Hi everyone :3 Welcome to Cheela's RomHacks Reviews. While i already did like a pilot review when i talked about a modpack for Minecraft (which honestly was more close to a romhack of Minecraft than your usual modpack) This is gonna be officially the first installment of this romhack reviews.

Disclaimer:

I am incredibly bias, i mostly play Fire Emblem and Pokemon romhacks... soo brace yourself for seeing more of those :3

The Fire Emblem Rom Hacking Scene has been always been mainly filled with two types of hacks: Original Stories and Rebalanced/Remix/Redux versions of the Fire Emblem GBA Titles. Prominent long standing projects like Dream of Five, Ceruleant Crecent or The Morrow Golden Country has been released recently and truly sparked the scene in a new golden light. I am gonna be honest, i am a consumer of the other category of hacks, the redux ones. While i have played my fair share of OG stories in the past like the classics The Last Promise, Bloodlines, the more comedy oriented telephone hack Void's Blitzarre Adventure, and more recently I absolutely fell in love with Vision Quest, I have never been huge into og stories, soo no, i haven't played all of this amazing new romhacks that are coming out every month . Is just a trait of my personality i guess, i always preferred the comfort of familiarity instead of reaching for new things. Does that means i never played Romhacks? Hell No! As my interest for Fire Emblem in general was reignited by a romhack: Project Ember, a redux version of Fire Emblem 6.

For those who know my opinions of the Fire emblem games, they know that FE6 is not on the top of the chain food for me but is not in the bottom either, is a perfect middle of ground IMO, fitting considering it was the first Fire Emblem released after Kaga departure, but that still has kinda that Kaga influenced (comparing the maps of FE5 with the ones present of FE6, the influence is kinda there still) soo when i finished Project Ember i got a new itch, an hyperfixation... Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones Rebalances.

Why? Simple, Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones is one of my favorite Fire Emblems, it was the first one i played back in 2014 when my best friend in high school shared me the rom via Bluetooth connection in my old Samsung Galaxy Ace. That day he didn't know, but just like the butterfly effect, he formed a monster: A Fire Emblem player. I got obsessed with this franchise, i was playing the games back to back like is nothing (and i still havent finished Thracia), so naturally the first hyperfixation with rebalances continued with the game i love the most. Is also... ONE OF THE EASIEST FIRE EMBLEMS! yes, i had to shout that, The Sacred Stones is mostly known in the FE community as being the easiest, and even though I think is not the easiest (FE3, Echoes of Valentia and Three Houses are more easy difficulty wise imo), I have to say is not only in the simple side for its difficulty, but also of how it gives soo many tools to blast through the game even if you play "poorly". Yes, Seth exists, Duesell exists, Epharim is pretty competent for a GBA lord (the best one of the 6 we got on the gba era tbh) and yes you can grind and the enemy quality is not that high (better than FE7 though *cough cough*) Soo naturaly, as I am no longer a Fire emblem casual, and i mostly play hard or maddening these days, and i have beaten Fire Emblem The Sacred stones in hard difficulty before... soo i wanted more.

Some hacks that are purely Redux version of FE8 that i have played in the past includes: The Sacred Stones Master Edition, The Sacred Stones Redux, The Sacred Trilogy, Project Jade (maybe i will talk about you later) and The Sacred Stones Reforged (this one is actually pretty good). This obviusly had two consequences: Dissapoiment and a burnt out. Unlike FE6 Project Ember, which become my primary way of enjoying Fire Emblem 6, all this reduxs that i played just didn't click for me. Reforged is probably the most note worthy as more than a rebalance is a remake of the gameplay too (and i may do a review of it soon too) but is definitively not replacement for FE8 base gameplay or story.


Cheela thats cool an all but where the hell are u going with this? Aside from understanding where my opinions are, and also to introduce not only the hack we are talking about today, but also to introduce another interesting type of hack: A hack based on a pre-written Story, but that is completely original... soo fanfiction! My story with this hacks is honestly a lil bit more than the og story category. I played a couple alternative timelines Pokemon hacks, alongside Elibian Nights by Arch, released around 2012.

Anyways, that being said let me bring the star of the show and our first romhack to be spotlighted

Fire Emblem - Curse of Lagdou

Curse of Lagdou is a FE8 based hack created by DoinThangs and released around 2024, while a 2.0 version with revisited balance and story changes was released in November 2025. What originally, in the words of the creator, started as another FE8 rebalance (told you it was important to talk about those) was turned into a FE8 based original story. The approach DoinThangs took is really interesting in my opinion, cause a lot of this fanfiction projects in the past has took either the prequel or the sequel route. DoinThangs instead took the AU route, a "what if" scenario per say. This approach is risky but in my opinion can lead to the most satisfying results too (i dont want to admit how much fanfiction i've read but trust me it can be good). Curse of Lagdou what if scenario is composed of multiple key points that makes it stand out from vanilla FE8, and stand on its own: Explore unexplored lore of FE8 (in this case the Lagdou ruins, a post game bonus dungeon in vanilla FE8), create new characters to explore this new lore and make the main cast of FE8 accompany this new characters on this alternate story. This is no longer Eirika and Emphraim's story, this is Isabelle and Jeanne's story.

