Sign in to follow this  
jugend

Xenogears - HardType v4.1 (Landon Ray)

10 posts in this topic

So I wanted to play Xenogears again but was looking for a bit more of a challenge than vanilla, but there's really nothing much around other than Landon Rays Hardtype, I usually shy away from his patches, and there really isn't that much info on this one available, just a few pages on the insanedfficulty archives. So I figured if that's all there is, I may as well give it a shot, and since there's so little info available on it it'd be good to have a thread here for some insight into the patch for anyone looking for a Xenogears Mod.

 

I tend to get bored or displeased with patches a lot because I'm super picky, so I may not document much of this or get very far.

 

Not very far in, just after getting Citan. So far it's been fine difficulty wise, easily get killed in the first two dungeons if you aren't careful, provides enough of a challenge without being stupidly punishing or overly relying on luck.... I have a feeling that will change though. Starting off stats for Citan have been heavily nerfed, his attack has dropped massively and there's now a 7 point difference between him and my fei in attack and feis two levels behind, however, his ether has raised significantly too, up to 21. His HP has taken a hit too, but it's still huge at 154. For now it seems like he's no longer the godly all-rounder, and something of a healer/tank? Mostly good for support for fei for now, interested to see how this progresses.

 

Thats all, for now, will post more as I advance.

Edited by jugend

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Okay so, I've been playing my usual way of avoiding battles as much as possible, to increase difficulty... and I've been punished severely for it. I didn't even think the sand sharks in the desert would be doable just solo, figured they were overturned and would need to run as long as I'm solo, so I messed about and ran from battles, go to the wrym fight, and got destroyed. Seems I can't be playing that way. Levels actually really matter, from 8 to 10/11 + an extra deatblow was a massive difference, went from being guaranteed killed by basically everything in the desert, to surviving everything with relative ease. Deathblows seem to be the most important, without the new one vs the worm thing I just wouldn't be able to damage him enough before he drains my fuel completely or kills me, so looks like you really have to make sure those are learned and you aren't skipping battles. Might have to grind a we bit it seems. Worm boss was actually pretty easy, just booster up to get more attacks in before he depletes your hp, then spam feis chi attack when your fuel is gone. Nothing too bad so far, but definitely quite difficult and if RNG goes against you, you can easily die.

 

Edited by jugend

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Next dungeon, picked up a +6 def? armor or something for Fei, his def is way too high, so nothing really hurts him. Doc is weak, weak attacks, weak def, makes up somewhat with his large HP pool and high heals. Same as the last dungeon really, a little mistake or rng gets the better of you, you can die. But I found nothing bad really, you get by every fight, few close calls here and there, but nothing bad. Fei is too tanky so it gives quite a bit of leeway. Next dungeon in gears, no challenge, just a build-up for that calamity fight.

 

So... I've heard this is where people quit and complain the most of this mod, so I tried go about it in quite a few to try see just how bad it is.

(wild smile always up) I've tried burning him down as quick as possible, with the highest damage skills with booster on, ran out of fuel, died. Next I tried an inbetween, died. Next I tried, boosters on, bart hitting with (30 fuel) hard attack, then 40 fuel combos. Fei hitting with 10 fuel, then 50 fuel combo. Both were down to no hp, bart died and Fei very luckily killed him with his last attack.

Next I tried, boosters up, 10 fuel attack and 40/50 fuel combos. Both ran out of fuel, not enough damage, died recharging. I've tried to look at it from the view point of, well, you have very little flexibility with your gears at this stage, thus not much variation in strategy, so maybe the creator wants to make the fight about maximum efficiency in terms of fuel spent.... as the strategy/challenging part? But eh, I think it's just badly balanced, you can scrape by, just... but you have to get lucky. This has somewhat put me off, but honestly, everything else has been fine. I'll give the benefit of the doubt for now and hope for better. I'm feeling the gear battles will be the worst part of this mod.

 

edit: wanted to try the fight again, this time fei using 10 fuel, 10 fuel skipping combo, 20 fuel level 2 combo. While Bart uses 30 fuel attack, then 40 combo. But same situation arises, HP is too low and fuel is gone. Both died.

 

edit: Tried again, this time, no boosters, fei 30 fuel attack, 30 fuel attack, 50 fuel level 2 combo. Bart 30 fuel attack, 50 fuel combo. When one got to low HP, boosters up. No difference, both died. This fight is poorly balanced, he has too much hp, and you are gonna run out of fuel or die regardless.

