My thoughts and comments playing through 2.0

Hello friends this will be my fourth playthrough of this hack over the years and I'm excited to see what the full 2.0 will bring to the table.  I am playing on the extreme difficulty which I believe gives me 50% extra experience.  I don't know if the difficulties actually change the mechanics of the fights or just change the numbers.  I'll do my best to give a brief rundown of how I did the bosses in case anyone is interested.  

I believe the first boss against the spider has had it's hp reduced from previous versions, which I appreciate.  The fight with the esper is a lot more fun and I am afraid this fight might intimidate new players after they scan it and see a really high number of hp.  Don't fret though I don't believe you actually have to deal that much damage to end the battle.  It's vulnerable to poison, but will cast rippler occasionally to transfer the poison to you, your magitek heal will remove the poison as well as recovering hp so you don't need to use items here.  After you've poisoned it for the third time it will use an ability where it cures it's self of poison and does a large amount of magic damage to the party, this nearly killed me, but I healed up Aurora, and revived my other party members.  Keep your party in the back row at all times and keep up magitek barrier, let the poison do most of the damage and you will eventually trigger the cutscene.  

Be sure to buy some karma jolts at the castle, and arrange your party members the opposite row as normal since the next fight will be a back attack.  You're against 2 guys in magitek armor, and once one dies the other gets huge buffs so you want to try to kill them as close together as possible.  My tactic was to repeatedly use Serin's tools to confuse them, which will make them attack each other.  Once one breaks the confusion hit the other with Cloud to keep the damage even and repeat. Use Aurora to heal and cast spark on both or one whichever is best to keep their health even.  In the cave I ran from the battles and you have to fight a zombie at the end.  It's not hard but keep in mind that it can zombify your party members, so it's best to keep a few extra karma jolts.  

I enjoy the fight against the Saibamen quite a bit.  They are weak against thunder and use self destruct after a while so I suggest trying to damage them evenly.  They will berserk your characters which made me realize I forgot to buy relics, I will have to go back for some just to be safe.  I got lucky and Aurora did not get berserked so I was able use her and the fight wasn't too bad.  

Raditz can't be scanned. I wonder if that's because his scouter hides his power level. Since stuff from Dragonball is being used already I wonder if Gi Nattak ever considered having Master Oyama be Master Roshi and then when you meet him in the world of ruin he could comment about being immortal or whatever, and that guy who stands in front of his house could be that turtle.  Raditz was pretty straight forward for me, I just used Blade Beam and sonic shot to damage him, while Aurora supported.  She healed every turn except when he gained a hidden status which I believe is multiple images and she had to dispel it.  I suggest toting extra ethers for the fight in case she runs out of mp. 

I made it to the end of the skull train and I had a few questions.  There is a guy at the back of the train who says you don't recover hp while walking around here, but I don't think you recover hp by walking around anywhere.  I also am not clear on what is supposed to be happening with Mr. Grimm here. He stands on the train and is defeated during the fight against the train, then some kind of weird looking thing comes out of nowhere and goes into his body, seemingly reviving him. What is this thing? the dialogue after this seems to suggest it's not some other kind of entity taking control of his body.  

You should be able heal small increments of health back like the Tintinabar did in the original on the overworld and many other places, the exception being 'places that are too hot or too cold, such as the caves of Fraust and the Underworld, as well as the Train. This effect is for the whole party. Check next time your HP isn't at max and take a step and re-check, should be gaining back little bit of HP.

For Mr. Grimm, what I was going for there is basically that you beat him, and he is powerful enough to come back from...wherever Grim Reapers go if they get killed lol, and that's his spirit energy manifesting once again into Mr. Grimm.

I think it would be more satisfying if Reaper were to take off his hood and devour Mr. Grimm's soul after you beat him.  The fight is annoying and it'd give the player a nice moment where they can see the source of their irritation suffer that kind of fate.  Also what is the deal with Arc's eyes? 

Arc's eyes, you mean his portrait? I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

The part of his eyes that are supposed to be white are green and it looks really weird to me. 

Ahh I see. I suppose it's just James (sprite artist) portraying Arc as having green eyes, which his character sprite has of course. I can offer no better explanation I'm afraid lol. There's not many pixels to work with there for the eyes, I'm sure it is nigh impossible having the white, green and black iris with such a small portrait to work with, this is probably as good as it can get factoring in the green colors. But I can pass this bit of feedback on to him, maybe he can tweak it somehow for a future update.

I don't want him to think I'm criticizing his work.  A lot of these sprites blow me away with how amazing they look. I think the reason it stands out to me is partially just because he has bigger eyes than most characters.  Oboro, Serin, and Ronan all have tiny slits for eyes. 

