Leaderboard

PSX Final Fantasy Tactics Dissidia 013 (Tredecim) Version 1.0 Download Patch This FF Tactics PSX hack was my first undertaking where I wanted to add in as much new stuff as I could manage which turned into adding characters from different Final Fantasies. The characters included were based on what sprites were available so I really had to look hard into what characters could be added easily and which could not. Adding characters from other FF's and their unique skills was something I really enjoyed and this became Dissidia 013. I wanted to make a really cool character based hack that utilized as many of their skills from their own games as possible. As such, this hack is not overly difficult and may be even easier with some of the character's new abilities. However, I worked really hard to balance the characters to make them all unique and provide a fun alternative to the main gameplay of FF Tactics. Each character has a new job that reflects their play style in their own individual game, and I was surprised to see how easily most of the characters fit with the tactics play style. Squall for instance goes form a Cadet, to a SeeD, to a Griever. Lightning, meanwhile is a Sanctum Knight as her guest, and a Knight of Etro when you gain her in your party. In addition to the new skills and abilities, new weapons have been added as well. Squall and Lightning have their specific Gunblades, that now replace Knight Swords. Wakka and Tidus can equip Blitzballs, that attack in a circular pattern. Even Firion has skills that are determined by what weapon he has equipped. There are also Rapiers and Whips as well, with their own unique traits. This was my first Hack of FF Tactics and I went really deep into what could be done. I never intended to share it but I decided why not, so let me know what you think. This is for the PSX patch and can be applied with PPF-Omatic ________________________CHARACTERS_____________________________ The main character is now Squall, since his character seemed to fit with Ramza the best. He can only equip Gunblades but he receives several throughout the game. Squall has a unique ability to disrupt charging enemies with the Trigger skill. Alicia and Radd have been replaced by Celes and Locke respectively. I wanted to replace Lavian with another character as well but the game does not seem to handle changing all three of the generic sprites. Similar to Squall, most of the main guest allies you receive are replaced with others from across the Final Fantasy pantheon. ---Ramza > Squall Squall replaces Ramza as the main character here since I wanted a relatively young character to take Ramza's place. This relates to the replacement of Gafgarion with Seifer to complete the pairing of FF8 rival characters. Squall can equip Knight Swords which have been changed to Gunblades that add +1 to attack range plus may Rend a piece of Equipment. Squall's main ability with the Gunblade are his Trigger attack that allows him to disrupt a Charging enemy and cancel their attack. His Skill set is Renzokuken that will expand as the story grows, with Lionheart being his final ability that can be learned, taking the place of Ultima. Squall's three jobs are now Cadet, SeeD, and Griever. Each allows for a new tier of Renzokuken abilities in addition to his Trigger Ability. In addition to this, he now has the inherent special ability JP Boost. -Renzokuken (Complete) Trigger Rough Divide Fated Circle Blasting Zone Lionheart Skills - Trigger cancels Charging and Defending for 5MP. Rough Divide has 3Range and 2 CT for 3MP and causes Darkness. Fated Circle is a 3Range area effect around Squall with 2CT for 8MP. Blasting Zone is a 5Range linear attack with 3CT for 15MP. Lionheart has a 3Range, 1Area for 3CT for 20MP that causes Silence. ---Gafgarion-Seifer Seifer replaces Gafgarion as the Fell Knight job class. Seifer equips Gunblades but his starting weapon is the Hyperion Gunblade which can be stolen to be used by Squall. The Fell Knight job utilizes Fire Cross that has skills