Rebalancing Sacred Stones

[Mandokarla]

So, it's no secret that Sacred Stones is the easiest Fire Emblem game in existence (not counting Casual / Pheonix modes in FE 3DS, because I don't consider those modes legitimate Fire Emblem). While it is my favorite game in the franchise, it is also by far the least challenging, regardless of route or difficulty. I've always held that Sacred Stones on Hard without Valni / Map Encounter abuse is on par with FE7 Eliwood Hard, Awakening Hard (IMO), and the normal difficulties of the other games -- but if you have to place limits on your playing of a game to artificially raise it's difficulty up to standard, then the game is poorly balanced. 

So if given the opportunity to rebalance the gameplay of Sacred Stones, how would you do it? How would you change certain classes, or enemy scaling? How would you change character bases / growths? How would you change certain maps (not total re-makes, just tweaks) -- reinforcements, enemy placements, small terrain modifications? Would you change promotion item locations? I want to hear what you all have to say. 

-----

I'd increase enemy growths by a significant amount. The Sacred Stones Master Version hack did an excellent job in scaling up the enemy stats into a place that felt appropriate for that point in the game, and so I would copy that change. Sacred Stones' largest gameplay criticism is that you can viably use Iron weapons all the way up to endgame easily -- you only need the Sacred weapons to kill Fomortiss and maybe Final Lyon. I'd like that to change, and making enemy units actually threatening for once will do so (really, the only threatening non-boss enemy units in SS are the draco-zombies in the final chapter). To accommodate those changes, make shops actually sell weapons appropriate for the difficulty curve. 

I'm torn on removing the Tower of Valni entirely. On one hand, training the Trainee units in SS is a lot of fun for many people, and I want to keep that function. On the other hand, it's existence trivializes the game even more if it's used. This one is up in the air, but I think a compromise would be to lock access to the tower behind a later chapter -- maybe like halfway through the game. 

I'd make bosses a little more threatening, because for the most part they just...aren't. Give them stronger weapons (earlier Spears / Short Spears, for example). I'd give enemy units more effective weaponry, more armorslayers (I guess, but I personally think Gilliam, and armor knights in general, are just bad, so idk if this matters), more horseslayers / zanbatos / swordslayers etc. These kinds of weapons punish the rash and inobservant player, and I like seeing them around. After chapter 4 or 5, maybe add one or two of these types of charaters per map to start. 

I'd place more enemy status staves in the first half of the game, and make them droppable. This gives the player both another obstacle and another opportunity to get a sleep / berserk staff. I'd also place more non-dropped fortify staffbots in the later game chapters, because it marks a priority target that the player can choose to eliminate. 

I personally would, for the most part, leave all of the maps completely alone. I enjoy the majority of the maps in SS (aside from the Gorgon Egg map, but it's just tedious). I would rebalance a few characters for purposes of viability:

Marisa: The worst offender of the SS weird recruitments. She comes several chapters after Joshua, with objectively worse bases, and without any exceptional growths to even try and make up for it. She reeks of being a replacement unit, and while there's nothing specifically wrong with that, she has a pretty bad flaw in her low Constitution -- which forces her to be weighed down by any sword that isn't a shamshir. I would increase her con slightly, to alleviate that problem. On top of that, I'd increase her base strength by 2. Other than that, I'd leave her as is. 

Seth: Nerf him. More specifically, nerf his growths into the dirt. I don't want any of his growths higher than 25 or 30%. His bases are ridiculous as-is, and that is part of his identity so it can stay (small nerfs to his str and speed bases are also probably justified). 

Neimi: I don't know if she's redeemable, she's so bad. She needs a significant overhaul, or we need to accept that she's a meme unit at best. I hate archers outside of Fates, so someone else will have to work on her. 

Amelia: Raise her bases by two across the board. Give her a chance to be more than speedwings fodder.

Ewan: Raise his bases by three across the board. Same reason as Amelia. 

Knoll: Raise his defensive growths by 5%, and his defensive bases by 2 def and 3 res. His combat is otherwise fine. You make him a summoner or you're a fool. While on the topic of the dark mage: Make Gleipnir deal effective damage against monsters. Every other Sacred Twin does, let it line up with the rest. Also give Luna 10 more hit. 

Myrrh: She's fine with her bases, growths, recruitment time, all of it. Give a second dragonstone at some point, or make her Dragonstone unbreakable. Her biggest issue is that she not only has poor availability (late recruitment), but also currently has a limited/capped usability, because there is only one main-game dragonstone, with only 50 uses. She is a powerhouse lategame, this unlocks her to be used as such if the player wishes to use a deployment slot for her. Let's see more of the best dragon-transformation sprite in all of Fire Emblem. 