The Story setting (directly from DoinThangs FEU post):

Eight hundred years before Grado’s invasion of Renais, the Lagdou Empire dominates the continent. Powerful mages rule with technology beyond the ken of mortal man. Condemned by the gods, the empire drowns in blood and fire. A curse of the flesh, cast upon the innocent out of fear and greed, births a single entity known as the Demon King.

One person has the power to stop it, at the cost of many innocent lives. They make their choice.

Eight hundred years later, war ignites. Isabelle Taylor, daughter of Carcino’s richest merchant, seeks to secure her legacy in gold. Beside her stands Jeanne, a moody misfit searching for purpose and identity.

Kings command and soldiers march, but a plague creeps underfoot. The poor haul corpses for their masters. Small villages are consumed by rot. This time, the deck is stacked in the demon’s favor.

The Review:

Without going into details of the story, i am just gonna say that is very well written. The original characters are interesting on their own, but my favorite part is how they interact with the prexistent cast. While not all interaction are winners, we see some more motivation from some underdeveloped characters of FE8, there is also a really a really nice written sub plot involving the most underdeveloped characters in all Fire Emblem: The bandits, making them feel like human beings compared to the traditional Fire Emblem treatment of the archetype just being push over to make the early chapters have weaker enemies to fight.
Along side that there is some horror elements on the story, and they chose the right game to based it on. We know Magvel is one of the darkest settings we ever got in Fire Emblem, with not only zombies, giant human eating spiders and necro-dragons. But Curse of Lagdou elevates those elements to a nice degree, while at the same time not being a pure horror hack. Is that type of horror that makes you sad, uncomfy and kinda gives you motivation to stop the villains for their horrofic treatment of their adversaries. Also character arcs in this hack are soo well written, special shutout to Jeanne, for her incredible story arch, her cute supports and for being my current favorite queer representative

Gameplay wise is also both a very experimental hack but also a traditional one. Contrary to other fire emblem hacks, specially rebalance ones, which bloats both the enemies and the player units with skills and personal weapons. CoL is pretty tame with some exclusive personal weapons and giving 1 or 2 skills to most playable units, but limiting them to those starting skills and class skills. What they really cooked with is with weapon reworks and the new crit system. And let me gosh for a minute, cause holy sh*t: The crit system is amazing.

As this cute image explains, crits are not longer random! Instead every unit that reaches 50% crit or more will always crit on the first hit. That sounds broken? Not quite, base crit has been nerfed to a 2x damage multiplier BUT it can be increased with skills from both the weapons and the characters. Along side weapon and character stats being use for crit chance, if you group units arround an enemy you can increase your crit chance, making position and planning a lot more satisfying. Is a really fun system which emphatizes in my favorite type of Fire Emblem Meta, the player phase focus one. CoL really empathizes player pro activity, not only because the player can get punished by turtling for the new crit system, but also because their is many times sensitive objectives, pushing the player to be more proactive, and there is some bosses that move away from their initial position and is easier to deal with them while they are stationary.

Another thing worth pointing out is the Legendary weapons. They have been reworked to be usable right when you get them, but with the penalty of being a couple of uses per chapter (empathizing using it during player phase and not for turtling). I like this change, not only because i have been the type of player that saves the legendary weapons until the end to save weapon uses in the past, but because is also makes sense for the difficulty and the pro activeness the hacks ask the player to deal with even in Difficult (Normal mode replacement in this hack)
Also a big shutout to TrikkiNikki and her fenomenal work in OST that this hack has, is rare to see an OST specifically made for a hack, as most of them tend to just grab different Game OSTs and FEGBAlizing them for the OST, is not bad as i know most of this projects are one person putting a game together by themselves, but in my opinion and OST really can only elavates an already great hack. And it shows here! TrikkiNikki said that she made this hack an OST because of how much she loved it, and it shows the quality and respect for the project on it :3 Take a listen here! My favorite Song being A Righteous Quest
Now to some negatives, even though i praised the interaction between the vanilla cast and the OC of the hack, they still feel like 2 separate casts, specially because of the absent of supports between the oc cast and the vanilla fe8 characters, while also keeping intact the original support. Not only there are a lot of character that could benefit with some interactions aside from story cutscenes, like Kyle and Forde with Isabelle or Saleh with Jeanne, but also some of them just straight up doesn't make that much sense anymore for story reasons like Ephraim support with Myrrh, as Myrrh is never rescued by Ephraim in this new timeline. Apparently there is gonna be an update in the future that solves this but for now, is a bummer that this is the case.
The second negative is that even though i praise the gameplay changes, balance is still something i wouldn't consider perfect. As the OC cast is really strong because of both personal weapons and chapter that they are mandatory to use, while aside from some Vanilla units like Eirika, Neimi and Knoll of all people (cause they really have been buffed) most of the original cast of FE8 feels like filler.
Also i really hated Isabelle for most of the story, but DoinThangs really did fix her arch from 1.0.6 to 2.0, still can't connect to her as i am not a rich kid with infinite potential, but her arch in the end is really cute ​