Download Final Fantasy Restored Sprite Touch-ups & Rebalancing ROM Hack

FF Restored by astralesper was a revelation. It took a very flawed but deeply loved game and almost totally fixed it without fundamentally changing the look and feel of the game like all the later remakes did. This addendum patch sets out to address two sets of design issues that Restored left outstanding: flawed sprite art particularly with animations, and major balance issues involving two of the six character options. See extensive details below.


Three separate patches are included. Choose only 1 of the 2 graphics patches.

Japanese Style Graphics Only maintains the style of the original Japanese battle sprites and weapons that are used by default in FF Restored. 

US Style Graphics Only reverts the battle graphics in Restored to the US versions. The most extensive changes are with Master and White Wizard. Additionally, four sword sprites are reverted to US versions. Although most other graphics from the Japanese version are left in place, it was decided to revert the crosses to the candles in Bahamut's lair as they are debatably more appropriate and visually pleasing in that area. Crosses still exist in Gurgu Volcano.  

Balance Only makes adjustments to the balance of the thief/ninja and the monk/master to make them better balanced against the other character options. 

**Please note: these should be patched on top of Final Fantasy restored. If using the excellent and highly recommended Dynamic Action Patch Re-Jiggered (Restored version) by Jiggers, apply this patch last.  


Version 1.03 02/28/2020
Updated Red Wizard sprite in all versions for the bottom of the left side of cape to be consistent with Red Mage sprite.
For balance patch, altered encounter rate of Death Machine to be the rarest encounter in 5th floor of Floating Castle. This restores the encounter rate to that of the original Famicom version along with subsequent English and Japanese versions of remakes. Credit to Disch for providing needed guidance.

Version 1.02 8/29/2019
Significant improvements to US version of white wizard animation. No more inconsistent lunge forward when attacking. 
Restored original US victory frame for ninja in US style patch.
Minor fixes to red mage and red wizard
Marilith face improvement. Now eyes are discernable.

Version 1.01: Initial release 8/28/2019



GRAPHICAL TOUCH-UPS PATCH DETAILS:

This started as a result of noticing several pixel flaws in the animation of the fighter. Continuing to play the game, the scope of the corrections expanded considerably from there. The problems noted below range from obvious errors to questionable design choices that are ultimately not consistent or pleasing to the eye when animated. It could be assumed that if the original designers were given more time to test the game and live with the animations, most if not all of these problems would have been eliminated. The impression is given by work done on the US version that there was an overall effort to improve the graphics but many obvious problems remained. The below corrections apply to both Japanese and US versions of the patch. US exclusive changes will be explained in the next section. FYI, it is the author's opinion that the US style sprites respresent the most polished presentation of game visually and the US Style patch is highly recommended.

Fighter: 
Amended incorrect and flickering pixels in hands and arms during walking and attack motion.
Fixed breastplace inconsistencies while standing and raising hands.
Removed seemingly incorrect pixel from left leg while walking. 

Thief:
Removed extra pixels added to left arm and shoulder when walking.
Removed extra pixel added to left shoulder When in victory pose.

Monk:
Corrected strange added left arm pixels during walking / attacking frames. 
Added armband on left arm during victory animation for consistency with all other frames.

Red Mage:
Restored missing hair pixels when hands raise.
Removed flicker pixel on cape when attacking.
Made cape length consistent between frames other than victory

Black Mage:
Corrections to hands while walking and attacking

Knight:
Removed extra white pixel that appears on left shoulder during attack animation.

Master:
Added missing hairband pixel during victory animation.
Fixed missing armband during victory animation frame.

Ninja:
Corrected enlarged head during attack frame. May have been intentional but creates an ugly flicker when animating.
Corrected flickering pixels on lower body while attacking.

Red Wizard:
Corrected flaw where cape goes missing in walking frame.
Left arm consistency fix.
Added missing black notch to cape under head in the attacking frame.
Made left side of cape consistent with Red Mage sprite 

White Wizard:
Corrected consistency issues with belt between frames.

NPCS:

Pirate:
Made sidways face border consistent with other NPC sprites. Edited forward face to not appear so unsightly.

MONSTERS:
Corrected left eye color of Marilith so it matches right eye. Per a survey, people struggle to make sense of her facial features. With her eyes now matching and more distinct from the jewel on her forhead as well as a nearby arm, this should resolve the situation.  



