Sign in to follow this  
Augestein

Monster Tactics : Augestein Adventure

35 posts in this topic

The original topic on ID is: http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/index.php?/topic/8114-man-this-game-is-good/

And the site is smart enough to actually know when you post media. Great work guys!

And from here, I'd like to continue the onslaught of fights! 

 

I like this fight even if the first turn is really annoying. REALLY annoying. 

Edited by Augestein

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Next up! The final boss of Chapter 2. 

 

This fight actually isn't too bad, and despite its length, it doesn't seem to drag on too much as I find that there's enough back and forth here to keep it interesting. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Nice to see this continued.  Don't forget you can upload these in the Videos section of this site.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
19 minutes ago, Augestein said:

Oh, would you prefer that to be done? I can do that for future videos as well. 

Best practice is to make a playlist on Youtube, and then link to that playlist (instead of individual videos). As long as you add the video to the playlist on youtube, it's on here as well. :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Fair enough. I have a playlist, I guess I'll just post a summary of my thoughts from now on rather than have a ton of videos like I was doing before. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In more recent versions, babies get directly replaced at ch 2 start.  This was partly inspired by your post ch 1 talk video. IIrc you had most of ch 2 already recorded/not uploaded yet by the time I made that change though.  This means that players no longer actually *have* to get new guys as the first thing they do.  It's been said also that ch 1 is more or less the tutorial to ch 2, and ch 2 is the tutorial to the rest of the mod.  Ch 2's main differences, as you mentioned: very few baby units, formations have more synergy, more harder to deal with status effects ("trap the soul" and "bad bracelet" first appear in ch 2), and the first superboss (Queklain).

Enemy "tiers" no longer exist outside of the babies.  I had to uproot them for more class slots, and for balance concerns.  Trying to make, say 50 playable monsters each serve a unique purpose in a game where the player only gets 16 player slots isn't reasonable.  And considering how much I've expanded the game as compared with vanilla, I'd rather have the difference in unique enemies than in redundant monsters.  As it was mentioned, speed is directly related to survivability.  The defense stats for 6/7/8 speed monsters add to 100/50/20, respectively; and each tier also has approximately 200 hp at lv 99 separating its average unit. 

Moves themselves are largely separated by their distribution.  For example, most "basic" stuff like Revive and Remedy have very high distribution, while moves like Trap the Soul are exclusive to Dragons and a few specific enemy groups.  A majority of most monsters' movesets are filled with medium distribution moves.  Stuff like Heal Bell which is given to both Chocobos and Birds, and Stone Edge given both to the Sacred and Behemoth.  This allows for enough move overlap to conserve space in the game and fill up skillsets enough that each monster has a minimum level of viability overall, and enough variety for monsters to have their own unique purposes as combined with their innates.  For example, a Steel Giant has a much more powerful Life Drink than a Ghost, but the Ghost has much more speed and maneuverability; so due to different playstyles they have different uses from each other despite having a shared move.  

Some moves in the game I admit have awkward targeting.  Smart targeting has largely been removed, to allow for both the player and the ai to have to be cautious of how to target their moves.  This is also a balancing factor for Amplify and moves that have impractically large aoe.  An amplified Meteor has a ridiculously huge AOE but in order to get the most out of the move, the player needs to be weary of the placement of his own units.  Stigma Magic likely doesn't really serve a niche over Esuna outside of being usable on units with Reflect (a niche served by Energy/Remedy).  I could likely switch around some aspects of it (targeting, status group, etc) or outright replace it with Esuna on the Tiamats.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh really? That's nice. I'm glad to hear that. As that makes a big difference with how a person approaches the start of Chapter 2. It's sort of like how people that start with good soldiers at the start of FFT / FFT 1.3 have a much easier time dealing with things as opposed to someone that gets a bunch of bad/worst compatibility with bad brave and/or possibly faith values. 

Yeah, this is a good point. It's a shame that the PSX version of Monster Tactics has this hardware limitation. Perhaps in the future you could have a Monster Tactics PSP version? Just something worth noting if you think it's worth the time, although I can imagine that the ASM could be a bit hellish in that regard, I never checked on how different things were from PSX -> PSP in that regard. And I'm fine with sacrifices on the player end if it means that we have more enemy variety. Variety is good as well. Especially if it means that we have to think of more combinations to use what we're given to overcome challenges. 

That's sort of what I was getting at in the video. There's enough variety even within the confines of redundancy to allow this. 