Edited by jugend

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So the Aveh tournament was no big deal, first fight was really intense, saving up AP to unload on him, and healing repeatdly to stay alive, whole tournament basically followed this format. Barts infiltration of the castle was likewise, no big deal, Bart is ridiculosly strong, and downs everything easily, so much damage. You do need quite  a few aqualsol S's though, and I didn't stock up, so I ran out, this actually ruined me for the Ramusus fight, I had to abuse save state to get through, but I'm not starting over just because I didn't purchase enogh Aquasol S's. Second fight with ramsus with Fei along side you is easy. No problems whatsoever with this section of the game.

 

Next onto Fei solo in weltal vs the geblar tropps and Elly. You fight 2 battles, vs 5 Gebler tropps, THEN Elly. I had no idea how this was possible, but turns out you NEED to get a frame 30 HP. If you don't have it, to bad, it's game over, you can not win without it. So if anyone reads this in future, make sure you get it or you can't progress, it's not possible to survive without it. I didn't have it, but I found out that its on Citans Heimadal, so for the brief moment you control Citan, take it off. This is a terrible, terrible idea to balance a boss fight around an easily missable item. Luckily I had a save back an hour or so, so was able to get it.

 

Going into the 5 gebbler then Elly, if you think you can beat the gebler and survive VS elly with a decent amount of HP and Fuel, think again. Elly is just as much, if not more of a boss fight then the rest, the fact that you just fought a gauntlet doesn't seem to factor into her fight, shes a full-on proper boss fight and she can and will kill you, easily. You need to kill off all the gebler gears except the one who does the pile driver, then just charge and heal till you are on at least 2.7k HP and 1k fuel. Elly does a fuck tonne of damage, you can't take this fight lightly at all. She can do 1.2k+ in 3 rounds or so if you get unlucky.

 

I'm gonna again, let it slide that he choose to balance around an easily missable item. But jesus christ, now that I have the healing ability frame on a gear, is everything gear wise gonna be balanced around the assumption that you can heal? Because it will be beyond tedious to always need to heal yourself/charge yourself up to the max in these gauntlets. I just got a glimpse of it again vs Vanderkaum.

 

Ugh, the gear battles are unbearable so far. But everything else has been pretty solid and well done, it's just the gear fights are absolutely awful. But hey, they are hard....I don't wanna quit this mod, but the gear fights are really pushing me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sewers were fine for the most part, Rico is a beast and made it quite easy. I'd say it was well ballanced. Next dungeon though? Fucking ridiculos. Fei and cita, 300 max hp or so for each of them, enemies doing 200 a hit. You even stuggle with 2, and fight up to 4. It's ludicrous. I'm gonna give a pass again and accept that it isn't balanced for 2 people, and you can get by.... though it's tedious.

 

Next gear Gauntet? FUCK THIS MOD. This basically finished me with this mod. They do too much damage, too many fights back to back, up to 1500 attacks on one fight. I've looked around on the net and found a letsplay by crunchy, she went full evasion with triple magnetic coats, and dodged basically everything. So, I don't have triple coats, only 1, I've tried it with triple old circuits, but it's not enough, still get hit consistently. With the triple magnetic coats, cruncy dodged everything. But I just don't have enough, so thats it! Can't progress. Another fight where you basically have to have an item, and if you don't, too bad. So heads up, make sure you have triple magnetic coats in preperation for this fight. Maybe, just maybe it's beatable without, but it's too tedious and ridiculous the difference they make.

 

So to hell with it, I'm cheating. I can't progress, and I don't wanna quit this mod. I'm gonna load up the normal version and beat them on that, then switch over to hard type when the boss battles are over. But if there is another set of gear fights that need magnetic coats, I'm done with it.

 

God, I hate this mod.

Edited by jugend

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I wanted to mention that inside the sewers and the next nortune dungeon, I started to feel like the mod was starting to come to life. But I  got to mad with the mod to discuss the positives after another shitshow of a gauntlet that I was forced into, without the equip to deal with it, so I'll touch upon that now.

 

So yeah, I could really see around that time things starting to come together, and the potential in the mod. The first few hours, or first 20? You don't have many skills, you don't have a solid or consistent party, and you are also forced into 2 man parties (3 times?),  all the while you are low on deathblows, struggling to build them up while facing OP enemies, so it feels very inconsistent and erratic. But things started to change in the sewers once citan got some deathblows and I could start playing more naturally, and it's just gotten better and better since then.

 

Obviously, in vanilla it basically doesn't matter what you do, there's little point in using any skils when every enemy just dies with minimal effort and all the broken characters mean you just don't have use for any nuances in the system. But now everyone feels very different, quite unique in fact. Fei (who I haven't used in a while), so far feels like an awesome all-rounder, high damage, good survivability, high speed, back up healer. Counterforce is awesome atm, truly allowing me to get through fights where I would have had been destroyed without it, like some of the fights in nortune where I was getting 2 shot, and with just fei and citan, that was hell, but counter force allowed me to scrape by a lot of battles that I shouldn't have. Soon after that Fei is out of commission for sometime, so I haven't used him in a while.

