[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.
Post Reply
Dyne
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Jun 06, 2020 12:47 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by Dyne »

Ok, after watching those videos I realize this mod just isnt for me. Its way too hard lol.
I love the balance fixes and I always wanted Suikoden II to be a bit harder but holy crap. No wonder I keep dying to Worm over and over haha

Thats just personal preference though. Its still awesome this was made.
Limlight
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2018 3:13 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by Limlight »

any chance to give out the patch that takes away healing rune/items going first? i'm working on my own hack (rebalance of enemy stats) and that healing change would go a long way
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by psychedelist »

Change in two places
21 88 23 02 66 66 03 3C 40 11 05 00 23 10 45 00
->
00 00 00 00 66 66 03 3C 40 11 05 00 23 10 45 00
dune
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Sep 20, 2013 4:33 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by dune »

I just finished my first visit to Rockaxe and recruited Camus and Miklotov.

The boss battles so far always ended with at least 2 party members being KO, and the rest defeating the boss in a last all-out attack. Boss battles feel very rewarding! The bosses I had the most trouble with were the Star Dragon Sword, the Spider at Neclord's castle and the Pest Rat at Two River Sewers. Those three bosses were the least enjoyable for me. Especially the Pest Rat seems to have an unfair advantage with his attacks that hit all people; meaning your spellcasters will die very fast, thus making it almost impossible to win the fight. I actually cheesed those fights by saving in between turns - the RNG for my party dying was too prevalent. In hindsight maybe my equipment wasn't optimal - can't really remember.

It seems that after Two River the difficulty is more 'fair' - still very hard, but we have more customisation options item-wise, thus making it easier to make a good party. Rockaxe/Mt. Rakuteit were very enjoyable for me. Can't wait to go to Toran etc.!

Up until now it also seems that your hack makes physical attackers with high Tec much more preferable than the supposedly really heavy hitters with less Tec - they just miss too often, and when they do hit their damage is not that much higher. Right now I could balance this by equipping them with Thunder Amulets (+10% hit, I think) I bought at Highway Village, but this would mean I would need to sacrifice much needed Mag Def from the Guard Rings for the S fighters.

Currently my tactic consists of having 3 reliable S hitters (Shin is an absolute beast) with a Down rune + lots of Guard Rings and 2 L magic users with an Earth weapon rune (that physical protection is needed for boss fights, otherwise they often die in 1 round). By having 3 Down runes you at least almost guaranteed to disable out 1 of your enemies per turn, which is a big help. I also cheesed myself through the Wack-A-Mole game with low framerate in order to get the Mole Armor - this one is also very needed in early since it makes one of your weaker L magic users un-targetable. Same goes for the Blue Ribbon. I'm thinking about experimenting with Sleep rune as well, instead of the Down rune. Also, the Darkness rune is a must use. It gives about a 50% chance to kill an enemy instantly; without the Darkness rune the game would be nearly impossible.

Luc to me seemed so extremely weak up to this point in the game. He is unusable; he just dies too fast. In late-game he probably becomes more useable again when you can beef his Prot with better equipment.

I also find that it is quite hard to switch party members (at least in the early game) - once you have 'invested' in a party member switching them to try someone different can only be countered by grinding. It seems that fast lvl ups happen until one is about 5-6 lvls below Riou's lvl, but those lvl's are often the difference between life and death for mob and boss fights. I guess this lvl. difference won't matter so much in the endgame.

Here are some notes:

- Stallion mentions the fall of Greenhill before Greenhill has actually fallen.
- When registering in Greenhill Flik says 'You say you were delayed by the war?' but that should be Emilia.
- A lot of Greenhill NPC's talk about 'refugees still trickling in' when it has already fallen. I know correcting this is not the aim of your hack, but thought I'd share anyway.
- The Monwer enemy in Greenhill-Matilda path is always set to 'Let go'.
- The Do-Re-Mi elves have a 100% chance to be hit by instant death Darkness spells (I don't mind, and maybe it's intentional). Zombie Slugs seem to be immune to instant death - could also be intentional.
- The Rare Finds Old Book could be updated with your list. It still has the old rare Finds listed.
- Lebrante should be able to be recruited earlier.

The descriptions for Runes could be more accurate:
- Earth lvl1 and lvl 2 says 'allies' but should be 'ally'
- Titan: should add 'but attack last"
- Protect Mist: maybe add repel % chance?
- Falcon: Doesn't seem to have a weakness? Is it still -10% hit per use? I don't think it says that.

