Legend of Mana: Legend of Mana - Combat Redux

This patch alters a few aspects of Legend of Mana's battle system in an attempt to make the game more difficult.

Key Features:

- Enemies can no longer hitstunned by quick attacks.

- Plunge attack damage is based on a multiplier that's increased by doing quick attacks, and will not do damage when used on their own.

- The player moves slower.

- Enemies and companions move substantially faster than before.

- Enemies do more damage.

- Game Overs occur as soon as the player dies, regardless of whether their companions/pets/golems are still alive or not.

Note: Due to the nature of these changes, the patch is intended to be used only with single player, on the default in-game difficulty setting.

Now includes a separate "Arrange Mode" patch, in which enemies do more damage, but the player cannot be hitstunned.

Additionally, includes two other patch variants. One has simplified quick attack multipliers, and one only changes the player movement and hitstun behavior.

First and foremost I would like to note that I used Cue's LoM modding tools extensively when making this.

Apply using any PPF patcher.

Apply either Standard or More Damage -- More Damage just makes the enemies kill you faster.

An Arrange mode patch is now included. This is the same as the More Damage patch, but now the player can't be hitstunned either.

A Simple mode patch is now included. For this, quick attacks have a flat multiplier, plunge attacks are weakened but otherwise are not affected by the multiplier, and there is no level scaling.

Additionally, 1.2 includes another patch variant that just slows horizontal movement speed for the player and disables hitstun on enemies. This version makes plunge attacks more powerful and quick attacks less useful in general, although that was my original intent before other people started suggesting the damage rebalances.

This is intended for use in Normal Mode -- Nightmare and No Future would probably be way too hard with this.

This is compatible with existing save games -- just make sure you load from an actual save, and not from a save state, or the changes won't get loaded.

This version has not been tested /extensively/ but everything appears to be working correctly. I'm not seeing any crashes, but there may be balance issues.

Should be compatible with any emulator.

Changes:
- Enemies are no longer susceptible to hitstun. Note that the player still is.
- Enemies do considerably more damage -- regular enemies are balanced to kill the player in about 8 hits in the Standard patch, and 5 in the More Damage patch.
- Enemies and AI companions move further with each step.
- The player's movement has been reduced, to be more in line with the enemy attack animation lengths.
- If the player dies but the NPCs/pets are still alive, you get a game over screen which prompts you to restart from the entrance to the current room.
-- This was just done for convenience -- watching the AI fight itself isn't fun.

- Plunge attacks work differently.
-- By default, uppercut/thrust/back-forward plunges don't do damage but instead are meant to be used defensively, to push back enemies or move.
-- There is now a combo multiplier. With each quick attack that lands after L1, the multiplier increases by one. This multiplier increases the damage done by quick attacks AND the plunge attacks mentioned above, which otherwise would not do damage.
-- The plunge multiplier is halved whenever a plunge attack is launched or whenever the player moves using a skill.
-- Landing a Level 1 quick attack resets the multiplier to 0.
-- This means that plunge attacks should now be used as combo finishers, primarily.
-- Also, the plunges mentioned above won't build ST when the multiplier is set to 0.
-- The standing normal plunge does 2x damage, because it leaves you open. The skill/plunge combos do normal damage. Both of these reset the combo multiplier.

Possible Issues:

- ST attacks appear to work correctly but have not been tested extensively with this. If you see any ST attacks that don't do damage, let me know.
- Bosses which teleport around or jump may overshoot. Haven't heard any reports about this, but if you encounter it, let me know.

Country: USA
SLUS: SLUS-01013

Legend Of Mana (U) (NTSC) [SLUS-01013]