Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

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Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby R-90-2 » Sat Oct 12, '19, 5:57 pm

So, just a few days ago, Fauntleroy released another General Improvement romhack, this time for Phantasy Star IV- while other hacks were meant to make the gameplay of earlier games less clunky, he still felt that there was some room for improvement even in the more modern-playing PSIV. Seeing as it's the Phantasy Star game I play the most, I'm pretty much obligated to have a look-see.

Beginning through Zio Fort

-Names are now consistent with the rest of the series: Dr. Lubetz is now properly Dr. Luveno, Palma instead of Parma, etc.

-Fauntleroy has once again taken a hammer and wrench to the script. Whiel the modifications aren't as enormous as for Phantasy Star III, it's mainly about adding some connective tissue and adjusting phrasing to make things less clunky and awkward. For example, the flashback in the principal's office is now eased into. Also, Zio is referred to as "that fanatic" rather than "that false magician."

-Alys also offers to introduce the Principal to the next five most dangerous things in the world if he doesn't spill the beans.

-The books in the Academy now have their own unique titles and descriptions, rather than all being "Some horrid math book."

-Shop prices for weapons and armor have been slightly reduced.

-TP costs have been adjusted for some techs, plus Alys starts with regular NER instead of SANER- apparently NER existed in the game data, it just wasn't implemented.

-The children's books in Saya's schoolhouse no longer reference other Sega games, they're now all references to PSI and PSII with such titles as:

"The Village of Fibbers"
"The Hero Ango and his Angry Sword"
"More Tales of the Man in Blue"
"The Life of Queen Alis"

And a bunch more besides.

-The requirements for combination attacks have been loosened- Flaeli can now be used in Triblaster.

-Alys isn't quite as forgiving about Grandfather Dorin blabbing her vital statistics to any passer-by.

-Rune's warning to Chaz about taking on Zio is now extended to Alys, plus he promises they'll talk more about the Zio problem once he gets back from his trip.

-Hahn can now use heavy shields (Titanium, Ceramic, etc.) so he's not as fragile as he was in the original.

-"Graphite" equipment has now been renamed to the Fiber- equipment from PSII.

-Seed's dialogue is somewhat expanded concerning the state of Motavia's problems as well as Rika's nature. A couple of the details added are things like "...The systems are currently operating at the bare minimum required to sustain the creatures that were introduced from other worlds." And "...If this continues, even creatures native to Motavia will have difficulty surviving." and "...Rika is a hybrid perfectly adapted to Motavia, and this may be the key to the future of the Palmans as well."

-The tech and skill learning order has been significantly restructured. Saner is only learned at Lv. 9 or 10, Chaz learns Tsu a bit later, and Rika learns Sar way earlier, presumably to that the player can actually do something if Juza decides to be 200% mad and uses ForceFlash every turn.

-Chest rewards have been redone. not only is there generally more equipment in chests, but there's also now two Laser Slashers available- One in Seed's lab in addition to the one in Kadary.

-Zio's new dialogue gives a little more insight into why he's so far gone- When Alys tries to explain to him that if this continues, he'll die too, his response is: "I too, am a worm- Who am I to question the will of an almighty god?"
Do not say: How is it that former times were better than these? For it is not out of wisdom that you ask about this. Ecclesiastes 7:10
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Re: Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby R-90-2 » Sun Oct 13, '19, 12:22 am

Plate System through Kuran + Optional Dezo areas

-Because Sar comes much earlier in Rika's Tech progression, Deban comes later than usual.

-Demi has been buffed. Not only is Little Beep Boop just generally a bit stronger, she has also been given Flare.

-Demi also explains how the Plate System is normally supposed to work- it doesn't actually stop Tectonic motion, it just regulates it so that it doesn't cause massive earthquakes. When it's working right, of course.

-Rika doesn't call Gryz a coward, she's just excited to see someone react to earthquakes like that for the first time.

-In this version of the script, Rune says his original plan was to meet up with you after he got the Psycho-Wand, but things have gotten out of hand, it seems.

-Rune's second to last line after Alys's death is changed from "Is fighting technique all you learned?" to "I know Alys would have taught you more than combat skills."

