velsper

Fortunately I haven't grabbed the stat ups yet, was just giving some of my thoughts on how the Sinistrals were playing out for me. 

I redid the game on hard mode, and made it up to the three towers pre Doom Island. A few thoughts: 

With my capsule monsters, I don't find em to survive long/at all in end game so I'm just rolling with the dark dragon who instantly wipes random fights with Eliminator. The others fell to the wayside compared to his skills. 

That's really interesting. It's fun to hear how older games do things sometimes. You get stuff like this out of it. Thanks for letting me know. 

Is it on the level of the other bugs in the game? Or there's just no room in the rom left?

I never bothered with the Colosseum. Just pop in and trade the knife for Shadow and away we go. Too much hassle.

11 hours ago, Artemis said:

Does it at least reset the Divine Shrine stat boosts, too, so that I can get them again? Because such a permanent penalty just is way too much overkill.

Divine Shrine and stat potions get reset too. So don't step onto that panel/drink those potions until you got your final set up. I find the ocean is a great place to grind for money to test out skill sets. Just sic the phoenix on those whales and watch em cry.

12 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I meant more in the sense that rank4/5 are similar in relative power but have different "roles"; like Flash4 is more a healer while 5 is more a damage dealer, etc.

Oh yeah, I've noticed that the master rank and rank four capsule monsters have both been useful. I flip them around if I need extra cover fire. Like when I lost Laxus, I swapped to capsule monsters that had attack all moves since Selan was all alone on that front now.

Didn't get an alert you had posted back, my bad.

Well, there's a notable increase in power between the last two Ranks for me. They're useful all game, but at that point they make up for bad life choices. Before the elf temple I rerolled the spell list with the cast to see what'd happen and during that span they were helping keep me alive on the seas while I made my money back.

I'm hyped enough for this that I went and bought FF8 during the last steam sale. 

I'll say this, the balance is really good. The later capsule monster evolutions are squishy but provide a lot of needed firepower if you got a bad load out. I appreciate the drop rate changes too.

When there's three times the number of skills than skill slots? I thought you made that many so you could roll with different set ups. Then I saw the cost for the skill deletion, sure ended my bout of curiosity.  

Speaking of the skills though, I really am liking some of the later ones a lot. The Venom/super poison and toxic bomb combo are fun. Blitz is pretty hilarious too. 

I'm not able to get Chocobuckle to fill out the list. Quarry Fuse isn't triggering anything but the bird pecking everyone to death. 

I started Act 2 (3?) with Maxim and Selan as parents, and wanted to ask why the heavy price on resetting the skills? I think it's enough that you have to go and rebuy everything if you want to rebuild your style, personally. Too bad there isn't a way to set up a spell shop to just sell back spells at a vastly reduced level or something.

Thanks, appreciate it. Rolling around on normal riight now, and that brush with Gades worried me since I was already at level 30 when I ran into him. I'll keep playing leisurely then.

I got a question about the balance, so far I've only bought abilities that I thought fit each character. Will I need to buy everyone everything they need to beat the game at the end? 

Is the Gades Blade still in the Ancient Cave? I think I just want to go grab it from there instead.

I was looking up blue magic because after I updated the files, I had a few new spells. Quarry Fuse instead of Level 5 suicide. The documents only mention how to get the old spells. Could you provide the info on where the new spells are? 

I'm up to the Gordovan tower, but he always wipes me with his wave attack. Is it possible to beat him there? Or am I out of his Gades Blade at that point?

I was wondering if the "The End" text can get edited to just say the password.  Would still wind up less immersion killing than what happened in the ending scenario. 

Well, I personally broke Poison Rods for the wallchange type bosses. I'll miss them when they're gone. 

Edit: By the way, why change the Red Jacket's fire immunity? 

Yoshi rolling up into an egg is a pretty cute defense stance.

Hm, well she was pretty well leveled. She was in her twenties. Basically what happens is she'd sketch the whole monster, their sprite would appear and everything and then she just step backs and nothing happens.

Oh yeah, something I did want to point out that'd legit help - Nastodon (the mammoth) in WoR Narshe's sketch just winds up doing nothing against the monster itself. I like how Relm's Sketch usually does a move that helps against whatever you're fighting, but with those mammoths they're immune to their own attack. So it doesn't help to Sketch them.

Could be, yeah. Does Sketch have a fail rate? Sometimes it just doesn't fire off when she draws an enemy. Not with everything, but sometimes it happens. 

Thanks for answering so quick. 

I was wrapping up the second to the last quest in the World of Ruin (getting Locke) when I remembered Narshe and went over there to pick up Apocalypse for Terra. While I was there, I saw that the Cursed Shield in this version is already the Hero's Shield, but just with the death counter already on it. Is it still the same process to uncurse it as before? Just kill countless enemies? He mentioned dragons after he gave me the shield, but I think he was talking about Crusader which I already got.