Some thoughts after 100%ing the game

[Beeps]

This is a really great DRPG, probably one of my all-time favorites, and I will definitely be doing another playthrough whenever 1.2 comes out. In the interest of maybe making the game even better I have a few design elements to address.

(1) Unique skills given to sleepers are in a rough spot. They all use the same pooled resource which means they are competing not just with each other, but with Sumireko's special commands, most of which outperform the majority of unique skills and have much broader application. Many of the buff and debuff skills are basically just something you could do without SP in two turns (like say, Reimu's +2 Evasion), which is usually worth it as you want the SP and the turn economy is not nearly THAT tight.

The damage-based unique skills far even worse, I would go as far as to say that literally all of them need to be buffed or have their cost slashed. As is, the only ones that I would ever consider using are Clownpiece's and Doremy's, and they would certainly not be my first choice. Early game signatures like Rin's and Murasa's *need* some kind of scaling: yes, you generally shouldn't be using Rin or Murasa past the first third of the game, but their pathetic power stops even fusing them onto someone else from being worthwhile.

(2) The MP economy is really bizarre. You go through an entire dungeon where Satori is your only means of MP healing other than the highly expensive H.E.L.P. Satori's unique requires you to be in battle, requires you to spend SP, and returns...13ish MP for each party member. And this doesn't scale.

I get this is probably to teach you about how important MP management is, but it's not like this lasts for very long. Around the time you find sleepers with MP share (which is, again, in battle only, and merely passes MP from something to something else...at a max of 50...) you can hijack Patchouli for coffee, which heals the exact same amount of MP as MP share without having to spend another sleeper's MP, while also working outside of battle and not requiring a skill slot. This is not at all difficult to do and is absolutely worth doing considering how important early game currency management is.

(3) I can't say I see the point of SP being reduced to 0 after reloading the game. This is especially pointless once you get to the point where every other resource can be easily topped off at any time without losing progress. It just means I have to either auto-battle through mobs or use boosters each time I reload to fight a boss, which is annoying.

(4) I would really like a grimoire that prevents Sumireko from earning EXP, at least beyond a certain point. It would make managing a low level run a lot easier.

[Mastema]

Marisa's unique skill is a really strong one and one of the few worth it's price in SP, but most skills could stand to get their SP cost reduced, mainly the buff/debuff ones that just don't carry their own weight compared to Sumireko buff commands, given that they take a party turn to use.

[ShinkuTear]

Since you've beaten the game 100%, I'm curious, are the postgame areas and postgame fight song supposed to sound like generic angry noise, instead of actual music? I can't tell if it's a bug, or if I just hate every song I've heard in the postgame, because the rest of the games music was actually good.

[Beeps]

Yeah I somehow forgot about Marisa's, I didn't ever use it but I could see it being strong because it actually has scaling.

That music issue...doesn't sound right? Though the Pandemonium track did kind of sound like one of those "(electro track) but the drop never comes" memes.

[Mistiry Shak]

Originally posted by ShinkuTear:

Since you've beaten the game 100%, I'm curious, are the postgame areas and postgame fight song supposed to sound like generic angry noise, instead of actual music? I can't tell if it's a bug, or if I just hate every song I've heard in the postgame, because the rest of the games music was actually good.

As someone else who beat 100% - I felt the music was very fitting. It's all very hostile sounding and harsh, and given how all the dungeons are full of damage tiles and HP/MP drain, I found it set a good mood. The music in the postgame also reminded me of Battle Tower and Tokyo Abyss from Dx2, which are similarly very different from typical SMT fare, and I would (favorably) compare the superboss theme to Battle F8 (To Become God's Enemy) from SMT4a.

I also felt this same way about the SMT3 OST at first, but it grew on me and now it's a favorite. I feel the same is happening to me here.

[Symbol VI: DynastyScans]

Originally posted by ShinkuTear:

Since you've beaten the game 100%, I'm curious, are the postgame areas and postgame fight song supposed to sound like generic angry noise, instead of actual music? I can't tell if it's a bug, or if I just hate every song I've heard in the postgame, because the rest of the games music was actually good.

it's a matter of personal taste because I do think Battle D and the Ultimate Boss themes are my favorite themes in the game

[Teddy]

I agree with all your points, I actually found myself very rarely using SP skills due to the competition of what to spend SP on and also the fact that it was actually difficult for me to find a lot of demons with SP skills. It's not too common to find, and I also play severely underleveled (10~20+) so I couldn't fuse the SP skills I did like onto demons due to level cap.

