Shining Force II: Shining Force II Maeson

This is a Hack for Shining Force II, an Strategy RPG for the Sega Mega Drive, also known as Sega Genesis. Similar to other Hacks made by this author, Shining Force II Maeson is a modification aimed to give a new spin to a game he has played too many times to keep it engaging.

After many years, it has been updated to Version 1.30! Well, more than updated, this is a recreation made from complete scratch, using more modern tools such as the Shining force Disassembly, combined with Hex Editing and such.

The older version had a number of glitches, and because it expanded the ROM to 4mb, it also broke a few things related to Secret Codes that you could input.

This new version manages to do all the modifications while still using the original game's 2mb size. By doing this, all the problems caused by the expansion are gone and the issues caused by the Hack itself are also gone.

But beyond that, 1.30 is also a tremendous facelift to every aspect of this Hack.
Some of the features of this Hack include:

* Rebalancing of the Characters and Classes. Stat growths were reworked, less useful Characters were made to be on par with others. Special traits for Classes were tweaked, and almost every Class now can use Magic, making each one more versatile and useful. Characters that join late are on par with characters you trained since the beginning.

* Equipment changes. Weapons tend to provide something more than just Attack. Arrows had their range extended to be more versatile. Accessories were not only tweaked, but also expanded, with several new ones you can find exploring, or as a reward by defeating specific enemies, and they are quite useful throughout the journey.

* The Magic System has been mostly redone. Offensive Spells have been made much more powerful and important, Status Effects are much more accurate and useful, Support Spells have been made overall more versatile and there's even a couple of new Spells. Range has been also extended, which changes the feeling of the game significantly. Enemy abilities were also tweaked.

* Enemies were of course, also modified. Besides their Stats and special traits, their AI have been tweaked. Now they can use Items to attack or heal, they use Spells much more often, including Status Effect Spells too, which bring a new threat as in the original game they didn't really used them. There were also changes in enemy formations for most battles, either swapping certain units for others, or changing their positions, sometimes for added challenge, others to shorten the lengths the player would need to travel to reach them, and their individual behavior also has changed for most of them.

* Extensive graphical tweaks for character Sprites. Besides fixing many sprite errors from the original game, many other changes were made to both Playable Characters and NPCs looking for more cohesiveness. For example, Barons overworld sprites now show their faces and wear a coif, like their Battle Sprites do. Wizards and Vicars have their headgear and their palettes match. For NPCs, a good chunk of them were redrawn to share similar proportions to other NPCs and the Playable Characters, as they were drawn wider than them.

* A hole bunch of other things, such as simplifying the Mithril forging process, taking away the RNG aspect of turn orders so Agility is the only factor, altering how Difficulty Modes work so each one offers a different level of challenge, taking away damage randomization, and more.

* Several optional patches were addded that make the Fairy Village Bonus Battle much harder, change the battle theme music, or edit the font to a non italic one for those people that find the text hard to read.


There is more than this in the typical "longer-than-life readme" that the author likes to attach to his Hacks.

The author would also like to thank all the people from Shining Force Central for the vast amount of information and research they have done throughout the years, and they still do. Without them this Hack would not exist.


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Shining Force 2 Maeson, Public Release 1.0 (Internal version 4.2)
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Did you think I would learn to make smaller readmes?
HAH!
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0 - Credits
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1 - Installation Process
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2 - Hack Information
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3 - Class List & Information
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4 - Character information
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5 - Character Stat comparison by Class
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6 - Magic Information
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7 - Equipment Information
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8 - Other Changes
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9 - Tips and miscelaneous things
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10- Credits
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Note: This readme contains spoilers for names, characters and such. Please, if you haven't played Shining Force 2, have that in mind!

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0 - Credits
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I feel the need to start this ridiculously long readme by thanking everyone that gave me the opportunity to make this hack.

Thanks to Sega and Camelot for creating this series, and this game.

