FREDO'S PROFILE

So I've been playing off and on since this was released... I don't want to write a review yet because I'm not done and I'm hoping some of these issues solve themselves later, but... While it's a great game (huge world, fun if somewhat familiar plot, good characters), you have some major balancing issues, imo. It's not so much that the game is hard - it's that the game isn't balanced in a way that is very fun (at least to me, ymmv). The game is generally well constructed and I am still having a good time and, imo, this is something that could be easily patched, so this is meant to be constructive:

- Experience gains from battle are wacky (they increase in fits and spurts and don't seem to correlate to enemy difficulty), encounter rates are really high, and random encounters are way more dangerous than bosses, who are generally weak as kittens, so it's just easier to slap on the moogle charm and only take it off to grind when you find an area with unusually high exp-to-risk ratio (e.g. the dream in the forest of Zen, where exp gains per fight is higher than in most of the Branch region but enemies go down in one hit)

- Enemy abilities are weird - enemy stats don't seem to matter, so Bolt 2 has been hitting me for roughly 1000 HP damage since the enemies first started using it. Originally, it hit me for 80% of my health. Now it's closer to 30%. Because of this, some enemies deal way more damage than is appropriate for the level, while others are dealing way too little, because it's all based on their abilities instead of their stats.

- The Death spell is way, way, way, way, way too frequent. It's not that hard to counter (since Phoenix Down are cheap) but it enrages me. I can't possibly be the only one. Either reduce the effectiveness or don't spread it to so many darn enemies

- Except for Vigor and Speed, most stats don't seem to matter. Magic does affect your magic damage, but you don't see a huge difference in damage between characters unless the difference in the Mag stat is huge.

-Stamina and Spirit don't seem to matter at all. Having 50% more stam/spirit seems to translate to 10% less damage - Hautley and Edric take similar damage from most attacks, so why bother with defensive stats?

-This translates to further issues because Mag boosts are generally on defensive equipment, so there's no reason not to outfit your entire team with equipment favoring 1) speed; 2) vigor; 3) magic, in that order. Nothing else matters.

- Physical abilities have weird formulas. It's generally better to just attack than to use abilities. Some abilities aren't affected by vigor at all for some reason (e.g. does Aurabolt scale off Vigor or Mag? Who cares, Jasmine just wrecks things with her basic attack command)

- Limits are not very useful because they don't seem to scale with any stat but level. They seem to ignore buffs, so... Why bother? Also, several are bizarrely balanced

- Most characters are useless for general encounters (at least through lv 30), because Hautley and Carina are just plain better. Most characters are sorely lacking in AOE abilities and in ability variety (I don't count multiple elements as different abilities unless they do different things)
1/2. The Augurers - Oy, these two are a mess. They have really balanced stat, but their abilities suck and they're stuck with subpar materias to even use them. I never got their abilities to drop anywhere, so I'm always having to hit the augurer coliseum for them, which is annoying. It's impossible to tell which of their abilities are stronger (they don't seem to correlate to MP consumption), they have no AOE, and I'm not even sure if their abilities run off vigor or magic. Their only good abilities thus far are Zuu, for the party-wide haste, and Marlboro for the status effects.
3. Sapphire - Her abilities are basically level 1 x-magic that require items. This would be fine, if not for the fact that Hautley learned his versions in the single digits and Saphhire is still working on learning these past lv. 20, after Hautley is working on Fire/Ice/Bolt 2. Her other item based abilities are also generally underwhelming because they require a big stack of items for generally ho-hum damage/effects. She finally gets decent after the Forest of Zen bit
4. Silas - His attack move is weak, his support moves are unnecessary. Thus far, his only saving grace is that he can use elemental swords
5. Bolt - I actually like him. He's fast, has a decent spread of abilities (gil toss has its moments and is cheap, Rescue is usefully strong combined with high speed, Peep would be good if not for the interface issue, etc.). Though, why does Dash miss what seems like 80% of the time? Also, the Magitek spell is lousy and has no use whatsoever
6. Edric - Given that stam doesn't seem to do anything helpful for me, he's not that useful. His kit is decent thus far (healing, buffing, debuffing, etc.) but his stat/equipment loadout doesn't really offer much
7/8. Hautley/Carina - These guys are so, so boring, but they are so, so much better than all of the other characters. Hautley, Carina, 2 random mooks to soak up hits can clear basically every fight up to Branch without having to think
9. Jasmine - Her abilities are way, way weaker than her attacks, but her basic attack can wreck everything when she's properly equipped. The fact that she manages to be a physical wrecker, decent mage, and speedster while the rest of these mooks are so weak and underwhelming seems a bit unfair...
10. Trigger - A well balanced characters. No complaints on him

