FE8 Gameplay Reversion Hack

[Gaggle of Geese]

I have just finished the first version of my Fire Emblem 8 gameplay reversion hack. This patch is meant to be applied to a US ROM. This hack will revert all the gameplay changes that occurred when bringing FE8 to the US (many of which are detailed on this page). A ton of things were changed during localization, but I'll detail some of the more significant changes below.

Since there were so many things to change, a few things might have slipped through the cracks, and there may be bugs that I haven't caught yet. If you encounter any bugs or changes I overlooked, post a reply or P.M. me. I used FEBuilder GBA to make this patch.

UPDATE 1.1
I've made some updates to the hack. Most of these involve boss A.I.:

• In chapter 5, Joshua will now attack Natasha if she's in range.
• In chapter 15, Caellach is no longer on a fort. He will also move to attack if a character is in range.
• In chapter 19, Riev will now move to attack if a character is in range.
• In chapter 20, Riev will now only attack an adjacent character (i.e., one he doesn't have to move in order to attack

Update 1.2

• Enemy weapon drops have been fixed. This should be the last version.

Version 1.2 is available here.

Previous versions:
Version 1.0
Version 1.1

Among the many changes are the following:

• Weapon stats that were changed in the U.S. version were restored to their originals.
• Character growth rates were changed back to their Japanese counterparts. (Lyon's now suck. )
• Character base stats were changed back to their Japanese counterparts. (Rennac's now suck. )
• Enemy levels, level-up bonuses, and just stats in general were changed back to their Japanese counterparts. This is probably what caused the differences in Pablo and Riev's stats in the player's second encounters with them. Also, the monster encounters on the world map mostly have bosses at lower levels than the U.S. version--whether this makes their stats lower I don't know, but they'll probably give less experience.
• In Chapter 13 Eirika's route, Amelia joins at level 5 rather than level 4.
• Hard mode bonuses were changed to their Japanese counterparts. This should make the game more challenging... hopefully.
• Several classes had their stat caps altered in the U.S. version. These were changed to their Japanese equivalents.
• Many shops, especially some of the later Secret Shops, had inventory (or even just display order) changes in the U.S. version. These were reverted.
• The Pierce glitch was fixed. (Thanks goes out to Brendor for the assembly hack... whoever he is.)
• Gorgons used to fly. Now with the aid of hacking, they can take to the air once more!
• A lot of enemies had their inventories changed in the U.S. version, including several bosses. The U.S. inventories actually make them more challenging in my opinion. In particular, the U.S. version gave Javelins and Hand Axes to a lot of enemies that didn't have them before, gave a lot of Gorgons extra weapons, gave swords and bows to Rangers that previously only had one or the other, and equipped the Demon King with a different starting weapon. However, since these weren't in the original game, the patch gives enemies their original Japanese inventories.
• Several chapters had more unit deployment slots in the U.S. version. These were taken out.
• ... And many, many more!

Incidentally, here are some things that were not changed:

• The Rapier and Reginleif still deal effective damage to Mage Knights. This was pretty clearly an oversight, so I decided to leave it as-is.
• The flickering of the Silencer skill is still purple, not red as in the Japanese version. Since this is a cosmetic change and not a gameplay one, I decided to leave it alone. Also, I can't find where the animation is stored.
• The text has been unchanged. Any translation/localization errors will still be in the game. So Neimi still knows Cormag somehow, and Garcia arm-wrestles himself.

One final thing--Lyon's terrible growths may have been a developer oversight. They're identical to the "generic" growths seen on a lot of enemies, but those enemies typically use their class growths instead. I'm inclined to leave them as-is anyway, though, since he has good bases anyway, and he joins at level 14 in the Creature Campaign. Let me know if you want a version with the better growths. (Or hack the ROM yourself, it's not that hard to change.)

Edited August 6, 2018 by Gaggle of Geese
Updated the patch