Came back to this for the most recent version, and once again NT does not disappoint! I do miss some of the extra stuff from 1.5, though I haven't touched Game B yet.
A Few things I wanna say
-Hard Mode is barely any different from Normal Mode aside from no Gil and steals being slightly harder until you get
Free Sneak Glove Yuffie. Gaining no Gil from randoms was the Real Hard Mode since it made all of your shopping up until Mideel very strict, and making you decide between stocking up on recovery items, new materia, or new weapons, and even who gets new gear. Once you reach Mideel, money becomes abundant via being able to morph a crapton of Crystal Gloves to sell for 8k Gil per glove (which becomes even easier and faster to farm once you get the majestic Mega All Materia).
>I feel like making a Hard Mode with enemies (especially bosses) that are actually stronger that require planning & strategy beyond Wall+All & Haste+All and specifically designed around No Gil from Randoms would make for a brilliant NT Hard Mode.
-I Love the changes to limits, especially the Lv.4 Limits. Everyone (except Tifa and Aerith) having Physical and Magical Limits is great since it rewards players for stepping out of a character's preferred role (most of these being some form of Physical Attacker lol). I love the additional effects Nanaki and Yuffie get on their Lv.4 Limits, and it makes me wish the others got a little more love to their Lv.4 Limits as well
>I think Nanaki could do with either having Howling Moon and Stardust swapped, or having Howling Moon giving him a boost to his Magic Damage and give MP Regen. His Lv.3 Limit set is kinda very lackluster on the magic side, plus Berserk is too harsh of a drawback against bosses and rather pointless against Randoms when you could use Earth Rave and likely clear out the randoms even faster than with Howling Moon buffs + Berserk.
>Cait having Transform as a Lv.1 Limit and a Slots Limit is very redundant and makes getting the roll for Slots Transform even more disappointing. Maybe swap one of the two to an attack that uses his Current HP for damage? His HP (and his Luck) is his greatest strength for most of the game, so it'd be nice to give him a way to weaponize it other than staying at dangerously low HP for using the enemy skill ? ? ? ? (hell, giving him a weapon or two that uses Luck for damage calc would make for a fun physical attacker Cait build if that's possible)
>Everyone gets new additional effects to their limits except Tifa. I can kinda get why given how her limits work, but it does kinda feel like she got the short end of the stick, especially since none of her limits are Magic based. Is there anything you could do to spice up her limits, especially to encourage other builds for her besides dumping all her SPs on Strength boosting ones?
>It's a massive pain grinding out everyone's limits until you get Slash All. I had gotten up to Cosmo Canyon/Gold Saucer (i don't remember which off the top of my head) and just barely got Cloud's Lv.2 Limits unlocked. I can understand Cloud's kill count needing to be higher than the others to unlock his limits, but I feel the others could do with a lower kill requirement for at least their Lv.2 Limits to encourage shuffling around party members more. (Vincent is the easiest one to get all limits, but Vincent still sucks lol)
-I do want to mention that a few fights that did survive from 1.5, mostly related to Lv.4 Limit quests, have been toned down a little too far for my tastes.
-Da Chao Spirit was one of the hardest Lv.4 Limit fights from 1.5, and now she's barely strong enough to even be considered a boss. Removing the Quicksand Final Attack from her Familiars was a much needed change since it was just Excessive in 1.5, but they still barely had any bite to their bark.
-X-ATM Prime wasn't very difficult to begin with in 1.5 if i remember right, but now it barely puts up a fight.
-Cait Sith's sidequest boss was... There. I was sorely disappointed that it barely even got in one attack before I beat it, and I'm pretty sure that one attack was casting Haste on itself. It was even more disappointing since a lot of work had gone into making and refining the models used for this fight, along with the really eerie and well done set-up for it. (Also does the Dark Matter you get from this sidequest do anything?)
-Totally-Not-Gilgamesh was more fun than in 1.5, though he was still kind of a pushover. Since you get a full recovery between Ziegfried and fighting Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh could definitely stand to have a bit more going for him. Also side note but it was nice seeing the COMMANDO Gal from 1.5 making a cameo in the Special Round
-Shinryu and Omega was also an improvement from 1.5, not much to say other than it's better than before lol
and on the other end of the spectrum...
-I'm not entirely sure what's going on in Ozma's fight, but at one point in one attempt, Ozma got like 8 turns in a row obliterating my party. On the positive side, Ozma is no longer the absolute joke it was in 1.5. on the negative side, Ozma feels even more RNG than its original battle in FF9 since it can pull out a devastating Meteor as a counter.
-Emerald Weapon is Excessively Powerful and is W A Y too bulky for a 20 minute timer. I'm even being cheap with Nanaki and Aerith for infinite Limit Breaks, and I still don't think I even got halfway down Emerald's HP pool before the 20 minutes ran out. the Eyes attack FAR too fast, and Emerald being able to Haste itself is way too much on top of being able to remove your buffs.
