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About this mod
A mod that alters various aspects of the game to provide an experience more in-line with the original (non-JP) vanilla release on the PS2, but now you can play it on PC!
The Final Mix content is still included.
Also, the main mod should be ReFined compatible!
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
General changes to get back to a vanilla experience include:
Some specific changes to make things vanilla:
Some specific changes that I took some liberties with and why:
What hasn't been changed and why:
I'm unsure if I'll continue with this, since this already ballooned into more than what I initially wanted to do (just changing the ability progression and altering the neutral resistance on most bosses), so if anyone wants to pick up from where this leaves off, I won't stop them.
As of Version 2, I'm actually done now unless terrifying bugs come up.
Note that this patches the 00battle.bin, 03system.bin, sys.bar, and P_EX330.mset files in kh2_first, so there's no guarantee that it'll be compatible with everything.
On another note, the main mod should be compatible with ReFined version 3.00+! Unfortunately, the Halloween in Christmas Town patch has some hiccups with the music and the "party member wandering around" models reverting to their Christmas Town outfits, both probably due to how they've implemented their Vanilla OST mod as well as the Port Royal outfits, and I'm not sure of the best way to go about fixing those, so either deal with the music weirdness and costume swapping during the main story or don't use ReFined for Halloween Town's main story segments. Not much I'm comfortable doing, I'm afraid.
Thanks to:
OpenKH - Resources and documentation
Osdanova - Making KH2FM Editor
AntonioDePau - Making KHPCPatchManager
REZXAR - Documenting various IDs they made changes to for their Revision R overhaul which made finding some attack parameters to change take less time
Square Enix - Making the game in the first place
- Bonus levels, including how much HP Donald and Goofy get*
- Abilities gained via level up
- Equipment stats and abilities
- Wide-spanning changes to player damage values, including abilities, drive form attacks, magic, and summons
- Revenge values of Limits
- MP and AP costs
- Enemy stats (this resulted in most bosses gaining more resistance to neutral damage)
- Base EXP for a few enemies (mainly just the larger ones like Large Bodies and the high-ranking Nobodies and some of the smaller ones like Armored Knights and Shadows)
- Enemy drop tables
- Treasure chest
Some specific changes to make things vanilla:
- Master Form lost a Draw
- Changed one of Wisdom Form's MP Hastega to Combo Plus (yes, look it up)
- Removed both of Dual-Wielding Roxas' Damage Controls (Damage Control wasn't in vanilla)
- Berserk Charge now only gives 1 Strength when active instead of the 2 it gives in FM
- Drive gain from non-boss enemies is now 35% instead of 75% (yeah, I did this, too)
- MP Rage's formula is now (damage taken / max hp) * 100n instead of (damage taken / max hp) * 75n (n is the number equipped)
- Defender increases damage by 2 instead of 3
- Experience Boost now activates at critical HP instead of 50% HP
- Quick Run Lv3's travel distance is shorter
- Lucky Lucky now increases drop chance by a factor of 1+0.3n instead of 1+0.5n (n is the number equipped)
- MP Hastega increases MP restoration by 100% instead of 75%
Some specific changes that I took some liberties with and why:
- No Experience is now available on all difficulties. If you want to do Level 1 Proud, go for it.
- Auto Limit abilities on party members should be automatically unequipped. It's just a QoL change for some, so just turn them on if you want them on.
- Bonus levels introduced in Final Mix have been almost all completely changed. You'll find your Final Mix abilities there, and Donald and Goofy will also get some more abilities that they didn't get before. I tried to keep the rewards thematically appropriate, so you might be able to guess what went where.
- Three exceptions to vanilla equipment being different between this mod, vanilla, and Final Mix are Donald's Shaman's Relic, the + version it, and Nobody Lance. Both Shaman's Relic and Nobody Lance now have Defender as an ability, Nobody Lance is a 4/5 weapon, and Shaman's Relic+ has MP Rage as an ability. The reasoning is that this allows base Shaman's Relic and Nobody Lance to be more like counterparts by getting Shaman+'s FM Defender ability while moving Shaman's Relic's vanilla ability of MP Rage to its + counterpart. MP Rage kind of feels like an upgrade to Defender for Donald, so that's my justification for giving the + version that ability.
