Gameplay Videos and Lets Plays

[zombero 24]

My own assorted development videos:

GrandBenja's Boss Fight Series:

Isak Haha's Boss Fight Series

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbgWO3BrM1g&list=PLoX1WgoRelsxwq5UnCp6QZvSpnwJdmefJ

PG's Stream Vods

Nesouk Kefka's Boss Fight Series (In-Progress)

If there are any other series that you feel should be added here, post below with a link and I'll add it if it meets some very basic standards.

I also want to thank the people who went through the effort of making and posting these videos.  They will help greatly with tweaking and re-balancing the hack in future versions, and also just give me the warm fuzzy feelings.

Edited November 4, 2017 by zombero

[GrandBenja 1]

Hello there. In spite of my troubles with English and with obs, I did manage to complete my series. After defeating the final boss, I drew my conclusions regarding this excellent mod. Zombero invited me to paste my comment here, so that other players may join in and share their thoughts. Here was my original message:

"As planned, let us draw our conclusion after playing this mod. The first thing I have to say is that this was a great mod. I enjoyed playing it. Zombero did a very good job. I would (and will) definitely recommend Hardtype over the vanilla game. I even gave Zombero a well deserved donation. I will also thank our friend Isak Haha again.
Now, let's get into the recap. We will try to be as constructive as possible.

- The best thing in this mod is that it was hard by giving us more viable options and strategies to choose from. Most hard rpgs are "hard" by forcing the player to use the only viable strategy;  Hardtype brilliantly did the opposite.
I liked being encouraged to use more than 3 demons and swap them in-fight.

- The new spells (Heat Riser, Chill, Antichton…) were very interesting. And, while that's just a detail, I liked having a detailed description for every spell, instead of vague information like we had in the original game.
Replacing "void everything" with "resist everything" on Masakado was definitely a good move. Maybe it would have been a good idea to have an "ultimate" spell like Last Word though. In the same vein, it also might have been nice to have one or two more useful spells on the Super Pixie, like Heat Riser. Her transformation would be an even more emotionnal moment with a spell like that. 

- Maybe the player gets slightly too much experience compared to money - or rather too little money, your call. I got level 99 without even wanting to, but I had to grind a lot of money to do what I wanted with the Compendium and get all Magatamas.

Let us talk a bit about bosses, now. In my opinion, bosses are the most interesting part of any hard rpg, so that is what I paid the most attention to. Every boss should be a tactical challenge requiring a specific strategy, and to Zombero's credit, some of them were.
In this game, the best way for a boss to be interesting probably is to give the player several problems to handle at once, and to Zombero's credit, some of them did. The game is more interesting if the player needs to play several moves, but does not have enough turns to do everything: you have to improvise, and to choose between a "bad" move and a blunder.

- Overall, I would say that most bosses were too easy, especially in late-game, as I had many more deaths in random encounters. I don't think any boss killed me even once between Samael and Lucifer.

- Against Matador, I liked the "Dervish" spell, which deals damage and debuffs. That's a very good mechanic for bosses, but unfortunately, very few bosses had similar spells.

- Mother Harlot is maybe the best example of what a boss should be like. I loved what Zombero did with her. She has a status ailment, a debuff, Dekunda, damage, sustain, an "enrage" phase, and a sort of special turn (the Dragon Eye turn) that the player has to keep track of. (Her use of Death Lust is too random though, considering it is by far her strongest move.)
Many bosses have too simple mechanics, compared to her, so they either have enough damage to kill you and are impossible, or don't and are harmless. (Typical example: Ahriman in second form.)

- Some AI scripts are too rigid and exploitable, most notably Dekaja/Dekunda wise. Beelzebub and Dante, for example, were very easy to lock into a loop. (I do understand that Zombero doesn't have complete freedom in editing the scripts though.)

- Maybe a spell like Satan's Retribution from Digital Devil Saga (kill one party member) could be considered on some major bosses, to force the player into even more improvisation after a pivotal demon is killed.

