Final Fantasy II: FF2: Demonic Pandemonium

This is an extensive improvement hack that seriously tries to take the ‘wasted potential’ the author saw in the game and bring it to life to make the game more appealing to all. This was accomplished mainly by balancing all aspects of the gameplay.

This patch is based on Neo Demiforce's FF2j translation.

The following are just SOME of the changes that were made. (See the Readme for the rest):

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| Demonic Pandemonium -- Final Fantasy 2 |
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| Lenophis and King Lettuce |
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Table of contents:
1. Introduction
2. Changes
3. What wasn't changed
4. Things you should know
5. Contact info
6. Credits

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| 1 - Introduction |
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Ahhh, the dilemma that is Final Fantasy 2. While a pretty good game by itself, there were just too many little quirks that
would make the general gamer look away. To myself, this game had a lot of wasted potential. So, I decided to get some help
from a friend to make the game much more appealing than it originally was.

There were two main problems with the game.
A: The difficulty for the majority of the game was non-existant due to the ability to level up as much as desired.
(although it would still have been easy for most of the game)
B: the same old story with magic -- worthless compared to weapons. This time magic had an added penalty of being
extraordinarely difficult to raise, especialy when compared to weapons.
Neither of these are problems any longer, so enjoy the game.

So with a hack in mind, it was a matter of choosing between the two translations. Neo Demiforce's, or whoever did the
Prototype. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages. However, I chose Demi's due to a more accuracte translation. Not
to mention, Demi's translation had a nifty title screen. :)

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| 2 - Changes |
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General
* The font isn't eye piercing anymore. - Lenophis
* In many cases, I decided to take advantage of the "li" "il" etc type letter combinations. - Lenophis
* Added many more icons for weapons and armor. - King Lettuce
* The level of difficulty gradually increases throughout the game now. Originally, there were 3 sharp spikes in difficulty.
- King Lettuce & Lenophis
* Had to tone down some color, as some originals were unbearably bright. - Lenophis

Character
* Changed "Richard" to "Gareth," according to the Origins translation. - Lenophis
* The characters that join you along the journey will now be about the same power as your party when they join. Also,
every character starts out with at least three spells, while there are a couple that have more. - King Lettuce
* Starting stats are higher than they originally were, but monster stats are as well. The intent now is to
advance through the game normally from the begining with not an overabundance of level-building.
Stats on each character are in line with their typical paths, although you could always take them in whichever path
you wanted to. - King Lettuce
* Every character has starting weapon proficiencies. As an example, Josef has a fist level to 7, instead of 2 in the original
game. Should be pretty easy to tell what a character's "dominant" weapon is. - King Lettuce

Magic
* Most spells are generally much stroner. Spell levels have a huge impact now, not just adding a few damage,
but increasing the power by a sizable amount. Some damage spells behave differently from magic defense vs magic
evade, For instance fire does more base damage than lightning, but lightning is much harder to avoid. - King Lettuce
* Some spells have been renamed. (Although, with that POS 4 letter limit, some names were challenging.) - King Lettuce &
Lenophis

Monster
* Complete overhaul of stats for just about every monster. - King Lettuce & Lenophis
* More pronounced monster type similarities and differences. Each group has their own variety of speed, health, power,
and resistances. This is intended to spice up combat a little by using elemental weaknesses etc. Also the monsters
aren't basically just level + resulting stats like in the original, where most creatures in each area pretty much
had the same hp etc. - King Lettuce
* Few monsters absorb magic anymore, so there is less risk in trying different elements to find a weakness. -- King Lettuce
* Tweaked most AI sets. - King Lettuce
* Changed the encounter rates of monsters. It was too "one-sided" to encounter the common stuff. You actually have a chance
to see some of the rarer encounters now. - Lenophis
* Renamed some monsters. - King Lettuce & Lenophis

