SirShaggy

I'll be sure to leave some feedback as soon as I can Zed! New semester at college just started so things are really hectic at the moment. To be honest, I might replay through the game if grinding is no longer necessary. It's been a long time since I've streamed it and I think switching to the newest version now would leave me kind of overpowered... Ah well, can never get enough Shadow Hearts, honestly.

Thank you so much Zed, and happy very belated birthday man! I will definitely start the Covenant streams up again very soon with this new "grind-free" version of the mod.

Hey Zed! Glad and AMAZED to see you still hard at work on this mod! I've kind of put my current playthrough on hiatus because of the excessive grinding, and can't wait to try the latest version! Any ETA on when you might have it ready? Hope you've been doing well and taking care of yourself man!

Yeah it would really throw off your system... You'd really have to redo everything from the ground up. I see what you're saying about the exp rate it's really hard to balance around dungeon size and exp earned, especially because you want to keep it fair that each dungeon gives progressively more exp. Makes me wonder what an exp multiplier would do for the experience and how much would be too much, you know, but trying to casualize a hard mod seems like a pretty counter-intuitive concept haha. I'm curious what the agility multiplier does and how that effects the enemies. Would bumping agility with seals be detrimental in the long-run because of that? Ah ok. I thought I got through it pretty fast. I must have missed some areas. Ah, it's all good man! I knew what I was getting into going in. From what I remember from last time the grinding slows down a bit in the later parts of the game, so I'll just power through for now. If it gets to be too much I'll probably cut myself a break and run with technical ring to makes things a little "easier" for myself.

Ahhh gotcha! A "perfect" low level mod would be cool to save on grinding time but I totally understand that that would be a ton of work. I started my playthrough yesterday and got up to Castor and Pollux! Forgot how tough those two were. Got up to level 8 so I'm gonna take them on again next time! Has the exp in the subway been adjusted? Maybe I'm just a casual but 20 exp for each fight seems pretty low considering it takes about 300 to get to level 8.

Gotcha! I will go ahead and give 5.0 a shot and if the grinding is a bit too excessive I'll probably switch to 4.1. Don't think my viewers would be interested in seeing me grinding for too long, otherwise I would. XII has really grown on my over the years. Just like FtNW honestly. Now they're two of my favorite RPG's.

Hey maybe I'll have to give it a shot sometime! I love me some hard mods. X and XII are my favorites. I'm actually finishing up my FFXII Struggle for Freedom (hard mod) run right now! I sure will man! I think I'm gonna see if my viewers are around and start on it tonight! Edit: Oh I forgot to ask, will the 5.0 version have an excessive amount of grinding in between bosses? I see you labeled it as a more hardcore version of the mod and don't know if I should do the previous version to save my sanity.

Dealing with some life stuff, but I'm not doing too bad! Thanks man! I really appreciate the amount of work you put into these! I'm really excited to see the improvements you've made. Ah man, I will definitely be checking out your other mods! I play FtNW every couple of years. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Never played FFVIII myself! Heard the junction system was really janky. I'll take a look at it and see if anyone has videos out of what it's like. Gonna start my Covenant playthrough here real soon! Same place, twitch.tv/shaggysir if you ever want to watch!

Wow, I was taking a trip down memory lane here and you're still updating this mod! Hey again Zed! It's Shaggy, the dude who streamed your mod a couple years ago. I got the Shadow Hearts fever and was thinking of doing another playthrough of Covenant at some point. How's your FtNW modding coming along? That's another one I played through doing my own ruleset of no armor/buffs/keys, which is a nice challenge in the later fights. A couple of my viewers liked the playthrough so much they've been asking me when I'll show them Covenant so of course I'm treating them to watching me get my ass kicked with your mod haha. Can't wait to see the changes you've made! Hope you've been doing well man! Good to see you're still putting good work out.

They really do play up the silliness way too much. I mean you go from wandering around area 51 looking for clues on one guy's whereabouts, to getting sidetracked by being captured by a child pirate on your way to South America, to getting sidetracked AGAIN by mob fights in Las Vegas. The story and pacing is all over the place. To be honest though, I do like Johnny and Shania as characters. Just wish they had more meaningful dialogue together or with the others. Were they actually going to make Yuri the villain? I thought it was that the marketing team was just trolling everyone by advertising Nicolai as the main lead. Daaamn... That's quite a challenge. Wouldn't be surprised if it could be done though since some people really know how to break FFX using the bare minimum. I've played a lot of Atlus games and I thought DDS1 was a pretty fair challenge. Then again, it was one of my first. Most of the fights come down to having the right setup of abilities to exploit weaknesses and protect your own so if you know what's coming up it's not bad. DDS2 definitely had some harder fights. That big green dude with a bunch of mouths near the end comes to mind... I really liked ME1. It had amazing atmosphere, writing, and world-building. Have to say though, happy to be moving on to ME2. The mechanics have not aged well at all. I was rushing through the Mako and combat sections to get to the cutscenes.

