[Mods] Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

If you are stuck in the Dunan Unification Wars; or wish for more details on the gameplay systems, this is the place.
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psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

[Mods] Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by psychedelist »

I want to share the result of my 2 year work to improve the balance and difficulty of Suikoden II. Links and changes description are all here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-r6 ... 2aBFQWnk8/

As of right now, unfortunately, the mod is not working correctly with the default HLE BIOS of ePSXe because of a certain very flawed technique that was used to make some changes. You need to supply a proper BIOS file for the emulator. BizHawk emulator also works, but it requires a BIOS file by default anyway.

A lot of things wouldn't have been possible without Pyriel's help and many others who contributed various information on this site, many thanks to them.

Here are two documents (1 2) containing my documentation of the original game's mechanics and data, may be useful when playing both the original and the mod.

Also, here are two documents (1 2) that were my "work in progress" documents while making the mod, at times they look like a collection of subjective rants, justifications and ideas, but dropping them just in case anyone would be interested. In a way, they have the same changes described as in the main document, but with much more details and much less organized.

This thread could be used for ideas and opinions on the mod or the game's balance in general as well, regardless of if you gonna try the mod or no. It would be interesting to hear what things people wish could be changed in the game, balance and difficulty wise. Although I realize there are already several threads suited for that.
Last edited by psychedelist on Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:21 am, edited 4 times in total.
Mulcarn
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Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

Time to start playtesting. Looks like you took a comparable nerf-bat to most characters like I had tried. However the changes to everyone's Weapon Growth makes mine look tame in comparison.
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by psychedelist »

Most of the 0 and 1 slot characters were buffed actually. As for weapons damage, it's how the values relate to enemies' Prot that matters. If i kept weapons power high, enemies' stats would need to be raised similarly, but it would also mean that unupgraded characters are completely useless for damage, and it's not how i wanted it to be.
Limlight
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Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Limlight »

will def try this. i'm curious if you would share the program you made to edit monsters etc?
Mulcarn
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Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

First bug so far, game crashes/freezes upon using Fire Breath rune.
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by psychedelist »

Weird, works for me. A bunch of changes in the mod was made by placing custom code to the game's header, and then battle modules jumping into it. It was a very dangerous approach, but i tested it extensively and it never failed, so i went with it. Using a command rune is one of the things that jumps to the header, so it's definitely the source of the problem. Can i ask what emulator you're using? Could it happen by any chance that you made a save state in the main menu while using the original game with just the bugfix applied, then loaded the save state to start a new game while using the mod? If that was the case, you do need to load the game properly (without loading savestates made with any different version), but i guess it's unlikely. Or maybe loaded an arbitrary savestate, then did soft reset combination to the main menu.
will def try this. i'm curious if you would share the program you made to edit monsters etc?
Yeah, will link to it a bit later. Wonder if it needs another thread, probably not.

Edit: I went through the whole installation process now. Original game, bugfix patch (latest version), mod patch, BizHawk emulator, loaded the game (no savestates), got to the circus trio, used Fire Breath on 1st and 2nd+ turns, seems fine. I hope this is a savestate or emulator issue and we can get it to work. It would be really sad to have to get rid of all those header changes.

Edit2: Here's the editor, exe in the root folder, also source code. Character and weapon growths only work with the bugfixed game version.
Mulcarn
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

I'm using the android ePSXe emulator, it's stable and consistent and what I used when I was messing around with the code on my project.

Everything was done new. New iso, new bugfix patch, new save game and I restarted everything from scratch. So no save state loading.
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by psychedelist »

I tried PC version of ePSXe now, apparently it doesn't like code jumping to header, maybe it cuts it out as some kind of optimization. It's unfortunate that i took this flawed approach to put custom code to header, but there was no easy way around it, and it's too late to change it now. If there's high demand, i could make a version without this some time later, but it'll be missing several features: Mother Ocean buff, Magic Drain buff, 99% hit chance for some command runes, Rust status, Sleep for Sierra unite, possibly something else i'm forgetting right now.

