Hacking Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity - English Translation

[Weyu]

Dios is my favourite boss in the game probably, for various reasons. His sheer size gives the fight an air of grandeur; it really feels you are battling against something powerful.
And as mentioned, he moves around a lot so it's a very action packed fight (compare it to something such as dragons who are mostly stationary when not in flight). It is also quite a player skill based fight, because there are many targets to hit and you have to aim in order to hit the right ones to deal maximum damage, which can get quite tricky because of his movements and also because you have to watch out for his attacks at the same time.

Speaking of his attacks, another thing is that he absolutely destroys people who don't move or block properly, so when you're first starting out against him the fight can be over within seconds.
All his little attacks like his paw swipes or the short hops he does can disrupt you and cause you to lose your chain, and the bigger attacks generally have several variations to keep you on your toes. Thus mastering the fight and becoming able to farm him easily on Infinity rank makes it mentally an extremely rewarding experience.
I remember when playing on the JP server, most people were generally very good and social, but that particular fight gave even good players some trouble, it was amusing to see that I was often the last person standing or the only one to finish the boss alive, since I studied his patterns so much.

In my opinion, it's a boss fight done just right, because he is hard but extremely fair.

 

[ineedPSP2i]

I don't have a problem with Dios himself. I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying, the fight really does feel like a good finale and is a spectacle once you see how small you are compared to him. Finding the heads isn't a problem either and it keeps things fresh as you go moving from target to target, until you finally weaken him enough to where the stage transforms.

To me, the real problem lies in simply just the combat system itself. The only way to do any damage in the PSP games is to get a chain going. This is why having all these bosses that try their hardest to escape you kind of kills the fun (for hunters at least, I'm sure rangers and forces have an easier time). In PSU, once something evaded or knocked you back, it was no big deal, because you got right back up and could start just attacking a PA without worrying about hitting it until you can do any real damage to it. Or lets say you're hitting a bil de vear and it jumps away or starts spinning. That 10 chain you had and were ready to finish with a pa? Well mash square again until its back. Now note that I don't have a problem with the chain system itself and find that it keeps most engagements exciting, but for certain enemies that are difficult to chain, the quality of the fighting goes down. All I can say is thank god for foverse.

 

[Weyu]

I used a Soul Taker rank 16 axe on my Hunter with a mostly offense focused setup, IIRC axes can hit 2 of the 3 upper body parts with the spinning PA, so he dies quite quickly.
Did you know that a new feature in Infinity allows you to set your partners to not break chains? With that you can get your partners to build chains pretty easily so you can focus more on doing damage yourself.

The best is to setup either your other player characters with a Shadoog and a Whip/Wand or similar, or get someone to share their support character with you with such a setup.
That way they generate chains very quickly, especially if you have three supporters like that, so it's not that big a deal if you lose your chain.

 

[Mage-Andrey]

Also, building chains has diminishing returns, if you check the formula. I find dealing 2 hits, following with combo-breaker for 200% damage is enough in most cases, especially versus things that move constantly (like de-ragans head, when you're shooting). Unless finisher takes longer time to execute, like full blade destruction, i don't bother. Also, there are techs that help build high enough chains, like sa-foie (the spinning fireballs) for melee, or sabarta / sazonde. Don't know how high is rate of fire of opaopa r-mag in infinity.
Most of the time surviving is more important than high chain building.

 

[Fefo]

Opaopa should be like on PSP2 (3 quick shots?) and not like PSP, where it was called OPOP and killed everything by itself.

As a solo player I played just like Andrey said: quick combo then quick finish, like twin sabers combo then Blade Destruction (the finisher is a good way to get killed) or knuckles one-two then shoryuken spam. Efficient, albeit not very PP-friendly. But now with increased PP regen and parry skills this is a minor issue.

I also dislike the chain mechanic; causing 5 billion damage after 2 minutes of strafing & shooting for scratch damage is silly. Sure, the PA spam gameplay on PSP was also ridiculous, but these 2 fused would be ok to me: no chains, small, shared PP poll, lesser PP regen, no PP Chargers, PSP's PA damage %s back. Normal attacks wouldn't be useless, as they restore your PP, and PAs would be for damage bursts. Of course, stats should be tweaked to not slow the gameplay.

---

lol, looking for a Dios gameplay I found someone:

 

[ineedPSP2i]

I used a Soul Taker rank 16 axe on my Hunter with a mostly offense focused setup, IIRC axes can hit 2 of the 3 upper body parts with the spinning PA, so he dies quite quickly.
Did you know that a new feature in Infinity allows you to set your partners to not break chains? With that you can get your partners to build chains pretty easily so you can focus more on doing damage yourself.

The best is to setup either your other player characters with a Shadoog and a Whip/Wand or similar, or get someone to share their support character with you with such a setup.
That way they generate chains very quickly, especially if you have three supporters like that, so it's not that big a deal if you lose your chain.

Say whaaat? Which number is it to tell bots to stop using PAs? If I want to get a chain going fast, I put on foverse and switch to knuckles or twin claws (or sword if theres a mob). I love axes and use them a lot now but he is quite jumpy so I tend to stick with blade destruction, dus skaad, or spinning break, since it can be executed faster.

