I Really Want to Like Sacred Echoes...But I Don't|| Romhack Recommendations/Reviews 

For a second I didn't realize the title cards were going for a "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" theme so I just thought Clint Eastwood appearing on the first slide was a joke on both him and Valentia being as misogynistic as humanly possible

I actually gasped when you said that not all the villagers could promote by theif shrine

It is very very vindicating to hear someone articulate the death by 1000 cuts Sacred Echoes feels like to me. It’s good that something so high effort is popular but… god I wish I liked it more.

It’s really odd how seemingly half the problems with the hack are just because of active choices made by the devs to remove QoL features from the game. Skill menus have existed in FE8 for ages, the guide button exists in multiple hacks, and the altering of how RNs work just seems kinda pointless when really any exploit that doesn’t harm casual playthroughs shouldn’t really be a problem. Hopefully the devs prove receptive to feedback, and the game can take another big step forward in quality.

Okay, just one thing -- why on earth would you _want_ to make low-percentage drops harder to get?! That doesn't make things more difficult, just more annoying! It increases the time investment demanded of you the player to unreasonable levels. And for what? Seriously, what does anyone gain from this sort of obnoxious game design?!

I gotta admit I respect the fact that they made Luthier's weird Photoshop gradient hair look so good, that's no easy task.

29:24 "Single player game. Let the people play how they want." This is a simple line but it resonated with me. I'm a romhacker myself and although I've never made anything as impressive as Sacred Echoes, I can still understand the feeling of letting other players "cheat" if they want to. I make simple Pokemon hacks. I've seen tons of streamers hack the game to give their party infinite rare candies so they level up to level 100 and then steamroll every gym leader they come across. So what? Sure it's not how I intended the game to be played but at the same time it's not my place to try and prevent it from happening. I think it's probably best to give the gamer the benefit of the doubt and allow them to hack/save scum/cheese the game if that's how they want to enjoy it. All that said this hack looks awesome (despite your criticism) and I'll be downloading it immediately lol

After watching through, I think a big difference between our experiences is that I played on normal and not hard, on 2RN, so a lot of your problems with enemy stats and such just didn’t apply to me. And otherwise, I think your issues just don’t bother me as much (except for the Lost Treescape, that map was absolute hell). But I am also a huge SoV fan so we’re coming at the game from two completely different points.

Completely unrelated to the review, why is Berkut's portrait permanently angry? It looks so goofy.

Excitement!!! I loved this little hack quite a lot tbh. I'm really curious what you will have to say about it.

I’m playing through it right now and I have to say I really love it. Excited to hear your thoughts though

im having trouble finding the rom hack for fire emblem scared echos!! can someone help me! it isnt loading with the link provided.

The only major issue I had with it is that there aren't too many resources on each of the games secrets and other hidden things. I feel like I missed out on so many things in my playthrough, from hidden items, the gaiden chapter, and even recruitable characters (I don't remember getting the thief on Celica's side). I might actually wait until there's a comprehensive fan wiki of the hack before I give it another go.

I played this hack over a year ago on normal (hard mode had yet to be finished and based on this video I'm glad for that or I might have picked it) and it was fun enough to be the only FE romhack I've ever finished but I think I would just rather play Echoes. Like you mentioned its changes don't really solve the core problems of the original. I personally don't think this game is a love letter to echoes and is an attempt to "fix" it more than anything which will rub me the wrong way regardless of quality because I really love echoes and its unique identity within the FE franchise. Also, I don't think you need to apologize so much for being critical. Random people on the internet will be mad at you for having an opinion different from theirs no matter how you frame it.

I am liking Sacred Echoes so far. At first I was suffering through cause it Alm's route I made the villagers random classes, while Celica's reinforced my opinion that mages are OP. But then I saw that I come make villagers have infinite exp if I go mercenecy, so I reseted my run and made all the villagers into their resetable classes, and... funnel all exp into Genny and use a map that had a summoner for infiinite exp for her. Now Alm's route is pass the Levin sword between the boys and Celica is sending out the immortal bookworm. For the lack of exp, for Alm's route, because I kept my army really small (Ram villagers, silque, Lukas, Clair), the exp nerf from hard mode hasn't hit too hard (... Minus the fact my Alm is under leveled). Celica's side has an easier time catching up because there are some terrors that one round most units but give buckets worth of exp when killed.