I'm so sorry to be a bother but I since I learned about the hp regen while walking I have been trying to pay attention to it.  Fraust and Rogue city both have npcs who comment that you won't gain health back in those places but I'm not gaining health back in Stardust Village or Sunset city.  I will go back and check the castle.  Is one intended to be able to regain health walking around in these areas?

No problemo at all, James actually saw the post here and said he'll work on it some more -- feedback is good!

Ah yeah the HP healing does not take place in any towns either, or basically any place there is no random monster encounters. Just to give INNs a purpose still and to balance the whole thing out slightly. It's a risky feature to have without breaking the game lol.

Did you ever consider instead of having James heal the player in the learning house they could be healed by drinking from Snes drunk? Also did you ever consider having any of the main cast be a smoker?  You could use the animation of throwing the coin for them throwing away their smoke. 

No, James is the White Mage and was there before SNES drunk's NPC, so he get's the honors lol.
And no, not really... I mean we have Oboro's 'friend' smoke during one of his dreams, but that's about it. None of the main cast besides I guess Otis would be a smoker, but his thing is alcohol of course. Well I guess Oboro as well, but he has the highest speed and cigarettes and quickness don't mix!

I could see Aurora being a smoker.  Either cigarettes or crack cocaine. I don't mean to criticize whoever wrote this line but in Ultros's letter he uses the phrase "non invertebrate"  which really sticks out to me as an odd phrasing.  I don't know if this is supposed to just be part of how Ultros writes, but it would be simpler to just say vertebrate instead of using that double negative.  

Do you get a reward if you're able to kill Kefka in the fight in front of the esper gate?  What about experience?

Sadly no, those kind of battles where Kefka is a regular character work differently than regular monsters, as you can assign them winnable items and experience or steal from them.
I could never think of a clever way to go about it via event editing either, besides just giving the character some item no matter what after the battle. But since those Kefka battles have a timer so if it drags on a bit, it will end anyways, it wouldn't really be much of a reward then.

This is an extremely minor thing but you might want to know anyway.  In the fights with the 3 squids outside of the Lunarian town (I forget it's name and when I go there it doesn't pop up) I am unable to target the one at the back.  It still gets hit by multi target spells but the cursor won't go to it.  This doesn't apply to attack where you surround them.  

I am near the floating continent and I wanted to ask if anyone can tell me if these side activities that might have quest lines attached.  The ghosts in the hotel, the puppy in the forest by the water, and the UFO.  If any of these are missable can someone please give me a hint as to how to progress so I don't miss them?

I have some comments and questions about the fight with Drakazul.  I don't mean to criticize your product.  After playing through the hack several times now this is one of those fights that I really dread.  Passing him up is not an option for me so I have to just grit my teeth and bear through it.   I don't mean this as a snide comment I am curious if this fight was designed to be so irritating to the player that they are intended to just stop trying and move on out of frustration. There is no one thing he does that makes it so bad but all together you end up with a fight where it is such an uphill battle to even be able to get a turn where you can safely attack that it really disheartens me to have to start all over again.  He also seems to be impossible to scan unless I'm missing something so finding an elemental weakness is just trial and error.   How would you, the person reading this comment, go about maximizing damage output on this boss?  Back row for everyone seems mandatory so physical attacks are weak. 

One other thing is that even when invisible i still seem to be getting hit with what seem to be just regular physical attacks by this boss.  

I don't mean to criticize your product but I am confused as to the purpose of the fight with 3 Tonberries in the chest.  They don't seem to give you anything except for 5 AP, which I think is less than you get for fighting a single one. 

On 2/23/2020 at 11:18 AM, Zig said:

I could see Aurora being a smoker.  Either cigarettes or crack cocaine.

I really, really don't see this.

On 3/1/2020 at 1:10 PM, Zig said:

I have some comments and questions about the fight with Drakazul.  I don't mean to criticize your product.  After playing through the hack several times now this is one of those fights that I really dread.  Passing him up is not an option for me so I have to just grit my teeth and bear through it.   I don't mean this as a snide comment I am curious if this fight was designed to be so irritating to the player that they are intended to just stop trying and move on out of frustration. There is no one thing he does that makes it so bad but all together you end up with a fight where it is such an uphill battle to even be able to get a turn where you can safely attack that it really disheartens me to have to start all over again.  He also seems to be impossible to scan unless I'm missing something so finding an elemental weakness is just trial and error.   How would you, the person reading this comment, go about maximizing damage output on this boss?  Back row for everyone seems mandatory so physical attacks are weak. 

