[PC][RPG] Legends of an Otherworld

[namida]

I'm happy to do that if it'll be helpful (assuming I can find it), but be warned that it may be a mess.

[Proxima]

A tip: Either disable the ability to change the formation, or make sure to use it in testing. It's not unusual for people to forget that this option exists, and if you change the party leader, it can cause duplicate characters to appear in cutscenes (because many users will fail to take into account that the party leader can be any character within the party). It is fixable, but I don't quite remember exactly how to do it - it wasn't too complicated, though, and if you need this information I can look for a project where I made use of it.

No danger of me forgetting that in my project -- there are six available characters and the player chooses three to form their party, so I have to take into account that the party leader and followers may be any of the six characters.

@Proxima: maybe you'll find it even more useful to see if namida may be willing to share to you some of the actual RPG Maker project files?  I imagine it'd be a little like looking at Lix's source code in addition to playing the game itself.

Not really; I'm not looking at the game to learn how things are done, but to get a feel for what it's like to play through a game, what balancing decisions I agree with and what I'd do differently in my own game

[ccexplore]

@Proxima: do post your game (or a demo version thereof) here, or at least provide a download link, once it gets to that point.  I probably won't finish it but certainly wouldn't mind trying it for a few hours at least.

[namida]

One small hint that could be a lifesaver, Proxima: (spoiler tagged in case you dont' want hints)

Spoiler

I know you think it sounds useless, but the Sensor ability is possibly the most useful one in the game. It lets you see the order of upcoming turns, so you know when an enemy is about to attack, and even what impact the attack you choose will have on how quickly you get your next turn.

[namida]

To correct some misconceptions / overlooked features I've noticed so far (these are all either basic features that might not be obvious how to access, and are not spoilery or hinty; or stuff you've specifically brought up in your videos). Some of these I may have mentioned in comments on the videos.
- When viewing scan info for an enemy, you can press a key (shift, IIRC) to switch to viewing their status resistances. And (an NPC tells you this early in the game) if you try an element or status on them once, their weakness / resistance to that status becomes visible in their scan info, even if you haven't scanned them.
- You can move quickly between characters on the status, equip, etc screens, with whatever was the default key for this in RPG Maker - might be Z and X?
- Ivy's Learn -> Blue Magic shows a full list of blue magics that exist. Although do note that due to the game being incomplete, some of them are inaccessible.
- Luck doesn't affect status infliction. It affects the chance of not missing, and the chance of getting a critical hit. I can't remember if it affected Steal's success or not. It definitely doesn't affect statuses.

And one that is slightly spoilery (since you might want to figure this out for yourself, it's the kind of thing that could be figured out), but is still mostly just game mechanics:

Spoiler

I can't remember if it's all items, only the normal ones, or only Alicia's ones; but at least one kind of item (possibly both) have a 100% chance of inflicting any status effects they carry, even if the enemy has partial resistance. Only if they're completely immune will they fail. On the other hand, other skills or equipped abilities carry a set chance (often but not always 100%) but this is reduced by the enemy's resistance to the status, if they have any.

Now that I think about it, I have a feeling (but may be wrong) that Amanda's status spells work this way too.

Appreciate the comment on *spoiler, see below*. This was one of the boss fights I put the most effort into, glad to see it paid off.

Click to reveal which battle

2nd Craig + Brianna fight

And regarding Cube (not really a spoiler since it's an out-of-nowhere boss), you didn't break the fight, that was an intentional weakness.



Now, to comment on something of your storyline speculation. Although this part never got into the game (though parts do exist in the source, including several completely functional boss fights), it is hinted at a bit more later in the game, though nothing ever outright confirms it. Do note that this may also mean they're spoilers for a remake or completion of the game, if I ever do get around to either.

Actually spoilers for what was intended

Lunaris was actually intended to be the semi-final boss. Xeon was going to end up being the final boss (Yauwe and Tamiku having been defeated a little bit beforehand.)

All four boss fights are in the code, though Yauwe's and Tamiku's are only partially functional (Lunaris's and Xeon's are fully functional, as are two other boss fights leading up to them). A look at the source would suggest Yauwe's might even be complete and if not is at least close to it, while Tamiku's is not even close (she has all intended immunities, etc, but her only move is a physical attack).

