Dragoon X Omega II

Dragoon X Omega II is a very extensive hack of Final Fantasy principally credited to "Sliver X" and "Thaddeus", intended as a sequel to Dragoon X Omega (a hack of Dragon Warrior). It features a gaming experience somewhat different from its predecessor, as in it uses the original Final Fantasy as an engine only, and even some elements of that engine have been changed.

Prologue
Centuries ago, the hubris of man led him to tamper with the realm of the gods, and a pestilence swept the land. .

Some fled to the south, building a great wall to seal themselves away. . This land came to be known as Hylis.

The Shogonite are the Warrior class of Hylis, gifted in arms and PSI. They are led by two generals: Sargon and Tyris.

Whe loggers began to vanish near Endengard, it was Sargon who was sent to investigate on behalf of Lord Higa. .

In the forest north of the town, Sargon and his men were ambushed in the night by a horde of strange beasts.

At the brink of victory, his own men turned upon him, and he was forced to kill every one of them.

Barely surviving this ordeal, Sargon made his way back towards Hylis Keep, to tell Lord Higa of This grave turn of events.

So it began.

Story
Dragoon X Omega II takes place at least one millenium after its predecessor. After the people of Shurek escaped to a new planet (Rasela), they began to establish human civilization anew, in a country they call Merkah. The Neverborn's starship, referred to as The Ark, was sealed by Nika (the "canonical" name of the heroine from the original game) so that the evils within would not escape, and suspended in the sky.

Meanwhile, Nika's descendants would become valued for their psionic powers. Centuries later, a decision was made to build a "Teleporter" to retrieve technology from the ark. The experiment backfired, and the Neverborn's minions would haunt mankind again. Some people escaped to the south, building a massive wall called the Great Divide to seal themselves from "The Plague", and forming a new nation called Hylis.

Over the centuries, however, most of the high technology of Merkahvi civilization was lost, and Hylis became something akin to the feudal japanese society of Earth.

Twenty years before the events of the beginning of the game, a civil war erupted in Hylis between Lords Sia (who has psionic powers) and Higa (who does not have psionic powers, but his elite Shogonite guard does). Sia created a new nation called Arternus and cut himself off from the rest of the world after the civil war came to a stalemate.

The hero of the game is Sargon, co-leader of the Shogonite along with the less honorable Tyris. While investigating monsters near the town of Endengard, Sargon is attacked by his own men and nearly killed. It is soon revealed that Tyris is behind this Shogonite revolt in cooperation with Arternus. Sargon sets out to the Marsh Temple and defeats Tyris, rescuing Priestess Kia. Later on, he travels to Arternus to defeat Sia and his elite Sianite Guard.

After this, Sargon has received the two keys necessary to unlock the Great Divide and explore Merkah. He learns that the people here scavenge the ruins for high technology to fend off hordes of strange beasts that have tormented them from time immemorial.

After acquiring a Grenade and blowing a rockslide out of the way, Sargon journeys to the Uris Desert, where the ancient fortress of Necrozar lies. Inside, Sargon confronts Tyris again, who now has an aura of pure psionic energy around him. Tyris is apparently killed again, giving access to the Plasma Cutter.

Using the Plasma Cutter, Sargon gains access to the drain mechanism in an ancient aqueduct system. At the bottom he battles a giant serpent and finds a Card Key that allows access to the control room of the Slegmine. Once activated, this grants him a Railjet which can travel across the rail network that spans Merkah.

Sargon finds an ancient data repository that tells much of what happened between Dragoon X Omega and Dragoon X Omega II. He proceeds to an ancient Armory, and does battle with a horribly disfigured but much more powerful Tyris. This grants him the EMP, which can short the force field generator in the Ice Lab. However, the Teleporter that lies in its deepest levels requires a power source, which was taken and hidden to disable any more of the Neverborn's legions from coming planetside.

