Nepster's general feedbackTeach that scanning does give infos on resistances to statuses, too.
Teach how to use the bombs and present packages. Looking under "Theft" isn't something very intuitive.
Don't have long talks before a boss fight (especially the tough ones with Coda). If one has to repeat the fight, one isn't interested in the talk any more. So allow to go back and save between the talk and the battle.
The enging sometimes demands more confirmation than necessary. Switch for example needs a confirmation, though it's a free action and one can undo it if necessary.
Agree on all four of these.
For the third one, I'm not sure what would be the best way to achieve this; putting an interruption where the player can backtrack and save feels like it breaks the flow of the scene. Perhaps a "skip cutscene" option is the best solution.
The last one is basically a side effect of trying to force RMVXA's engine to do stuff it was never intended to be able to do.
Why is it impossible to flee from boss fights, especially the ones you can see coming? This only requires you to replay parts again or to backtrack often to save crystals. On the other hand, I feel that one shouldn't be able to escape from a Monster-in-a-Box.
I'm actually surprised to hear monster-in-a-box is escapable, I would've thought it'd be the kind of thing I wouldn't make escapable. Not being able to escape from bosses is fairly standard for RPGs.
Some of the rarer random encounters could come more often. I never had the Treevil in the forest, or the Cuboid in the Haunted Manison, for example.
I could swear the Treevil occurs as a monster-in-a-box. It was intended that some encounters are extremely rare, though.
It's pretty weird that you can stack a HP+10% and a HP+5%, but not two HP+10%.
I think for the most part, it makes sense that you can't stack abilities. The +??%s are a special case where maybe it doesn't make sense, but imagine being able to stack four HP+100%s... (yes, those exist, at least in the code; not sure if any are accessible in-game). It would be a total gamebreaker if the enemies weren't adjusted for the possibility, and basically just reduce it to "grind until you can afford four of them for every character" if the enemies were adjusted for it - unless they just became extremely reliant on proportional damage attacks, which isn't ideal either.
A lot of items can only be sold by 1GP, which is annoying: Blue Magic learning items, Turbo Boost, Vampire Fangs, ...
This is a fairly standard RPG mechanic. The idea is basically "you can get rid of them if you want to, but you won't make money off them". Perhaps this could be removed (and the items just made unsellable) with the addition of a way to simply discard unwanted items. Although... (game mechanics spoilers which neither Proxima nor Nepster would be aware of yet)
At level 30 Alicia can learn an ability "Mix", which can use any two items (excluding equipment and rare items). Of course, some are more useful for this than others.
As Proxima already mentioned, enemies still casting while having no MP themselves is weird. Especially as this makes Osmosis pretty much useless.
Yes, this is something I think needs reconsidering. There are both things I do like and things I don't like about this system. Osmosis isn't completely useless though - it can be very useful if you need to top up some MP. This is somewhat negated by the frequency of save crystals, which also recover your party. My thoughts on how to deal with this: Allow saving everywhere, make the crystals rarer and solely for recovery - and perhaps either a limited number of uses, or have a "recharge" period between uses. (I did also consider the idea of removing them altogether in favor of just making Tomes a bit more common, but the difference is that Tomes can be used anywhere (as long as it's outside battle), whereas a healing crystal would only be in one specific place.)
Nepster's segment-by-segment feedbackWorks fine. The "Red means danger" hint isn't needed - let the player figure this out for themselves.
Even with this hint, some people have been unable to figure it out. :/
The solid plants are annoying, because I cannor reliably separate them from non-solid ones.
Agree.
I felt cheated that the very fast ghost has no impact on the story at all, even for later. That was disappointing, especially given the amount of work I put into talking to it.
ERATICATOR: Good optional boss, but I would let the guard clarify that everything beyond him is totally optional. I took his warnings merely as "Do some preparation before coming here".
These are good points. Though I do like to put in things that seem relevant but aren't, just to keep the player on their toes.
But this ghost was probably a bit excessive.
CRAIG & BRIANNA I: Not a total push-over, but one of the easier boss fights.
This is not a common reaction to this fight, if anything, common feedback is that it's too hard (though I personally think it's just right).
There should have been a save crystal at the north end of the village. Currently one has to walk too much. The Alphas were interesting enemies, but the distinction between Ice, Thunder and Water could be clearer. It took my black mage two wrong tries to determine their elements.