Finally, I think this game (and the whole series) has one big gameplay flaw: the healing mechanic. A spell like Prayer means that your opponent will either kill you in one turn or deal irrelevant damage, as you can fully heal in one single move. And an item like the Great Chakra means that an mp-draining attack is pretty irrelevant too. That prevents bosses from being built around the idea of a war of attrition.
I think that, for future games, Atlus should nerf both damage and healing, and rework the mp mechanic into a resource you actually have to manage. I would try a smaller mp pool, an automatic mp regen, and no mp items, to force a more careful mp management.

In spite of these few innate flaws, Zombero managed to make the mod very interesting, and our fight against Lucifer and his Root of Evil is a rather good example of this. Well done, sir!"

[zombero 24]

"Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

It was pretty satisfying to see players use the new mechanics strategically (such as cheap demon swaps and Heat Riser), and they honestly played a bigger role than I expected them to.  For future versions, I'd like to take these concepts even further.

I've noticed the same thing with XP coming being a bit excessive, and player's usually being higher level than what I planned for.  I hadn't noticed the money issue, though.  Prices are already 1/3 less expensive than they were in vanilla's Hard mode, so I'm not sure how much further I'd want to take that.  But maybe dropping some macca into a few Cache Cubes would help the issue.  In general, looting cubes and chests are pretty unsatisfying as-is due mostly to this game having no equipment, so they can use all the help they can get.

For bosses, there is certainly room for improvement.  One day, I'll probably make an effort to free myself from some of the AI shackles that bind my current options with them.  In addition to that problem, there are also just SO MANY bosses in this game that coming up with good ideas for all of them is legitimately difficult, and I kinda just got tired of trying to come up with good ideas for them by the end.  For these reasons, I'd say bigger and better things can be expected from bosses in a future version (eventually).  The same goes for Full Kagutsuchi Encounters.  I've already removed the AI limitations on those, but haven't done anything with that expanded freedom quite yet.  I would say FKEs are in an even worse state than bosses.  As for the lack of bosses with skills like Dervish... that's basically just because 90% of the bosses were already made by the time I started adding new skills.  Going back and looking for opportunities to add those in is a good idea, though.  As to having a boss that kills pivotal demons (like Satan's Retribution) isn't that basically what Baal does now?

Very true that healing mechanics are very lackluster in this game and SMT in general.  I considered doing something more drastic with healing skills for awhile, but ultimately didn't pull the trigger.  I'll have to revisit the idea again at some point.  MP design has issues, too.  Both in this game and in 99% of JRPGs.  That one is a lot more challenging to address."

Edited October 7, 2017 by zombero

[GrandBenja 1]

My next answer didn't bring anything new to the table, as I mostly agreed with what Zombero said. Therefore, I won't even paste it here. If anyone else wants to join in, please feel free to do so.

[Nesouk 49]

I will give my thought and conclusion once I have finish the Mod.

[MountainSageValentine 1]

 I've played hardtype 5 times now and i've also gotten about 10 or so other people to play it (and more are planning to soon), and for some, it was their first experience with an smt game. Feedback on that front is that as long as they have the modified heretic mansion even newcomers seem to love the hack! Right now some of my friends and I are working on making a demon tier list (tier is decided on how good a demon is for the period of the game it is relevant during and how useful it is in general- including for things like fusion) 

On the topic of feedback, I am of the personal opinion that death and expel skills could use a bit of a revamp. 

My first issue with them is that just like vanilla nocturne you are running into instant kill skills right from the start of the game, but with no reliable way to keep them from instant killing the MC leading to some pretty BS feeling game overs. 

If you could add some death/expel skills that were of the more standard damaging variety and moved the instant kills back a bit I feel like it could go a long way towards the game feeling fairer and adding a bit more depth to the encounters. 

Another thing I was curious about is if you would be willing to share any documentation or tools you use for hacking nocturne? I'd love to play around with it! Adding some more evolution demons and making the worst ones a little bit better would be a fun little project!