Special Thanks to ALL the people from Shining Force Central, which include, but are not limited to:
Obob, Drakonis Nightshade, BigNailCow, Sir Hedge, Colonel M, Space King, Stordath, and many more.

Thanks, Shining Force Central, for your research, information, and tools like SF2Edit and The Caravan.
This hack wouldn't exist without all their previous work, and I'll be always thankful for the time all
of you put into your work.



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1 - Installation Process
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Quite easy. You need to get yourself a BIN o MD format rom of Shining Force 2,
NTSC-US version with this information:

CRC-32: 4815E075
SHA-1 : 22DEFC2E8E6C1DBB20421B906796538725B3D893
MD-5 : 6473B1505334EF5620D13191C18251FE

Once you have it, you have to choose one of the two patches.

The difference between two is just one: The black color used in sprites and scenarios.

You see, the game uses a tone of black that can look pretty bad in some TVs regardless of your
configuration. That's why I changed it for another tone that isn't as annoying to look at, even
more on LCDs, and the fact that some graphics for maps use it a bit too much does not help.

If you want to use the less annoying black, use Patch Version 1.
If you want to keep the original black, just use Patch Version 2.
You can also change from one to the other without problems if you just want to check.

You'll need a tool like LunarIPS for the IPS patch.

Note: When you patch the ROM it will be expanded from 2MB to 4MB. It's completely normal.

I've played this Hack with Kega Fusion on PC and Genesis Plus GX on my Wii.

Honestly, I don't know much about Genesis emulators on PC (or other platforms), as Eke-Eke's Genesis Plux GX for Wii is absolutely
fantastic and it's the one I've been using for years. Also, it's said to be very very accurate, and this hack works perfectly with it.

You could check Retroarch's version of Genesis Plus for PC too.

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2 - Hack Information
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Shining Force 2 is one of my favourite Sega Genesis games, and childhood games too. While I like the first game,
this one made so many improvements that I was hooked as a kid and couldn't stop playing it. The music was great,
the cast of characters was wacky and fun, and the gameplay while simple for the genre was fast paced and fun.

Now, the main idea of this hack is to give the game a new spin. I want to keep enjoying this game, but I also
wanted to make the gameplay a bit more "rich" to keep my interest, give it a bit more meat, for future playthroughs.

Characters have been balanced (On a 20/20 basis) so there are no "useless" units. Characters like Kiwi
or the already promoted characters are now as good to bring along with you as any other, and the classes
themselves have been changed here and there, with new perks and now almost every class has a selection
of spells to improve the versatilty and posibilities.

Magic has suffered also a large list of changes, and now is quite more powerful in both, your hands,
and your enemies', so you should be careful. Also, thanks to the stronger enemies, spells like Muddle,
Dispel and Slow are a fair bit more useful.

Equipment has been changed in some ways, and new accessories have been added to the game. Also, promotion
related items have been reduced to one (a scroll named Secret Path) that can be bought after a certain point;
and the dwarven forge offers rare weapons more easily, and also new items instead of outdated weapons.

The dark enemy forces also are stronger and more dangerous, with higher HP, and stats, but also because of
the improvements in magic and equipment. Also, many enemies bring special equipment to the battle that you
can take to wear yourself, so take a look before each fight and defeat them with a character with inventory
space!

There are several graphic-related edits here and there, like Kiwi's promoted sprites, or the new accessories
sprites. Also there has been some text editing to clean some engrishy (or simply horribly written) lines.

There are other changes, like inserting the "search command" during battle to open chests.
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3 - Class List & Info
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Here I'll put a fast description of the classes, as the Character section has much more information about
each unit.


Swordman/Hero
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A class exclusive to Bowie.

This class has great stats all around and is able to learn Thunder and Fire spells,
alongside the Egress spell (although it's not there from the beginning).
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Priest/Vicar/Master Monk
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Typical healers of any RPG. Rather fragile, and weak on Attack Power, but they
have Blast spells to deal with enemies.

