My opinions and (almost) a review: The post. Also, SPOILERS

Hello there, I just finished my playthrough of BNW and got a sudden urge to post my absolutely valid and completely unbiased opinions and feedback about this mod/hack, so here I am. Though it's mostly nitpicking tbh.

Character changes were awesome, as they actually gave them identities with both weak and strong points, so there isn't much to be said. The only noteworthy mentions being:

Gau: Tried very hard to make him a usable mage, but ended up as HasteX, then spam Doggo/Scrapper/Rocky rages ad nauseam. Definitely not a bad character, it's just a shame that the magical rages are, in my experience, useless.

Locke: pretty good physical damager, pretty good healer/mage, but completely overshadowed in every single aspect by somebody else. Cyan/Edgar/Sabin/Shadow deal a lot more damage, Setzer/Relm are a lot better healers/supports, so the only thing he has going for him is X-magic and double Life 2, which is not much. In theory, he could be a usable tank/damager with Kirin and Atma weapon, but Celes fulfills this role a lot better. Steal being nerfed to the ground is another bad thing. 

The gameplay was pretty great, hit the ideal difficulty spot for me, having only a few complaints.

1. Very slow equipment progression compared to vanilla FFVI in WoB (but also completely understandable)

2. Atma being perhaps a bit overtuned for that point in the game (even more understandable)

3. Elemental dragons being either total pushovers of absolute nightmares, depending on your WoR progression. For example Ice dragon being virtually unbeatable without Iceguards, but simple with them. Or Earth dragon being capable of instant TPK via Meteor (or is that intended behavior, and the Meteor was a counter or something?). Quite impossible to change, so just an observaion. And this is just a matter of taste, but I vastly prefer the original sprites, as they gave each of them a semblance of a personality, though I can understand that some poeple don't consider tiny lizards, dinosaurs and skeletons to be completely valid representations of actual dragons.

4. Another slight problem I have with BNW are bosses in Kefka's tower. Most of them were complete meh, whatever. (started at level 30).
Inferno: literally who from magitek factory: electric boogaloo. Just an obstacle with zero gameplay or story relevance. Boss in name and battle music only.
Ultima: The final boss from WoB: electric boogaloo, now with a new paintjob and maybe? a 5k or so more HP. Meh.
The dragons were a bit better, especially the Green one, as there is no Dark resistant gear and getting BTFO by thriller was fun.
Guardian channeling his inner Dadaluma warmed my cold, cold heart, so cool. 
Kaiser was a very nice touch, but might need a bit more HP, as I managed to circumvent his gimmick by somehow triggering the first purge, and then beat the shit out of him with Ultima, Bum Rush, Tempest and Fixed dice about a second after the critical reactor temperature appeared. If it's not secret, how exactly does his script work?
Myria was a nightmare (Relm, Gogo, vig Edgar, Shadow), Flare and connecting physical being instakills on everybody sans Edgar. About 6th or so tries I realized that zombies keep all applied buffs, ATB queue and they even properly perform their previously queued action. Then I completely ditched the ribbons, completely embraced the zombification, and somehow prevailed thanks to a huge supply of ninja stars and Osmose providing unlimited power MP.
Compared to Myria, Isis (alexander/phoenix Celes, mage Locke, Strago, Gau) and Asura (mage Terra, Vig Cyan, Vig Sabin, mage/tank Setzer) were cakewalks. Sure, the freeze and charm/love token are nice gimmicks, but they ultimately lacked enough damage/status effects to be truly dangerous, especially compared to Myria with Overcast, Mind Blast and brutal physicals/Flare. This might have been caused purely by my playstyle and party compositions but I believe that Isis and Asure could use a few new tricks to make them threats comparable to Myria.
The Kefka fight was a glorious finish. Started with Terra/Relm/Setzer/Edgar, had a lot of trouble with trying to finish the first tier with full buffs and HP (I feel like it was designed with this in mind), then it promtply used Glare on Relm and died, so Gau replaced her instantly. Second tier died pretty quickly to Ultima/Chainsaw spam, with Setzer healing and Gau being, well, Gau (Rocky rage is awesome, though). Third tier was mostly uneventful, almost too easy (maybe also intetional to give enough breathing space to fully prepare for the end). And Kefka did exactly what was expected of him, almost instantly transforming a well controlled battle into a chaotic clusterfuck pretty much impossible to contain, so I just frantically juggled full offensive, X-Potion spam and the occasional prayer to every god listening whenever he used Goner or two Meteors back to back. Seriously, why did he keep using two Meteors back to back? Also, didn't see him use neither Fallen one nor Ultima, which made me a bit sad, but also lucky and grateful.

