KYUUYAKU MEGAMI TENSEI II - CATHEDRAL OF DARKNESS 0.7

This is a modification made for the Megami Tensei II half of Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei. It drastically changes the results of fusion: No longer can the player fuse NEUTRAL demons such as Fairies. Instead, most fusions will produce EVIL demons such as Jaki, though some (in particular triple fusions) will still produce GOOD demons such as Deities.

NEUTRAL demons are still available by encountering them on the field and recruiting them to your cause. If you're having trouble finding a particular NEUTRAL demon, try fusing Elements to rank another one up.

I originally started making this hack out of a fascination with the inaccessible (and largest) set of demons, because I pondered what an EVIL-only challenge run would look like, and because I really love Megami Tensei II.

As a bit of advice, expect to be using glass cannons: demons designed to deal damage even with the high Defence of the human characters, then die after a couple rounds of combat. The EVIL demons make certain strategies, such as using status effect skills to soften up random encounters or Makaranda to drain boss MP, more viable, while others, such as healing through incoming damage in battle, are harder with them by your side.

As of this version, the layout of the fusion table is unchanged, so the same pair of clans will always produce the same clan of demon. For example, Fairy and Jirae produces Wilder; as such, the first fusion available to players will generally be the lowest-level Wilder.

The following short table illustrates what alignment effectively means in this hack:

Alignment	Encounter?	Recruit?	Fuse?
GOOD		No		No		Yes
NEUTRAL		Yes		Yes		No
EVIL		Yes		No		Yes

To match most of these these changes, some pieces of text have been changed, particularly the fusion expert in the hotel in Haneda.

The changes in this hack may affect the Megami Tensei half of Kyuuyaku, but I haven't tested it enough to say if and how they do.

INSTALLATION: This is a simple .ips patch generated with RHDN's creator mode tools. It should be easy to apply. It is designed for the English language patched version of the game.

KNOWN ISSUES: Sing, Last Resort and Deathtouch do not seem to work for the player. Curse may not -- though access to EVIL demons provides access to Mudodyne, which is much better at the cost of MP. Energy Drain doesn't, but it wouldn't affect the enemies anyway. A major factor is likely that these skills do not have a string of text attached to them for use on the player's side. However, the Eyes skills have associated text, so they *may* work, and Poison Gas *does* work.

The changes made seem to prevent fusion in the Megami Tensei half of the game, as the game won't tabulate the demons you've recruited. I could probably fix this by cleaning up the changes that allow fusion using EVIL demons in MT2, but this hack isn't made for Megami Tensei. For one thing, the majority of demons in MT1 are playable, while EVIL demons are the majority in MT2. For another, the EVIL demons in MT1 are generally cannon fodder with uninspired designs rather than demons worth using in their own right. A future version might fix this, but don't count on it. You can use an older version of this hack without the same changes (though the results will be poor in both games), play MT1 on a clean ROM, or just look at it as a special challenge!

There is no Famicom MT2 version of this hack. Not a real issue, but I wanted to make one. The problem is that changing the table of highest-level demons, which is present in both versions, doesn't affect the results of fusion. So a hack of the Famicom version would require different changes rather than importing the ones I've made here.

FUSION TIPS: In general, the most accessible clans are Night, Ghost and Wilder. Foul can be made using combinations that normally make Yoma, while Jaki can be made using combinations that normally make Beast. Refer to a fusion chart for the vanilla game for a bit more advice. From there, Ghost and Wilder together can make Femme. Kaiju (see below) and Wilder can make Spirit.

SPECIAL FUSIONS: All of the special fusions from the base game work, so make Divines through triple fusion to your heart's content. There are also a few "special fusions" that I rigged up to replace some easily-accessible fusions that originally resulted in Tyrants. You may also get these results from combining demons of the same two clans listed below.

Jaki Orc + Fairy Pixie = Vile Sargatanas
Wilder Garm + Fairy Apsaras = Kaijuu Wyvern