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[FF8-PC Steam/Switch] FFVIII Crystal 1.5.6 / Remastered Version 1.1.6

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NapazTrix:
Really enjoyed my time with this mod, though I got a few suggestions for changes and notes I made through my playtime.

0: Shiva grants Mug to Quistis but with her low Speed the rate of it is low and Shiva never unlocks any Speed-related abilities. Whereas Irvine has a higher speed stat, and gains 2x +15% SPD, making him a much better candidate for this, and what I changed to when getting Mug at Fisherman's Horizon. Is this intentional?

1: Desert Prison Floor 2 gives a Pet Nametag as OG, but the item pickup said it gave 2x bioblasters.

2: Had a freeze when I had Rinoa, Squall, and Quistis versus NORG. Squall did a critical trigger hit and the screen froze as it landed. Not sure if it is just the mod or base game though.

3: The Chocobo World add-on wasn't considered during the mod creation, but for non-remastered it can play a big part in balance and is an avenue for Mog and Boko to be used. I'd prefer if these had some form of implementation if not just an easier way to get some items without grinding in-game.

4: I defeated Odin with 0 seconds to spare and it gave me his rewards, but also counted as a failure so it kicked me out. This allowed me to beat him again and get his rewards a second time.
    4a: Tonberry King had quite a lacklustre reward since he really only gave the Kamikaze ability. For how tough he was, at least working around his almost Insta-kills and Junk counter, it didn't seem worth it. Especially since Kamikaze removes that character from the battle, making it have little worth as VIT 0 isn't as good as another character for their actions when considering most of the bosses can get up to 5 turns before yours.

5: The Card Club side-quest didn't recognise that I won 15 matches in the Garden, I finally was able to get into the CC quest, after 25 wins in the Garden. Did it all, but no item rewards, just cards, which are kinda pointless in the mod.
    5a: Following on from Cards, since there is no CardMod ability the card game has a severe lack of purpose when compared to the base game. You can get the Card skill from the guy in Dollet, and a few items from the prison fellas that have been changed to be worse, but mostly there's not much point to play the card game from my experience.

6: Zombie has a weird texture glitch that makes the character see-through and like a MissingNo from Pokemon. Curse has a similar issue where the visual stops showing when it is still active.

7: Adamantoise's drop rate of Adamantine feels far too low, I had to grind on them for 10+ levels to get 3, leaving me at 50-60 levels.
    7a: Probably too much to implement now, or too hard to do regardless, but it would be nice to be able to Mug an enemy and still get their normal drop. I agonised so much over if I should Mug or let the enemy drop their item. At least for Adamantoise, I believe you stated in the thread that it's better to let them drop Adamantine. I can't follow an online guide on who drops what as you changed most things past the Dollet Mission. At least some bosses had set drops, that you still get with mugging, but it was hard to gauge if a boss dropped anything good when just looking at their drops.

8: The Red Dragon in Fire Cavern I feel is a bit overturned. If not just for its harsh scaling with your level, you're unable to make yourself immune to fire damage or Daunt, plus the use of Flare and melee attacks dealing so much damage. The fire healing per turn would be fine if it wasn't healing almost 4k for every other action I can take. It seems heavily geared towards a mage party since the junction element doesn't stop the healing which isn't fun if you've spent so much making a physical team. It's just not enjoyably designed in my mind. Even after getting it done with Selphie doing Double-Blizzaga, the Red Dragon still had its regen at times and failed to show the text for the element stopping it. Not sure if it's just a chance of it stopping the healing or if it just glitched out at times.

9: There is seemingly a lack of enemies to easily get the -aga spells from before Disc 3. You gotta look in really small areas or story/boss fights to get those. This is seemingly prevalent with Blizzaga in preparation for the Red Dragon. Adamantoises of 56 still had Blizzara, and many other enemies seemingly stopped at -ara on the map before Ragnarok.

10: Seifer felt too harsh in his solo and duo fight with Edea in the Galbadia Garden invasion. His crit rate was so high he was doing 1800-2000 damage a hit, meaning most died in 1-2 hits, with a follow-up Firaga doing the job if I didn't have high hp or shell active. Edea was fine as she could be countered well enough with Auto-Reflect.

11: In the Abaddon fight, the boss counters spells which interrupts and stops the second cast when using Double, which is a major pain. Unsure if that is a glitch or not. I found this happened a few times with normal enemies and a few bosses, where Double just didn't cast the 2nd spell.

12: Edea as an ally was quite underwhelming. She didn't have that great of a Magic stat, nor many spells or the ability to draw more. I had to give her spells to cast. In the end, I didn't use her much because she was uninteresting.

13: The Esthar enemies in Laguna flashback while on the elevator have way too high a crit rate too, being able to kill anyone who isn't Squall/Laguna in 2 hits or so, with a cracked speed or just double actions.

14: The Sorceress Memorial gauntlet was rather fun and felt fair, however, the steals from them are atrocious. I can buy shell stones and the like with ease, I don't want a hidden boss to give those. This might just be because they are the same ones you fight in the story, but I would prefer items to refine into Ultima, Flare, or Meteor.

