GuestLog in

Hack adds a bunch of great conveniences but invalidates a lot of mechanics through trivializing Zodiac compatibility effects which have extreme nerfs to basic things like phoenix downs. (Ironically he 'fixed' this by giving it a flat 20, but that doesn't always apply with the Zodiac compatibility nerf so I see 8's 80% of the time rather than the supposed '20') This also nerfs a crap ton of balance in nearly every fight making females less effective against certain male enemies and likewise, all under the guise of bringing less tedium to the player; tldr it adds tedium and removes 'tactics' by homogenizing so much. (I really don't think Tzepish realized so much of the base game is genuinely balanced around those zodiac %'s with healing and everything else taking effect with the nerf. It's like a house of cards and he changed the numbers. It doesn't feel tactical anymore and it doesn't feel like having different units feels meaningful, it feels like everyone hits the same against every enemy and gets hit the same, which is in no way realistic to real life...at all..which was kind of the whole friggin' point of the biological- astrological connections to each character, they were trying to make it realistic. That gave it true identity but also made the game a nightmare to those who don't care to understand it)

Same thing with crits, gone are the coup de graces and the whiffs, which means your getting constantly critted much more than the base game because he buffed it the rate it happens, after 50 hours I found my own crits to be about on par with the base game. I definitely noticed I was getting crit a LOT by enemies.

Reactionary abilities invalidated because many enemies choose better abilites; gone are the times that you could count on a counter tackle because now that monster WILL ALWAYS use a named ability instead of not always choosing correctly. Again; it takes away the dynamic gameplay and save scumming proves that the AI is no longer even thinking and it just auto-locks into that movement - placement - attack pattern. (Obviously it's choosing the best abilities, but still, no longer thinking, just hulk smash)

I'm sure there's more but at this point it just didn't feel worth it to continue.

FFTactics on PSP is a mixed bag, I like many of the additions but I was not very happy with some of the changes so I was considering a playthrough of the PSX version with the Lions War patch which adds a bunch of the PSP additions but is far from complete due to some PSX limitations.

That is until I heard of this patch which appears to have pretty much everything I needed, from re-adding the spellcasting quotes to granting access to multiplayer items, plus a bunch of QOL improvements.

Just want to point out that the "gender equality" change should have been optional since it removes variety from the gameplay but this is a small price to pay.

Huge thanks to Tzepish for this great stuff.

I cannot begin to count the money you (and the other modders in the community that helped this mod in various ways) have saved me by not only making this well and updating it but improving the game in almost every single way I would personally want to do so myself. However, I lack the skill and patience, so again, I thank you.

Primarily, the balance changes, optional features, and the ability to rename human units most of all are what I love about this specific mod. I love mods of great games that keep the integrity of the original in tact while simply improving upon what could have been improved. Again, you saved me between $40 to $60 on a random, new, likely disappointing new game, and you did so right as I have been considering restarting my v2.01 save file simply because I have decided I wanted different "characters" (custom named generic units) again. I cannot thank you enough.

On the note of "near perfection", the only other thing I wanted all these years that no one has done properly thus far, in my opinion, is allow the player to access the Holy Knight and various other special unit classes and their abilities for generic units. I understand why even the War of the Lions didn't have that, though it gave us the Dark Knight, but for the sake and interest of putting the power and choice in players' hands, I was wondering if you would ever considering adding an optional feature like that. Maybe I'm the only one who desires it, but if you ever did add it, even just Agrias' Holy Knight class and abilities, I would be immeasurably happy.

In any case, thank you for your dedication. I wish Square Enix, previously Square when they developed this game's original version, would recognize modders/ hackers like yourself and reward them rather than excise them.

TL;DR—Use this entire hack if you're considering playing FFT!

FFT is a game I have played and finished many times before, and I honestly still don't understand the gushing so many people do over it. The writing is pretty bad, the game balance is pretty non-existent, and the good stuff in the game tends to be hijacked by bad game design decisions.

Enter: This Hack.