ADDITIONAL GRAPHICAL CHANGES FOR US STYLE PATCH ONLY:

Fighter:
Injured frames reverted to US version.

White Mage:
Injured frames reverted to US version.

Ninja: 
Reverted victory pose to US version where legs are joined together.

Red Wizard:
Reverted victory frame to US version with fuller cape coverage.

White Wizard:
Updated all frames to have upper body shift right 1 pixel per US version. No more hunchback wizard.
Created an all new frame for the attack animation because US version strangely used the Japanese graphics for this frame only, causing the WW to lunge forward when attacking in an awkward manner inconsistent with every other character attack animation. A custom frame was designed by the author that should look more natural and consistent.
Fixed belt consistency issue.
Fixed consistency issue with shadow under left hand.
Touched up hair to the left of face.

Swords:
Reverted sword graphics to US versions on four different swords. 

Candles:
Reverted Japanese cross tiles to US candle tiles due to them debatably looking better and being more appropriate for the locations they appear.


REBALANCING DETAILS:

FF Restored did a ton of things right as far as balancing. By fixing the crit bug, the overwhelming power of the fighter was reigned in quite a bit. The fixes to spell bugs and the int bug made all three wizards much better. But in this author's opinion, we were still left with two significant character balance issues. These are not bugs per sey, but flaws in the original design that surely would have been ironed out with more time alotted to testing. First, the thief / ninja was still too weak in combat. He was made a little better by having the flee bug fixed, but he still was weak as a kitten in combat due to both low strength and a low number of attacks based on slow accuracy growth. The red mage was better than the thief in nearly every way. Likewise, the monk / master remained as game breaking as ever if you grind a little in the late game due getting 8 attacks at level 32 and maintaining his extremely high late game critical rate. The following changes have been implemented based on the disassembly published by Disch. This was simple work from a hacking standpoint but it may be appreciated by those who don't dabble themselves into hex editing or simply appreciate the planning and testing that went into these changes. 

Thief: Starting accuracy increased from 5 to 15 (5 points higher than fighter) and accuracy growth rate increased from 2 per level to 3 per level. Since every 32 points of accuracy provides an additional attack, he will gain extra attacks at the same pace as the fighter--actually generally two levels before the fighter. The idea here is that the thief / ninja consistently has much lower strength and weaker weapon options and will continue to do somewhat less damage than the fighter but at least he is now a servicable combatant, unlike the original thief who was dead weight in the early game and underwhelming at best after the class change. A complete playthrough was done to test these changes and the thief/ninja's damage stayed just about half way between the fighter and the red mage. Based on this change, he should now be a very balanced character with the advantage of casting haste and temper in the late game along with the boost to running but the disadvantage of doing somewhat less damage and having lower defense and HP. 

Monk: Starting accuracy increased from 5 to 16. Accuracy growth rate decreased from 3 per level to 2 per level. Keep in mind that the attack rate of the monk is always doubled while unarmed, so giving him 2x growth is actually more like 4x growth (instead of the native game's 6x growth). The initial boost in accuracy was done so that the monk would actually get a small boost in the early game by going from 2 attacks to 4 attacks at level 9 instead of level 10. A nerf now applies to the monk in the later game. Monk goes from 4 to 6 attacks at level 25 as opposed to 21, and then goes to 8 attacks at level 41 instead of 32. 10 attacks per round will no longer be possible. The test playthrough resulted in the monk essentially being at the same damage output as the fighter through the middle portion of the game and continuing to be the most powerful dps character in late game, just not to such an extreme and debatably game-breaking extent.

Additionally, the Restored patch had two options for handling the monk's magic evade growth rate. Option A was 4 points per level before job change like the original game and then 1 point per level after job change. Option B, designed to make the monk class change an actual upgrade and not a handicap, inverted the magic evade rate to 1 as monk and 4 as master. However, this makes the overall evade growth much lower as a player tends to gain more levels in the initial class. This patch takes another route by setting the monk evade growth rate to 2 (like the fighter and thief) but increases it to 3 after class change (in line with the mage/wizard classes). This approach preserves the benefit of class changing but takes on a much more balanced approach and not leaving him with negligble magic evade for 2/3 of the game.


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Chicken Knife

08/27/2019