related to fire and give slight variation to Gafgarions initially sparse moveset. -Fire Cross No Mercy Fire Fira Skills - ---Agrias > Lightning Lightning now replaces Agrias as the main magical swordsman. Her first Job is the Sanctum Knight and the second is the Etro Knight for the second half of the story. She also is able to equip Gunblades, with her standard Gunblade being the Blazefire Saber and her upgraded weapon being the Blazefire Saber 2.0. Her Job allows for her to inherently Absorb MP and makes her immune to Lightning attacks as well. Her skillset is called Paradigm Shift and allows for Thunder abilities and a summon, as well as her special ability Army of One. -Paradigm Shift Thunder Thundara Strike Protect Ruin Arsenal of One Army of One Odin ---Orran > Wakka Wakka replaces Orran and is one of the starting units along with Lulu. He can equip Blitzballs only which take the place of Bags. The Blitzballs attack in the same way as Instruments though. Wakka's initial ball is the Official Ball. Wakka's Job is Team Captain that has an inerent HP Boost. His Skillset is called Slots that deal various forms of Status effects and delays to the entire field minus your own units. -Slots Silence Buster Dark Buster Delay Buster Magic Reels Attack Reels Status Reels ---Mustadio > Tidus Tidus is very similar to Wakka in that he can use Blitzballs as his main weapon but he but he can also equip regular swords similar to his character in FFX. Overdrive emphasizes speed and support with Haste and Cheer. Quick Hit and Jecht Shot are used to affect the CT of other units. Tidus also absorbs Water as the Striker Job Class. -Overdrive Haste Cheer Quick Hit Jecht Shot Spiral Cut Energy Rain Blitz Ace ---Beowulf > Auron Guardian -Bushido Threaten Sentinel Armor Break Power Break Shooting Star Dragon Fang Banishing Blade Valmafra > Lulu Black Witch -Witch Magicks Fira Thundara Blizzara Toad Meltdown Tornado Quake ---Orlandeau > Hero of Light Hero of Light -Master Blade Ascension Speed Break Mental Break Magic Break Aura of Light Shield of Light Day Flash ---Reis > Cecil Cecil replaces Reis as the Dark Knight initially, which replaces the Holy Dragon unit. Getting Cecil to complete the Reis sidequest changes Cecil into the Paladin, which replaces the Dragonkin unit. As the Dark Knight Class, Cecil uses his Darkside techniques that are similar to the generic Dark Knight attacks only boosted. After Cecil becomes a Paladin, the Darkside skill changes to Chivalry that are used to buff and heal allies. Paladin -Chivalry Regen Reraise Recover Ally Augment Ally Encourage Ally Sacred Cross Holy Dark Knight -Darkside Soul Eater Dark Cannon Abyssal Blade --Alicia > Celes Rune Knight -Runic Blizzard Blizzard Blade Regen Confustrike Drain Spinning Edge Phoenix --Radd > Locke Adventurer -Thief Skills Boost Charm Hastega Blindstrike Trickery Mirage Dive Pilfer ---Rapha > Terra Terra replaces Rapha as the Esperkin, which is a versatile magic based unit, with both Non-Charge and Arcane Strength inherent. Like Celes, her main weapon is the Rapier, which has replaced the Flail. She can also equip the Rod as well. Her Trance Skills Mimic, Celes's as well, with Fire and Fira Edge being her elemental attacks. Silenstrike and Riot Blade are her high tier attacks and her summon is Maduin which replaces Cyclops. Esperkin/High Summoner -Trance Fire Fira Edge Shell Silenstrike Syphon Riot Blade Maduin ---Marach > Zidane Zidane replaces Marach and is one of the faster characters. He has inherent Dual Wield for his Knife equips. Zidane is also immune to Disable. The Tantalus Thief utilizes his Dyne Skills in a similar way to Marach's original Nether attacks. However, most of them offer an enhancement or elemental affinity. Tantalus Thief -Dyne Free Energy Tidal Flame Scoop Art Shift Break Meo Twister Grand Lethal ---Meliadoul > Firion Firion in the most versatile character that replaces Meliadoul. He can equip most of the main weapons except for the Rod, Staff, Pole. Firion is also unique in that his skills as the Rebel