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I thought I'd pop in to share an experience I just had.
So…I dueled the guy in the Pang Tong replacement battle…with Yang Hu. And won. If you think about it, how exactly did he pull that off? "Stand aside, Master Lu Bu. I shall deal with this monster with my own blade!" :)
I'm enjoying the heck out of this so far! Thanks for (re)making a great mod!
Whew, I finally got back. Okay, here's a few more observations from me about certain playable characters:
Sun Shang: Am I really the only person who likes her a lot? 190 Int puts her out of consistent Behead range, which is important considering all of the Beheads coming at you after she joins. It also makes her more difficult to Terror, plus she doesn't automatically get hit by Flare/Phoenix, unlike every other warrior type. She has a high soldier count throughout the game, and she packs a hard-to-resist Terror herself – in the next two chapters after you get her, you face a bunch of high-Str, high-AP, low-Int guys, and you NEED that Terror to work. Basically, she's really defensive. Crossbows is icing on the cake. Whether it was intentional or not, I think it's awesome that you made a character who appears so mediocre so useful!
Mr. Happy: Two uses of Behead will usually take out everyone vulnerable to it for only 40 TP. It's good, but not game-breaking, and it's fine on the other guy you get that has it. What's game-breaking is that he has 255 Str and Agi, and no weaknesses! Even if you make the end-game equipment less available, all the player has to do is give what he does have to this guy and he can still casually stroll through the last two areas. With Zeal, a Tiger Paw, and a Halberd, it doesn't matter how many enemies have Raise, his damage outpaces potential enemy recovery.
The Guy in the House: I think he's totally balanced and a cool end-game reward, but he's overshadowed by Mr. Happy and the other guy with 255 stats in a house near the very end, both of whom have higher stats and higher soldiers. I still think that this guy – the original house man – should be the only 255/255 guy you can recruit.
Ling Tong: For a warrior-type, his Str and troop count are low. His Int is higher than Gan Ning and Ding Feng, but lower than every other warrior. And his Agi, while high, doesn't balance out his other stats. Why not give him something like a 245 Agi? That would at least guarantee that he'll go before most of the enemies, in addition to making him look better. It's not really a big deal, but I never thought that he was a viable choice compared to every other leveling general.
The guy who joins after Shu: Wow, he's great. Best Terror in the game, and he does everything else anyone would ever need for the rest of the game except use Raise and Focus for 3-6. I even won a few duels with him! Personally, he was one of my favorite things about this mod! Thanks for putting him in!
I know that's a lot of text, sorry about that ;) Thanks as always!
Finally, life stopped getting in the way of my video games, and I had a chance to finish this game.
Thank you Sonic!
Wall of text incoming, you have been warned.
Overall, I thought it was VERY good…it was well balanced and fun, generally just hard enough to make me plan ahead for tough battles and agonize over party choices a few times, but not so hard that I felt battles were impossible without grinding or save states (like Ieyasu…). I loved how you used the "less is more" philosophy with officer stats; even with their poor stats, Zhou Fang was necessary for me at points, Sun Shang was one of my most used officers, and I used a spoiler character with a 210 as his highest stat in my active party for the entire game as my all-star. The story was also entertaining for me from beginning to end, and considering that Wu is my least favorite kingdom, it's pretty awesome that you were able to make me enjoy this so much. I thought FoW did have one big problem, though.
In the Jin section, after you fight Zhong Hui and enter his camp, there's a familiar face in town who gives you access to the bonus area, and now you can Seawing to Runan. Which of course sells the best equipment. Which makes the rest of the game a joke. Even without Halberds, with 3 Steeds and a few Heaven M and Fear H, the rest of the game's battles, including the last few in the bonus area, boiled down to this:
Zeal, Attack. Rest of party focuses. Heal when necessary. Focus. Enemy uses Chaos? Focus repeatedly and heal until it wears off. Enemy uses Thwart? Focus repeatedly, my AC and troop count is high enough to endure until I can heal. Enemy uses Evade? Focus repeatedly and heal until I can attack. Enemy uses Raise on a dangerous general? 3 generals using Zeal/Steed Attack can kill anyone in a few hits, so it doesn't matter. Enemy uses Zeal then Barrages me repeatedly? I always have Protect up versus smart guys, so it doesn't do much damage. My own Barrage didn't do much and would fail against the enemies I really needed to take down, so I didn't really bother and just attacked instead.