Overall a 9,5/10 experience

TLDR: Magic Gau sucks, Locke is mediocre however you use him, either nerf Myria or buff Isis and Asura, give Kefka something better to do than dualcasting two Meteors. And provide an optional patch with proper dragon sprites

Also, using Sketch on bosses which aren't colored dragons is always a great idea.

I personally think that the dualcast life/cure 2 makes Locke the best healer. Relm heals harder but has to stop for osmose because she can't downrank her spells. Setzer is slow and doesn't have a reactive life spell, only rerise. Locke is an emergency healer that is at his best with a team that needs more attention that will have people dying sometimes (Shadow comes to mind). As a teammate with a beefy team like Cyan/Terra/Celes, he's not going to be showing off his best sides, whereas with a squishier group of teammates, he's the only reason you're not getting game overs.

Myria is definitely harder than the other 2, but I think this is the first time I saw the suggestion as "buff the other two" and not "nerf myria". Though I think I agree.

Kefka casts meteor as a counter under certain specific circumstances and also casts it when transitioning from phase 1 to 2 and 2 to 3, so it is only possible for him to double meteor twice over the entire battle since it requires you to get a meteor counter with the attack that pushes him to the next phase, which causes his next turn-attack to be meteor. It's avoidable, but most people don't know how to. Fallen One is in his script, but only during phase 4, so you probably just burned him down quickly enough to not see it come up.

As to the Kaiser script, hop on the discord if you want to discuss the specifics of that. We try to avoid spoiling major things like that in places where google can find it.

I personally can't stand Locke as a healer myself. X-Magic's delay is just too grievous for me to actually consider it worth it. You can use X-Magic Cure proactively, or you can just use Go Fish, for example, reactively. Locke's revival prowess does nothing for Shadow; Phoenix Downs are faster, and Shadow's roughly as tanky at 1 HP as he is at full HP. i.e. he's perfectly good at surviving even without having a dedicated healer for him. Similar arguments apply for Gau, Gogo, and to a lesser extent, Relm. Relm has enough MP to rarely need to Osmose during a fight unless you're literally spamming super hard or if you didn't really take many levels in MP. But since ZoneSeek is her only source of Magic ELs, she will generally have a lot of MP to go along with it. And if you need Life 2, you generally need it somewhat frequently, and Locke just doesn't have the sustain for that unless you're willing to burn Ethers and the like.

I just have a few things to add:

About Locke: While he can do a lot of different things in BNW, what really stood out for me was his sheer ability to cover and counter if you build him right. He has access to good & tanky gears, to good espers, and he's fast, so if you pump him with a ton of stamina / HP ELs once you get Atma Weapon he just becomes the game's MVP to me. You can use his turns to lob items at your party whenever needed and then just let the game do your work for you, seriously.

About Gau: What worked for me on a cast-based Gau was to rely on stamina-based spells instead of magic-based ones. Enough stamina ELs and you can get absurd healing for some rages, and absurd damage from others (especially Shrapnel, which slaps once you have enough stamina). If you really want him to cast "real" spells, though, you're gonna have to get your magic stat from gear, and that's mostly magic club. Stamina is just better in every scenario, plus what the game intends for him to use.

Gau's strength lies in his unparalleled versatility. No matter what weakness the enemy has, he can do it. If you need a status applied and have no other way, he has some way to do it. If you build him for speed, he comes out as decent dps with magic attacks through sheer turn economy, and he can always hit the weakness if there is one. Couple this with a variety of status or elemental immunities and he can render some enemies, even some bosses, helpless against him.

If you don't want him as a fighter for various encounters, his support rages require no maintenance, for instance Conjurer. He can cast Rerise constantly without needing to have his MP refilled. It's imprecise, but with speed ELs his crapshoot has a decent chance of giving the other team members more valuable turns.

I can see all of your points and I think everybody having a different opinion is a good thing about the balance, but...