Honestly really dislike this hack so Im glad someone can put into words why it just doesnt work

So quick question: Does SE have SOV's thing where the lowest damage that can be dealt is one, or does it allow you to get defenses so high you don't take damage?

I know I’m spamming comments (for the algorithm right?) but making the lords have locktouch is awesome. I love thieflords, it aligns so well with my thoughts on royalty! In totally unrelated news, I’m rooting for Charles’ cancer

I dont agree with some takes about ''feeling like I have to grind'' but this was a good video🙂

I'm interested in checking out this hack, but I'm glad to see this first to help temper my expectations. I'm a big SoV fan, but not a blind one. While I would prefer something of an SoV+ kind of hack, this definitely seems like a fun experiment with taking it a step further. While the rn seed problem seems like a bizarre inclusion, it's something I can work with. What I can't really fathom, is after adding so much in terms of QoL that a dev would make such stringent and grindy system for exp. I think the average player doesn't mind grinding a unit or two a little for favouritism/memes, this makes it seem like more work than anything else.

did somebody mentioned Shackled Power? Oooooh cant wait or that one, my favourite fanmade fire emblem so far!

If you want to get rid of arrow waggling, I'd think you should just change it so the RNG is called every frame.

Sacred Echoes is about as good as a Valentia game can be. But it is still a Valentia game. The core gameplay issues can't be fixed, as doing so would make it no longer be a Valentia game.

Glad I found your channel. Nice to meet another queer Fire Emblem fan.

The only issue I have is the exp gain and how unit levels line up with when you get shrine access. Otherwise its exactly what I wanted, Echos stuff in the Sacred Stones engine. It may take awhile to beat due to needing to "grind" some characters an extra level to get that promotion (usually mages and Pegs with their ridiculous level requirements), but I love the music in this hack, so I don't care that much lol.

Do you have a link to the desert treasure map?

I started this hack because I really liked valentia. I had a similar experience though. The grinding, promotion system, and such just sort turned me off of finishing it. It seems cool but overall i just wasnt really having fun playing unfortunately.

Are you interested in playing/reviewing Souls of the Forest? That's my personal favorite romhack by a wide margin and it's got some pretty interesting/wacky stuff.

I want someone to do something like this but for Shadow Dragon but im thay game's strongest soldier so mighr as well lesrn how to hack

I've played a lot of Fire Emblem hacks over the years, some demakes, some simple QoL updates, and some completely new stories. Sacred Echoes was one of those I playtested. Everyone has their opinion. For me, I grew up with the GBA. Most of the hacks I've played are on the GBA, because I prefer that system. So Sacred Echoes ticked many boxes for me, like it crossed out those boxes for you. At least you gave it a good stab, so kudos on that. If you want to try a neat hack, I'd recommend Iron Emblem. Been enjoying it quite a bit lately.

As a person who has never played gaiden/SOV. What are the misogynistic elements in the story?

Oh boy the Sacred Echoes video! As much I love this rom hack I agree with pretty much every critique here. Exp gain was so bad I had to lower the difficulty in my run

Almost done with the game. Celica route is the best valentia gameplay ever. Alm route is significantly weaker, with underpowered player units forcing me to rely on mage!Faye, Forsyth, Lukas, and Merc!Kliff. The cavs in particular are barely useable

I honestly never had an issue with the boring layouts of the maps where you fight on open fields.

