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Gameplay / My thoughts on "A NEW THREAT"
« on: 2019-06-22 19:15:49 »
The short version is that initially I loved it, but then as the game went on I started asking myself over and over again, why am I even putting up with this? It quickly becomes a lesson in futility: How much trolling are you willing to put up with?
The pros:
A lot of new content, and a different way to build your characters up. Script improvements etc. New textures, medicine man, save point options... tons of new cool stuff. It's clear a lot of work went into this mod.
The cons:
Wildly unfair battles and unnecessary trolling. Confusing changes and no real documentation for all the changes. For example, where is ultima? What are all these items that never actually go into your inventory? Every time you're expecting a good treasure or a good drop, the game trolls you. It would be one thing if it was a brand new game, but when you're expecting something and you get snubbed over and over and over again it just becomes annoying.
Weapons seem to all universally suck in their own way. Always seems like you're choosing between what sucks the least. Also is hit chance bugged? I'll have 99 attack%, and then miss every swing on a 4x cut over and over again. And steal seems completely busted. I get that you wanted to avoid a completely linear progression in gear... but like... I've been using the same gear for 2 discs because the alternatives are just terrible. Every single "new drop" I get is an objective downgrade to the one before it. It just doesn't make a good progression. It's like when I picked up the pilebunker in the northern cave. Oh great! A new weapon for Barret! I'd been using the AM launcher for like... 10 hours of gameplay. Oh... wait.... the pilebunker has an attack% of 75. Which may as well be 0%, since you miss nonstop at 95%! And low and behold, Barret cannot land a single attack with it. 4x cut misses 75% of the time, and even if it does hit, since it's not a long range item and barret is backlined as a tank... it does 100 damage/hit.... at lvl 99. Like... what??? Why is the end game gear objectively worse than gear from disc 1?!?!?!
Let me start by describing the encounter that led me to write this review:
I'm in the northern crater, what was normally a treasure trove of gear. Instead all the treasures of old have been replaced by seriously underwhelming gear (which is kind of emblematic of the entire mod, instead of getting the good gear you think you're going to get, you get trolled with a potion of something equally as useless.) and the majority of the end game loot must be stolen from the monsters within. I look up that the 'Iron Man' can have a Ragnarok stolen from him.
47 steal attempts with my lvl 99 thief later... no success. 47 ATTEMPTS!!!! FORTY SEVEN. At lvl 99. I'm not even sure this is the fault of the mod, but what on earth is going on here? Does this seem right to anyone? This isn't even counting the hundreds of aggregate attempts in previous battles with this guy. I mean what is the success chance??! 0.0001%???
Then before I can even get a single turn off, the mob goes: grand sword, adrenaline, grand sword. Game Over. His regular attacks one shot my tank, even though my tank has max hp, max defense, backlined, sadness applied, barrier applied and his defending. 9,999 dmg attack that occurs basically every second. HOW FUN!
Now let's discuss the curator in Midgar. I'm using a party of cloud, barret, tifa. Cloud and Tifa limit breaks are both random, and let me tell you what, just about every rng goes to the part of his body that takes 0 damage. As did just about every comet 2 I threw at him. After what must have been 30 minutes, I finally get him down to just the core. Then he does coral laser. It does 2k damage to my party... no big deal, my guys all had ~5,000 hp.... except my party is dead? Does this inflict death status effect or something? Why did my guys all die despite being at half hp? 30 minutes flushed down the toilet. (I don't understand why this happened, but if the Coral Laser ability does indeed inflict sudden death, this might be the worst designed enemy in video game history. To set up players to put in 30 minutes of effort just to be killed because you weren't wearing a safety bit is insane. Or maybe it was a bug?)
