Balance ponderings:[Edit: I forgot about holy habits, which would probably have solved some of my problems with light damage, but would've made me take double damage from fallen angels, so all of this still stands)
I think unholy spirits might be massively overpowered (too much burst damage thanks to their self-buffing spell, and you can't use Shizuka or Arthur's Cover abilities to tank them because the tank will take over 1000 damage in a single turn from getting hit with the same Unholy Wrath 5 times and die; hell, I lost both of them to
single target spells, and Shizuka had quadrupled BDY!). Fallen Angels's Smite the Righteous is extremely strong as well, but in their case it's single target so it's manageable.
Maybe I'm just not using enough of the permanent boost items. It's hard to tell how many I'm supposed to have used at this point, because of how I have near-infinite money, but these fights seem to be more or less unwinnable without using a
lot of them. Like, tens or hundreds on a single character. I am starting to feel like the boosters should be made much more limited; give them away for silver or gold stars, maybe, or only at fixed points, or make them drop from tough enemies. You could then weaken some of these crazy enemies.
I'm actually curious how you beat the first battle of Chapter 14 now. I found it the hardest non-boss fight since Chapter 1; the second battle was MUCH easier. Did you use Protection and use a bunch of HTR boosters on Hermina so she could use scrolls / Drain Life to pick off the priests while Arthur took the incoming hits? Did Hermina get knocked out and force you to chase them around through the poisoned swamp with Arthur, using healing and MND-restoring items on himself?
I mean, look at the stats on these things!
i.imgur.com/husZ5ho.png(Because of the impossibly high damage of Unholy Spirits and Fallen Angels rather than because of Hector himself [he's kind of a pushover by comparison; even with his ultimate ability, which he managed to use on Shizuka in the rematch, he did
less damage than some of those ungodly strong Unholy Wraths], the Hector fight is
ridiculously hard as well, especially since you have no time to equip Shizuka, Bianca or Mei before the fight starts. I actually think Unholy Wrath's damage scaling might just be too high? It's doing 150+ damage to Mei and the other cloth-wearers, who have ~110 LOV, when cast by a (+HTR 1 stack) enemy with 157 HTR. In the end, the only way I could find to beat it was to buff Amara to the point where she could soak up 250 damage in one turn without going down, and deal over 1000 in a single hit with Force Strike.)
(Smite the Righteous one-shots Arthur too, but it's a dark attack and he's a light mage, so that's not as unreasonable.)
Some of this might be fixable by adding a new tier of armor with higher ARM/LOV, but I do think unholy spirits and fallen angels need to be brought down to a bit closer to zealots in terms of damage (zealots are virtually harmless now; they could possibly use a slightly better weapon).
In conclusion, my suggestions:
Remove Blasphemous Faith from Unholy Spirits, or remove the +HTR effect from Blasphemous Faith, or reduce the base HTR of Unholy Spirits so they
Slightly reduce the amount of damage Unholy Wrath gains from HTR (or from something, maybe it's not HTR based but my point is it does way too much damage. OK, maybe significantly reduce. Shizuka has 262 LOV and they have 189 HTR and they're doing
damage in the hundreds after she got hit with weakness to light and darkness.)
Slightly reduce the damage of Smite the Righteous.
Consider limiting the availability of permanent stat boosts somehow, though I think they were less of a problem before the fairly reliable money doubling effect of the monster arena gave me access to an unlimited amount of them.
Either way, rest assured, I won't let a tough fight stop me from progressing for like two weeks again. (Assuming I have access to Shizuka or Amara, anyway.)
(^ Actually, Shizuka's character notes are overdue a bit of a change as well, maybe at the start of one of her previous focus chapters... maybe the one which is specifically her focus chapter. I think we know enough about her by then)
Non-balance ponderings:Diana was literally bright red for a second. Is she an Oni? Or maybe a demon of Wrath?
Could be more obvious where the exit from the swamp is. I just walked around the edge to the north until I found it. (I later figured out it's the only way you can go without stepping on the poison tiles, but they can't actually kill you, so they don't really impede you much.)
Weak to darkness, strong against light? How does that work? I mean, it's convenient, but...
i.imgur.com/G73fZXo.pngIsn't this the plot of Act 1 of Diablo 2?
i.imgur.com/JrzwgW0.pngThis chapter, and its vague implications about the next chapter, remind me of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, a little. We have a remote village, a really dubious religious order, some snowy mountains, a swamp...
i.imgur.com/142z5ye.pngI'll admit, I was expecting a random other Lunarabbit from the Kaguya faction, but I guess million to one chances come up nine times out of ten on Yurishima.
i.imgur.com/7Wt6JMv.pngI suddenly feel like we might be the tragic villains of this story, not the heroes.
i.imgur.com/n4gyeYy.pngThe fact that that exists is hilarious.
i.imgur.com/DNR30CE.pngIs there a trigger command to change an actor's description? Because I think Amara's could have done with an update a few chapters ago. I mean, it's still sorta in date, but...
