FFT The Lion War ReMixed v1.0-1.1.11 [PSX]

[Nyzer]

This project started out as my intent to replace the Proposition system in FFT, which has always left me extremely unimpressed. Even knowing before I went in how time-consuming the task would be, I still ended up taking much longer than intended, going well out of my way to make the plot of the missions as sensible, humorous, and referential as possible.

As I approached the end of this task, I took a stab at again trying to understand the ASM hacking format, and finally got somewhere. I also was taught by Kokojo how to use JuraviS, which allowed me to easily see how full all the events were in The Lion War - and how easily I would be able to include the Preparation Menu, a mechanic I came up with some time ago, but wasn't going to be included in a mod at that point in time.

So I ended up also including the Prep Menu and working on some ASM hacks in order to include features like a dynamic Guest roster, refunding abilities, giving Rafa and Malak center tile bias and more reliable hits in their skills, fixing Cancel Movement... tons and tons of work. I also included some level of rebalancing in order to turn options that were otherwise functionally useless into viable options.

spoiler: Version 1.0 changes

New mechanics:

- Preparation Menu, allowing you access to a wide variety of options before a battle begins. No more will you be stuck just randomly guessing what you might want to send out on the field before even seeing it.

- Game Over recovery, allowing you to immediately retry the battle or even return to the world map (provided you aren't in the middle of a battle sequence).

- Dispatch Missions, the far superior replacement for Propositions. Also gives a wide variety of extra training options for units to make things like catching up in levels or Brave/Faith manipulation significantly easier. Or even to let them undergo gender transition!

Character/job changes:

- Two Archer skills have been replaced with Aim (removes effects and elements, cannot miss) and Disrupt (removes effects and elements, interrupts casting and charging). Equip Crossbow has been changed to Equip Bow, adding Bows to the equipment granted by the skill. Archers can now equip knives.

- Dragoon Jump skills have been changed so they all add +1 to the range, stacking on top of each other. Jump now works with boosting skills like Attack Up or Two Hands.

- The Mediator's Praise and Preach got a 30% accuracy boost.

- Dark Knight skills can be used with katana and axes.

- Dark Knight (F) and Bard have been swapped around. This should now cause Dark Knight JP to spill over with other Dark Knights, and Bards with Dancers, rather than the mix we had before.

- Guests have been brought back, at least for a first playthrough. They should remain as battle-only Guests in New Game Plus.

- Luso has been brought back as a Blue Mage and given one Blue Magic skill from each monster family. Monsters and their skills have been tweaked so that their MA has almost all been nerfed to make them roughly as strong as they were in vanilla without making Blue Magic basically useless on a human. Certain skills have been redesigned or buffed to make them more worthwhile as Blue Magic. Certain monsters have had their access to skills improved. He does not have the same stats or weapons available to him as WotL's Luso, as he is more of a Blue Mage than a cheap Ramza clone.

- Mustadio's Snipe skillset comes with a free passive Equip Guns.

- When Mustadio, Agrias, and Ovelia are temporarily unavailable during Chapter 2, as well as Rafa during Chapter 3, they're flagged Missing instead of being removed from the Roster. Upon reappearing, they use the stats and equipment they had saved in battle. (Sadly, Ovelia is then removed for good at the end of Chapter 2.)

- Ashley Riot's skills no longer jump to the Holy Sword formula with a damage boost before being halved. They do damage based on the standard weapon formula for each weapon type, all multiply damage by X/16, include elemental effects (overwriting weapon elements with ability elements if there are any), and have a 100% chance of status infliction. He also has a unique Support skill: Armsmaster, which allows him to equip all non-female weapons and shields regardless of Job, and gives him access to Equip Change.