 

Citan is really starting to shine now too. Hes atm basically the high-speed, high-survivability healer, and now with his deathblows coming together hes also functioning as a pretty decent damage dealer (lower than the other, but still quite good). His ability to aoe everyone of his heals/debuffs/support skils is really nice, and makes his game style interesting. A pre-buff for an AOE heal is very risky in this mod, so his style feels unique if a little underwhelming/dangerous as the main healer. Atm, he is totally outclassed by billy as the healer, but still has his uses due to his speed, skillset and survivability. By end game the dynamic between him and billy should be really nice since citans damage will shoot up when he gets his sword, not sure who I'll want to use then, have to see how things develop.

 

Elly is also excellent. Shes slow and fragile, but a great damage dealer with her weapon, and her magic is amazing, with ether doubler, shes completely broken. But that's actually quite good in this mod if you want to alleviate some of the time spent in dungeons (which can be excessively high). I've been using it to deal with some random fights, once I've completed basically every enemy variation in the dungeon normally a few times, then I'll just steamroll with her to speed things up.

 

Billy is so fucking good. Aoe heals, speed up, def up, very decent damage, but a little slow. Atm, he feels almost essential due to how good his tool kit is, and ease of access to aoe heals. 

 

Rico is an absolute monster now. Huge hp, high def, huge attack. He's exactly what he should be. The best tank and damage dealer, but hes completely lacking in utility, which actually balances him out fairly well in spite of his huge advantages.

 

Bart is fantastic too. Pretty good speed, excellent damage, next best to Rico atm, brilliant tool kit, wild smile, accuracy/evade up, enemy provoke, attack up. Evasion dps/tank right now, and working extremely well.

 

You'd expect with Rico being such a beast that he'd just outclass everyone, but he doesn't. He serves a very specific role, and hes the best at that, but the lack of utility is a big deal, and what bart and fei bring to the table can be just as worthwhile depending on your party composition/playstyle. I want to say that atm, everyone just feels fantastic, everyone is more than viable. They all have their own niches and everything works atm, no one really feels like much of a downgrade, other than billy maybe being a bit OP at this stage of the game due to his utility.

 

I'm glad I stuck through the bullshit because after so long I'm actually really enjoying the mod now, especially the character uniqueness and the freedom I have with party selection due to everyone being pretty much excellent.

 

I went and farmed magnetic coats after that bullshit I had to endure. My elly for some reason didn't come with a power drive or whatever on her gear, so I've got a ether doubler instead (lol), but I haven't been using it for boss fights. 

 

Next few dungeons were; the abandoned ship place. Was fine for the most part, nothing too bad. Wells were very strong and can overwhelm you, but mostly the exact same deal as before, can handle the dungeon fairly okay, but things will catch you off guard, and you'll lose a few members here and there. The chuch was next and those assassins were very strong, need to get down the priests asap before they destroy you with status. Some very hard fights in here, but again, same old, you'll lose some members and scrape by in some fights, challenging but not impossible. Lastly, the ethos excavation site. Mostly the same thing again, balanced fights for the most part. The lizardmen duo are pretty crazily strong, expect to have a few parties members KO'd vs them. Seraphita and tolone were pretty easy with citan/billy. Might have been too hard without billy though, not really sure, don't care to try it with just citan on heals. But quite easy with billys healing/speed up, and citan putting fire resist on all. ID was annoying, so fast and evasive, can easily 1 shot you if he double death blows on you, an annoying fight really, lots of prebuffing so things go smoothly and he doesn't kill you in 1 turn, easy enough.

 

All in all, last few dungeons have been excellent. Challenging while not impossible, and nice fight variation, and even better that I now can choose so many more characters. The gear fights as always, are god damn annoying. Ramsus was fine because of elemental attack though, brought down to nothing with micas/ground. I'm hoping that in the future, once I have a lot of options with gear accessories and whatnot, that the fights will become better.

 

 

Edited by jugend

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I wanted to note this before I forget; If you are about to go to babel tower, make sure you have an ether doubler. In the fight vs Ramsus's wyvern, Miang heals him 7200 every third or so turn. He dishes out up to 4.5k an attack, so dealing out enough damage to negate her heal, all the while staying alive while Ramsus trashes you, seems next to impossible without an ether doubler. Maybe with the power drive (which I didn't have), and several eth amps up on elly, it's possible still, as power drive is a lot of extra damage. But I just went with ether doubler on Elly, and he still takes quite a beating. Seems to me like the gear fights are now balanced around having an ether doubler. I'd really insist on getting an ether doubler at this stage as a fail-safe, even two if you can.