Martyr are dependant on which weapon is equipped. Rope Knife is only usable with a Knife equipped, as well as the Axe, Lance and Arrow skills. The Wild Rose skillset also has the summon Silf and his ulitimate move the Lord of Arms. Firion is also immune to Charm, Sleep and Darkness. Rebel Martyr -Wild Rose Wind Thrust Reflect Rope Knife Reel Axe Lance Rush Straight Arrow Lord of Arms Silf ________________________JOBS_____________________________ The Job system has been completely revamped, with almost every job getting some kind of change unique to Dissidia 013. Job Requirements have been changed to distinguish physical or magical jobs even more than the Vanilla. Base Jobs are the Fighter, Chemist and Adventurer. Fighter classes follow a physcial job path, while the Chemist follows the magical. Adventurer is similar to the Thief job and is necessary to get up to the Fusilier and Ninja classes. Primary Physical jobs will require a Primary Magic job to gain access to the Hybrid Jobs. An Example of this is that the Knight will require the Black Mage job at LVl 2 to become the Mystic Knight. Similarly, the Primary Job combinations will yield Elementalist and Samurai Jobs. The Dragoon and Blue Mage classes will be unlocked by getting to level two with all of either the Physical Primary Jobs or the Magical Primary Jobs. These are considered the Secondary Jobs. TO get to the Elite Magical jobs, one needs to get to Lvl 2 with all Primary Magic classes and also level 3 with a specific mage class. For example Lvl 3 Black Mage will acquire the Summoner class, Lvl 3 Red Mage will acquire the Oracle Class and Lvl 3 Green Mage will yield the Sorceress class. Base Jobs -Fighter - Unlocks> Knight, Hunter and Monk at Lvl 2. -Chemist - Unlocks> Red, Black and Green Mage at Lvl 2. -Adventurer Primary Jobs (Physical) -Knight -Hunter -Monk Secondary Jobs (Physical) Dragoon = Knight Lvl 2, Hunter Lvl 2, Monk Lvl 2 Fusilier = Knight Lvl 2 + Hunter Lvl 2 + Monk Lvl 2 + Adventurer Lvl 3 Elite Jobs (Hybrid) Mystic Knight = Knight Lvl 2 + Black Mage Lvl 2 Elementalist = Monk Lvl 2 + Green Mage Lvl 2 Samurai = Hunter Lvl 2 + Red Mage Lvl 2 Primary Jobs (Magical) -Red Mage -Black Mage -Green Mage Secondary Jobs (Magical) Blue Mage = Red Mage Lvl 2 + Black Mage Lvl 2 + Green Mage at Lvl 2. Ninja = Red Mage Lvl 2 + Black Mage Lvl 2 + Green Mage Lvl 2 + Adventurer Lvl 3 Elite Jobs (Magical) Summoner = Red Mage Lvl 2, Black Mage Lvl 3, Green Mage Lvl 2 Oracle = Red Mage Lvl 3, Black Mage Lvl 2, Green Mage Lvl 2 Sorceress = Red Mage Lvl 2, Black Mage Lvl 2, Green Mage Lvl 3 __________________________JOB SKILLS______________________________ --Fighter The Squire has been reworked to have more worthwhiles skills that can carry over to upgraded jobs. The Fighter gets the Rend skills that can break equipment as well as skills that boost damage and speed. -Combat Techs Focus Tailwind Steel Rend Helm Rend Armor Rend Shield Rend Weapon --Chemist -Items (Unchanged) --Knight The Knight skills have been divided with the Fighter class and now include the Break Weapon skills that can damage enemies. The Knight, however, specializes in reducing enemy power by whittling away Magic and Attack. -Sword Skills Rend MP Rend Speed Rend Power Rend Magick Armor Break Crush Weapon Crush Accessory --Hunter -Hunt Charge +2 through 20 --Monk -Martial Arts Cyclone Aurablast Shockwave Doom Fist Purification Chakra Revive --Red Mage Red Mage replaces White Mage though offers very similar skills initially. The main difference is that the Red Mage can be used offensively by equipping them with the new Rapier weapon that emphasizes speed. Red Mages are proficient with mainly curative magic so in that respect they are different from the traditional Red Mage in other FFs. However, their skills also include a Drain abiility and focuses on raising Bravery and Faith. Red Mages are also weak to Ice Magic. -Red Magicks Cure Cura Curaga Raise Arise Regen Protect Shell Esuna Life Drain Ascension Belief --Black Mage Black Mage is pretty close to how