Final Fantasy Hacktics

(http://i.imgur.com/WhU0KEG.png)

Final Fantasy Tactics: Kind Of: Critical Mode is a mod based on Final Fantasy Tactics: Kind Of 2.5, for the PSX. I've had a couple people who have played normal KO comment that it was too easy, so I'm hoping that this will sate their thirst for something a bit harder, but still true to KO's core values. Critical Mode differs from regular KO in several ways, as is listed below.

-Enemies all have set Bravery/Faith. You won't ever see a human enemy in story battles with less than 70 Brave. Physical units and several bosses will have low Faith (several bosses will have very low Faith to discourage spell nuking), but all mages will have between 60-70 Faith.

-Lucavi now have 100 Bravery.

-Esuna no longer cures Death Sentence, Slow, Stop, Blood Suck, Berserk, or Charm.

-A larger number of enemies now have set Reactions, Supports, and Movements. Enemies in Chapter I usually won't have R/S/M. Enemies in Chapter II have set Movement skills. Enemies in Chapter III have set Reaction and Movement skills. Enemies in Chapter IV have set R/S/M skills.

-Auto-Potion, HP Restore, MP Switch, Speed Save, Cheer Song, and Slow Dance have been removed.

-Last Song's accuracy has been reduced.

-Invite now adds Charm instead of Invite.

-Beowulf's Spellblade skills become as accurate as Yin-Yang Magic, MP costs are 1.5x the cost of their Yin-Yang equivalents.

-Elemental boosting items have been altered.

-Two Swords is now only compatible with Knives and Ninja Blades.

-Two Hands is now only compatible with Swords and Katana.

-Enemies have slightly more intelligent AI.

-Smart encounters have been added, thanks to Xif. Now if you select a city as your movement target, you will never run into a random battle, however if you select an area with random battles they'll trigger 100% of the time.

-Dispose and Crush have been nerfed.

-Fire 2, Ice 2, Bolt 2, and Blind Rage can no longer be Math Skill'd, have been replaced with Fire, Ice, Bolt, and Unction.

-Ramza now has access to Gained JP Up, as he cannot do Propositions.

Future updates will include more changes to random battles, as well as any bug/balance fixes if needed.

As is usual, please patch a clean ISO and keep a clean backup ISO at all times! Enjoy!

Possible bug: Mustadio's level doesn't scale when he joins the party permanently. Lavian, Alica, Radd, and Boco all scaled. Kind of a buzz kill if I were planning on using him.

It's doubly weird considering he scaled when he joined the party initially as a Guest, so he actually lost several levels.

Thanks for the info! I'll fix that for the next update. How're you enjoying it so far?

Speaking as someone who's put hundreds of hours into vanilla but never touched a modded version of the game it's been... humbling. There aren't a lot of story battles that I haven't had to take a second pass on. There have been a few especially brutal fights, but nothing has felt like bs.

Well, except for one.



But for realsies, except for that I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The "harder" aspects of it feel less arbitrary (stat boots for everyone!) and more about thoughtfully just giving enemies better resources to work with. The balancing of the monster classes is especially fantastic. I was actually considering putting Boco in my main party for a little while, but then he crystallized saving Agrias. Whoops!

Another bug (I think?), probably not highest priority: The music doesn't cut out when defeating Queklain. The battle music is still going as he asplodes. Again, not the biggest deal I suppose, but there it is.

Nicely done beefing him up by the way. I had a heck of a time beating him, but with the right tweaking to my party I finally managed to stay on top of his shenanigans and take him out.

Events weren't touched at all, so that must've been something Vanilla did... though I don't recall that at all.

Sorry to ask, but will this be released for the PSP's WotL?

Probably will be when I get bored and have nothing better to do, haha.

hi ET XD been a while :o
you still have the png/psd file for the title screen i gave you? :D
i'll cook something up for your critical mode :3

Heaven's Cloud says it has a vertical range of three but it most certainly does not. I found out the hard way. :P

I'm up to Yardow. Still diggin' it. Despite the nerf Elemental received, I'm finding that pretty much my entire party has been or is going to be a Geomancer at some point. Their equipment spread is simply one of the best. And truly, taking away Gained JP Up is one of the best decisions ever. I'm one of those people who generally always used it in favor of actual, useful support skills just so get the most JP bang for each action.

Have any battles in particular given you much trouble yet, Torgo?

'Sup folks, been awhile.

I noticed that Monster Skill says it's supposed to have an effective range of three, but is only working on adjacent monsters, like so:


   [M]
[M][H][M]
   [M]


Is the ability description incorrect, or is it working wrong? Such a short range really hampers its usefulness.

The ability description is incorrect (always has been) but I *think* there's a hack that fixes that... somewhere. Because yes, Monster Skill is nigh useless normally.

A pity too, because some of the fourth abilities look pretty swank.