[Proxima]

Is the following a bug or an intentional mechanic? I hope it's not intentional, because I am feeling very frustrated at this point.

Spoilers for Taspia portion of the game

In the third Craig and Brianna fight, Brianna can still cast after using Lena's Osmosis to deplete her MP.

[namida]

Spoiler

Yes, enemies' MP is only there for the purpose of draining it. It doesn't affect what they can and can't use. This mechanic was copied from Final Fantasy X, though I'm not completely sure how I feel about it now.

On one hand, it means that you can't cheap your way past enemies just by depleting their MP (counter-argument: a poor workaround exists in just giving them absurdly high MP; a neater one would be to provide them with ways to recover it while possibly also only applying the "needs MP" rule to human enemies), but on the other hand, it is contrary to expectations. I would only be okay with "some enemies work this way, some don't" if there was a very clear way to distinguish, such as the aforementioned humans vs monsters difference. I'd imagine the ultimate result of the game working this way would be much higher rates of unique-to-enemies skills that use no MP.

[namida]

I notice that the link in the first post was somewhat outdated, there was one further update since then. Although, this update just fixes one bug (albeit one that can be quite game-breaking, specifically, if you return to a certain area after completing the events there you can be unable to leave). Anyway, I updated the link. I also found a copy of the source code, so I put up a link to that too, as well as a few notes about a debug room that can be accessed via the source code version.

To those of you who have played this, I would be interested in seeing your overall feedback on what did or didn't work well, whether it relates to specific parts of the game or the overall system. While I don't know if it ever will happen, I am hoping to remake this game one day (with completely original assets, most likely including a custom-made engine even, and better writing etc), so any feedback that I could take into account for that would be great.

[Nepster]

You wanted feedback, so here it is. I noticed a few bugs in the current game, but as you plan to do a complete rewrite, I do not mention them here.
Overall it's pretty well-designed and has nice dungeons, random monsters and boss fights. So don't be frustrated should I sound overly negative in the spoilers.
And I tried to use relatively spoiler-free titles, while still giving enough information about when it is save to read this stuff.

General stuff that could be improved (almost no spoilers)

• Teach that scanning does give infos on resistances to statuses, too.
• Teach how to use the bombs and present packages. Looking under "Theft" isn't something very intuitive.
• Don't have long talks before a boss fight (especially the tough ones with Coda). If one has to repeat the fight, one isn't interested in the talk any more. So allow to go back and save between the talk and the battle.
• The enging sometimes demands more confirmation than necessary. Switch for example needs a confirmation, though it's a free action and one can undo it if necessary.
• Why is it impossible to flee from boss fights, especially the ones you can see coming? This only requires you to replay parts again or to backtrack often to save crystals. On the other hand, I feel that one shouldn't be able to escape from a Monster-in-a-Box.
• Some of the rarer random encounters could come more often. I never had the Treevil in the forest, or the Cuboid in the Haunted Manison, for example.
• It's pretty weird that you can stack a HP+10% and a HP+5%, but not two HP+10%.
• The messages from "Enemy has no steal item" and "Alicia just failed to get it" are the same. I would prefer to them being different. Proxima informed me that they are different. For some mysterious reason I never noticed that.
• A lot of items can only be sold by 1GP, which is annoying: Blue Magic learning items, Turbo Boost, Vampire Fangs, ...
• As Proxima already mentioned, enemies still casting while having no MP themselves is weird. Especially as this makes Osmosis pretty much useless.

Start until the Transient boss battle

Intro Area:
Works fine. The "Red means danger" hint isn't needed - let the player figure this out for themselves.
PHANTOM I: Relatively easy boss, but good as is.

Carialint:
The solid plants are annoying, because I cannor reliably separate them from non-solid ones.
I felt cheated that the very fast ghost has no impact on the story at all, even for later. That was disappointing, especially given the amount of work I put into talking to it.
The part ouside is a good challenge for a low-level party. But I would keep the missing bridge as part of the map. I took the end of the map as a hint that here comes a far more difficult part beyond, and first went to the north thinking this only to be a side-quest.
ERATICATOR: Good optional boss, but I would let the guard clarify that everything beyond him is totally optional. I took his warnings merely as "Do some preparation before coming here".