Sargon then journeys east, to the Deadpool. Here robots from the time of Dragoon X Omega stand guard over the tunnel to the Catacombs, where the bodies of those killed in the "Great War" with the Neverborn's creatures were laid to rest. The Source of the Teleporter was also buried with them, but strangely animates their corpses via the energy it emits. Sargon kills a powerful undead soldier name Karrion, and takes the Source back to the Ice Lab and activates the Teleporter.

The Teleporter places Sargon inside a high tech but crumbling city, which houses the Singularity Drive that powers the Ark. As Sargon pushes towards the Drive, he runs into Tyris yet again.

Sargon learns that it is Tyris that is in league with the Neverborn and plans to become his corporeal form; the nanomachines implanted into Nika in Dragoon X Omega were not destroyed, but rendered inert from the shock of the Neverborn's mind being embedded into them upon its death, as the Neverborn was a psychic entity.

The last conscious action of the Neverborn/nanomachine hybrid was to enter the DNA of Nika's first child when she and Duke Argus conceived it, thus passing down copies through all of that child's progeny.

After centuries, the colony of nanomachines inside Tyris turned out to be the one in which the mind of the Neverborn finally became fully aware again, and as it influenced Tyris it seized control of all the other inert nanomachine colonies in the other descendants of Nika's first child; this is the reason most of the Shogonite and the Sianite of Arternus went berserk, but those such as Sargon and the PSI trainers in towns didn't, as they are descended from Nika's second child.

He also learns that the Ark and the Neverborn are connected entities. Tyris/The Neverborn needed the immense energy of the Singularity Drive to allow the nanomachines to reconstruct Tyris's body into its new incarnation, but in doing so they became interdependant: destroying the Neverborn will destroy the Ark along with him.

After defeating the Neverborn, Sargon is killed in the resulting explosion of the Ark, which outshines the sun itself. However, with the Neverborn's nanomachines gone, mankind is in a position to easily defeat what remains of the evil minions the Neverborn spawned. Civilization thrives, and mankind returns to the stars once again. But no matter where in the universe humanity exists, Sargon is never forgotten.

Comparison beetween Final Fantasy
Unlike Dragoon X Omega, which was essentially Dragon Warrior with new aesthetics, Dragoon X Omega II features a world map, enemies, weapons and armor, quests, and spells totally unrecognizable to a Final Fantasy fan. Unlike Final Fantasy, where players controlled four player-chosen characters in battle, Dragoon X Omega II has only the cardinal hero, Sargon.

The game is overall smaller than the original Final Fantasy (by using a Game Genie cheat to walk over normally impassable terrain, a player can discover large unused areas of the map). However, the amount of detail, particularly in the towns and dungeons, far surpasses anything present in Final Fantasy.

It should also be noted that there is no equivalent to sea travel, so there is nothing like the vast expanses of ocean present in FF (Which contributed to a large bulk of the overworld's size).

Sargon has two spells (PSIs) over eight levels (as opposed to three over eight levels in Final Fantasy). He can sprint to speed progress on both the overworld and indoor maps, a feature unavailable in Final Fantasy. The game is somewhat faster paced than Final Fantasy (enemies are stronger, but yield more experience and gold on their defeat), addressing a common criticism of 8-bit-era RPGs.

There are two main optional sidequests (As of v1.26): The first involves finding an item called "Nanite", which when given to a certain robot will give Sargon access to non-Neverborn tainted nano machines. These change his appearance, and allow him to learn the Level 7 and 8 PSIs (Which are also hidden).

The second involves finding a very hidden item early in the game, which leads to a long trade of a series of items, ultimately leading to the aquisition of an item (The AntiRad) that grants Sargon access to an abandoned nuclear plant.

Inside this dungeon, he fights a very difficult, but winnable, battle against a powerful enemy named Pyro, who is far stronger than even the Neverborn itself. Accomplishing this, the player obtains the Omega Rifle and Gamma Armor from Dragoon X Omega, which are now far more powerful: These practically render Sargon unstoppable by any enemy in the game.