they are in the Vanilla game but they no longer get the -ja tier of elemental magic, which is reserved for other units. Black Mages still equip Staffs but they can also now equip Books as well. In addition to this, the Black Mage also has skills that include a Syphon abiility and specializes in lowering Bravery and Faith. Black Mages are also now weak to Fire Magic. -Black Magicks Fire Fira Firaga Thunder Thundara Thundaga Blizzard Blizzara Blizzaga Spell Absorb Cowardice Disbelief --Green Mage The Green Mage essentially combines the Mystic and Time Mages to focus on Buffs and Debuffs. Battlecry is a skill that takes the place of battle song but is not permanent and does not affect the whole field, only a range around the caster. -Green Magicks Blind Silence Sleep Confuse Disable Immobilize Haste Slow Dispel Reflect Battlecry Second Wind --Summoner -Eidolons Moogle Shiva Ramuh Ifrit Titan Leviathan Carbunkle Bahamut --Adventurer -Thievery Steal Gil Steal Heart Steal Helmet Steal Armor Steal Shield Steal Weapon Steal Accessory Steal EXP --Fusilier The Fusilier takes the place of the Orator and places more emphasis on ranged attacking with guns. This new unit takes cues from Mustadio and expanding on them, with some from Tactics Advance. The Fusilier also has the Trigger Skill similar to Squall's gunblades. -Trick Shot Leg Shot Arm Shot Seal Evil Dark Shot Silenshot Stopshot Trigger --Mystic Knight The Mystic Knight is a hybrid physical/magical class that emphasizes elemental sword skills. It is similar to the Samurai class in that respect, though the Mystic Knight also specializes in Draining HP/MP as well. The Sword Skills cost MP unlike Samurai. -Mystic Blade Frost Blade Flame Sword Thunder Slash Water Blade Earth Slash Syphon Drain --Elementalist -Elements (Unchanged) --Dragoon -Jump Horizontal Jump 2, 4, 5, 8 Vertical Jump 3, 6, 8 --Samurai The Samurai class has been altered slightly to no longer break the weapon when using skills. To offset this change, most of the skills require a slight charge time now. -Katana Techs Asura Kotetsu Osafune Murasame Ama-no-Murakumo Kiyomuri Muramasa Kiku-ichimonji Masamune Chirijiraden --Ninja -Throw (Unchanged) --Blue Mage Blue Mage functions similar to previous FF's in that being hit by any of the corresponding spells will add them to the skillset. Unfortunately this is solely related to attack magics as I do not know how to get curative or support magic to be added if the enemy will not use them on the Blue Mage. -Blue Magicks Choco Meteor Flame Attack Spark Mind Blast Earthsplitter Breathe Fire Bad Breath Twister Giga Flare Tri-Breath Nanoflare Unholy Darkness Ultima --Oracle -Farsight Refresh Blindja Silencja Snakecharm Poisonous Frog Midgardsormr Meteor Doom Zodiark --Sorceress -ManaStrike ManaStrike Firaja Thundaja Blizzaja Ruinga Stoneja Flare Deathstrike Lich Download Patch Download Log File

Interesting. I am finishing up the change log for another hack called Final Fantasy Tactics - The Zodiac Age for the WOTL. It is similar to this one but the unique characters are all from FF12 and the jobs are different and named after the zodiac. I can review the ENTD for that one and change it before I upload it. It would be a good start for changes I can make to this one. Thanks for the ideas.

So the only ENTD changes I made were in regards to allowing characters to join. The first was changing the opening battle after the monastery to include Wakka and Lulu in your starting team. They are Orran and Valmafra so that had to be changed in the ENTD to make it work. Battles were not significantly changed in terms of units or layouts if that is what you meant. Gameplay wise I guess rebalancing mostly comes down to job abilities. Arithmetician is now Blue Mage so Oracle and Sorceress can be utilized for spells that affect the field. Wakka has some of these abilities as well. Otherwise this plays pretty much like the main game, only Seifer is Gaffgarion and you get to play with new characters and abilities. Anything else I am open to suggestions.