15: When using Double with Selphie, she would sometimes not use the stock of spells, but other times she did. I am not sure why this happened, but it mostly occurred with Pain and Double.

16: I felt that the shops could have been made a bit more unique, it ended up being 3 or so stores I would use since the rest had nothing I needed. Possibly more options for buying materials from shops, like Esthar mostly did for Life Rings into Arise.

17: The Sorceress fight at Edea's House was a bit too long/reactive for me. It took 45 minutes to beat her since I had to keep healing, buffing, and reviving. Either I missed something or it's just a game of return damage and keep yourself alive to attack every other turn.

18: Diablos was a fun fight, but like the Red Dragon it is a massive pain if you're low-level with little skills to back you up. Same with Vivian, but I had two characters with Ribbon due to Chocobo World, so I feel I had more fun with it due to not having to worry about as many statuses. Vivian's reward was great, much better than Diablos who just gave Nightsword.

19: The behemoth for the third key was underwhelming. It didn't really do anything unique except the fire-counter and ending with Starfall. I had no issues with it except a crit on Selphie so I had to revive her. The reward was nice for it.

20: The Abyss Worm fight was very anti-climactic. I was expecting a different phase or something else to spawn. Nice rewards though.

21: Bahamut was an engaging fight with the affinity changes, however, I feel a copy of Darkside is kind of a lacklustre reward, since Squall gets it anyway and you're forced to have him in the party. I expected more stat ups, like VIT or SPR since he is meant to be Squall's Knight class.

22: The run down the Deep Sea Lab was not fun at all, and not really that hard. There are just so many fights against enemies with so much health that it's a slog. It took me 1hr 40mins to get to the bottom where you start getting the fixed encounters. Without easy access to gravity spells, this was just a terrible experience.

23: The Ultima Weapon fight was fun and engaging, having to keep everyone up, use actions wisely, and finally being able to double-ultima was satisfying. I will say that Licht Säule (Light Pillar) could be done with 50% usage, as it was a bit heavy-handed. The reward was nice, but I was expecting some more stat-ups due to the difficulty. I suppose drawing Ultima is a good prize on its own.

24: The Seifer fight in Lunatic Pandora was annoying with the Hellbiter, as he would get up to 8 attacks in 1 turn, with a good chance of making everyone zombied for his Alexander attack. The main issue is that this forces mega-remedy usage if you want a chance at even healing. I think he should have fewer actions, if not use Hellbiter a bit less, as it was mostly 2 characters using a mega-remedy and then mega-potion to not die. I had Selphie using double magic over and over to hope she could win it. Also, I stole 2 Shell Stones from him, and the boss gave no reward, that is terrible for how late in the game this is.

25: I don't think I understood how the Keys Geezard fight was meant to work. Is it just killing him x times? He died to a poison proc after I had run out his HP close to what seemed like 50 times. The reward for 6 casts of Wall is great if it wasn't the culmination of four bosses previously and all the work to get to that point. I feel like there should have been more hints as to how he was meant to work.

26: The Virtuous fight was pretty great, the double insta-kill was annoying but I had tons of Arise at that point. The full-heal was a bit confusing, I surmised it was just a DPS check at the end as I rushed it after the first time he used it. Though, the boss had normal fight music and the boss had no attack audio most of the time.
    26a: Diablos is an amazing reward, his damage is cracked. Easily deal over 15k with him in Ultimiciea's castle. It actually feels like an end-game reward, but I actually get to use it in this mod, rather than getting it after the final boss with no purpose. Siren and Doomtrain didn't have their status effect proc often, making them a bit underwhelming. I felt as if they should have come with more abilities, such as Elem x2 and Status x2 for defence and attack.

27: It was very surprising, and nice, to see you removed the damage limit. I only really got over it with Selphie and Ultima, and the GOAT that is Diablos. I am unsure if Boost stacks with Boost+ though.

28: Jet Engine says it grants +20% speed in the text, but it actually grants the 2nd variant of +15% when used.

29: Most of Ultimecia's Castle was fun, mostly from Diablos's damage output. I am glad you didn't make the bosses too difficult, due to us not having all our actions. Tiamat was a bit annoying though, as I couldn't keep my team alive except for Squall, who had to use Arise to bring the other two back up. Not sure if I just missed a mechanic here. I had Firaraga/Thundaga Elem Def and Shell active.

30: As with the base game, Omega Weapon is just not fun. I can't really build around him due to not having any of the normal junctions, plus his seemingly higher Speed stat and several actions. It did seem like you reduced some of the damage, as our HP stats cannot get too high, but I just gave up trying to attempt the fight. So I don't know if its rewards are even good.

31: Final fight gauntlet seemed like the base game. I had fun with it and was able to work it with mostly my normal team. No issues with that.

Overall, the mod was a fun change from the base game and a lovely time for actually being able to level up. I would mostly prefer if the Cards had more use in the mod, more quests in the towns to engage in, and the possibility to get 3x Ribbon for a whole team of it as statuses become an annoyance rather than fun in late-end game. I was sad there were no items to grant Aura either, as that was a major fun factor of the base game.

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