Regarding the save crystal, that would become irrelevant with a save-anywhere system. Agree that the Alphas could use more visual differentiation.
PYRAMID: Easy, but probably intended as a intro boss. But I haven't up to now found any other boss changing their elements, so this into feels a bit weird.
Illusiona, Enchanter and Dark Illusiona can also change their elements (though since elemental spells aren't the only practical way to damage them, nor is attention drawn to it, it isn't as noticeable). It isn't particularly common, but Pyragon is not unique in having this ability.
TRANSIENT: I came there as level 8 and needed some grinding to level 9 to beat this boss, even though I already learned the breaker-attack for one fighter. One of the main difficulties is that the Trauma attack feels like a magical one, not as something doing physical damage. So it took a very long time for me to find out that I can reduce the damage by defending.
One more comment regarding the Transient fight: Someone mentiones directly before the fight, that the Weakening Sand is designed specifically for the Transients. That let me believe for a long time, that no other enemy is affected by Weaken and Meltdown. So you might reformulate that part a bit.
Beating it at level 9 is quite an achievement; even my personal best isn't much lower than that (and keep in mind I know (or at least, knew at the time) every vunerability it has, every detail about it's attack pattern, everything that could be obtained nearby that might help, etc).
I see where you're coming from that Trauma looks like a magical attack, though it is explicitly pointed out by one of the party members that it's physical and that Defend can reduce it (and that Pulse is magical and Defend will not work, for that matter).
Regarding the Softening Sands, I see your point there, especially since this is the first time Weaken and Meltdown are seen by most players.
Nice layout of Saria. The parting with Amanda felt like I would reunite with her pretty soon, so I left her pretty good abilities, which I missed later on.
Yeah, I get what you mean here. I'm thinking the best solution is, rather than offering an option to remove them when someone leaves, just allow reconfiguring them even when they're absent. (This does seem a bit weird - how can you unequip something from a member half way across the world then immediately equip it to someone with you - but I think it's an acceptable break from what makes real-world sense.)
The palace is nice, but I wish I could explore it even after talking to Cameron. So perhaps the Flunky fight could only be triggered when trying to leave the whole palace?
Yeah, I could see that working with a few adjustments. Although the downside would be - if you were to save inside the palace, there'd be no access to recovery points or shops.
Just out of curiosity: What does the shady character sell here?
I don't remember exactly what it is, but in general, they sell very good abilities; I recall one of the very early ones selling Auto-Haste but I don't remember which one it was.
FLUNKY: An extremely hard fight, given my relatively low level (and no way really to grind levels in Saria). This felt like I was using half of my turns just to revive someone.
Did you pick up on his pattern?
He alternates between using Radar (single-target version) and a strong physical attack. The physical attack always targets whoever he just used Radar on, unless they've been knocked out in the meantime (which would only happen by you attacking yourself). So, you can have that character Defend.
The bowling maze is very nice, the calculator a good idea. Even though I got the basic idea pretty soon, I was totally stumped, because every green operator button recalculated the number. This was totally unexpected, so I aborted the idea, until the guy confirmed it again. I am not so fond of the sand area afterwards: I have no clue at all what the red button does and the Monster-in-a-Box is so hard, that I had to replay the area again. And I am still stumped about how to get to the other side of the chasm at the Monster-in-a-Box.
You and Proxima are actually the first people I know of to figure out the calculator puzzle.
The red button, I'm not sure off-hand if it actually does anything. It might be that it unlocks the optional side room, the next actual room, or a path to a treasure chest. But knowing me, it could indeed also be that it literally does nothing.
I don't think the other side of that chasm is accessible. It might be possible to come into that room on the other side from somewhere else later (I don't remember for sure), but it isn't possible to cross it IIRC.
Given that one is transported to this area rather unexpectedly, I would have liked some kind of basic tool shop in the area (with items being twice as expensive), e.g. the girl just outside the prison.
Yeah, a shop there is probably a good idea.
The way to Yuvia is pretty neat, but the random encounters are rather difficult. You basically have to know in advance what each enemy can do to beat them. But that's fine with me. The only major annoyance was the Bloob: At that point one has only pretty weak magical attacks and Ivy needs to cast more than 10 times to take it down, with noone else being able to do anything else. It would have been much better with only a third of its current HP.
