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1

General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: December 12, 2014, 10:35:25 PM »

Breath of Fire 3 Magic Only Challenge: Success! Honestly this was not very difficult. The hardest fight was Gaist and I think that the primary because I couldn't use Defense Formation. I didn't have a whole lot of offensive options for Gaist so my strategy for him was spamming items while hoping he didn't use Howling and Sanctuary back to back.

Most of the other bosses where really shut down by defensive buffs. The most memorable moment was doing 1500+ to Chimaera with a  2x Meditate +3x Enlighten Myollnir from Nina. 

Myria was frustrating at first with Sanctuary, but I was able to wear her down to the non sanctuary phase and easily beat her from there. It's kind of neat to have Nina spamming spells for 400-500 damage while Myria can't break 100 damage over the whole team.

As a whole, it was a pretty interesting challenge, and damage potential of magic really surprised me (I was able to deal over 3000+ to one of the enemies in Station Maria). That being said it did expose some of the big restrictions to damage being competitive to physical attacks.
-The primary one is that Nina learns her spells really late. If she learned all her 3rd level spells about 5 levels earlier she would remain competitive with all the other party members. As it is now, there's about a 10 level gap between Lightning and Blizzard which is just ridiculous.Especially, since a lot of characters can just level up with Deis to get the 3rd level spells before Nina gets them naturally.

Slightly less significant, but it's really stupid that Enlighten is self target only when Might can target whomever.

Of course the biggest advantage physical attacks have over spells is their transformation bonuses. There's no way spells can compete with the ridiculous bonuses WereTiger, or Myrmidon and other Dragon transformations provide. Which is kind of a shame because aside from that, physical and magical attacks seem decently balanced in Bof3.

Also, one minor DL relevant note: healing spells seem to get a speed buff. Could be helpful for Ryu and Momo in a long winded battle.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: December 06, 2014, 11:53:10 PM »

Some more quick notes from BoF3 magic challenge.

I'll probably go into more detail once I'm done, but Gaist was by far the hardest fight in this challenge so far. Big defense and magic resist made him incredibly difficult to damage, especially since I didn't find the Icicle shop until after the fight.

Angler was tedious, but not too difficult. He has no weaknesses and decent enough defenses especially since Garr is pratcically a non factor on offense, but he's still not bad. Just tedious. The team really wants the third level spells soon.

Also, I don't know if this is mentioned in the stat topic, but I'm pretty sure BoF3 healing spells get some kind of agility boost. It's not huge enough for Ryu to outpace someone with a significant agility advantage, but it's enough for Ryu to do something like going after an enemy who is consistently faster than him normally but slower than Nina to being consistently faster than the aforementioned enemy while still being slower than Nina. Seems like it could be a nice boost to Momo especially.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: November 30, 2014, 02:59:47 AM »

Breath of Fire 3: Been doing a magic no physical attacks playthrough. Just got through the first adult dungeon. As you might expect, Nina is MVP. It was pretty rough going until I beat Stallion (who wasn't too bad Garr used items, while Nina and Ryu plinked away on offense). At that point Momo had already learned Quake and Mygas gave us Typhoon and Magic Ball to pass around.

As a whole, Momo has been kind of underwhelming. I have to run away a lot to convserve MP, and as a result Momo didn't learn quake till around the tournament arc (which she never got the chance to use). Everything in the Lighthouse is immune to Quake aside from the boss so she wasn't great there either.

As you might expect, Nina is pretty good. She was essential in the first couple non Teepo dungeons, and even after that she beat the Dodai's one on one and wrecked the lighthouse. Iceblast was about as good as you would expect in the Volcano too. It'll be interesting if she can keep up her dominance in the second half of the game.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: November 21, 2014, 08:00:37 PM »

Pokemon ORAS: Started this up and went with Mudkip as the starter. Pretty solid so far although it has the same problem of adding some cool new features while removing other cool ones that all the other pokemon games do (trainer customization is gone, and roller skates might be as well, but the pokenav has some cool stuff.)

One of the most notable changes is that when you're out on the field every so often a pokemon tail or head or something will pop out of the grass and you can sneak up on it to fight it. Some have generic sprites so you won't really know until you fight it, but for others you can tell which pokemon it will be. Sometimes it's against a normal pokemon, but other times it's against a much higher level pokemon with a move it wouldn't normally have. A lot of people have said they caught a level 5 Taillow that already has Brave Bird, and the tutorial example they use is a level 5 Poocheyna with one of the elemental fangs. Normally other pokemon in that route would be around level 2 or 3. I didn't find the Tailow, but when I was wandering through Petalburg woods I found a level 15 Shroomish with Focus Punch. I'm kinda curious to see how the level scaling works with these guys because right now it's looking like it's 2x the level of the other randoms. It would be kind of awesome to be able to encounter a level 80+ pokemon in victory road for example.

