News of the latest major release of the Star Beasts hack is brought to us courtesy of our contributor YeOldeLoremonger (RHP), who designed the town layouts and gave feedback on the overworld and world map in the release.
It is believed that Asteroid version will no longer be supported moving forward. Meteor version previously already had its support dropped.
Project lead Soul Valor (RHDN) gives the following update via PokeCommunity forums. You can find the Github repo here.
Worked on over the course of more than half a decade, Star Beasts is a Gen 1 total conversion and homage to the first generation of Pokémon games.
Started as a passion project to make a playable version of Vast Fame’s Shi Kong Xing Shou for English speaking audiences, Star Beasts became its own project with entirely new fakemon designs and a new region.
Star Beasts 3.0.: Comet Version features an entirely new Dex of Fakemon and a mostly new region (Relas) with a focus on exploration.
Some of the new features are as follows:
A completely overhauled soundtrack! Almost none of the music from the original games remains!
An overhauled Pokedex, complete with backsprites, that fixes balance issues and replaces uglier designs and makes older evolutionary families more consistent.
Even more overhauled movesets, with even more new moves!
The Fairy, Steel and Dark types!
A new region, Relas!
New types of trainers with different rosters and improved AI!
More dialogue and areas than the original games!
Rebalancing of the game to make it more accessible to newcomers, including plenty of NPCs that give you hints on where to find rare Star Beasts! And, as if that weren’t enough, there’s documentation on every Beast! (Although the game is best experienced blind, use your discretion!)
Various quality of life improvements, such as an experience bar!
So, what do you think? Comment below, or check us out on Discord.
Featuring Inu Megapack Integrated with RPGe Translation
For the first time, the widely hailed work of Japanese romhacker Inu (dog) has been amassed for testing and integration with the monumental RPGe translation before being released as a standalone, no-frills megapack.
Why the name “Boco’s FFV”? Well, dog is man’s best friend, and Boco is Bartz’s best friend, so to speak, so there you go.
Although certain hacks have used some of Inu’s work in the past, it is unclear how big of a fraction of Inu’s comprehensive body of work was included.
Some of these works did not provide any integration with an English translation.
Furthermore, those certain hacks added additional features, sometimes well beyond those that Inu intended to offer in his body of work.
Project Status
Additional documentation may be available later here or via Discord.
Phase 2: Inu’s improvement patches for FFV – 7/8 integrated (1 in conflict, 3 excluded) – see below Examples: GBA dash, improved item sort
Phase 3: Inu’s QoL loose patches for FFV – 16/18 integrated (2 in conflict, 6 excluded) – beta available today via FFV Central Discord Examples: pass turn in battle, L/R character scrolling in menus
Prior Hacks that Use Inu’s Work
Be sure to check them out and support each modder’s work.
For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube or Twitter.
1. FF5r (Remix) by ff5aki: “Autumn Challenge”
Recoined as FFV: Autumn Challenge via editorial discretion for purposes of the writer’s posts on this blog. Aki is taken to mean autumn in this context.
The game difficulty is significantly increased from vanilla.
Official name stays the same and will still be referenced.
For Serity’s fan translation of this mod on RHDN, see here.
2. FF5r-IC by waterga: “Heroine Trilogy”
IC has no particular meaning.
Recoined as FFV: Heroine Trilogy via editorial discretion for purposes of the writer’s posts on this blog.
As the name suggests, this mod features a heroine instead of Bartz, and the mod itself spans three roms.
Heroine Trilogy uses Autumn Challenge as a base. However, players need not concern themselves with this detail, especially with the advent of our web patcher.
The game difficulty for the most part is on par with vanilla.
Our translation team should ideally reach a unanimous decision before an official renaming can happen.
For now, the official name stays the same and will still be referenced.
For more info on our translation project, see here.
3. FFV Clean and FF5r Clean by xJacks: “Clean Edition” (TBC)
Exclusive font, script, and icon improvements along with a curated compilation of QoL and bugfixes.
The mod author is currently considering a rebranding.
My personal suggestion is to keep the current branding using the recoined names, i.e., FFV: Clean Edition and Autumn Challenge: Clean Edition.
The reasoning is that the same approach is taken in both versions in terms of what’s being changed.
To call them something different would seem to be more confusing. You may even find yourself explaining to someone, “Oh, ‘Sparkles’ is just ‘Clean’ but for Autumn Challenge” (made-up example).
This post will be updated when more details from the mod author become available.
This mod title is pretty self-explanatory, so it won’t need to be localized.
For Sky Render’s fan translation of this mod on RHDN, click here.
5. FFV: Nostalgia by Anonymous
The naming of this mod can be revisited if and when a fan translation of this mod becomes available.
6. FFV Patch Set (Bugfixes) and Various Patch Files (QoL) by Inu: “Boco’s FFV”
clymax’s upcoming compilation mod of Inu’s work will be dubbed Boco’s FFV. More details to be released in the near future.
Implementing the Changes
Romhack Plaza
Before
After
Special Thanks
Special thanks to team members of Final Fantasy IV – Ultima for raising and discussing the issue with our team members. You can check out their Discord here, or click the thumbnail to learn more about the mod.
So, what do you think? Comment below, or come check us out on Discord.
