[Swagamemnon]

What are the differences between Easy and Hard mode for SMRPGA Version 8.0? Is it just enemy stats, or is there content and gameplay differences?

Is Easy mode still a challenge, or is it actually EASY?

[Doomsday]

The largest difference is that all the enemies deal twice as much damage with physical attacks. In other words, you'll take as much damage by blocking an attack on hard that you would if you failed to block that same attack on easy. Other notable differences include higher damage for monster spells, higher FP cost for ally spells, and making Celebi slightly less broken. There might be a boss here or there that does something slighty differently, but in general hard mode is the same thing but with less favorable numbers.

Don't let those differences fool you, though; easy mode is far harder than the original SMRPG. If you're just starting out with SMRPGA, you should start with that. When v9 comes out, easy mode will actually be called standard mode because of this confusion.