Anyway, Roxie got destroyed by the uber shroomish who was even able to use Focus Punch successfully because Nosepass used Harden at the wrong time. Team is currently Marshtomp, Shroomish, Ralts, Lombre and two others. I don't know how long I'm going to keep the Shroomish, but I kind of want to make a Sub/Leech Seed/Spore/Focus Punch set since the game basically handed it to me. It even has Poison Heal for toxic orb shenanigans. 

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: November 02, 2014, 09:29:09 PM »

Riki might be able to MT OHKO the slimes, but they have initiative and do 1 LP to anyone who doesn't block them. So you'd pretty much have to be in a monster form with a shield and high LP and pray for ludicrous luck. Virgil's a dumb stall point and I'd probably just use pathetic base-level PCs to get the combos needed.

In my LP, Riki was a Black Dragon with Magnetic Storm and it couldn't OHKO them, but perhaps something with slightly more min maxed stats might be able to do it?

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: August 15, 2014, 06:08:10 AM »

I've been playing Shining Force Sword of Hajya for no particular reason aside from the fact that it's there. This game is very unbalanced. To give an example, I faced a wizard boss on one map who dumped a Blaze 3 on a bunch of my units. It did around 20 damage to the ones that it hit when they had around 30 HP at most. The range for the blaze spell was the usual FFT summon spell range whereas all of the previous spells had used the cross shaped pattern. Naturally, I was looking forward to when my basic mage learned the level 3 Blaze Spell.

It turned out that the second mage to join the team learned Freeze 3 much faster than the other mage learned any of her level 3 spells. Freeze 3 is completely nuts. Whereas Blase 3 does about 20-25 damage to everyone in range for 8 mp, Freeze 3 does around 40-50 to everyon in range for 10 mp.  Most enemies have around 40ish hp so doing this huge amount of damage is pretty substantial.

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Tournaments / Re: The Royal Canadian Rando Tourney Round 1-E

« on: July 30, 2014, 04:56:31 AM »

Event 17: Surviving Dwarf Fortress
Randy Marsh (South Park) vs. Excellen Browning (SRW:OG)

Event 18: Doing the Impossible
Citan Uzuki (Xenogears) vs. Hrist Valkyrie (Valkyrie Profiles)

Event 20: Evade the Illuminati and Discover the Truth
Lakitu (SMW) vs. Erim (Lufias) vs. Orange Tang Does Reincarnating count as evading the Illuminati?

Pairs Event 5: Bridge
Cidolfas Orlandu (FFT)/Kamina (Gurren Lagenn) vs. Winnie the Pooh (Disney)/Wreck-It Ralph (Wreck-It Ralph)

Pairs Event 6: Solve the Big Case as Buddy Cops
Vin Venture (Mistborn)/Stephen Colbert (Stephen Colbert) vs. Kirby (Nintendo)/Sokka (Avatar: Last Airbender) I don't think Colbert is quite as much of a hindrance as others are suggesting, since part of his character is being an investigative journalist. He's also quite good at flustering people in interviews and getting them to say what he wants which seems like it could also be handy in interrogations.

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General Chat / Re: Random final fantasy poll!

« on: July 02, 2014, 04:03:26 PM »

Favorite FF game: I think I have to go with 6 for this one, although 10 is really good as well.
Least favorite FF game: I wasn't a fan of FF13 at all.
Favorite FF dungeon: Hmmm. This is hard, but Lunar Subterranean really nailed the final dungeon vibe with all the optional bosses and ultimate weapons around. FF8's was really good too.
Favorite main character: Zidane probably. It was nice to have someone like him after the relatively sombre protaganists from 6-8.
Least favorite FF dungeon: I was going to say FF5 pyramid because I replayed it recently and it was annoying, but then Super reminded me that Academia 400 AF existed.
Favorite final boss: FF6's. This was just an amazing sequence especially considering the technical limitations they had with the SNES.
Favorite FF game plot: FF10's. The character and world building here is easily my favorite.
Favorite weapon (Can list more than one): I have no idea.
Game you use the most status in: Probably FF13. I used both Saboteurs and they were both pretty good!
Game you use the least status in: I think it's FF1, but I didn't really use it that much in FF10 or FF9 either.
Game with the best challenge: If you don't know how to break it, FF5 has a really nice challenge balance. FF4DS is probably still harder, but is less well balanced.
Game you've replayed the most: FF6 I think.
Game that has aged the best: This is interesting. FF1, FF10, and FF7 seem to be regarded about the same as when they came out. I think FF8 might be the one that's improved the most since people have accepted that the plot is stupid, moved on, and embraced how easy it is to break the game.
Game that has aged the worst:FF9 probably, although it is still a nice game aesthetically.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: June 25, 2014, 04:57:59 PM »

