- I'm doing a ton of morphing. Early Morph (and Added Steal) is great fun and I love the way Hard Mode encourages it. Picked up a nice amount of all kinds of consumables. But of particular note here are the X-Potion & Turbo Ether Morphs on the Cargo Ship, as well as Elixir in Corel Prison and Hero Drink II in the Whirlwhind Maze. These are all incredible consumables, and being aware of the limited-time availability of these places, I hunkered down and grinded for 20-30 of the healing items and a dozen Hero Drinks. I find the design decision here a little dubious. Seems like it's much more effective to do an hour of farming in each of those spots and set yourself up for the rest of the game than farming those items literally anywhere else later on. This put quite the halt to my progression in those spots, as it just seemed too good of a grind to pass up. This also made finding any Turbo Ethers/X-Potions/Elixirs later on much less exciting. Could just be a me problem though, as I'm hyper-aware of stealing/morphing everything and preparing for all possible situations because of the low-level thing.
- The enemies doing 300 HP fixed damage attacks on Corel Mountain/Railway were really annoying for me with my low health. I was actually level 13 here initially but went to 16 just so I could survive two of them with everyone (This turned out to be a good idea anyway for a lot of later HP thresholds). Might be that they only counter magic or something specific (don't recall) and I potentially skill issued. But I genuinely didn't often get hit that hard for quite a while following that area when properly itemizing, so lowering their damage a little bit might be worth considering. Or having it be reducable to 200 by Barrier, maybe?
- Cait's incredible natural HP has made him the best Cover-tank by an absurd margin. I was genuinely shocked when I saw his almost 2k HP at level 16 when everyone else was at 500-700, to the point I thought my game was bugged haha. I figured I would need to turn off No Exp before the end of Disc 1 to keep having fun, but that sure changed things. Suffice to say, he has literally never left the party since that moment. Since Cloud is mostly forced, this has reduced my freedom when team-building quite a bit. Third person mostly ended up being Aerith for her great Magic. Would've been neat to have Barret or someone else tanking sometimes, but with a ~1200 HP gap, that's just unreasonable. I assume this is much less egregious if you're actually leveling up?
- The morphs from the safe boss in Shinra Mansion (Enhance Sword) and Presidential Guard in Rocket Town (2x Shinra Alpha) were kind of absurd for that point in the game, but in a fun way so I didn't really mind. 8 slot weapon with those stats AND double growth is kinda nutty, and 70 defense, +37 dex on an armor with 7 slots is also up there. Have almost never taken them off once since I got them, so might be worth reconsidering that placement if balance is a concern.
- I was a tad bummed out at how easily I was able to complete the entire Battle Square when going for the Keystone. This was genuinely challenging at level ~20 in 1.5 (or maybe 1.4) and needed me to find a good setup, while being a breeze for a level 17 Cloud in 2.0. Could've sent Cait in and it would've been even easier. Also a bit sad that you don't get any equipment as a reward anymore, getting the Organics there kinda ruled back then.
- The Wutai side quest also felt a bit too easy. Maybe that was because I had a bunch of materia left over. Does Yuffie steal less materia compared to vanilla? Aps put up no semblance of a fight. The Pagoda, meanwhile was... odd. I like the idea of each of the fighters being hyper-specialized, but it felt a bit too gimmicky to me. Might just be personal preference, though. Godo only having 4000 HP (afaik) made him die really quickly, which somehow felt easier than vanilla.
- Magic use has mostly outpaced physical attacks by A LOT, but I suppose that's to be expected when at low levels. The balance document (read of all of it, thank you!) spoke about Level being much more important for phyiscal attackers. Might be nice if that discrepancy could somehow be lessened a bit for people playing at lower levels, but of course the meta doesn't have to account for niche playstyles.
Deathblow + Added Cut was semi-viable for a bit, then dropped off, and came back in a big way with Powersoul + Curse Ring. I really thought it wouldn't be that good with the nerfs and didn't even try it until Tifa was forced into the party in Whirlwind Maze, but my girl has 200 Strength and is beating the crap out of people haha. Grit is also really nice for going into fights at critical HP and at least living one hit. Props for giving her that passive, all of it feels really good to use together. This is reaching ahead a bit, but as of now Aerith still mostly outdamages her ST Deathblow=Added Cut with MP Turbo=Hydro/Comet2 and her MT Slash-All with Magic Breath, but at least Tifa can keep up well enough, especially for those magically bulky enemies. Sad she'll leave the party soon and I'll have to use Cid and then Cloud again as Party Leaders haha.
- Hard-stacking stats like Vit/Dex/Mag is much easier than I expected. Of course, my characters are properly SP-levelled for these purposes as well. But with the summons having such amazing boosts (Titan/Kjata/Bahamut/Neo Bahamut my beloved), I was able to get 255 Vit on Cait really early and Dex at 150+ on 1-2 characters with the Shinra Alphas which feels very good, to say the least. Now before Mideel, my Curse Ring Tifa has 205 Strength and 255 Dex, while Circlet + Mag Plus Aerith has 145 Dex, 210 Magic. This isn't really a complaint, I suppose I'm just surprised. Especially at low battle speed, Dex feels like the god stat, but that's how Speed generally is in these games. While levelling Vit on anyone who isn't actively tanking feels like kind of a waste, as >90% of phyiscals seem to be single-target and Cover-able. Again, not complaining, I'm having a good time playing around with the stats regardless.
