Hello,
I made an account just to post my review and comments having just finished the Lionheart mode.
First, I want to thank you for this excellent mod. One of my most cherished games growing up, I love the atmosphere, story, characters, music, but the old junction, levelling, and battle systems are just not fulfilling to me anymore. This mod has revitalized my love for the game. For me, this mod is the definitive way to play and is overall a much more balanced and rewarding experience than the original. So thank you so much for that.
I have some feedback on certain points below, almost entirely positive. There’s other things I could mention (like extra save points, Odine shop, abolishing triple triad rules for a fee) but suffice to say, if I haven’t mentioned it, it was also a great change and sincerely appreciated. So I'm only going to focus on areas that some people might debate. In saying that, my experience was probably helped immensely by having played on the most recent revision of the mod.
The magic vs attack changesI’ve read through some discussion / complaints here that magic is too strong, especially with triple. I went into this wanting to use a balanced party of Squall (str/mag), Irvine (str), and Rinoa (mag) and ended up beating Lionheart with exactly that, so I think I have a credible opinion on this. While Rinoa did usually end up being my strongest damage dealer, there were three main drawbacks to magic that I think balance it out. First is that it requires Triple to be set up (which can be lost on KO). Second is that it uses up draws. Third is that triple isn’t available until far later in the game (and even early on, double has to be used sparingly). Further but more minor: Silence is also more punishing than Blind (with 255 acc, attacks still often hit through blind).
For these reasons, I agree that magic needs to be stronger than physical to make it worth using. If it was not, why would you bother with triple or use up spell draws? In the end, a triple ultima/meteor/flare was doing about (6,000 x 3) while Darkside was doing about 12,000. This feels fair. Maybe physical could use a slight buff
or magic could use a slight tweak down, but I really thought it was balanced overall. Particularly since Squall / Irvine could be left on low hp to trigger a Limit (which are still much stronger than any tripled magic) which is not as feasible for a magic damage dealer who relies on triple being up and therefore can’t afford to be KO’d.
Draw changesThe change to Draw was so good. Not having to draw GFs was one great change, but drawing 50 spells at a time with Rinoa was such a nice QoL. The only thing I’d say on this is that given how easy it was to draw, I didn’t really see a point tying this to MAG. It was quite annoying seeing Irvine fail to draw… fail to draw… then draw 2 spells. There was just no point drawing with him. In the end, the approach was to draw 100 with Rinoa, transfer them to Irvine, then draw another set of 100 with Rinoa. Which was still tedious. I don’t see why everyone can’t just have the ability to draw for max regardless of MAG. This change would also probably help with the debate about STR vs MAG.
Item changesI ended up not using any hero / aura stones. Having now beaten the game without them, I'm not sure it was necessary to keep them in the game at all. I guess some people might still like them but for me, at least on Lionheart mode, I believe they go against the spirit of the challenge. Being on low life for Limits now feels like a genuine trade-off. Staying on low life now sometimes was a deliberate strategy in the end game. While there were some other battles throughout the story (Edea Disc 1) where I was on my last leg and just went for a last ditch Limit to win it. It felt so exhilarating when it worked. I believe Aura (and aura stones) ruin this low life dynamic.
I was also a little worried when I saw you had kept attribute ups (Str Up, Devour, etc) in case it was necessary to grind them to beat Lionheart. Turned out this was no issue as I only used the ones given out from sidequests and fared fine. In the end, they were so rare that it did feel special getting them from a sidequest. But they made such a marginal difference that there was thankfully no need to grind for them.
The other item changes, such as weakening card refine, and ensuring a smoother weapon upgrade path (e.g., Lionheart after Ragnarok) were much appreciated.
