Just finished playing through this mod for the first time (I actually bought the PC version of the game specifically to be able to play with this mod), and it was an amazing experience. After playing through the game almost a dozen times on PS1, I was always frustrated that the amount of grinding it takes to unlock all the best abilities makes you so strong that you don’t actually need to use said abilities.
All I wanted from the game is for it to FORCE me to ACTUALLY NEED to use all the awesome tools it gives you! And now it
does! So thank you.
That being said, once I was around half way done with disc 2, I decided to actually start making note of the glitches I was noticing (wish I had started sooner, but at least you get half-a-game’s-worth of logs). These are all things I noticed in the normal course of playing the game, without going out of my way to try and break anything. (Though I did—briefly—do bug testing professionally a number of years ago. If you’d like, I’d be willing to “stress-test” some parts of the mod for you. Let me know!) Also, since this was my first time playing through the PC version of the game (and the first time I’d played it with an eye for catching bugs), I’m not sure how many of these are due to your mod and how many are just inherent in the system (there were no other mods involved, so at least that can be ruled out).
I’ve divided my notes into four categories: glitches (which is the catch-all for things that obviously (or presumably) were not supposed to happen), “out of place” (which were things that may or may not have been glitches, but should still be addressed), suggestions (which are changes that may or may not be possible within the scope of your mod, but that I feel would make it better), and typos (which are typos). Speaking of typos, if you can send me your changed dialog script (or tell me how to extract it from the game files), I’ll go through and proof-read it (much easier than trying to come across the dialog naturally in the game).
Glitches:
- After stopping the train in North Corel, the kid gives the party the Planet materia automatically. Then, when you talk to him in his house, he gives it to you again. (Not that I’m complaining about being given two Planet materia, mind you.)
- During the long course in the Chocobo race, once you pass the waterfall, the loud “water rushing” sound effect continues to play until the race is over and the scene changes.
- When fighting the Ghost Ship, I got a game over when the party died, even though two of the characters were thrown away alive. The reason I think this is a glitch is because other battles that have the knocked-out-of-the-party mechanic DON’T have a game over when the same thing happens.
- Maxim Gun and Battle Trumpet have normal growth, but their descriptions imply they should have triple.
- The description of HP Shout is “?? ??” instead of the damage formula (like the other ultimate weapons).
- A number of custom items don’t sort alphabetically (there must be a hidden value or something that tells the menu how to sort them that your items are missing, or something). The ones I caught are Sun Curtain, Astral Curtain, X-Mine, Syncher, Lucky Pill, Dirty Bomb, Maxim Gun, Red Clip, Restore Rod, Relic Ring, Hybrid Brace, Cactuar Gun, Oversoul Shard, and Typhoon Ring
- During fight with Mirage: characters affected by Fantasia keep spinning while dead. If revived, player can choose their actions but attacks will still hit party and healing/buffs will still hit the boss (as if they were confused)
- More generally, the confusion status is permanent. It cannot be cured—even after resist has been dispelled—even though all the other statues that Fantasia inflicts can.
- Pearl can still be cast while character is a frog
- When visiting the Alter in the Forgotten City in disc 3:
- The exit is not marked while assist is on
- The character sprite seen while approaching the alter is Ifalna’s (or maybe Aeris' from when you infiltrate the Don's manor), but when you enter the alter it’s Aeris’s.
- On disc 3, Tifa can’t be added to or removed from the party using the normal save points while Cid is the leader.
- On disc 3, if Tifa or Cloud is in the party when they’re not the leader, their sprite will be used on the world map instead of the current leader’s.
- In the Dark Cave version of the Don’s manor:
- In the right-most room, the camera doesn’t follow Cloud when he moves after the battle, unless you exit and re-enter the room.
- If you confront the Don while Aeris is in the party, she doesn’t come out for the lineup
- Aegis Armlet doesn’t protect from Holy or Hidden elements.
- In the Dark Cave Honeybee Inn (in the room with mini Cait Sith)
- Cloud can clip into the left side of the tub
- Either the camera or the map is allowed to move too far when approaching the edges of the room, so that the edge of the map visibly moves (exposing the void behind it)
- In the Dark Cave version of Aeris’s house, transitioning up/down the stairs and entering (but not exiting) the house causes the music to restart.
- During the entirety of the Dark Cave, Tifa cannot be removed from the party.
- In the Dark Cave, after getting Cid back, the green arrow (from having assist on) is blinking in front of the text box.
- Visiting Wall Market in disc 3 while Cid was the party leader: in the diner, I accidentally tried walking into the kitchen. The chef stopped me like normal (“Hey! Stay out of the kitchen”), but instead of automatically making Cid run back into the dining area, the game soft-locked on me (Cid froze mid-turn and I could no longer move him, nor could I interact with anything or open my menu). Doing this with Cloud has no problems; Cloud turns around and you continue controlling him as normal. I didn’t test Tifa. If I had to guess, I’d say Cid’s model was lacking the proper animation or something to that effect (not sure how things like that are handled in the game’s engine).
