Hi Sega Chief and fellow community,
I love your mod, it's really great, thank you.
I learned from my mistake of giving gjoerulv feedback just when I was finished, since I took long breaks and therefore forgot a lot.
If that is of any relevance: I am using the Steam version on Win7.
So without further ado, I'm gonna tell you all the stuff I noticed:
Dialogue:
In Midgar Sector 7, there is this one boy with brown spikey hair who likes to eavesdrop Cloud and Tifa.
The first chance you talk to him, he says somthing like "Explosions, explosions! Avalanche is so cool". So far so good.
His dialogue is changeing the more you progress in the Sector 7 part of the story. But for some reason, on later dialogues, his last sentence is always "Explosions, explosions! Avalanche is so cool". I'm pretty sure that's unintended since that doesn't fit to what he said earlier in that conversation (eg eavesdropping Cloud and Tifa).
In sector 6, there is a house where a man lives, who distrusts both Shinra and Avalanche (upstairs is the boy with the 5 gil / Turbo Ether and the Turtle note). He has a TV. When you approach the TV, the news states that Avalanche blew up "Reactor No. 1 today" - either 1 should be replaced with 5, or today with yesterday.
Kudos to you for improving the mess the original translators (or even the Japanese writers, i dunno, haven't played the original JP version yet) did with Corel. By that I mean eg that in North Corel everyone talked about Barret destroying their town, but their town clearly is located under the Gold Saucer (where the prison is) - with your new dialogue, all of that makes more sense now.
Also the story in the prison itself was not very well - how the hell did Dyne become the boss so quickly? Making Mr. Coates the actual Boss makes much more sense.
But there is also a thing or 2 which could make the whole prison story better:
Only Cloud, Cait Sith and a third person were at the crime scene in Gold Saucer. How did Dyne, Barret and the rest of the party end up in prison too? I know that is too much to ask for, but explaining via dialogue is fine too. Afair, it's now the same explanation from the other party members - "After we heared what happened, we followed you", or smth like that. Not very feasable, and also doesn't explain how Dyne and Barret ended up there.
And just one minor thing about that: there is this one man wandering in prison on the way to Dyne. He says "Dyne is in a bad mood today. Or was it one of his better days?" - Dyne is appearantly here for less than a day - strange that he can judge on that.
Balancing:
Yes I know you don't want NT to become a hard mod. But I feel massively overpowered. Here's the reason:
with early access of Morph (and there is also Steal), I (and I'm sure others as well) wanted to explore all the possible surprises, which means encountering all the enemies and Steal from and Morph them. So I actually never grinded, but Cloud already is Lv. 40 in Niebelheim. I "discovered" the enemy list too late so to say, but then again I found out that the said list is appearantly from an older version, as a tiny part of the information on the current list is incorrect.
At New Game, as well as reaching Gold Saucer for the first time, I was asked if I want to play "Arrange" mode. The only info I have is that Arrange is "harder". Can you please give more info on that? Didn't even find that on the FAQ. Doesn't have to be extremely precise - a couple of sentences like "Enemies give less Exp and have more HP" etc. would be enough.
Just a personal opinion: I don't like it that so far every weapon for Aeris has an extra materia slot compared to the others' weapons (even the double grwoth weapon). "You want more materia growth without grinding? Too bad, you have to put Aeris in your party".
Vitality and Spirit are still useless - at least compared to Strength and Magic - or if you already have like over 200 def. In battle, I literally can't tell the difference if my armor provides 10 or 30 def. While this is an issue brought up by vanilla FF7, the Mr. Smile upgrade system is something new. Judging from all the options you have (if you disregard the 2 OP options for Aeris), 1 Strength is "worth" the same as 1 Dex, 1 Vit, 1 Mag, 1 Spr and 1 Luck. But in reality, 1 Spirit and 1 Vitality are worth much less. While it's probably not your aim to change the algorithms (which would also be too much to ask for), I, personally, would think, the options where Vitality and Spirit are involved should grant more Spirit and Vitalioty as they do now. The Accessories also won't suffer from providing more. And the armor could also have bigger gaps, so you actually can tell the difference in battle if you have a Four Slots or a Gold Bangle equipped.
Events:
I love the way Yuffie joins the party!
Thank you for the skipping options! I for one haven't used them, as I also wanted to see the altered dialogue. But I'm gonna use them in future probably.
However, I have one particular question: When skipping Cloud's (fake) past, what "did he do"? Eg. for vanilla FF7, Cloud has to play the piano in order to get an extra Elemental materia from Nibelheiom while Tifa leads the party. When skipping, what did Cloud do? Did he enter Tifa's house, played the piano, and sniffed her panties :3 ? It would be very pity to lose out a materia just for skipping a long story you already know.
EDIT: Also, shoutout to the Fort Condor Teleport Guy!
Music:
I like to play with the battle theme. But on some areas (I think all those with new event battles, like where you place the bomb in No. 5 reactor) you never get the Battle theme (field music keeps playing), but you get the victory fanfare. Not a major issue, but I just wanted to tell that.
Conclusion: Very great mod so far! Ofc I don't expect you to alter anything just because one random internet dude told you to. I would also be glad if you just give responses to my suggestions. Thank you very much!