[FE8][Complete] JP Hard Mode

'Sup.

Made this in under an hour. For those of you unaware, the English release of FE8 “added” a bunch of negative levels to the game compared to the original Japanese release. I used FEBuilderGBA to take a look at the JP release of FE8 to get the exact levels for each chapter and added them back in, and also added an even more difficult 2xHard Mode. It’s shocking how much more fun FE8 becomes by simply increasing the enemy quality. See below for more specific details on the different game modes. I included some non-gameplay-altering quality-of-life patches such as enemy range, etc. I did NOT, however, add anything that affected gameplay in any way such as infinite trading/rescuing except for the RNG scrambler.

Edit: I did not change anything else relating to individual units. Pablo & Riev are still consistent and player units’ bases & growths are unchanged, and no inventories are changed, either.

Download from Dropbox here and install using an UPS patcher such as NUPS or through FEBuilderGBA.

In-game Difficulty Selector
  • Easy: “Enemy level penalties are removed and tutorial events are disabled.” All chapters are given 0 bonus/penalty levels. Contrary to popular belief, Easy Mode in the original JP release of FE8 did have -2 levels taken from all maps starting from Ch2 (including the Tower & the Ruins), except for Ch5x. Outside JP, FE8 had another -2 levels taken away from most chapters across all three game modes. Localized FE8 Easy and Normal Modes had -4 penalty levels & -2 penalty levels, respectively, occasionally causing an underflow bug that resulted in promoted enemies being extremely weak. Additionally, promoted enemies in vanilla are calculated as having promoted at Lv10 in Normal Mode and Lv20 in Difficult Mode. This was patched so that they are calculated as having promoted at Lv20 in all game modes.

  • Normal: “Has the same Hard mode bonus levels as the JP release given to all non-recruitable enemies.” The Japanese release of FE8’s Difficult mode had bonus levels given to all maps starting with +3 in the Prologue and gradually increasing to +6 by the endgame. The localized release of FE8’s Difficult mode reduced the bonus levels by 2 across the board, ranging from +1 in the Prologue and gradually increasing to +4 by the endgame.

  • Difficult: “Has double the Hard mode bonus levels as the JP release given to all non-recruitable enemies.” In other words, the bonus levels range from +6 in the Prologue and gradually increase to +12 by the endgame. In this mode, Seth no longer doubles/one-rounds O’Neill, and there is even a theoretical chance for him to die in the Prologue. See below for some early-game boss stats.

Patchable Game Modes
  • RNGrowths: Playable units’ growths work the same as they do in vanilla FE8.

  • Fixed Growths: Has fixed growths patched onto both player and enemy units. “Stat growth is based a formula that uses your level and growth rates to determine what stats to give. The effect is that your growth rates add and you get a stat for each time they pass a multiple of 100. You start with a completely arbitrary 50 points to make the first level not always empty for most characters (and it also technically has a rounding effect on your average stats if you start from level 1) Because the stat gains are mathematically tied to the level (there is no actual memory of your total growth points) your characters will gain different first level-ups if you start them at different base levels.”

  • 0% Growths: All playable unit growths are set to 0%, including post-game Creature Campaign units and even the Phantom (yes, I remembered Orson).

  • 1% Growths: Objectively better than 0% Growths. All playable unit growths are set to 1%, including post-game Creature Campaign units and even the Phantom (yes, I remembered Orson).

Credits
  • AnimNumbers Damage pop-up in battle anime 20220205: Huichelaar
  • Map Danger Zone (Select: Toggle): circleseverywhere
  • DecideWhetherToFillAiDangerMap: Vesly
  • FE8-Battle Stats with Anims Off ver2: Vesly & Tequila
  • Anti-Huffman: Hextator & 7743
  • FillAIDangerMap Efficiency Fix 20220712: 7743 & HyperGammaSpaces
  • FixedGrowthsMode & RNGRandomizer: TR143
  • HPBars_with_warnings Cache: circleseverywhere & Tequila
  • Enable Faster Movement By Holding A: Gryz
  • Remove Pierce Glitch: Brendor
  • Toggle Health & Safety Warning: circleseverywhere
  • NarrowFont: Scraiza
  • Show Heal Amount & Faster Level Ups: Tequila
  • Add blink to portrait image on status screen & Change formula of automatic growth auto level of enemy: Stan
  • Accelerate Frames for AI to display targetting cursor & Accelerate Got item popup & Accelerate poison damage motion: Vesly
  • Boss Animation ON & When Boss Animation ON,Start animation with background & Allow fast-forwarding of battle animations with the A button 20220531 & Added a game option that staff and dances do not display anime & Accelerate MapAnim Sleep & Silence motion & Accelerate recovery motion & Display the bar quickly when getting experience points & Lost weight when dancing and make it faster & Lost weight when stealing and make it faster & Remove the delay at the start of map battle & Remove the delay until background is displayed & Remove the Round delay in map battle & Speed up by omitting a battle bg fadein & Speed up by omitting a gray fadein & Speed up the dark magic Flux & The number of seconds to wait when bad status damage & Tutorial Disabler: 7743
  • Enable Faster Movement By Holding A (alt): unknown
  • Speed ​​up the gray poison mist map effect when receiving poison damage: unknown
  • Give a hard mode Lv bonus to the enemy promoted, even on normal difficulty: aera
  • Skip:Opening(OPENING_CUT): unknown
  • Set Default Option “Animation” & “Cursor & etc”: various
  • Text speed for Support Viewer room: SageMatthis & EgalLau37
  • Weapon Selection etc routine’s Eyes Blink: 7743 & Mokha
Early-Game Boss Stats

O'NeillBreguet
BoneBazba
Note: These were taken from Fixed Growths Mode. Their stats are variable in the other modes.

Please check out my real, serious hack that I put actual effort into making! Here is the FEU thread. It’s a remake of FE7 in FE8 w/Split Promotions & SkillSystems. Testers wanted!

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Do Pablo and Riev get massively inflated on rematch like they did in vanilla JP?

If so, Eirika route might be a worse idea as she will be susceptible to being OHKO’d by Pablo’s Purge if you didn’t kill Aias fast enough.

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