Fire-cave to Swamp:
The random encounters in the fire-cave felt too easy (while not being trivial). Similarly the swamp was quite easy: The Nom-plants didn't pose any problems and I almost never encountered the Swamp Soul (but even they were pretty weak).
CRAIG & BRIANNA I: Not a total push-over, but one of the easier boss fights.
MEGANOM: A good challenge, because you have to learn to ignore the two Nom-plants.

Nyatta:
There should have been a save crystal at the north end of the village. Currently one has to walk too much. The Alphas were interesting enemies, but the distinction between Ice, Thunder and Water could be clearer. It took my black mage two wrong tries to determine their elements.

Forest:
Nice labyrinth. The roaches are pretty hard and give less exp than other enemies, which are push-overs (once you know what they do).
SPIRIT: I don't really remember anything about this boss any more, so it was probably pretty straight-forward and nothing special.

Metaspe-Cave in forest & Transient:
Very good and fun enemies there.
PYRAMID: Easy, but probably intended as a intro boss. But I haven't up to now found any other boss changing their elements, so this into feels a bit weird.
TRANSIENT: I came there as level 8 and needed some grinding to level 9 to beat this boss, even though I already learned the breaker-attack for one fighter. One of the main difficulties is that the Trauma attack feels like a magical one, not as something doing physical damage. So it took a very long time for me to find out that I can reduce the damage by defending.

One more comment regarding the Transient fight: Someone mentiones directly before the fight, that the Weakening Sand is designed specifically for the Transients. That let me believe for a long time, that no other enemy is affected by Weaken and Meltdown. So you might reformulate that part a bit.

Saria until the Returner boss battle

Saria:
Nice layout of Saria. The parting with Amanda felt like I would reunite with her pretty soon, so I left her pretty good abilities, which I missed later on. The palace is nice, but I wish I could explore it even after talking to Cameron. So perhaps the Flunky fight could only be triggered when trying to leave the whole palace?
Just out of curiosity: What does the shady character sell here?
FLUNKY: An extremely hard fight, given my relatively low level (and no way really to grind levels in Saria). This felt like I was using half of my turns just to revive someone.

Metaspe escape route:
The bowling maze is very nice, the calculator a good idea. Even though I got the basic idea pretty soon, I was totally stumped, because every green operator button recalculated the number. This was totally unexpected, so I aborted the idea, until the guy confirmed it again. I am not so fond of the sand area afterwards: I have no clue at all what the red button does and the Monster-in-a-Box is so hard, that I had to replay the area again. And I am still stumped about how to get to the other side of the chasm at the Monster-in-a-Box.
Given that one is transported to this area rather unexpectedly, I would have liked some kind of basic tool shop in the area (with items being twice as expensive), e.g. the girl just outside the prison.
The random encounters could be slightly harder. The Dainu, Careter and the Minigon are push-overs, only the Eyepod is any danger.
ILLUSIONA: Very tough batte, especially due to the party sleep attack. Nice challenge.
CUBE: Great boss, because of the totally unexpected way of attacking.
CEMEO (Monster-in-a-Box): Very hard encounter due to the instant-death attack. I only got past it with Alicia's help.
CRAIG & BRIANNA II: I know, you consider this to be one of the best fights, but I considered it pretty stright-forward: Just keep Brianna silenced.

Yuvia:
The way to Yuvia is pretty neat, but the random encounters are rather difficult. You basically have to know in advance what each enemy can do to beat them. But that's fine with me. The only major annoyance was the Bloob: At that point one has only pretty weak magical attacks and Ivy needs to cast more than 10 times to take it down, with noone else being able to do anything else. It would have been much better with only a third of its current HP.
The library wasn't much fun, because one NPC mentioned he lost some item in it, which caused me to check on each book shelf, but didn't find anything.
GANGSTER: This was pretty easy, as Darkness and Sleep lets you basically take them one-by-one.
BEN: I was probably underleveled at that time, so this was an extremely tough fight. After a few tries I got lucky and got Ben killed with just 4 HP left over. It would have been nice to add Alicia to the whole party first to properly prepare her. Like this I had to remove all the abilities from all other members, and apply them again afterwards.