Yeah, this is a major difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere. I think the difficulty here needs to be toned down a bit. Regarding the Bloob though, do keep in mind that it's not intended that every random encounter is reasonable to take on the first time you get somewhere - this is why the Escape option is pointed out at the start of the game, and again when Vince joins.
GANGSTER: This was pretty easy, as Darkness and Sleep lets you basically take them one-by-one.
Yeah, this is meant to be a somewhat easy fight if you remember to use status effects.
Very nice dungeon. But the Exp-values of the random enemies are way off: Obbies are pretty easy, Accras almost surely kill one character and are pretty hard, the roaches here are still extremely nasty, but the Spellpot is laughable (just use one Silence attack on it). But then the Spellpot gives very nice items and a ton of Exp. It would feel much more deserved, if it had a special action healing Silence.
To be honest, I don't feel the EXP / AP balancing in this game is very good at all. It needs significant reworking. Though I think a significant factor here is that the dungeon wasn't intended to be taken on when it's first available. So, the enemies "level" is higher, which in turn means lower-level characters gain a
lot of EXP from them - whereas AP is "max X, and this decreases slowly if you're above the enemy's level", EXP can be adjusted
upwards if you're below the enemy's level.
GREAT OBBIE: The worst boss I have encountered up to now. The first two thirds are trivial, then there comes a brief interesting part with Plague and lots of status effects. And then the Desaster, wiping out the whole party.
Yeah, I don't feel Grand Obbie is a particularly great optional boss. It's pretty much just a long-lasting Gobbie fight, with the catch that you need to have one character with high HP fully healed before you lay the finishing blow - which you don't know exactly when it is due to him not being scannable, although there are warning signs that you're getting close (such as him starting to use Plague).
TRANSIENT: Pretty easy this time. I always got the transient killed before it got to cast Trauma.
These Transients are a fair bit weaker than the storyline one from earlier, in addition to you now being at a higher level.
Ok, here is a HUGE difficulty spike, both with the new Phantom and the random encounters afterwards (and their instant death attacks). I tried it once, got badly mauled and then decided to do some grinding with the whole parts. I went from level 12-13 to 17-18. With these levels, I felt I was actually a bit over-leveled, because the optional boss was pretty easy, even though the random encounters were still challenging. I didn't like the invisible maze, even though its layout was good.
It sounds like you were a bit underlevelled when you got to this point. The optional boss is accessible a fair bit earlier in the game, which is why you felt overlevelled for it - you were.
Note that I wasn't yet strong enough to fight [Deadhead] head-on (pun intended), so I had to study it rather well and then be pretty sneaky: Casting only Light and healing spells on it, to avoid the draining counter-attack.
That's awesome to hear. The whole idea behind that was that a head-on assault wouldn't work too well, and you needed to pay attention to what it does.
ENCHANTER: An extremey easy boss. I targeted the man right away and was surprised when it got down and I didn't even got a chance to steal from it. I only learned about the element-changing nature from Proxima's video - it never changed any colors when I played it.
Yeah, Enchanter isn't meant to be a particularly hard fight, though probably could use a bit more difficulty.
TOROPHO: Very neat boss, even though the Torando is extremely powerful. Unfortunately I never got it down completely with Split Attacks before it casts Tornado, so I had to pool all my HP+ and DEF+ on Ivy, and revive the other party members afterwards.
...he's vunerable to Split Attack? That was not intentional, I don't think.
My favorite is the first room with the question, especially the third one. Only of the last two rooms, I am not so fond of. But I would allow doing the rooms in an arbitrary order (perhaps only forcing the bottom one to be the third one).
I like this idea.
CRAIG & BRIANNA III: Very hard, but extremely clever battle! Here comes the power of the Zombie attack on a regenerating character...
As I've mentioned, many people have stated that they feel this is the hardest battle in the game.
But yes, making good use of strategic points like that is definitely the key, far more so than any grinding - they're quite capable of taking down even an overlevelled party if you just try to brute force them.
DARK RETURNER: Much harder than the first Returner, because you need to store a lot more damage to avoid the more damaging alternative spell. With level 26-27 things went very smoothly, especially as I had Haste now.
Indeed.
And unlike the first one, which with a bit of luck you can get through without figuring out how he works, you really
do need to figure it out for this one - unless you're so overlevelled that you can take him down before his first unleash energy.
This is the point where Proxima is up to, so I'll continue the rest in the next spoiler tag.
