ADORKABLE'S PROFILE

I'd love to play a harder Final Fantasy X. <3 I remember playing that as a teen and it was kinda fun but the end optional boss felt anti-climatic and blah for some reason. I personally wouldn't want it TOO hard though.

You can make summons/summoners not be overpowered- this isn't really that hard at all. You will just need to do a lot of battle testing to tweak the numbers so fights still feel challenging/exhilarating. It's often as simple as giving your abilities the correct numerical value rather than anything too complicated strategy wise. And then playtesting enough times. And don't have or seriously nerf 'Quick Hit'-type attacks cuz that move was way too strong in the original FFX. Speed/agility is the one that usually needs to be kept in check the most in these makers.

I primarily use rpg maker 2003 myself, but I'm pretty sure you can easily write a formula in the newer makers where 50 points of strength always translates to 50 hp worth of damage on regular attacks. And if you want it to be really transparent you wouldn't even need a defense stat or anything, just give the monster extra HP when you want it to be tank-y so '50 strength always does 50 HP worth of physical damage.' Unless of course the monster evades it somehow etc. You wouldn't even need that though, just crank up their HP plus all the different crap the enemy can do to make life miserable for the heroes heh.

In the skill tooltip window you can also give more transparent info that games don't usually have like 'This ability does damage two times your strength stat for such and such mp' or whatever tax/nuance you want to give it depending on the character. It might seem at first glance like you're holding the player's hand too much with all that stuff, but they will be in for a nasty surprise. =D

I don't like items that restore life to be super expensive. A battle that requires lots of reviving could be interesting, potentially.

There's nothing even inherently wrong with stocking on 99 potions. Maybe there's a dungeon that tests your endurance and having all those little cures is helpful.