Fire Emblem: Shackled Power
is a Game Mod of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones made by Sphealnuke. Like many mods, the campaign here is fully custom, with a fleshed out story and characters and brand new maps to experience.
The story chronicles a war between Altina's two powerhouse nations, the southern Birene and the northern Gothen. After a lengthy war many years ago, the two nations were, for a moment, at a stalemate, until Gothen's queen Birgitta is emboldened to finally reignite the fighting with the goal of conquest. Her subordinates are able to obtain the Imprisoner Whip, an incredibly powerful artifact that the Arduin Church had been keeping hidden for many years. All is not lost however, as the king of Birene has recently opened up knighthood to the common citizenry when it was once only open to nobility. He placed his youngest son, the headstrong Prosel, in charge of recruitment, and it's this Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, including Deuteragonist Marilyn from the Church, that Prosel enlists that prove to be the strongest hope Birene has of surviving the war.
Tropes in Fire Emblem: Shackled Power:
- Big Bad: Birgitta, queen of Gothen, is the villain from the start and remains so to the end.
- Crutch Character: Larry Haban appears from the start and has the unique trait of being the only playable Great Knight in the game. He starts strong, and full weapon triangle access and Canto+ give him a niche, but all of his growths outside of Strength and Skill are terrible.
- Dying as Yourself: The named characters revived as Spawns in Endgame 1 and 3. Although they were already dead at this point, so I guess they re-died as themselves?
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Everyone under the power of the Imprisoner Whip gains these, and also stops blinking entirely, as shown by the named characters revived as Spawns in Endgame 1 and 3, and Queen Birgitta during the final fight against her, where she begins to channel the Whip's unrestrained power.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Peirhok joins your army for a chapter before leaving. You're ultimately forced to kill him later on.
- The High King: Despite Birene occasionally being referred to as an empire, Aster is referred to as a king rather than an emperor.
- Hijacked by Ganon: Nestrix is pretty obviously trying to pull this off from word "go." She fails miserably. Queen Birgitta is able to shrug off Diraugus's influence through sheer willpower, and she sends Nestrix off on a Suicide Mission for her betrayal.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Fulshir appears in Chapter 2, blocking the way to a pair of chests. He's a Berserker with high stats and powerful weapons, meaning he's all but guaranteed to kill any unit he gets into a fight with. However, once he starts moving, you can bait him into chasing Eileen, your Pegasus Knight. This enables Prosel to open the chests, which contain a White Gem and an Elysian Whip well before you would normally be able to get your hands on them.
- Magikarp Power: The closest equivalent this project has to an Est-type unit is Nidas, Prosel's brother. He joins unpromoted at a point where basically every other unit should be promoted, and his bases, while not bad, are a fair bit lower than your other recent recruits.
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members: In old builds, lategame recruits Madari and Evans were this, though later patches allowed the one you didn't pick to join in a later chapter as long as the one you did pick survived to that point.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Girulian turns on Birgitta in the final part of the endgame because of this. Diraugus, trying to pretend to be Birgitta and present the image that she's still in control of the situation, says several things that the real deal would never say.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Every royal is shown to participate in the fighting at some point; your main Lord is one, and his family will join your army late in the game as well.
- Sequel Hook: A post-credits scene has Marilyn sailing to the mainland, with the audience learning that Saurium is also hiding aboard.
- Sharing a Body: Saurium secretly shares his body with a powerful demon. It never comes up in the main story, but Demi recognizes the signs and demands answers in a boss conversation.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: As if Chapter 18 wasn't already pretty dark, Lenny and Remy have their Last Stand among the burning remains of Birene's capital, throwing themselves at Prosel's forces knowing full well their fates are sealed, win or lose.
- Shout-Out: Several.
- One of the Dread Knights uses a sword called Trishula.
- One level has a set of minibosses obviously themed after a certain color-coded team.
- The manga Elieen and Madari read in their support seems to be a reference to El Viento.
- Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: Deconstructed. Fulshir is Lilim's once-sickly brother Odin. The combination of the abuse he suffered at the hands of their father and the shady method by which he overcame his illness turn him from a weak, but decent person into a bloodthirsty butcher.
- Sins of Our Fathers: A recurring theme in the game. Several major characters are either answering for their parents’ mistakes or struggling with familial trauma.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Several of Gothen’s lesser soldiers, namely the bosses not present in Birgitta’s court. They all seem to think they’ll be the one remembered as Gothen’s great hero.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: Bombs are a new weapon type introduced in this hack, only usable by the Guerrilla and Thief class lines and Prosel's promoted class. They have a range similar to bows, though they strike resistance instead of defense.
- Train Problem: Parodied. Several chapters include an enemy soldier who says how many turns it will take for reinforcements to arrive. In one chapter, he debates travel time with a fellow soldier with so many extra variables that it gets confusing before ignoring the math and just insisting it will take 12 turns.
- Villain Teleportation: A franchise staple. As the resident evil dark mage, Nestrix gleefully abuses it. Taken to an extreme when characters describe her as abusing it to fly.
- Warrior Prince: Prosel, and to a slightly lesser extent his older brother Nidas.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 18: War Agony, is this. Birgitta is able to slip a strike force past Prosel, and they torch the Birenian capital to the ground- allowing Nestrix to steal the sacred tomes unimpeded. The very first thing you see them do is strike down unarmed civilians and holler about their kill count. On top of it, Prosel figures out Marilyn was complicit in it after the battle ends and beats the shit out of her when she gets cagey about why she did it.
- What's Up, King Dude?: Invoked by Prosel, who ditches his royal garb for old and worn-down armor to seem more approachable to the common folk he's recruiting.
- White Mage: Marilyn is obstentially this, being able to use both staves and holy magic. She also gains access to dark magic on promotion.
- World of Badass: Standard for Fire Emblem. Nearly every named character and their mother is a threat on the battlefield.
- World of Technicolor Hair: Played with. While there’s a wide variety of hair colors, some of the supports suggest that a significant portion of the cast dye their hair. On the other hand, it’s mentioned that Bluettes are natural.