Vicars are a direct improvement over Priests, while Master Monks transform the Priest
into a mix of heal/warrior type of character, having worse supporting capabilities
(because of lower MP), but giving them the ability to fight hand to hand, making them
flexible characters.

Characters will learn the same spells with either class.
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Knight/Paladin/Pegasus Knight
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These are your first front line units

These centaurs use spears and lances to fight, have higher defense than other standard
classes, and they have great movement range.

The promotions have several differences, for one, Paladins have higher defense and HP, and
with proper use of Land Effect can tank rather well, but they lower Agility and horrible
walking around some terrains, like sand. Paladins have some resistance to Ice attack and spells.

Pegasus are more offensively oriented. They have lower Defense and less HP, but have higher
Agility, more Attack, and can pass over obstacles or stay over water (or hold their
position in the air). Pegasus have some resistance to Wind attack and spells.

Their spells also differ from each other; Paladins having more supporting spells, while
Pegasus having more offensive ones.

For example: Paladins can increase the Defense of your allies, while Pegasus
(Pegasuses? Nah... Pegasi?) can decrease the Defense of your enemies!
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Warrior/Gladiator/Baron/Red Baron
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Warriors are the other basic front line units.

These are your typical axe wielding badasses. High HP, Attack and Defense, lower Agility.

Once promotion arrives, you'll have to choose between Gladiator and Baron.

Gladiators have higher Attack and Defense, and are more focused on offense. Their critical
hits hurt far more than normal ones, and possess some resistance to Fire. They learn Dispel
to defend themselves against mages, and Muddle and Katon for versatility.

Barons (and Red Baron) have higher HP and Agility, and have support spells to make them
more rounded fighters. They have higher chances for double attacks, and get their movement
range improved by 1. Their spells are supporting ones, like Heal and Detox. They also get
the rare Attack spell, which can't be used on themselves, but can buff other units!
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Mage/Wizard/sorcerer
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Here come your crystal cannons!

Mages are able to cast powerful attack and status-inflicting spells, although each
promotion has their own spell list.

Mage/Wizards have your typical elemental magic, plus a status-inflicting spell. They
can't hit as hard as Sorcerers against single targets, but they are far better at
dealing with groups of enemies. Wizards have more Agility than Sorcerers.

Sorcerers have summon magic, which divides the damage done by the number of targets,
so it's best to aim at single targets for very high damage. Sorcerers have superior
Defense compared to Wizards.
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Thief/Ninja
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A class exclusive to Slade.

Thief starts as a weak type of Warrior, but with enough training it will start to show
some promise. But it's after promotion when this class shows its worth.

As a Ninja, he possesses very high Agility, good Attack, adequate Defense and okay HP.
It also has a high chance to do critical hits, and more powerful than normal
ones, to make up for it's lower defensive stats. Also, he's the only character to be
able to use Katanas, a very dangerous type of swords.

He also learns Katon and Raijin, two elemental spells that add some offensive ranged
options. Try to avoid sending him too far away from the other units, as he usually
is a juicy target for the enemy AI.
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Tortoise/Monster
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A class exclusive to Kiwi.

This is one of those quirky classes. It has a very high Attack/Defense, while also
having low HP and Agility. Once he promotes, Kiwi learns a line of Breath spells, with
high offensive power, but also with high MP costs. This class resists Fire, and when
promoted, also gets a small resistance to Lightning and his movement range becomes the
best in the game (7 squares, ignoring almost any type of the field, but having the
defensive bonus).

Can be used as a bait-tank against physical enemies without worrying too much, but be
careful with spells.

Now this Bowser/Gamera mix is worth your time!
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Phoenix Kid/Phoenix
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A class exclusive to Peter

Phoenix is another hard hitting class, with very high attack and great stats all around.
It's capable to learn Blaze and Blast spells, giving him a way to do ranged damage, and
resurrects itself if he falls in battle.

He's a simple yet reliable character.
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Archer/Sniper/Brass Gunner
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Archers are ranged units that attack with bows. They also have higher chances for
Double A