Sorry, I rambled for so long, I just really love this project!

Edited December 5, 2017 by MountainSageValentine

[Nesouk 49]

2 hours ago, MountainSageValentine said:

On the topic of feedback, I am of the personal oppinion that death and expel skills could use a bit of a revamp. 

My first issue with them is that just like vanilla nocturne you are running into instant kill skills right from the start of the game, but with no reliable way to keep them from instant killing the MC leading to some pretty BS feeling game overs. 

If you could add some death/expell skills that were of the more standard damaging variety and moved the instant kills back a bit I feel like it could go a long way towards the game feeling more fair and adding a bit more depth to the encounters. 

I can agree on that tough on the beginning of the game there isn't that much demons that has Insta-Kill move (and they are the base version with low accuracy), my personnal issue with Expel and Death is that they doesn't include only Insta-kill move especially Expel type that have some standar attack such as Starlight which is make useless against bosses an issue and was an issue in the Atlus during the PS2 era is that bosses are all immune to this 2 element making both the Instant-Kill and the normal damaging move useless against them I think there should be a way to separate Instant-Kill and damaging moves for these element like Persona 5 did tough I assume that this isn't possible at the moment. 

Also I didn't notice but I want to ask :

On 07/10/2017 at 5:26 PM, zombero said:

I've noticed the same thing with XP coming being a bit excessive, and player's usually being higher level than what I planned for.  I hadn't noticed the money issue, though.  Prices are already 1/3 less expensive than they were in vanilla's Hard mode, so I'm not sure how much further I'd want to take that.  But maybe dropping some macca into a few Cache Cubes would help the issue.  In general, looting cubes and chests are pretty unsatisfying as-is due mostly to this game having no equipment, so they can use all the help they can get.

Just out of curiosity I just beat Pale Rider and I was LV52 with MC what LV are you expecting the player to be at this point ? I don't have trouble for Macca yet at this point tough I remember that was the case in Vanilla to however the next magatamas (starting with the manikin collectionnor) in Vanilla just get a really huge difference in their Price which I found honnestly to be completly ridiculous I remember that when I finish my first playthrough of the game (which was on Hard) I had something like 3 magatamas left to buy and if I wanted to get I had to get nearly 1 millions macca which I found to be completly ridiculous to be honnest.

[MountainSageValentine 1]

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

I can agree on that tough on the beginning of the game there isn't that much demons that has Insta-Kill move (and they are the base version with low accuracy)
 

 

3

I get that it's both uncommon and low accuracy, but that doesn't remove the fact you can literally do nothing to prevent your MC from being instant killed early game, which leads to a game over and lost progress that was totally out of your control. I just object to them being there till you have some method of dealing with it. 

[ihaha 0]

16 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Just out of curiosity I just beat Pale Rider and I was LV52 with MC what LV are you expecting the player to be at this point ? I don't have trouble for Macca yet at this point tough I remember that was the case in Vanilla to however the next magatamas (starting with the manikin collectionnor) in Vanilla just get a really huge difference in their Price which I found honnestly to be completly ridiculous I remember that when I finish my first playthrough of the game (which was on Hard) I had something like 3 magatamas left to buy and if I wanted to get I had to get nearly 1 millions macca which I found to be completly ridiculous to be honnest.

I beat him at level 48, so I guess you could say that I was underleveled. Though I grinded a few levels to beat Girimehkala properly. Also, I don't think you'll encounter any money problems. I could always afford the magatama I needed in this hack (in contrast to the original game haha). If you ever do though, then you should probably learn the Hell's Vault. It's not that difficult when you have spent like 10 minutes on it learning. It becomes second-nature after that.

19 hours ago, MountainSageValentine said:

Another thing I was curious about is if you would be willing to share any documentation or tools you use for hacking nocturne? I'd love to play around with it! Adding some more evolution demons and making the worst ones a little bit better would be a fun little project!