Gobbie-Cave:
Very nice dungeon. But the Exp-values of the random enemies are way off: Obbies are pretty easy, Accras almost surely kill one character and are pretty hard, the roaches here are still extremely nasty, but the Spellpot is laughable (just use one Silence attack on it). But then the Spellpot gives very nice items and a ton of Exp. It would feel much more deserved, if it had a special action healing Silence.
GREAT OBBIE: The worst boss I have encountered up to now. The first two thirds are trivial, then there comes a brief interesting part with Plague and lots of status effects. And then the Desaster, wiping out the whole party.

Spoiler for a later battle - read only after a pentagon turned into a tool shop

Given that one has to know the Zombie-Deadly Rain combo later on, I would prefer that this boss uses Deadly Rain pretty early (as it already casts Zombie often) instead of Desaster at the end, and then starts with the status effects much earlier.

Nyatta - Transients revisited:
I was at level 12-13 at this point and had no troubles with the main fights. In fact the random encounters were much harder and took much longer, because the Minosients have a ton of HP and one cannot deal much damage per turn. I had Enemy Repel put on almost the whole dungeon, which I do only rarely.
After all this, I noticed the direct transport to Carialint. But it would be a lot more useful it went directly to the Eraticator rock.
TRANSIENT: Pretty easy this time. I always got the transient killed before it got to cast Trauma.
RETURNER: Very interesting battle mechanic, which needs a very counter-intuitive strategy:

Spoiler for a later battle - Read only when you have figured out the precise mechanics of this fight

To attack only when it counter-attacks (and once with Harley during every time it's storing energy).

Saria again until the DT boss battle

Way to Saria (second visit):
Ok, here is a HUGE difficulty spike, both with the new Phantom and the random encounters afterwards (and their instant death attacks). I tried it once, got badly mauled and then decided to do some grinding with the whole parts. I went from level 12-13 to 17-18. With these levels, I felt I was actually a bit over-leveled, because the optional boss was pretty easy, even though the random encounters were still challenging. I didn't like the invisible maze, even though its layout was good.
PHANTOM II: Very nice the in-between taunting that Silence no longer works. I found the weakness, but had only one bag to inflict Darkness and no other way. So I had to backtrack to Nyatta to get some more.
HELLFIRE: After realizing that defeating the smaller ones isn't going to help at all, this was easy. Alicia had the bility "Counter-Attack" at that moment, so the small ones got frequently removed without me doing anything, which helped a lot.

Way to Haunted Mansion:
The way itself is nothing special, but the random encounters are pretty neat, though not overly difficult. I only wish the Soulcluster would be more dangerous - after all one gets warned about the dark grass and then it's one of the easiest enemies around there. The Deadhead though is an extremely interesting random encounter and was a lot of fun to best. Note that I wasn't yet strong enough to fight it head-on (pun intended), so I had to study it rather well and then be pretty sneaky: Casting only Light and healing spells on it, to avoid the draining counter-attack.
ENCHANTER: An extremey easy boss. I targeted the man right away and was surprised when it got down and I didn't even got a chance to steal from it. I only learned about the element-changing nature from Proxima's video - it never changed any colors when I played it.
TOROPHO: Very neat boss, even though the Torando is extremely powerful. Unfortunately I never got it down completely with Split Attacks before it casts Tornado, so I had to pool all my HP+ and DEF+ on Ivy, and revive the other party members afterwards.

Haunted Mansion:
My favorite is the first room with the question, especially the third one. Only of the last two rooms, I am not so fond of. But I would allow doing the rooms in an arbitrary order (perhaps only forcing the bottom one to be the third one).
The randon monsters are fun to battle with, while not a real danger to my party. Btw, I almost never used Lena for this part, even though she was by far the most powerful character here.
That Alicia leaves the party is very annoying, just to come back right away. I took away her abilities (fearing a similar incident as with Amanda previously), just to have to give them back...
CRAIG & BRIANNA III: Very hard, but extremely clever battle! Here comes the power of the Zombie attack on a regenerating character...
ENTITY: Pretty nice battle, but not really hard (which is good for such an surprising boss encounter).
CULT MAGE: Extremely easy battle, as they are all vulnerable to darkness, silence, ...
FRAGMENT: This boss needs some preperation against the fire, so the Coda monologue is annoying. Otherwise a nice battle, but not as remarkable as Craig&Brianna fight before. I managed to inflict Silence and Darkness, so I got the feet attack every time, which Ivy could heal well enough.

