Insane Difficulty: Undead Balance - Insane Difficulty

Now that the new undead design has made its debut, it's time to start evaluating its role and performance! I'll preface this by saying: it may be too early to analyze them very effectively, so this may be an ongoing process over the next few stages.

In the original game (and older versions of this hack), undead were a high risk, high reward unit for the player. The player had to be cautious about when to use undead, but in a lot of fights they would be completely invincible. As such, I had to design enemy squads in a way that made sure quite a few of them had something to kill undead with. For the enemy, they were basically garbage, as they were very easy for the player to counter and destroy.

The new design seeks to leave some of the high risk, high reward aspect in place, but to close the gap a fair amount. Undead can now be killed through a wider array of means than before (though not quite as quickly). In return, they come back at full life at the end of any battle in which they are killed. This also makes them considerably more useful for the enemy, as the undead will be back after each encounter to possibly get some attacks in or soak more melee hits.

Right now, my biggest concern is undead's synergy with the retreat command for the player. If the player comes up against an enemy squad that is able to quickly kill their undead, they player can retreat after one round to get them revived. This doesn't come without consequence: charisma penalty, lost ground on the map, and maybe the enemy gets an opportunity to hit the back row with some melee in the front round. Nonetheless, I am a bit concerned by having no direct consequences for undead dying. One possible way to add a minor consequence for the player losing their undead is to continue the auto-revive for enemies, but require the player to use a cheaply purchased item that would revive all undead in a squad. By cheap I mean probably 1-2k goth. I'm going to wait on this to see if it's actually needed, though. Maybe the existing downsides of undead will be enough.

Tweaking how capable undead are of surviving Fire and Elec attacks is certain to be an on-going effort. Currently, almost any White attack will wipe out an undead, but they may actually be able to survive a Starlight from a Princess (due to it now dealing low damage). I am fine with this handicap to Princess. A strong, targeted Fire/Elec attack (such as from an enemy Wizard or a player Wizard of sufficient level) can currently kill an undead in one shot. A strong front liner with Fire/Elec weapon can also potentially do the same, though they might have to be a special character or large monster (or be hitting a ghost, who die pretty readily to elemental melee). AoE magic and weaker magic (such as ninjas and valkyries) should both be survivable by undead, but a second volley will kill them. Str-based attacks that are elemental will obliterate ghosts, but skeletons tend to live through one of them. Ghosts have high enough speed to typically get an attack in before they die, have higher evasion against both phys and magic, and will eventually use ranged Black attacks in the front. Skeletons get higher HP and better resistance against Str-based elemental attacks. I probably wouldn't ever want undead to be more vulnerable to Fire and Elec than they are now.

Overall, right now I am going with a best possible scenario in terms of how easily undead bounce back and a worst possible scenario as far as how easily they are killed. If they wind up feeling underpowered, I will probably up their survivability against Fire/Elec. If they wind up feeling overpowered, I will probably increase the consequences of undead dying through a cheaply buyable item. If I feel like their survivability is appropriate, but am concerned about their synergy with retreat, then I may do both of those things.

So, those are my thoughts right now. What are yours so far? I'm not expecting too much, yet, but I'll be updating this post as I complete more levels and my opinions on undead take better shape.

I always feel like I'm cheating when I use an undead to shut down a strong enemy physical group. I still do it though! Give any thought to making undead enemy units only given their ability to be abused somewhat? Lots of time for testing before making a big decision like that. If it's even possible to change the neutral encounters in the areas they can be recruited. Wouldn't have to worry about having most enemy units having some way to deal with them then or having strong physical groups trivialized. Can always play around that I guess by having strong physical groups hang around with units with good undead killers. The player will then at least have to do some manipulating to get their undead against the unit they want.

As far as the enemy undead in stage 5 I found they were more pesky when there were 1 or 2 in a unit instead of 4. More chance of the rest of the unit surviving and giving them a chance to revive I found. I think they could use some more fire/elec resist but that's only in respect to how easy they were to kill in the enemy groups. Can't comment on how the extra survivability would effect them in player groups as I've only used them against groups with just physical attacks so far.

Looking forward to testing them in the stages to come.

Not really a balance thing and not a big deal but when I have an undead in the front row taking a physical hit it doesn't seem to display the attack animation correctly. They swing their sword fine but the slashing graphic shows up in a random spot on the screen, seems to be a different spot each time. This happen to anyone else? When I attack an enemy undead with a physical attack it displays fine.

I noticed that my ghosts didn't seem to be receiving an attack animation at all, but I didn't notice the animation showing up anywhere else.

On a related note: I need to decide if I'd rather have undead get hit and show no damage or always display "miss" like in the original game.

Found and fixed the enemy attack animations vs. undead display bug.