In which I detail my experience playing through this to the best of my memory from a couple months ago

[MorteTheSkull 3]

Hey, so I've been playing through this mod every year or two since it was first a thing, and I usually do a thread compiling my thoughts/feelings on the game.  I played through 2.0 (I think technically 2.1?) back in April, and meant to give my thoughts but never did, so here they are.  This will be general thoughts, my experience with each character that I used, and fights that stood out to me.


My character builds: 

Firstly, on this playthrough I didn't use Gau or Shadow beyond the point I needed to, and I let Shadow die.  I generally always neglect two characters due to how Kefka's tower functions, and this time around I picked those two because my last few times playing this mod Gau was my MVP, so I wanted to do something different, and I've frankly never let Shadow die before and wanted to see what that was like, especially for Relm's mechanical changes from that.

 

Terra: Did a build of mostly Maduin with some Phoenix levels once I had access, to give stable morphs with heavy magical utility both in terms of damage and healing.  This was *very* effective.  Dragged for a little while before I had access to Phoenix, but overall was solid throughout the game apart from that little period towards the middle.

Locke: Almost pure Kirin build with a little bit of Ifrit thrown in.  Used atma+shield, or atma+vailiance depending on how much defense was needed.  Frankly, usually even after I had Valiance, the shield was usually better.  Oh, and in early game before damage really became an option in this build, just had him wield the healing edge to be a speedy healer; I love that he has that option early on for his late-blooming builds.

Edgar: I did a hybrid build with both vigor, speed, and magic.  It worked out pretty damn well, with him early game doing good damage with most tools along with having some support utility, and late-game dealing good damage jumping with the elemental swords to snipe weaknesses and laying down utility spells.  Drags a *bit* in the late-game from not having a good straight upgrade to the elemental swords; Excalibur doesn't really serve much of a role, really for anyone who can use it that I can tell, but more on that later.

Sabin: I went basically full Terrato.  Not much to say about this build; it's fun!  Ton of HP, hits plenty hard enough.  Since it's been a while since i played, I can't recall if I initially built him this way or re-specialized in the WoR; I wanna say it was the latter with an early focus on Stamina, but I'm not positive.  Either way, let it be known that Terrato Sabin is a lot of fun to use, and despite not having the Stam investment some of his utility blitzes are still pretty useful in a pinch with this build.

Cyan: Bismark/Crusader build.  Very simple, very powerful.  Also respecialized him in the WoR; used Kirin in early game so he wouldn't be squishy.  Not much to say apart from that Bismark/Crusader gives you a character who hits like a truck and has good armor and tons of HP.

Celes: I did a phantom/crusader build.  It was really enjoyable, and I relied on ???? for random encounters and even some bosses to great effect alongside some powerful attacks with elemental swords/Illumina, and the utility of being stamina heavy and having cover.  Some decent spell utility as well; I dipped a couple Seraph levels to not completely lack HP, and found the MP useful for healing and utility spells, so didn't bother to respecialize her.

Setzer: Pure Seraph, great healer and utility caster.  I love this build; it's simple, goofy, and gives him an enormous pool of HP and MP

Mog: Dragoon - Palidor with a few Terrato levels.  Went Maduin for dance power in WoB, though, then respecialized in WoR.  Dragoon Mog rules and is *really* distinct in how he plays from Dragoon Edgar, which I used in previous playthroughs.   Particularly with a certain character-specific relic, this is a really fun build that dishes out physical punishment.  Once I had Umaro, I made sure to keep them together, since Mog's particular Dragoon build doesn't lose the extra benefit of pairing him with Umaro.

Strago: Shiva/Zoneseek build.  Mostly Zoneseek, but took Shiva when it seemed his magic damage was dragging a bit.  Strago is a lot of fun, and usually a character I kind of neglect (he's often left behind for me in Kefka's tower, but not this time!)  His kit gives a lot of utility magic, and X-magic can help him nuke certain bosses.  He was particularly devastating to the holy dragon, which is good because I kind of brought him to the fanatic tower on a whim.  Generally, he's great in getting up buffs on all party members with shield and refract and whatnot.  He can be a pain with how squishy he is, and benefits from a party with a good bodyguard.

Relm: Did a Stamina build with some investment in MP and speed.  This was fun, with access to interceptor dodges.  Magic damage was still *very* decent.  Overall I probably prefer a standard magic attacker build for Relm, but it was a cool and interesting change.

Umaro: Bodyguard setup, with blackbelt + knight cape.  This, with proper party support, absolutely kicked ass.  Enormous damage output, great defense, with image set on him an absolute powerhouse.