Ice Temple:
One of the best dungeons I played so far: The puzzle is very sneaky and satisfying to solve, while the encounters are interesting. The snowflakes could be more visible against the background and the Sapphire Dragon if far too easy for a dragon.
SARIAN SOLDIER: I don't remember much of this fight. I guess inflicting status effects made it pretty stright-forward.
ICE ELEMENTAL: Having gotten enough ice resisting abilities, this wasn't much of a roadblock. I wonder whether casting water attacks, would make this fight more interesting?
CERBERUS: I couldn't take him while around level 22-23, but once I got past the Dark Transient and was level 27, it went surprisingly smooth. Having bought several Omni Resists helped.
CRASH ENGINE: Only here I learned that Breaker Attack isn't just useful for Transients, and that only because I got frustrated an tried anything to get a bit more damage out of my characters. Otherwise a very nice and surprising battle.

Saria during the Cult Attack:
Great change of atmosphere! The random encounters here are pretty boring and only annoying, though. I was slightly disappointed that after a long way to the bottom left corner, there was nothing there at all.
When I got to the second boss fight, I saw that my levels were far too low and I went back to the ice cave and leveled from 22-23 to 26-27.
DARK ILLUSION: Nice fight, entertaining at that time, but nothing exceptional.
DARK RETURNER: Much harder than the first Returner, because you need to store a lot more damage to avoid the more damaging alternative spell. With level 26-27 things went very smoothly, especially as I had Haste now.
DARK TRANSIENT: This requires the "Zombie counters Dark Rain" knowledge, which I didn't have and namida had to tell me. This is especially frustrating, because one would expect that the recently aquired Death Resist abilities would work at least partially here.
And even given this knowledge, the fight was very tough, because one becomes a zombie at the beginning (and has to use Relics to heal it), then has to survive Trauma (for which I had to heal the members fully before defending), and afterwards let Harley inflict Zombie on himself (using Zombietouch) and swap out all other active party members. The last part is needed, because at that point I finally managed to cast Haste on everyone, which would be removed during resurrection. So Deadly Rain kills everyone, except the Zombie-Harley, who uses Phoenex Dust to revive the other party members, who at 1HP swap the hasted ones back in. After that the remaining fight is relatively easy.

The Guardians, the Flashback, the Hunting club and the Icy Caves

From here on, I no longer have Proxima's videos to remind me of every boss, so I might forget to mention some of them.

Becoming a Guardian:
I liked the difficulty of the random encounters here. They were pretty tough, but that's good.
PHANTOM III: This felt easier than the previous Phantom battle. Don't remember much about this fight.
ENDURANCE TEST: Ok, I made the mistake and not read the intro text a lot, so I tried to hurt it and quit after a few rounds. Once I realized my mistake, this became pretty easy.
POWER TEST: This was a lot of fun, even without much strategy in there.
KNOWLEDGE TEST: I didn't like this one. I am still wondering what the "Use something that affects different enemies differently" is, because in my opinion almost all attacks work like this. That some question (even correctly answered ones) pop up multiple times is weird.
STRATEGY TEST: I suspect, I should have used the Sneaky Powder, but I cannot prevent the boss to cast Infection. So I found out that the item Poison Dust works as well (despite the intro text), even though it gets healed (not treated via infection) and so has to be applied multiple times. Because I only had one of them, I had to backtrack all to Nyatta to get some.
AISHA: A fun battle without any specific strategies. It wasn't too hard.

