Insane Difficulty: magictrufflez - Viewing Profile - Insane Difficulty

I've been doing a 1.7 run through (surprised by some of the changes between the beta I played and 1.7.4!), and if you all are scrounging for some gameplay ideas, I might have some.

It occurred to me that there are a number of points in the game where you are technically asked to make "choices" that aren't exactly choices. Maybe make some of these decisions actually affect the gameplay a bit? This could possibly introduce optional challenges into the game that you could tweak to reward the player in some way---some potential points (WoB mostly right now, since that's as far as I am, and I forget some of the specifics of WoR events):

--Terra in the Returners hideout: You can technically access Lete River at any point, so why not give the player the option to flee solo? Perhaps with the rest of the party following normally?

--Celes and the coin flip: How does Celes even know about Egdar's coin if you haven't activated the Figaro flashback? Maybe make her lose the bet and change the IMF events if you haven't activated the flashback, but things proceed normally if you have.

--Terra Flashback after the IMF: Maudin is given a choice to leave Madonna at the very beginning----maybe change something as a result of this? (I haven't given this one much thought yet)

--Shadow: Make getting all his dreams do something? Not sure how popular an option this would be, but I always felt this "sidequest" was missing something, and it might be a nice touch if there was some sort of bit you could do to change the man's ending (Full Disclosure, I'm a Shadow fan)

I'm not even sure if any of this type of stuff is doable, but it was just a thought that occurred to me while I was playing lately. Feel free to take (or demolish) what you like from these ramblings of a fevered mind!

OK, is Ultros really supposed to be this hard? He hits my party fast, he hits it hard, and I don't seem to have any time to recover in the slightest, let alone do meaningful damage in return.

He seriously gets in 2 attacks for almost every 1 action by my characters, more if they're actions have a longer buildup (like Miracle), the seize/let go nonsense is incredibly random (sometimes he'll only hold them for 1 round, sometimes 5 regardless of the damage I do to him), he loves to use flood and heal for ~350 HP often, and I can't prevent pig status on more than 1 person because I only have 1 white cape. I've tried every strategy I can think of, including vanishing key party members, dispelling Ultros, and just going straight at him (including busting a fire rod on him for ~3k damage), but nothing seems to buy me enough time...

Please tell me there's a really easy way to get past this? Or that I triggered some kind of AI bug? Because this seems like I need to be WAY more powerful to get past, but I'm already probably over-leveled (party is at ~13/14).

Hi all--I think I'm going to give this hack a shot, but I was curious if it was compatible with ManuLowe's bugfix/text cleanup patch? Or does it already incorporate those fixes in the script?

Not sure if linking the patch here is kosher (it's hosted over on RHDN), but I can definitely provide a link if no one knows what I'm talking about!