Sure, Gau is a great character, both as a physical attacker and stam healer/support/attacker, but his magical rages fall pretty quickly, and are outperformed by physicals even when hitting weaknesses. Rages like Chimera/Scarab/Shokan are useful mostly for completion purposes.

I think that Locke's main weakness stems from basically not having a special skill, severely limiting his versatility (not countig Mug in Zozo). X-Magic Locke can dualcast Life-2 and stretch out his MP, but he can't do much else. Offensive X-magic yields noticeable results only vs enemies weak to Fire/Bolt, and burns through his MP incredibly fast. I agree that Relm might have some downtime thanks to Osmose, but even Locke will run out of MP in certain boss fights or dungeons, unless you support him with Mana Battery/Chakra/Ethers, and you can also use the same support for Relm, on top of having the option to Osmose. X-Magic Locke could theoretically be the best healer in the game (though I disagree with this statement), but every other healer has other things they can provide, be it buffs, damage or status effects. Unless you are fighting an enemy weak to Fire/Bolt, Locke can only heal/revive.
I thought that the cover/counter build with Atma would be utilized best by Celes thanks to ??? providing both cover and counter, but come to think of it, Celes has better things to do than tanking damage and smacking things with a lightsaber, and this setup could also be useful for secondary healing/reviving in case things go to shit. Still, he's IMHO the least useful character in BNW

I'll be honest and admit that I've not given physical rages much of a chance, and I hear they are strong. The biggest drawback in my opinion is the counterattacks.

I would disagree with the sentiment that magical Rages fall off over time. Gau will steadily get faster over the course of the game unless you're slam-dunking all your Esper levels into Stamina(at which point, it is absolutely defensible to disregard the elemental precision and focus exclusively on the Rages that scale with Stamina). But if you're putting ELs into Speed, Gau's damage will increase, moreso than most characters in this fashion because Gau will never really need to wait for you to input his command for him. Combine this with the fact that a lot of his more powerful Rages use spells/skills with a high Spell Power, and he doesn't need a heavy investment in Magic to do a lot of damage overall, even if his damage per hit isn't notably impressive very often. Though higher Magic Power certainly helps. In particular, Shokan is a devastatingly powerful Rage when applied in the right context. It devastates anything that has a weakness to Dark, which is a pretty hard weakness to exploit effectively. It also keeps up Seizure for free, since Gau will use Raze reasonably often just by virtue of the sheer number of turns he will take.

Physical Gau is definitely better for straight up DPS, there's no question about that. Magic Gau is useful for slamming a weakness or for AoE.

Locke ... you're definitely in the minority. Most people seem to like the simplicity of having speed, decent damage, HP, and healing. Some people really love how easily his Phoenix build can waste Fire weak bosses in the WoR. You're right that he's mostly a Red Mage that doesn't really shine at anything except X-Magic.

One major point where I'll agree with you is in the WoB. Locke under-performs in the WoB, except for allowing one to stockpile rare steals (Slim Jims). Best you can do for the guy is pump him full of Kirin ELs. Helps immensely for where he's forced, but when he's not forced, Cyan does it better. Honestly, I think the major reason is because Locke needs MP to actually function correctly. Without MP (or HP), Locke's just a bad Shadow.

For his Kirin build, I'll point out that he can also dual-wield FAR more safely than his Ramuh build. He doesn't gain TOO much out of it in the WoB, aside from being able to do it without dying. For the WoR, the Atma + Valiance combo is nice. Yes, you can argue that Celes does it better, but Celes also should be using Illumina, even with her Phantom build. So it's perfectly reasonably for Celes to be a Cover tank with Illumina while Locke does it with Atma + Valiance.

Isis and Asura are easier than Myria. Last I checked, their physicals hit just as hard as Myria. It's just that Myria's also got a nastier fight set-up (Overcast, Mind Blast, Flare Star, Flare). Asura relies on rng to bork you over (N.Cross, Doom, Meteo), but it has to be moderated b/c everyone would complain if she regularly won due to rng, so ... she just ends up being not overly threatening most of the time. For Isis, Love Token doesn't do anything except say "don't use the Fight command", which ... OK, most characters weren't going to anyways, and the ones that do, it's more efficient to send them against Myria. Back attacks don't give a damage multiplier anymore, which is a major loss of flavor. The only thing remaining is Charm and your team being split up; annoying, perhaps it can catch you by surprise, but ultimately way easier to handle than Myria. (Somehow, putting Isis in a pincer is GOOD for her, b/c back attacks are useless but you can't heal as efficiently? lame!).

