Fire Emblem: Vision Quest
is a Game Mod of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones created by Pandan & Friends. Playable from start to finish as of 2020, the hack boasts 43 total chapters, 62 playable characters, and various unique mechanics that help to set it apart from the game it deviates from.
On the continent of Yaska lies six distinct nations, including the empire of Nevan, led by Emperor Festan. The imperial state of Belaro, led by Lord Gradin, has resorted to heavily taxing its citizens, jailing those who cannot comply. Needless to say, this proves unpopular with the state's population, including Storch, a young farmer, and his friends and family. Soon, he's resorting to stealing from the rich to be able to help his family avoid prison. One excursion into a relatively wealthy part of Belaro ultimately leads him down a path that would change the course of Nevan's history.
Designed to be played as an ironman run, hence the large cast, Vision Quest boasts an incredible amount of content and a tone that slides carefully between drama and humor with its character interactions and small scale compared to most Fire Emblem games (more in line with Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 than anything else). The game is divided into four parts, similar to Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, with each progressively growing in scale without ever resorting to having you fight dragons or gods. The patch can be found at the link provided. A sequel, Lengths of Time, was planned but ultimately cancelled. Nevertheless, what was completed can be found here.
Tropes in Fire Emblem: Vision Quest:
- Aerith and Bob: Character names can vary wildly, from Western ones (Michael) to Dutch (Onderdonk) to Norse (Helga) to just food (Stroganoff, Mango, Honeydew). Almost all of them are Real Life names though.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Don't want to go through a prolonged amount of turns and playthroughs to view support conversations? Don't worry, the support conversation viewer has all of the support conversations unlocked, allowing you to view various interactions with characters without having to waste massive amounts of time. Also doubles as Interface Spoiler, as it reveals who is recruitable and who is not.
- The Bard: Michael, a jazz musician, joins in Part 3 as the game's only refresher unit.
- Bittersweet Ending: With high emphasis on the bitter. Emperor Festan/Yury is ultimately defeated by the combined forces of Waluyo, Titus, and Storch. However, Horvath's cult is still up and running, and Storch later opts to go back to his hometown upon learning of Tidus' plan to become Emperor of Nevan. Later, after failing to produce a heir to the Nevanese throne, Horvath later reveals to Titus that Lera is his daughter from when he was with Esfir. Shocked by this revelation, he reluctantly agrees to make a deal with Horvath, setting up yet another event that will once again engulf the Nevanese Empire in turmoil.
- Numerous characters endings fall into this as well. Storch generally finds peace as a farm hand, although he can also grow lonely and bitter if his paired endings involved a bad rejection. Hollace has to accept that his sister Anisa feels nothing towards her Nevanese family and must allow her to return to Kuching. Duck's supports almost always involve accepting a rejection or watching a friend vanish. And so on.
- Crutch Character: Esfir is a level 9 Thief with average growth rates. She'll prove to be one of your stronger combatants in the early chapters, but she's ultimately still useful for her thief utility even after others surpass her combat-wise.
- Darker and Edgier: A greater focus on realism and the human element, and a less optimistic tone in general leads it to being this in comparison to most official Fire Emblem titles.
- That being said, the game is sprinkled with comic relief and a likable cast, so it never goes too far in that darker, edgier direction.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: In particular, Kuching is inspired by Native American cultures, and Mahala takes inspiration from Japan in its naming conventions and designs.
- Final Boss: It turns out it's not Horvath, but rather Festan who you wind up fighting last.
- Flashback: Chapter 3-3x is set six years before Part 3's events, back when Waluyo was still an inexperienced leader.
- Food Porn: There is a lot of food talk in this hack, from Nevanese nobles discussing cheese to descriptions of Mahalan cuisine. The game even features a recipe book!
- Gay Option: With all the support conversations and endings, there are two pairings which are explicitly romantic that happen to be same-sex: Michael and Timmonen and Bulan and Stina. There are some more ambiguous pairings like Kusuma and Anisa, but those two are the most explicitly romantic.
- Just Like Robin Hood: Subverted. Though you start as thieves stealing from the rich at the beginning, none of it is being distributed to the poor and is entirely for keeping the player characters financially stable in spite of heavy taxation.
- Killed Offscreen: Tien, Freyja and Radoslav end up as this if you do the final Gaiden chapter. Cassius could also end up like this depending on interpretation.
- Magikarp Power: Sigrid, a level 5 Monk who joins you in Part 4, has absurdly high growth rates in comparison to other units, though her late join time means she'll need to be caught up to speed if you want to use her, though she does have a very strong personal weapon to help her in that department.
- Mushroom Samba: The titular "vision quest" is heavily implied to be this. We get to see the results in an unlockable side mission, which shows Titus wandering the desert, viewing hallucinations, and starting a fight with a small army that likely doesn't even exist. How does he trigger these hallucinations? By eating cactus, of course!
- Nerf: Compared to Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, in which support bonuses (particularly Earth supports) can offer insane bonuses, those bonuses have been reduced heavily in this hack.
- Playable Epilogue: One is available if you complete the game with six specific units alive as of Version 2.0. It focuses on Gunnar, and (predictably, since this is Gunnar and all) sets the Darker and Edgier dial up by killing off three (potentially four) of them and having another undergo a completely willing Face–Heel Turn
- Precision F-Strike: Storch drops the only f-bomb in the entire game when he realizes that Titus's actions since his Vision Quest in Mahala have been to ensure his ascension to Emperor, representing the now-permanent strain in their relationship.
- Religion of Evil: The Order, a mysterious cult that appears from time to time, is pretty transparently evil, even ignoring the fact that most of its named members are Shamans or Druids. Though according to Cassius, its current state is due to corruption from within.
- Sidequest: 9 out of the game's 43 chapters are optional Gaiden chapters that need to be unlocked, either by having certain characters recruited and alive or by some other means. These aren't necessary by any means, though they often help to flesh out the personalities of side characters or otherwise provide a change of pace for the player.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: After two parts of controlling Storch's party, Part 3 has you switching over the perspective of Waluyo, a Kuchingi chief. Both parties ultimately merge for the fourth and final part.
- Vision Quest: It's no surprise there's one here. It's presented as a part of traditional Mahalan culture, where young men consume the flesh of a cactus and wander into the desert alone at night. Supposedly, the hallucinations they see help them understand what the future has in store for them.
