Ultimecia’s Castle
Not having full stacks of Aura going into disc 4 this time around made for a vastly different experience. That plus the fact that you seemed to have touched up on most if not all of the bosses here has turned this into a worthy final dungeon in my opinion. I enjoyed all the fights and was even pleasantly surprised by a few of them. Trauma and Tiamat gave me a few game-overs that I wasn’t expecting and the fight with Ulimecia got dicey at a few points. All in all, I really enjoyed revisiting this part of the game after finding it really easy last time.
Oh, and I think Catoblepas’s Deadly Horn ability might be bugged. I have never seen it actually land a hit. I redid the battle a second time and he still missed every one he threw out.
General thoughts
The absolute highlight of this version has to be the buff to the ultimate weapons and the damage cap removal. Standard attacks hit noticeably harder now and doesn’t feel like a waste to use anymore. Darkside has become such a beast of an ability in the late-game as well. Funnily enough, I would’ve never imagined myself using Berserk as much as I did, but it’s amazingly good.
Limits, however, still maintain their dominance as the best way to deal damage (as they should be) but they’re no longer easily spammable without consequences. As a result, they actually feel special and exciting when you do get to use them.
I also ended up utilizing Bahamut and Eden much more than I did last time around. I think they already broke the damage limit before but I just didn’t have the incentive to level and use them as much as I do now. It feels like you’ve really nailed a good balance for all the different avenues of dealing damage. Kudos.
Darkside
This might be a bit contentious but I would like to see a second Darkside being available. As it stands right now, there are mainly two ways to maximize physical’s damage potential: Darkside or Berserk. And as much as I made use of Berserk, I’m actually not a fan of the way it works. It’s very costly to lose control of a character and it’s something that I hesitate to use on tough battles because of that. More importantly, I feel like the loss of control goes directly against the essence of a turn-based RPG where being able to plan and react with your command abilities is a large part of the enjoyment.
In addition, I feel like a second Darkside would allow party compositions of two (or even three) physical attackers to be more viable. Right now, if you run two physical attackers you would want to run Darkside on one of them and Berserk on the other. I feel like being able to run two Darksides in this setup would lead to a more enjoyable and healthier gameplay experience. Now, if you want to run a party of three physical attackers (and I don’t see why this should be discouraged), the most optimal way to go about it would be to have two of them berserked and that just feels wrong and degenerative.
Berserk (and Mad Rush by extension) is great for plowing through regular battles but I don’t think relying on such a mechanic for boss fights should be encouraged. If necessary, I think nerfing Darkside a bit or making its health cost higher would be a fair trade to be able to have a second one.
Angel Wing
I usually don’t like using Angel Wing for the same reasons I don’t like Berserk. However, I think the new implementation of it is worse than the previous version from a pure damage perspective, even if the way it works is fundamentally better.
The reason I say this is because there is really only one reason why you would want to use an ability like Angel Wing in the first place: to do more damage per turn than you normally would without it. Otherwise, there’d be no point to give up control of your character. And I don’t think it accomplishes that currently.
I tried using it on a few occasions during this playthrough and I came across the same problems every time:
[list type=decimal]
[*]There are too many low level spells. The –ga spells, Pain, Water just doesn’t feel good when you get them. Yes, they still hurt but when you only get Meteor or Flare like once every 6-8 casts you start to wonder if you shouldn’t just triple cast them instead. I'm not 100% sure how the numbers compare but it doesn't feel like Angel Wing pulls ahead even without taking into account point #2.
[*]If a boss has any elemental properties, Angel Wing falls behind pretty handily. Boss has a weakness? You’re almost guaranteed to do more damage just manual triple casting the targeted weakness every turn. And obviously, if they are strong to or absorb any element(s), your total damage can go down drastically or even into the negatives (I tried it on Omega to much amusement.)
[/list]
I firmly believe that you should limit the spell pool to the non-elemental damage spells. I think that even if you lower the coefficient back to 3 but take away all the elemental spells, it would still be better than the current iteration. By the point when you unlock Angel Wing, you pretty much would never cast spells below Flare or Holy for damage anyways unless it’s to target a weakness.
Wall/Invincibility
I decided to try using Selphie more after neglecting her last time around. I never realized Wall gave Invincibility but I feel like the skill (and the buff) is a little cheap in general. As for the skill itself, I actually feel like it is better than Invincible Moon in its original form. While it might seem difficult to reliably count on Slots to keep the buff up, it’s actually pretty easy to pull off in practice by just doing it in long animation sequences like summons or certain Limits.
Now, I think the bigger issue I have with it lies in the Invincibility buff itself. I really dislike the idea of being able to avoid a fight mechanic completely. Ways to mitigate it, yes, but to completely negate a mechanic feels like it’s almost cheating the fight. Even heavily limiting its availability (as in the case of Hero/Holy War) doesn’t diminish its binary nature. It’s the kind of mechanic that either trivializes a fight if used or doesn’t have any value at all.
I would like to say that this is simply something that I don’t personally like. I think that it is completely fine as it is, with how limited you can use it, to keep it as an option for the player to choose to use or not. With that said, if you do decide to change it, I think making it work as a damage reduction that stacks on top of Protect/Shell might be an option to keep it strong but not overly cheap.
Vit0
This is another rather minor issue that I have with Vit0’s current functionality much like with Invincibility. Vit0 was one of the more broken mechanics back in the original game and I think it’s actually in a really good spot balance-wise in this mod. This is basically something that I would like to see improved but I don’t think it is a big deal.
The issue I have with it is that it’s an all or nothing mechanic (like Invincibility and Aura.) In order to balance around this, you either have to make a boss have that much more health if they are susceptible to make up for the damage increase or you make it have such a low chance of applying that it might as well be immune. So the choice becomes: Is boss immune? If yes, then the mechanic is useless. If no, then you have a situation where there could be two wildly different experiences for the same fight. For example, if you set the chance to apply to be high, then obviously the boss has to be balanced around having Vit0 on. If the chance to apply is set to be extremely low to counteract its strength, then there could be a case where one player manages to apply it early on in a fight and have a much easier time compared to someone else who didn’t (even if they were casting meltdown the entire time.) This not only makes it difficult for the person doing the balancing but it also isn’t very enjoyable for the player to spend an entire battle trying to cast meltdown and having it not work.
If such a functionality can be implemented, I would love to see the status get a rework to be less potent but have an easier time applying. Maybe something like 50% or 25% reduced Vit/Spr with a limited duration so one would need to constantly reapply it in order to take advantage of the damage increase.
