Illustrious gave me a pretty rocking custom chocobo charset that I've used for a while now, so he helped in that regard. It was a small contribution, but I appreciated it no less than a big one!

And I am going to make the castle more visible now. Maybe it will take up about a quarter of the screen before fading into the blue abyss.

author=Oblic
Ok... I just watched the whole thing again to make sure... but it looked like Vahn hit maybe once?... with his normal attack. Was that just bad luck?

Yeah, it was just odd luck mostly. Vahn should hit more often than not, but it also does seem that monster agility is a little odd at the beginning anyway. I've been lowering it a bit today to make hits occur at least 80% of the time or so. When a weapon calls for a 90% or above hit rate in the database, the actual battles should reflect that for sure.

I'm going through the game again and am rebalancing all of the stats and skills. Good thing I am too, because some monsters were using what I refer to as the "real" versions of spells that the party can learn... And they're far too strong for monsters to use at the beginning (characters having 200-250 max HP and being slammed for 150-200 damage).

Aside from fixing battle-related aspects, I'm finding a lot of dialogue that I wrote several years ago that I would honestly be embarrassed to let anyone read. It wasn't "awful" or anything, just a little juvenile in some areas.

Also adding a few things to encourage exploration and such. Threw in an entirely new map that players won't be able to reach until they have access to a chocobo (30 minutes in, tops). I plan on having several little things like that along the way because, if I have any players going off the beaten path and just wandering, I don't want them running into dead ends or just not finding anything. I want to make sure that anyone who decides to wander off in a random direction is rewarded for doing so, at least to some extent.

author=bigtime
Yeah seems like his skills dominate but physical attack was lacking.

His attacks kill in 1-3 hits, which isn't too bad. His skills are meant to be remarkably helpful in the beginning, but they're costly at the same time. This is remedied quickly though, because he learns an attack that steals MP from enemies.

Throughout my test play I am going to be keeping a VERY close eye on damage output from physical attacks. My general opinion is that the earlier weapons are almost all slightly underpowered once monsters start getting 300+ HP. I expect to be increasing the power behind weapons and decreasing the defense of several monsters for sure.

But at least weapons are pretty potent at the end of the game. One character has been doing crits of 9999 which I like to see. That number is synonymous with end game Final Fantasy so I'm glad to see it being reached.