Let's Talk Difficulty

[Agent 12]

I'm pretty sure you can take the portal back (just go to dactyle nest).  What I'm not sure on is if there's any shops that sell ethers.....If there's not I would love to sell ethers cheap because as I stated above I want people to feel comfortable using techs.

--JP

EDIT: Not dactyls nest......um....mystic mountain?  The place where you start at.

[FaustWolf]

I've definitely bought Ethers by that point in the game I think. What I'm not sure about is whether the prehistoric salesman sells them.

[Lenophis]

There's imbalance in the Huacan Factory (I read that as the Human Factory at first).

The Acid/Alkaline combo give an absurd amount of experience (I'm leveling every 2 or 3 fights right now). They die in one Fire Punch double-tech (how many HP do they have?). I'm reading this as a pre-cursor of what's to come (LOOK OUT!). If you're curious, Lucca and Robo are level 24, and going up.

The R-Series and etc on the other hand, take forever to kill, and can beat you down mercilessly. I like how they actually heal for real damage, unlike the real game. So, this is hard to determine. For now, I say leave them as is.

[Agent 12]

Hm.....when you finish the chapter let me know your thoughts.   What you'd like to me to do.  I can't tell if you want me to lower the alkalines exp, raise the robots, swap them or do something totally different   I considered the lucca/robo chapter to be pretty hard cause they are so darn slow.  So i may have over compensated with the exp.

--JP

[Lenophis]

The Dash Ring and Speed Tab really help. If it were me, I'd probably drop the experience given by the Acid/Alkaline to 1/3 each. You'd still level fairly quickly, and it would be just as equally dangerous (taking 90 damage per hit is kinda scary at this point). It would seem more like a grind, but as-is right now, it's too much.

The end of that chapter was just fine. The extra leveling I did on the Acid/Alkaline helped against the Vision Serpent. Had I not learned Heal, I would've been doomed to obscurity.

[Lenophis]

And now the overall balance report. Aside from the horrible imbalance from Zeality's first patch in the Beast Forest (which has since been fixed), I must say that the game had a very excellent flow to it. It was almost completely fluid from start to finish, and the difficulty was just about perfect throughout. There are some things I will point out though:

The Martello you face in the Colliseum is the same Martello that shows up in the busted Ocean Palace. It dies in 1 hit (and given the difficulty of the choice made, that should not happen).

Making Kilwala's drop Barriers in Marle's scenario is an additional godsend along with the Fay Arrow. Whoever thought of this, thank you.

It seems as though that not many enemies use status ailments, aside from the final dungeon and the surprise attack on Chronopolis. Did I kill things too quickly too see any? I point this out because I bought an initial stack of 20 Heals or so at the beginning of the game, and never had to use them.

Heckran was a little on the easy side, plus he had a lot of HP. I'm not sure on suggestions for damage or HP, as I need to get to him again.

I can't think of anything else off-hand.

All in all, you guys did really good on the difficulty.