Sacred Stones is my favorite Fire Emblem currently, so when I heard it, as well as the other GBA games were getting extra Quality of Life changes, some of which I use a lot in later games, I was excited. And for the most part, yeah, I really enjoy how all of this turned out.

I should preface all of this with saying I used the Ultimate GBA VC Injector to install FE8+ onto my hacked 3DS, so it may have interfered in ways I don’t understand, but here’s my experience with it so far. Alongside this, I used FE8+ Mix version, without the Fixed Growths hack.

I’m happy to report that in version 3.1, the Casual Mode hack functions properly. I didn’t use it for my recent replay (Eirika, Hard, Classic), but I was able to test it by killing off Franz, and he came back. I don’t use Casual mode, but it’s a great addition.

As well, I like that the entire sound room is available from the beginning, for this and FE6/7+.

Alongside this, I love the Danger Zone hack. But it is a little bit odd, in some ways that were inevitable, and some that I imagine would be tricky to work around, if possible at all.

Particularly, on big maps such as chapter 9A: Distant Blade, using the entire danger zone ends up slowing down inputs a fair bit. But as it’s a lot of toggled tile changes, I imagine it’s hard to work around that.

Similarly, I found there was no toggle-able Danger zone in Fog of War maps. This is something i’d love to see changed, but as the tile change is already being used for the Fog, I doubt it’s possible.

1 odd thing, however, is Dangerzones go away at the start of Enemy Phase. I have no idea if there’s any way to allow them to persist on enemy phase and move over after an enemy unit moves, like it works in Awakening or Shadow Dragon. But it’s slightly annoying.

I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt with these changes, as I don’t know if it’s possible to change them. I’ve never worked on a rom hack, so it’s probably harder than I think.

I also really enjoy the Bug fixes. In a recent FE8 vanilla replay I had to redo ch.15B due to the Pierce glitch, and I’m happy to say it is completely gone, as intended.

I will say I personally find the removal of Enemy Control glitch, for this or FE7+, is rather unnecessary. It’s not a terrible loss in my opinion, and for all I know it may have interfered with the other hacks, but I felt Enemy Control is something nobody who uses this hack will likely stumble upon. It merely adds a replayability element for those who enjoy it. That being said, it’s far from a terrible loss.

One thing that’s odd with this and the other hacks, is I found there’s certain hacks that exist for 1 of the FEGBA+ hacks, and not for the others. I am certain this will take a while to change, but I’ll list what all I found weird.

• FE7+ is the only one that allows you to see your units’ Growth rates. As I personally feel this should be available information without the (good) fire emblem wiki, I was a little annoyed that it wasn’t available for FE6+ or FE8+.

• FE8+ is the only one with the Dangerzone hack in this state. I did mention some oddities with the dangerzone hack, but I still use it a lot when I play FE8, so I admittedly wish it was available for FE6&7+. FE7+’s Dangerzone is equal to the Fog of War version in FE8+, and FE6 uses the Select button to open the menu.

Some other oddities that I wish to gain a little bit of insight on, that might not even be for this hack itself, but I only noticed when I played FE8+.

• I was able to perform a Triangle Attack in chapter 10A: Revolt at Carcino with a Falcoknight Vanessa and an unpromoted Tana. Once I promoted Tana to Wyvern Knight, it ran on the typical FE8 Tri-Attack Rules (need all 3 Pegs cornering an enemy, only 1 Wyvern Knight, the Wyvern must initiate the attack)

• When I promoted my Ewan to Summoner, I found that if I had a summon attack a unit on Player phase, then Die, it would crash the game, and I would need to exit the game entirely. Thankfully, it saves a suspend save right after the phantom dies, so it’s by no means a Softlock. And also, if a Phantom dies on enemy phase, no crash occurs. However, I found it rather annoying for trying to whittle down a boss’ weapons for experience points.

I had this happen first in chapter 16: Ruled by Madness. In an Extra battle, such as a Za’albul Marsh skirmish, the Phantom worked as intended. But then in chapter 17: River of Regrets, I got the Crash to occur once more.

I have no idea how many factors are involved in the Crash. I didn’t test it with Knoll, Creature Campaign Lyon, or in any more mandatory chapters.

This may sound like I’ve been overly negative towards this hack, but I mostly wanted to report some bugs, and had no idea how to contact the devs of this hack in order to do so. But I truly appreciate the work the devs put into making a more QoL friendly version of my favorite FE game. I personally hope the bugs can be fixed, and that the Dangerzone can be added to FE6&7+, and the Growth Rate Display can be added to FE6&8+, if it’s possible.

Alongside this, one of the factors that made me trust this hack was how much Choice you had in your own personal way to experience the game.

FE8+ gives you a total of 6 patches: Pure JP FE8, Pure US FE8, and a Mix which has FE8’s JP Enemy Stats, but keeps most design choices close to US. Alongside this, all 3 of these also have versions with Fixed Growths. As i didn’t know what bugs would be added with Fixed Growths, and wanted a more vanilla experience this time around, I went with FE8+ Mix. The fact that you have so much choice in how you go about this, or the other FEGBA+ hacks, is frankly incredible to me.

(Though I will admit, the 1 thing I will criticize, I personally felt that changing FE6’s weapons to have FE7’s weapon stats in the Numbers hack was unnecessary. It is more accessible, but took out an element of FE6’s meta and identity in my opinion. I’d love to have a version of FE6+ Numbers hack that only gives more units HM Bonuses and removes ambush spawns, while keeping weapon stats the same. I’m only putting this in an FE8+ review as I have yet to delve deep into FE6&7+, my next big FE projects alongside Shadow Dragon)

Overall, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones Plus is a great quality of life hack of FE8. It’s not perfect as of 3.1, but it’s made great strides to make an amazing game more accessible to a more casual audience who may be more experienced with the newer entries, while keeping the identity of Sacred Stones intact. Much love to the devs, you all are doing an amazing job and I’d like to see where you go next, whether it be another hack of a different game, or maybe adding some of the bug/QoL changes i mentioned earlier to the other games. I know it’s hard, but it’s been absolutely worth the effort if you ask me.

Makes a great game just a little bit Greater, with where version 3.1 is at currently.