are pulled between toxic powers and try to just live in the complex landscape that is being at war. This game doesn't have as many of the elaborate features of some other rom hacks but it does have a lot going on for it with a refined fire emblem formula.

Drums Of War is a hard game, a little too hard even for me who has played FE since the first game released but this is a problem across Fire Emblem romhacks. The base level is kinda made for people who play these games on their hardest difficulty and find that too easy so they look for ways to make that harder. They aren't typically made that hard but they are what that kind of player thinks is a fair challenge which can lead to a struggle to play. This game does had a nice feature where you can rewind to the start of a turn rather than the last action which is great but ultimately I suggest if you are like me to use save states, they will take you further. Eventually I hit a stride with the game, I had enough units I liked and learned to save state hard enough where I felt like I as going through maps at a good pace and the too hard turned into fine for me. It may just be a bit of a bump in the road until you hit I'd say about act 2 of the game.

Note since I wrote this review an easy mode has been added you can play, I haven't tested it but if your looking for an easier time but like the sound of the game there is an option.

Despite the difficulty the gameplay does add a lot of interesting little things to the classic GBA Fire Emblem formula without ever radically changing it from what you might have expected as a follow up to Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. After clearing most maps until fairly late game your given a chance to recruit a character or ransom them for money. Some people want to be sent back home, some want to join the army, some are gonna be thrown into a cell, you get a diverse set of situations to make a moral call but also a gameplay call. Would this unit do something for you that the money wouldn't, what's more valuable, do you like the character more than you like the money? This little tweak to recruitment makes it where maps are extra exciting when you see a boss you like the look of cuz your gonna get access to that character most likely.

It makes other tweaks that your millage may vary on, classes are remixed to have different weapon lay outs, archers got a massive expansion to their stats and an additional range for non mounted archers. This makes Archers probably the best class in the game, the whole game archers are this extremally annoying threat, I hated it, I hated dealing with enemy archers but the maps were at least designed clearly with these buffs and changes considered even if I think the game was way too hard on flying units for the FE community's perceived sin of them being too good.

Narratively, this game presents a complicated political war situation and for a long time I wasn't sure what the game wanted to say or where it was going with the politics but ultimately it landed in a fairly decent place. You end up leaving behind all the toxic powers your tossed between and leading your own front for your own ideals. Roxelana and Calista don't have wild ambition but even in earlier parts of the game it's clear that above everything the priority is to the lives of the people Roxelana has sworn herself to lead.

What the game does more impressively is have extremally captivating leading women and a lesbian romance at it's center. These sapphics are constantly flirting but Roxelana is living with the death of a previous girlfriend and so she pushes the romance away. We have other side sapphics including a blonde swords woman who falls for Roxelana as well and is as ride of die as Calista. This games take on queerness doesn't present us in a world with no homophobia or heteronormativity, no this shitty world full of shitty leaders of course is full of terrible bigots. However, it doesn't linger on it, like a real queers life they deal with it if it comes up which it rarely does because straight people mostly aren't very smart anyway.

The approach to characters and this slow burn romance are really what kept me hooked even if it was using a fairly limited support system where you can get unlimited B ranks with characters from a characters extremally small support pools and one A rank. I wanted to see what sweet little things were hidden in the games surprisingly solid writing. It was a captivating war story, it didn't present an anarchist utopia or how to build that but it did present hope for a better future by rejecting the idea of serving the lesser of two evils and fighting a hard fight even if it is so much harder then standing by a powerful persons side. This game is really fun and special and I think if you like hard SRPGs or just think the story or characters sound interesting you should check it out.

If you enjoy these reviews you can read more, I write lots of them and if you really enjoy them I can always use support over on Patreon and Ko-fi.

[staneetrashee]

here's a video of me playtesting it yay :D

im editing a fe7 rom for my friend to make him just. question existence. it'll be kinda easy and simple but would y'all like me to lp it?

[space-spring-art]

Fire Emblem GBA-style portraits for the Triangle Strategy protags!

Inspired by this neat post, I went and found this GBA Fire Emblem portrait generator to make these (plus added some changes by hand).

Part 2 (Other main cast)

[sharpeylogic]

Triangle Strategy in GBA Fire Emblem: The Complete Series

It's done. Every Triangle Strategy character in GBAFE. Thanks for all the support on this! Next venture is Octopath Traveler.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

Be sure to properly document where you got your animations from and credit their creators in your rom hacks people

!