I think buffs across the board to the damaging ones + allowing skill inheritance of sleeper unique skills (with some restrictions like maybe only demons could inherit it if it's possible for a fusion to make them, cause as far as I'm aware it only works for fusion).

SP resetting after reload is incredibly annoying, I always have to go to Animal Realm and just farm up Boosters + charge up SP after loading up a file.

MP wasn't a huge issue for me, but I can see of what you mean by the way MP Share / Coffee (and how easy it is to obtain) is, I don't even know how they'd buff it sinceit's pretty pointless in SMT too and even more so in ADiA. I kind of personally wish there a teamwide MP restoration item or easier access to Energy Drinks (at least in the end-game).

QOTL that I hope gets added is inventory rearrangement too, I constantly reorganized it because it bothered me having my items all over the place, and being able to view what demons you're fusing before you do it (because I forget who they are, and what moves they have)

Maybe a rebalance of some the item drops too? I don't remember how big of an issue it was, but I just remember finding it weird going through Moon Palace and finding treasure chests for items that are both 100% guaranteed item conversions.

I also don't know how they could do it, but I think maybe having an incentive to make it worthwhile to actually visit the Dreamer's Monolith every time a floor opens up too would be huge.

[Dawnbomb]

SP resets are dumb and bad, and if you actually died to a boss and reset, make you need to grind SP for no real reason.

i can see both reducing SP costs for allys, and increasing Sumireko's SP costs, except for hijack that could be lowered. That would make you get the obvious SP usage out of the way first, and then focus on using ally abilities.

Alternatively, we could instead increase SP gains and increase Sumireko's costs (except hijack) to encourage more usage of SP skills.

It just sucks theres a entire type of skills are mostly unusable because SP wants to go to sumikero in every situation. So the answer wants to make SP skills overall more available, but also somehow decreasing the rate you cast Sumirko's SP skills. But considering she will still hijack, that one specific skill still wants to be open. The question is, is increasing money/item hijacks going to make skills more available because your detured from hijacking, or less available because you now save it all to hijack.

We could have a chance to fail a hijack, but players would just stall battles. i think maybe then, that a sucessful hijack into item or money could refund part of the SP cost (Maybe via a terminal skill). in this way you still have a SP requirement, but also SP to use unique skills, without increasing SP gains. this also fits the "Increase all of sumirekos SP costs" theme. Players still use hijack, but your have the SP for your allys as well, and less often do we cast sumirekos other SP skills due to costs non-refundable.

Giving her a skill that increases SP directly could also work. so long as -1 member is worth the SP skill of an ally.

Alternatively, rework SP itself by giving all allys their own SP meter. but i do hate games where every ally has 2 MP bars.

[matthew]

I find the terminal upgrades SP on defence and SP on any action (can't remember the exact name) to be useful. fast hijacking cost could be lowered or decreased if you got the normal decrease hijacking upgrade. (I rarely use the normal hijack anymore, and most are very hard to do)

Still, for me, defending to get SP isn't bad, I do this a lot for fast hijacking, but saying that, using other SP special skills, I don't really use that much. As for losing SP if you die, or load a save, that doesn't bother me too much. Especailly when its easy to gain SP in a battle.

But those special skills, maybe there cost could be lowered a bit, to make them more viable and useful. as it is the MC that eats all the SP, and don't really use many others due to the high cost of casting the said skill.

[Potemki12]

I do have some balance changes planned for 1.2. Also, converting Patche into coffee should never happen. Coffee is her rare drop, and should be unobtainable through item convertion. That was unintentional, so I will fix this.

[matthew]

Looking forward to 1.2, do you have an ETA and what it may contain? And while I not finished the game, I am finding the game a whole lot of fun. even if I'm not a huge fan on some of the mechanics. But I'm learning as I go, especailly when I never played any of the games this game inspired from.

And PS dev, thanks for supporting the game, and listening to the community and fixing bugs. its not often you see this, so its nice to see. and you got an awesome game. loving every minute of it.