Nocturne modding has come quite far lately. It's now theoretically possible to add new demons into the game. Other things would be like creating custom puzzle boy maps and what not. iirc Zombero has just been editing the .iso directly without messing with unpacking or repacking any files. I haven't quite gotten into the modding scene yet, so I can't help you. I think Zombero would be happy to tell you about his research but modding this game isn't really an easy task as it is with the Persona games.

 

Anyways, Zombero. I've unlisted all of my hardtype videos so my channel could be a lot cleaner and easier to look through. However, they're all in a playlist so if you could edit the thread to link the playlist instead of my first video then that'd be cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbgWO3BrM1g&list=PLoX1WgoRelsxwq5UnCp6QZvSpnwJdmefJ&index=1 Updated link.

 

 

[Nesouk 49]

2 hours ago, ihaha said:

I beat him at level 48, so I guess you could say that I was underleveled. Though I grinded a few levels to beat Girimehkala properly. Also, I don't think you'll encounter any money problems. I could always afford the magatama I needed in this hack (in contrast to the original game haha). If you ever do though, then you should probably learn the Hell's Vault. It's not that difficult when you have spent like 10 minutes on it learning. It becomes second-nature after that.

YEAH I saw your video after I beat him, he gives me trouble tough I did go for a completly crazy and unsafe strat that is really not the best but I just wanted to have some fun, for now I also didn't need any more money, well I go for a magic build so i didn't put many points on STR since the beginning which is kind of an issue for grind money in the Hell's Vault as I can't break some of the obstacle, but I don't need money right now so that's not an issue currently, right now I just beat Dante I'm going to update my LP

[zombero 24]

On 11/3/2017 at 10:42 AM, ihaha said:

if you could edit the thread to link the playlist instead of my first video then that'd be cool.

No prob.  I updated the link, though I don't think the site can show a preview for unlisted videos.

On 11/2/2017 at 2:38 PM, MountainSageValentine said:

On the topic of feedback, I am of the personal oppinion that death and expel skills could use a bit of a revamp.

This could be a possibility.  I took care not to directly increase the prevalence of unavoidable insta-death, but there's still what was already in vanilla, and the increased difficulty (enemy party size, enemy HP, etc.) can still indirectly make it more of an issue.  Although, if we're talking about the early game, crits and focusing down the MC can just as readily lead to unavoidable deaths.  It's just sorta ingrained in the MC death = game over system.  And while I didn't want to make this situation any worse, I'm hesitant to do anything to make it more lenient... just for the more fanatical players out there.

I can give it some thought, though.  Maybe if I can come up with some alternate effects for these skills that don't feel like they strictly make the game easier, then I'd be interested.

On 11/2/2017 at 2:38 PM, MountainSageValentine said:

Another thing I was curious about is if you would be willing to share any documentation or tools you use for hacking nocturne? I'd love to play around with it! Adding some more evolution demons and making the worst ones a little bit better would be a fun little project!

Sorry I rambled for so long, I just really love this project!

Glad you enjoyed it!  Any of the people you got to play are invited to share their thoughts here as well!  The tools I used are just PCSX2Dis for a debugger, a hex editor, and Cheat Engine for making changes mid-game.  Nothing fancy, really.  My documentation is pretty disorganized, but I could see what I can whip up when I have the time.

On 11/2/2017 at 5:38 PM, Nesouk said:

I think there should be a way to separate Instant-Kill and damaging moves for these element like Persona 5 did tough I assume that this isn't possible at the moment. 

It'd be a bit of work, but it's certainly possible to do.

On 11/2/2017 at 5:38 PM, Nesouk said:

Just out of curiosity I just beat Pale Rider and I was LV52 with MC what LV are you expecting the player to be at this point ?

I don't really have a log of expected levels, but that sounds pretty close.  Are you having trouble with him?

On 11/3/2017 at 10:42 AM, ihaha said:

Nocturne modding has come quite far lately. It's now theoretically possible to add new demons into the game.

