This originated something like a parody of Final Fantasy. Then I started taking it seriously, and then I started adding *stuff* the way I do. Right now, it's been tested up to the bossfight of the Lemurian Ship, though many later bosses have already been edited. Hopefully I'll start editing the game text at a later date, though I've already been through removing some references to Psynergy.
Each character has two classes available to them, and most are based off of similar themes. To change classes, just open up the Editor and change the class values accordingly. It's lazy, I know. This was mostly created just for me to play around with anyway. Garet (aka 'Boomer') and Mia (aka 'Dew') don't have their second classes yet.
Be warned: The beginning-of-game fights are very tough, but with the right strategy they can be taken down. Here's a hint: The War Machines have limited MP, and use a suicide move when they run out. Also, if playing with Jenna (aka 'Chiki') as a Furie, her Wing Beat has a chance to blow the target out of battle.
Also, I have hidden a number of random references in the hack. Post here with any you find!
Ok, just thought I'd point out, Blockades are @#$%&*! annoying.
The battle against the 3 Ruffians is ridiculous; the fencer deals half your HP in damage on most hits, the War Machine conjures up another Blockade/War Machine/Fencer every turn and the blockade uses War Shield every turn to reduce your damage to 1. Added to that, Wing Beat uses up 1/5 of my MP and the Mana Regen move is pretty pathetic (1 mp per turn). On top of all that, Blockades can replicate. I now have to kill 7 Blockades with 1 damage per turn. Woo.
Just my initial thoughts, I'll post again when I get further in.
Yeah. The Fencers aren't your big problem though, because Wing Beat or Fire Bomb should be able to kill them in one hit. Actually, the reason they're so strong is that they use class stats. They're as strong as a player character Fencer would be at that level. Also, when fighting Blockades, Wing Beat is a good idea. Yeah, the MP regen is kinda deliberately pathetic, because there's no cost for using it, but when fighting Blockades it's still faster than poking them for 1 damage. Actually, use Mana Boost while waiting for them to run out of items, then start blowing them away with Wing Beat. But yeah, I'll go in and edit that, since I'm not quite sure how well a Thief would fare even with Fire Bomb, especially since she doesn't have a move to get rid of Blockades. A Furie can take care of them with a lot of turbo-moding, but you shouldn't have to waste 15 in-game minutes on introductory battles. I'll go in and lower their item counts (this'll go a long way towards making those fights less painful), then re-upload.
About that... defend is generally superior if you're just stalling.
Does every character have two classes or two class lines? Either way, it should be easy to add in-game class switching.
This sounds interesting, will definitely check it out at a later date. And maybe with a bit of luck it's somewhat closer to completion by then.
...how about just making the damn blockades NOT spawn new enemies? Drop the assembly kits and signal wistles, give them a higher rate of using their barrier skill and leave it at that. Spawning new blockades is just ridiculously lame.
Playing as I write this post... HOW MANY OF THESE THINGS DO THEY HAVE???? I keep thinking I've stalled out the five-no wait, SIX blockades long enough that they won't have any more items, then begin to attack them, only to find out that they have more. This is seriously such a huge waste of time, and six blockades don't even display properly on screen. At this point I'm attacking the most recent spawn and hoping that the others run out of items by the time I get to them. This is some of the worst game design I've ever seen.
PS: Buff mana boost. It's so slow. Make it recover 10% of the max, if possible. It would only make it go up to 2 PP recovery at the beginning of the game like this, but even that would be a huge improvement.
edit: Looks like they finally ran out of items. This fight would be completely insufferable without a speedup key to make battle rounds go by faster. I probably would've quit already. Instead, I'm just spamming A while I have speedup and B held down to make the rounds go by.
edit2: And they finally all go down... I can't wait to see how much "fun" the third intro fight is going to be!
edit3: Wing beat managed to make swift work of the fencer and a couple war machines (WHY CAN THESE DIVIDE TOO???). Finally got down to one war machine and a ton of blockades, and the war machine was unable to divide. These fights really aren't hard. Just long and tedious. And not fun.
edit4: WHEEEEEE BACK TO SIX F'ING BLOCKADES!
edit5: Finally, 30 minutes later, done.
In closing, let me just say this: If you were to ever present a game with similar battles to that to someone in the game industry, you would get rejected in an instant. I must be a masochist to have played through it all.
edit6: ...Did you change the default text speed? I thought it started on normal, but was set to slow when I checked, for whatever reason.
I don't know why the default text speed changed, it bothers me too.
And yeah, giving them seven was rather overkill. As I said, I need to switch that down to like, three.
You mean one - at the most. It just makes the fight pointlessly long. They don't do damage. They're just annoying and take a long time to kill. In this respect, the tutorial fights are "harder" than the first freaking boss.
Speaking of which, I love the first boss. Brilliant enemy choice. Could've even made it a bit harder imo, but I guess it can't be too hard when you're relying on herbs as your only form of healing. Imo make the poison skill target 3 and make them all drop antidotes at a 100% rate.
edit: Grr NPC class. Guess I can't use fog, then.
edit2: YES! BREATH! I can heal without herbs now!
edit3: Just found out that the buff spells restore HP, too. Wut.
I just blew the King Scorpion away before I could have a chance to kill it, but there are several neat ideas in this hack so far! A shame that I can't use Fog without being an NPC though, but so far... Yeah!
So I was fighting the first boss, and they killed Chiki! Luckily, I remembered that I had an Oil Drop and pretty much destroyed the remaining two bosses, so that went well!