Aaah ok. He must be beatable somehow since people have done no sphere grid runs before. Probably just takes a ton of preparation and some really busted item/Mix combinations. Is DDS1 considered easy? I thought it was pretty challenging but I did play it when I was younger so. DDS2 was definitely harder, probably because I did a Luck/Agility run. I'm liking ME1 but the combat feels so clunky and the Mako is a friggin bouncy-castle haha. It's a great game with some amazing world buiding but I think I'll enjoy ME2 as a whole more. Totally agree. The humor in SH3 is so misplaced and unfunny at times. The first two games were funny because it contrasted with the dark serious tone of the plot. SH3 isn't dark at all so the constant humor just feels like a stupid attempt at being "random xD". Haha, honestly, Frank and Mao are my biggest complaints in the game. Too many joke characters. Mao has a nice personality but it's ruined by the fact that she's a cat for no discernible reason whatsoever. Imagine how much cooler she would be if she was an actual human female drunken-fist-using mafia boss. And then Frank... His entire character is a joke. There's nothing serious to take away from him. I don't mind characters like Joachim being set up to be funny, but at least Joachim was semi-serious about things and had some good back and forth between the other characters at times (Joachim/Anastasia). Frank is just there to shout a ridiculous one-liner every now and then while everyone is ignoring him. If these characters were given some sense of believability (Mao not being a cat) and their personalities were balanced to be a bit more serious at times (Frank being able to hold a conversation with the others on the team) I think it would round out the cast a lot better. And I also think that's why Johnny comes off as a pretty "meh" character. I quite like Johnny actually. It's refreshing to have a dorky average kid as the main character and he has some moments throughout the game that show him to be pretty mature and confident when he needs to be. The problem as I see it is that Johnny is surrounded by a giant drunk talking cat and an insane German ninja. The game puts him in the role of the straight-man going "Hey guys, look at that! Isn't that random? xdddd" constantly. With such a light-hearted and goofy main character I don't think the game really needed three joke characters, especially Frank and Mao. If the cast acted more like mentors to Johnny on his quest, letting him play up the naive dork role while they taught him life lessons along the journey, I think the cast would feel much less like a walking circus bumbling around aimlessly and more like a coherent group of outcasts working as a team to stop Lady. /end rant

This was actually my first time ever using Lucia's oils for real and... Yeah, they're totally broken haha. To be honest, I think if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't use the Mind's Eyes. I messed up so many damn rings because of those things. I think the mod is in a great spot. Even when I was using the strongest combinations in the game the bosses still had some challenge. I started up ME1 instead cause everyone was telling me I should play it first before jumping into ME2. The combat is clunky but I really like all the worldbuilding. Honestly, From the New World is a guilty pleasure of mine. I used to hate it, but I've gotten used to its wacky antics and it has the best gameplay in the series. The setting is definitely a huge departure which I think works in some ways and falls flat in others. Some locations were very unique and really showed off the Shadow Hearts universe in a brand new setting, but I wish there were more dark locations to go and less pirate ships and area 51... In my From the New World playthrough I'll be using all the worst armor and not using any arc buffs. I might not use Mind's Eyes either this time. Also there won't be any broken oils. Last time I played the game that way and it was actually a nice little challenge, especially towards the end. I know what you mean. So many RPG's are easy to beat even without using everything in your arsenal. We need more hardmods in the RPG community. Hmm, I've never tried a HP, Str, and Mag only run of FFX. That sounds interesting. Do you still pick up Accuracy and Agility? SMT3 is a great example of a challenging JRPG (Matador can kiss my ass), and Persona 3 is another good one despite the fact that some bosses can be pretty cheap. Digital Devil Saga is a favorite of mine. Plenty of challenges without it ever feeling unfair.

I've done it! I beat the game! Holy crap dude, I can't believe it's over... Man this has been a blast and I'm real sad that after 60+ hours of playing through this game there really is nothing left. This was such a fun trip down memory lane, and it wouldn't have happened if it weren't for your mod. Thank you so much Zed! Now it's on to other games (first playthrough of Mass Effect 2 coming up), but I shall return with From the New World in the future! Of course I'll be playing my own poor man's "hard mod" of it as well, if you haven't come up with one by then haha.