Technically, Hardtype adds new demons to the game already, but I assume you mean new demon models?  It'd be pretty exciting if models from DDS and such could be imported into Nocturne and used in-game.

Edited November 4, 2017 by zombero

[ihaha 0]

8 minutes ago, zombero said:

Technically, Hardtype adds new demons to the game already, but I assume you mean new demon models?  It'd be pretty exciting if models from DDS and such could be imported into Nocturne and used in-game.

Probably, I don't think it would be so easy to do it though since Nocturne uses .PAC's for the demons. (model binary, animation binary, texture binary, sound data, and probably more packed into one file, in maniax, the PAC files are compressed into .LB's) while DDS doesn't. I think it would be possible with Devil Summoner though.. It would require more research though and KrisanThyme would probably know more on the subject.

[Nesouk 49]

16 hours ago, zombero said:

I don't really have a log of expected levels, but that sounds pretty close.  Are you having trouble with him?

No I already beat him and unless the Loa decide to be major troll he isn't to bad, right now I'm LV60 and The Harlot is giving me a really bad time (especially the last phase) I think I'm gonna do something else and come back fo her later cause her fight is really tough and a bit luck-base at the moment.

[ihaha 0]

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

No I already beat him and unless the Loa decide to be major troll he isn't to bad, right now I'm LV60 and The Harlot is giving me a really bad time (especially the last phase) I think I'm gonna do something else and come back fo her later cause her fight is really tough and a bit luck-base at the moment.

I found a tactic for The Harlot. First of all, you need a lot of mana so you can stray through the battle. She uses Dragon Eye every 3-4 turns (not sure, haven't counted properly) so you can predict her actions pretty easily. Meaning that putting up a debuff doesn't hurt. The only thing that sucks is her abuse of Taunt in the second phase, luckily she's almost dead at that point. Second, you need a phys resist magatama. Her focused attack will always hit the Demi-Fiend meaning that he will suffer the most. You'd think that an electric magatama would help more, but for me, a phys resist magatama worked better. Debilitate is a really nice skill to have at this point, though you'd need to make a good Amaterasu to have that.

Another key factor is having really strong magic. Magma Axis works fine, but I used all ice attacks with all of them being boosted by Ice Boost/Magic Boost just so I could get in some sweet physical damage with Deathbound or Divine Shot every now and then. A few helpful demons that I found were Odin and Wu Kong, though I didn't have Wu Kong since I fused him away. The last phase can be a pain, but it almost seems like Dekunda is completely removed from her skillset whenever she uses Dragon Eye. So you can even predict that pattern.

I'll admit. It  took me a lot of attempts before I could do her. Really difficult boss, but really predictable after you've failed a few times.

[Nesouk 49]

2 hours ago, ihaha said:

I found a tactic for The Harlot. First of all, you need a lot of mana so you can stray through the battle. She uses Dragon Eye every 3-4 turns (not sure, haven't counted properly) so you can predict her actions pretty easily. Meaning that putting up a debuff doesn't hurt. The only thing that sucks is her abuse of Taunt in the second phase, luckily she's almost dead at that point. Second, you need a phys resist magatama. Her focused attack will always hit the Demi-Fiend meaning that he will suffer the most. You'd think that an electric magatama would help more, but for me, a phys resist magatama worked better. Debilitate is a really nice skill to have at this point, though you'd need to make a good Amaterasu to have that.

Another key factor is having really strong magic. Magma Axis works fine, but I used all ice attacks with all of them being boosted by Ice Boost/Magic Boost just so I could get in some sweet physical damage with Deathbound or Divine Shot every now and then. A few helpful demons that I found were Odin and Wu Kong, though I didn't have Wu Kong since I fused him away. The last phase can be a pain, but it almost seems like Dekunda is completely removed from her skillset whenever she uses Dragon Eye. So you can even predict that pattern.

I'll admit. It  took me a lot of attempts before I could do her. Really difficult boss, but really predictable after you've failed a few times.