Monster / Boss changesFirst, I want to say for the most part all the enemy changes were so well executed. I actually had to think about each boss battle, sometimes fail it a few times, then problem solve and go back in. The whole process gave me nostalgia about the early days of playing PSX and not having a million internet guides out there. Even when there were a couple times I was truly stumped and had to search this thread to find some tips, it felt more like asking my school friends and getting some vague maybe-helpful-maybe-not advice rather than just looking up a guide which tells you exactly what to do. So thank you again for instilling that feeling again.
Protect, Shell, and Haste were super important but there was enough bosses with dispel (or just getting KO'd) that it felt like a reasonable challenge to juggle them. Having just one or two Auto-buff abilities went a long way to removing any tedium of enemy dispels, as did Renew (though I barely used Renew).
I do want to comment about some bosses:
- The fight that sticks out the most is the top of the prison (two GIM robots + two red G soldiers). This is the one fight in the entire game that felt unfair. The enemies are so fast and spam such devastating attacks that it seemed there was no counterplay. I didn’t feel there was any problem-solving to do here, I simply had no choice but to grind out levels for an hour or two to have any chance (which is what I did - thankfully the remaster has 3x speed). Then I went in, spammed GFs, and won. No real thought put to it, just brute force. It seems this fight is a tad controversial so I just want to add my 2c that I agree it could use toning down (unless it was intended as a roadblock to force you to level up??).
- All other story bosses on Disc 1-2 were a great challenge and seemed well-balanced. It was a little odd that X-ATM was so easy after Elnoyle might be one thing to mention. I remember Brothers, Gerogero, BGH, and Norg all taking a few tries but were so satisfying to take down (actually had to use Float on both my party and the Brothers for the first time like the game intended, how cool). Diablos was so difficult I left him till way late (I think I may have had Tonberry + Odin before Diablos) but that’s fine cause he’s optional.
- On Disc 3, Abadon annoyed me and made me look up this thread to understand the crouching/standing thing. I had junctioned Death to Stat-D as much as I could and was still getting murdered by it. In the end, it felt like winning this one was more luck than problem-solving. Apart from that, all the other Disc 3 story fights were tops. Bahamut and Ultima Weapon were great fights too - challenging but fair.
- On Disc 4, Adel took a few tries mainly for me to realize how fragile Rinoa was and really focus on healing her. Another good fight. All the bosses in Ultimecia’s castle were great fun though I wasn’t a fan of the decision to take away the choice in order of commands to unlock. I figured this was because someone could brick their save file if they unlocked the commands in a dumb order (because the fights were so much harder). If this is the case, I think just making Sphinxaur always unlock Magic would be enough to avoid bricking, then allow the rest to be a free choice of unlock. Minor thing either way.
- As for Ultimecia, I felt such a tension in the build up towards fighting her. I figured 4 fights in a row would make it the hardest fight in the game. That tension worked so well with the creepiness of the castle. In the end, I beat her on the first try but it was a great fight with a couple close calls, very enjoyable and a fitting conclusion to a superb mod/game.
As for the new optional bosses:
- The bomb was a cool idea to make use of some seldom used game mechanics so that was nice (though in fairness, I’d actually been using Counter and Return Damage for much of Disc 1-2 as they were so good now).
- The 3x adamantoise were tricky to get ahead of but coming back with Bahamut/Eden and all the junction abilities helped here.
- The ruby dragon was probably the hardest of the three, not much to add - just a tough but fair fight.
- The sorceress in the storage room was a neat homage to Yunalesca, though I didn’t like this fight overall. I can’t remember exactly what happened but I remember thinking the speed and order of her turns felt unfair at least a few times. Like most of the fight was just cruising then all of a sudden she’d rip out a combo of moves that couldn’t be defended against… can't remember exactly what the moves were but I remember just shaking my head like WTF was I meant to do against that (not exactly helpful feedback I’m aware).
- The laboratory fights were fine for the extra rewards but not too memorable otherwise.
In summary, thank you again for such a fantastic experience. I have had a blast playing through this mod for 40 hours or so. You’ve made one of my most cherished games of all time even better.