I played with both optional patches (Smart Encounters and De-Scaled 'random' battles) in addition to the main balance hack, and I have to say that 90% of the gameplay/balance/design problems of FFT are fixed as a result. Rebalancing class requirements makes it easier to access a wider variety of skills quicker, which makes it much easier to adjust builds as needed to deal with new encounters that can often be higher level than you. With a few exceptions, the only grinding I really ever did was JP grinding to open jobs - the removal of encounter scaling and a little creativity in skill setups makes this option very feasible. As a result, I played until a decent chunk into Chapter 4 (of 4) regularly ~5+ levels behind the main storyline mobs, which led to a lot of really enjoyable build creation and **actual use of tactics during combat**.

The usual difficulty spikes are still here too, and at these points I did do some level grinding, but these still never felt nerfed that much. Even the infamous Chapter 3 spike was conquerable at 1-2 levels less than the enemies (although still rough) - but now that you don't need to grind as much to make it past that point, Chapter 4 also feels much less like a pushover, which is a welcome change! So much so that I never felt guilty once about switching to all the "overpowered" unique characters your party gets flooded with in Chapter 4.

All in all, this hack made revisiting this game an unexpectedly enjoyable experience for me. The writing still sucks, but IMO this hack and its optional patches really bring out all the potential in the original gameplay/design.

If you play/replay FFT, you really need to use this!

I never played the PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics all the way through, but I am a gigantic fan of the original on PSX. So playing through this mod was quite a treat for me giving me a double dose of new experiences. I liked that I actually had to strategize and prepare more than usual and couldn't always go with my default gorilla strats stemming from the PSX version here, new balances and adjustments had me messing around and experimenting with different builds and characters, one of the most welcoming being Rafa who actually got time to shine (and not be a huge hindrance where she is a Guest).

Many of the quality of life adjustments make a lot of sense as do the new balance changes, making Knight Swords two hand only in particular because let's be honest, those weapons were straight busted in the original, especially combined with Ninja's Dual Wielding. The entire playthrough I was was unable to hit for damage cap at all. Monk Ramza with Bracer and a couple rounds of Scream? Nope. Even the almighty T.G Cid was unable to hit for beyond +500 after acquiring the best gear I could get for him. The closest I was able to get was through Beowulf, I'm sure if I pumped him up a bit more I'd be able to pull it off, course that means keeping him in the danger zone.

Deep Dungeon's changes were some of the most welcome with how it progressively became more difficult as enemies got stronger+tankier, with some particularly nasty combinations of gear and abilities, and of course, that final boss fight at the end that really tested my squads mettle. In the OG I'd just have Ramza teleport straight up there to him, Chaos Blade in hand and he'd go down quick, but here I actually had to slowly wage war up that mountain to avoid getting nuked and locked down.

The final battles going into the "Necrohol" (PSP localization is still new to me) were all quite rough for me as well, especially Cletienne who proved most challenging, compared to the original where he was a mere pushover. However the final boss, the Bloody Seraphim herself Ultima felt like I just scammed her time and time again - She would not let up on targeting Alma.

Once I managed to get Alma to cast Aegis on someone, and slowly start getting everybody else buffed, that was it for her. Going into the 2nd Phase, she just would not stop trying to Dispel those buffs from my squad, and by constantly recasting Aegis on everybody, I essentially had her in an infinite loop. She did not get a chance to attack even once. A pathetic way for the final boss of the game to go, but oh well, the name of the game is Final Fantasy TACTICS and my scumbag tactics won out in the end. Being able to control Guest characters really is the best. No Rafa trying to yolo Not-Sephiroth and his Escorts, and Alma actually getting to see GAMEPLAY, even doing DAMAGE. Amazing.

That said, it was a satisfying experience and I enjoyed it very much. Bit disappointed that I apparently missed out on a couple PSP-exclusive events, but maybe next time.

Two things about this hack caught my attention.

• Optional Feature: No random battle level scaling

This, alone, is worth the price of admission, to me.

At the start of the game, I spent so long grinding my characters up enough to unlock all the cool jobs, like Dark Knight and Mime. As I did, I noticed that the random battles were scaling to meet my level, making the grind even harder than it needed to be. On top of that, I noticed that when I actually started to play through the campaign, event / story characters were still waaay down low in levels and skill while the randos were, as mentioned, scaled up to my highest level. To me, this really threw the balance of the game off and made me far less interested in actually playing the game.

