Okay everyone, time to play Old Fire Mumblem! This is a crazy bad hack, for a variety of reasons which I might point out, but nevertheless, we will probably get some interesting experiences out of it! So...
Let's skip the intro and get straight to...
Old Fire Mumblem: Episode 1: Episode 1: The Beginning of the Beginning
Were you actually expecting a custom title screen?
We'll get one later
As you can see, we don't have CHAPTERS, we have EPISODES! Makes more sense, right?
This hack doesn't really have a big, overarching plot, and the episodes themselves are relatively self contained. So I think this is one of the few wise choices I made in this hack.
Believe it or not, the game does stuff with your name, so...this actually matters!
The things I do with the Tact name... I look forward to this!
So...survival test, huh? Guess what the objective is!
Enemies and allies spam-deploy everywhere, corrupt-theocracy style, and then...
The chapter just starts. No dialogue or anything! Don't worry, that will change. Anyways, there is EXACTLY ONE enemy, and he's on the fort. There's a bunch of allies too, but we're all scattered.
This is history in the making!
Old Fire Mumblem I think was made a couple months after Super Hard Lyn Mode was abandoned. I stopped FE hacking for a while since I felt that I couldn't really go much further with the current tools. Every now and then I would check up on the community to see if new tools were available and, lo and behold, Nintenlord eventually released the Event Assembler! Excited to finally have full control over units, reinforcements, cutscenes, etc. I spent hours reading Arch's old eventing tutorial, experimenting and learning.
The result? One of the first ever custom chapters in FE hacking history (The first ever I believe is Puchiko's "Eliwood Vs. Everyone"). Though, this is not my first ever custom map. That would be the abandoned chapter 10 of Super Hard Lyn Mode.
Anyway, while I figured out eventing enough to make a custom chapter, map changes were still very difficult to do. In addition, conditional events confused the hell out of me, so Old Fire Mumblem has none. More on conditional events once you kill the boss...
As you can imagine from the episode title and lack of cutscenes, I was more or less doing the same thing I did with Super Hard Lyn Mode; figuring stuff out, testing it out, gathering data, then moving on to more difficult things as I progressed. In Super Hard Lyn Mode, it was mostly small milestones, but Old Fire Mumblem has enormous leaps and bounds between chapters thanks to the power of event editing and the desire to impress my friend BuringPenitentEngine.
The map itself is some weird sort of pseudo-castle, with a big field of nothing outside it. The good news is, we have a throne to hold out on!
As our standard troops, we have the whole cast of FE7 lords, with standard level 1 sucky base stats! Of course, all of them except Lyn have useful backup-weapons, luck for them. Mind you, Eliwood's gonna be doing most of the fighting, for reasons we'll see later. Also, no idea why Lyn is called Lyndis instead of just Lyn.
My memory is a bit hazy, but I think Hector's base stats are slightly nerfed. In the original game, he came at level 2. Here, he's level 1, so I figured it would make sense for his bases to be lowered a little.
That, and I felt he was too good in the original game.
Oh, right! There's one more, isn't there!
It's Nino, everyone! That's right, the est joins you in the prologue! I'm not sure exactly what Marky did to growths, but I do know that he didn't nerf them, and so this lady becomes INSANELY OP if you actually train her. Which we're totally doing, because this isn't the type of hack you want to do a challenge run on.
Nino's growths and especially her bases were nerfed. Granted, her growths weren't nerfed nearly enough. She is definitely a Top Tier unit. Though, I think Eliwood's the best unit overall.
The one poor loser bandit moves out.
When suddenly, three more fighters!
So yeah, that's basically the gist of this chapter. Survive for fourteen turns with four separated units while large amounts of dudes pop out in the space in-between them all. Let's get to it!
The first thing we need to do is get everyone semi-close to each other...
Oh, and some of the descriptions are switched out! I really like this one.
Let's check out the shops!
There's nothing you really need, but I sell Hector's red gem regardless.
Shops... hoo boy. Self reminder: Talk about the shops once TheMoniker has gotten a few more episodes in!
Bye, losers.
More fighters! Lyn is heading to meet up with hector, Nino's kinda stuck right now, and Eliwood will NOT move one step from that throne for the entire chapter.
Oh, sure! Hit NOW!
A third wave of fighters! Isn't this exciting?
It's worth noting. Old Fire Mumblem was made before Tactician Hell, and I suspect Tactician Hell was made during Fire Mumblem, Revised Edition. I hadn't learned my lesson of NOT using Copy/Paste reinforcements yet. ;-;
The first of many. Hopefully they're all this good.
