elltacko

Oh wow, it's very exciting to see that there's a new update, Zed! It amazes me that you're still able to improve the mod! I'll definitely play it when I have time -- Shadow Hearts 2 + this mod is still my favorite combat system. I was sort of surprised that you upped the EXP in general -- it seemed like from the last feedback, you were against it. As for seals, I used them to compensate for being lower level, which I thought was fun in itself because it was one of the few ways to permanently "customize" your party members towards a build. Of course, putting them (and especially the agility ones) on Yuri is the most powerful choice, but I think it's also fun to non-optimally put them on other characters, especially to compensate for other challenges/playstyles. In terms of having a more consistent difficulty curve for players, it makes sense to remove it (especially with the increase of EXP), but it does sadden me a bit to see it go because it comes at the cost of player expressiveness. (Of course, they're still usable by loading up vanilla, but it feels significantly more "cheaty" to do so.) I like your philosophy on Technical Ring, in which if you want to use it to make the mod easier, it's all good, but it's not required to win. The mod was still definitely difficult enough even with using everything available to me. When I play the newest version, is there any specific feedback you would want? Was it useful for me to document my levels before the bosses? Should I document random encounter "one shots," like how you lowered the damage of Rhondda Mines so Blanca doesn't get one shotted? See if I can still get Libertis before Disk 2 if I use everything available to me? I'm still thinking of playing it without Yuri and Keys (to limit physical damage stacking, big fusion into 3 combo, and Dark Seraphim, all things that are out of scope for a mod to do) but on new game plus, just for extra copies of the AOE buffs that Yuri would otherwise have. Also, out of curiosity, what team do you use? And how far do you buff stack for damage? Do you just stop at Rage? Or do you go all the way with Keys + Energy Charge + Mind's Eye? I ask because that makes a huuuuggggeeeee difference in damage output.

Hello once again, and it appears I have another wall of text! I've completed this mod again on 5.0. Again, thanks for all of the hard work. Shadow Hearts: Covenant has some great gameplay and options, but the base game being pretty easy means that you don't have to use any of it. As compared to 3.0, the last version I played, this version is a lot less janky and more consistent without Spikes. The random encounters are a lot more interesting, having to match elements and differing enemy types, but they also take a lot more time now, and random encounters can get kind of repetitive. Still, as compared to other JRPGs of the era, they are some of the most interesting I've played, even if repetitive. Since there was talk about a low level version, I went ahead and tried completing 5.0 under leveled, making sure to record my levels (and gameplay) as I played. If you use all the mechanics the game has to offer, including Technical Ring, Seals, Replacement Men, Element Matching, and, of course, Lucia. Before St. Marguerite, I was about 1 level under leveled, if that, and afterwards, about 10% to 20% under the recommended level, depending on how long the dungeon was beforehand. With this playstyle, not much extra grinding was done for bosses. I would explore the level normally, and by the time I reached the boss, if I could get a level by doing 2 fights, I would, otherwise, I'd go for the boss. For endgame, instead of grinding for levels, I grinded for speed seals and Ashura's Earrings for HP, both of which you get from the same pit fight. I think grinding for speed seals might be faster than levels, and I personally found doing its boss fight more interesting than doing more random encounters. By the way, being 10% to 20% underleveled can be super rough at times, but it's doable. At this amount of underleveled, it feels like a decent amount of things that are supposed to be a 3 shot turn into a 2 shot, and things that can be a 2 shot can turn into a 1 shot, along with an even more massive turn advantage bosses and enemies will have. I think it's intended for bosses to start with 2 turns before you go? When underleveled, bosses will get 3 turns before you go, which can be quite rough: one of the boss fights I managed to turn around and win started with a full team wipe, lol. The main thing you could do to make it "proper" for low levels is make the first fight with Kurando a bit easier, since that was a hard wall I couldn't pass without grinding. Reducing damage/agility/or amount of the enemies would all be fine, if it's possible, but I understand if you don't want to also adjust their stats because they're also used in the first dungeon of Disk 2 or because it's more work. A nice quality of life thing for low level runs would be to increase, perhaps greatly, the EXP gained from bosses. I haven't actually checked all bosses to verify this, but it seems like a boss fight is worth around 3 to 5 random encounters? Considering the length and difficultly of a boss compared to a random encounter, it could probably be increased without causing players to become overleveled. My gut feeling would be to go with 2x, if that's something you want to bother with. While I'm talking about EXP, I think The Vessel could give more EXP? It seemed like they give similar EXP to the other final areas, but The Vessel's random encounters take a lot more time since the enemy will always go first, their higher HP, and they actually apply status effects. If I were to play this again, I think I'd do it without Yuri and keys. Yuri's damage output with keys and buff stacking gets silly, and Yuri's final fusion makes healing, buffing, and random encounters really easy. Even before endgame, Yuri makes random encounters really easy since you can still get Libertis before Astaroth, and if you dump all of the speed seals on Yuri, he can go before the enemies. I think without Yuri and keys, Spikes and Mind's Eye might also might be fine (on characters other than Joachim)? That seems fun to try. I would do it on New Game Plus, mostly for better access of AOE buffs because you don't get duplicates other than Yuri until endgame. Lucia's Strike Oil is pretty balanced on low level if she goes 3rd or 4th. You need buffs on to live at all, but you also need the buffs off when you cast Strike Oil'ed buffs because the game doesn't let you reapply buffs, so you have to wait for an opportunity to actually cast super buffs. Additionally, sometimes the extra protection of the super buffs doesn't actually change the amount of hits before you die, anyways. A 1 shot might turn into a 2 shot with technical ring buffs, and it still might be a 2 shot with super buffs. And the Strike Oil uses Lucia's turn, and sometimes, you need buffs or healing immediately. It also doesn't do anything if she immediately dies afterwards, and she's fairly squishy too. Reapplying super buffs is also a big pain if someone dies, since you need to wait for Lucia's turn + someone else's again, especially if it was Lucia that died. The damage dealt is also pretty unnecessary, doing 20k to 30k with a Mind's Eyed Third Key, when bosses have 10k in endgame. At the same time, if you're able to apply a super Arc Gale and survive, that's like a victory condition on its own, which is a lot easier to do if she goes first. I recorded my entire playthrough, so if there's anything you want to see or know, I can pull it up, like a more detailed description of my levels when completing bosses. This was a blast to go through again, and I think Shadow Hearts: Covenant has my favorite combat system of a JRPG when played with your hard mode. I have yet to play From the New World, but I think I'll take a break from the Shadow Hearts series and hard modes for a while. I want something easier with a more developed story next, lol.