What they should have done, in my opinion, is have story characters also scale to the player's highest level. That way, there's no ridiculously unbalanced engagements where neither the enemy has, like, Level 4 characters on their team. Alternately, something to completely nullify XP gain would work equally as well. While I know there are ways to level down characters, it's really not an option in the early game, so...

The other thing that caught my attention was this:

• Gender equality - female and male characters have the same stats and equipment access

... why? If you're gonna go for "equality", make the Dancer job available to males and the Bard job available to females. If you're just looking to "balance stats", though, you may as well lock everyone's Faith and Bravery stats at 50, then. Why should a rando recruit get less healing just because they happen to not be as devout as the person next to them? And why should a coward get less critical hits that someone willing to jump in the middle of eight Bomb-class enemies? Plus, the game gives females higher Faith and males have higher Bravery, generally speaking. That doesn't seem very "gender equal", to me.

Go big or go home. Commit or forgeddaboudit! Be equal in all regards, or equal in none! That's how I see it.

–

There are a few other things about this hack that I would like to see made optional.

• The "JP Boost always in effect" and "Treasure Hunter always in effect" things make leveling the Squire and Chemist up high somewhat pointless.
• "Quicker spellcasting speeds" is a little iffy, to me – I happen to like the occasional flavor text or the over-the-top battle animations.
• (Edit: This is already implemented!) Speaking of, I'd love to see the spellcasting text re-implemented, if that's within Tzepish's power. Of course... that would require actually translating them, then changing them into Elizabethan dialect, but I'm sure the work's been done, already.
• Not sure Guest / story characters should be able to do errands, either, and I don't think Guest characters should be controllable right from the first battle.
• And, of course, anything that outright alters the difficulty / challenge of the game should probably be made optional.

Despite all of this, I say that this is an absolute must-have hack for people who want to make a good game even better! I highly recommend it for the "no level scaling" patch, alone!

12/23/22 Update:

Tzepish actually has re-implemented and redone the dialect of the spellcasting text. Thank you for pointing this out, Tzepish! My apologies!

Incredible hack. Added a lot of quality of life improvements and more fun to the game by reducing grind. Can't recommend this enough. I only wish this existed, somehow, for the PSX version!

This hack shows really well how many annoying design elements FFT has, no matter how good the core gameplay itself is.

I wouldn't probably recommend this if you wanted a pure experience, there are pretty many minor changes that add up to making the game feel somewhat different. However, a person wanting that wouldn't probably browse for hacks anyways, in which case I wholly endorse this one if you wanted to play a better iteration of FFT:WOTL in every way I can think of.

Massive praise for keeping Rapha gimmicky, but extremely fun and effective at the same time!

Great tweak, very beginner friendly. So glad that my first play through of the game is on a version that's so well fixed up!

I originally had some issues in this game, and Tzepish worked with me to determine that the root cause was a bad ISO dump. If you're having issues, make sure your vanilla ISO matches these hashes:

MD5: 18d1169cefed2d5ed77a599694f2f871

SHA1: 5120ff66f78cfd31f6e90d8ef4be8200eca563f7

CRC32: 0d6a3d9f

I'm not one for difficulty hacks. I don't want to be beaten up by a game anymore. Since a lot of 'balance' or 'challenge' hacks make a game harder to get through and, IMO, way less fun, I haven't waded too deeply into the world of FFT hacking.

Two tweaks make progression a little easier. The ability to control guest characters is huge. No more suicidal guests! And everyone has innate JP Boost from the beginning. This gives you the ability to experiment with more classes with minimal grinding.

There are a few changes to unlocking skills, but they're not huge, and they don't really affect how you'd play the game.

If WOTL is your preferred version for FFT, then this is a great patch for your next playthrough. I think this is what a "balance" hack should be; it focuses on lessening frustrations. Give it a shot!

I've played up through the 1st Chapter so far and I think the simple changes really have made a difference in how well I am enjoying the battles, especially story moving battles.

I can see where this patch would be a good starting place for further tweaking, perhaps for the purpose of making the game more challenging.