- Rafa and Malak's skills will always strike the center tile on the first hit if it's a valid option. They will always hit a minimum of half the maximum number of hits (rounded down). The skills themselves no longer have exactly the same size and number of hits - they have been diversified a bit so they don't just feel like carbon copies of each other. All of Malak's skills now have a chance to inflict Innocent (which now increases the damage of his skills rather than reducing them), and his skill that causes status effects uses different status effects compared to Rafa's, but are still roughly equally likely to disrupt the enemy in similar ways. They also got access to more weapon types, and had their job stats rebalanced so they actually have MA growth now.

- Meliadoul can now use Mighty Sword skills with spears. Mighty Sword skills can now hit monsters.

- When Beowulf asks to join you, rather than being given a choice, it just jumps directly to the Join Up screen for him. Choosing whether or not to let him join determines how the rest of the scene goes. If he's rejected from the party, you can reread the rumor to view the event again.

- Cloud's skills have been copied over directly from the Journey of the Five design, aside from Finishing Touch which has been left at a 100% chance to hit, and Cherry Blossom, which is just a hard-hitting, wide-range magic AoE attack. Limits work with many more weapons, not just the Materia Blade as in vanilla, or swords & knight swords as in TLW.

- Alma joins the party after the final battle against Altima. Once she joins, she automatically learns Ultima 2 and All-Ultima. Ramza still has to pay to learn these skills in the Depths of Murond New Game Plus menu. Like Ramza, she has both Male PA and Female MA, and cannot abandon the party due to low Brave or high Faith.

- Dragons lost Tail Sweep. Each dragon gets its Dash attack and elemental breath attack normally, as well as access to a Beastmaster skill. Green Dragons get Dragon Quicken from Reis, Blue Dragons get the new Blue Magic skill Mighty Guard, and Red Dragons get Dragon Boost from Reis.

- New monsters have been included in the Deep Dungeon's END, both during the Elidibs fight and one of END's random battles afterwards: Lamias, sprite made by Twinees. I based their skills off of the Journey of the Five Lamias too, because why not. I figured they made for thematically appropriate minions for Elidibs/Zodiark. They are vulnerable to Invite.

Weapon changes:

- Axes now use the WotL Fell Sword formula.

- Flails' random damage now goes from 0.5x to 1.5x damage rather than 1 damage - 1x damage.

- Magic Guns have taken a 6 WP hit in order to avoid them being ridiculously broken when using an ability formula that uses standard weapon damage (WP * WP for guns). In order to compensate, they also get boosted back up by half of the unit's Magic Attack.

New choices/event options/alterations:

- Several maps/events that didn't have Move-Find Item options now do. Mostly because of the Reveal Treasures option in the Preparation Menu. Battles which don't let you deploy units now have at least one controllable unit with Move-Find Item. The player's inventory will no longer be reset after the Orbonne Monastery prologue battle, allowing the items there to be retained for Chapter 1.

- Ashley Riot's fight now uses fixed levels.

- You can skip the Wiegraf fight and get straight to Velius.

- You can choose not to Save Rafa on the Riovanes Rooftop. She'll join the party regardless.

- If you have enough units, you can choose to send a second group to the side of Bethla Garrison you didn't choose first. (Leaving this battle via the Prep Menu will cause returning to Bethla to load up the Sluice.)

- Any unit can flip the switches at Bethla, not just Ramza.

- Instead of Reis being kidnapped by Aliste and Bremondt during the questline from WotL, the player can choose which of three units to leave behind on the hill: Reis, Beowulf, or Ramza. The unit left behind will be kidnapped, leaving the others to rescue them.

- The Deep Dungeon has been reworked. Exits are no longer randomized - instead, every possible exit is a viable exit. Landing on an exit during the battle gives the player the option to go through it, which skips War Funds and War Trophy rewards, but ends the battle and unlocks the next floor. Beating the battle without finding the exit causes five crystals to drop over the five exit tiles, and allows the player to choose whether to leave the battle without unlocking the exit (just in case they have one unit with Death Sentence or something). Choosing to stay lights up the map (from the crystals) and ends the battle once the player steps onto one of the exit tiles. Elidibs no longer keeps his human name in Lucavi form or uses the Serpentarius title, as these don't line up with how the other Lucavi work. Instead, he's taken inspiration from the Espers tied to Zodiac Stones in other FF lore, and he is now named Zodiark, with the job title Master of Rule.