The point is, you get thrown into wildly unfair battles that are pretty much a guaranteed 30 minute waste of time, as the enemy's trump card that absolutely must be taken into account (that you also had no idea existed) wipes you out. The mod claims status effects are very important... only that it seems as though enemies are completely immune to every status effect, and you are completely crippled by them. I've lost battles because I ran out of softs after using 30 of them in a single battle. Does Slow do anything? Stop? I've had time materia equipped the entire game, and it seems like the enemies get more attacks off than you no matter what. Doesn't matter if your party is hasted with maxxed out dex, and the enemy is slowed over and over again, they are going to get more attacks than you. Like in the sunken airplace Gelnika or whatever... there is an enemy that can needle your guy and just take them out. He killed a guy, and then before I could even revive him, both my other guys had been needled. Game over! Feels like something equally broken/frustrating happens in every stage of the game.
IMO, buffing the enemies needs to come with a buff to your characters. It's just not enjoyable when your attacks do 1/10 of what you're used to them doing at a similar point in the unmodded game, and the enemies have 10x the hp and 10x the damage. Again, my guys are level 99, and I'm hitting enemies in the northern cave for ~300 damage/attack on my strength characters. When I try to take them out with my casters, it's the same! Comet2 hits for ~800/comet. Meanwhile the enemies normal attack one shots your tank. Also, the enemies have counter attacks, also the enemies have hidden triggers for other counterattacks. Oh you casted Cure3 five minutes ago? Too bad! The enemy gets three turns in a row!
Enemies that are weak against poison will dodge Bio over and over again, even sometimes there is 'green miss' text, as if to suggest that the enemy who is supposedly weak against poison would be healed by it if it actually hit.
Dazers don't seem to do anything. Added effect also pretty much does nothing. I had it equipped the entire game with various status effects, they were actually inflicted on maybe 1/100 attacks. It just feels like the enemies have all the broken mechanics and you just have to take the shaft over and over and over again. Then on top of that, when you think that next sweet piece of gear/materia will be your reprieve, you instead get trolled. For all these reasons I have given up. It's just an exercise in sadism at this point.
I do want to thank Sega for all the work put into the mod, and it's certainly not all bad, and some people genuinely enjoy being tortured by a game, but I am not one of them. I just can't handle the unfairness and the trolling anymore. Sorry guys, but I'm getting off this train, gonna live a nice quiet life in Kalm until the Meteor hits. Good luck.
The pros:
A lot of new content, and a different way to build your characters up. Script improvements etc. New textures, medicine man, save point options... tons of new cool stuff. It's clear a lot of work went into this mod.
The cons:
Wildly unfair battles and unnecessary trolling. Confusing changes and no real documentation for all the changes. For example, where is ultima? What are all these items that never actually go into your inventory? Every time you're expecting a good treasure or a good drop, the game trolls you. It would be one thing if it was a brand new game, but when you're expecting something and you get snubbed over and over and over again it just becomes annoying.
Weapons seem to all universally suck in their own way. Always seems like you're choosing between what sucks the least. Also is hit chance bugged? I'll have 99 attack%, and then miss every swing on a 4x cut over and over again. And steal seems completely busted. I get that you wanted to avoid a completely linear progression in gear... but like... I've been using the same gear for 2 discs because the alternatives are just terrible. Every single "new drop" I get is an objective downgrade to the one before it. It just doesn't make a good progression. It's like when I picked up the pilebunker in the northern cave. Oh great! A new weapon for Barret! I'd been using the AM launcher for like... 10 hours of gameplay. Oh... wait.... the pilebunker has an attack% of 75. Which may as well be 0%, since you miss nonstop at 95%! And low and behold, Barret cannot land a single attack with it. 4x cut misses 75% of the time, and even if it does hit, since it's not a long range item and barret is backlined as a tank... it does 100 damage/hit.... at lvl 99. Like... what??? Why is the end game gear objectively worse than gear from disc 1?!?!?!
Let me start by describing the encounter that led me to write this review:
I'm in the northern crater, what was normally a treasure trove of gear. Instead all the treasures of old have been replaced by seriously underwhelming gear (which is kind of emblematic of the entire mod, instead of getting the good gear you think you're going to get, you get trolled with a potion of something equally as useless.) and the majority of the end game loot must be stolen from the monsters within. I look up that the 'Iron Man' can have a Ragnarok stolen from him.