On the next turn, an archer and monk join the party! Eliwood equips his Light Brand to fend them off. You'd think it wouldn't work, but...
These are literally the wimpiest enemies ever.
Oh, and these guys have chest guys for some reason, even though there aren't chests on the map! And we can't steal them! Care to explain, Marky?
*Shrugs* Not a clue, chum!
Nino's gonna need HP, she'll go down if both fighters hit her!
Magic!
Speed!
There weren't any more archers/monks, but some new classes joined the fray! The myrms and armors are the main threat, but Eliwood can handle the armors, while Nino can't really handle the myrms.
I think Nino can one-hit kill them with Elfire. Most of the enemy units have much lower HP than normal in this chapter. The weight makes the Myrms able to double her, but if you have Lyn hanging around, you can trade-equip her back to Fire afterwards.
Actually, speaking of lowered HP, I just realized something. Instead of upping stats of enemy and player units like I did in Super Hard Lyn Mode, here, I was mostly lowering them, or just tweaking them slightly. Perhaps these were the first signs that I was becoming aware of this foreign concept called balance?
And this level isn't helping!
This one is, though.
That...has to hurt.
See Eliwood? THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T USE MAGIC.
Ow!
More of the "new" reinforcements! Also, there's someone else...
It's none other than...
BATTAAAAAA!
LOOK at those beautiful stats. LOOK AT THEM.
A promoted boss unit with bad stats... Here was my reasoning.
I didn't feel that bosses gave enough EXP when killed. :P
Eliwood is still murdering, and gaining Eliwood levels.
These myrms are aggravating, but luckily one was too interested in healing to pursue Nino.
He's moving towards us, which is good and bad.
More! Luckily, nothing special comes this time.
A good level! Thank you!
I would have gotten annoyed since she didn't get speed. =X
Are you SURE that hit, Hector?
More!
Okay, Batta will be a DIFFICULT, CHALLENGING, THREATENING, HAIR-PULLING OUT BOSS, but I'm sure we can beat him!
*Quivers in fear*
I thought this line was clever. Hindsight makes me wonder why. Probably something like "OH MAN! I bet you thought this line wasn't changed!!"
They trade blows, and then...
Nino finishes!
It did, I'm JUST THAT SKILLED *shades*
Right. So. Batta. Hax. Conditional events.
Originally, Batta was going to be "full of hax". I was going event him to respawn every time you killed him. But I just couldn't wrap my head around conditional events, so I gave up and left him like this. Broken. Defeated. Mortal...
BEST LINE OF THE WHOLE HACK
I'm sorry please don't yell at me
I love making fun of myself.
Wouldn't it be AMAZING if the Est turned out horrible?
She hasn't gotten speed once, so I'm a tad worried to be honest!
I cry, because that strength point will be...
LOST.
Okay, this time around I'm less eager to attack Batta, and choose to hang back a bit.
Hector rewards me with a beauteous level.
Beauteous? Who are you? Sain?
Stay safe, Nino...
Don't die Lloyd!
Eliwood is outpacing the others in level quantity due to his position, but not quality!
That's really strange. I recall him being really good.
Lyn lures out Batta! Look at my MASTER TACTICS!
Lucky indeed...
Another pirate/armor/myrm combo, and another archer/monk to back them up! Eliwood can handle them all, of course.
Re-finished! And Nino's level was, slightly, better!
Here's a fun fact for ya. Did you know that you can block Batta's spawn point? PwnageKirby did it in her LP, and I was like "God dammit!". She didn't even know anyone was going to spawn out of that stairway.
Oh, so we're back to fighters now?
Honestly, this just isn't hard.
I know it's a bad chapter and all, but doesn't it make sense that it would be easy? It is the first chapter afterall.
Though. It could have at least been easy in an interesting way. Starting with NOT taking 14 flippin' turns!
It's really not.
Even if Eliwood isn't cooperating.
Hey Lyn, could you maybe get some defense sometime? Pretty please?
Lyn puts more effort in maintaining that hair than she does in actually surviving. This is fact.
And now, back to the other type of wave for the "big finish"!
SOME FIGHTING LATER
What? Switching back to fighters again?
Hector's gonna be amazing, I can see it already.
I get it, they were revolving back and forth for the last few waves!
Oh man. Changing up the reinforcement patterns in the last few turns? I'm so edgey.
The only survivors were the pirate and myrm you see here.
AND THEN...
It just ends!
It ended as it began... So poetic
NEXT TIME: We gain witness to some pathetic semblance of a story!