On Locke, I'll echo what others have said.  He's a bit not great in the WoB, but I don't think this matters a ton since WoB mostly doesn't let you pick your own party anyway.  In WoR, his advantage is versatility, and the fact that his absurd speed lets him do a lot of his tasks much faster than other characters.  Last time I used Locke, I gave him Kirin (I think it's Kirin, the stamina esper) for all of WoB, then pumped him with some Phoenix levels in WoR for more versatility, but basically with Atma he becomes a fast Paladin.

Regarding Gau, it's similarly worth noting his speed, and this makes me think maybe you're missing an important component here.  It isn't just a matter of who is making the biggest numbers appear on-screen; how often you see those numbers also matters a ton, particularly in longer fights.


 

This is the topic I wanted.

Maybe I raised sabin wrong, but for the life of me 9 can't make him do decent damage with bum rush. I put all strenght raising equipment and nirvana band and he does like max 4.000 at most. And I don't think he excels on anything else but having high hp.

Locke is as always a bad character, but I found a strategy to make him cool. Atma, valiance+berserk with haste equipment. Nice dps. I think his really low mp makes him a non reliable mp user.

For Celes, Shock was kind of a letdown. I reseted all of the el of celes and put only stamina and then stamina equipment and still the damage is underwhelming.

It's nice that she can have the half mp relic to make her a usable mage. Still her magic is not good. Holy does not that much damage and merton is kind of dificult to pull, because you can have only 3 fireguards and ypu lose the iceguards until you get the multiguards, but that is the final battles, so for me it doesn't count. I tried yo make her a fighter but I bet the illumina for anpther item, i dont remember wich one, and ended using excalibur. But i rhink i shpuld have like reseted her els to put only strengh to make her a viable fighter (i think you can raise strenght? I have bad memory and havent checked in a month).

Terra is amazing. One of my favpurites. She suffer from the same as celes, low mp, until she comes across with the quarzt charm, and mp raising espers. She basically is an esper for mpst of the game. There is no clear reason to make her a human. Back row and shell/safe and that's it.

You can use cure 2 to do 1200 hp recpvery and low mp magic like break flr 5.000 or ultima for arpund 7.000 to all enemies. Ypu still have to have edgar qith her or sabin, basically rendering their offense null. And edgar does amazing damage. Another one of the top 3.

Edgar does everything you need and has a great way of surviving everything even if he doesnt use a shield.

I love hoy cyan was so buffed that he became amazing. The mutsonokami is kind of useless on him sp i put it in shadow, that without ninja stars kind of sucks, but i wish he cpuld have mahic raising espers to have fun qith scrolls and that sword. A hastened, berserked shadow with the knife that does attack 2x coupled with mutsonokami is a fast way to do good all enemie damage.

Mog without dragoon setup kind of sucks, i try to make dancing wprk in wor but it dissapoints, and he has low strenght.

Setzer stsrted good and ended really bad. He doesn't have anyrhing good. I didn't use fixed dice plus 2x attack because I just left him along woth mog in the airship.

Gogo and umaro are beasts now. The two of them deal lots of damage if they are well equipped (well umaro has only relic options since he has one equip).

I didn't find gau as an attacker very good.  But his 2 all character healing plus earth attacks amazing with haste.

Relm and strago are very good but suffer with bad magic. They do tons of damage for the magic that they have and sketch now is pne of the best abilities. Using flare to atma to deal tons of damage wad amazing. Last fight she kinds of underwhelm since you cannot sketch anything amd flare doesn't do that much damage.

Strago on the other hand plus magicx is a best. Dual dark or ice 2 to an ice weak enemy is a lpt of damage. I think grandtrain is nerfed because it doesn't do that much damage as in vanilla for the magic cost. But he is really versatile and his high magic and mp with osmose makes him a great asset.

Next, the fights. Ypu DO need to learn how to ply the gme again, but when ypu get the thinking behind fights, it becomes a lot easier.

