Insane Difficulty: Final Fantasy IX : Alternate Fantasy - Insane Difficulty

honestly i never knew about this but im not surprised int he least, these games always hide something stupid like that in them. I still dread the day i hunt for all those summons and the onion sword in ff4

Kjata, on 31 August 2015 - 08:22 PM, said:

What do you think it means?

Made it past the evil forest on disk 1, and I've enjoyed it so far. I liked the twists in both the fights. Too bad thunder doesn't hit enemies with Slow as consistently as it hit me, heh.

There was a problem with the sound during the cutscene escaping the forest, but I think that was a problem with the file I patched.

On a side note, I always wondered if it'd be unfair if the abilities were more limited. Like only some characters get access to stuff like Antibody or X Killer based on their class. It'd probably make things unfair by endgame, oh well.

Last note, still think that Zidane's Detect is a pointless skill.

Like what I'm seeing so far.

Thanks Velsper !

Someone just warned me that the final boss was invincible in my mod. You would think that I tested it before releasing it but apparently not
Actually, I tested it before making a few of last modifications. I thought they were harmless, but they were not.

So, here I updated the patch to 3.2 to fix it (link in the 1st post). Other than that, there are a few other things I fixed (battle texts in Kuja's fight, Ozma's Curaja acting weirdly when you didn't finish the friendly monster quest...). In order to apply the version 3.2, you should un-apply the previous version beforehand (or apply the patch on a normal game).

Sorry for the trouble. I hope there is not a lot of bugs left (from my experience, I never succeeded in making a 100% bug-free thing ).

God dammit, I'm dying to play this. I need fucking 36 hs days.

Tirlititi, on 26 September 2015 - 05:48 AM, said:

It's cool, if I run into something I'll tell you. Going to patch it right now. By the way, here's a question, since you were playing around with the guts of FFIX recently.

Is there any way to remove the random space tick that is necron from the game? Or would the game just refuse to end if Kuja was the last enemy? I'm curious.

Well, you can do that, but you need to come with a reason why the party is being teleported outside then.
If you don't care about continuity, you can do a bunch of stuff like that though, yeah ^^"

I enjoyed the fight with Black Waltz 1. Liked how Sealion started with its status effect. Was going to tell you about how I enjoyed it with the Vivi scenario too.

Did you add script to it? It's been a while since I fought that boss, so can't remember if Sealion turned on it normally. I don't think it did.

Just an random observation- this mod sounds really interesting, and I'm sure I will give it a try at some point, but it brings to light my main problem with replaying ff9, although I do enjoy it a lot.

More so than any other FF game, this one is bloated with a lot of unskippable cutscenes and dialogue. Something the ff7 New Threat mod the Chief put out did, that I and am sure many others appreciated, was the option to skip some of the medium to longer cutscenes. Is such a feature possible for future versions of this, or any other ffix mod for that matter?

Indeed, I added script for that battle, Velsper. I tried to make a lot of minor changes without denaturate the game. I think it's important to remind that it is a modded version by different means to keep the interest on.

@Jackimus : Good point. I didn't add such a feature but it's definitely possible to do so (I don't think the game catches button press while on pause so it wouldn't be like that, but it catches pauses themselves and one can do something like "skip the cutscene if start is pressed while holding select").
However, it will recquire a lot of scripting to make it work fine. You'd have to make sure all the important things that should have happened during the cutscene happen for real (obtaining items, unlocking doors, keep the scenario counter progression...).
I'm adding that to the things I'd like to do for a future release. Thanks for suggesting it

Returned back to the game a few days ago, and now I'm on disk 2.

Some random thoughts, in no set order:

I liked the change to Beatrix in her boss fight. Doom sword was a fun twist. Fortunately you gave us Blizzara, so Vivi saves the day. I liked how you gave Beatrix access to her white magic list, so even that wasn't an assured thing. I smiled when I saw her use Blind and Reflect.

Freya's Lancer keeps her competitive, but her physical attacks are pretty weak. Is there any way to make her Jump more powerful? I feel like it doesn't do nearly enough to be worth it. As it is, I just use her as a guard, which she does have a lot of options towards.

If that's the case, what does Cover use for its formulas? Could it the hp total that it takes for Cover to activated be raised more? I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd like to be able to use Freya and Steiner as walls for the weaker people.

I don't really enjoy Quina. I feel he/she is underpowered with her Blue Magic. Or rather, she isn't very fun, since her moves are hard to work around without someone with Scan. On that note, I have a request, could you remove Scan from the White Magic pools and give its properties to Zidane's Detect? I don't really think it's needed to know what an enemy can give you, but Scan would be useful to have on hand all the time when you're with Vivi and Quina. Plus it really wouldn't break early game balance, since it just gives you info.

Interesting move set on Marcus, makes him stand out.

Hey Tirlititi.

I've finished Disc 2 yesterday, it has been a good trip so far. The changes I've seen are all spot on, you can see the AI changes, you can see the difficulty is slightly higher than vanilla (but not much, really). And yo can see a lot of small improvements regarding balance, and adding flavour to the game in general, which is great.

The one thing I'd like to add and suggest, is about the AI changes. I'd love to see more of that, and I mean a lot more. I'd like more cool things you could add to the fights, that would basically differentiate Alternate Fantasy to vanilla. As it is, it doesn't feel as "alternate", but rather as "vanilla with a few cool changes".

Also, the difficulty is simply not challenging, in my opinion. Here's my breakdown.

The random battles are easy, and they don't punish you much. you can stack on potions and Tents, and with the high amound of Ethers you grab in the way, you'll do fine easily. I feel like Brave New World is the one hack where the modder actively thought a concept I always agreed on: A jRPG should challenge you, not only in preparation and execution pre and during battles, but also during a whole segment as a whole.