Sturges (Flashback):
Very nice dungeon at general layout.
GRIELLO: Very unintuitive solution, by not casting Regen on one-self but on the enemy. Then one just has to defend...
SASHA & RIVA: Another very clever battle, having to kill both directly after another to avoid their Phoenix Tears. Having to steal the Haste and Shield statuses is a nice touch, too.
The encounters at the normal time, especially the ones in the sand cave proved far too difficult for my party, so I decided to do some grinding to level 28-29 afterwards.
I went into the deep sand cave with the ability "No Encounters" put on, but got stuck there. A lot of stuff like the red crystals, the pentagon next to it or the blocking white crystal didn't do anything. And the hints Alicia translated didn't make sense, too. I will have to try this again later on.

Hunting club:
Nice idea, but the areas are too large for my taste. A bit more texture to the landscape would be nice, e.g. a lake or similar.
The random encounters are nice at first, but the rare encounters are too rare. Moreover the random encounters have almost no useful steal items (except for the Water Blob). So I did a lot of fleeing to avoid over-levelling.
DRACULINA: This was surprisingly easy due to the status effects I managed to inflict.
REAPER: This needed a ton of preparation, because again the Death Resist abilities don't work and the Seal action is just sooooo powerful. Alicia had Light Touch and attacked always, Amanda did always cast Light, Leanna constantly revived Harley and Harley casted Haste on other members whenever alive. This way Harley got sealed dead only at the very end of the fight. 
Unfortunately there is a bug, that defeating Reaper is not always remembered, so I had to do this fight twice.
I did not go further to the Mayae Temple yet, because I felt I did enough of levelling up.

To the Ice Temple:
I decided to start from the west. The random encounters were nice, though became almost trivial once I got Tara past level 30 and leaned the Slash-All attack, which together with Darkstrike, Slowstrike and Sleepstrike it just too powerful. Then I went down the east path, before exploring further up. Only once I reached the upper caves with the Cave Gobbies, I got challenged again, though the Creepers and Deshells fall still to Tara's attack.
GOLEM: Sorry, but this was easy and boring. The Golem got it's strength reduced, the party members got Haste and Vince's upgrades and then everyone just physcially attacked the golem until the deed was done.
FISH-WARRIOR: This was quite a tough fight, because all my lovely status attackes proved to be useless. Nice challenge.
PHANTOM IV: Harley just learned Regen, so this fight was almost trivial for me.
CRAIG & BRIANNA (Zombie edition): This is exceedingly difficult, even for my party of level 34. I probably made the mistake not to learn Dispel for Harley, so I have no way to remove the Haste state. While I can completely avoid Brianna's spells for three party members, a hasted Craig (even with Darkness) manages to kill them easily.

I decided to go back and try either the sand cave or the Mayae Temple at this point, to allow Harley to gain enough AP to learn Dispel.

My current party

For the records, here my party attributes and items at the moment. The abilities usually get modified for tough boss battles.
Tara: Level 34, HP 1777, MP 139
  Str 58, Def 43, Mag 18, Spr 28, Agi 42, Luc 16
  Platinum Aycara, Str+10%, Sleepstrike, Slowstrike, Darkstrike
  Dark Attack, Silence Attack, Magic Buster, Spirit Buster (bad choice), Stand Ground (bad choice), Slash-All

Leanna: Level 33, HP 1646, MP 155
  Str 85, Def 42, Mag 14, Spr 50, Agi 62, Luc 15
  Diamond Aycara, HP+25%, Str+10%, Multi Resist, Sensor
  Silence Attack, Breaker Attack, Strength Buster, Vampire Attack (bad choice), Split Attack, Stand Ground (bad choice), Quick Attack

Harley: Level 36, HP 1647, MP 336
  Str  8, Def 41, Mag 68, Spr 66, Agi 24, Luc 21
  Sapphire Emblem, HP+25%, Agi+25%, Half MP Cost, Multi Resist
  Cure, Revive, Esuna, Esuona, Haste, Aura (not yet as useful as I hoped), Regen, Scan

Amanda: Level 35, HP 1570, MP 582
  Str 15, Def 34, Mag 57, Spr 55, Agi 34, Luc 15
  Cursed Staff, MP+100%, HP+25%, Mag+25%, Omniproof
  L1 Elemental A, L2 Elemental B, L3 Elemental B, Osmosis (bad choice)