I had a pretty bad experience with the original while playing it on PC ePSXe several years ago, it had some consistent crashes with some combinations of spells. But apparently it was either graphic plugin dependent, or was fixed in the new version. As for the current problem with the hack, may i suggest trying BizHawk on PC?

Edit: hold on, are you using a bios file for your emulator? It's crashing with the default HLE BIOS, but then i loaded a proper one and it worked, not crashing on command rune use. BizHawk has using a BIOS file as a requirement either way, that's the reason why it was working i guess.
Mulcarn
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Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

Yeah im using just a default bios, lemme find a new one and see if that works better.
Mulcarn
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

Gimme some time to get back with you on that. Updating Bios files wiped my saves.
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by psychedelist »

Hope it wasn't too much damage, and the game is working too. I've updated the patch with a small fix, i realized i'd forgotten to add Canopy Defense nerf to Harpy's magical attacks, so had to fix that.
Mulcarn
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

Fire Breath is working properly after updating Bios file. Just finished Mist Shade boss, will post thoughts and opinions as I progress more into the story.
Mulcarn
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

With the increase in both Prot and HP for all monsters across the board, I find the Weapon Growth changes in damage unneeded. Even some characters like Viktor, Pesmerga or Bolgan will be hard pressed to deal damage towards the middle-late game.
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by psychedelist »

On each of my 3 playthroughs to adjust balancing, i was slightly reducing HP and Prot of enemies every time, making it more forgiving, perhaps i'll continue in that direction next time as well. Which particular enemies do you think have too high Prot? I tried to give higher Prot to those enemies that appear to have armor, for example Highlands. But even against them, weak characters can use normal attacks for utility, such as Poison. Most enemies won't have Prot more than 110 even in end game. With ATK over 200, strong characters should be able to damage them.

Bosses tend to have high Prot solely to prevent the numbers getting blown out of proportion with Berserk+Violence(+Solitude), this is the reason why i decided to make Exertion inaccessible too. If they had less Prot, i'd have to buff HP further, but then going all-berserk would be by far more efficient than anything else. I really wish that Berserk and Violence acted as secondary multipliers like almost everything else in the game that improves attack power, but it's not something that could be changed easily. One thing that could be considered is making Berserk and Violence constant-based bonuses, then all enemies Prot may be toned down safely. But it'd be quite a radical change, and there'd be issue with them being too powerful in early game and not very powerful in end game (lack of scaling factor).

Weapon Growth changes were needed because i didn't want the characters to depend on them too much (if the values remained high, then Prot would have to go up as well, once again to prevent one-hit kills with Berserk+Violence). Another reason is to give ally animals a chance in late game. For physical damage, i think it's alright if they surpass even the strongest human characters, as the animals may struggle a lot in late game against magic in boss fights.
Mulcarn
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2020 11:34 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced

Post by Mulcarn »

With Double-Beat being removed from the game (at least as far as I can tell) and with the multipliers from Berserk and Violence being reduced by a fair margin, I don't think Weapon Growth (and possibly Strength Growth now that I consider it) needs to be at 1/4 of it's original value. Increasing Monster HP and PDEF along with those rune nerfs were probably all that was necessary. Because I'm having the same problem here that I was having with that Hardcore mod I tried over a month ago. Physical damage is just too negligible to even bother with. I found it not only easier but smarter to just run about 4-5 mages to AoE burn everything down and have maybe 1 frontline fighter hit stuff that is magic resistant.

Case in point, in order to beat Double Head I grinded out enough money to put Fire runes on my entire party and immolated him to death, with Riou healing after every attack. I had Rikimaru barely doing 70 damage to the thing with every sword swing.

Honestly monster balance had been okay up until about that point when I noticed my warriors were just tickling monsters to death. It was at that point I used your editor to crack open the game to take a look at the different monsters, characters and weapon growths. I noticed the problem was only going to get worse as enemies were only going to have more HP and PROT the later in game i'd go.
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