I didn't find maximizing damage output to be important here, as he's got too much HP to overpower before dying if your defensive strategy isn't consistent.  Unless you break Lunar Rods on him, of course.  They will probably hit the damage cap, and it's not really a bad move to throw them here because it's a tricky boss fight that isn't near a save point.  You can get more Lunar Rods later, and there is no other important use for them before you get the airship.

Even if you don't want to throw your Lunar Rods, you have options.  I used the Ghoul Medal with Tifa and poisoned her with Virus so that she could heal.  She will also be healed if Condemned triggers, and you can feed her a Potion in a pinch as well (250 HP may sound lame at this point, but it could save your life if she's hit by Ninth Dimension, as you absolutely can't let her die with the Ghoul Medal).  In her second relic slot, I used a White Cape to prevent Pig and Berserk without preventing Poison.  Applying Shell and Protect to her is also necessary.  Ronan got the Talisman, which prevented him from dying to Condemned.  I can't remember what was in his second relic slot.  I think it was the Eaglehorn, but it probably should have been the Griffin Eye.  I guess you could swap the sets of Relics; I can't remember my rationale for who got what.  Letting Zeke remain a zombie the entire fight is worthwhile.  It's much better for him to absorb hits so your other characters don't have to.  Leave him in the front; the damage he does to your party is low, so you will want the extra damage to the boss.

For offense, I just used the standard Meteor Smash + Freeze.  If you're really consistent with Beat Rush, it does slightly more damage.  All of these attacks are long-range.

This strategy was pretty consistent for me.  I beat him twice in a row (the first time I was just testing strats with a save state before the fight, so it didn't count).  Of course, it depends on your levels.  I usually try to adopt a policy of "never run, never grind" for casual playthoughs.  This usually leaves me underlevelled if anything, but may have left me overlevelled here because I fought all of the encounters in the solo Tifa section when the game encourages you to run.  If you don't have ~2000 HP on your Ghoul Medal holder to survive Ninth Dimension, this gets a lot less consistent.  Otherwise, I think this strat works four out of five times.

I was able to beat him after gaining some levels and getting lucky.  Sometimes he uses death a lot, sometimes he never casts it the whole fight.  I considered trying to drain all his mp to make the fight easier, which is a strategy I like to use against Soul Eater, but since I can't scan him I don't know how much mp he has.  If he has hundreds of thousands this strategy wouldn't work obviously. 

I actually really enjoyed the fight once I got it down, it's just jarring how much harder he is than the other bosses in this section of the game.  I was telling Gi Nattak that since the boss fights you by farting and burping on you he should occasionally have an ability he uses where he eats something to replenish his supply of farts.  Ideally something that would make his farts especially fetid like raw onions or kimchi.  

I found an npc who says somewhere in the world there is someone who will reward me for some smutty magazines.  Can anyone give me a hint where I might find him or her? 

3 hours ago, Lockirby2 said:

I really, really don't see this.

You think she would prefer chew?

Since Drakkazul is an optional boss with nothing super important gated behind him I don't really mind if he's a bit harder than average.  It doesn't end up being luck-reliant, which is the important bit.

As for that hint, you've definitely seen this NPC somewhere, and it is also very clearly in character for them.

Can anyone give me a hint to whether there is any significance to the frozen FuSoYa in the mines and the ghosts in the hotel room? Also I've done everything I know of except Zuriel's tower and the castle in the new esper world.  Can someone please tell me if I have missed the record that presumably goes on the player in Rogue City?  Do you all think that guy Zeke is a reference to The Simpsons?

I'm pretty sure that the frozen FuSoYa is the Ice King from Adventure Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ7-XPR_vLk.

Other than that I don't know if he does anything.

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me mister kirby2.  In the lizard tower there is a guy with a bunch of heads who's name I forgot.  I don't understand what is going on in this fight.  He only shows having about 20k hp but I did probably 10 times that much before he actually died and it never said he extended his life force like some bosses.  I thought maybe he only died if you drained his mp but that didn't work. 

I defeated Shenron and the Dark Crystal.  I know there's a boss in the beginner's house too.  Are there any other hidden superbosses besides those guys?  I never was able to find the record that goes on the player in Rogue City.  Maybe Zuriel has it.  I saw in the patch notes that Santa has a store, but I was never able to find that either. Can anyone give me a hint where he might reside?

I finally defeated Zuriel.  He was really scary and didn't end up having that record so I'm still not to sure about that one.  I found out where Santa lives but the invisible maze has been absolutely impenetrable to me.  I really don't think I can do it since I can't see myself or where I am going.   I might do a bit of New Game plus but if it's just the same thing but easier I probably will wait and come back later to play through on the hardest difficulty.  

I haven't done the tower yet, so I don't know the answer yet.