Gogo: Took me a long time to work out the best utility for them.  Ended up generally using lore, magic, and tools or blitz for utility.  Setting buffs/debuffs with the occasional mimic of a high-damage more was nice, but not always easy to pull off, and Gogo is still squishy.  Overall, I get the appeal of mixing and matching abilities in ways you can't otherwise, but I never got as much use out of Gogo as I'd like, and found using them to be kind of a chore.  I initially liked the idea of giving Gogo an offhand dagger for Bushido or ????, but that didn't really end up being that useful outside of some contexts.  At the end of the day I'd probably rather have kept Gau than used Gogo, but I'm glad I gave the time to explore Gogo's options.  I also know there are some interesting uses of Gogo with Rage, but frankly since I didn't use Gau in this playthrough that seemed like a pain to set up.


I'll post some specific thoughts on some fights/parts of the game at a later point.

 

[Nesouk 49]

10 hours ago, MorteTheSkull said:

Locke: Almost pure Kirin build with a little bit of Ifrit thrown in.  Used atma+shield, or atma+vailiance depending on how much defense was needed.  Frankly, usually even after I had Valiance, the shield was usually better.  Oh, and in early game before damage really became an option in this build, just had him wield the healing edge to be a speedy healer; I love that he has that option early on for his late-blooming builds.

I like how much option this mod can give, like for me in WoB I was using Kirin Locke with Cover/Counter set up with Elemental Blades, can be pretty devastating when you know the ennemy's weakness and you can now adapt since it's now possible to switch weapon in combat.

10 hours ago, MorteTheSkull said:

Gogo: Took me a long time to work out the best utility for them.  Ended up generally using lore, magic, and tools or blitz for utility.  Setting buffs/debuffs with the occasional mimic of a high-damage more was nice, but not always easy to pull off, and Gogo is still squishy.  Overall, I get the appeal of mixing and matching abilities in ways you can't otherwise, but I never got as much use out of Gogo as I'd like, and found using them to be kind of a chore.  I initially liked the idea of giving Gogo an offhand dagger for Bushido or ????, but that didn't really end up being that useful outside of some contexts.  At the end of the day I'd probably rather have kept Gau than used Gogo, but I'm glad I gave the time to explore Gogo's options.  I also know there are some interesting uses of Gogo with Rage, but frankly since I didn't use Gau in this playthrough that seemed like a pain to set up.

For Gogo with Rage it's actually easy to set up, found a Rage that gives Attack that does triple damage, and with a Rod if the spell proc the spell will deal Triple Damage, actually pretty good but require to know the ennemi's weakness and probably need another character to cover him.

I also like pairing Gogo with Sabin use Chakra with Sabin then Mimic, with this 2 your team will never run out of MP, pair with a powerfull mage like Strago or Terra ad you can Mimic them when they cast strong spell for decent additionnal damage, Mimic also allow him to Mimic Dual Cast so with Locke he can be devastating on boss weak to Fire cast Double Fire 3 with Locke then Mimic for a free Double Fire 3, same deal with ennemies weak to Dark with Strago.

Gogo is just so fun to use, maybe sub optimal but who cares ^^

 

[MorteTheSkull 3]

So, my experience with my playthrough more specifically:

I don't have a lot to note prior to the floating continent.  I had some issues with Dadaluma because I happened to take the one very specific course of action that led to me not having access to sap when I got to him; I didn't buy the drill for Edgar and otherwise I was using Locke, Celes, and Shadow.  Had to backtrack, not a huge deal, but it might be worth either making sure the player has the drill by this point or strongly hinting they'll need to be able to inflict sap in Zozo.  Hell, have one of the lying NPCs be like "don't worry, sap is a useless status, you won't need it any time soon," that's funny, right?

Otherwise not much to note on the WoB; it plays like vanilla but with more difficulty and thus requiring thinking about strategy.  Floating Continent is a cool dungeon as always, but ever since BTB hinted he eventually wants to make that a multi-party dungeon that's all I can think about, because it really does feel built for that.  Atma, as has been noted, is the first "wall" of the mod, and while I don't think that's a bad thing (it could be argued it's testing that you've gained mastery with the characters/mechanics before entering the much more difficult WoR) I think the fight has some flaws that also continue into much of the WoR.  Specifically, Atma is the first of quite a few bosses that just feel like they have a bit too much HP.  The fight is extremely deadly, and if you don't understand its mechanics you will get killed when Atma goes super Saiyan if not sooner.  It really doesn't feel like it needs to go on much past the first time Atma does this cycle, though; at that point the player has demonstrated understanding of the mechanics and it can feel a little bit tedious to keep repeating the same strategy for 5-10 minutes until the monster actually dies.  That said, this isn't as bad as some of the later bosses, and it's still a very fun fight.