I think bosses need a little more work. I understand the way you want to make statuses usable, but if every boss fight ypu need to use slow and haste, it tends to become old at some point. With that every boss becomes easy. So it's kind of insane high hp.

My strategy for basically most bosses is golem, zoneseek, haste, slow. And then profit. Even dragons. Just be carefull with the attack that makes then haste themselves.

Translation for me didn't work. There are good parts but the constant references break the inmersion for me. And as an iron maiden fan, understanding every one of them was off putting, I even got the castlevania one. I know that there is the choice to use the other translation, but i wanted to see what this one was about.

The last thing is that I understand the thinking behind making magic a scarce resourse, so you can focus on phyisical abilities more, but I think it's a little overdone. At least have more access to mp replenishing items or making the mp replenishing abilities more generpus. Like mog dance. He dies the mp healing really scarcely and it does low healing. You have to go out pf your way to turn sabin or edgar into a mp healer and that's it. If ypu raise stamina a lot it never imrpoves that much of the healing. 

I want to point out that this is my opinion only. I do enjoyed the hack a lot.

I like the way I have to learn to adapt to different rules to use different aproaches to kill enemies and bosses.

But the same can be said if ypu go on a low level natural magic vanilla run. You use those mechanics in a creative way.

I think the nex time i play this game is going to be the randomizers.

On 7/24/2022 at 2:10 PM, deno46 said:

stuff

 

Terra: Yeah, she's amazing, especially in the second world.

Locke: Phoenix Locke is an old favorite of veteran players, and is usually considered Locke's best set-up. Your set-up is known too though.

Edgar: Yup, he's amazing.

Sabin: Sabin's damage falls off by endgame, yes, and it's been that way for many versions of BNW now. For the second world, you want to take advantage of elemental claws (with berserk optionally added on), eventually switching over to being a Chakra user (re-spec to stam or HP).

Celes: I'm not happy that version 2.0 removed the 4th Flameguard, and consider it a major flaw with version 2.0. The Merton set-up worked very well, and had no need of being nerfed. Otherwise, Celes doesn't really do great damage, excepting elemental weaknesses or with berserk. She tends to shine more in the support tank role. Some veterans even just build her with pure Seraph.

Cyan: stam Cyan with the Mutsunokami seems to be the favored veteran strat in 2.0.

Shadow: With his speed, he can clear randoms quite well with his AoE magic. Otherwise, yeah, good glass cannon.

Gau: Yeah, Harvester Gau is arguably his best deploy in 2.0.

Setzer: Huh. Interesting. Usually I consider Setzer a mainstay. Build 10 Seraph, 10 whatever else, and you got a bulky healer with Rerise. Granted, Terra might just be straight better than him. GP Toss does good damage if you don't want to bother with Daryl's Soul.

Mog: Yeah, Mog's dances basically fall off by endgame. Earth Blues is still usuable lategame, but that's mostly it. (My mod, Lol New World, does try to fix that). Sage Stone Mog can work well, but he'll need Chakra support. Otherwise, yes, Mogoon's traditionally been the "I just need an easy-to-use but still viable Mog for the lategame".

Strago: He's one of the favorite characters for veterans. Makes incredible use of X-Magic. Black Omen was more useful in older versions of BNW, but X-Dark exists now.

Relm: In the second world, Relm's damage is dependent upon finding a Crystal Orb, yes, and even then, you need to build hard magic to really see noteworthy numbers. I personally prefer building speed on Relm. Snag an early Crystal Orb and she'll be a nice, speedy healer + Flarebot + Rerise spammer for the second world.

Fights: Nowea Hard Type attempts to diversify boss fights a bit more, while also making things harder. It's another mod option to look into.

Magic Resources: I'll have to disagree with you on this one. Chakra and Mana Battery provide potentially infinite MP, and you can also have 99 Tinctures in your inventory well. Also, my experience is that a handful of MP espers is usually enough for most characters. There's also a final trick: X-Mage Strago can transfer MP over to other units with some creative use of Reflect and Osmose (or Ghost Ring and Osmose). BNW's got options for MP management, and with that, and the "free" attacks/heals, I personally think there's not ENOUGH MP management concerns in BNW. Regardless of that opinion though, I hope I've helped give you some ideas for MP management in your next BNW game.