The one thing that would make playing your difficulty hack more manageable is an increase in storage space (currently 6 pages) or carry-able items (currently 3 pages), but I figure this would be very hard to achieve.

Also a technical question: recruiting Gantetsu takes > 1000 Strength. Is this number determined before or after equipment and runes? I tried recruiting him with multiple Warrior runes and Belts of Strength equipped, but he still owns the pushing contest. My strength was around 11000. Might also have to do with the fact that I'm in the middle of a mission (just before checking out Radat with Viktor after coming back from Rockaxe).
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by psychedelist »

dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 amThe boss battles so far always ended with at least 2 party members being KO, and the rest defeating the boss in a last all-out attack. Boss battles feel very rewarding! The bosses I had the most trouble with were the Star Dragon Sword, the Spider at Neclord's castle and the Pest Rat at Two River Sewers. Those three bosses were the least enjoyable for me. Especially the Pest Rat seems to have an unfair advantage with his attacks that hit all people; meaning your spellcasters will die very fast, thus making it almost impossible to win the fight. I actually cheesed those fights by saving in between turns - the RNG for my party dying was too prevalent. In hindsight maybe my equipment wasn't optimal - can't really remember.

It seems that after Two River the difficulty is more 'fair' - still very hard, but we have more customisation options item-wise, thus making it easier to make a good party. Rockaxe/Mt. Rakuteit were very enjoyable for me. Can't wait to go to Toran etc.!
It's important to prepare optimally, otherwise it's gonna be harder than intended. And by optimally, i mean separate setups for getting treasures from a dungeon, and for the boss. As you mentioned, Darkness is very good but it's also useless on bosses. Mt Rakutei is a bit easier because going all way back to the castle would be a big pain.
dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 amUp until now it also seems that your hack makes physical attackers with high Tec much more preferable than the supposedly really heavy hitters with less Tec - they just miss too often, and when they do hit their damage is not that much higher. Right now I could balance this by equipping them with Thunder Amulets (+10% hit, I think) I bought at Highway Village, but this would mean I would need to sacrifice much needed Mag Def from the Guard Rings for the S fighters.
There are several things to note when it comes to reliable hitting. Only human and human-like enemies tend to have higher tech, the rest usually don't. More than one Thunder Amulet doesn't add extra Hit, but later you'll have Skill Rings (already should have at least one) which raise tech directly and therefore are stack-able. Boost status has been reworked to give a massive increase in tech and speed. And the most broken thing, unites don't miss, so Bolgan and Viktor can get around their weakness with this easily.
dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 am- The Monwer enemy in Greenhill-Matilda path is always set to 'Let go'.
They don't have an attack animation, so it's like giving you the option to walk away w/o harming defenseless plants.
dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 am- The Do-Re-Mi elves have a 100% chance to be hit by instant death Darkness spells (I don't mind, and maybe it's intentional). Zombie Slugs seem to be immune to instant death - could also be intentional.
The instant death effect has been reworked like following - 100% chance on small enemies, 50% on most, 25% on bigger ones, 0% for the few huge ones, all bosses and the undead/zombie kind.
dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 am- The Rare Finds Old Book could be updated with your list. It still has the old rare Finds listed.
If you mean South Window's Item shop rare finds Old Book, i don't think i changed anything with it compared to original, not sure what you mean.
dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 am- Falcon: Doesn't seem to have a weakness? Is it still -10% hit per use? I don't think it says that.
Konami did something funny with Falcon and Shrike. Maybe they did mean the runes to have a hit penalty, but they ended up implementing it as Hit x 1.8 (Falcon) and 1.9 (Shrike), so nearly doubling it, which made it always 99% chance to hit in practice. I removed the hit modification altogether.
dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 amThe one thing that would make playing your difficulty hack more manageable is an increase in storage space (currently 6 pages) or carry-able items (currently 3 pages), but I figure this would be very hard to achieve.
Expanding storage space would be too difficult to achieve for me, same for the party bag. Party's 3 pages are fine because in the end when you get powerful scrolls and food, the limited slots will become your party's combat capacity; if you could fill it with nearly infinite amount of Kindness Rain and such, you'd be unbeatable in boss fights.
dune wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:38 am-Also a technical question: recruiting Gantetsu takes > 1000 Strength. Is this number determined before or after equipment and runes? I tried recruiting him with multiple Warrior runes and Belts of Strength equipped, but he still owns the pushing contest. My strength was around 11000. Might also have to do with the fact that I'm in the middle of a mission (just before checking out Radat with Viktor after coming back from Rockaxe).
Adjustments don't count for it, only the base str.
Lyrinix
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jul 06, 2019 5:28 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by Lyrinix »

Having great fun w/ the mod, thanks to psychedelist for the time & effort that went into it. It's a shame the game and mod doesn't get more recognition!