- After beating the last boss in the Dark Cave, the far exit doesn’t work (player can walk through the marked exit for a little bit before hitting a dead end).
- All documentation (and the weapon smith) refers to the "Pilebunker" as the "Pile Banger." (not sure if the weapon name is wrong or everything calls it the wrong thing, but it should be fixed either way.
- After exiting the Dark Cave, talking to the foreman again caused him to glitch out for ~5 seconds (scaring me into thinking the game had soft-locked before I could save after beating the boss), then stopped glitching and said his normal line.
- Kalm (disc 3): there’s a woman stuck in the center of the tower in the middle of town.
- Armored Keeper (or whatever the boss at the end of Mt. Nibel was called) doesn't use Trine. (According to Proud Clod, only Movers ever use it.)
- The game doesn’t recognize the following achievements with your mod: End of Part 1 (I chose to let Aeris live, so I’m guessing if I had let her die and seen the funeral scene I would have gotten the achievement), End of Game (getting the normal ending might still trigger it, but I haven’t checked yet), Battle Square (which you should get for “[starting] a battle in the Battle Square”), and both the Bahamut Zero and Knights of the Round achievements (which is weird, because I DID get the Materia Overlord achievement for mastering all materia. *shrug*)
Out of Place:
- After the final Fort Condor battle, Yuffie’s swearing should be censored the same way Cid’s and Barret’s swearing is. It feels very out of place otherwise.
- In the same conversation, the Aeris’ line should come before Cid’s final line (I forgot to write down the exact lines, but I remember it was something to the effect of Cid saying “let’s go” and then Aeris comments on the Condor, or something along those lines)
- Documentation states that Mime was changed to a 1-star materia for balancing, but it’s not. It’s 2-star and can be mastered, thus allowing as many as I want. Either the documentation is wrong and should be updated, or that’s a glitch and should be corrected.
- During Cait Sith’s side quest, he talks about finding the source of “the strange signal” they received, but it wasn’t mentioned anywhere else (the prompt to revisit the Temple of the Ancients was just a vague “you should go see what’s there” type of message). Was there supposed to be more to his quest (or at least, some mention of a strange signal coming from the Temple of the Ancients)?
- In the Dark Cave, having the standard victory music after a fight and the normal sleeping music when you rest is very jarring, and breaks the creepy atmosphere you were building.
- Also, the first screen of climbing up to Shinra HQ had the standard music from that event (from disc 1). On the second screen and onward, there was silence.
- Use of music in Shinra HQ was inconsistent:
- Outside, lobby, elevators, and floors 61–69 had no music
- The store and battles had the “sneaking into Shinra HQ” music playing.
Suggestions:
- In Cloud’s memories, I think changing Tifa’s “The day mom died…” to “…The day mom died…” would help sell the idea that she’s suddenly remembering something sad (the implied hesitation at the start of the sentence).
- On the rocket (after it’s been launched) the exits aren’t marked while assist is on (makes it hard to figure out where on the screen I’m supposed to exit). Not sure if this is a vanilla glitch or not, but I’d suggest fixing it either way. There are several other areas in the game that aren’t marked well either. If that’s something you can (and are willing to) fix, let me know and I’ll make a note of them on my next playthrough.
- Change Aeris’ model on disc 2 and 3 to not have the white materia. It’s very distracting having the characters talk about how she lost the white materia WHILE THE CAMERA IS ZOOMED IN ON THE WHITE MATERIA CLEARLY SITTING IN HER HAIR. =P
Typos:
- In the Forgotten City with Bugenhagen and Aeris:
- “I prayed for Holy but nothing happened.” Missing comma after Holy
- Cloud says “… I attacked her …” when talking to Aeris. Flag should be added that checks for Aeris being in the party, and if true, changes “her” to “you”
- Cait Sith: “You know the Junon cannon vanished?” Should have “how” after “know”.
- Scarlet (to Reeve): “Once you open up all the way everything will go full speed!” Missing comma after “all the way”.
- Heidegger: “… power of a Reactor-fueled cannon!” “Reactor” should not be capitalized (it’s not a proper noun in this instance).
- Scarlet: “Off course!” should (probably) be “Of course!”
- On the Highwind during disc 3, when talking to the NPC who tells the player about the “New Threats,” asking him about Midgar tells you about Rocket Town.
- When forging ultimate weapons: “Off course!” should be “Of Course!”
PS, sorry if any of those were already reported. I didn’t feel like looking through 274 pages of posts to find out whether there were any overlaps in bug reports.
PPS, I was playing on Arranged difficulty. That probably matters.