A couple issues I've noticed while playing are Renew being affected by MBarrier, making it a Worse Cure 3 (even moreso with Cure 3 being able to be paired with All/Mega All), Mustard Bomb has No Sound at all, and there's a purple materia in Rocket Town post-Rocket Launch that I can't interact with. I assume this is supposed to be where Long Range gets moved to if you missed it earlier (I picked up Long Range as soon as I was able to)
-A smaller issue I noticed was with Added Effect=Materia with positive status effects. I tried having Aerith hit the party with Regen via a normal attack and... Regen doesn't apply to anyone. Tried it with Barrier, MBarrier, and even Reflect. Nothing worked. (also could we maybe get more weapons like Aerith's healing staffs for other characters for fun support things that the splinter materias with positive effects are for?)
-Goblin Song costs no MP, which is pretty OP considering it's Life 2 on the party + Fury on the enemies. Might wanna fix this
-I'm not sure if the extra bosses in this game have extremely high physical defense, or if Cloud's Ultima Weapon isn't working right, because Cloud's Omnislash barely reaches 350 per hit, even with Elemental Materia paired with the boss' weakness. I'm hoping it's the latter, cuz battles have mostly been spamming Turbo MP'd Comet 2's until the boss dies.
-Speaking of Comet, it's really much too strong from the time you get it, and even moreso with Turbo MP. These two Spells basically render all other attack spells moot. even casting Pearl from Aerith with Turbo MP on a Holy Weak enemy struggles to match Comet 2's power.
-Small note, but sometimes when killing Emerald Weapon's eyes, it's mode change causes the pop-dialogue "Carmine is switching to Limit Mode!" rather than the intended "Emerald is switching to Limit Mode!"
I'm still working my way through the end/post-game content, and i'm enjoying it for the most part! I'm about to go against
the super secret boss behind the cryptic puzzle,
and after I finally beat the weapons, I think I'll try out Game Mode B
EDIT to avoid double posting:
I got around to finishing Game Mode A (sorta. the game softlocked in the Cloud Sephiroth 1v1 because Cloud had Sneak Attack=Wall equipped... whoops...) and I wanted to give more thoughts before diving into Game Mode B
-I finally beat Emerald after accidentally discovering a devastating strategy while taking a swing at Ruby of Party Reflect -> Pandora's Box. It almost felt like it was necessary to be obnoxiously cheap without resorting to Peerless to ignore incoming damage against Emerald while still beating it within the 20 minute time limit given how much time it wastes with its attacks and especially its eyes.
-Ruby felt like a fine battle after I had Pandora's Box to heal my team while keeping up the damage, and it felt like it'd just be a matter of planning out my support materia set-up for Ruby.... until I accidentally discovered Pandora's Box is reflectable when I had put up reflect in hopes Ultima could be reflected. Then this fight turned into bullying Ruby into oblivion
-The Calamity was honest to god everything I had been hoping for from a Hard Mode: incredibly difficult while not being impossible. It felt somewhat RNG since its Attack x4 move could KO 2 characters if one of them didn't get a lucky dodge to bring it down to only one KO'd and one badly injured, but I never felt like the fight was beyond my control. This fight made me have to rethink my materia and even my accessories to obtain victory, and boy that victory was the sweetest thing in NT.
-Sephiroth was an understandable step down from the previous boss, though the Safer form was... boring, since it was just Doublecasting Comet + Mime spam until he died since his defenses were far too high to attack him in any other way.
I was originally worried that I'd have to make use of Peerless to beat The Secret Boss, but the more I tried, the more I realized that I just needed to refine my strategy and my gear more and more, and I really wish more of NT Hard Mode had that. too many bosses could be brute forced through with Comet/Comet 2 spam without much thought, so much so that I only bothered levelling up Contain, Hydro, Pearl, and Ultima just to get the Master Magic Materia, and didn't even bother levelling up the Core Materia. I think that Comet should be pushed into later into the game because it really is so obscenely powerful it makes even Ultima pale in comparison. Maybe swap its placement with Contain?
Oh also would it be possible to add a 2nd Final Boss for the 2nd Party you make against Bizarro Sephiroth? I always found it weird and kinda disappointing that they never got a fight after Bizarro, even as a kid.
one final thing I wanna add before diving into Game Mode B is that I feel draining moves were nerfed a little too hard across the board, especially in the case of Osmose. Osmose drains so little it's basically not worth using until the extra bosses where it will always drain ~250MP per cast. I totally understand why HP Draining needed to be nerfed, since it really was hilariously broken (my main strat back in 1.5 was Cid Drain Tanking for the team with 2 Covers and 4 Counter Attacks while wielding the Venus Gospel, so I'm VERY aware how broken it was lol), but MP Draining is almost not worth slotting in Osmose/MP Absorb at all, aside from sticking it on the Master Magic Materia.
I'm gonna go and beat Sephiroth while avoiding the softlock, then dive into Game Mode B. I can't wait to see what Mode B has in store!
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