Final Fantasy 5: Doing the FJF and I probably got the easiest loadout imaginable. Team is Blue Mage/Sorcerer/Beast Master/Samurai. So I've got all the tricks and bullshit that Blue Mage can do along with Sorcerer for ST damage and Samurai for cleaning out randoms with Zeninage. Beast Master is pretty handy too for one big shot of damage on bosses and helping the Blue Mage get spells and whips are a good weapon type. Just beat Atomos and I haven't really had too many problems. I've still had a few deaths though because FF5 is pretty good about catching you unprepared with stuff like Bio Knights 2HKOing the entire party with their counters and the like. The only real irritant is lack of revival which means I spend a whole lot on phoenix downs which are still kind of pricey for this point in the game.

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Tournaments / Re: Tourney of Random Events: Round 4

« on: May 28, 2014, 06:13:50 PM »

Last of the Meheecans- Domon Kasshu (Mobile Fighter G Gundam), Professor Layton (Eponymous), Carmen Sandiego (Eponymous) and Miriel (Fire Emblem: Awakening) VS Luca Blight (Suikoden II), Lilianne Valendorf (Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy), Bowser (Mario Series), and Athena Cykes (Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies)

If I'm reading this right, everyone on team border crossers has to make it for them to win. Normally, I would think Luca's team would be better overall at this, but the guard team is competent enough to realize they only have to prevent one person from crossing to win. They identify the easiest one to stop (probably Lily or Athena)  and just prevent them from crossing by any means at their disposal.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: May 16, 2014, 02:51:39 PM »

Yeah that mindset doesn't really appeal to me at all. I never really investigated inspections after I figured out they were the game's method of grinding (and SN is pretty easy most of the time, why would I grind?).

I do actually kind of like breaking games (kinda. If they're broken to the point where they can't fight back at all they get boring fast) but grinding is like, the child's way of breaking games. I'm much more a fan of learning how best to make use of the tools available to me without grinding, since with the degree knowledge = power in RPGs this is pretty much always an option in all but the most primitive of entries into the genre. I have no issue with people who want to break games via grinding, and certainly Disgaea is a good vehicle for that, but it's not for me and of course a big part of why I rate Disgaea poorly and why it took me just shy of a decade (holy shit, has it really been that long?!) to play a second N1 game.

I'm not a big fan of N1 style grinding either, but in Soul Nomad it is mercifully quick if you know what you're doing. Just grind up the MC by abusing the Invisibility Decors and menu spells in inspections and then buy a bunch of guys at the same level.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: May 08, 2014, 07:05:04 PM »

I'm still playing Soul Nomad of course. Game is coming along quite nicely. Not headed for an all-time favourite by any means, but pleasant enough certainly, much more to my taste than Disgaea was.

Be sure to play the optional storyline once you beat it for the first time. A lot of the best plot stuff is saved until that second playthrough.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 29, 2014, 01:09:53 AM »

Dark Souls 2: Beaten. Sorcery gets a lot better late with Staff of Wisdom. Still feel that hexes are better, although being stuck across two catalyst types sucks. RRA was the only optional boss I beat. I tried the one at the end of Undead Crypt and then decided that figuring out his patterns would take way too long when every attack one shots me. That's probably the biggest problem I have with the game. Too many enemies rely on just doing obscene amounts of damage. As a result most of the bosses where really boom or bust and it really encourages going in with some helpers to grab the bosses attention. I admit I was running a frail sorceror build, but I ran one in DS1 too and I didn't find my self getting OHKOd too much outside of things like grab attacks or other attacks with significant windup. Final boss went down like a chump because I went in with two sunbros although there was a scary moment at the start when I realized that those orbs were very potent curse orbs.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 26, 2014, 07:54:24 PM »

Went roaming a little more and got... summoned as a grey phantom in Pharros' Door? What? The hell?

