Oh, haha. Well, you should like the rest of that character plot going on, then. =)

That's weird... does restarting the game solve it? No one has ever reported lag in battles at all, even after extended play sessions. But then again, none of the testers were running win 8.1, so maybe there is a problem there. :/

I just tested, and 3-4 seconds is about the speed that a character's bar fills on the default speed. With the speed set to max, it's more like 2 seconds, which I figured was plenty fast when you have 4 characters and need to allow for things like Haste still being effective. That said though if there's a problem I can pretty easily just add a faster speed so that's not an issue. Let me know if that'd help!

EDIT: @WCouillard: Usually I'd think so too, but I spent a ton of time correcting any memory leaks/cache problems and cleaning up/removing offending scripts (Tsukihime's Scene Interpreter was causing a massive leak, for example). Testers have played the current version for hours and hours and the memory usages stays stable and no one has reported any battle slowdown (but again, all the testers have been on Win 7)... the only issue was the world map, which has been fixed. Of course, if you know of any problem scripts I might be using I'll definitely look into them. I have modified the ATB to run at a constant speed like a FF ATB, but what I did couldn't cause a problem as I just changed a method to return a constant rather than a variable.

I am planning to write up a sidequest/hidden item guide so that people won't miss anything. I was planning to have a basic one up this morning, but I've been busy trying to track down a few nagging bugs people are experiencing. It should be up within the next couple of days, and I'll try to keep it as story spoiler-free as possible. Good idea though, the game does have a lot of sidequests and stuff hidden that a lot of players might miss.

I think we ended up lowering the % of MP dag consumed for his Chainspell before release. Chainspell is kinda taxing when you first get him since you have no MP recovery, but it is pretty good once he can use refresh on himself. It probably would be really over powered if it didn't cost anything since his ATB to the next round is almost nothing.

That being said I didn't use Dag much except for the colosseum generally, I went pretty white mage heavy with 3 melee's most of the time when I was playing normally. My party set up was generally Ashiee, Fievel, Cass + misc DPS... Probably either Karina or Level, sometimes Elysia in that 4th slot to super buff Ashiee and Fievel <_<;

How much damage did you end up getting your Heaven's Gate to? I know if you build your characters up correctly you can pull off crazy numbers, I'm just currious~

@Noel: Chainspell essentially gives Dag an extra turn with a no cast-time Dualcast immediately. If it didn't burn some MP to activate, he'd be way overpowered compared to the other mages until you get the Soul of Thamasa waaaay later on. As is, while he generally learns spells later than the dedicated mages and has lower relative Intellect and Spirit, his chainspell combined with his ability to use better armor and weapons makes him really solid, I feel. Once you get his more unique spells like Quick and Bubble, he becomes really fearsome.

As for Limits, I had considered it, but ultimately decided that with the ability to swap in party members it might be pretty abusive, as you could just build everyone's limit gauge and then just completely waste a boss immediately with limit break spam from 8 people.

One thing I was considering that I kind of wish I'd just taken the extra time to do was Band-type skills between characters. Ultimately what stopped that was the ridiculous amount of work doing the animations would have been, and the fact that it would have kind of forced certain character combos, along with practically eliminating using the characters' individual skills. That said, I might consider it in the future, if nothing else I do plan to have FF Dimensions style combined attacks in the next game we do if we do it, and I might just toss a few into this game as a testbed.

As for party talk, I'm usually kind of hesitant to say who I use, as people may be like: "Hey, if the dev uses those characters, they must be the best!". I will say I worked pretty hard to ensure that the characters are fairly balanced. At some points in the game certain characters may shine more than others, but they even out pretty nicely towards the end. It just depends what kind of setup you want to go for. Ash's brute force setup works well, but a more tactical setup like Rebel is using works great too. Orophin used an interesting group, and was able to effectively play defensively to the point that only a couple of bonus dungeon bosses were able to pose any sort of threat to him.

I tried to really set stuff up so that people could create all sorts of interesting setups and make almost any combination of characters work. It's pretty awesome reading about all the setups people are using, even ones I hadn't even considered myself!

I will say I'm fond of a couple of setups. Karina(with ultimate weapon), Marz or Ashiee or Azran(with Conqueror's Mark), Aeth (with Offering) or Abelia (with Soul of Thamasa), and Dag (for healing/refresh) is one of my favorite setups. I also like the setup Rebel uses, as Divinus can also use Mix to make all sorts of cool buffing/healing items and has access to AoE haste and Reflect. I'll also say Elysia is definitely worth a look, as while her own attacks are only moderately strong, her buffs can be absolutely crazy. Also, if you just like seeing huge damage, Abelia with a Soul of Thamasa dualcasting Ultima is pretty hard to beat. And while a lot of people discount her as just a WHM, Cassie is really good to have, especially if you are lower level or playing on hard, as her ability to essentially fully heal the party with a single cast, along with spells like Blink, Arise, and Reraise makes her pretty much the best at keeping the group alive. Also, no one's mentioned Miko! His damage shields on Adlo spells are amazing, and let people survive huge hits they normally wouldn't be able to. Azran always had him in his party.