With the 2.0 release of Brave New World just around the corner and one of its most prominent changes being a complete overhaul of enemy AI, I wanted to take a moment to talk specifically about how to design a good boss fight in an RPG. Now, anyone who's played Brave New World at all in the six years since its initial release can generally agree on at least one thing: Atma Weapon is the fight to watch out for. He's big, he's mean, he caps off the first half of the game in an epic fight with its own special music, and I set out to make sure that every bit of that distinction was earned. All of the other bosses in Brave New World have slowly evolved over time to get to where they are now, but Atma in particular has barely changed at all for fear of fucking with the gold standard that I was holding everything else I was designing to. And that's particularly interesting since, when I wrote it, I really didn't know what the hell I was doing. There are many ways to go about making your boss difficult, most of which fall under the definition of "fake difficulty" and should be avoided. More important than if something is hard is why it's hard - I'm not going to complain if you have an erection, but I will be concerned if you got it from stabbing children. Giving your boss more hit points (beyond a certain threshold) does nothing except needlessly prolong the fight and, while random elements are necessary, relying too heavily on them will turn your fight into a luck-based mission. There are several reasons that Atma works despite the fact that his AI is not particularly complex or interesting by my current standards: most importantly, he uses a wide variety of attacks that are both directly and indirectly offensive, and his stats are fine-tuned to my personally-suggested guideline of, "make the fight just hard enough that you, the developer can beat it, but only barely, and then dial it back a notch". But even this is just scratching the surface of what really makes the fight tick. At their core, battles in RPGs are nothing more than a balancing act of priorities. At their most simplistic, those priorities are defense and offense. Will my character be able to survive another hit? If not, then heal, else attack. A third priority often comes into play in the form of a limited resource, most commonly MP for magical abilities, that might force you to think one more turn ahead. You can see right away that this isn't particularly deep, especially when that third priority isn't stressed hard enough either because MP is so plentiful or consumable items are so abundant to the point of never being an issue (extra demerits if said items are just as good as or better than any character-specific abilities that they imitate). Sadly, many RPGs are comprised of battles which are barely if at all evolved beyond the point of "hit the bad guy until it dies" - unsurprisingly, such games tend to be regarded by their fans for their stories rather than for their gameplay. I've stated in the past that status effects are the "X-Factor" separating an interesting battle system from a pure numbers game, and this is where we dive head-first into that concept at work. By expanding the above list of priorities to include both positive and negative effects on the player character as well as the opponent, suddenly there's a lot more to juggle. Indeed, Atma Weapon is a battle where negative statuses are applied liberally to the player while positive ones are periodically stripped by force. Atma himself gains status buffs halfway through the fight that the player can opt to remove. However, this is immediately followed up by a particularly devastating attack that will require action to recover from, thus effectively dividing the player's attention. Initially, these buffs were a one-time application which would simply reward any player who thought to remove them; the only significant change that Atma has seen in the last six years was my realization that a "set and forget" approach to this particular element meant that it didn't end up factoring into the player's list of priorities. In order for those buffs to be part of the great balancing act, they had to be a persistent factor throughout the fight, and thus a new core mechanic of the battle is preemptively dispelling those buffs at set intervals. The final ingredient in what makes the battle with Atma Weapon particularly rough is his inherent ability to regenerate health. That it makes the battle more challenging is obvious, but it's again important to note why. Looking at the player's list of priorities, we see now quite a few things: offense, healing, resource management, buffs and debuffs... but this can all still be simplified to "get on your feet and then attack", meaning that the player can adopt a heavily defensive approach to greatly minimize the risk of defeat. With the enemy afforded the capability to heal, however, offense can no longer be completely de-prioritized and becomes woven into the fight's balancing act in a way that it otherwise wouldn't. Other fights in Brave New World take different approaches to this problem, most notably Phunbaba's "rage timer" that earns the player a face full of Blow Fish if they go for too long without attacking, regardless of how powerful that attack is. So, where does good boss design have to go from here? We must look past offense simply existing as a single priority and break it down into several of them, else offense is a simple matter of "hit the bad guy with the strongest attack you have" since there's generally no benefit in not using the strongest attack available. This is a concept that the original game attempted to explore with "wallchange" bosses which would periodically shift their elemental weaknesses at random while gaining immunity to every other element. Unfortunately, it didn't quite pan out as they'd hoped since players found it preferable to simply ignore the gimmick by spamming non-elemental attacks. Even when Brave New World took this concept one step further by preventing non-elemental damage and thus forcing the mechanic on the MagiMaster boss, the result was more of a gear check than an interesting or challenging fight. So clearly, there was a flaw to this approach. Enter Kaiser, king of the dragons and famous dummied-out boss from the original game who finally got his global debut as one of many questionable additions to the GBA re-re-release of Final Fantasy VI. He also appears in Brave New World as a third "wallchange" boss who somehow ended up even less interesting than the two who preceded him. Of all the boss fights to get a complete rewrite in 2.0, none were as significant or as needed as Kaiser's, which basically takes the "wallchange" gimmick and makes it proactive instead of reactive. The elemental premise still exists here, but rather than waiting in boredom for a weakness to present itself the player must instead actively cycle through their available attacks in order to prevent Kaiser from unleashing its real ultimate power. It's an extremely hectic fight that, moreso than any other in Brave New World, tests the player's ability to balance multiple priorities if they are to have any hope of pulling through. And for the closest thing that Brave New World has to an optional superboss, I would accept no less.