Ivy: Level 29, HP 2153, MP 78
  Str 37, Def 77, Mag 56, Spr 64, Agi 65, Luc  8
  Gold Crown, Slowtouch, Poisontouch, Deathtouch, Alchemy

Alicia: Level 34, HP 1376, MP 29
  Str 89, Def 24, Mag 67, Spr 23, Agi 69, Luc 27
  Slow Shuriken, Str+25%, HP+10%, Luck+25%, Auto-Shield

Vince: Level 36, HP 1611, MP 40
  Str 50, Def 71, Mag 18, Spr 69, Agi 39, Luc 20
  Terra Orb, HP+10%. Str+10%, Def+25%, Spr+25%
  Flee, Faith, Purify, Adrenaline, Medidate, Accel

Other Abilities:
Str+10%, Def+10%(2), Spr+10%, MP+25%
Light Resist(2), Dark Resist(2), Omni Resist(3)
Iceproof(2), Waterproof, Darkproof
Firedrain, Icedrain, Lightningdrain, Waterdrain, Lightdrain
Fire Touch(4), Ice Touch(5), Water Touch, Light Touch, Dark Touch
Darkness Resist, Zombie Resist(6), Psycho Resist, Death Resist(3)
Poisonproof, Silenceproof, Sleepproof
Darktouch, Silencetouch, Sleeptouch, Zombietouch
Auto-Reflect
Counter Attack, Magic Counter, No Encounters, Debuff Resist
Defence Trainer, Spirit Trained (equipped to whomever levels up next)

[ccexplore]

It's been a while since I played this, so I probably won't provide any feedback now unless I get the chance to replay it again, likely from beginning (though I also have the option to play from the backup files correspond to whenever's the last time I touched the game).  I will say though that skimming through Nepster's "general stuff", at least a few points he mentioned are stuff I kind of took for granted based on experiences with other RPGs, so I guess the feedback will likely also depend on which other RPGs the player has played previously.  Of course, just because it's "normal" (or perhaps a better term would be "conventional" as in following the "usual" conventions of these kinds of games) doesn't mean it has to be slavishly accepted.

stuff on Nepster's "general" list that I assume is normal

• Why is it impossible to flee from boss fights, especially the ones you can see coming?
• Some of the rarer random encounters could come more often. I never had the Treevil in the forest, or the Cuboid in the Haunted Manison, for example.
• A lot of items can only be sold by 1GP, which is annoying: Blue Magic learning items, Turbo Boost, Vampire Fangs, ...

More generally I've expected that most bosses are immune (or at least highly resistant) to certain "cheap-ish" maneuvers that would otherwise work on most random-encounter enemies, for example percent-based damage that eg. takes out half of target's remaining HP, and escape would certainly be something I expect to fall under "haha, nice try but it's a boss".

I don't remember the specifics of item costs, but if an item is not generally available for sale (ie. your characters can buy them) in a shop, I do expect that many would not be valuable to sell back for GP either.  Items that are available for sale in a shop I usually expect maybe sold back at 1/3 to 1/2 of bought price (or something like that, it's possible memory fails me and they usually sell back for much cheaper).  That said, I also do believe that in many RPGs, there are certain types of items that simply are not valuable to sell even if they may cost you much GP to buy from a shop.

The MP thing I'm on the fence.  One important detail that needs some clarification:  is the enemy's remaining MP ever revealed through any kind of scan-like capability?  I think it's somewhat reasonable to expect that enemies may have completely different mechanism for their attacks from your characters, so that an enemy attack may look or feel magical but does not actually involve MP consumption.  (Though preferably, they should not look and be named exactly like a player-character attack that does cost MP.)  It would definitely be very weird if you are able to observe an enemy making a move that consumes their MP, and yet the move can still be made even after their MP has been depleted completely.  But based on what's said that doesn't sound like the case, instead it sounds more like people were expecting certain enemy attacks to be MP-consuming when in fact they are not.

Either way, maybe it's better that if an enemy's moves don't involve MP consumption, perhaps they should just have 0 MP to start with.  And maybe have someone in the "battle tutorial house" make some sort of remark about enemies having magic-like abilities that don't consume MP, to set expectations upfront.  Having more consistent conventions (like the human vs non-human thing namida suggested) would likely also go a long way in making this aspect less jarring.