- Boss fights can easily be cleared by using one or two physical characters, equipping them with a good weapon, Gauntlets and/or Genji Gloves, using a Power Coating (are these supposed to be infinite? Mine never get used up), casting Haste and Rampage (though, Genji Gloves don't work with Rampage. Is this intentional?) on them, and just healing occasionally.

- Mechanics are not clearly explained. Ability descriptions are unhelpful (you have so much empty space in the description! Give me actual numbers, effects, and elements!). Item descriptions are also unhelpful. Improves evasion? By how much? Why can't I see my evasion?? Why are there so many items I can use in battle whose descriptions says nothing about what they do?

- The Peep/Libra interface is nonsense - some symbols are used twice - once for status effect (e.g. burn, flu) and for an element (e.g. fire, water), so the icon will show up in the weakness and the resistance side. Is it weak to burn and resists fire, or vice versa?? The elemental icons are not used for anything so I'm never quite sure what all of them are (what are holy and shadow's icons?)

So, incredibly long story short, I have three major recommendations:
1. Improve the information you give the player. Give the player a clear sense of exactly what abilities do and what enemies are weak to. I *think* the abilities for most characters are lousy, but I might just not get what they actually do. The player should know what stats to increase to affect ability damage, what effects the ability has, and what its general power level is
2. Revisit your damage formulas - stats are generally not sufficiently determinative of damage, on both the player and enemy side. It makes a lot of abilities and equipment you've designed completely useless.
3. Revisit how you want your player to level as they go through the adventure - are the experience payouts really consistent with a smooth level curve, or are players grinding in certain areas and ignoring fights in others?

author=MightyMonte88
To the people having problems with the world map lagging really bad, i ran into a problem similar to this with my old PC running flash/java applications, i know that's totally un-related but i remember distinctively the problem was unrelentingly annoying and even more annoying to fix, it had something to do with my power options / profile as i was running on a laptop. I hope somehow this helps, the issue is most likely to be client side and not a problem with the game as not everyone is experiencing that issue. It was weird too, only java/flash games would run like trash, i could play way heavier games without any problems at all. Good luck yall

This worked for me! The Lenovo Energy Management software was to blame. I switched it to high performance and the world map became smooth as butter. Even the battles are less laggy!

Now, I wonder if this fixed the problems I was having with my own game's lag that caused me to quit... Well, that's a problem for after I'm done playing through this game!

So, maybe I did something wrong and bugged this out somehow, but I think I broke Falk's skill tree. When I went to buy the second (was it third?) level of Falk's second attack up skill, it suddenly turned into Earth Strike Level 6. I now have lost the attack up skill entirely and have mastered Earth Strike without spending any points in it. Turns out Earth Strike Lv. 6 is a decent investment anyway, so I'm not too upset about it, but it seems like something you might want to fix.

Enjoying the game thus far. It has some balance issues (why are enemy physical attacks so weak and magical attacks take 70+% of my health per shot?), some characters seem useless (looking at you Arc, though Cindy is not a particularly useful character on bosses either) and the plot is a tad aimless (I've been on the same basic quest for hours!) but the dialogue is funny, the characters are zany, and the game looks pretty good.

I played a couple hours today (just past going to the rift shrine for the first time). It's definitely obvious that you spent a lot of time refining the game, and it's fairly enjoyable.

That being said... I'm not loving it. Actually, I keep playing because I want to enjoy it, and it is generally just aggravating me. Here is my (hopefully constructive) critique:

I feel like the balance is completely off.