That could work. It's just something I noticed, because a non-offensive AoE that is from the target itself is very difficult to use. And not in a good way. It's fine when something like Meteor with Amplify is difficult to use because of how devastating it will be when it lands, but something like status cure can be rather problematic just because of the nature of how the game works. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This battle is unique in that it's heavy in damage.  Fairies are pretty passive though, but do have a few moves that pack a punch.  IIRC I lowered their MA since the version you played on.  The rest of the enemies there have high PA and MA.  The battle is set up in a way that most of them heal from and can spam ice moves, and reflect is fairly common as well for those across the map snipes.  Boomburst can reach any unit from the top of the house due to its bow-like targeting.

Innocent does not affect any of the damaging moves.  If you use a bulky enough party that the AI starts to use Enslave or Confusion on you, or lower their stats, Innocent can help here.  Dragons and Goblins are among the more fragile units of the game.  Most of the more dangerous damaging moves are PA*MA or MA^2 based, with no faith in these calculations.  

Oh, and as you may have noticed, Olan death no longer is a game over and you can still control guests.  This allows me to make a damage heavy fight that's still fair to the player, because you're not having to rescue something that's fairly fragile and would tend to rush enemies.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There's not much to say about my fight, I think it might win as my least favorite fight in the mod so far. Very short, and kinda easy if you get a charm off. I think the problem is that it's too centralized on one unit here. 

 

 

Edited by Augestein

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Shinobi with ??? and immortal flag is actually a later game superboss.  Extra battles have been primarily a place for experimental ideas I thought might be interesting to attempt.  They have not gone through the same rigorous testing as the story battles, since they don't have to follow a difficulty curve/most of the same rules.  Most of them I beat once in the version where I created them, and didn't touch again.  For that battle, and one other extra battle I made, I had the idea of a very fast undead (superboss speed tier) unit supported by regular enemies.  These were actually inspired by a random battle. :P

**Edit** Forgot to mention that I made a lot of these bosses vulnerable to some statuses that are normally blocked by immortality, to make them easier to beat if you find them in random battles.  This will carry over to extra battles if I didn't give them items/immortality there, as you saw.

Edited by Emmy

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's interesting to note on that one. Yeah, I can definitely see how the fight is more experimental than anything else. I just thought it was insane how one charm on it just basically wrecked the whole thing. I'll grant you I got lucky on the charms, but man... That was just shocking to say the least. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 

 

This was is actually pretty easy, but I do happen to like multi-enemy fights more interesting than single boss fights. I'm glad there are so many in this mod. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Monster Trials are a different beast altogether. Instead of fighting a wide variety of enemies, you are instead given one enemy type to fight, and in that same enemy, one of them is a guest. It's a great way to get a semi-challenging fight as well as see what the monsters can do without any other assistance from other monster types. It also results in generally getting a pretty decent version of that monster. 

While they don't have anything special necessarily, they can still be fun battles.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have to say, the extra battles are kind of addictive in a way, but I really should move back to the main story again. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This fight is pretty different from the last. I don't think I've ever fought an undead boss before, but it has blade grasp and runic, which makes it especially difficult to hit with abilities. Basically, the 100 - Target Brave = Chance to hit. Which makes for most of your attacks having around 25% accuracy at base. 

How do you get around this? By hitting the boss with healing spells of course. This means that suddenly your white mages / healers become your best DPS and any other units should simply support. It's a pretty cool concept for a boss. 

But like most bosses in Final Fantasy Tactics, I'm not a huge fan of them if they have a chunk of hp, and they don't have multiple forms or allies to make them scarier.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the title speaks for itself, but I had to hit the enemies with a barrage of status effects to ensure that I didn't die. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 

It's not that I don't want to play, quite the opposite, I was having fun with it, it's just that, after that upgrade, nothing seems to be working appropriately. And I'm starting to think it's my save file more than anything. It couldn't handle all of the changes as I was going through, and so it caused a problem. I know normally it's not good to keep saves, but this one didn't seem like it would have done all of that so I kept updating? I guess I could cheat and make Ramza stronger again...? Or would you guys rather see me go ahead and start over, but this time having the 

"Human Tactics" challenge added where I play through the game with 5 humans? What do you guys think? 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, thanks for that. I'm not even sure what on earth happened there. It was just strange, Ramza suddenly didn't have abilities, Agrias lost EVERYTHING outside of Holy Knight Job Level 4. It was pretty strange and ridiculous. And while I know how to edit saves, I wasn't sure what effect it'd have on MT's mod. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this