DAEDRON'S PROFILE

author=luiishu535
But is the Focus spell always used the turn before Heat Wave?

Yes, though it has a 50/50 chance of casting either Megido or Heat Wave. Focus only affects Physical attacks so Megido doesn't get boosted damage. Guarding 'should' save your hide no matter what it casts though, especially if Tarunda is stacked to max.

author=luiishu535
Yeah, I think it was Heat Wave. The dragon was boosted in someway, but I had lowered its ATK quite a lot. You can probably survive that by guardian, but the real difficulty is that it's not easy to know when that spell is going to be used. Devastating spells like that could have a warning turn, like the Solar Beam from Pokémon.

The boss casting Focus is pretty much a warning turn, though I believe the game never explicitly tells you what Focus does if the enemy casts it, you would only know if you had experience with SMT or aquired it for a player character.
Major enemy skills now show a description so it's easier to figure out what certain buffs/debuffs do and you can plan your next move accordingly.

author=luiishu535
About the grinding urano23 mentioned: since you have full control over how you build your party, I think it's crucial that enemies and bosses can be defeated with different tactics and set of magic. It can be very hard to know before hand what spells to buy for an upcoming situation. If I'd make wrong choices, I would be pretty much forced to grind so that I can adapt to the situation.

Yeah, it's a problem on certain fights. I'm fine with buffs/debuffs being mandatory but the Null "X" skills should just be a helpful tool instead of a super important skill to have, so that's definitely being changed. AP is also way harder to obtain in the remake since you can't grind for it easily (Majority comes from level ups) so I'll have to make sure people can't mess up their characters early on.

author=luiishu535
Btw, are you planning on making the enemy encounters' more aggressive or while they be kept the same? I had no particular problems with the way they were handled, since there's always be a boss to judge if you're strong enough.

Enemies will now chase you if they spot you in their line of sight, but only a short distance + the AI is simply not capable of figuring out good movement patterns so it's still super easy to avoid encounters except in tight corridors.
I guess it's at least a slight upgrade in aggressiveness, but not enough to make a huge difference.

Might have been Heat Wave, which is actually a physical attack and gets boosted to 2.5x damage by the Focus buff the boss casts the turn before he uses that. Guarding SHOULD allow you to always survive that. I think...I am not even sure anymore!

Also I updated Marlene's Faceset. After 3 tries the bloody thing actually uploaded correctly so it's the latest image in the gallery. I think it looks better already :V

author=luiishu535
Lol, I thought Cyrielle was 27 or something. xD

Close enough!

author=luiishu535
I may or may not have another go at that dragon at some point. My party is at 17/18 atm. Interesting to see there's a pattern. Is that a common thing from SMT games? That you have to like study the bosses and learn all their patterns before attempting to beat them?

SMT bosses usually have less of a set pattern, but more of a "If you cast this, I will do this." or "I will use this after using this move."
I think it's usually a good idea to mix in a bit of randomness as well as patterns when it comes to boss movesets. The randomness to keep the player on their toes, and a pattern that allows those who figure it out to take less damage.
The problem in Blood Haze is that there are bosses where if you don't figure out the pattern you have no chance of winning, ever. So that's something I'm trying to rectify in the remake.
Well, if you do manage to beat the dragon, let me know!

author=luiishu535
-I agree with your points wholeheartedly. I like your facesets too, even if they feel pretty goofy. Kaleo's faceset is my favorite so far. I think the other faces could use some further improvements, especially Cyrielle and Marlene. Those chicks kind of looks like small babies' to me right now. Don't get me wrong; they're very good facesets, but I personally don't think that they look like teens (I'm assuming they're supposed to be teens).

An internal tester actually said the same thing about Marelene's faceset! And I will have to agree with that one. I'll be touching her up quite a bit (probably redoing from scratch actually) to make her look the age. This actually became quite apparent to me after I finished Cyrielle's and I noticed they both look pretty young. Not a problem for Cyrielle cause she's supposed to be pretty young (13) but Marlene is actually supposed to be a bit up there.

author=luiishu535
-Gharos Forest: it was a pretty nice place and all, but traversing it was kind of confusing, since most stuff looked the same. The signs are great, but I'd also recommend you to add some varieties to the nature: maybe another pound, a waterfall, or something the like. This is mostly a minor nitpick though.

Maps are handled a bit differently now, I no longer have big open maps so traversing should be a bit easier. Map design overall is a bit more linear, but with more side-areas for those who go off the beaten path. And yes there is actually a waterfall area.

That reminds me, I should add a couple more signs here and there. :)

author=luiishu535
Also, I really liked the side quests, especially "The Lost Beer". More of this or similar stuff would be awesome!

That's probably the silliest thing I've ever come up with, haha!
All I can say is there will be a couple of silly sidequests and easter eggs present in the game. ;)

As for the dragon, its fire spells are set to cast "at random", however there are turns where it will ALWAYS cast certain spells. Turn 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Then goes on random for 2 turns before repeating the above pattern. So if you wanted to use Null Fire, your best bet is to make sure it's up on the first 2 turns, as well as the 2 turns after it's done casting Megido/Heat Wave. He also casts Garula/Zionga on the "inbetween" turns but they're single target, which is far easier to deal with than the Maragilao.
Keeping a full 4-stack of Tarunda on him should cut down his damage to sizeable levels too. As well as Me Patra gems to deal with the Mute Blast.
That's really all you need, I think the usual level to be at was 15/16-ish or around there, it's been a while.