7th Dragon

7th Dragon
General
Author	Pokeytax (Geoff Embree)
Type	Translations
Version	1.01
License	CC0 1.0
Last Updated	2014/04/19
Links
Patch & Script files Download
Website

This is a complete English translation for 7th Dragon for Nintendo DS. 7th Dragon was developed in 2009 by imageepoch and Sega by a solid team, including Kazuya Niinou and Reiko Kodama, and features art by Mota and Akifumi Yamamoto and a soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro.

The game blends the challenging combat and character customization of Etrian Odyssey with a traditional overworld map, cast of characters, and towns, reminiscent of the SNES era of RPGs.

It was released near the end of the Nintendo DS’s lifespan, and features colorful graphics and a classic soundtrack. It’s not perfect, and the difficulty is definitely tuned toward a bit of grinding and resource management, but for its target audience, it’s absolutely the best RPG on the Nintendo DS, and one of the best available anywhere.

Installation

You need to obtain an .nds file, the Japanese version of the game; there's an optional version of the patch, 7th Dragon USA, with a lowered encounter rate and field damage.

And there are cheat items available in both versions if you're absolutely fed up with the pain. The goal was to maintain some of the core difficulty while still mitigating aggravation, but since the target audience of the game is masochists, the base patch remains unaltered. If you're savvy enough to transfer your save file, you can switch between the two patched versions as desired.

Game information
Japanese title	セブンスドラゴン
Aliases	Sebunsu Doragon
English title	7th Dragon
ROM information
File	3468 7th Dragon (JP).nds
Region	Japan
Length	134,217,728 bytes (128 MB)
CRC32	507D57AD
SHA-1	EA9D8A10 EA6B0907 0F5805EF 08452D44 EB027D51
MD-5	71B7674D 76694273 497397C8 E6AC63CC

This patch is an .xdelta file, meant to be applied to an .nds version of the game:

• Windows - Use DeltaPatcher or xdelta UI.
• Mac - Use MultiPatch.
• Linux - Use xdelta, or run DeltaPatcher in wine.

User guide

Translation notes

While bits of Japanese text remain in the game, their meaning is generally redundant. For example, the Japanese text in the class selection screen just says "Fighter", "Rogue", "Mage", etc. The full-screen splash screens do provide a quick blurb about the town (e.g. Miross Federation, "Beautiful City").

The Marero and Rushean languages were represented by running original text through a many-to-one cipher in order to give them a distinct feel. One NPC in the game speaks Aizo, which is actually represented by Chinese in the original game. Those characters with font limitations were romanized, as reproducing them will require a lot of work (and truncated and probably totally butchered it, sorry Chinese-speaking players).

Using DeSmuME

The following information is relevant only to DeSmuME; NO$GBA and hardware are fine.

DeSmuME crashes when you land on the central island group. This makes the game unfinishable, because you need to travel there once late in the game to advance the plot.

However, activating the following cheat will allow you to walk directly onto the Forbidden Gate on the central island and enter it directly without triggering a crash. From that point, you can activate Portal Edo yourself and use the Portal system to bypass the crash from then on.

Walkthrough Obstacles (Hold R)
1200a1ba 0000d100
94000130 feff0000
1200a1ba 0000e000
d0000000 00000000

Tips and tricks

A DeSmuME bug may occur when visiting the game's central island (and surrounding small isles), crashing the game. The player needs to visit this island once, and only once, to advance the plot. This patch adds a workaround - reactivating the first nine Portals in the overworld, and then stomping some Bloom, will automatically reactivate the tenth Portal as well. The player can travel through the tenth Portal and advance the plot without ever having to visit the central island. This is a small sequence break that skips a short cutscene.

There are a few skills that make the game much easier to play - the Knight ability Walk Safe, the Samurai ability Evil Eye ("Demonic Countenance"), and some form of MANA regeneration (the Princess's Moonlit Song or the Healer's Craft Mana). A Knight/Samurai/Mage/Healer party is essentially easy mode.

The 7th Dragon USA patch reduces the encounter rate by 50% and damage from Bloom ("Furowaro") by 60%. While that's a huge decrease that neuters the resource management side of the game, it does leave battle difficulty intact while making variant parties more viable (In other words, it's not much more of a cheat than having a Samurai and a Knight in your party).

Additionally, in either version, registering a character with the second Mage appearance and the name "*TLOVE", where * represents the musical note, activates a cheat. The new character comes equipped with items that prevent all random encounters and Bloom damage, which you can transfer to other characters as desired.

There are 28 secret passwords that provide an extra SP, if you're willing to forgo a custom name. Each one is attached to one of the class appearances:

• TST01-04: Fighter
• TST05-08: Knight
• TST09-12: Rogue
• TST13-16: Samurai
• TST17-20: Mage
• TST21-24: Healer
• TST25-28: Princess

The game contains text for a debug room, which has been sloppily translated, but is likely inaccessible without a programming change or hex cheat.

Screenshots

Compatibility

This patch has been tested on PC in DeSmuME and NO$GBA. DeSmuME is graphically superior and recommended.

NO$GBA has a more muted color palette and fails to display some graphical elements rendered through the 3D engine, but does not have the same crashpoint.

Known issues

It appears to have a nasty crash late in the game which may prevent completion of the Japanese version, but a cheat code can be entered in the emulator allowing you to advance.

Changelog

1.01 Crisis Averted

• Third release 4/13/2014. Eliminates the DeSmuME workaround.
• The Portal Edo workaround was removed; abuse can make the game unfinishable.
• Existing cheat codes are sufficient to reach the Forbidden Gate in DeSmuME.
• If using DeSmuME, see Section 4, "DeSmuME Crash".

1.00 No Joke

• Second release 4/6/2014. Game seems to be stable, and no major bugs have been reported.
• The USA patch encounter rate has been bumped up to 50% of normal.
• Map labels no longer misaligned but still kinda ugly.
• A few botched translations fixed (notably some Empress of Grief quest items).

0.90 April Fool's

• Initial release 4/1/2014. Not tested as thoroughly as I would like, because it's a long game, but it's good enough to ship. I would treat this as an open beta; feel free to wait a week to see if any significant kinks remain.

Credits

• Special thanks to my wife.
• Thanks to Gemini for releasing the primary font for this project, Melissa, a lovely 2bpp font well-suited to the spirit of the game.
• NO$GBA and Crystal Tile 2 were critical tools for this project. Thanks are due to Martin Korth and angel-team for creating these. Additionally, thanks to FAST6191 for translating Crystal Tile 2 into English along with cory1492, and for his help with forum questions.
• Thanks to all fan translators, and thanks in particular to Absolute Zero Translations for releasing an English patch for Tales of the Tempest on April 1, 2013.
• Thanks to the existing English resources on this game, which were a great aid in playtesting and attempting to run down all possible lines.
• Thanks to Archeia, who found a way around the DeSmuME crash using only existing cheat codes and allowed me to remove a workaround, which has given some people issues.
• And, apologies to fan retranslators and Atlus USA.

External links

• Author's website - https://cavespeak.org/
• Romhacking.net - https://www.romhacking.net/translations/2176/