However, I will agree with leaf when it comes to the Blockades. There were about 6-8 of them when I gave up and activated the debug menu.
And those are sentence fragments, haha. Still, I am kind of having fun with this, so I will keep playing for a bit longer.
Yeah, low Luck is a bit of an issue with some early bosses, thanks to the Wing series.
Actually, as far as the Blockades go, I think I'll remove their Assembly Kits so all they have is two signal whistles. After all, in most of the encounters Signal Whistles actually do what they're supposed to. The original idea for the fight that has nothing but one Blockade is that it would be able to summon Fencers and War Machines. Unfortunately, I can't give them the ability to summon them without giving them a "maximum per encounter" value of one, which gives them the ability to show up at the start of the fight and which I really don't want. I'd originally wanted to do that with some area bosses as well, so that they'd only join the encounter if summoned. Unfortunately *again*, I needed Clarion Cry for another boss...
And I'll have to see about adding another two classes for each character, so I can assign each of them to an element. For example, by default Chiki would be a Thief, and you'd make her a Furie by giving her a Jupiter Djinni. This means I have to screw around with elemental levels, though. Don't want Chiki to be cheating her way into the Magician class, after all.
Just so you know. I finished the beginning with out getting hit. the first two blockade's were blown away first time. the fight with three I blew the two enemy's. the blockade doubled, i recharged psynergy... and blew the last two away.
Not to sure why leaf had so much trouble?
only thing I would add would be do something with the field enemy's, at least early game.
Updated. Please repatch, though one of the changes means you'll have to start from the beginning again. Sorry about that.
@zman: Early-game field enemy edits, you say? Have fun at Air's Rock~!
Did you change the first boss at all? Since now that I know sivi has healing moves (and very good ones at that), you should definitely make the first boss harder than it was in the previous version - and make it more obvious that those moves heal while you're at it, if you haven't done so already.
Oh yeah, and I was disappointed that the enemy djinn weren't edited at all, or not noticeably at any rate. I couldn't tell if the mimic was edited or if it was just moves it used that had been edited.
Sivi's original primary class was an offensive mage. All she learned was various elemental spells of superdeath. Fireball in particular was nasty against the first boss (65 power fire spell at level 1!), but the problem was that she had no healing, so I couldn't make the first boss that nasty since Steal HP rarely triggered. Also, part of my goal regarding bosses is that they should all be beatable at target level with all party members alive. Anyway, the healing spells aren't that strong. Agil Plus only heals by 50 HP, and Res Plus only heals by 40. Actually, I was considering nerfing Agil Plus to 25 like Pow Plus was originally. Instead, I buffed Pow Plus since by the time you get Sordas you really, REALLY need a healing move, and he doesn't learn proper healing until level 27, well after one of the nastiest bosses so far. A few party members get self-healing spells, though, such as Steal HP, and these will actually trigger on some bosses. Actually, perhaps I should just nerf Agil Plus and Pow Plus to Pow Plus's original level, then nerf the Lemurian Ship boss.
Yeah, I haven't done anything to Djinn at all, except occasionally give them nastier spells. The Mimic is not edited much, though Mana Thief is going to screw you repeatedly in any case.
40 HP at that point in the game is plenty, and it also buffs resist, so you take less damage after that.
QuoteAlso, part of my goal regarding bosses is that they should all be beatable at target level with all party members alive.
I had to use one herb. One. Do you want me to record the fight next time I play through it to show you how easy it is? Because I will.
Really? I had to reset to not die the first time. Sivi got owned in two hits by the darn things.
Huh. I went through twice and didn't have trouble staying alive either time. They go down pretty fast. The reason I went through a second time is because the first time I stupidly used my antidotes to actually heal status, and wound up being unable to heal the poison after the fight. That's what gave me the idea for making the poison target 3 and having them all drop antidotes 100%. That way, you'll probably end the fight poisoned, but it won't screw you over long-term.
It was kinda funny, though, because when I first went to the shop, I said "I'm going to get some antidote because I don't trust jamie."
I get to the fight. "I was right not to trust him."
When did I say anything about the first boss? Anyway, the encounter now gives you one antidote. Unfortunately, with the way GS works you can't get duplicate items from a single encounter.
...I've been talking about the first boss this whole time. I figured you were, too.
I am, but I don't understand your comment about not trusting jamie or whatever.
Oh. That was just me being silly about assuming you would put in something that poisons. =p
It could be worse. I could've given them Paralyze, which can't be cured because you can't buy elixirs yet. But that would be cruel and unreasonable. Most of the bosses I've edited are cruel and unreasonable anyway in some fashion, though. Heck, I did something cruel and unreasonable that has nothing to do with enemies at all!
Now I haven't re-patched yet, but didn't you give one of the bosses Charm or Confuse? I had just made it to Air's Rock before I read the message about there being a new patch, so I had beaten three bosses at that point. Anyway, the reason why I ask is because I was wondering if you had tested Elixirs or Restore on someone inflicted with these ailments while you were testing things out.
Charm and Confuse are NOT affected by Elixirs or Restore, I tested this already.
Anyway, when you get to Air's Rock again, have fun with that.
Edit: Actually, I DID give the bosses a stun move! They just don't use it often.
New patch coming once I'm finished testing the first boss. Edits include:
- Taint and Poison now hit three targets
- Healing on stat-buff spells is reduced
- Enemy Crabs have 50 more HP
- Sordas's secondary class requires Venus Djinn instead of Mars.
- Stuff I'm not telling you!