Ahhh, I thought that might be the case. I figured I was a bit underleveled as it was but having Kurando and Anastasia, who were SUPER underleveled, in the party really made the difficulty jump. I power leveled a bit offscreen last time I played and got Yuri and Blanca to 90 so that's perfect! I'm planning to stream the finale tomorrow if everything works out! Thanks! Maybe it'll bring some more players your way. <3

I guess it doesn't matter too much now that I'm 99% of the way done with the game haha. Damn, it's just hit me that I'm already at the end. It's been great to go back and experience this game again after so many years. I just might edit and put my playthrough up on youtube. Maybe not the whole thing since that would require a lot of editing and tons of bandwidth, but we'll see how the reception is (if there is any anyway). If anything, it'll make a good excuse to practice editing. The smaller enemies in the Neam Ruins part 2 are insanely fast! I think you might want to adjust them a little cause running into the 6-stack of them can be an instant game over since they all go first. Then again, I think this might be the hardest dungeon in the game right? I probably should have done the Dog Shrine first...

Aw, no need to apologize! It's my fault for breaking the game haha. Honestly, Technical Ring by itself is a nice boost, but technical ring WITH with Lucia's strike oil (with 99 strike expansions...) is completely busted. It's an extra 29% bonus on strikes, including buffs. If you balanced around that the game would be insanely hard for normal ring users. I think I'm going to switch to normal ring for the rest of the game cause I feel like I'm cheapening the late-game experience.

Ok cool thanks! Mecha Lord fight went really well. I put Anastasia in to take its picture and she ended up face-tanking almost every single hit so the entire battle came down to reviving Anastasia over and over and over again as it punched her across the room haha. Only the Queen's Garden left and then I'll start the optional dungeons! Not too far off from the end now.

It seems weird just from a mechanical standpoint to have a spell that not only has a very small AoE but also does reduced damage to multiple targets... Oh. Well, time to swallow my pride and start using those coral pendants then haha. Is there an order I should do the sidequest dungeons in?

Oh YEAH! I forgot about Dark Seraphim and his broken For Everyone buff. Wow, that's going to be interesting if I can get that off with Lucia's oil... Hitting perfects might become a problem especially with my lack of coral items. I'll try to honor my code of not using them but we'll see... My Garan fight did not go well, mostly because I kept screwing up my rings. I was really out of it when I was fighting him last stream and ended up getting tilted after screwing up Yuri's ring for the 30th time that day haha. I'll probably give it another go next time I stream and grind a bit if need be. That's a good point about Bright Banish! It really is a weak spell in comparison to all the other ones. Thanks!

I'm pretty excited just to see how fast the final boss is going to decimate me haha. My first week of classes is just about over and then I'll have three days off to do nothing but stream.

Aw, thank you man! I'm glad you could make it to the stream yesterday! I should be ok as far as saving myself into a dead end now. I'll probably keep going with it tonight.

I've been having a lot of fun. It got a lot better once I got out of the early game, but again, that's a problem with the early game's lack of variety and strategy rather than the mod itself. Hey, I'm more than happy to help! I did my own "hard" playthrough of From the New World where I never upgraded armor, used arc buffs, or bought the "coral" items and found that it was a lot more challenging and fun. I love Shadow Hearts, but the combat like most RPG's is easy and formulaic once you know what you're doing which really takes away from the fun. Challenges like this are a dream come true. Haha, looking forward to it!

That's good to know! The seals definitely make a difference though, especially on Karin who is taking over physical attacking for Yuri. The Mother Filarias and Asmodeus were just as intense, if not more! Making my way towards Astaroth, and then onto Disc 2!

Night Queen is ROUGH. Damn, that was intense haha.

True, I had to wait for Joachim to get out of bat form when I was grinding so he would be able to survive a hit. Karin is quite a beast right now since I gave her +6 strength/luck from seeds, even though Joachim could have used them too but... Ya know... Aesthetics. Also I just realized that Lucia's oils don't scale with stats and the only one worth using would be the one for guaranteed crits so... Crap. Well I guess I wasted those seeds on her, haha. Ah well. Stand + Spikes is amazing, I never used spikes in the original game so I had no clue they could be so broken. I was wondering why my level 2's weren't learning anymore abilities... Totally forgot they were attached to the level 3 fusions. Thanks for the tips!