FFTA: A Shattered Dream (1.022)

[FlamingZelda]

Intro
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: A Shattered Dream is a full game mod for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

Key Features:
- Level cap changed from 50 to 30
- Enemies autolevel to match your clan's level (Clan's strongest unit's level - 1 + rng(0-2))
- Mp gained per turn is [maxmp]/8 +2
- AP costs are reduced (100 -> 100, 200 -> 150, 300 -> 200, 800 -> 400)
- Shop prices are increased, gil rewards from missions are reduced
- Beastmaster, Morpher, and Nu Mou Time Mage jobs are replaced with Nu mou Animist, Shaman, and Astrologer.
- Base stats are based on race, growths are based on job
- Speed is affected by your equipped weapon type
- Each element type has a different effect:

spoiler: Elements

    Fire - Strong against warrior type jobs
    Lightning - Strong against rogue type jobs
    Ice - Strong against mage type jobs
    Water - Strong against basic jobs
    Wind - Strong against advanced jobs
    Earth - Strong against the five main races
    Dark & Poison - Strong against healers, heals undead
    Holy - Strong against undead, heals holy jobs

- Adjusted lawsets and reduced penalties for breaking laws (No more Equipment Fine or Stat Down)
- Rebalanced every Item, Job, and Ability in the game
- Reduced the number of mission items
- Reduced the length of several extremely complex mission chains
- Reworked every enemy formation except wandering enemy clans
- Reworked totema and combo abilities
- A whole bunch of other stuff

Explanation:
I made this hack because I liked FFTA as a kid, but found the second half to be very disappointing. I've taken inspiration from FFT, FFTA2, and the Fire Emblem series in my reworks. The goal was to create something which feels like vanilla ffta but progresses into a higher echelon of power and epicness than the original.

Testimonials from my playtesters: (These are paraphrased)
"Wait, what did you even change?"
"I was surprised how much everything felt like the original."
"Wait that was part of your hack? I thought that was from the original game!"

Screenshots
(I wanted to post gifs of epic boss fights and cool abilities, but mgba kept crashing so here are some screenshots of casual gameplay instead)

spoiler: screenshots

Downloads
Hacktics won't allow me to attach any more files, so either go to post 2 or my discord for downloads.

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

spoiler: Special Thanks:

Bluhen
Dck
ScarletMagi
Leonarth
Darthatron
Mohawkjoe
Aya
Ninjapenguin

Discord
https://discord.gg/CCuQz9n5dQ

spoiler: old post

11-2-2024 - A few weeks after my progress was deleted I found a random game file from December 2023. This was enough work regained for me to pick up work on the project again. I've been making progress at an extremely fast pace. I'm currently trying to get the next version ready for release in the next few months.

spoiler: 8-20-2024

- Hey all. Wrote a paragraph explaining the situation but then it got deleted. The short version is I lost the romfile for this project. The last saved version (September 2023) is on my discord server. I've lost so much work though that I've decided to let this project die. Feel free to use and edit as you wish. Sorry you guys couldn't get see the final version (It was really cool).

spoiler: 9-13-23

- 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.

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

[FlamingZelda]

Releases
(To check that the game patched successfully, start a new save file and check Mewt's hp. If he has 7 hp you are playing shattered dream)
(You may get a checksum mismatch error when patching the game. No issues have been observed from this.)

Important! This mod crashes on the following emulators:
Delta Emulator
Pizzaboy
MyBoy
JohnGBA

-It is not possible to complete the game on these emulators. If you normally use one of these emulators please install and use Retroarch instead.

- Version 1.0
A Shattered Dream.zip

- Version 1.01
A Shattered Dream 1.01.zip
Changelog

spoiler

Fighter:
HP 21.2 -> 21.0
MP 1.7 -> 1.9
Def 8.0 -> 8.2
Speed 1.3 -> 1.4

Dragoon:
Speed 1.4 -> 1.3

Templar:
W.Atk 9.2 -> 9.0

Nu mou Black Mage:
MP 3.1 -> 3.7

Nu Mou Animist:
Speed 1.6 -> 1.5

Shaman:
Def 6.8 -> 6.4

Moogle Black Mage:
MP 2.7 -> 2.8

Masamune:
Power 75 -> 65

Masamune 100:
Power 89 -> 75

Rods:
Speed 8 -> 9

Souls:
Speed 10 -> 8

Toad:
MP Cost 24 -> 28

Air render:
Vertical range 2 -> 3

Unspell:
MP Cost 0 -> 6

Elementalshift:
Range 4 -> 3

Updated mission ranks

Fixed clan Shalo not auto-leveling

Ninja is now weak to Holy magic

Nu mou Doublesword AP cost 100 -> 800

-Version 1.022
A Shattered Dream 1.022.zip
Changelog

spoiler

Synopsis: Removed the Pale Company, Steal: Ability, and Holy Sign game crashes. Only remaining known crash is the Hot Awakening Emulator crash.

Adrammelech
- Gained Dragonheart & Concentrate
- Lost Counter, Weapon Defense +, and Lightspeed
- Howl of Rage no longer crashes the game
- Changed AI behavior weights

Combos
- Changed the Combo Formula to:
Damage = Fight damage * (1 + 0.15 per assisting ally) * 0.2 * JP spent

Steal: Ability
- Changed hit formula back to vanilla.

Holysign
- Dispel effect only works on non-undead units
- Exorcise effect has S-type accuracy

Totemas:
- Ultima and Exodus now have correct descriptions

Created Permadeath Version (Untested)

Added a "Formulas:" section to the guide.txt

[FlamingZelda]

(Reserved)