Equipment
* Originally, wearing anything would make magic utterly useless. Not so anymore. In fact, that penalty has been eliminated.
- King Lettuce
* Each Weapon type has very defined characteristics now, balance power with hit chance and evasion. For example,
daggers don't do as much damage as most types, but they are very good for evasion.
Power Order Fist, Axe, Spear, Sword, Staff, Bow, Dagger
Accuracy Order Bow, Dagger, Sword, Staff, Spear, Axe, Fist
Evade Order Dagger, Staff, Sword, Bow/Axe/Spear/Fist
Also, most weapon types automatically do additional damage to certain monster types.
Daggers do additional damage to humanoid/giants, Spears do additional damage to dragons,
Axes do additional damage to were, Staves do additional damage to magical, and
Bows do additional damage to flying opponents. Fists and Swords do not have this, however, Fists are the most powerful
damage in the game and there are many swords which are better than their counterparts from the other categories even
with these bonuses. -- King Lettuce
* Many weapons do spells when used in battle, more than in the original game. The spells done are more balanced
with appropriate levels and whatnot, too. As a side note, you should hang onto those magic canes you find. :)
- King Lettuce
* Many of the weaker armor have special abilities such as additional stat ups. -- King Lettuce
* Renamed some weapons and armor. - King Lettuce & Lenophis
* Blood Sword is no longer the cheap solution to killing everything. - Lenophis
* Added the Killer Bow, which is renamed. This weapon was never in the game originally, probably because of the 100% kill
anything on contact via insta death. (The Sorcerer's in the Ice Cave from FF1 ring a bell? Yeah, that kind of insta death.)
- King Lettuce
* It is now impossible to become auto-evade machines. This was one trick to beating the final battle originally, where his
physical attacks would never touch you. All you had to worry about was the very weak magic. - King Lettuce & Lenophis
* Readjusted the attack power of most weapons, and defense of a lot of armor to make them more balanced out. - King Lettuce

Shops
* Tweaked the prices for quite a few items. The items in Mysidia's shop costs are in line with the gold that you will have
when you're supposed to go there, so don't bother going there early on unless you're pretty rich. - King Lettuce
* Shuffled the items sold in a lot of shops. Also, since there were many repeat items in a lot of shops, some items that were
never sold before now are. - King Lettuce

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| 3 - What wasn't changed |
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* The storyline itself has no changes. However, because of the complete overhaul of balance, we believe the flow of the story
is more fluid than it used to be.
* Dialogue is not changed, although some errors were corrected.
* Not a single map was changed.
* Although some of the music makes ears bleed, none was changed. Suffer, infidels!

"So then, why go through all this trouble?" Answer, because then it wouldn't be Final Fantasy 2. This isn't a generic hack
that makes the game something that it isn't. We're hoping to get some attention to a game that is hated for the wrong
reasons.

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| 4 - Things you should know |
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* Although now not insanely difficult, you also cannot just breeze through the game. There will still be a point or two where
you will have to build up stats or spells for about 20-30 minutes.
* Magic always has been annoying to build up, mainly because of menu speed. Well, that and magic "experience" goes up too
slowly. It's a little faster now, mostly because the "accept and cancel" bug was fixed. That's the one where you enter a
command, cancel, and still earn experience for it.
* Elixirs don't fully recover the user. It only gives back about 4000 HP and MP.
* Phoenix Downs in battle only work on the person that uses the item, aka "self only."
* Using Life as a multi target spell in battle only tries to bring back the ones already alive. In other words, you must
solo target a dead character for it to work.
* Using Life in battle is a gamble, as your chances of successfully bringing back a character is based on the level of the
spell. The higher the level, the better chance to bring back that character.
* Using Life out of battle is much different. It will work 100% of the time, the main difference is that the amount of HP
restored is based on level. The % is the level divided by 16. (25% if spell is level 4, 100% if spell is level 16, etc.)
Halve that number if you use it as a multi target spell.
* The Aid spell is the Basuna spell in Origins. It recovers temporary inflicted status ailments (Poison, Sleep, Deafness,
Mini, Paralysis, and Confusion) based on the spell level.
* The Esuna spell recovers permanent inflicted status ailments (Blind, Envenom, Curse, Silence, Toad, Petrification, and
Death) based on the spell level.

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| 5 - Contact info |
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Lenophis - [email protected]
King Lettuce - [email protected]

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| 6 - Credits |
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Squaresoft - Square climbed out of bankruptcy with Final Fantasy 1, and continued with another hit with Final Fantasy 2.
Believe it or not, this is a much better game than most people give credit for.
Neo Demiforce - For getting the ball rolling with an English translation.
JCE3000GT - For suggesting the font that would be used, and later revised.
Parasyte - For fixing the title screen. (http://desnet.fobby.net)
Disch - For hosting the hack at Slick Productions (http://disch.zophar.net)
Xkeeper - For hosting the hack at the Rom Hack Archive (http://sthick.cymoro.com/rha)


Final Fantasy II (J) [T+Eng1.03a_Demiforce & Titlefix].nes
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