L'Arachel: For the love of god increase her bases. Make her level 10 on recruitment, with growths applied appropriately. She's the goddamn Rausten Princess, and she's unusable. This way she will still be horridly underleveled, but at least she's in a position to immediately benefit from promo bonuses and be worth deploying. Perhaps increase her starting staff rank too. 

Class Changes:

Knight: Give it +1 move. Make it fucking usable.

Rogue: Give it +1 move or innate Pass. Also put a second Ocean Seal in the game somewhere, in case the player wants to both promote Colm and Pirate!Ross. The second Ocean Seal isn't a priority though, exclusive choices aren't a bad thing. I'd like Rogues to be more attractive to both have and field. 

Wyvern Rider: fix the Pierce bug, and change it's activation from Level% to 10 + Level%. 

 

That's what I have so far, I want to know what you guys think. 

 

 

[FRZNHeir]

I like the changes you a proposing for a remake, balancing-wise. 

The Tower of Valni (and to a point, the ruins in late-game) I only used to level up units I didn't use, trainees, or grind supports. By removing it, would force players to depend on the random monster placement on the map, which has the potential to be unfair for leveling units. By locking it for later in the game, depending how much farther, Amelia and Ewan would be useless until then, and using it to level might be near-impossible, unless you do the wall and ranged weapons trick. It's tricky figuring out how to balance it. Maybe have it give reduced XP based on floors and unit level?

Make Marissa usable 2k18. Maybe, if character skills would be used in a remake, give her a character skill that gives her innate triangle advantage against sword units, on top of your proposed changes. 

A Seth nerf would make sense in story as well. If I remember correctly, he is supposed to be pretty injured from his fight with Valter in the prologue. Make it so that his growths or stats get better through story progression, but at the point where he would be useful again, the other cav units, namely Franz, are beyond outpacing him level-wise. Make it so that it's not that big of a deal in the early chapters, but mid-game he is not as useful. IF you stuck with him rather than replacing him, when his injury is fully healed, he would be back at OP levels of usefulness, but until then, he's a typical Jagen. 

Neimi's base stats just need to be increased. She has good availability, along with being your only archer for half of the game, and her growths aren't a big issue.

Amelia and Ewan's bases should be increased. So no other comments there, same with Knoll or replace him with red tome Eirika the Gleipnir thief 

Indestructible dragon stone is all Myrrh needs. It cripples her usefulness, and most players aren't at the point that plowing through the Ruins to get a new one is doable. I don't think you even can at the point that you get her.

L'Arachel should get increased bases, and maybe an innate Slayer skill? She is the princess of Rausten, so her having the Bishop's signature skill right off the bat would make sense. 

Your class changes make enough sense as well that I don't think a comment on them would be useful. 

Personal opinions-

Raise Colm's base strength by 2. It's difficult to level him when he can't get kills on his own. 4 base STR is ridiculous, even for a utility-focused character.

Make it so that Moulder the Boulder isn't immediately outclassed magically by Natasha.  I understand that he should be different, so maybe put the War Cleric in the game for him? IDK how I would handle him tbh. 

Make it so that the Pegasus trio can't promote into Wyvern units. Make them have 2 pegasus related choices, like FalcoKnight and maybe Dark Flier. 
Make the Great Knight class a tad bit more useful, Like having much higher DEF than the Paladin class. Make it an actually hard choice when promoting the cavs. 

[Son of Thunder]

Do you mean make it so Natasha isn't outclassed by moulder? Because natasha comes with 2 magic compared to moulder's 4.

Buff light magic. It's only useful on bishops. Give it a bit more innate crit(10% on shine, 15% on divine, 10% on ivaldi), and make light magic lighter than anima magic. 

Buff forde. Not sure what the best way to do it is, but he is normally outmatched by franz by the time he joins.

[Shadow Mir]

-Make tomes not so damn heavy, especially the dark tomes (if they retain the weight system)

-Buff Marisa - as is, she offers nothing Joshua doesn't, and that's ignoring her being outclassed in the first place

-Give Great Knight 7 move like Awakening and Fates did - I find the fact they only have 6 movement to defeat the purpose of them being mounted in the first place

-Make it so Myrrh isn't limited in usability

Edited February 21, 2018 by Levant Mir Celestia