It's part of a new covenant where you get summoned into someones world and they can try to kill you. There are typically traps they can activate using Pharros Lockstones (you should ignore most of the Lockstones in that area. They only have enemies or traps mostly) and the enemies will be hostile towards you. If you die though as a phantom you don't lose anything so it's just an inconvenience really. It only triggers there and one other area.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 26, 2014, 02:27:49 PM »

Dark Souls 2: I probably need to listen to Fenrir and start working towards Hexes because Sorceries are underwhelming right now. The damage really needs to be increased, because Soul Spear still isn't one shotting most of the trash enemies which seems wrong. I do have the sunset wand, but I need more faith for most of the spells and I would like to get the Staff of Wisdom levelled up first and see if that helps at all with the sorcery damage. Soulmass is still alright I guess and I just got the Greatsword spell which is also neat. I also tried Pyromancy and did over 1000 damage with Flame Swath. That was pretty neat, but it's also very slow and takes up all of my stamina to use most of the spells.

People are very nice in Drangleic castle though! Had two sets of sunbros help me through the area and then another group help me through the Mirror Knight. I think I'll stick around and do co-op for the Mirror Knight a bit longer. I'd like to see him actually summon an opposing player instead of the generic phantom.

edit:Oh my. I just saw how much the Sunset Staff gets with each upgrade. Going to go work on that today.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 24, 2014, 02:13:03 PM »

I think DS2's the hardest for me. Just seems like enemies do a lot more damage than Dark Souls and especially Demon Souls and the Estus flask change makes it a lot harder early on. Slower recovery on being guard broken and after using Estus is a factor as well. 

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RPGDL Discussion / Re: Bravely Default stat topic ideas

« on: March 20, 2014, 09:08:32 PM »

If they're not better at inflicting ID with them than any other class, they deserve no credit for it.

Personally I'd ban such weapons (or more accurately, their added status) because they're completely non-unique, just like I do with FFX unless you want that entire cast to have 100% sleep and 100% zombie. (I think those were the statuses anyway.)

Is status hit rate based on a per hit basis or is it a flat rate for a weapon? I think that a Ninja who hits 10 times with a 5% per hit ID dagger should be able to wield it and get credit for the ID compared to a character who only hits 3x with it. 

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RPGDL Discussion / Re: Bravely Default stat topic ideas

« on: March 20, 2014, 09:00:07 PM »

Figured I'd throw in my two cents.

0: I'm not a fan of a 3 turn average with a 4x brave at the end at all. It more than doubles the damage average and almost ensures that all but the very best damage dealers will have substantially below average damage on a per turn basis. I don't want to throw it out, but doing things like limiting the amount of times you can brave or default could help prevent having a cast of Godlikes and heavies who can quadra act at will to end a fight. Maybe prevent them from letting their BP go below -1? That way at least they'd have to have a few dead turns before unleashing the multi act. That way the cast can't blitz everyone immediately. Opposing buffers would have a chance to prepare for the damage surge or blitzers could just take them out faster while they wait to get the turns.

1. I'd just go with job classes. We didn't give classes to the FF5 pcs and giving them jobs based on crystals is less arbitrary than jobs based on class intro videos.

2. Normal mode. The bosses already seem like they would be better in the DL than in game. No need to flood godlike with a bunch of hard mode bosses.

3. I think special moves are fine. I don't know how far it goes up, but they seem like neat little limit breaks from what I've acquired so far. 

4. Only at the third continent so can't speak for this one.

5. Only allow bosses actions they can use in game. If they only brave certain attacks, then so be it. Brave is already a really good action for bosses. Also they can only brave when they've reached the appropriate health thresholds where they start doing it ingame.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 20, 2014, 02:15:13 PM »

Tried Poisonville, not quite happy with the way the dark orb from those giant things murders me.

If you have a ranged attack, they can't angle their dark orb attack at all. Get angled either below or above them and their dark orb will whiff or get caught on a ledge.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 20, 2014, 04:48:03 AM »

It's entirely possible that the two are mutually exclusive as I noticed something similar on one attempt. I think the water makes the biggest difference as I think it cuts the damage down by like half. The time I ended up getting it I even had enough time to fudge the landing a bit and lose a couple ticks of health and my build doesn't have a lot of health at all. My Vitality is still in the single digits. The chest has a shield by the way. It has really good fire resistance and decent enough everything else. It wouldn't surprise me if it had  some hidden stat bonuses though. Apparently there a quite a few items with unlisted bonuses to certain stats.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 20, 2014, 03:12:11 AM »

-Magma chests in the Iron Keep*. Even with the fire resist ring and Flash Sweat up, I can only survive long enough to make it to the chests. If these were items on corpses, I'd just grab them and die, but no, I have to be able to survive long enough for the entire chest-opening animation to play out. Ack. Short of taking time to identify and upgrade the most fire-resistant armor set in the game, doubt I am ever getting these two (maybe it would help if my only upgraded armor set was something other than the harem outfit).

