Feedback: Difficulty and balance until early WoR

[Vaylen 11]

Hello there, I am currently playing through 2.0 and thought I'd make some notes while I'm at it. Here, I wish to discuss the challenge of encounters throughout WoB as well as early WoR until ~Daryl's Tomb.
I hope any of this will be useful to the devs, so here goes...

As a note on my levels: I generally try to keep my levels low and always use the lowest level characters, if possible. I don't speed through the game, but don't grind a lot if at all, so my levels should be in very "normal" ranges, a bit low if anything.


World of Balance

Figaro Cave(Both Visits)

The enemies here could stand to be a bit stronger, but there really isn't much to work with this early in the game.

Sabins Scenario, especially Phantom Train

Enemies in the whole scenario could be a good deal more difficult. Cyan, Sabin and Shadow(if you don't skimp too much on Shurikens) are all early powerhouses, in my opinion. You also have a decent amount of tools at your disposal. I'd crank the difficulty a good bit and would probably add Shurikens&Image Scrolls to the vendors on the Phantom Train. On the train specifically, one might be able to do a bit more with the ghastly companions you get throughout the train, to increase strategic diversity.

 

Battle of Narshe

Pretty fine as it is, but I'd like to see some more enemy variiety.

 

Zozo

While the enemies are decently threatening, I still believe they could use a small buff to their health pools, especially Hobos and Slam Dancers.

 

Imperial Magitek Research Facility

Enemies here pose a threat in theory, but you also get the very powerful elemental swords around the same time, which just demolish this part of the game. In addition, you also get the Scimitar. Running Scimitar+Elem Sword turns most battles here into absolute cakewalks and even the bosses buckle a bit too quickly under the pressure you can exert.

I'd suggest moving the Elem swords to post-IMTRF, but keeping them in the chests you get throughout the dungeon. Aside from that, bosses deserve a small buff, so you got to interact with their mechanics a little bit more.

 

Sealed Gate Cave

Difficulty here seems almost right, it's just a bit on the low side.

 

Burning House

It's pretty easy, but I see how it is hard to create a challenge here.

 

Floating Continent

An appropriately big jump in difficulty.
Sky Armors and Spit Fires are pretty dangerous, but you also have great tools to deal with them in almost any party.
Chupon, Ulros and IAF are all good fights.
The continent randoms can be very threatening. The most threatening one I found was the double Behemoth. Their meteo hits hard and can easily wipe if they go double meteo. They counterattack physical and are overall really bulky.
The one thing I'd change is their(and probably Atmas) weakness. Ice is not an element available to anyone - importantly, it is also not in Shadow's repertoire. That the hardest encounter on the FC as well as the boss are both weak to ice is quite restrictive on party composition.
I'd change their weakness or add another one, preferably one Shadow can hit(as he is the certain baseline in this part of the game) - probably Water?

Character note: Relm

Relm is quite the latebloomer, as stated by the readme, too. However, the main reason she doesn't perform well during FC is her lack of offensive versatility. Somehow adding one more mid-tier damage spell to her arsenal could make her a much more useful character for this stage of the game. I'd also buff up the stats of the Monet Brush to about the same levels as the Dali Brush. In a sense, Monet Brush is actually an "endgame" weapon, if you want to set Safe with Relm and its stat should reflect that. As it is a pure defensive weapon - and her spell coverage/utility would be very limited regardless - I think it'd be fair for her Monet Brush to be brought up so that it feels a bit more useful later on as well as on the FC.

 

World of Ruin

 

World of Ruin Overworld - especially Deserts

I'd appreciate if the desert encounters - aside from Figaro desert - would be a good deal more threatening and maybe even really difficult if you tackle them early on.
The reason for this is more atmosphere than gameplay, really. It'd add onto that atmosphere nicely and would be a good place to put XP/GP/EL farms for later on. (lvl 23-25, 15-20 EL, 4 characters).

Aside from that, the encounters you get once you have 4 characters could be beefed up a bit.

 

Figaro Cave&Figaro Castle Basement

The cave enemies were REALLY weak, in my opinion. The Robots in Figaro Castle B2 were fine, but could hit a bit harder. Sabin really puts on the hurt on everything here. I really enjoyed the tentacle fight. Could be made a tiny bit harder, but that's about it.

Daryl's Tomb

The encounters here are latently threatening, but not quite enough. The enemies fall extremely quickly to your obvious options(Hell Claw hits, Poison) and do not deal enough damage to be an actual threat to your party. I like how Powerslaves are designed, they are really annoying on your MP pool. The enemy status moves also seem to have quite a low hitrate at this point.
As we know what the party will be when going in - Setzer, Celes, Edgar and Sabin - I think you could build the encounters a bit more around their strategic strengths to create a more enjoyable experience.
Dullahan fight, on the other hand, felt pretty great. A beserked Hell Claw Sabin pretty much rips him a new one, though(5-10k dmg per turn). Tbh, I think the output of Sabin should be toned down a bit for this part.

 

 

So, this is about it. I'll keep making notes for Feedback and have a good chunk of feedback on system and characters, too, but I'll finish the game first before presenting most of the rest. I just thought I'd give my opinion on the difficulty of the "rail-roaded" part up to Daryl's Tomb. Feel free to disagree with me on anything, I am happy to get my mind changed. I hope this will at least be a little bit useful to the development. Cheers!

Edited April 23, 2021 by Vaylen