Easy mode hacks for RPGs

[Mechatiger891]

I crave a power fantasy right about now. I want there to be more easy mode hacks for RPGs! I especially want super easy mode hacks where the main protagonist is stupidly overpowered and all the enemies don't stand a chance against him! It'll make the game a breeze and requires little to no grinding at all. I wish there was an easy mode added to all the PlayStation final fantasies. I don't want a brutal mode hack for an RPG, I want a stupid easy mode hack for an RPG!

[FAST6191]

This is usually the sorts of thing cheats, save editors, game editors and more can make for you and quite trivially. Final Fantasy can be a bit more tricky for cheats (granted I have not cheated on the PS1 versions, usually more GBA stuff) but chances are cheats already exist.
You can go the other way and do things like set enemy HP to 1 or something ( https://web.archive.org/web/20080309104350/http://etk.scener.org/?op=tutorial works for making enemy health cheats, https://doc.kodewerx.org/hacking_psx.html if you want PS1 specific cheat encodings) with slightly more advanced cheats (enemy HP location will be found in memory, most times it will be a slot for each and same between battles but could be something else) as you instead want to check to see if the health is greater than 1 and then set it to 1 but this can also trigger whatever low health behaviours the enemies might have so is not ideal. Possibly also set any stats involving evasion or defence or attack to prevent them from hurting you.

Flick stats, gold, experience, items for end game items... to max and gongratulations you likely now have game journalist mode in your game. You might equally be able to edit item stats in various editors so could turn the starter dagger into the best weapon in the game (some games will scale requirements with weapon stats but in those cases you have the other options).

[Timfollery]

If you're willing to do part of the work by yourself, you can use tools like table finders to search for things like HP or ATK values and change it to 9999, 255, whatever the highest values should be.

RPGs usually have programming structures that aren't really easy to get by. But if you're feeling lucky, you could get a "CoolRPG (hard mode hack)" rom and a "CoolRPG (standard game)" rom, compare them on a hex editor to look for what the hard mode hacker has changed, and see if you can revert the changes to make the game easier instead.

Another option is "assembling" a custom hack using codes and resources you can find around. For example (I'm giving a random example, I don't even know if this specific game would work with this method or not), if you can't find a "Panzer Dragoon Saga: Easy Mode" hack, you can try to create one yourself. Study codes for game genie, gameshark, action replay, whatever is available, see how you can "hard code" them in the PDS iso (not every code conversion is feasible, as a lot of them just write constantly to RAM in a way that's not stably translated to the game code itself) and finally create the iso with your patches applied to test it. If it works and you're gonna make it public, don't forget to credit your sources!