Happy new year! Honestly, I'm okay with randomly dying to random encounters. It sounds kinda stupid, but you can deal with randomly dying to random encounters by changing the way you navigate the dungeon. By emphasizing save points while doing dungeons (most Shadow Hearts 2 dungeons are not very big and save points are fairly common), you can make incremental progress by going back to the save points after doing a puzzle or getting an important item. Navigating dungeons was then pretty scary and you get the risk/reward of either going further into the dungeon for a save point or items and possibly dying vs. retreating for a save point. So, there was a lot of tension and fear while moving through the dungeon because I could randomly die. And whenever I reached a save point, whether a new one or while retreating to a save point (because you can still die on your way back), there was always a breath of relief and happiness. I also appreciate that the dungeon design in Shadow Hearts 2 was a little unrefined at times, so save points were actually kinda unpredictable when they would actually show up, making reaching a new save point surprising and relieving, rather than "oh, I'm pretty sure it's time for a save point? Yup, there it is." So when I got the accessory that prevented back attacks, although the game was more fair, the tension of going through the dungeons disappeared. (But at the same time, that occurred around the time I was able to start oneshot bosses with buff stacking, so it was also okay because then after struggling through the game for so long, it felt incredibly powerful being able to go through dungeons and bosses without breaking a sweat while being incredibly underleveled.) Alright cool, that's very useful to know that I can grind in Nihonbashi Park. This is also weird to say, but even though I missed that you could grind and ended up finding the boss unreasonably difficult, it was still fun switching to the base game, getting like 4 to 6 turns to the boss's 1 turn and messing with the boss into a super overkill buff stacked oneshot was also fun. The feeling was like "lol, the base game is really, really easy (and I might've been overleveled for the base game), so that's the reason why I'm playing on hard mode." Partly because of not actually finding it unfun and partly being pretty sure that I was underleveled was why I didn't mention it originally. I was okay with it being unreasonable for me. I think that unlike other players, I tend to appreciate jankiness and unrefined gameplay because it tends to give a sense of unpredictability, wonder, discovery, and cleverness whenever you figure out a way around the jank. And a lot of times, when players complain about unfair or unrefined mechanics, there are usually ways to play around and avoid the issue. Me included, apparently, with the Nihonbashi park encounters, lol. Finally, just because a design can make you feel annoyed, frustrated, cheated, angry, or even bored at times, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad design. If art is about making you feel emotion, why aren't those valid emotions to make you feel? A game that makes me feel those "negative" feelings is definitely more interesting than a game that always tries to make you feel good emotions. So yes, I really enjoyed my time with your mod, including the unenjoyable or unreasonable parts of it. That's why is why I want to replay it, especially on the new version to see how things change. Will I like it as much? Will I find new things to like? Even if I like the new version less, it's still okay because it will probably clarify my feelings on why I like the previous version more, even though the new version is very likely better. Sorry for this long post, I feel like maybe that you got the impression that the things I mentioned were "bad" (and to be fair, the things I mentioned were phrased as issues with the mod), but that's not how I feel at all. Also, my posts from 2018 are probably not representative of how I feel now after 1.5 years of expanding what I think "good" is.