I'm gonna stop right there, because I feel that might go way out of your scope. Last thing, a battle I was looking forward (because it marks a pretty important point in the game for the player and the plot) is the boss in the Iifa Tree. I liked Shockwave, but the rest felt pretty much the same. Mustard Bomb is a petty skill, in that you already have Body Temp on everyone by that point. The damaging attacks don't do much damage. And the counter to fire spells is just... ocasional. Like the equivalent of a Kaizo block in a mario hack, you see it once, then you restart and avoid that block. Here, you just don't cast fire and that's it. A cool counter concept gets thrown away. You could probably use that counter with another flag for a cooler effect in the fight.

Hi Hart-Hunt

I'm not aiming to make an insane difficulty mod. The mod is already a bit more difficult than the vanilla game and I don't plan to make it even more difficult. You don't find it challenging because you're used to FFT mods or BNW which are just impossible for the casual player ^^"
But I would like the casual player to be able to go through all the game without having no other solution at one point but to restart a new game because he didn't take the best gear as soon as it's available or such (most gamers only do 1 save and feel they have no other solution when they're stuck).

However, there are a few points in the game for which I'm not satisfied with the difficulty. The 2nd half of disc 2 is too easy indeed (and Soulcage is indeed not that great, if you put aside the fact that some people never really fought him for real in vanilla ^^). I'll try to think about it.

Also, for AI, I totally agree. I should definitely do more complex AI and make them use a bit more spells.
I think that, when I saw vanilla's AI, I didn't think they would be so personnalized already. Devs really did varied AI but since the game was so easy, we couldn't enjoy them (much like most of FFT's systems). When I did my mod, I tried to come to terms with those AI and add systems without replacing what was in place. I think I'll be more invested in those AI for the next version and change things from the ground.

I'm really admiring FF7 New Threat ; in term of difficulty, I think I would add optional bosses if I want to make things more challenging.

Tirlititi, on 26 August 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

Yeah, that's probably right u.u But I don't mean you to do dififculty like 1.3, I respect the idea that you have in mind.

Tirlititi, on 26 August 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

I can definitely see that you tried to do that, and you definitely nailed it. Now, as a player, I can't but feel like you were restraining yourself from expanding the scope, either for the sake of discression (so you don't expand it too much), or because you didn't want to invest that much time with it. Both decisions are fine, I just feel like you could make some really interesting things to some really dull fights (Basically most of them. Each Black Waltz could be way different, there could be even more uses for the statuses. The AoE trick you did with the Black Mages where they hit the 2 characters in the middle was genius, I'd love to se more stuff like that)

Tirlititi, on 26 August 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

Actually, from what I've seen, NT might be more difficult than BNW. And yeah, that's the exact difficulty I'd love to see in your mod.

For the record, Brave New World was not created as nor is marketed as a difficulty mod. I don't do insane difficulty.

My philosophy is that the fun of a JRPG is building up your characters, whereas the purpose of difficulty is to give you an incentive to do so - there's no point in crafting characters meant to overcome a challenge that just isn't there.

>_> I'll...throw in support that BNW isn't really a proper difficulty mod. It seems more the sweet spot that a jRPG wants. (Not sure insanely difficult jRPGs really work anyways).

Personnaly I'm currently playing this mod in french (since I'm french) and doing boss videos on youtube so like to add my opinion.

I recently defeat Beate 2 so far the mod is fun and have some really interesting idea I like the changes on some bosses, add statut to elemental magic is a cool idea that I liked, however yeah it is overall not a difficult hack if you know well the vanilla version (stealing the bosses is still a pain in the ass tough), but it is fun to play and I liked it, I think that it could have even more changes because I think some fight haven't been change at all (in CD1 only Black Waltz 1 and Beate were really different from Vanilla version and also Fourmillion (I don't remember his english name) was pathetic he only did Fira and Glue S what about it's other attacks ??).

A thing that annoys me is bosses are way to fragile seriously they die way to fast for me I think their HP should be increase a little, the change of AI you made so far are cool and I'm really to see what will be done in the next version of this hacked, seeing new optionnal bosses like in New Threat could be really interesting.

Personnaly while I enjoy having great challenge I think J-RPG should above all be fun to play, it should encourage you to try everything you have (either your abilities, your equipment, different builds...etc...), Brave New World really makes FFVI a way more fun game to play than it was, it makes me use Characters that I never used in Vanilla (either because I think their were worthless such as Umaro, Gogo or Cyan or because the way you learn their ability was tedious (fucking rages)), it makes all character unique and worth to try to use them, makes me use some strategy, ability and gear that I never used and that's how a good Hack (and even a good game) should be (in my opinion anyway).

Hey, thanks.

Your videos are nice. I've yet to see a video playthrough of this mod (siz16 did a textual playthrough on gamefaqs, but that's pretty much all).

Yeah, a lot of bosses are not "alternate" enough, that's what Hart-Hunt said (and he's not alone in this). It's normal if you feel the same way. However, Fourmillion (it's the same name in english: Antlion) still casts Sandstorm though. I guess you were lucky there ^^

Will you try Tantarian (Lovecraft) in disc 2? He's quiet hard at this point and a game over brings back a long time before.

Well I guess I was very lucky for Fourmillion then because even in my "stealing fight" (which takes 10-15 minutes (AKA Zidane worst Thief ever)) he never did Sandstorm XD.

Must admit I didn't think of doing Tantarian in Disc 2 I really don't like being on a time limit for a boss, but I might give it a shot even tough I don't know if my characters will be strong enough for him (especially Steiner since we didn't play him for a long time).

Same here lol. Even though the party in disc 2 is slightly better imo, I'd rather wait for chap 3 for Tantarian.