So for me, once you get access to Runan, the Jin section and the bonus section were much easier than almost everything else before them. I think it would've helped if the last cave did NOT have a Halberd, 2 Heaven M, and 2 Fear M in chests. That's 324500 gold of value for nothing – if that equipment wasn't there, or if there were at least less of it, then the player would acquire this ultimate equipment as he could afford it instead of all at once for free, and these last few areas wouldn't be such a cakewalk.
Speaking of cakewalks, there is a particular character that can be acquired pretty easily at this point who just might have a very high troop count (that levels up!) and two stats at max, plus Behead. Maybe…that's a mistake. I certainly laughed and cheered about it, but this guy could Behead two enemies on the first turn sometimes, and then take out a 55k+ enemy with over 200 AC in one Zealed Carnage if he got enough extra attacks afterwords. And that happened a LOT.
Overall, there are three recruitable officers with 255 Str/255 Agi. One of them broke the game but is easy to acquire, the second one broke the game even further but at least he's not available until near the very end, and the third one is available at the same time as the second, but has fewer than 30k troops at max level and a low Int, so he's not really so bad. Maybe the third one should be the only max Str/Agi character that can be recruited? Maybe…he should be recruitable a little earlier?
I have a few other comments; characters that I thought were underpowered, and even a few overpowered ones, and also some thoughts on TP costs (and no, I don't mean the 100 TP stuff), but I'll save that for later, I think I've typed enough for now.
Thanks for putting up with me ;)
I want to wrap this up soon; I'm at level 46 if that gives you an idea of how much more of the game I have. I plan on giving a great deal of specific feedback, too, but I want to finish first.
Although I do have a question: do you get anything for beating, er, "Mr. Happy" or the guy with 65k soldiers and 255 AP/AC in the house? Is there maybe an item to recruit him? I've beaten him before (with a duel, believe it or not) and didn't really get anything but an empty house, so I thought I might have missed something.
Jin Force used Terror. Success! Success! Success! Success! Success!
Jin Force used Terror. Success! Success! Success! Success! Success!
Jin Force used Terror. Success! Success! Success! Success! Success!
I feel like I'm fighting against myself, here.
I like how the generics that accompany the officers in Shu are almost as threatening as the officers themselves.
Slogging through them like this really makes me feel like I'm invading a neighboring state…
Quote:It actually is a very difficult fight, but it seemed to match up with that effect historically as wellI agree! An easy He Fei is no He Fei at all! And I'm terrified of the next battle, whatever it may be…
Incidentally, it's forced me to not only grind out a level but completely restructure my party and equipment. Sonic, this is what I'm looking for in an RPG. Freakin' awesome.
So I've just gotten to the first He Fei battle.
Crossbows, Evade, Behead, and Revive? Really? Really!?
I'm sure I'll get him, but this is harder than most every battle in Lu Bu or Ieyasu for me.
Excellent ^_^
Quote:I'm currently having trouble with the Huang Zu fight north of Changsha on the bridge when I am supposed to meet up with someone for Liu Bei, or something like thatI don't know if you're still stuck on this or not, but I used a party of the latest high-intelligence generals, and took a long-term approach – one or two Recovers every turn, Focus a lot, and Powdered like mad. Also, everyone had Wood H and Plates.
Wait a minute, this officer isn't Xu Gong, or one of Dong Zhuo's guys, is it? If so, that would explain my problem…
Thanks a lot for the answers, guys!
Quote:Just went back and recruited this officer. No issues here. I never tried waiting until the end of the game to go back and recruit officers that way.I suppose the first time you can recruit this officer is once you get to Jian Ye, or beat Yuan Shu? Because I certainly tried to get him then, and I got that mad glitch too. Like I said, I can send a save state with Sun Ce still in the party getting this guy and glitching out the game.
So I have a few questions about the mechanics:
1) Does a War Manual or Red Hare ever cause agility to overflow back to low numbers?
2) What precisely do Slayer and Guard do?
3) Why can't I stop dueling people constantly? It's…it's like an addiction, I can't stop. I just duel, duel, duel all day long. Why does it have to be so much fun!?
In Ieyasu, I only ever saw one person killed in a duel, but in this game…man, Huang Gai and Chen Wu were like grim reapers for a little while. I kind of wish it could happen more often, but I realize there wouldn't be anyone left to fight if you could outright kill half of the enemies.
Thanks, and sorry if my questions are dumb.
Ce just died and I decided to check all of the older towns for recruits.
Is that character Zhang Hong or Lu Su? I wouldn't mind abandoning Zhang Hong, but I'd be pretty sad if it were Lu Su.