And all you said is exactly what I'm doing since the last 2 days and it just doesn't work at all, I don't know how many HP she's left when the second phase but it's just way to much way 4-5k cause I think in one my attempts I manage to deal over that in damage and she was still standing (EDIT : rewatch it and she isn't even in her "nearly dying" stance when the second phase is trigger) , to be honnest I think i've done everything I could do at this point to make the fight works better but I am as far as i'm concern around LV60 this fight is just completly luck base from start to finish every single of her turn can lead to a game over if she decide to be a bitch, the Dragon Eye turn (every 4 turns then every 2 turns) are just a complete gamble sometime she will be nice and some other time they lead to a Game Over (generally when she uses Taunt and Death Lust in the mix), I can predict the Dragon Eye doesn't change the fact she can wipe me out during them and there is really nothing I can really do about it.

Also Magma Axis is still locked I dunno what level I need to unlock it.

EDIT : Well I beat her can't believe how much luck is involve this fight can go wrong in fact my succeful I thought it was all over (the next turn would have probably kill me).

Edited November 5, 2017 by Nesouk

[zombero 24]

Mother Harlot is one of the toughest bosses (for her position in the game) right now.  Though she's skippable so you have options on how to respond to that.  She also seems to be a favorite boss of some people, so I'm not sure if it's a bad thing.

[Nesouk 49]

I would lie if I say I didn't like the fight I definitly like the fact that she had a lot of thing you have to found a way to deal with I just think it has a bit of randomness in it (at least when done as soos as possible) tough I possibly was underprepare for her, and it's my fault of willing to do the bosses as soon as they are available

Edited November 6, 2017 by Nesouk

[GrandBenja 1]

She indeed is a great boss, and I definitely wouldn't advocate nerfing her.
The only problem I see with the Harlot, in her current state, is that the fight relies too much on luck. I essentially agree with Nesouk. Her trademark spell, Death Lust, is much more dangerous than the rest of her repertoire, and she seems to use it randomly. Therefore, the fight can be impossible if she decides to spam Death Lust, and much easier if she does not.

I think a good adjustment would be to make Death Lust a scripted event, for example one Death Lust every x turn. The fight would then rely less on luck and more on planning, as it would give the player one more turn count to keep track of. 

Edited November 6, 2017 by GrandBenja

[Nesouk 49]

Well I could keep up with Death Lust healing it heals for 1100 my MC could deal around 1200-1400 and Amaterasu around 1000-1200 if Prominence hits twice in both case and I have Parvati that deal 550-600 so depending of if Prominence hit twice or not I could deal between 1800 and 3200 so that's not the issue but my problem with Death Lust abuse is it is a really "everything in one attack" type of move I mean it deals Great Damage (especially after Taunt), it's almighty so you can't counter it, it heals her (and fun fact it heals her even if all your party member dodge the attack) and as if this wasn't enough it can inflict Charm possibly the most dangerous statut effect in the game so YEAH this is the only attack I think should be either nerf or make scripted (I agree with GranBenja that the later would be better).

[Nesouk 49]

So as I said here an overall more in deep conclusion about this mod, hopefully this will be constructive enough, I will be commentating on most aspects so let us begins :

