Marth.exe (Formerly FE SD: Rearmed)
A downloadable game
Originally made for April fool's day 2024. Many series like sonic, mario, etc. have gotten .exe games from fans, so the idea here was to make an old school .exe horror game for Fire Emblem. Then I would post it in the SRPG studio communities getting people to play it under the guise of a genuine Shadow Dragon rebalance project. But it's an evil, cursed version and they would eventually notice the weird things going on.
This was a quick project but I figure .exe enjoyers will have fun with it. I spent a good amount of time importing Shadow Dragon assets and I also drew some custom assets for the game including two handmade animated cutscenes. The game lasts around 10 or so minutes. Can you find all three endings?
Also check out our discord server:
https://discord.gg/UpydYWk
Old description:
This is a project based on Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon. A game that has great aspects but generates criticism for lacking features and odd choices. Using the SRPG studio engine this is intended to be a fanmade recreation to address the major drawbacks that most players speak of and redo a few things that stuck out to me personally. So far this is a short look at the first few chapters and the changes that I made, lasting just a few minutes. As this is based on community criticism of Shadow Dragon, I would be very grateful to any players who try this out and leave feedback on this page. Even if you don't, I hope you enjoy the project.
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Development log
- Final fixes updateAug 12, 2024
Comments
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I wish the animations were better (the battle animations)
I expected this to just be a generic sonic.exe type thing but with a fire emblem skin but you cooked.
I love how it ended up tying into the actual story of Mystery of the Emblem
Hey, just wanted to say that the game is really cool! I'm a huge fan of Fire Emblem and was waiting for someone to make a game like this. It seems to be a bit of an untapped gold mine. I do have a bit of feedback, though.
Though the Marth fight was designed to be unbeatable, it seems as though there's a pretty simple method to beat it, even simpler than the one posted earlier.
All you have to do is position Camus and Hardin in a manner that blocks either entrance of the long pillars and shove Nyna in the middle so she can run back and forth healing the two while Marth's damage can effectively be mitigated by how durable Camus is, especially with his Vulnerary and Nyna's staff. It doesn't really require you to break Marth's Rapier, and can even net you a couple level ups (Cavs are always blessed) before Marth finally dies. To make it even easier, Marth even moves off of his throne around turn 3 or 4, leaving him wide open, though I will admit it took a few attempts to come up with this strategy, and the jumpscare section was pretty scary (though the real jumpscare was the ending after beating him, as well as phase 2 of the boss fight.
I will say though that there might be an issue with some of the tiles being labelled as Plains even though I believe in the original game there was Ocean tiles, such as on the first map.
A bit of a thing I might recommend adding (if you do update the game at any point, if not, feel free to disregard) is a bit of dialogue if you enter a House or the Castle on the 2nd map, maybe something about how nobody's in there or something. As redundant as it might sound, it might add to the ambience the game brings out. Oh, and one final recommendation- perhaps a bit of dialogue if you manage to get Caeda killed in Chapter 1? Dunno, just a thought.
Overall, great game! I'm hoping more people make stuff like this in the future.
Oh, a couple things I figured out:
-Cavaliers and Caeda can walk on the water in the first map. You can have them go for a swim before they get removed from existence.
-You can undeploy Marth in the unit menu before chapter 1, thus creating a paradox where Marth can't do his thing, resulting in a game over.
Yes, these mostly came about from the process of being rushed. Little things slipped through the cracks because I worked on this for like an hour or two a day for 2 months total before releasing. The Marth bossfight is still effectively unbeatable if you don't know what's coming, which is the important part. But yeah, I just tested the method that made the most sense to do and that worked as unbeatable so I left it at that and I got hit with a wake-up call from people who tried to make a strategy in a strategy game.
I really appreciate the feedback. I wasn't planning on doing another update but fixing things you mentioned and a couple other things like the music if I can would probably be worth it, especially with the surprise attention this game got. And I need to make marth force-deployed. Luigikid undeployed him on accident and now most people's introduction to the game includes a weird softlock that I didn't even think of lmao.
Either way, thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback, it's really valuable when making games and the fact that you enjoyed it enough to comment this is also really cool.
Hey, thanks again for your feedback. I just put out an update covering most of this stuff. Now you can go into houses, music loops properly, Marth is force deployed, etc. It's all in the changelog in the "final fixes update" on this page if you want to see that, or even if you want to play through it again.
is the marth fight beatable?
Absolutely. The trick here is to play the long game. Corrupted Marth will eventually lose all uses of his Rapier, in which he'll swap to the ineffecitve Iron Sword. There's a reason why Nyna is there after all: To keep Hardin and Camus alive. If Hardin dies, you automatically get the canonical ending.
However, I think that the third ending behind beating Marth is endless void, where you're forced to skip turn after turn, with Hardin all alone in it. If the developer of this game can confirm that this softlock map is already the third ending they were talking about, that would be nice.
Yes, this is correct. Originally, I tried to make the Marth fight unbeatable, and it seems to still work to bamboozle on the first attempt, but someone figured it out so I decided to add a small third ending in case the player actually managed to beat the boss fight. It is intentionally just a softlock for story reasons. You know, you win but the forces at play have now got everything they wanted so they leave you with nothing.
I figured that was the case, considering what the second ending was. I was expecting a jumpscare in the third ending... but I suppose that it's fitting that there is nothing but the void.
Without Marth, Medeus and the 'interlopers' both have won. But I don't think the former will enjoy his reign much considering what happened after.
That begs the question though: Why is it Hardin whose death will return the world on its tracks? Is his fate truly linked the fate of the world itself? Or maybe Naga-ex-machina shifted this doomed timeline into a mere vision/dream for the dying and atoning Hardin of FE3/FE11?
A really interesting set of balance choices, at first I didn't really understand the changes, but after a couple of turns I found that this is indeed an incredible improvement on the Shadow Dragon experience.
Also, kudos for getting all the SD graphics into SRPG Studio.