[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

[Rolina]

Wow... giving the features a good read, this looks really interesting.  I think I may give it a go later.

[Caledor]

Hello! I'm back!

I have now completed both games in full. I'm going to write here things I've noticed that seem odd, that are perhaps overlooks and glitches, so you're at least aware of them.

Golden Sun:

• Flash is blocking A LOT more damage than Granite. (I can't recall if this is present in the Lost Age though.)

Golden Sun: The Lost Age:

• Water of Life is NOT consuming when used outside of battle. The same may be true for the first game.
• Similarly, and Revive / Raise psyenergy doesn't consume PP outside of battle. May be true for the first game as well.
• I'm not sure how much you're aiming for compatibility, but while Mountain Water does transfer from the first Golden Sun, it's quantity is always one.

Thanks again for making! It was a blast to play these games again with the added difficulty!

Thank you for your report! About Granite/Flash, they've always been like this: Granite shields only 50% of damage while Flash a whopping 90%.

The other three are overlooks which i'll try to fix ASAP (will require formula editing though, so it might take a while). The third requires sheer luck instead, cause I can only move the Mountain Water around in the editor and hope that a suitable empty block exists.

As a side note, would you mind sharing you endgame class setup? I'm curious. :D
Also did you finish everything or just rushed to the end?

Wow... giving the features a good read, this looks really interesting.  I think I may give it a go later.

Thank you Rolina, I really hope you'll like it, cause a lot of your ideas have been very inspiring for me.

[Chronotakular]

Thank you for your report! About Granite/Flash, they've always been like this: Granite shields only 50% of damage while Flash a whopping 90%.

Really? I remember in the original game both of them blocking a very similar amount of damage. Although, it has been a while.

As a side note, would you mind sharing you endgame class setup? I'm curious. :D
Also did you finish everything or just rushed to the end?

Well. Before my file got overwritten by some crappy junk with a save state, (it overwrote the battery) I was using:

& with all .
& with all .
& with .
& with all .

I did have to mix them around a lot, especially earlier in the game for certain boss fights. I used this layout a lot mostly to promote healing and being defensive.

But yeah, I beat the game, wanted to go back and do optional things, but my file is all the way back before the Biggs fight now. Ah well, maybe some day! I don't think I could have beat Dullahan, not without a ton of grinding anyways.

Good luck with the mod! I'll check in every now and then and see how it's progressing!

[Rolina]

Heh, I'm actually speaking with Golden Sunrise right now.  We just finished the TLA runalong, and we may start playing this as a group stream together.  Between The Balanced Seal and The Balanced Age, this looks like it's going to be freaking awesome.

If it gets off the ground, I'll let you know so you can watch us play~

[Caledor]

& with all .
& with all .
& with .
& with all .

I did have to mix them around a lot, especially earlier in the game for certain boss fights. I used this layout a lot mostly to promote healing and being defensive.

Lol, I can certainly see you being defensive with 3 Protectors, 4 Wish-user and 7 (!!!) Revivers. I think you could have improved that a lot, at least offense-wise, by switching Jenna's Djinn with Piers' and Ivan's or Sheba's with Felix's or Isaac's. My setup was quite different, as i tend to favor tri-elemental classes more, except for the few 2 elemental classes which i consider to be VERY good.

Heh, I'm actually speaking with Golden Sunrise right now.  We just finished the TLA runalong, and we may start playing this as a group stream together.  Between The Balanced Seal and The Balanced Age, this looks like it's going to be freaking awesome.

If it gets off the ground, I'll let you know so you can watch us play~

That's nice! I'll try to fix the bugs Chronotakular reported even faster then. ;)

EDIT: Revive bug fixed in v1.18, now i'll try to fix the Mountain Water bug too. Sadly, the Mountain water bug can't be fixed.

[FrozenWrath]

Is the Cadaldbolg a reference to FFX? 

Eh, I'll only know when I get it.

[Caledor]

Actually I choose that name from a list of Historical swords on wikipedia, but if I really must find a reason for why the name "Caladbolg" was the first I noticed, then Tidus' weapon is certainly responsible. Blue sword, water unleash (brotherhood's element)...
Also, the irony: I usually focus a lot on fixing translation mistakes when i hack games since i can't stand them, and in fact i did the same even for this Golden Sun mod, but the Caladbolg in my mod received this name only due one of those mysterious deliberate changes from the Japanese, 'cause it should be called Ultima Weapon in FFX. :P

[Rolina]

Yeah, Caladbolg is one of those things where I'm glad they changed it.  Like with a huge amount of the spell names in GS.  Japan... kinda sucks at naming things some times.  And seriously - you can't just make all your uberswords be called "ultima weapon".  Vary it up a bit...


Anywho, noticed you changed the Turtle Boots - They're now +5 DEF, -5 AGL.  They're... actually useful!  I approve!  Off chance you made the Golden Ring not suck as well?

[Caledor]

Well the nane of the Ultima Weapon is one of those things that makes FF a saga, that binds the whole thing together, that's why I'm against changing those. Back to GS, I don't really like useable items cause to me they feel like cheating the whole class system, and my default approach to them is the one with me holding the nerf bat. Long story short, golden ring now casts ward, cause the aura gloves don't do that anymore (they're weaker riot gloves now) and we already had a resist effect with the matoi. Another useable item that got nerfed a lot is the spirit ring, which now casts wish.

[Rolina]

...But use-items are useless.  Why would you nerf them even more?  Why not just swap it out for passive effects?  

