Farland Story 4
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Translation by BTAxis (contact at BTAxis@gmx.net)
VERY Special thanks to _Bnu, whithout whose crappy unt.exe I would never have been able to get this done so easily.
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ABOUT THIS TRANSLATION
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Farland Story 4! They said I was mad, but here it is! Actually, they still say I am mad, but that's not the issue.

It is by pure luck that I could hack this game at all. FS4 and FS5 use compressed datafiles. After FS3, I was seriously doubting my chances of getting a shot at this game, but then I happened across a little tool that neatly decompresses and recompresses the files. It works for FS5 too (and incidentally, for Horny Sweeper as well).

FS4 is not all that much different from the previous three games (apart from some technical changes to the engine). The major points of interest are the square playing field (it was hex before), the multiple endings, and most importantly, a serious lack of Arc and co. Man, was I getting tired of him. This time, a young man by name of Phir embarks one a journey to rid the world of a dark and wicked Empire. The story isn't so bad, and although Phir seems to be running all over the world to save his girlfriend (and then save her AGAIN and then AGAIN until the girl gets fed up with it and saves herself), the end of the game more than makes up for this lack of change.

Four games behind me. Nine more available (I don't have FS9, which is for the Sega Saturn only). I won't get bored for a while.

-BTAxis, 05-05-2003

NOTES WHILE PLAYING
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- I seem to have triggered the barcode checking mechanism somehow. I don't know what I did, I don't know how to shut it off again. The protection is flimsy at best however, and hacking it was a piece of cake. Just enter all zeroes.

- You will still need to use a Japanese font to play the game. Some characters are still in doublebyte, and can't be represented in singlebyte (or just look better in doublebyte). This goes for the star symbol, for example.

- Some monster and weapon names, but in particular most terrain names are severely truncated. This has - again -  to do with the names being in the executable, and I can't change the length of the original string. I know it sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it. If you think it sucks, you are cordially invited to do it better.

- More on names. The hero's name is "Phir". Due to the nature of Japanese, the original name can be read as "Fir", "Phir", "Fil" or "Phil". I decided to use "Phir", because "Phil" is what you're called when you work in a cubicle from nine to five, not when you're on a quest to overthrow an evil empire.

- FS4 uses an experience scaling system. What does that mean? It means the the amount of experience you get for damaging or killing a monster is influenced by the difference in levels. If your character is level 20, and the monster is level 15, you will earn less experience than you would have if the monster had been level 25. Keep this in mind when deciding on who should finish off a nearly dead enemy.

- FS4 has multiple endings. Depending on who you choose to participate in the final battle, you will get different ending scenes. Note that there are also combination endings! For instance, if you take either Gras or Wel, they will have individual endings. But if you take them both, they have one together.

- Minor bug in the transition between stages 2 and 3. There is a heart symbol over one of the characters during the cutscene. It isn't supposed to be there, but fortunately it does not affect gameplay. It just looks silly.

- Like FS3, I have increased the difficulty level for FS4. Note that you can revert the game back to most of its original difficulty by not replacing the .unt files. Most. Some enemies are stored in the executables, and you can't revert those back to normal without either using the original executables (which means you're basically back to a Japanese interface) or hacking them back yourself.