Been working on it on and off since around mid 2022 when I started to put into practice what JWP had taught me earlier about hijacking functions and creating custom code. I just felt the balancing is still lacking in some ways, and what I could do with the existing FF8 tools was pretty much exhausted, so further adjustments could only be achieved by altering game code.
For example, it has always been baffling to see how far one can get by just spamming the same first three GF over and over, even on Lionheart mode, so I made it so that GF can be summoned only once per battle, mainly to shift the focus to all the other GF than just the first three (+Diablos) when going for an GF approach. The same goes for Limit Breaks; being able to use them over and over, despite enemies being more threatening, just isn't healthy to the game's balance and could still be abused to some degree, so there will be a simple cooldown on most of them, which in turns makes some of the harsher nerfs redundant (Zell, Irvine).
Besides that, Gravity damage missing on so many enemies can be frustrating for sure (especially after sitting through long attack animations), so there will be no Gravity immunity in 2.0, just damage reductions depending on the target (1/2 to 1/256).
As you can see, there were still some things left do, and 2.0 will hopefully sort most things out. I hope for a release in March. Thank you.
Yes, in 2.0, Triple will no longer be available for the player party and replaced with a second water-elemental spell. The only way to further increase magic damage output (besides Double) will be summoning Cerberus for a +25% boost, having certain weapons or GF equipped, through Selphie's Slots or Rinoa's Angel Wing.
Characters that aren't supposed to be proficient as casters will also have trouble accessing powerful magic, as there will be casting restrictions depending on the user's Mag stat (for example, a minimum Mag of 150 is needed to use Full-life, 200 for Ultima etc). In addition, stat-ups from items and devoured enemies will be limited throughout the game (Forbid Med-RF will be replaced with Blue Mag-RF), which will likely lock out certain characters from high-tier magic entirely.
This might sound harsh, but there should be plenty new options to increase the incentive to use physical attacks more often, such as the aforementioned Lucky 7 ability on Irvine's Bismarck, which works similar to Zidane's ability of the same name in FF IX (randomly adds either 7, 77, 777 or 7777 damage as fixed damage to the final damage output), when choosing the Attack command; some of the "Killer" abilities will also be back as passives slapped onto weapons and do additional damage to certain enemy types (beasts, demons etc), and Aura will increase physical damage output by 25% instead of granting a massive boost to Crisis Level, with its availability generally being more common than before.