- The Protect line of abilities that was on Goofy's higher tier mushroom weapons have been reworked into a single ability, Mighty Guard, and will be on both Donald and Goofy's highest tier mushroom weapon. Mighty Guard will also block 50% of incoming damage vs Protega's 40%. While changing the abilities, I found that vanilla Save the Queen had MP Hastega along with Premium Mushroom, so I had to figure out what to do. After some time, I thought to make a Shell counterpart for Donald and change Protect to be physical-only, but that caused some bad things to happen, so I decided to just give both Donald and Goofy the same ability for their mushroom weapons. Also, since Protect traditionally only works on physical damage, I decided to go with Mighty Guard which normally applies both Protect and Shell. Also, since there's no real upgrades for that spell, I decided to just do one level and place it on the final tier of mushroom weapons.
- Winner's Proof and Two Become One have different abilities. This came up as a result of Damage Control and Drive Converter being on Kingdom Key and Sweet Memories respectively. I felt like I had to put a second copy of them somewhere, so I figured the two Final Mix keyblades are where they should go.
What hasn't been changed and why:
- Scan is still obtained from Day 4 Axel. It used to be obtained from reaching level 4, but you can just not equip it until then if you really want to be like that.
- Form and Summon level up requirements. Vanilla had much higher requirements to level up and it was just an exercise in tedium.
- Similarly, Drive Recoveries and High Drive Recoveries also keep their Final Mix restoration amounts. Less tedium, and, if you know the tricks to get easy drive (which you probably do if you're downloading this), it doesn't even really matter much.
- Coliseum battle levels. I just don't know where those are stored right now. Maybe I'll do it later, but it really only affects the non-Paradox Cups
- Gummi stuff. Apparently, gummi blocks have slight stat changes between vanilla and Final Mix, but I'm not changing those.
- Most Final Mix stuff. Final Mix content was most likely balanced with certain things in mind, and I have no idea how to properly "vanilla-ify" it, so I just decided to leave most of it. This does mean that you might need to come up with some new strats for some of them due to changes elsewhere, so enjoy figuring that out.
- Reflect is an odd case. Across all three releases, its damage has changed from doing 1.5x-2.0x damage in JP Vanilla to 5.5x to 8.5x damage in International Vanilla to 5.5x in Final Mix. I've made the decision to leave Reflect at 5.5x across all tiers of Reflect. The reasoning for this has to do with the above statement regarding my lack of changing the Final Mix enemies. Only Xigbar, Demyx, Luxord, and Roxas' data fights have neutral damage resistance which makes me believe that those resistances were intentional, given how most of those are different than their story fights, so they were balanced with a 5.5x powered Reflect in mind. This will mean that Reflera and Reflega will be less effective in story fights than it is in vanilla, but I think this is a fine balance.
- There are some very niche enemy things that I'm not sure how to go about doing such as changing Demyx 2's second DM to have a time limit of 10 seconds instead of 15 or having the cannons in the final fights take 20 Bomb Bell Bs instead of 16.
- Reaction Command damage. This is purely because of Critical Mode giving you a Reaction Boost for free. Most RCs that had their damage change got a nerf going into FM (Jump and Eclipse/Magna Storm are notable examples), and I think being able to utilize those larger damage values with Crit's Reaction Boost is a bit much.
As of Version 2, I'm actually done now unless terrifying bugs come up.
Note that this patches the 00battle.bin, 03system.bin, sys.bar, and P_EX330.mset files in kh2_first, so there's no guarantee that it'll be compatible with everything.
On another note, the main mod should be compatible with ReFined version 3.00+! Unfortunately, the Halloween in Christmas Town patch has some hiccups with the music and the "party member wandering around" models reverting to their Christmas Town outfits, both probably due to how they've implemented their Vanilla OST mod as well as the Port Royal outfits, and I'm not sure of the best way to go about fixing those, so either deal with the music weirdness and costume swapping during the main story or don't use ReFined for Halloween Town's main story segments. Not much I'm comfortable doing, I'm afraid.
Thanks to:
OpenKH - Resources and documentation
Osdanova - Making KH2FM Editor
AntonioDePau - Making KHPCPatchManager
REZXAR - Documenting various IDs they made changes to for their Revision R overhaul which made finding some attack parameters to change take less time
Square Enix - Making the game in the first place