Having recently started a challenge run where I only use Optional recruits I think one major issues is actually vulneraries I already think they are slightly too expensive in vanilla GBA as they have 3 uses and only heal 10 HP and take up unit actions while healing staves are much more efficient, in essence they are early game or emergency tools used when you need to heal more units than you have staves, and are completely replaced by elixirs late game unless you're trying to save cash. [I think a system of 5 uses and 10 gold for each HP healed is good so 150 for 5 uses and 15 HP is my preferred balance, I mean I'd also gut the effectiveness of staff healing but whatever] Regardless in Sacred Echoes vulneraries heal 10HP and still cost 150 gold which is ridiculous in the game's economy it's HALF the cost of iron swords, this completely outweighs their value there is almost no reason to ever buy them and makes challenge runs such as women[or men] only or X weapon only needlessly difficult to do as your main healing source will be vulneraries until you can promote, It's a very poor design decision outside of this as if you play Iron man and lose Silque and Faye [or just promote her to non magic class] you lose out on Heal spells until Luthear/Delthea [or mage Faye] promote or you get Tatiana, which is very bad since you are then required to grind to get either promos or money to buy heal items, which if you are doing a challenge or badly in an Iron man you may well not be able to. This could easily be fixed by making vulneraries cost 50 gold or heal 15-20 HP instead as this would make the price value worth it as you would either be able to use the larger HP recovery more efficiently or they would be much more reasonably renewable since, in the challenge run I mentioned I ran out of Vunleraries with close to optimal use on Ch4, and I even purchased one, it was miserable. It would have been less of a problem with real rng as I could more reliably gamble low hit rates by trading the iron sword in the mountains for WTA against the brigands but this wasn't viable as such the map became smashing my head into the wall until I could get good enough rng to kill the enemies. Edit: I actually like the hack, Echoes is in my top 3 FE games, I just think this is a big flaw along with the Rng changes. While I'm here I do think overall this hack is the best version of Echoes' story, mostly for the Celica rewrite near the end, and Faye is actually a character, which made me very happy.

This romhack is my favorite FE game. A tip is to give all your Cavs Heavy Spears and Ridersbanes. That will take care of those Barons real quick.

I haven't played Sacred Echoes (which is why I am watching this review), and despite having a higher appreciation/tolerance for Gaiden/SoV, I felt your points pretty fair, and ended up agreeing with the issue you brought. It seems if I want to enjoy it, I'll need to go Normal/Easy Mode.

"One token gay is not enough and I agree with this" bless u dani

Wild how many people in this comment section just turned their brains off for the RNG/arrow dancing part. The fixed RNs are pretty wack and it was definitely my least favorite part of SE. Player antagonistic indeed

