DIS'S PROFILE

Good work. It's nice to see a decent rm2k3 game these days. I'll play further through it and give a better review when I can.

Most of the common strategies have already been explained, but I will add my two cents anyway.

1 - How do YOU keep battles interesting?

Well I like to keep things fresh. Meaning you won't see very much of the same thing on a battle to battle basis. In most rpgs, you will spend a half hour in a dungeon where you will experience monster parties like this:

Party 1:
Enemy 1 - Cave Troll A (Special Skill - Club)
Enemy 2 - Cave Troll B (Special Skill - Club)
Enemy 3 - Cave Bat (Special Skill - Drain)

Party 2:
Enemy 1 - Cave Troll A (Special Skill - Club)
Enemy 2 - Cave Troll B (Special Skill - Club)

Party 3:
Enemy 1 - Cave Bat A (Special Skill - Drain)
Enemy 2 - Cave Bat B (Special Skill - Drain)
Enemy 3 - Cave Bat C (Special Skill - Drain)

This traditional style works, but after 10-15 battles... it can get boring and you'll wind up wanting to avoid battles (unless you love to power level). Now what I do to make dungeon battles interesting without making 10 enemies per dungeon, I just change the behavior and stats of certain enemies. This way you will experience monster parties like this:

Party 1:
Enemy 1 - Cave Troll A (Special Skill - Club)
Enemy 2 - Cave Troll B (Special Skill - Quake)
Enemy 3 - Cave Bat (Special Skill - Drain)

Party 2:
Enemy 1 - Cave Troll A (Special Skill - Rock Skin) *Strong vs Arrows*
Enemy 2 - Cave Troll B (Special Skill - Quake)

Party 3:
Enemy 1 - Cave Bat A (Special Skill - Drain)
Enemy 2 - Cave Bat B (Special Skill - Ultrasound) *High Evasion*
Enemy 3 - Cave Bat C (Special Skill - Fang)

See the difference? The player won't always come across the same thing, and you're only using two different monsters (technically). You can indicate these differences in behavior and stats by changing the monster's color, or whatever else you can come up with. You can also add a twist (like absorbing enemy skills) to make this even more interesting.

2 - How do YOU balance your enemies so that it's fair, yet challenging?

This can be tricky. I think what makes battles well balanced is paying attention to what monsters you're including in the party. You can't just add three heavy hitters and call that a "challenging" battle, because you will have to constantly heal your party (and if in a dungeon, will run out of items quickly). If you want to create challenging battles, you'll have to create the core of the difficulty (lets say in this case a heavy hitter, like a dragon), and create something revolving around that difficulty (like something that will paralyze your party, or whatever else you can come up with). Lets use that enemy skill absorption idea I mentioned earlier.

Party:
Enemy 1 - Fire Dragon (Special Skill - Lava Breath--Absorb able)
Enemy 2 - Dragon Tamer (Special Skill - Lower fire resistance)
Enemy 3 - Absorption Phase (Special Skill - Disable absorption skill) *High Evasion*

This would be fitting for a boss. The Fire Dragon uses a total attack that will be even more devastating if the Dragon Tamer uses it's spell that lowers your resistance to the attack. The easy way out of this would be to absorb the Dragon's Lava Breath (disabling it's use), but the Absorption Phase prevents you from doing so until destroyed.

Try to think of your more difficult battles like solving the pieces of a puzzle. The battle is only difficult until you complete a couple of steps, then you can move in for the kill. Using methods like this will make your battles challenging, but not over the top.

3 - How do YOU go about creating monsters?

I have my methods, but I'm not going to give EVERYTHING away. =)

(The examples used above are spinoffs of some battle tactics I use in my own project. Feel free to use them if they appeal to you.)

You guys are terrible... :-\

Cancel that, I just sold my main computer. (Needed quick cash) So I have to pull out, sorry about that.

It's hilarious to me how the majority of the people dislike this series, but whenever someone makes a topic about it it gets 100+ replies...

I've never played the series, but I must say he's doing SOMETHING right...