[ballbuster2005]

i mostly agree with this, but i found no mp management troubles despite playing an early version of the game without money drop buffs, also never hijacked for coffee
i think reworking a majority of unique skills or how you use them would be nice, as well as having sp be saved after loading (why even have it reset?)

[Teddy]

Originally posted by Dawnbomb:

SP resets are dumb and bad, and if you actually died to a boss and reset, make you need to grind SP for no real reason.

i can see both reducing SP costs for allys, and increasing Sumireko's SP costs, except for hijack that could be lowered. That would make you get the obvious SP usage out of the way first, and then focus on using ally abilities.

Alternatively, we could instead increase SP gains and increase Sumireko's costs (except hijack) to encourage more usage of SP skills.

It just sucks theres a entire type of skills are mostly unusable because SP wants to go to sumikero in every situation. So the answer wants to make SP skills overall more available, but also somehow decreasing the rate you cast Sumirko's SP skills. But considering she will still hijack, that one specific skill still wants to be open. The question is, is increasing money/item hijacks going to make skills more available because your detured from hijacking, or less available because you now save it all to hijack.

We could have a chance to fail a hijack, but players would just stall battles. i think maybe then, that a sucessful hijack into item or money could refund part of the SP cost (Maybe via a terminal skill). in this way you still have a SP requirement, but also SP to use unique skills, without increasing SP gains. this also fits the "Increase all of sumirekos SP costs" theme. Players still use hijack, but your have the SP for your allys as well, and less often do we cast sumirekos other SP skills due to costs non-refundable.

Giving her a skill that increases SP directly could also work. so long as -1 member is worth the SP skill of an ally.

Alternatively, rework SP itself by giving all allys their own SP meter. but i do hate games where every ally has 2 MP bars.

I feel like the game already has REALLY good SP gain, I actually limited myself by reducing it with one of the Grimoires and it feels like the "right" amount especially with SP Defend and the increased SP per action. It really feels like the Magatsuhi system from SMTV where I thought the Magatsuhi gain was pretty bad (although I never beat SMTV because I didn't like it, maybe it gets better?)

With how potent Hijacking and item converting it is, I think SP gain is balanced where it is. I do think SP refunded after a successful Hijack would be a nice convenience change just for grinding/farming though and would be perfect for a Terminal upgrade.

I think it's just reducing the SP cost of some Unique skills. I think Sumireko SP cost is fine but I wouldn't be opposed to raising it to 75 SP in the early game because of how insanely strong it is, and then reducing it to 50 via Upgrades by the mid-late game where Dis-para/Dis-atma becomes a lot more standard for bosses to use.

I think Quick Hijack being 50 would be a nice QoTL change to for grinding.

Originally posted by Potemki12:

I do have some balance changes planned for 1.2. Also, converting Patche into coffee should never happen. Coffee is her rare drop, and should be unobtainable through item convertion. That was unintentional, so I will fix this.

That explains a lot actually LOL I thought it was insane how early accessible it was. For the characters with more than one item conversion, is that unintentional as well? Or do some characters just have rare item conversions?

Originally posted by slayer gaming:

i mostly agree with this, but i found no mp management troubles despite playing an early version of the game without money drop buffs, also never hijacked for coffee
i think reworking a majority of unique skills or how you use them would be nice, as well as having sp be saved after loading (why even have it reset?)

Yeah I had an over abundant amount of Tea/Coffee just "in case" but actually never ran into much MP troubles. I think MP is pretty well balanced, and with the existence of Memory Orb and Magic Fabric, there's huge convenience of going back and just healing.

[Lintton]

I'm not sure how a low level run would work, Sumireko must be present for every battle, and bosses can and do hit like a truck once you get into the -sol tier spells. Perhaps with affinities like Junko or Patchouli and -kopa to reflect the weaknesses?

[Beeps]

To clarify, it's not so much a "lowest level possible" challenge that I'm looking for as it is a means to prevent overleveling in any regard. Something like "Sumireko's level cannot exceed the highest base level sleeper in her party" would work.

[Teddy]

Originally posted by Beeps:

To clarify, it's not so much a "lowest level possible" challenge that I'm looking for as it is a means to prevent overleveling in any regard. Something like "Sumireko's level cannot exceed the highest base level sleeper in her party" would work.

DQ11 does it perfectly IMO.

Reduced Experience from Easy Fights - Enemies that are way weaker than the party give little to no experience (though they still drop items).