FFVIII Crystal is a gameplay mod designed to give a new way to play Final Fantasy VIII by making each playable character more distinct, strengthening and redesigning enemies, and adding new content, now ported to FFVIII Remastered for PC and Nintendo Switch.
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File credits
Programs Used: Doomtrain by alexfilth, Maki, and JWP Deling by myst6re Ifrit by Gjoerulv Ifrit AI beta by JWP Cactilio by JeMaCheHi Quezacotl by JWP Rinoa's Toolset by Maki MnGrpEditor by Nightshade JunkShop by alexfilth Roses and Wine/Hext Tools by DLPB
Many thanks to everyone involved in creating these tools.
Thanks to Sega Chief for showing me how to fix enemy data files; to JWP for many of the exe edits used in this mod and for sharing them publically; to Callisto for locating and sharing the SeeD salary values; to Colly for the mngrp.bin Thingy tables; and a huge thanks to UpRisen, goodmorninpluto, Nikkolas, and Dorklord for feedback and bug-finding.
Lastly, a huge thanks to everyone in the FFVIII modding community. I couldn't have made this without you and your efforts.
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Made certain enemies immune to Stop and/or Sleep in order to prevent these effects from interfering with enemies' death AI. In some cases, enemies were given lowered resistances to other status effects to compensate.
Removed Stop effect from GIM52A's Snipe Laser.
Irvine's [Gun] Parts items now describe the guns' properties.
(Remastered PC only) Changed Aurabolt's description to match the other versions'.
Version 1.1.8
(Remastered PC) The download now includes pre-patched FFVIII_EFIGS.dll files for 1.0.1, 1.0.2, and 1.0.3.
Slightly increased the effect of Darkness, Silence, Slow, and Defend on Crisis Level.
Slightly increased all standard GFs' HP.
Fixed an issue in which the gain from Str+25% was set to +20% instead of +25%.
Increased power of Lv?Curse at all Crisis Levels and changed the divisor at Crisis Level 1 from 4 to 3.
White Wind now functions as standard curative magic when determining the amount of HP healed.
***Crisis Level 1: Slightly stronger than Pray and slightly weaker than Cure.
***Crisis Level 2: Slightly weaker than Cura.
***Crisis Level 3: Slightly weaker than Curaga.
***Crisis Level 4: Stronger than Curaga.
Slightly increased Quistis' STR in the early game and the STR and/or base power of some of her weapons.
Added Slow to Aurabolt's list of status effects and increased the chance of inflicting an effect.
Increased Tonberry (summon)'s power.
Increased Cactuar (summon)'s power.
Increased the following enemies' chance to drop an item: Bomb, Hexadragon, Blood Soul, Armadodo, Wendigo, Death Claw, Grand Mantis, Adamantoise, Vysage, Tonberry, Funguar, Eliminator, X-ATM092.
Increased the chance of successfully Mugging the following enemies: Adamantoise, Mobile Type 8
Changed high-level Bombs' most common drop to Bomb Spirit.
X-ATM092 will now drop a Megalixir at low levels.
Lowered Mesmerize's STR at high levels slightly.
Lowered Grand Mantis' HP and increased weakness to Thunder to 200%.
Changed Righty's Mug/Drops at high levels.
Fixed an issue in which a Confused Adamantoise would cast Haste and Reflect on itself instead of a player character.
Mid-level Adamantoises are more likely to yield Whisper than before. It occupies the third Mug slot and the second Drop slot.
Made Adamantoises more likely to appear on the beach on Winter Island.
***Mid-level Admantoises can be found on the beach on Winter Island as well as the isolated beach in the southeastern part of Centra.
Fixed a crash that would occur in the NORG fight when Right Orb attempted to dispel Aura.
Changed Seifer (3)'s extra attack while under Aura status to a regular attack instead of a crit.
Changed Seifer (4)'s first two Mug slots to Holy Water x10 and Remedy x5; the last two slots contain Megalixirs as before.
Lowered Seifer (4)'s Slow and Confusion resistance.
Lowered Omega Weapon's max HP from 256,000 to 224,000.
Lowered Red Giant's Poison and Zombie resistance.
Lowered Tiamat's Slow resistance.
Increased number of Chef's Knives that can be Mugged and Dropped from Tonberry.