I'd rather have a 1-2 PP regen than a 1-3 use 7 PP heal from the Adept's Ring.
I'd rather have +5 attack than a 1-3 use of impact, which I have Ivan for anyways.
I'd rather have +10 to each elemental power than a completely worthless "cast resist on party" that breaks on the first use and is most certainly NOT worth the effort of putting in that stupid gold password.

Surely you can see how I feel about those things.

[Caledor]

Noted a lot of those ideas, and i like them a lot. Expect to find them in the next version.

EDIT: v1.19 up.

[Rolina]

Oh.  Sweet!

I'd have suggested a Res boost for the Golden Ring if not for the Luna Ring already being a thing.

I do find it odd that the Sol ring is a crit booster - even in DD when it was introduced.  You'd think the counterpart to the luna ring would be the elemental power booster, you know? XD


But yeah, my hatred for on-use items runs deep.

Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that will heal you for 70 without considering your EPower, when you can just have a stack of herbs?
Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that acts as an elixir in battle, when you can just have a stack of actual elixirs?
Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that casts Wish Well without considering your EPower, when you can just have a stack of Mist Potions?
Why bother using a 1-3 use mirror shield that doesn't consider your ELevel, when you can just have a stack of smoke bombs?
Why bother with ANYTHING that boosts stats when it requires you to abandon your character's role to use it?  Isaac's better off attacking.  Mia should be healing.  Ivan doens't need the darned thing because he's casting the buffs.  It's better to have a small passive buff to the stat it's wanting to help instead, IMO.

These things are far better off just having small buffs on them.  Hell, that's why always wind up cloning the hell out of the Guardian Ring at Trial Road - so that I can have rings that actually matter.

[Caledor]

Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that will heal you for 70 without considering your EPower, when you can just have a stack of herbs?
Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that acts as an elixir in battle, when you can just have a stack of actual elixirs?
Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that casts Wish Well without considering your EPower, when you can just have a stack of Mist Potions?
Why bother using a 1-3 use mirror shield that doesn't consider your ELevel, when you can just have a stack of smoke bombs?
Why bother with ANYTHING that boosts stats when it requires you to abandon your character's role to use it?  Isaac's better off attacking.  Mia should be healing.  Ivan doens't need the darned thing because he's casting the buffs.  It's better to have a small passive buff to the stat it's wanting to help instead, IMO.

Well it looks like I fixed them all ;)
The Healing Ring now heals for 100, the Fairy ring casts Restore on the whole party (just like the Unicorn Ring casts Cure Poison on the whole party), the Mirror Shield increases Luck as well, and the stack of Mist Potion is no more (well at least no more from Prox, you can still farm them but it would take FOREVER). The nerf to the Spirit Ring (from Wish Well to Wish) was needed because by the time you can have the spirit ring you just barely learned Wish Well (around level 22), and immediately gain a free version of a very costly spell (24 PP), not restricted by class AND by the 4 djinn threshold is something VERY unbalanced.

And ehm... this is probably bad news for you but Guardian Ring was quite broken for me so it now provides only a minor boost to Luck. After all we're talking about a item you find at level 8 and you're still wearing it against Dullahan... there must be something wrong with it.

[Rolina]

And it breaks after 1-3 uses, so... you get what, one free use before it breaks?  Those items are never used for a reason - they're too unreliable. 


@Guardian ring:  The reason you use it vs Dullahan is because everything else sucks.  And not in comparison either - I mean it just plain sucks.  4 Defense isn't all that much, and though 20 HP is a fair bit early on, later on it's nowhere near as good as regen.  It's main feature is that tiny boost to defense.  I can see swapping the HP for a small luck boost, which would keep it useful without defeating the ring's point - which is the small defense boost.

[Caledor]

Nope, the defense boost vanished too. That's what I meant when I was saying that TLA is way too easy. You have weaker enemies, higher levels, stronger gear and more gear (the new boots) ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

[Rolina]

Hmm, that's right - you did add the new boots, didn't you?  Still, that boost is minor, and with some of the other rings you've introduced, it's also overshadowed by quite a bit now.  Basically, we've got options - something we didn't have in the original.

Are you saying that vanilla TLA is easy, or your patch still feels easy to you?  If it helps, I find that spells are pretty nasty.  You could make it a light resistance ring, something like tiny version of the Luna Ring that happens to have a small luck boost too.

[Caledor]

All the boots are still there plus the greaves and the ninja sandals. Vanilla TLA is the easy one... I was just stating the reasons behind all those nerfs in tla. As for the luck/resist ring that's plain impossible cause I'm limited to 4 bonuses per item, but I don't think it will be needed. I raised luck granted by djinn in general and you've got the divine camisole too. My pure mage mia can easily reach 40 luck for example.

[Rolina]

First:  You do remember you made this game notably more difficult, right?  One person with 4 more defense isn't going to be a big balance breaker.

Second:  Oh right, items don't just have slots for the main stats, do they?  I keep forgetting that.  Been too long since I fiddled with the editor - it's attack and defense that you can add on top of it, right?

[Aile~♥]

Yeah, there are separate Attack and Defence slots. Everything else shares the four other slots.

[Caledor]

First:  You do remember you made this game notably more difficult, right?  One person with 4 more defense isn't going to be a big balance breaker.

And it isn't. 4 more defense means that the character takes 2 less damage from mundane physical attacks (always. It's 2 less damage from Punchy Ant and 2 less damage from Dullahan), but it would make such an early ring statistically better than many other rings found much later, just cause those rings don't have the defense boost.