-There's a new weapon for Gryz, the Plasma Axe, inside Nurvus to make sure he doesn't fall behind.

-Wren first refers himself as a Wren-series Android before allowing the party to refer to him as Wren.

-In the new script, Zelan was originally the relay station that received instructions from Mother Brain and transmitted them to the various systems under her control throughout the three planets of Algo.

-"We seem to have crushed someone's house or business." Also in the new script, they take Raja on as a party member because if they don't he might raise a fuss with the locals which could lead to unfortunate delays.

-One of the bookshelves in Tyler now contains a book called "Skure: The Legacy of Colonial strip-mining."

-After Dark Force is defeated, Rune now tells Chaz that there will be a time that he'll talk about how he's seen Dark Force before, but Chaz will have to be patient until then.

-One of the Musk Cats explains that they were originally brought by colonists from Palma.

-Skill uses increase more slowly, and they max out at 10 per skill.

-Rever has had its TP cost significantly increased.
Do not say: How is it that former times were better than these? For it is not out of wisdom that you ask about this. Ecclesiastes 7:10
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Re: Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby myau56 » Sun Oct 13, '19, 12:06 pm

Ah ! Thank you so much for this information ! As I haven't noticed this launch by Fauntleroy ! After the third one, what a great news !!!!
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Re: Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby R-90-2 » Sun Oct 13, '19, 9:32 pm

Air Castle through Soldier's Temple (+ Hunter Missions)

-The new script makes it a bit more clear that Chaz doesn't believe Raja's sickness at first because the guy has been a merry jokester for the whole rest of the time he's in your party.

-Kyra comes with two slashers instead of a slasher and a shield this time. She also starts with GiGra as her highest technique, so she has more oomph out of the gate.

-In the new script, Rune explains that becoming the vessel of Lutz doesn't obliterate the original personality.

-Also added in the scene where Rune/Lutz lays it out- he explicitly calls out Alis and Rolf as Chaz's predecessors in the ancient struggle.

-There are more tools available for Kyra- the Air Castle now has a Fire Slasher for Kyra to use. Kyra on the whole has more utility in this version of the game.

-Lassic is quite fixated on Lutz in the new script- when Chaz tries to interject in the pre-fight talk, Lassic is like "Quiet, peasant!"

-In the new script, Lassic's second defeat gives him a moment of clarity- at the end, he begs Lutz to destroy Dark Force and release him from his eternal slavery.

-The technique and skill growth had been fiddled with so that characters have all of their skills and techs by Level 35- further levels only grant more skill uses as well as the other level up benefits. The end result of squishing the progression like this is that it actually encourages the player to play a bit more dangerously, taking on certain bosses earlier than normal.

-The hunter missions have some new titles, but are still basically the same.

-The Perolymate has been moved to the inconvenient bakery, though. Also, Bayamare gift shop is now appropriately called Baya Malay.

-Termi has a bit more in the dialogue, such as the person who says that they say that Alis was so beautiful that no sculptor to do her justice adds: "...But that sounds like a load of tourist hokum." A townsperson also says that the Alis-shrine was set up by the man in blue, but given that there are some strong signs in the original game that Lutz misses Alis the most of all, this isn't out of nowhere.

-One of the additions to the script is that on Motavia, Alis is still remembered because of the hero's hill in Termi, but Lutz has become this very distant, mythic figure just called The Man in Blue, and you can find books and mentions of that throughout the game.

-Rika still isn't impressed by the gifts from the gift shop if you set them up in your house, but for separate reasons this time.

-The new script expands on why a weapon like the Posibolt would even exist. In the new edit, it was developed in case Dezolis got uppity back when the Palmans were strip-mining the planet back in PSII.

-Monster immunities and resistances have been corrected- the Slave/Servant-type robots are now vulnerable to Spark/Tandle, like all other robots.

-The new script expounds further on why Wren was set up on Zelan in the first place- in the edit, Wren explains it was believed that it was possible to restore the planetary network without Mother Brain as a controller, but that didn't work out in the end, obviously, so all it was possible to do was manage the limited environmental controls they still had access to.