hi, first time watcher, first time caller! (came here via share from a friend too, not algo-powered, yay!) i'm not super embedded in like the community or anything so I think some of my thoughts on what you had to say come from that. For example, i dont mind information that only exists in the readme; imo that's what manuals are *for*, especially for something like the gba FE engine which imo gets uglier the more info you're trying to convey, but i also acknowledge that common standards exist that are not being adhered to, and theres stuff not documented that should be that you mentioned. *However*, I do have some thoughts related to the removal of arrow dancing, which just from your description and a bit of info about the hack, I mossstly disagree with on the premise level. Full disclosure: I don't like arrow dancing. For me, I find that it turns the game into more of a problem of fishing for the correct RN string rather than a problem of tactics. but I think having knowledge of arrow dancing is just as much an outside resource as the other tools like saves and scripts you describe. I think that knowledge is really fundamental because as soon as you know about it, *you know how to easily manipulate the game's RNG*, even if it's just a little bit, so it completely changes the experience of how to interact with the game and huge swathes of the series. I don't think it's per se a *problem* inherently especially for casual play; as you say, it's functionally random because casually you're probably only occasionally taking the same series of inputs when retrying moves. If you find yourself needing to retackle maps or you're casually savestating it's definitely intuitable that moving in different ways can bump the RNG like that, or learn that doing the exact same things will produce the exact same results, but imo actually picking up what is going on is a bit of a leap beyond that. It was for me anyway, way back in the distant past of *mumble*ty years ago. So, imo the casual response is to just naturally try different actions in different orders. For a less casual player it changes the shape of the problem-- it turns it from one of sifting through the RN sequence into figuring out *where to place the RNs you're given*. Maybe that garbage RN you can't get a kill with can be allocated elsewhere, maybe you want to actually cede the turn, maybe you just have to figure out how to use it so that it hurts you the least, etc. It's also something that dovetails really nicely into undo mechanics as in the modern releases-- bad RN placement is no longer a lose condition, it's an undo condition. this does mean in the GBA engine, which lacks native undo, you're really sensitive to enemy stat inflation, which just from what you describe isnt super taken into consideration here especially in hard mode. I'm not sure that's a winnable fight though lmao, i'll just sit here in my little 'it's ok to not play on max difficulty' car in the parking lot with the windows up, i have snacks, the air conditioner is on, and my favourite music is playing, hahaha. There is another problem this presents as well, but I'll come back to that because... Why I Don't Think Removing Arrow Dancing Is Bad For LTC, Actually: (and I am mostly talking from raw theory, someone who actually enjoys LTC can absolutely tell me to shut up and really should if i'm off base here) keeping the deterministic RNG while removing arrow dancing is okay for LTC because at the end of the day, LTC is a game of finding the correct sequence of actions in the correct order. Some of those actions are gonna be arcane and unintuitive but buddy, that's what you signed up for. Sometimes you gotta sacrifice turns now to make them up later. It's still the same *type* of problem, even if you have to approach it differently. Scramble RNG turns it into another beast entirely. So with why I don't like scramble rng as a solution to the issue, the problem I see here is that for casual play you just don't have an out if you get a really bad run of numbers. Sometimes all of your answers to 'how do i beat this' are just *bad*. There's an intuitive answer: just reset. You can leave! But you can't, actually, because your RN state is preserved across maps and loads. so as far as i'm concerned, the design problem here is now: we want to preserve deterministic RNG for LTC and speed strats so a level playing field exists for competitive purposes, but we also want players to be able to exchange a set of bad RNs for new ones. Solution: New games start with a set RNG seed, per normal. Loading a saved game randomizes the seed. ahahahaha wow this is a giant wall of text, i'm sorry. Anyway I really liked the video and I'm really intrigued with by the romhack as you describe it-- I don't think you came off harsh at all, you clearly have a lot of respect for the team and what they're aiming for here even where it sounds like it does fall short. I'm probably going to give the hack a try because of your video; some of the Just Valentia Things you mention i agree are issues but i'm just not bothered as much by, like the (lack of) map design or the awful slog Celica's team has to do. So I'm excited to see how our experiences differ! (it's a definite 'how', not 'if', if only because i ain't touching that hard mode with a ten-foot pole lmao) Thanks so much for the video!!!

16:58 Berkut joins your army? Don't you mean Fernand?

Honestly, I think Sacred Echoes is in this weird spot where I genuinely think it's a better experience than SoV, but the amount of GBA "isms" in it can very much make or break the experience for a lot of people. Your section on the map design in particular illustrates that well, and I genuinely think it fails to even address SoV's core issues despite changing a lot of the maps (for the better, imo). But still, trading wide open field #753 for a fog of war map full of forest feels so wack

WHAT!? WAS I SUPPOSED TO LEVEL UP BERKUT FOR A GAIDEN!? f#ck it i'm going 100% growths and easiest mode to see that thing

This just seems like the worst way possible to handle hit rates

I'm sorry, wait, forsyth gets a weapon called forscythe? Is that a forge or an actual weapon name.. I can't take that seriously. Only Odin dark would do that, not him

Honestly im really Happy you poswted this review. I spent hours trying to get the mod to work and never could but this is making me not mind never getting it to work.

Dani, you’re only gonna only like this hack on 0% growths huh

Hm. I'm usually with you, Dani, but I think your biggest criticism here is misplaced. When I hear that removing an RNG manipulation exploit can make certain maps nearly unwinnable on Hard mode, to me, that sounds like a design and balancing issue rather than an argument in favor of leaving in the arrow wiggling. (But then again, I despise low-hit-rate SRPG fights, so maybe that's just me.)