Also, building chains has diminishing returns, if you check the formula. I find dealing 2 hits, following with combo-breaker for 200% damage is enough in most cases, especially versus things that move constantly (like de-ragans head, when you're shooting). Unless finisher takes longer time to execute, like full blade destruction, i don't bother. Also, there are techs that help build high enough chains, like sa-foie (the spinning fireballs) for melee, or sabarta / sazonde. Don't know how high is a rate of fire of opaopa r-mag in infinity.
Most of the time surviving is more important than high chain building.

Opaopa should be like on PSP2 (3 quick shots?) and not like PSP, where it was called OPOP and killed everything by itself.

As a solo player I played just like Andrey said: quick combo then quick finish, like twin sabers combo then Blade Destruction (the finisher is a good way to get killed) or knuckles one-two then shoryuken spam. Efficient, albeit not very PP-friendly. But now with increased PP regen and parry skills this is a minor issue.

I also dislike the chain mechanic; causing 5 billion damage after 2 minutes of strafing & shooting for scratch damage is silly. Sure, the PA spam gameplay on PSP was also ridiculous, but these 2 fused would be ok to me: no chains, small, shared PP poll, lesser PP regen, no PP Chargers, PSP's PA damage %s back. Normal attacks wouldn't be useless, as they restore your PP, and PAs would be for damage bursts. Of course, stats should be tweaked to not slow the gameplay.

Thats usually where I break it to on some bosses. 2-5 hits. I can see r-mags having more use in the PSP games but I can't seem to get into any single handed weapons. BD with the hyaaka swords destroys the PP bar this time around though, and I thought it was bad in PSP2 .

I guess I'm still used to PSU. After years of hitting 5k a stab with the second part of dus majarra, or shredding bosses with 10k+ hits with anga jabroga, or cutting through mobs with assault crush, without worrying about chains, its hard to adjust, even with hundreds of hours in PSP2. I miss hitting big numbers with every hit! I have also seen Blades video to see more on Dios and am now tempted to make one.

 

[Mage-Andrey]

Well, regarding hits in psp - they were still useful. I used normal hit, then PA with right timing for +50% damage, then pa stage 2 with right timing again for another boost, but yeah, you could just spam
As for opaopa in psp - for forces there were better things - Shag Hejiz (the 5 bullet obliderator). Bunch of those with all the elements out-dps'ed opaopa, and were the reason why psycho wand is just a useless stick in psp. Shag Hejiz + Motav + Newman (or even human) Force = mass destruction. Acromasters were amazing with those r-mags too. To the point it was irrelevant that humans/newmans did not get photon blasts or good LIGHT techs.

 

[Fefo]

Elemental Shag Hejiz are almost broken, there was 5 on every suggested build. Opaopa is just easier to find, has better functional range and a neutral element for "small" but dependable damage.

They are far less insane on PSP2 and the guard/parry mechanics make them less absolute. Dogde being more spammable on PSP2i kinda balances it.

 

[Weyu]

Say whaaat? Which number is it to tell bots to stop using PAs?

IIRC it's the second last one on the bottom at the command list, but it's been a couple years since I played this.

 

[Atlas_Noire]

bumping on this thread.

I'm just wondering about one thing, what's the real use of live tickets that your support characters give you?
I know that you'll receive them from your support characters after a few missions, and they come in different colors denoted by the kanji in the end. You receive a different color depending on your support character's race
For what purpose do you use live tickets for? They're definitely not for trade missions, so are they required to play some secret missions?

 

[ineedPSP2i]

IIRC it's the second last one on the bottom at the command list, but it's been a couple years since I played this.

Close, its the fifth one. Goes "fuoro-shifui" I think? Anyway that is another much appreciated update.

bumping on this thread.

I'm just wondering about one thing, what's the real use of live tickets that your support characters give you?
I know that you'll receive them from your support characters after a few missions, and they come in different colors denoted by the kanji in the end. You receive a different color depending on your support character's race
For what purpose do you use live tickets for? They're definitely not for trade missions, so are they required to play some secret missions?

Those live tickets you get from the music named Clad 6 tactical missions. http://psp2.psupedia.info/Special%3ASearch/Tactical_missions.html#Clad_6

Once you get 1 of each ticket, you can do Ivory Concert, which is based off the World of Illusion event mission from the Winter Carnival event from PSU. Its a survival mission, low HP/high ATP, boosted drop rate etc. Haven't done it in PSP, but in PSU, it was a very fun and tense mission.

I do wish they put MAG/MAG+ and some of the Protectors/Anniversary Festa missions in.

 

[CyberAly]

I just wanted to say thanks to everybody involved in translating this. I never imagined that people would still be working on this so many years after the game's release. The fans truly make up for the fact that SEGA hates westerners.

I'm assuming I can use Save Game Deemer or something to import my data from the PAL version of Phantasy Star Portable 2 and continue the story? But the story's not translated yet...

