Healing items are why this game is easy

[Soulmancer]

The difficulty is pretty unbalanced due to the fact that you can just spam limitless heal items. would have been better if you could only carry 1 of each at a time. But you essentially have limitless heals.

[Taylor Machine]

What difficulty are you playing on? And how far into the game are you? When I played I had hardly an items at all to heal myself.

[RedHat]

For my part, I've played through the whole thing on Tough. It was a pretty good challenge, I died quite a few times (Specially at the end) and healing ressources were not all that common, I actually ran out/got close to run out quite a few times.

[Tolna]

I think the biggest culprit is that death prevention mechanic. I dunno about hardcore but on Tough it seems to put you at 1 hp if you recieve a killing blow. I found it kinda moot to upgrade health if everything was gonna near 1 shot me.

[OACMann]

One could always do a self challenge by only using 1 healing item at a time. :/

[Noogy]

Originally posted by Tolna:

I think the biggest culprit is that death prevention mechanic. I dunno about hardcore but on Tough it seems to put you at 1 hp if you recieve a killing blow. I found it kinda moot to upgrade health if everything was gonna near 1 shot me.

Agh, sorry Tolna, I meant to quote this bit but I accidently trimmed your post. Anyway, this death mechanic was actually added to the PC version, since one big complaint from XBLA users was that it was too easy to be one-hit-killed in the latter part of the game. I'm torn on whether it was the right decision or not, since you can always make the game harder.

[Taylor Machine]

Originally posted by Noogy:

Agh, sorry Tolna, I meant to quote this bit but I accidently trimmed your post. Anyway, this death mechanic was actually added to the PC version, since one big complaint from XBLA users was that it was too easy to be one-hit-killed in the latter part of the game. I'm torn on whether it was the right decision or not, since you can always make the game harder.

I believe this was the right descision, it completely gets rid of 'BS' deaths in these kinds of games, you know when you will die, and you have time to react. It doesnt make the game much harder, it just opens the opportunity to correct a simple mistake, or to react to a sudden enemy.

[Zilashkee]

I don't think it was a wrong decision, but it does upset the balance later in the game on harder difficulties. It becomes undesirable to have more health, since that means more healing required to get above the threshold. Also devalues defense.

Unrelated, I happened to read your post about multiplicative Fidget bonuses, and I ended up with her buffed to OVER 9000!
It still took more than one sneeze to beat the general on hardcore, though (more like five).
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=149559095

[Chronos]

health upgrading is still usefull when you free all the characters from the cages you get 60% health boost. the game was pretty easy on normal but on hardest difficult whit limited food i had to spend all my cash on food it is pretty challenging.

[iNol]

I think the 1 hp barrier is good decision, especially in the later part of tough & hardcore level where screen is quite crowded with enemies. Without the barrier, it's gonna be quite ragequit inducing.

For me, healing items throughout the game is okay. They are really useful in harder difficulties, while in easier difficulty can be sold for gold.

[Soulmancer]

The thing is with a built in, infinite healing exploit. I have no desire to increase my HP or use 4 keys for an HP buff. HP is the last thing I boost when I level. Overall it just seems to really unbalance the game; I think a healing sysem similar to Ys would have made the difficulty much easier to balance, since hardcore seems designed based on spamming healing items. Other than that the game is amazing, just the healing system is flawed and the ammount of gold you earn means you'll never have a problem buying an over abundance. That's the only reason boss fights are easy. I do like the 1hp death save! But I'd say a healing cooldown or limited to only 1 of each healing consumable rather than being able to hold infinite of each type.

Edit: I play on tough and hardcore, change from time to time. I am in the mountain area. You can buy healing items, and they are cheap and you earn lots of gold and rarely are there items other than food I actually need to buy.

[Tolna]

Originally posted by Noogy:

Originally posted by Tolna:

I think the biggest culprit is that death prevention mechanic. I dunno about hardcore but on Tough it seems to put you at 1 hp if you recieve a killing blow. I found it kinda moot to upgrade health if everything was gonna near 1 shot me.

Agh, sorry Tolna, I meant to quote this bit but I accidently trimmed your post. Anyway, this death mechanic was actually added to the PC version, since one big complaint from XBLA users was that it was too easy to be one-hit-killed in the latter part of the game. I'm torn on whether it was the right decision or not, since you can always make the game harder.

Ah, administrative powers gone wrong. Don't worry about it, ya got the gist.

