Ardens Armatura - Phase 1 is the first chapter of a highly-ambitious mod project featuring a branching story based on permadeath and player decisions. It may be a Shining Force mod, but Ardens is a huge overhaul featuring an entirely new story, new characters, new battles, and a slew of technical changes not seen before in Shining Force.
Guide Oakley's story to a conclusion all your own based on the decisions you make. Replay it multiple times to see new characters and events unique to different routes. While this only represents the first chapter of the final product, there is enough content variation to warrant a half-dozen playthroughs at minimum - but to see every possibility, you might have to get a little comfortable with death.
Enjoy this unique experience, the likes of which Shining Force has never seen and few SRPGs even attempt.
v1.01:
- Fixed cutscene-related crashes on multiple emulators.
In order to make the game even more reliant on your decisions, there are two ways I am asking for feedback on this project:
- Using the Phase 1 feedback form
- Via its official Discord
Special notes:
- Due to an unforeseen issue, the mod is only currently confirmed to work on Fusion. We are working to fix this as quickly as possible.
- Due to current limitations of Shining Force modding, do not hold a direction when a map transition is happening. This will not cause any major issues but will displace sprites, causing cutscenes to display improperly.
- There is no way to raise characters. Battles automatically scale to your current party and will keep every encounter possible with your current army. It is highly encouraged to avoid resetting or savestating to avoid deaths mid-battle, as it allows your playthrough to be shaped organically.
- There are no save points until the final map of any given route. Savestating between battles is appropriate to avoid losing all of your progress should the next battle go poorly.
- The functionality of the A-button menu has been changed - the Talk option has been replaced with Stats. In lieu of Talking from the menu, Talking and Searching can be performed with the C button.
- Creator
- Tyadran
- Art
- CodeEden
- Gryphonblade77
- Code support
- Xeno
- Dtothefourth
- Official character art
- witcherkat
- Playtesting
- Elieson
- Gryphonblade77
- Nihil
- Community resources
- Steve
- Lynx
Known issues:
- It is possible to Talk/Search in the middle of some cutscenes. This will usually result in an out-of-place "Nothing is unusual" message but at times will trigger NPC dialogue.
- It's a little unclear, but there is a battle with special conditions that cause a loss if only certain party members are left alive; the pre-battle dialogue alludes to this, but appears to be confusing. This will be made clearer in a future update.
- If the Gallant Axe is unequipped, it cannot be re-equipped.
- A particular pre-battle dialogue can cause Oakley to reference a character who is not present.
- Dialogue at the end of battle 1 uses a first-person plural pronoun, even if the protagonist is the only character left alive.
- There are small graphical issues with a couple of portraits when they begin talking, and selecting some options can cause minor graphical glitches on the main menu.
- The Map option in battle is buggy and does not display properly.
- A particular cursed item cannot be un-cursed.
- Some NPCs appear briefly before disappearing when that NPC should not appear in a given scene.
- A few particular text boxes use incorrect dialogue sounds.
- It is possible to become permanently unable to pick up a particular item if it is picked up with a full inventory.