-Seth is Seth is Dark Force, though in the new script Chaz is about as tired of him popping up again as anyone.
Last edited by R-90-2 on Sun Oct 13, '19, 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Do not say: How is it that former times were better than these? For it is not out of wisdom that you ask about this. Ecclesiastes 7:10
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Re: Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby R-90-2 » Mon Oct 14, '19, 6:59 pm

Rykros through End.

-Chaz still has the same misgivings about the mission, but also articulates them better. I mean, what kind of force of Light just hands down missions and leaves?

-Chaz also recognizes what he's seeing inside Elsydeon rather than being merely utterly dumbstruck at what's going on.

-Also, the Elsydeon scene has been extended, but I don't think this was especially necessary.

-The conversation with Re-Faze is actually significantly longer in this version and adds a little something that I want to say but am going to put in spoiler space.

There is also a message for you from someone from beyond.
Who it is, I cannot say, but...
'Your swing is finally fast enough'
Perhaps this has some meaning to you.


-Some of the less desirable party members for the final dungeon have gotten a bit of a boost, under the guise of the idea that other characters would be looking for legendary weapons of their own. Demi has her own Photoneraser, Kyra has two Moonslashers, and Gryz now has a more powerful weapon, the Odin-Axe, which is basically a renamed version of the drop-only Defeat-Axe from the vanilla game.

-I don't know how Fauntleroy managed to do it since the dialogue in the ending runs on fixed timing, but he actually managed to extend the conversation inside the Landale after it takes off- this means that Demi actually gets more lines in the ending, which I approve of.

-And also, Rune/Lutz has a few different things to say this time during the end.

General thoughts

While I rarely need an excuse to replay Phantasy Star IV, a Fauntleroy hack was just the thing to get me right into doing the thing. That said, this isn't really a "must have" in the same way as his Phantasy Star III Improvement hack, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that the gameplay of Phantasy Star IV isn't really something that needed to be updated, unlike its aggressively clunky predecessors, so you don't gain as much by rearranging the proverbial furniture.

The second is the fact that there are some diminishing returns to taking the toolbox to a script like PSIV's over a script like PSIII's. In Phantasy Star III, the script was terribly sparse, so there was plenty of room to try to expand and improve on anything and everything without rocking the boat too much. PSIV had a much longer and more developed script, so there's a lot less room to maneuver when it comes to adding your own touch. While the English script modifications in PSIII are pretty much all improvements on the source, the record in this hack is somewhat more spotty.

Even though Fauntleroy claims not to have changed anything about the characters' characterization, the script changes do this in ways they may not have intended. The difference between Rune's "Rune voice" and his "Lutz voice" is even more stark, for one.

So, it's worth a look, but it isn't really the same kind of huge gameplay (PSII) or script (PSIII) overhaul that they've done before.
Do not say: How is it that former times were better than these? For it is not out of wisdom that you ask about this. Ecclesiastes 7:10
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Re: Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby augmentedfourth » Sun Oct 20, '19, 4:01 am

Little Beep Boop

:D :D :D

I'm with you in that I wouldn't have selected PSIV as needing a script overhaul, but some of the tweaks do sound interesting. If nothing else, I do appreciate the changes back to the original names, like Palma and Baya Malay. ("Parma" always made me think of cheese. :p ) I also don't think I'd mind anything creating a stronger tie between Rune and Lutz, but I can see this winding up like fanfic - since the characters were so fleshed out and well defined in the original, any changes that don't align with the player's personal vision of how they are may not go over well.

As far as gameplay goes, the extra items seem pretty cool. For levels and stats and stuff, thinking about it too much makes me go a little cross-eyed, so I'd better leave that alone....
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Re: Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby Scootaloo » Sat Feb 8, '20, 6:40 pm

I haven’t tried this hack yet, but I hope to soon. It sounds really cool and innovative, and I’ve noticed a trend of script rewrite hacks in the Phantasy Star series.

As a side note, Ner doesn’t exist in the games original code. He took Feeve, made some modifications to it, and it basically became a single target Saner.
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Re: Phantasy Star IV General Improvement hack

Postby myau56 » Sat Jul 18, '20, 12:45 pm

I started to play it a while ago now but still haven't advanced very much ! Maybe one time when I'll have more time on my hands...:(
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