Action Edition brings a fresh experience to lovers of Aidyn Chronicles, an RPG released on the Nintendo 64 in 2001. Using the power of hex editing, Action Edition is a mod of the game that fixes sluggish combat, modifies the game’s pace, and adjusts the economy.

Ultimately, the game plays faster, is more dangerous, and feels more intuitive.

Combat

The number one driving factor to make the mod was to resolve the awful pace of combat. I found it extremely frustrating for characters to miss the majority of their attacks. Enemies missed just as often, and a long adventure game was made all that much longer by the low accuracy of the game’s weapons. This one fix drastically improves the game in my opinion, and since sluggish combat is one of the most mentioned complaints in the reviews the game has had since it launched, I can conclude I’m not the only one who shares this opinion.

Aside from significantly increasing the accuracy of the game’s weapons, combat was also modified in several ways.

Enemy damage, abilities, and stats were carefully considered and tweaked to provide a more consistent challenge throughout the game.

Weapons, Shields, and Items

The weapons, armor, shields, and accessories in the game have had significant changes in name, purpose, effect, and effectiveness.

Bugs and Exploits

The game has numerous well-known bugs. Most are not fixable through simple hex editing and will remain unresolved until the community is able to successfully recompile the game. Yet I have patched a couple of really bad ones, such as Sholeh losing her intelligence. It will no longer drop to 3 when you reload the game after adding her to the party. The alchemy free money hack, in which a player could sell certain potions back to the shop for much more than the cost of the ingredients purchased to make the potion has been fixed. Alchemy costs and requirements have been carefully balanced to avoid economic exploits like this.

Economy

The economy in the base game is pretty bad. Without using the alchemy exploit mentioned above, a player would still be rolling in a mountain of cash throughout the game. The amount of money players of Action Edition will have has dropped significantly by reducing how much loot is dropped by enemies, reducing how much gold things fetch when sold, and increasing how much things cost to buy.

Shops

The shops in the game have experienced a very significant overhaul, with each shop’s aesthetic and location being used to guide which items should be available at the vendor. I haven’t done a formal count, but I would guess that the shops in Action Edition offer about 3x more content on average than the base game. This is a huge improvement because the shops in the base game often felt very disappointing, and in many cases hindered gameplay. For example, a player may desperately need “reagents” to make potions and cast spells, but can’t find any as is the case with the last city in the game, Ugarit. During a period in the game when you’re using magic and alchemy more than ever, and therefore needing reagents (Herbs, Spices, and Gemstones) more than ever, Ugarit offers none. This is a city with 6 shops, several with an aesthetic that looks like they grow herbs and nearly all with gemstones floating everywhere, and not a single one sells an herb or a gemstone!

Now with Action Edition, if a shop has weapons on the wall, it will sell weapons. If there are gemstones and potions everywhere in the room, the shop owner will sell gemstones and potions. If the shop is in a library, the shop owner will sell magic scrolls and maps. It’s all very intuitive and makes sense with the way the game presents itself.

Magic Availability

In Aidyn Chronicles, there are four schools of magic: Naming, Elemental, Star, and Necromancy. Each character in the game may only learn magic spells from whichever school of magic they’re assigned. There is technically a 5th type, neutral, which all characters may learn. Alaron, the main character, is able to learn all of the spells.

In the base game, the way these schools are distributed among the characters is a little boring, with Elemental for example being overrepresented, and 4 of the 14 playable characters unable to learn anything. In Action Edition, two of the characters who couldn’t use magic now can, and they use Elemental. Two characters that could use Elemental now use Star and Necromancy. This spreads the magic out better and gives players more options when constructing their party.

Experience

The experience required to level up stats and abilities has been modified significantly to help the game’s pacing. It was rather easy to max out all of the character stats (Intelligence, Willpower, Dexterity, Strength, Endurance, and Stamina) by the middle of the game.

The experience cost for upgrading stats and certain skills has increased, while less useful skills have had their requirements reduced.

 

Overall, Action Edition transforms a very slow and very easy game, into a fast challenging game. I’m happy with the result!