nah but the rn thing is kinda bs. Im glad I watch this b4 i play the hack

As somebody who VERY RECENTLY played and beat Shadows of Valentia for the first time, my biggest complaint was its overall difficulty. The number of times I saw the Game Over screen numbered somewhere in the 70s. This would be mildly understandable if it were my first Fire Emblem Game, but considering it was my THIRD, technically FOURTH, and I was playing on NORMAL MODE, the extreme difficulty was very confusing. My first Fire Emblem game was Three Houses back in 2021. In well over 6-700 Hours of play time, I've never seen the Game Over screen more than maybe 4-5 times. My second FE game was Three Hopes, but considering the gameplay differences, the point is rather moot. In 2023, I played Blazing Sword on NSO and absolutely loved it. I think I got around 10-20 Game Overs in total after a Full Lyn + Eliwood Mode playthrough, AND a Hard Lyn + Hector Mode playthrough. Needless to say, Echoes' extremely high death count has left me quite flabbergasted. I still overall greatly enjoyed my experience, but the immense challenge combined with nonstop backhanded comments from my FE associates has made Shadows of Valentia leave a rather sour taste in my mouth. I think my experience can best be summed up with me looking up a few things after beating the game, only to discover that the characters I considered to be my "Best Units" were widely known as being some of the worst characters in the whole game. (Silque, Mathilda, Jesse & Est) Oh yeah, and since I purchased the entire Special Edition physically for the sake of playing it, the DLC was entirely out of my reach, so no help there. After finishing Echoes, I've now been trying to get through Binding Blade, but to say things have been going better is... Questionable.

Honestly, I like this hack. I can understand some of the criticisms, but removing arrow wiggling doesn't really hurt anyone except people who want to intentionally cheat the way the developer intends the game to be played, so I can understand the developer's philosophy. If someone were playing the game on an actual cartridge it would affect no one because there are no savestates and no lua scripts. The player wouldn't notice at all, because the player would be physically incapable of resetting to reroll the RN. I can also understand wanting regalia drops to not be cheese-able if the intent is for them to be a legitimate "you won the lottery" moment, though personally I think better design would be to either guarantee the drops for them or just remove them from the game entirely if they're going to be so rare that you're realistically never going to see them without rigging.

I watched Mekkah play through the first couple of maps, but I was majorly turned off by it being GBAFE. Because I like Echoes so much, everything about this hack just felt wrong, and doubly so because it's built on my least favourite FE era. Weird how I dislike it for pretty much the opposite reason to you, lol.

as someone who really hates sov, sacred echoes was definitely a better experience, but it’s still pretty low in my fe rankings. a lot of my experience was carried by gba charm. it just didnt fix my biggest problems with a story i already really had problems, but it was definitely better

Really great video, it comes off as a measured and well intentioned critique of a rom hack, though I do disagree with your use of the phrase “player hostility”. I know you say you’re trying not to make a moral judgement, but the fact you call this design decision “hostile” inherently gives any criticism you make seem as if you are calling the devs out on some moral failing. I get the criticism that changing the RN only negativity effects people and hardly effects the people it’s supposed simulate randomness for, but the devs are not required to have that type of RN if they don’t like it. They don’t need to nor have to please every player, and making a design decision that doesn’t cater to a very specific kind of player doesn’t make the design decision “player hostile” It’s an artistic/design decision made by the devs because that’s how they want the game to be played. I actually agree with you that the original RN system was better, but I feel calling a design decision “hostile” is going too far just because we personally disagree with it. Anyway apart from that minor semantic issue I have really great review! Can’t wait to see more.

I usually enjoy your reviews, but the RN system is a non issue for 99% of the people playing it normally without save states. To me, it's the equivalent of being mad that a bug got patched out from a game. The only way someone playing this game for the fun of it would find a similar issue is if they're resetting for better luck in a chapter, and even when I was playing FE as a tween with no experience did just "resetting because the game didn't go exactly as I planned" was a strategy I thought of. As well, calling it "Player Hostile" is a very intense term that doesn't reflect what is at most, inconvenience for a hyper niche section of the community.

I haven't played Sacred Echoes (which is why I am watching this review), and despite having a higher appreciation/tolerance for Gaiden/SoV, I felt your points were pretty fair, and ended up agreeing with the issues you brought. It seems if I want to enjoy it, I'll need to go Normal/Easy Mode.