I played his 3.0 version of his mod. It was pretty difficult, which isn't surprising since I was underleveled. I overall enjoyed the mod because it felt like the mechanics were incredibly focused on managing buffs (agility up and defending sp cost down being mandatory, along with multiplicative buff stacking being the best way to achieve damage), healing (due to the really high incoming damage from a boss as they would usually get about 4 or 5 turns for every 5 to 6 turns that I have, after agility up), and somehow finding the time to do damage. Deciding what to do on my turn was pretty difficult (Heal? Buff? Am I healthy enough so that I could do some damage?) and the game was really rewarding when I would win by playing smarter. There were definitely times though that because I was underleveled, the game was unreasonably difficult. The most notable time was sometime on Disk 2, where you have to fight a boss after doing something like a minute or two of mob fights with the Mutant Apes. That boss went three times before I went and would AOE me to death; I had to switch to the base game to get past that because I'm pretty sure you can't fight random encounters before that boss during that event, so I couldn't grind. EDIT: Oh yeah, due to surprise attacks in the early through mid game, dying to a random encounter was a matter of when, not if, due to them killing you before you have a turn to go. So that's something you have to be okay with. It's mitigated when you get an accessory that prevents ambushes, but the final dungeon's enemy agility is high enough that that can still happen. Also, the balance of the characters isn't very good, but I'm pretty sure zedor didn't rebalance the characters from vanilla, so it's not their fault.

Thanks for the quick reply for information! Now that I'm looking at these levels, I'm pretty sure I was very under leveled, being somewhere between 5 to 15 levels under leveled for most of the game. However, I don't have save history, so I don't know for sure how under leveled I was, so I could be wrong. When I replay, I'll try to gain about the same amount of EXP and find out how under leveled I was on my first playthrough.

I plan on playing the new version of your mod and this time I will try to avoid using technical ring! However, can you give me a spreadsheet or list of recommended levels for each boss? I felt as if I might have been under leveled on my previous playthrough and there were some difficulty spikes that might have been avoided if I was properly leveled.

Yeah, I would agree with removing spikes also because the buff management was brutal if an ally died and the the first dungeon of Disk 2 was really brutal because enemies had 9x or 15x hit so without spikes, you'd die, and with spikes you would go berserk, along with probably underleveled party members. I also remember there were cheesy strategies involving the AI on late game bosses because they had an ally and they would prioritize forming a combo formation with them instead of attacking you, so if you left the enemy alive, they would waste about half their turns. Oh, even if you cannot one-shot enemies, Gathering into AOE into AOE into AOE still would work very, very well.

I beat the mod! It took 90 minutes for Yuri to punch the final boss with Eternal Key and the weakest weapon, lol. Overall, good work, although I think changing the order/difficulty of the sidequests would be good. Neam Ruins was probably the most annoying one, since it had the hardest enemies, hardest navigation, long times away from a save point (I played on a real PS2, so no save states), and the games forces you to use two characters that may be severely under leveled. In my playthough, I think was naturally around 67 to 69 on my mains and around 54 on my offs by the time I finished the other sidequest dungeons, so there was a lot of grinding to do. Alternatively, making it easy to grind just before Neam Ruins would also be fine. Additionally, if you use Rage + Energy Charge + Mind's Eye + Third Key on technical ring (Lucia's 100% crit is actually unnecessary), you oneshot bosses, so maybe the post-game bosses need more health.