Noticed a tad of a difficulty spike since the highland camp infiltration, and I'm now feeling I need to grind at South Window - I feel forced to use magic each encounter to come out ahead, and after 7-8 random encounters I'm barely scraping through with my party (Riou-Nanami-Victor-Freed-Ellie). Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if it is meant to be this hard.

EDIT: I think the balance around South Window feels off. The squirrels/rabbits each hit my characters for 80 - 100 dmg, have 500+ hp and generally move faster (i.e. vs. my units they hit harder, have more hp, move earlier and there are unlimited quantities of them). I'm barely getting any exp each fight (everyone is ~30), and short of magic or items (e.g. healing, dmg etc.) to make up for the difference (which imposes limitations on how many mobs you can get through before a boss), there's no way to reliably beat them. I like difficulty (have played Dark Souls, S/TRPGs like XCOM: LW and XCOM 2, Battle Brothers etc.), but this feels a little... unfair. Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT 2: Realized this was intentional to keep the mobs "relevant" since we'll be in this area for some time. The downside then is that (1) these overworld fights are unrewarding in EXP/items for their difficulty, and (2) this encourages players (like me) to try and avoid spending time in the overworld while scurrying to places with better difficulty-exp/item dynamics, which seems kinda perverse and unintuitive (let me escape the overworld by getting into a dungeon with weaker enemies!).
Dakkon
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:57 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by Dakkon »

I love mods like this, most rpgs are far too easy for my liking. I'm similarly up so the highland camp infiltration and it seems challenging but in good way so far. I barely scrapped past the double head boss which was super fun needing to make good use of the magic and items that I had on hand.

Lyrinix I'm using magic drain on Jowy to help with needing for offensive magic the bigger groups.

I've come across 1 tiny bug so far. In Muse city the pointed hat which from your docs is suppose to be a rare find shows up as a regular item for sale as well as a rare find.
RCLemon
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Aug 04, 2020 9:29 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by RCLemon »

I created an account just to comment here lol.

Anyway, first of all, this mod is great! Gives a lot of new changes and is harder which I like!
I really appreciate the character changes (except for Riou), which makes some characters actually playable!
I always liked Gengen and Millie but they were so mediocre in the OG that they weren't worth it, but now? Oh boy, are they useful!

I prefer this mod over the hardcore one, which went a little overboard imho. This feels more...well, balanced lol.

Anyway, somr thigs rhat I'd like to say.
1) Riou...the nerf REALLY made him a lot worse. He can't heal that well jow since enemies deal a lot more damage and his magic takes forever to reach 100, thus unlocking his 4th slot and more importantly, his 2nd lv3 mp charge, for healing mostly. Otherwise, he's alright? His speed jot being better than the bosses helps in some situations but his 70hp heal needs some buff to keep Riou useful until he unlocks the better heal, because bosses just deal much more damage than he can heal.
2)bosses! I love them so far, although I think that removing 10-15% of their HP could make the battle go a lot quicker.
I am currently stuck on he Worm fight. He hits waaay tok hard (his jump attack kills all the backliners in one hit for instance) and units thatcan tankt hose hits are mostly physical but the boss resists physical attacks something fierce!
Also, when I checked the Worm boss's HP...Yikes. that's a HUGE jump from the last boss! Is he really supposed to have 17,000 HP? Or is this for yhe second fight (before turning into the moth)?
3)Luc is bad this time around. Him having a locked wind rune hurts him badly since he can't upgrade to Cyclone or change it (Gale is fine though), but his stats are fine, I like him as a glass cannon-type character!
4)Hix is...not that good. When he joined, he only had 4 more strength than tengaar(76 to 72). He does have the exertion rune, but I dunno...i suppose he will always be mediocre lol.
5) I am actually using trade for once,yay! It's a good way to make sure that I don't have to treck aaaall the way back to Gregminster to recruit the trader dude.
6)The changes to loot, runes and characters make party-creation so much more fun and difficult, I love it! Good job on this!
7) thank you for providing this mod! It has been a lot of fun (and pain lol)! This is a really good challenge for people who want to breathe some much needed changes into the game!