Quality of Life changes:

- JP Boost is now innate for all units.

- The starting generics have fixed Brave and Faith. One is deliberately given low Brave and Faith in an effort to encourage players to use Dispatch Mission Special Training.

- New version of the Roster Hack which allows the return of Guests during the first playthrough. Slots 18, 19, and 20 start out reserved for Guests, decreasing as the game goes on and fewer slots are needed. Units can also be flagged as Guests without NEEDING to be in the Guest-designated slots, allowing Beowulf and Reis to be flagged accordingly during their sidequests as needed. The Load Formation functionality is now ignored if units aren't in the Roster, rather than loading junk data. The Bench Hack ignores Guests and can't be used to fill the slots designated for Guests until they're no longer reserved for them. Guests can be freely deployed in battles they aren't already reserved for - meaning you can bring units like Alma and Ovelia along to battles as long as they're still in the party.

- L1 and R1 shift units around on the Formation screen.

- A customized version of the Permadeath Terminator has been included, which only activates during Rendezvous battles. When active, once a unit's timer runs out, it becomes unrevivable for the rest of the battle, but does not turn into treasure or a crystal.

- Purchased abilities can be refunded to regain the JP spent on them. Reaction/Support/Movement skills equipped by the player cannot be refunded, and must be unequipped first.

- Scene skipping: for non-battle events, hold Start at the beginning of the scene, after a camera movement, or as a dialogue box is finished in order to instantly skip the scene. In order to better facilitate this change, Start now also works as a text advancement button, the same as O, X, or Select.

- Cross-Skip: Hold X to automatically speed up and rush through events. Useful for battle events which cannot be Scene Skipped.

- Zodiac Compatibility Highlighting: Hold Square overtop a unit, and units with non-neutral Zodiac compatibility will light up according to what that compatibility matchup is. Blue: Best Compatibility, Green: Good, Yellow: Bad, Red: Worst.

- Cancel Movement 1.14e Unofficial: After Moving in battle, but before Acting, press X to revert the unit's position back to where they started, reloading any stat gains they may have obtained via Move-JP Up and the like. Failed teleportations or found treasures disable movement cancelling.

- Learn on Hit skills can now be learned by both the current Primary AND Secondary skillsets. For example, if Ramza is a Monk and has Guts equipped, he can learn Ultima after being struck by it.

- Missing units can have their equipment and skills changed, preventing any of them from locking their gear away from others - or being unable to have their gear reset before returning for a future battle.

- Equip Change no longer consumes your Action for that turn if you only change weapons/shields.

- Defend now blocks loss of control status effects. Mostly to make Bad Breath far more possible to learn as Blue Magic.

- Some of the Engrish script has been tweaked. There's very little rhyme or reason for it, it mostly was just whatever I happened to stumble upon at a time that I felt like changing it.

Version 1.01 Resources

spoiler: Version 1.1 changes

- Your inventory is no longer reset after Orbonne Monastery, allowing you to keep any Move-Find Items from it. This doesn't cause a temporal paradox at all - don't worry about it.

- Smrt Encounters has been incorporated. No, not Smart Encounters, S-M-R-T. Holding O after selecting a dot will give you the functionality of Smart Encounters, but not holding it will keep the default random battle chance in. You should be able to patch the real Smart Encounters over top of it if you want to, though.

- The Flee penalty from random battles used to only be reduced by a small amount for every battle beaten. It now fully resets to zero upon beating any single battle.

- Extended Warranty has been included to the list of QoL hacks in ReMixed. If the enemy steals your gear, once you're done beating the shit out of them and win the battle, you'll get it back from their unconscious and/or dead bodies. If they break your gear, you can buy it back at the Fur Shop. If you break a katana with Draw Out, you can buy that back at the Fur Shop, too.