Added a note about Irvine's weapons when he joins the party; also, one of each [Weapon] Parts item is added to your inventory when he joins.
Added a message displaying how much the player has donated to the Trabia Garden fund to make the sidequest's objective clearer.
Changed NPC dialogue in Shumi Village to hint at stronger monsters being found on the western side of Winter Island.
Changed NPC dialogue in Esthar to hint at stronger monsters being in high, Ragnarok-only locations on the world map.
Changed NPC dialogue in the Presidential Palace post-Lunar Cry to hint at stronger monsters being found at Tears' Point (post Lunar Cry, pre-Disc 4 only).
Added some dialogue in the Presidential Palace that hints at the Sorceress Memorial sidequest that was excluded from the Remastered/Switch versions by mistake.
Version 1.1.7
Reduced the number of fixed encounters when using Zell to open the door to Deep Sea Deposit.
Included more chances to encounter Adamantoises in Deep Sea Deposit.
Version 1.1.6
Fixed an issue in which Flare would damage Edea(3) when cast on herself under Reflect status.
(Switch) Fixed instances in which Magic Summon would cause a crash when spawning certain enemies in the Aberrant Monsters and Sorceress Memorial sidequests.
Version 1.1.5
Removed Mobile Type 8 battle from Zell's stint as party leader on Disc 3.
The FFVIII_EFIGS.dll patch for the 1.0.3 update to FFVIII Remastered is now included in the archive.
Version 1.1.4
Changed the Elastoid in the final battle of the second Laguna dream to an Eliminator, preventing a crash that would sometimes occur when killing the Elastoid.
Version 1.1.3
Fixed an issue in which the sidequest with the drunkard in FH was accessible earlier than intended.
Fixed an issue in which using a Scan Stone on Seifer would cause a softlock.
Version 1.1.2
Fixed a crash that could occur when fighting "Sorceress" (1) under certain conditions.
Fixed a crash that could occur when fighting Vysage under certain conditions.
Fixed a typo.
(Switch) Made some minor adjustments to certain enemies' HP and drop tables to reflect the PC version.
Version 1.1.1
- Early Strength growth of Squall, Quistis, Zell, and Rinoa increased.
- Rinoa's Luck increased.
- Increased Crit Bonus of all of Rinoa's weapons except for Shooting Star.
- Darkside's AP cost decreased from 100 to 80.
- Changed the required crafting materials for various weapons, also fixing an oversight in which Zell's second weapon wasn't able to be made until later than intended.
- Added weapon upgrade requirements to the included info document.
- Both the 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 .ips patches are now included in the mod files archive.
There is currently an issue with Demaster, the tool needed to play FFVIII Crystal, that causes crashes in D-District Prison. You can get it around it by moving ff8_demaster.dll out of the FF8 Remastered folder to disable Demaster, getting past the affected scene, and putting the dll back. You can also pack FFVIII Crystal's archives into main.zzz directly using zzzDeArchive to use the mod without Demaster. This issue has been fixed in the latest release of Demaster.
FFVIII Crystal is a gameplay mod designed to give a new way to play Final Fantasy VIII by making each playable character more distinct, strengthening and redesigning enemies, and adding new content.
Junctioning has been de-emphasized in favor of more meaningful stat gains from leveling and each character is assigned a GF with abilities tailored to them (more details on this can be found in the included info document). New enemies have been added and existing ones have been reworked with new abilities and gimmicks. New sidequests have been added and existing ones are more meaningful, sometimes rewarding items that teach abilities that can't be found anywhere else. The mod's difficulty level is intended to make fights challenging and engaging without being too harsh.
The 2013-Steam and Remastered versions are the same, with the following exceptions:
- Unlike pre-1.3 releases of Crystal, Edea remains a party member despite the GF unequipping fix not yet being in place for the Remastered version. - Irvine's GF is Cactuar instead of Cerberus. - Jumbo Cactuar is spawned by killing at least 5 Cactuars and winning a battle in which only a single Cactuar is present. - The contents of certain Draw Points has been changed. - The Draw resistance of all spells but Meteor, Ultima, and Apocalypse has been reduced to 0. - Characters start out with more spells stocked. - Draw, Auto-Potion, Cover, Darkside, and Return Damage use their default behaviors/properties. - SeeD level payouts are at default values.