-The rebalancing : So this is a HardType we are expecting of course challenge, and to Zombero's credit the game is overall effectivly harder than the original but I really like how Zombero's manage to increase the difficulty but also at the same time expended our options in battle, giving us new tools (new skills such as Heat Riser or new offensive spells), tweaking some mechanics (ability for the demons to swap themselves) and overall rebalancing the game, Physical were way above Magic in the original especially Mid and End game were we can get Pierce in this hardtype both are usable leaving to the player more viable ways to how he want to build the Main Character and his demons.
There is some balance issue however for start off I think Prayer is available to early you can get it with the second kalpa's shaddy broker I think Prayer should have been remove from the Nue and overall it should be available only extremely late game, not to mention it makes one of the new spell Armrita useless, the overall healing system is quite unbalance as GranBenja says spells that heals HP to full to the entire party such as Mediarahan make it so that the only way the ennemy can kill you is by having enough power to one-shot you, a suggestion I make was to nerf Mediarama and give Mediarahan the Power of the current Mediarama (which would have a power that would put it between Media and Mediarahan), Mediarama with buffs and high magic can heal a lot so by doing so you would have to manage buffs and debuffs to have an efficient heals and would have to be aware of the user's magic stat (as Mediarahan and Prayer ignore it completly).
Regarding attacks I already bring this to the table but considering how Magma Axis has been made considerably stronger since it ignores Repel with Pierce it becames an ultimate move that no ennemies can stop I think it's an ultimate move that should be put on a more later Magatama as it's available a little to early in my opinion, I also think the MC's should be given an ultimate almighty attack such as Last Word, the last Magatama was pretty lacking in new skills sure the Repels are nice but I think it could have be given a new skills speaking of which nerfing Masakado's resistances was definitly a good thing to do.
On the little detail I also like the rebalancing regarding the Freeze and Shock statut effect now working on bosses but only allowing one critical hit, I also liked the precision give to the descriptions of the skills and the fact that we can now see all the next skills a Magatama or Demon will learn allowing the player better understand for planning.

-The difficulty : So let's get this out of the way yes random mob fight are overall the most dangerous part of the game due to the sole fact that unlike a boss you can't prepare for all the random possible in one area and cannot guess what random you will get, unlike a boss which is at the same place and from which you can prepare for, so yes Random in general can leads to many death (fucking Ambush) but this is to be excpected.
Regarding bosses overall I think there is a great disparity, most of the toughest bosses in the game for me (Matador, Dante 1, Hell Biker or Mother Harlot) were during early and mid game I must say that the end-game bosses lack in difficulty, the difficulty of bosses such as Mother Harlot is they give you a lot of thing to watch out for and to handle making you have to make choice at carefully think of what is the best issue to address of course that kind of fight has some randomness in it (still on Mother Harlot the Death Lust and Taunt spam can be really deadly) then there is the special case of the Trumpeter which as I mention during my LP is a typical kind of bosses were there is no luck involve it's either you know how to deal with him and succeed or you're screwed no luck involve I really like that type of fight and I think the Trumpeter is the only boss fight of that kind in this game but I agree not all bosses should be like this.
I think the problem most bosses in a specific department for instance Beelzebub is statically a very strong boss that has good skill but his AI was lacking in my fight he never use Silent Prayer (only once just before dying), there is also the opposite bosses that are way to trigger happy on Dekunda/Dekaja/Buffs....etc... the first fight against Dante and Metatron are exemple of that they are both strong bosses that could easily kill you but their AI make it so they waste a lot of turns using Dekunda or buffs resulting in having only one turn to actually attack this are just some few exemple also many bosses such as Thor will be either cakewalk or painful if they decide to spam Dekunda, Dekaja and buffs or if they decide to not use them I think a balance should be found for that case, another exemple is Lucifer has I mention I actually had to record him 3 times because in the first 2 he never uses Root of Evil even once I think something should be made so that he actually use it for certain at least one time in the fight cause if he doesn't the battle is much easier, Arhiman and Noah also are very lacking in the buff and debuff department, overall I think that the end-game outside of Lucifer is to easy and actually the Diet Building is kind of an issue for difficulty because what I've I saw in Isak Haha and GranBenja video the Diet Building can actually be tough (especially Samael) if done prior to the Labyrinthe of Amala however I've done it after the Labyrinthe of Amala and just having Dante (who has Pierce now), Pierce and the LV and stuff I got from it make the Diet Building a total breeze I don't know what could be done about that tough.