- The event telling players about the Rendezvous battles has had its dialogue altered to now include mention that you can't die in them, but you can't bring Math Skill.

- You can't bring Math Skill to RDV battles anymore.

- Units sent out on Dispatch Missions can now be stripped of gear while dispatched.

- After beating the battle at Goug, you retain access to Zigolis Swamp, on the off chance that you need to grind random battles before the Barius Valley battle.

- Agrias' Bariaus Valley equipment from vanilla will now be earned as War Trophies after that battle. I forgot to give Rafa the same treatment, whoops.

- Axes have gotten a WP buff.

- Cat Kick and Dash (Squire) now have a 100% knockback rate. Pretty sure this gives it to Counter Tackle as well.

- Maintenance now prevents katanas from breaking through Draw Out and also prevents the user's stats from being reduced.
- The Blue Magic ability Wind Soul has been given guaranteed knockback - even if it misses.

- Oracles now have the Support ability "Equip Pole".

- The Geomancy skillset has been condensed down to just three abilities. Elemental Pulse hits a single target and chooses a specific Geomancy type depending on their tile. Elemental Surge does the same, but hits in an area. Elemental Blast does the same as Surge, but uses your tile to determine the type of Geomancy.

- Fixed a bug with Dragoons in which they would lose most of the vertical Jump range if they Mastered the job.

- Equip Katana and Two Hands have now been merged into one ability - Bushido.

- Two Swords has been renamed to Ninjutsu. Units with Two Swords can equip Ninja Blades, regardless of job. Books, crossbows, and nonmagical guns can now also be dual-wielded (though books currently don't say so in their descriptions); the way this works is that, as long as the second weapon does not have less range than the first one, you will get your second attack. If the second weapon does have less range, then even if the attack was still within its range, it will not go off.

- Rafa and Malak have been buffed even further. Their chance to inflict status effects has increased. Truth skills will now heal allies that are hit by them, whereas Un-Truth skills will never hit allies. Having the Un-Truth skillset equipped will cause Malak's low Faith to act as high Faith when he uses a Faith-based spell. Rafa has one skill that will never hit allies, and Malak has one skill that will always inflict Innocent.

- Truth and Un-Truth skills have been renamed, because shit like "Heaven BltBack" is dumb. I tried to aim for a mix of less ridiculous translation and sticking to a theme of heaven/hell, good/bad naming convention. For example, Heaven Thunder vs Hell Thunder, or Diamond Sword vs Slicing Sword.

- Move-Find Item has been given an extra advantage: equipping it will cause low Brave to act as high Brave for Reactions.

- Oracles have lost Any Weather and received a new Movement skill: Move-Cleanse, which removes negative status effects after Moving.

- Geomancers have lost Move on Lava and Any Terrain and received a new Movement skill: Terrain Mastery, which grants them Waterwalking, Lavawalking, and all the benefits of Move-Find Item. An all-around upgrade to Move-Find Item, essentially.

- Ninjas have lost Move in Water Waterwalking and received a new Movement skill: Pass, which grants +1 Move and lets them walk through enemies as if they were allies. Discount Teleport, essentially.

- Samurais' Walk on Water Swim skill has been buffed and renamed. Now called Athlete, it allows them to swim, grants +1 Jump, and causes Move to not consume CT.

- The Fly skill has been buffed. It now has all the benefits of Terrain Mastery, making it an upgrade to that skill - which itself was already an update to Move-Find Item. The final form of Move-Find Item, essentially.

spoiler: Version 1.1.01 changes

- Added Monkey Grip functionality to Equip Axe and Equip Shield; with either support skill equipped, two-handed weapons can be held in one hand.

- Fixed a bug with Ninjutsu (Dual Wield) that prevented attacking with both hands when barehanded.

- Fixed a bug with the Game Over event that prevented you from retrying random battles.

- Fixed a bug with the second Delita/Ovelia battle that caused it to potentially be re-triggered by making certain choices during unrelated events.