 

[xBladeM6x]

---

lol, looking for a Dios gameplay I found someone:

You just so happened to post my video. My other one being this one. Surprisingly, these two videos are some of the most viewed of the game on Youtube. I plan to make more once the translation is released.

 

[Zio_Infinity]

Dios is my favourite boss in the game probably, for various reasons. His sheer size gives the fight an air of grandeur; it really feels you are battling against something powerful.
And as mentioned, he moves around a lot so it's a very action packed fight (compare it to something such as dragons who are mostly stationary when not in flight). It is also quite a player skill based fight, because there are many targets to hit and you have to aim in order to hit the right ones to deal maximum damage, which can get quite tricky because of his movements and also because you have to watch out for his attacks at the same time.

Speaking of his attacks, another thing is that he absolutely destroys people who don't move or block properly, so when you're first starting out against him the fight can be over within seconds.
All his little attacks like his paw swipes or the short hops he does can disrupt you and cause you to lose your chain, and the bigger attacks generally have several variations to keep you on your toes. Thus mastering the fight and becoming able to farm him easily on Infinity rank makes it mentally an extremely rewarding experience.
I remember when playing on the JP server, most people were generally very good and social, but that particular fight gave even good players some trouble, it was amusing to see that I was often the last person standing or the only one to finish the boss alive, since I studied his patterns so much.

In my opinion, it's a boss fight done just right, because he is hard but extremely fair.

Dios is the form that Dark Falz deserved in the PSU universe. After the fiasco with the PSU Dark Falz (De Rol Le and Dulk Fakis pathetic reskins) this is what a final battle must be. Epic and impressive monster with good battle music and a good story.

 

[ineedPSP2i]

Yeah, damn I'm getting nostalgia from MAG where we finally got to see Dark Falz...er Dark Fish we all used to say. That was very disappointing. Dulk Fakis alone would be a decent DF and I feel like they wanted it to resemble it PSO DF in terms of scale and some physical similarities, but they just named him Dulk Fakis instead of Dark Falz for some reason, and then when AOTI came around, realized they wanted Dark Falz and then just reskinned him in there. Dios is cool, except when he jumps across the map after hitting him once for 50 damage.

By the way, does anyone know if rare missions got infinity ranks? I've been trying to get some rare missions on infinity ranks but have yet to come across one. Did a few S runs and got PSO areas and Firebreak missions, what luck!

 

[Deleted User]

Drop wise, there's been only little changes from PSP2 to PSP2I. And yes, PSP2pedia is still 100% compatible with PSP2I. I also happen to have found this spreadsheet lying around: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AneZiaAiYedKdFM4Y2lhdVQ1dEFzSXRUTVU4UmFRU1E&gid=0
It only translates weapon names, shield weaves/, modules and trade items. It also includes some illustrations of the weapons including the DLC ones.

I put a lot of hard work into making that spreadsheet, I'm really glad that more people than myself are making good use of it. I also have a downloadable version of it that I made in Excel if anyone wants it.

 

[Shy_Wolfess]

Okay, I would desperately love to help if I can. I'm not good at translating but I am great at writing and programs and stuff. I really really want this translated just like I wanted .hack//Link translated. I got my wish on the second one but this one has been in the making for four years and with SEGA being a little douchy about Phantasy Star games coming to the US, *cough* PSO2 *cough* Phantasy Star Nova *cough* I really want to get the expanded story of Phantasy Star Portable 2 due to the fact that PSP2 is the game that launched my love of Phantasy Star.

 

[Hargrun]

Okay, I would desperately love to help if I can. I'm not good at translating but I am great at writing and programs and stuff. I really really want this translated just like I wanted .hack//Link translated. I got my wish on the second one but this one has been in the making for four years and with SEGA being a little douchy about Phantasy Star games coming to the US, *cough* PSO2 *cough* Phantasy Star Nova *cough* I really want to get the expanded story of Phantasy Star Portable 2 due to the fact that PSP2 is the game that launched my love of Phantasy Star.

Just curious... Could you write a program that can convert PSP2 US/EU save datas to PSP2i?

 

[JamRules]

Technically it's possible to decrypt savedata.bin using game keys for each region
-NPJH50043.bin - JP
-ULUS10529.bin - US
-ULES01439.bin - EUR

And then re-encrypt SDDATA.bin using the PARAM.SFO of the desired region (possibly right?)

Couple of different programs claim to do this but best bet might be to nab the source from PPSSPP
(Which I assume handles the encryption, but haven't checked)

Would be very cool to see someone do it

Shy_Wolfess

Main things left to do that I haven't started yet include
-.pmf movies
maybe not exactly programming, but the game uses softsubs which I haven't seen before

-nmll/nbl second type compression
no idea on this, it might be possible if you can recognize the format
file format is discussed here
http://psumods.co.uk/archives/wiki/files%3Anbl.html

 

[hoshea]

Just curious... Could you write a program that can convert PSP2 US/EU save datas to PSP2i?

actually, i played my PSP2 US save data on PSPi, you just need to rename the US save data folder as a JP, then import the save data in-game, i did this on PPSSPP though, dunno about real PSP.