47 steal attempts with my lvl 99 thief later... no success. 47 ATTEMPTS!!!! FORTY SEVEN. At lvl 99. I'm not even sure this is the fault of the mod, but what on earth is going on here? Does this seem right to anyone? This isn't even counting the hundreds of aggregate attempts in previous battles with this guy. I mean what is the success chance??! 0.0001%???
Then before I can even get a single turn off, the mob goes: grand sword, adrenaline, grand sword. Game Over. His regular attacks one shot my tank, even though my tank has max hp, max defense, backlined, sadness applied, barrier applied and his defending. 9,999 dmg attack that occurs basically every second. HOW FUN!
Now let's discuss the curator in Midgar. I'm using a party of cloud, barret, tifa. Cloud and Tifa limit breaks are both random, and let me tell you what, just about every rng goes to the part of his body that takes 0 damage. As did just about every comet 2 I threw at him. After what must have been 30 minutes, I finally get him down to just the core. Then he does coral laser. It does 2k damage to my party... no big deal, my guys all had ~5,000 hp.... except my party is dead? Does this inflict death status effect or something? Why did my guys all die despite being at half hp? 30 minutes flushed down the toilet. (I don't understand why this happened, but if the Coral Laser ability does indeed inflict sudden death, this might be the worst designed enemy in video game history. To set up players to put in 30 minutes of effort just to be killed because you weren't wearing a safety bit is insane. Or maybe it was a bug?)
The point is, you get thrown into wildly unfair battles that are pretty much a guaranteed 30 minute waste of time, as the enemy's trump card that absolutely must be taken into account (that you also had no idea existed) wipes you out. The mod claims status effects are very important... only that it seems as though enemies are completely immune to every status effect, and you are completely crippled by them. I've lost battles because I ran out of softs after using 30 of them in a single battle. Does Slow do anything? Stop? I've had time materia equipped the entire game, and it seems like the enemies get more attacks off than you no matter what. Doesn't matter if your party is hasted with maxxed out dex, and the enemy is slowed over and over again, they are going to get more attacks than you. Like in the sunken airplace Gelnika or whatever... there is an enemy that can needle your guy and just take them out. He killed a guy, and then before I could even revive him, both my other guys had been needled. Game over! Feels like something equally broken/frustrating happens in every stage of the game.
IMO, buffing the enemies needs to come with a buff to your characters. It's just not enjoyable when your attacks do 1/10 of what you're used to them doing at a similar point in the unmodded game, and the enemies have 10x the hp and 10x the damage. Again, my guys are level 99, and I'm hitting enemies in the northern cave for ~300 damage/attack on my strength characters. When I try to take them out with my casters, it's the same! Comet2 hits for ~800/comet. Meanwhile the enemies normal attack one shots your tank. Also, the enemies have counter attacks, also the enemies have hidden triggers for other counterattacks. Oh you casted Cure3 five minutes ago? Too bad! The enemy gets three turns in a row!
Enemies that are weak against poison will dodge Bio over and over again, even sometimes there is 'green miss' text, as if to suggest that the enemy who is supposedly weak against poison would be healed by it if it actually hit.
Dazers don't seem to do anything. Added effect also pretty much does nothing. I had it equipped the entire game with various status effects, they were actually inflicted on maybe 1/100 attacks. It just feels like the enemies have all the broken mechanics and you just have to take the shaft over and over and over again. Then on top of that, when you think that next sweet piece of gear/materia will be your reprieve, you instead get trolled. For all these reasons I have given up. It's just an exercise in sadism at this point.
I do want to thank Sega for all the work put into the mod, and it's certainly not all bad, and some people genuinely enjoy being tortured by a game, but I am not one of them. I just can't handle the unfairness and the trolling anymore. Sorry guys, but I'm getting off this train, gonna live a nice quiet life in Kalm until the Meteor hits. Good luck.