- Added War Trophies to (mostly) match Guest Rafa's starting equipment in Riovanes Entrance, to make up for the duplication of her starting equipment when Guest Rafa leaves and Joining Rafa appears with a full set of gear.

- Fixed a bug with the knockback abilities that prevented them from having 100% knockback if they had a max range of 1.

spoiler: Version 1.1.02 changes

- Blade Grasp, Finger Guard, and Arrow Guard should now correctly display the hit chance if the target is using the low Brave reaction protection with the Move-Find Item movement skills.

- Malak's skills should now correctly avoid ally tiles.

- If using a pincer attack at Bethla, the first group should now correctly be flagged Missing while the second group attacks.

spoiler: Version 1.1.03 changes

- Fixed an issue with reactions that caused them to be 100% regardless of what the hit chance said because I forgot to add a minus sign at one key point.

spoiler: Version 1.1.04 changes

- Fixed Death Knight Algus being unable to use Dark Sword in Limberry Castle.

- Fixed issues with trying to use scene skip during the Delita's Betrayal event with Delita, Olan, Balmafula, and Ovelia.

- Gave Cloud's Soldier job the ability to use Knight Swords and Katanas.

- This was changed in an earlier patch but I forgot to note it: The Dragon and Hydra families now have Non-Charge to allow them to instant cast their Blue Magic abilities.

spoiler: Version 1.1.05 changes

- Fixed a bug with the Prep Menu that accidentally assumed the maximum number of units on the field was 17, not 16, and messing up Reveal Treasures at exactly 12 units on the field.

- Fixed a bug causing Zalbag's Matra Magic spell to be a one-hit KO. Also increased its MP cost to 50, so he can't use it nearly as often (and basically shouldn't be able to use it at all in Igros).

- Fixed a bug with trying to scene skip during the funeral event at the end of the game.

- Re-added in the TLW Credits and Depths of Murond Events. (I really needed to delete the empty "event files" from my event folder much sooner than this.)

spoiler: Version 1.1.06 changes

- Enemy Sing skills now correctly give beneficial effects to units on the same team.

- Mustadio's Snipe skill no longer allows him access to Female specific gear.

- The final battle against Altima should now correctly do the "This Game Is Complete" victory rather than a generic one.

spoiler: Version 1.1.07 changes

- Fixed a softlock in the optional Disorder in the Order battle.

- Fixed an issue with the Luso Recruitment event that caused the screen to remain completely black if the scene was skipped as soon as it began.

spoiler: Version 1.1.08 changes

- Changed Monster Skill functionality. Now, instead of giving a skill to monsters within 1 tile of the user, it affects all allied monsters on the field. It also grants all allied monsters +1 Move (which doesn't stack with multiple uses of Monster Skill).

- Tame also gets all the above Monster Skill functionality.

Version 1.1.08 Resources

spoiler: Version 1.1.09 changes

- Fixed a bug in which the Roster size was getting screwed up in NG+, causing Benching not to work anymore. Now, upon viewing the Orbonne Prayer event at the start of NG+, or the Military Academy event shortly after (or in the Brave Story's Records, for those of you with save files from older versions), the game will check whether you're in NG+, and if so - and if the Roster variable is zeroed out - it will properly set the Roster size to 20.

Version 1.1.09 Resources

spoiler: Version 1.1.10 changes

- Fixed a text bug in the event that introduces Rendezvous battles and Dispatch Missions.

- Zodiac has now been given a 100% chance of Learn on Hit.

- The two summoners that can appear in the END map after beating Elidibs/Zodiark should now come with the Zodiac summon learned.

- Fixed a bug in the final Altima battle that prevented Alma from learning Ultima 2 and All-Ultima upon clearing the battle. Also set it so that if Alma is already in the Roster, her stats will be loaded at the start and saved at the end.

- Made a new "Smart Auto-Potion" hack. Auto-Potion will now automatically default to stronger potions depending on the damage of the last hit taken, according to specific damage thresholds.

- Defending will now reduce physical and magical damage taken by 1/3, and no longer consumes Act.