Just got this one. By the sniper who attacks you when you're by the entrance to the big lava pit room there's a Pharros Lockstone that when unlocked releases a pool of water. Roll around in that and see if your footprints turn dark, if they do that means you have greater fire resistance for a while. Also you can drop straight by the chest from the draw bridge you lowered with the switches. You need the Silvercat ring or else you'll die from fall damage but it puts you right by the chest. Aside from that, Flash Sweat, Orange Burr, and any equipment that boosts your fire resist or health. You can also pop some lifegems to give you and extra few fractions of a second. 

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 19, 2014, 03:20:20 PM »

Dark Souls 2: Did some sunbroing in Belfry Luna because the boss there is really fun and I get some bonus souls when I get invaded. People are still trying to figure out the ideal builds, and my typical waiting to be summoned spot puts me in a position to blast them with a Great Soul Arrow before they get their bearings so I actually win most of the time! Also, I discovered that the shield I had been using was pretty shit so I upgraded to one with more stability and the effect was almost instantly noticeable. Probably going to do either Iron Keep or Blightown 2 next. I haven't really decided.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 12, 2014, 09:41:25 PM »

Listened to the OST in the car to/from work today. Incredibly disappointing. We are in stock Sakuraba territory except he mashes an orchestra instead of an organ. It apes the same basic style as the first game's music, except there's no sense of energy or dynamism to anything (with the notable exception of one direct holdover from DS1). It's like the directors told him, "Hey, we liked what you did in the last game, but can you make it less distinct and tuneful? We want vaguely menacing sounds that will loom blandly in the background and not draw attention in any way." There is nothing like the diversity of moods covered between Sif's theme, Gwyn's, Nito's; here, I cannot distinguish one song from the next. It's depressing to realize that once you've reached the first boss you have already heard everything the game has to communicate aurally, and to know that all I have to look forward to hearing all game is negligibly minor variations on the same combination of strings/tubas/drums/chorus. It saddens me how unmemorable it all is considering it was the soundtrack that made me want to play Dark Souls in the first place.

It is an established fact that I overemphasize the significance of music in games and movies, but it is difficult not to infer that the overall blandness of the soundtrack stems from uninspired source material. It really drives the nail into my developing impression that the game constitutes some longtime From Software staff looking at Dark Souls 1 and saying, "They changed it now it sucks." So they changed it back.

That's a shame about the soundtrack. I'm not a fanof Sakuraba at all, but I felt that Dark Souls really emphasized his strengths as a composer. Shame that the music is more generic. I wouldn't mind bringing back the Demon Souls composer either. A lot of the boss themes in that game reminded me of something you might here in a 1960s Greek/Roman epic movie, but it worked pretty well for the game.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 12, 2014, 02:20:39 AM »

Mephillia is very predictable as well in her pattern. In fact, it's her support that makes her dangerous on normal, because MT 2HKO every three turns or so is kinda not so awesome with BD's easy-come MT healing.

Yeah it's the confusion that makes the fight a pain. In normal, someone getting confused can force you to play defensive for a while, but that's about it. On  hard that Mt 2HKO is more like a MT 95% PCHP without default, if someone gets confused before the blast turn they're fucked unless they're like a knight or something with full health. The summon will one shot your squishier characters or come very close to it.

And again, the Wind Crystal fight on hard is irritating because a critical breath + normal breath can easily KO a mage through default.

Although granted, I'm still fairly early on in the game so I don't have too many defensive tricks. The next set of classes looks like it will have a lot more options to limit the extreme damage bosses do on hard.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2014?

« on: March 12, 2014, 12:53:03 AM »

I think things have 50% more HP on hard?

25% boost to all stats, if the FAQs are correct. Regardless, I haven't even touched Hard mode and I've found the challenge very much fine.

My biggest problem with hard mode is that it made things a bit too luck reliant. Take the fight against the Summoner boss or the Wind Crystal guardian. An inopportune hit with confusion or a critical hit on normal mode is a setback, but on Hard mode it can be an almost guarenteed reset. I also like doing sidequests immediately, which was just a huge pain on Hard mode.