Seibzhen fight is pretty similar to Ramsus, but he attacks really fast, and only heals 2.2k or so, I didn't have any troubles with him. But I can see how you definitely could, and after you defeat Ramsus you can't leave the tower, so if you party composition is off, you can not change it, but if you can beat Ramsus with that party, Seibzehn should be alright too.

 The generator defense is a little annoying. I think fight 3/4 are the hard ones, for 3 you want to go full evade, tripe magnetic coast, since one enemy deals about 7k a hit, and you can't take two of them. 4th fight is probably meant to be burst down with Elly's Aerods or magic, the enemy does attacks that deal 5-7k that are Gel damage, and I can't seem to evade them, and I don't think there's anything to reduce Gel damage. The other two generator fights are pretty easy. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

After a very, very long time of pretty smooth sailing and well-balanced dungeons.....fort japser enemies caught me by surprise. Once again, just overpowered. These are the same guys that were OP in kislev. They can do 200 a hit, triple hits in one turn, thats 600 damage or so. Well enough to kill everyone but rico, and you fight up to 4 of them. Two of them alone can wreck you, 4 is just stupid. You are gunateed to die here. So you'd want to have your evade gear, or ability to burn 1 shot them, so high-level deathblows. You could just take elly or maria or (chuchu) and 1 shot them with an ether attack. Annoying dungeon for sure.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thankfully the creator had mercy and made solaris enemies quite easy overall, basically nothing of any real threat in the entire dungeon/s. This was really needed due to the sheer size and amount of time you can spend in there.

 

Grahf+executioner was fucking insane. Is this fight balanced around power crisis? I wish there was more info about this mod, reports on how players dealth with things. I tried without power crisis, but it's way, way too frustrating. I don't have the time/patience to put up with it.

Basically, with 150 def, grahf will deal 450-600 deatblows, miang will aoe you 150 or so and 1 shot you with another skill. The issue is it's too much buffing and keeping up with damage, people are going to get 1 shot, then you need to res, reheal, respeed, or allow them to get 1 shot by next attack and not heal, but that can be ill-advised if you more than 1 because miang will kill multiple with her aoe then. Grahf is FAST, he can get in two turns in a row if you don't have speed up on. It's so much whack-a-mole with maintaining buffs, resing, keeping hp to avoid maings aoe, very little time to do actually damage due to all these reasons. Fei and bart can actually evade miangs 1 shot and grahfs deathblows with their counter skills, but thats another buff to keep up. I got to frustrated, maybe if I had more levels? Even still it seems too much. I just put on a power crisis and killed miang asap.

Edited by jugend

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Okay, I'm done. I actually quit in the final dungeon, nothing to do with the difficulty mod, I just couldn't bother figuring out that puzzle, and I completely overpowered my gears so there wasn't much interest, just watched the ending on youtube, damn that puzzle! I might pick it up again later, just to see what Deus is like, but my characters are ridiculous;y stacked so...

 

I don't really have anything of note for disc 2. If you make it there, there's not going to be much new you can't deal with. Elements fight was mostly fine, Dominia goes pretty crazy when shes the last left, but it's dealable. The back to back Ramsus/Miang gear fight was a little rough, but I just used ChuChu and abused her heal while Miang waits to attack.

 

I think I've outlined most of the trouble issues with the mod, and what you need to overcome them. Overall, it was pretty balanced for the most part? When you have three characters that is, the gear gauntlets are rough, no doubt, but if you have the right gears you should be okay. Main issues come from the start with just 2 characters, midway with just 2 characters, and those guys with the triple shots that annihilate you, calamity is poorly balanced, but it's not indicative of the rest of the mod. If you are well prepared, everything should be quite doable. Doable, but definitely hard and a lot of issues regardless, it is quite a difficult mod after all.

 

I would recommend this mod, but, without any doubt, you need to go all out, it's quite gear dependant, you will need triple magnetic coats, and ether doublers, and to stay on top with supplies/deathblows. The gear fights are the worst part of the mod, especially towards the start, not gonna lie, these are awful, and so rage-inducing they almost ruined the entire mod for me, but the more gears and skills you get, the easier everything gets, and the gauntlets stop eventually. Grahf+executioner is definitely the most difficult fight of the mod, for all intents and purposes, this really is the end game boss. Disc 2 never really challenges you like disc 1. I'd like to go back and try to beat Grahf without power crisis abuse.

 

By end game, Citan had turned into a walking god again. It's a shame there's no real end game content, or really much on disc 2 to challenge you in gearless flights, it would be interesting to see how the characters faired in their final forms, but nothing to test them at all. I went to the dune place, but Fei basically just solos the black dragon, so yeah, not much to say regarding endgame balance, that's the fault of Xenogears itself though, rather than the mod.

Edited by jugend

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