Disc 1 sure went by much faster than I remembered. Guess I'm having enough fun to make the game just fly by. Overall I can't say I've discerned much of a practical difference between my previous playthrough 2 years ago and this one in terms of challenge, although there's clearly more bonus stuff present and the balance curve is way more finely tuned. But more on that later.
As per tradition I attempted Diablos as soon as possible and was super positively surprised that, for the first time ever, he proved to be formidable enough for me to postpone the fight until a bit later. He really doesn't like people drawing demis out of him, which is absolutely the right choice since it's such a strong junction spell. And me being obsessive compulsive naturally meant I needed to draw full stacks no matter what.
Gerogero was a pushover and provided some new spells for junctions. Laguna flashback cyborgs were susceptible to the same statuses as back in the day, gaining a nostalgic smirk from me. Although I did hope they'd have some new tricks because they really are helpless as babies. Good news is you can't draw death from them anymore, but more on that stuff later.
The brothers felt exactly the same; floats across the board neuter them totally, which I think should be rectified for hard mode. This is one of those extra bosses as well so it is underwhelming when there's such an easy solution to counter them.
Iguanas had some new buddies, or at least I don't remember them being there before. Didn't make the fight much harder though. I guess I don't mind this one being easier since it's more like an appetizer for what's next.
And here I get to throw some abundant praise at Callisto. First off, Seifer is pretty much perfectly tuned. First you're like "Hey, he actually puts up a fight! Awesome", then you adjust your junctions and feel like "Ok it's quite easy after all", but then he throws one last curve ball at you and you're like "Oh shit" for a while before the end. It's not too long, and keeps things fresh. Awesome fight. Same for Edea, actually - I rather enjoy that it's clearly the most complex and varied fight of disc 1. She's got it all - physicals with status inflictions, -ga spells, dispels when you buff up too much, and a badass AOE. Can't remember if she had any heals or esunas for herself but that would be a good addition if it's not there yet, to counter a potential bio spam.
The prison is a horrid, monotonous busywork hell like always. Seriously, it feels worse every time I play through it. Such lazy design from square. Would benefit from having some encounter-free floors if possible, or something to ease the torture of running up and down a million times... And the constant party changes/re-junctioning, God...
At this point in the game I was slowly sinking into apathy, and not only because of the prison. Disc 1 felt quite easy overall until Edea came along to spice things up for a bit and gave me hope that things would kick into high gear in disc 2, but the encounters weren't any tougher in the prison.
What finally roused me from my coma was the encounter at the top of the prison with 2 captains and robots. This fight was
[email protected] metal, and rejuvenated my enjoyment of the game. I had to pull all stops for this one and experiment with different strategies until I found the right one. I got to try so many approaches and use my imagination, this is the stuff I live for and have been waiting for. What finally worked for me was a very specific setup with Quistis at low HP and someone with cover. I needed Q to survive until she got the Acid limit off on one of the captains, dealing 4 k damage, and Squall throws a double on Rinoa who casts double Bio to finish the guy instantly. At this point, Quistis inevitably bites the dust because they're so fast and bound to hit her eventually, and so would begin my slow recovery process which was only possible when one of them was dead. With all 4, I never managed to keep up no matter how defensively I played. Double ray-bomb was always a party-wipe without a shell on everyone, and dispelling every aura stone immediately was crucial. What a beautiful fight.
Some factors for perspective's sake: I'm constantly using the no-exp ability since I got it, only changing it for the toughest boss fights where I need the slot. Squall is at level 9 for all these fights with everyone else either at default level or 1-2 above it at most. No card modding either, but otherwise I'm not holding myself back. I draw new spell stacks from bosses I encounter and explore a lot, mugging everything etc.
Overall thoughts. I'll have to double down on my comments about GF's - even for bosses who actually are susceptible to some statuses, GF's still end up being inferior to alternative methods in practice. Either they're too flimsy to survive through the summoning if it's a tough boss, or their damage is useless compared to regular double casting, or it just takes too long or the bosses are immune to the statuses(as is most often the case), rendering the GF's presumably only redeeming feature moot. And you're committing a menu slot to even use them. The only asterisk I have is that I don't know whether stuff is planned with the +hp and dmg abilities in mind, but in the case it is I don't necessarily agree because it would require extra grind and will often result in overleveling, and the thought that you have to commit time to get them even up to par is just another hurdle that makes them not worth it.
Verdict; I think there are tiny traces of vanilla Final Fantasies' cardinal sin in here, where bosses are balanced around the fact that they're immune to most if not all status attacks. It effectively removes a whole section of gameplay mechanics from boss fights, namely debuffs, and by extension severely cripples the utility of status-inflicting summons since the one time you actually want to use them they don't work. I know there are exceptions and you've done a lot of work to rectify the problem but I think there's room to expand on it even more for this hard mode, where debuffing would become a more prominent aspect of boss fights as well, adding further depth and complexity. In other words, tune the balance with status effects in mind so you can allow the bosses to be susceptible to them more extensively. Suddenly the GF's become an attractive option when you know that you're pretty much toast if you don't land the slows, or the poisons or the silences, and they have a high resistance -
but they are not immune. This is all particularly important for hard mode, I feel, where more complexity is better and players can be expected to know how basic debuffs and buffs work.
Card modding is in a nice place where it's not completely broken but there's plenty of ways to get a lot stronger if you want. I still banned it from myself though. I remember someone commenting on card modding being weak in the mod, which honestly baffles me now that I've seen it again.
So many warm, fuzzy flashbacks to our conversations from years ago, with death & regen removed from disc 1(or at least I couldn't find them outside of card modding but that's broken anyways), and other strong spells removed from many draw tables. 2 single-use draw points with double to ration for boss fights. Oh, the memories. This fine-tuned spell curve is undercut by what you can get just by refining drops/steals on disc 1, though. To name a few I found meltdown, bio, pain, haste and most notably double which seems antithetical to the whole economy aspect of that spell. Some of those are super super strong for disc 1 so I'd push them further away.
The added save points were a thing of true beauty, every one of them highly welcome. Especially the ones right before bosses as they should be. Still perplexes me why they don't have save points before boss fights in the vanilla games.
Lastly, you've really managed to give me the slip with some new sidequests. Went after anacondaurs for quite a while for the Dollet girl first ingredient but to no avail, and after the prison escape on disc 2 took a quick detour to Deling to get the Rinoa card but the general was talking shit about Iguanas in the sewers. I consider myself a pretty stubborn old school gamer, but after over an hour scouring every square inch in the sewers, I gave up. No idea how I could have possibly missed them.