Dragoon X Omega II contains some mild language.

Misc
Releases

The development of Dragoon X Omega II was somewhat rocky, due to the sheer amount of work done to complete it. This resulted in several versions being released.

1.0: Intended to be the final release after a series of public betas, but a major bug was discovered with the armor system (i.e., it didn't work) after release.

1.26: Sum of two private betas: Added ability to see items in a chest if Sargon's inventory was full, a new subquest, several new items, bugfixes and balance adjustments.

Easy Type: A massive overhaul to the game balance to bring it more in line with most RPGs. Shared all bugs with v1.26.

1.30:Supercedes both 1.26 and Easy Type (Based on the latter). Fixes bugs and adds animated overworld water graphics.

Final: Fixes several bugs.

Final 2: Fixes all known bugs. Intended to be the final release.

Development
to be added

Easy Mode
Author: Obscurumlux01 aka Daedalus007#6878 @ Discord aka Daedalus007 @ Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Daedalus007/

Changelog:

Stats
 * Doubled all starting stats; Evade is 75% base and Hit is 25% base
 * Max possible HP/MP/stat gains with 'strong' stat gains every level
 * Unlock new 'tier' of spells every 5 levels
 * Max out all magic points at 9 each much sooner than normal; happens around Level 33 with 232425 exp total

EXP
 * Needed XP to next level reduced by 50% for all levels
 * Original required 989641 to get max level; now you need 494821 instead

Costs
 * All costs of buyable items everywhere have been reduced by ~50%

Spells
 * Aura has been granted a narrower range of ~7 variation for healing to make earlier levels more tolerable
 * Auratap has been similarly buffed to have a narrower ~15 range instead of the usual range

Weapons
 * Omega Rifle nerfed to only 75 hit% but now you start with base 25 hit% instead to reduce the frustration of missing too often in early levels

Helms
 * All Helms edited have Evade Penalty scale up from 1 to 5 percent for the first 5 helms, then scale back down from 5 to 1 percent for the last 5 helms
 * Power Helm now resists Poison
 * Zeite Helm now resists Stun
 * Regal Helm now PSI-resistant and resists Instant-Death
 * Spline Helm now resists all PSI and status effects

Armors
 * All Armors prior to Argus Armor now start at 5% Evade Penalty and increase by a steady 2% each time
 * All Armors prior to Argus Armor now start at 5 DEF and increase by a steady 5 DEF each time
 * Power Armor now casts Aura when used in combat
 * Argus Armor buffed to have only 10% Evade Penalty instead of 19% and casts Aura when used in combat
 * Myra Armor buffed to have 128 DEF rather than half the DEF of Argus; now you can use it as a viable clear upgrade
 * Myra Armor was not as 'Psi Resistant' as you would think; it is now resistant to more Psi spells and instant death

Bosses Buffed:

An optional alternate hardtype patch that is poorly-balanced, admitted as such by the author themselves on their Discord server. It includes all the changes from 'Easy Mode' but with certain enemies being much harder than normal. The author of 'Easy Mode' calls it 'Alpha Light' and the Bosses Buffed version as 'Alpha Nightmare'.

Enemies
 * All Bosses, SuperBosses & the Final Boss now have 10x health and increased stats to keep them from being total pushovers; some have also been granted a few new tricks to kill you with
 * Feros, Samael, Baal, and Marduke are now considered minibosses and have been buffed accordingly!
 * Due to possible 'difficulty cliff' with this issue I have made two versions of the patch both with and without the boss buffs; they are both included in the archive so choose your destiny!
 * You gain 10x more EXP and Arca from defeating the harder versions, so it is well worth it!

This 'Easy Mode' patch can be obtained from RomHacking Dot Net.

Reception
Dragoon X Omega II was awarded fourth place in the "Top Ten Best Rom Hacks" by Video Games Are Rad.