FFTA: A Shattered Dream (BETA)

[FlamingZelda]

Intro
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: a Shattered Dream (FFTA:SD) is a rebalance mod for FFTA. I began the conceptual work on this mod February of 2019 and began making edits June/July of 2020. The mod is now over 90% complete. I had initially intended to release this mod in its completed form, however I believe there is room for more playtesting and a few bugfixes before the mod is truly considered complete. I will edit this post (and the title) when it is time for the official release.

A word on design philosophy
FFTA:SD seeks to remain faithful to the original FFTA's unique design and identity. For this reason I have forgone making changes which could hurt the game's structural identity. This means controversial mechanics like the law, JP, and AP systems are in full effect. While it would be easy to remove these, FFTA is one of the only TRPGs with these systems and I feel they are necessary for the authentic FFTA experience.
There are a couple places where I chose to go against FFTA's natural design, these will be underlined when they come up.

Key Features

- Max level is set to 30.
- Enemy levels scale to the highest unit level in your clan.
- Jobs have been fully rebalanced.
- Many game breaking strategies have been removed.
- Fixed many broken or near useless abilities.
- Reworked Item stats. Weapon power is more appropriate for weapon type.
- Shop tiers are based upon story progression.
- Base Stats are based on race.
- Job's stat growths have been reworked to be more forgiving.
- Learning abilities is smoother. Slightly more AP is gained per mission and less AP is needed per ability.
- Elements have effectiveness against different types of units.
- Enemy formations remain conceptually similar to FFTA, but adjustments have been made to make for a more engaging experience.
- The Beastmaster and Morpher jobs have been replaced. We now have the Apothecary and Shaman jobs instead:
    The Apothecary is a physical support unit which crafts items to use from long range. They start weak, but become powerful in the endgame.
    The Shaman is an offbeat spellcaster which uses monster souls to toy with enemies. At first they seem strange, but their dark magic can be incredibly useful.


A word on difficulty
Aside from its lack of clear explanation for its mechanics, FFTA is possibly the easiest videogame I have ever played (No really, it's easier than pokemon). While this is not explicitly a difficulty hack it does bring the difficulty to a level more comparable to FFT on playstation. In the latter half of the game (a place where I feel the original falls off) FFTA:SD enjoys experimenting with powerful enemy compositions and encouraging the player to experiment with its mechanics. This comes to a head with the final boss fights which take a decent level of prep and strategy to defeat (Something which is commonplace for a Final Fantasy game, but is missing from FFTA.) It is my hope that both players new to FFTA and returning players alike can enjoy this mod.


Downloads
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r102qfrhf4xitwe/AAB1e8igojgZDpwYmeKgv1_ja?dl=0
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-QIlI9Amrc-zwDLqac_GnhcyI1HvlxIN/view?usp=sharing

Patch to a "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (USA)" rom.

Credits
Darthatron (FFTA All In One Editor v0.7)
bcrobert (FFTA Nightmare Modules v19)
Leonarth (Tutorial skip)
Hextator (Nightmare 2)
Victotem (FFTA TextEditor)

Discord for this and my other projects: https://discord.gg/CCuQz9n5dQ

(9-13-23)EDIT: The project is currently on hiatus. I am very slowly making progress on this between other things. I will hopefully have the next version out sometime before February of next year. Making a full game hack for FFTA is a very large and time consuming process. I hope you will be patient and understanding in waiting for the completed game.

[FlamingZelda]

(Reserved)

[FlamingZelda]

(Reserved)