- I only started to be seriously challenged at Jenova Death and Junon Escape, going for morphs. The first scripted encounter during the latter genuinely felt like being gunned down by a firing squad and it was kinda awesome. That part was stressful in the best way possible.
- Following the aquisition of the Highwind, I took advantage of the brief time period where Tifa is forced into the lead by breeding myself a Gold Chocobo and attempting the Materia Caves. My party of Tifa/Aerith/Cait were able to take out the Mime & Octamagic bosses pretty easily; 255 Def Cait with W-Item and Big Guard handled both fight quite nicely by surviving everything thrown at him and just bringing both of the others back in one turn. These fights felt like they might be a little too easy.
- With the power of Octamagic, I was able to win the Mega-All boss by nuking the Cactuar with Hydro. That being taken care of, I was able to handle everything following without major difficulties. Even the jumpscare 2nd phase went very well, because the Tonberry did literally nothing until I had taken out all the other enemies. Still, quite a thrilling fight and an adequate challenge.
- The Shinryu & Omega fight for KotR was amazing, and as an FF5 superfan, I really appreciate the lengths you went to to be faithful to their original attacks. You even have Omega do the extended boss death animation and Shinyru the normal one, just like in FF5. Awesome attention to detail.
The fight seemed extremely difficult at first, as I just didn't have enough of a damage output and got quickly shredded. But with enough Elemental materia in his armor, Cait could survive everything except a critical or back attack Rampage, and Mustard Bomb. By putting him in the 2nd party slot, I could ensure he started the fight facing Omega. Aerith could also live all elemental attacks with Geomancer stance, and I had a Sprint Shoes Cait throw W-Item Vaccines at people to protect against Delta Attack/Rocket Punch, while also allowing him to survive Blaster.
But still, doing the fight this way would've taken extremely long and most likely not been reliable at all. So I decided to bust out Coin Toss & Mime on Tifa. Had to get a bit lucky with Omega's counters so Tifa doesn't get killed through Grit. Otherwise I would need to revive via Phoenix Down, which would break the Mime streak... costing me 100.000 Gil each time. I didn't feel like spending unnecessary amounts of money so I reset a bit. With some patience, I also got Mustard Bomb to land on Tifa (who had E-Skill) and picked that up early. When executed correctly, my strategy was quite consistent, which I'm pretty proud of, for a battle of this caliber haha. Definitely one of the cleanest fights I've ever played out. And it only cost me 200.000 Gil, which is less than the price of a house. Link to the video, if you care (also has some more info about the strat):
https://youtu.be/KjHZqWFszr0- Of note: I was able to pick up KotR here before the fight initiated on one attempt. So if I succeeded, I think I would've had two in total? Had a similar thing occur in the Mime cave where I got two Mimes before my first attempt started. Also, rarely, entering a materia cave will crash my game, but that might just be a mod compatibility issue.
Here's some more miscellaneous stuff I remembered from throughout the game:
- There are no buyable Poison materia past Junon during early story progression. Kind of weird that the entire center continent doesn't sell them (unless I'm forgetting something). Might be worth adding them somewhere. Maybe Gongaga, or Fort Condor because you can easily fast-travel there?
- There are no buyable grenades anywhere past Midgar. Those're actually really handy for early to midgame morphing (consistent, small damage). I was sad when I ran out, please consider making these available somewhere.
- The first available Chocobo Lure can gain AP while being auto-mastered, while the 2nd one cannot. I imagine this has implications for the Missing Score (if it even still works the same), and is also just kind of an odd discrepancy. Unsure if intentional.
- The Trickplays around Icicle Area grassland still give money when using Gold Mountain on Hard Mode. I assume that's intentional since it's not technically a drop? Still a bit odd because it's the only way I've found of gettting money from a fight and it had me puzzled for a bit until I remembered that mechanic.
- Is it intended for it to be impossible to reapply Death Sentence after dying to it under the effects of the Curse Ring? I think it's really interesting mechanically in any case, having to purposefully kill Tifa off if she lasted that long, then reviving and getting a fresh timer for her to work with. Kind of funny if she still has Grit available and I have to W-Item to kill her twice, haha
- Putting a Morph on nearly every enemy/boss is really cool, but it introduces a major complication for the usability of all kinds of counter-attacking materia when going for those Morphs. I've literally never equipped a single one of them to this point to ensure I don't accidentally kill any enemies (which would be infuriating on bosses). Although I'm sure you're aware of this, so mentioning this might be a moot point.
- Resist can't be used with All, which (according to the Wiki) isn't vanilla behavior. Why is that? Is it a balancing decision?