I know this is a big rant, so I apologize for that!
With all of that said, have a nice day/evening/night!
dune
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Sep 20, 2013 4:33 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by dune »

Hi,

Still trying to finish this mod after all these weeks :D I'm stuck on Luca Blight and I just cannot beat him. Anyone have any recommendations for a viable strategy? The guy just hits way too hard.
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by psychedelist »

Also, when I checked the Worm boss's HP...Yikes. that's a HUGE jump from the last boss! Is he really supposed to have 17,000 HP? Or is this for yhe second fight (before turning into the moth)?
Unlike previous bosses, he attacks only once per turn, and one of those attacks is a column attack (always targets center column, so it's easy to build around it).
Still trying to finish this mod after all these weeks :D I'm stuck on Luca Blight and I just cannot beat him. Anyone have any recommendations for a viable strategy? The guy just hits way too hard.
First two groups need to be all glass cannons with sacrificial jizos. Third group needs to take advantage of his attack patterns. His row attack only hits front row and column attack only hits central column, so back left and back right characters can disregard defense. All others need to have fire emblem, scale mail or Fire Sealing, and need to be Clay Guardian'ed. Hero, being a support and healer character, needs Gale to have a high chance to act before Luca. One of the front row characters can be a tank, other two in front row can have anti-target (Skunk, Blue Ribbon, Mole Suit), then use Revenge Earth on the tank one, using Defend action also helps. By far the best character for this tank role is Feather in center column - by taking up two slots, he will mitigate half of the damage that is normally done by the column attack. Since it's a long fight, consider a secondary healer besides Hero. For offense I'd go with physical for more durability rather than magic - unites, or if have to use normal attacks (Feather), use Boost food to counter Luca's high Tech. Boost can be cleared with foods that clear positive statuses, to avoid hurting yourself when you've done a lot of damage during a Boost duration.
The Utility Man
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 11:24 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by The Utility Man »

Sorry if this has been asked, but I skimmed over the topic and didn't see it, but are you still working on this mod or do you consider it finished? I've been waiting for this mod to be finished before trying it.

Thank you!
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by psychedelist »

I have a few ideas that i'd like to see done in future, but i don't know when i'll do them so you could say it's finished for now. In future i'd like to see these happen:
- Making anti-target randomly fail
- Randomizing enemy column attack targeting
- Readjusting all bosses to account for the previous two changes, they'd generally need to be easier
andreguidelli
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2020 3:34 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by andreguidelli »

I consider myself a fan and "normal" player. I've beaten the game dozen of times and I'm currently testing this mod.
This is trully a masterpiece. It's so painfull to advance in the game, you just haven't a rest place when facing enemies.
But for a "hard" mod, it's way too hard :twisted: . I'm no kidding, because in my point of view, A hard mod would give the reward of winning battles just for the player knowledge about the original game mechanics, making a good party and knowing enemy loots, treasures locations, etc. Most of the nerfing you did would be necessary to get rid of the obvious strategies and magic-only teams. But... since almost EVERY known easy scape was removed and the enemies are overwhelming at any point, to advance in this mod it was 100% necessary to me to read a lot of big documents/spreadsheets with the changes and dive into ALL game mechanics to find a way out.. Still relying a lot on luck to not die at some points. The rebalance here is in a "enought to barely die" way :twisted: .
But don't take me wrong, I don't suggest you to change things, I like the way it is, that's not my point. :D

I saw your replies on the posts here and I see your intention is to make the players to use the mechanics of the game at it's full power, in a game where everything is important and have it's relevance, and this is the most beautiful thing about this rebalance, I learned so much about the game and I have no regrets. But to achieve this you needed to make this game extrememaly hard. So my suggestion is to change [again] the title properly to this intention.

Maybe "Extreme mod", or "Ultimate Challenge Mod" would suit best. :mrgreen:
psychedelist
Posts: 68
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:45 pm

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by psychedelist »

I'm glad you enjoy all in all, despite the difficulty. Sorry if it's a bit too much in some places. Naturally, the process of making the mod made me very familiar with the mechanics, but i still wanted to keep it challenging for myself. But i still don't think it's the "ultimate" kind of difficulty. If having problems at any given moment, you just need to find a setup that works. Also, i uploaded my enemy editor somewhere in the beginning of this thread, so if anyone wanted to make a "community edition" by dumbing all the enemy stats down a bit and upload it, i don't mind.
Rizen
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:50 am

Re: Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

Post by Rizen »

anyone else complete this yet? trying to encourage more to stream it. ill be doing my second run next year sometime.
Post Reply