Suikoden II Issue: Tenzan Pass Enemies
Late in Suikoden II, you can access the Tenzan Pass area again, which is where the whole game began. Along its trails, you can find two enemies. The first is the Minotaur and the second is the Magus. Both are more powerful versions of enemies encountered earlier. However, in the North American version, both have names that were not translated from the original Japanese encoding. The later European versions fixed the translation issue. Another, less obvious issue, is that the area actually contains a third enemy, a more powerful Chimera, that is never seen. This is theenemy that drops the Cyclone Rune, which is otherwise a unique item in the game. Other enemies drop the remaining second-tier elemental runes (Rage, Flowing, Thunder, and Mother Earth), and it had long been a mystery why nothing dropped the second-tier Wind Rune.
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Hunting the Tenzan Chimera |
Cause
The cause of the translation issue is immediately apparent. The reason the Chimera is not accessible is a little more difficult. Its data is complete, and the game can spawn it without issue. It is also present in three of the enemy formations defined in its area (see
CDROM/010_ARA/VA11.BIN on the game disc). Despite this, it can never be encountered because, of the ten slots allocated for random encounters, none of them references a formation with the Chimera in it. There are 9 formations in total, and there are four duplicate references to formations containing only the Magus and Minotaur.
Fix
For the translation issue, replacing the name strings is easy enough, but it would make for a code that's a little too lengthy, so only patches will offer this fix. It's also a simple matter to replace three of the formation pointers in the encounter array with references to the Chimera's formations.
GameShark Codes
Encounter Chimeras in Tenzan Pass
(North American Version)
D01363EC 6328
801363D8 637C
D01363EC 6328
801363E0 6398
D01363EC 6328
801363EC 63B4
Patch
See the Patch Files page for your version.