NoIdeas4Names

Late reply, and only putting this here cause i don't think it's big enough to warrant another post but, i just had an idea, the biggest issue you've ran into in development is the fact that the number of enemies is limited to 255, so at this point DK has to remove one to add another. However, you've already altered certain number limits to be higher bit variable types, such as damage and hp, so could you possibly remove this boundary by tinkering with the idea of making that a 16-bit variable and thus raising the limit enough that it might as well not exist? Other than Lazy Shell editor probably running into a few problems with it, what prevents this from happening? (If i had to guess it would be SNES memory issues tbh.)

PTSD flashbacks to getting cursed, every, damn, turn That one is just so luck based that it feels more like winning a gamble when you beat it lol, i find it pretty telling that SMRPGA Ozma is arguably better than the original Ozma since, while meteor can still make you lose if you get unlucky it's very rare compared to the original.

Preferences would mostly be about the difficulty and the massive amount of postgame content, but personally, few games i've played nailed satisfying, challenging bosses like most of SMRPGA did, Dark Souls is one of the only ones i can think of right now, the fairness and strategy of the fights make it hard to feel frustrated when i lose, unlike alot of games that advertise themselves for challenge but unlike this one are littered with bs and artificial difficulty.

(Don't interpret this as me saying the hack is bad, quite the opposite, i've liked it ever since the old versions and it's easily the best ROM hack i've ever seen, taking an already good SNES game and vastly improving upon every aspect, i wouldn't be criticizing it in hopes of improvement if i didn't like it.) The pinned post by BTB nails this, by removing status effects from an RPG like this one you take away alot of the spice that keeps it from being just healing and attacking until you either win or die, while most of the hack is very fun and satisfying due to the fair but challenging bosses that take strategy and good timing to beat, i couldn't help but notice that practically every single postgame armor shares these same effects: Making you immune to all debuffs and one hit kills, and resistant to all elements, you can still be inflicted with stat reduction; But that is much more simple and straightforward, once again, just numbers. Think about it, there would be much more potential for challenge, strategy and diverse equipment in more than just stats if effects weren't such a nonfactor in endgame fights, and resistance to everything wasn't so commonplace, maybe you could keep immunity to all debuffs to easy mode, while in higher difficulties, some equipment could just reduce the duration of most if not all the debuffs while some makes you immune to just one or two effects? I don't know if DK changes the source code or something else to alter the mechanics but depending on what it is, it would be relatively easy, just make it so the counter to when your debuff will end starts out at the combined number your gear detracts from durations. Speaking of status effects, the ones you inflict on enemies are quite unbalanced now tbh: On one hand you have burn and poison which only do like 1000 set damage per turn each, amazing early game; Progressively more useless as you get stronger, meanwhile defense down is practically a requirement to succeed on high difficulties since it makes bosses take double damage for multiple turns at a very low cost of either FP or frog coins, you might argue they're balanced around it but the fact that it's such a no-brainer to use in every fight that their whole defensive stats are balanced around this one debuff is the definition of OP, it's not the higher damage taken itself that's too strong, it's the fact that in a typical fight you'll always keep the bosses taking double damage because of long duration and spammability. So, anyways, what do you think?

Could be like Peach in the Doom Cake fight, you get fully healed and the menu opens to equip things and switch characters just before the fight begins, with Luigi avaliable. (After would work just fine too, though.)

Nice, would just need to find a good place to add him in, maybe the General Guy fight?

As in, can the engine handle it? Does the current code allow it? Luigi would be relatively simple sprite wise for the most part, just recolor Mario's animations, i'll make Poltergust attack custom sprites if i find it out to be possible to add characters though. His niche could be inflicting powerful status ailments on enemies, maybe a few buffs too, with above average defense, magic and magic defense but meh offensive stats to balance it out, his ultimate special could be Negative Zone, the animation just a big circle that inverts the colors inside, green fireballs, lightning and such would all be simple spritewise too.