I will say though....perhaps you coulda added a final difficulty Like perhaps "Mithraren Must Die" mode after beating the game 1 time of course. that would make everything and anything a 1 hit kill. That way the major problem with the spikes people have would be gone (they done goofed and got hit.) and make the game FAR more challenging by flat removing any reason to use food. (also removing revival gems because I can see people complaining about em.)

[Lancar]

So that's where that death-prevention mechanic came from. It was a quick fix to the higher difficulties one-shotting you all the time...
I started the game on Tough right off the bat since pretty much all games these days are trivial on normal (normal is the new easy, or at east it seems that way). I quickly found out that some enemies just brought you down to 1 hp at the slightest misstep, so I didn't bother to upgrade health much for about 1/3rd of the game. It was simply much more economical to pop a health item when you took some damage rather than heal yourself back to full. It was all going to vanish in 1 hit anyway, so why bother?
After investing HEAVILY in defense, prioritizing it over everything else, I finally got to a point where healing myself to full (or at least half-full) was actually worth it.

I feel the difficulty levels could've been balanced better with attacks doing many different levels of damage instead of "a bit" or "everything", even on the harder difficulties there really shouldn't be any attack that automatically brings you to 1 hp regardless of your health state, unless you've been seriously shirking on your ability gem investments. This is probably pretty hard to balance, I know, but still...
My personal hate-enemies that did this were the fast mini-boss creatures in the graveyard that had blades for arms and dodged and did their jumpy spinny attack a lot. Whenever I encountered them during all my time in that zone, 1 attack from them would always bring me down to 1 hp. And my DEF was my most invested in stat. It wouldn't have been so bad if I could block-stun them, but nope... whenever I actually succeeded with that, we both got knocked back.

[Hitaku]

Originally posted by Noogy:

This death mechanic was actually added to the PC version, since one big complaint from XBLA users was that it was too easy to be one-hit-killed in the latter part of the game. I'm torn on whether it was the right decision or not, since you can always make the game harder.

I personally think that hardcore should not have this feature. As someone said above healing items are too powerful with it in place. I understand how being one shot can turn players away, but I would assume that a large amount of the player base that selects hardcore would be ready for such a thing. I think it really takes away from the game. If that's not enough perhaps you could make the OHKO Shield an additional option when starting the game? I can't stress enough how important options are. If players want a super difficult game why deny them that experience?

I absolutely love this game and I think you did an amazing job with it, I just wish that there was a little more challenge in it. Having a larger fear of being killed would really add to the overall experience, not to mention it would make hardcore actually feel hardcore. I'm sad to realize that I chose the wrong version of this game. Knowing that XBLA doesn't have it makes me feel like I'm playing the "softcore" version.

On another note, as Tolna said above me, I would absolutely support a version of the game that turned everything into a one shot. I can't see how adding this would be an issue. Yes not many players would enjoy it, but more options are never a bad thing right? I'm no game developer but I can't see this taking much time. This could be a fix for hardcore gamers that crave the challenging experience the game kind of lacks atm.

[TITOMOSQUITO187]

1 HP was a great mechanic if you were leaving the insta-death thing in there. All the spikes, lava, etc. still stunklock you to death so there are plenty of cheap daths there.

Insta-death might be something you put back in for Hardcore only though. I agree with Hitaku in this regard. I'm playing HC now and while I have died alot I'd say almost all of them are environmental with few exceptions. Enemies have done it after a 1 hit to 1 combo after being surrounded, but otherwise enemies haven't been much of an issue.

There isn't much variety in how much damage you take to get that KO hit. That's why HP sems pretty worthless for the most part. Earlier half enemies will wittle you down slower, but towards the end with tons of Defense you still get one shotted down to the 1 HP. I think somehting for OHKOs should be for the hardest difficulty and players who REALLY want to go out there and not ever get hit. Some of the giants and stuff though will hit me even if I am positive I have parried. That would drive me nuts if it was OHKO.

You could limit healing items too, although I rarely even use them. I just don't get hit for a while and use the regen items. If I end up getting hit I did something wrong anyways. If you have OHKO you would spend all your gold on the Revival Stone things.

[Hitaku]

Originally posted by TITOMOSQUITO187:

If you have OHKO you would spend all your gold on the Revival Stone things.

Honestly I don't think revival stones have place in a hardcore mode anyhow. It doesn't feel like nearly as much of an achievement when you know someone else could have just bought their way through the difficulty. =P