-Regarding the experience and money available to the player I have a mix feelings about it as since the game was still fresh in my head I admit that of the time I was kinda rushing through it going straight to the goal, the result is I often think my LV was average maybe a little below from what was expected to take on the bosses well except for the Diet Building (where I was clearly overlevel) and Lucifer (clearly underlevel when I reach him resulting in my first attempts being an almost one-sided fight ^^) but I can understand a player that take his time get maybe lost a few times will end up with a lot of EXP, at the end I think this is always a thing with RPG in general you can't predict what LV a player will end up with as there is to much variable to consider, regarding money I actually was fine with money (mostly because I never buy healing items as I save my money for negociation and resummons demons through the compendium and buying magatama) I was having some meney issue at the end but this was solve easily by farming the Labyrinthe of Amala Hell's vault speaking of which the one that leads to the fifth Kalpa is fantastic it's extremely easy to do giving you 13k Macca one round and give a lot of Beads of Life seriously I wasn't even seeking for Bead of Life and just from my money farming I must have get over 20 of these (I've sell some to cut the grinding a little) which is actually a little game breaking considering the usefulness of Bead of Life (restoring every HP and MP of all the team) so YEAH Hell's vault save my day regarding the money and did more than that.

So yes overall it's not perfect, it has it's flaws that would probably be address someday, but overall this is really great mod not only it provide a better challenge but it's also manage to rebalance and even improve greatly the mechanic of the game leaving the player way more option and above all making the game even more fun to play than it already was, so really Zombero did a great job and I'm really looking forward to what he will have to offer in the future versions, also considering this was my first time playing a Zombero's work it really give me a good impression I might try some of his other work (the Chrono Trigger's mod maybe ?). 

[the_E_y_Es_o_0 12]

Hello there. I've been meaning to post for a while, and now that I got my Xbox360 controller working with pcsx2 it's much easier to play the mod. Using a keyboard for pcsx2 is just painful. Now that's solved and I have a much larger HD storage, fraps and v1.5.1 of the mod, I want to record my own little series of vids for hardtype. It will be a nice breather from my working on own hack too. I wonder if I should just record everything or be more selective about it. Hmm.

@zombero: from what I've read of the comments, sounds like Mother Harlot is the Giga Mutant of this mod. Do I see a pattern with your hacks? haha

[Nesouk 49]

Currently casually replaying the mod with a physical build this time, for now I think the early game is easier with Physicals than Magics in fact remember about soloing Specter 2nd phase ? Well....

 

It's even easier with a physical build due to Counter ^^

By the way I have a question in the list of change I see this : 

• Dark/Bright Might crit rate reduced to 50%
• Might crit rate increased to 30%
• Might skills, Drain Attack, and Attack All can now all stack with each other

So I was wondering does the might skills stack between themselves ? Like if I had Dark Might and Might will they stack and give me like 80% crit chance ?

[GrandBenja 1]

I have another question regarding skills: Zombero, would it be within your abilities to give a skill more effects than it was intended to have in the original game?

For example, let's assume we want Death Flies to include a Debilitate effect on top of the almighty damage and insta-death. Or let's imagine we want to create a boss-exclusive skill that would combine Focus and Heat Riser into a single move. Would that be possible? If so, is there any limit to the amount of effects a skill can have, or could you theoretically give any skill as many effects as you would like?
(As you may have guessed, I've been daydreaming about how to rework a few late-game bosses.)

Thank you; have a good day.

Edited May 22, 2018 by GrandBenja

[Nesouk 49]

Actually I wonder if it would be possible to gives bosses more Press Turns (like 3 instead of 2) and make it so that Reflect and Draining would only make them lost 2 Icons instead of all of them would maybe be interesting to do so for the end game bosses.

[GrandBenja 1]

That's a good point. I've been wondering about reflect / drain too. Baal Avatar would be an excellent example of this issue: she gets 6 press turns, then loses all of them in a single move.

Here goes another question: would it be possible to implement a sort of improved Silent Prayer that would, rather than simply remove buffs and debuffs, reverse them? For exemple, if the party is fully buffed and the boss is fully debuffed, then that spell would leave the boss at +2 and the party at -2. I could see Ahriman, for instance, having that kind of ability.

Edited June 2, 2018 by GrandBenja