The WoR is really good in this mod, and genuinely feels dangerous and full of weird stuff to explore and often get killed by the first time, which IMO is how it should be.  Ignoring for a moment my issue with some of these bosses (which I'll get to) I think content here is really strong much moreso than in vanilla where the WoR feels like a victory lap.  In my opinion the coolest area is the Ancient Cave/Castle, given that it has multiple optional bosses, cool secret loot, etc, and in this mod that content actually feels earned.  My critique of the WoR isn't really related to this mod, but more a suggestion of how this mod could go further to improve what is probably the weakest part of the vanilla game: I think the WoR would benefit from more even distribution of content across its dungeons.  Ignoring the optional dragons, which a lot of players are going to come back to instead of challenging immediately, there's several dungeons that don't end in a boss fight, which feels weird in terms of pacing.  I don't know if there's a good way of fixing that since I suspect adding whole new boss fights would be a pretty huge undertaking, but Mt. Zozo, Gogo's dungeon, and especially Phoenix Cave feel kind of anticlimactic without, particularly compared with Daryl's tomb, Owzer's mansion, Ebbot Rock, and other places with a boss that has actual story relevance to one of the characters in your party.  Speaking of Ebbot rock...that dungeon sucks.  It's completely terrible.  This is a vanilla issue, obviously.  Its core mechanic is simultaneously confusing and boring, and it's essentially a single room and a boss fight.  If there's any way to like...make it an actual dungeon that engages the player at all, that would be a good thought for later versions of the mod.

Speaking of the dragons, that brings me to the other thing; broadly speaking, I love that the dragons are actually very challenging fights in this mod.  They were kind of a joke in vanilla, and giving them the 4 Fiends music is also fantastic and makes them feel like something from a forgotten time.  That being said, those fights maybe more than any suffer from that same issue of what feels like slightly too high HP; once I was ready to take on the dragons, a lot of the time I was just cycling laying down my buffs/debuffs, dishing out my damage, occasionally putting buffs/debuffs back up as needed, without any real risk at that point because I understood my approach to the fight.  I understand the need for late-game fights especially to feel "epic," but at a certain point seeing the death animation happen felt more like a relief from tedium than a triumph.  I don't think this is an issue with my playstyle, either; generally speaking I'm dishing out pretty heavy damage, and these fights still feel like they're taking about 1.5x as long as they need to, on average. Other bosses that felt like they had this issue were Hidon, (IIRC, been a minute since I did this playthrough) Yeti, and the warring triad.  I may be mistaken on some of these as it's been a minute, but I remember distinctly feeling like several fights, particularly the dragons, dragged on longer than they needed to.

Some other pretty minor notes:

1. Past a certain point in the game, I'm using slow at the start of every single boss fight, and re-upping it if it ever gets dispelled.  Slow is pretty inarguably the single best spell in this game, with haste/hasteX as a close second.  There does come a point where you have to ask if it's really a strategy if basically every party has some amount of access to it and it's always the most optimal move at the start of a fight, or if it's at that point just become effectively a tax paid at the start of a combat.  I'd add to this that the only way this mod somewhat addresses that is by having some bosses use dispel on themselves semi-frequently, which feels less like it's dissuading players from using slow (which pays off even after a round or two so is still worthwhile) and more like it's just adding tedium to fights.  Not a huge deal but worth mentioning.

2. This is extremely minor, but the Excalibur sword obtained in the Fanatics tower has no practical use I can think of.  I can't offhand think of a single character build that doesn't have a better option; all I can think of is maybe if you did a vigor build for both Terra and Celes and could only get one of their special swords, it's a good option for the other one, but even then I'm not positive it's the best option, and that's very niche and dependent on build.  I'm trying to think of what could be done to make it stand out; what comes to mind is keeping its two-handed property, giving it auto-cover and a HP boost, and also having it raise defense?  Essentially the ultimate protector/knight weapon with fairly poor offense.

3. The particular build I did with Edgar, relying heavily on elemental swords to proc on jumps, kind of loses some of its edge very late game.  It's never outright weak, but the build is using pretty low-tier weapons, and it feels like maybe it would be well served to have some higher-tier elemental swords in the late game.  That said this is very minor.

4. Feelings on the script are mostly positive, but there's a few parts that feel a bit messy/don't have the same polish and professional quality as the rest.  There's some issues with tonal consistency and with characters speaking/behaving consistently at a few points in the game, but overall it is a stronger script with more personality than any official release.