Game Genie with Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends

You may have remembered I posted a guide on this blog on how to mod your weapons in Dynasty Warriors 8 via Windows software Bruteforce Save Data.

Mod?! What a crime, you say! But nah, this came into existence dominantly because the majority of people, including myself, absolutely dreaded the awful weapon tempering system in the game originally. Modding weapons was therefore a way to relieve yourself (your temper, not your pants) of this agony and have some actual fun with the game once again. It was also useful for test purposes, e.g. testing out different element builds.

Albeit the weapon tempering has gotten much better and almost perfected in Xtreme Legends, people who have used it have been kind of spoiled, apparently. They desired to mod their weapons (and other bits) in Xtreme Legends as well, even though the only thing that urges any modding now is the endless grinding and farming the game requires.

I have to maybe pause and say that some things are better left in secret. KOEI has caught onto our shameful tactics and in defense have double layer encrypted their game saves starting from DW8:XL and onwards. This means that Bruteforce Save Data can no longer be used to decrypt the game saves in order to modify their data. Even worse, the developer of Bruteforce Save Data has withdrawn development of the software entirely and pulled it off from his own website. Oddly, I still can't find reasoning of the sudden departure, but this may potentially mean the road will look very bleak for support of newer games, even for mere profile resigning.

Nevertheless, double layer encryption is not foul proof. It can still be destroyed via third party devices such as Game Genie (English) and Cyber Save Editor (Japanese). Yes, Game Genie still exists and not a mere distant memory from the 90s. I know for a fact that Cyber Save Editor has added support for the latest KOEI games such as DW8:XL and SW4 (as documented at savedata.jp). These are of course the Japanese versions. There is still uncertainty that English versions of these games are supported in Cyber Save Editor (Japanese do play our games too, ya know?!)

Anyway, onto the most important part—viewer T Blipz has written the following message to me through e-mail and declares I should let everyone know of this. Hence, I shall not let him down.

He states that basically Game Genie can now decrypt DW8:XL and allow hex editing:

Therefore, if you want to continue to mod stuff in DW8:XL, then Game Genie (English games) or Cyber Save Editor (Japanese games) will be your only bets. The best thing is that Game Genie is a mere 30 bucks, compared to $50-$100 for Cyber Save Editor.

Now stop asking me how to mod stuff in DW8:XL. :) And I have no experience in either of these and never used them, so please don't ask me how to use them. Besides, I believe there are already a few guides on the internet for both.

Finally, I wonder what KOEI will do now knowing of this evil I just unleashed through the bag... *Gulp*

tl&dr: DW8:XL cannot be used with Bruteforce Save Data; however, you can now overcome that with Game Genie.