I present Tear Ring Saga: Hard Mode
When I first finished Tear Ring Saga, the impression that I was left with was that this had the structure of what could be one of my favorite games of all time, but the enemies were too weak. The map design was very good, as were the mechanics, but the enemies were often so weak that they may as well have not even been there. This was a bit disappointing because I could see lots of structural difficulty and scenario complexity there that didn’t really end up mattering because of the enemies.
The goal of this project is to increase the difficulty while maintaining a ‘clean’ experience and not affecting the base game too much.
The stats of the enemies have been increased, and in many cases they have better classes, better weapons/items and more skills. This might sound kind of bland, but it makes for a much tighter and more interesting experience than the base game, while still respecting the existing map design and fitting in with it.
The player characters have not been altered at all, with only two exceptions:
Narron doesn’t start with Elite. He learns it at level 8.
Zieg doesn’t have Elite.
The reason of these changes is that the improved stats of the enemies causes them to give more XP.
I was able to balance the game around the new XP curve, and ultimately I think it ends up being a better experience since you can more comfortably train more characters.
The one exception is the characters with Elite that you get early on, Narron and Zieg.
having that skill so early with the increased enemy XP causes them to rabbit out and grow too fast, so I made Narron get the skill on level up instead of having it at base. In the case of Zieg he’s still one of, if not the best unit in the first half of the game, so he just doesn’t need it anyway.
The intention here is different from other difficulty mods such as TRS Kaizo, where the way the game plays is significantly altered and many things are changed to provide a fresh experience for experienced players.
In the case of TRS HM, it’s designed to essentially just address the really weak enemy quality in the base game and make it into the best version of itself.
The intention is for this to be something that a first-time player can play and enjoy without being left with, like I did, the sense that I just played what was essentially a masterpiece game that was held back by the fact that the enemies were too weak. If anyone seeing this hasn’t played TRS yet, I do seriously recommend this version.
There are two versions of this patch. The regular version and the gameplay only version. The reason for this is to get around one of the pet peeves I often have with game mods, where you see what seems like it’s going to be a very nice mod that does a lot of things you want, and then you see that in addition to the main point of the mod, which you like, the developer changed a bunch of random crap because they felt like it, and that’s not really what you want.
There were some things that I wanted to change like that, but I don’t want other people to be put off by it, hence the two versions. The gameplay only version only buffs the enemies as mentioned above.
The main version has some other changes, which I personally like and recommend:
-renamed some characters and items to match the Japanese version more
-changed a couple of small things with the script to match the Japanese version more
-Gray grid patch: You can turn on a set of grid lines in the options. By default, the grid is green. I find this ugly, particularly on non green-dominant indoor maps. I edited it to be dark gray, a more neutral color.
Patching instructions: to a base TRS bin file, first apply the translation patch(https://forums.serenesforest.net/topic/53111-tearring-saga-new-translation-finished-v104/), then the hard mode patch or gameplay only hard mode patch.
Screenshots:
Also, my friend Ghostwheel played through the hack. He was the first person to play it aside from me and the testing was invaluable. It was his first time playing TRS, and he really enjoyed it, especially as a first experience. If anyone is thinking of playing TRS for the first time, I do seriously recommend this version over the base game. You can see Ghost’s playthrough with commentary from me here: (starting at part 1). There are a few changes that were made based on this playthrough, but they are minimal (there was really only one ‘me go to far’ moment that I had to dial back).
Let me know if there are any issues found.
Special thanks:
Ghostwheel: Testing, Playthough vids
April: Help with TRS editor tools
Aethin: Original translation
Unicorngoulash: Help with finding bin file address for gray grid patch
Patch link: 1.74 MB file on MEGA