The characters are WAY too slow (some battles, I had to wait 20 seconds to get a turn, and the enemies would each move 3 times in the meanwhile. That is crazy. Triple the enemies's damage output and make them move once per party turn)

The elements are ridiculously annoying. Enemies get healed or negate damage from elements all the time but are rarely weak to any, even if it would make sense by rpg conventions. The number of enemies pretty just immune to the magic available to you is pretty frustrating. (On the note, Vera joins just in time for a FIRE-themed dungeon when her only ability is Ifrit? Are you doing that just to mess with the player?!) What is the point of using Oalston if he rarely hits weaknesses? If he's not hitting a weakness, I can do the same amount of damage with another character's physical attack, especially once you hit levels in the teens where basic level spells are too weak but you don't have the -ras yet.

Enemies have bizarrely low amounts of HP. I one-shotted one boss, and killed a few others in a few turns at best. It's sort of crazy. If you get unlucky though, the game can turn on you because the miss rate on some weapons seems to be just kind of nuts. This could also be caused by what appears to be an agility disparity between party members and monsters.

The characters are all very interchangeable because physical attacks are pretty much the only way to go. Elina is nice for Haste, but only because the characters are so damn brokenly slow. Everybody else either has useless/weak abilities, too little MP to use their abilities, or just really boring skills. Ami is pretty much the only exception by level 15. I just slapped the ring that gives berserk on Vahn, gave him that MP draining spear that attacks twice, and just watched him rape the first few hours of the game. I'm hoping this will change as the characters level up.

Also, I feel like I am leveling annoyingly slowly - especially characters with harsher experience curves. I would say that the difference in exp curves between a character like Elina and a character like Vera is pretty crazy. I'm not entirely sure how that will affect the balance later on, but it makes me worry. The slow levelling means slow ability gains, which translates to more stale battles while I wait for my characters to learn spells worth using.



On the plot side, there is pretty much nothing going on. Events keep happening but none of the characters seem to care. Vahn's reaction (or lack thereof) to the whole Hans thing seemed pretty crazy. He barely mentions it, and always sort of as a sidenote. Similarly it seems insane that nobody questions Vera about her turncoat ways. I understand that this is old school, and not meant to be a plot-heavy game, but I think that old Final Fantasy games actually did a lot with very little dialog. In this case though, I can't even tell you what the characters' personalities are. They all have very thin motives for joining, and their lines are all interchangeable. Without the name at the beginning of the line, I would never know who is speaking.

Also, the dialog can be painful at times. Characters have a tendency to overstate things, and they act in very inappropriate ways for who they are (I'm looking at you, Ivalice Generals who remind me of a clique of mean high school cheerleaders)

But the big problem that sapped my will to keep playing (for now) is the game progression. I have been looking for the Crystal of Wind for HOURS. We have trekked across a gigantic continent, found thousands of mcguffins, rescued children and the occasional sheep and nothing has happened! I get to a town and I am thinking "I must be close to the crystal!" the townspeople tell me "We won't let you pass until we force you to help us" and then off I go on some plot tangeant for a second. Then I go on to the next town... and the same thing happens again! And again! And again! I know that this is the "old-school" structure, but I think you took it too far here. You need to let the player feel like they're progressing with the game once in a while. My characters barely level, the shops never change their stock, and I just keep going from generic town to generic town solving generic problems while defeating enemies that fall in a few attacks, assuming my characters don't start missing their attacks like a bunch of blind drunk hobos. I rarely level, rarely gain abilities, and all the stuff my characters are learning now serve no purpose (why am I going to blind an enemy I can kill in two turns? Do any enemies even use enough magic to be worth silencing?). I fight generic bosses, several of which I fought in several final fantasies, in generic dungeons (why does this world have such an elaborate cave system?!?)


Long story short:
I really appreciate the amount of work you put into this game. Good job for completing it. I wish I could enjoy it more, but I am getting frustrated. My two cents on what could make the game more enjoyable (at least for me):
- Lower enemy speed, increasing ally speed. By at least 25% each.
- Increase boss HP
- Give enemies more obvious elemental weaknesses. Why are most fish not weak to lightning?
- Give Vahn and Nobumasa more MP. Give Vera more useful spells at lower levels.
- Break up the long stretches of plot stagnation by having an occasional, short scene meant to advance the characters and their personalities. Maybe you rescue a child from bandits, and Elina shows her motherly side by taking care of the kid. Maybe Oalston thinks Dr. Cid's lab is awesome. So on, so forth.

Just a few thoughts. Take from them what you will. Sorry for the wall of text. Congrats on getting the game done!