- Secret Hunt has been moved to Archer in order to make room for a new Thief support skill.

- New support skill: Bandit's Eye. Ignores 20% of the target's Evasion, boosts the base success rate of Steal and Snipe skills by 20%, and causes Steal Gil to also deal weapon damage.

- Balthier has lost innate Maintenance, as that skill makes more sense on Mustadio. But in return, he's gained innate Bandit's Eye, which should help emulate the boosted Steal chances he has via his Plunder skills in WotL.

- Monster Talk is no longer its own support skill, due to being almost useless. Instead, Equip Gun now grants the benefit of Monster Talk. Mediator now has innate Equip Gun instead of innate Monster Talk.

spoiler: Version 1.1.11 changes

- Fixed a bug with generating units under certain circumstances caused by some side testing that had unintended consequences.

[Talcall]

holy shit!
I can't wait to try this, all of these changes sound insane!
good job Nyzer! and nice to see you again!

[RetroTypes]

Very cool, great work Nyzer! Lots of new QoL for everyone to enjoy, I'm excited to give it a go 

[Caazan]

This looks incredible Nyzer! I can't wait to try it!

[Celdia]

This looks like it will be an absolute blast! I've got it on-deck for my next run.

[budgieflame99]

another mod and alot of big changes it seems, cant wait to get stuck into this one. gunna give this a blast very soon. great work

[3lric]

Well done

[Mura]

Is this patched over an already patched Lion War rom? And will it work with Lion War of the Lions or only the original Lion War?

[Nyzer]

No. You never mix mods unless you are explicitly told that they're meant to be.

[Nyzer]

Version 1.01 has been uploaded. This fixes both a ShowGraphic issue I forgot to ensure was fine beforehand (preventing the end-of-chapter images from glitching out) and the inventory reset that occurs when your starting generics first join the roster in the Academy event - so now the Phoenix Downs and Elixirs you might acquire from Move-Find Item in the Orbonne Monastery battle will be saved and thrown back in time to the start of Chapter 1.

[gingacide]

I can't play this one, it bugs out for me at the very beginning when Argias is speaking. When she gives the line "So there are rude knaves even among the Hokuten?" it just sits there and then eventually they'll start walking in place like you're in a battle. Nothing i've done has allowed me to get past this spot.

[Nyzer]

I just patched a fresh copy, booted it up, and that issue isn't occurring. It must be something on your end. What emulator are you using? Because anything based off of TLW has fun issues with ePSXe, and it's recommended to use PSXfin or Duckstation instead.

[Nyzer]

Finally got around to attaching the resources to the topic. Kinda just tossed a copy of them together, hopefully haven't missed anything anyone would be hoping to make use of.

[RavenCurow]

I've downloaded and patch the ppf to my bin, but I can't seem to get duckstation to load it. It just sits on the startup screen with the playstation logo forever. Not sure why as the unpatched rom runs fine.

[Nyzer]

I finally went ahead and added a chart with the list of Blue Magic skills, which monsters have them, and what they do. It's been attached to the first post in the topic, so you can see it at the bottom there.

Hopefully it makes everyone's search for the skills a bit more tolerable!

I've downloaded and patch the ppf to my bin, but I can't seem to get duckstation to load it. It just sits on the startup screen with the playstation logo forever. Not sure why as the unpatched rom runs fine.

Couldn't tell you why. Try repatching or another ISO, I suppose?

[Nyzer]

Version 1.1 is out now.

Never mind - it seems as if there's some major bug that occurs semi randomly in battle.

[badluckman]

I may be an idiot and missed it, but is this for PSP or PSX? and is it EU or US?

[Nyzer]

PSX and US.

[Nyzer]

Okay. Version 1.1 should be up for realsies this time.

[Nyzer]

Version 1.1.01 is up. Mostly bugfixes, but also includes Monkey Grip functionality on Equip Shield and Equip Axe, which almost made it in v1.1 except I had one last routine I needed to figure out first.