[Proxima]

Reply to ccexplore

Blue Magic items are bothersome since a second item for a BM you've already learned has no use, and clogs up your inventory unless sold. I don't mind it selling for only 1 Kx, but it would be nice if you could just "use" it to consume it. However, giving it a higher selling price would make it worthwhile to go for more steals, so I can see where Nepster's coming from on that one.

Enemies' maximum and current MP is visible with Scan, yes. And the probably specifically with the Craig & Brianna 3 fight (the one where I tried this as a strategy for winning the fight) is that Brianna casts magic that's available to your party (e.g. Haste) and costs you MP, so it's reasonable to expect it would cost her MP.

It would also have made the fight more enjoyable than it actually was, since the actual solution made Brianna die very quickly.

[namida]

Feedback on above. I'll just spoiler tag the whole thing, but I'll split it into two - one for up to where Proxima's up to (based on latest video, which is currently part 19), and the rest up to where Nepster's up to (which is at, but not past, a boss fight against two undead enemies - I think only one such boss fight exists so this should identify it).

Spoilers up to these respective points will not be further marked, including those that are gameplay mechanic spoilers rather than story ones. Any spoilers beyond those points that are brought up within the tags, will be spoiler marked as nessecary.

Up to Proxima's current point

Nepster's general feedback

Teach that scanning does give infos on resistances to statuses, too.
Teach how to use the bombs and present packages. Looking under "Theft" isn't something very intuitive.
Don't have long talks before a boss fight (especially the tough ones with Coda). If one has to repeat the fight, one isn't interested in the talk any more. So allow to go back and save between the talk and the battle.
The enging sometimes demands more confirmation than necessary. Switch for example needs a confirmation, though it's a free action and one can undo it if necessary.

Agree on all four of these.
For the third one, I'm not sure what would be the best way to achieve this; putting an interruption where the player can backtrack and save feels like it breaks the flow of the scene. Perhaps a "skip cutscene" option is the best solution.
The last one is basically a side effect of trying to force RMVXA's engine to do stuff it was never intended to be able to do.

Why is it impossible to flee from boss fights, especially the ones you can see coming? This only requires you to replay parts again or to backtrack often to save crystals. On the other hand, I feel that one shouldn't be able to escape from a Monster-in-a-Box.

I'm actually surprised to hear monster-in-a-box is escapable, I would've thought it'd be the kind of thing I wouldn't make escapable. Not being able to escape from bosses is fairly standard for RPGs.

Some of the rarer random encounters could come more often. I never had the Treevil in the forest, or the Cuboid in the Haunted Manison, for example.

I could swear the Treevil occurs as a monster-in-a-box. It was intended that some encounters are extremely rare, though.

It's pretty weird that you can stack a HP+10% and a HP+5%, but not two HP+10%.

I think for the most part, it makes sense that you can't stack abilities. The +??%s are a special case where maybe it doesn't make sense, but imagine being able to stack four HP+100%s... (yes, those exist, at least in the code; not sure if any are accessible in-game). It would be a total gamebreaker if the enemies weren't adjusted for the possibility, and basically just reduce it to "grind until you can afford four of them for every character" if the enemies were adjusted for it - unless they just became extremely reliant on proportional damage attacks, which isn't ideal either.

A lot of items can only be sold by 1GP, which is annoying: Blue Magic learning items, Turbo Boost, Vampire Fangs, ...

This is a fairly standard RPG mechanic. The idea is basically "you can get rid of them if you want to, but you won't make money off them". Perhaps this could be removed (and the items just made unsellable) with the addition of a way to simply discard unwanted items. Although... (game mechanics spoilers which neither Proxima nor Nepster would be aware of yet)

Spoiler

At level 30 Alicia can learn an ability "Mix", which can use any two items (excluding equipment and rare items). Of course, some are more useful for this than others.

As Proxima already mentioned, enemies still casting while having no MP themselves is weird. Especially as this makes Osmosis pretty much useless.

Yes, this is something I think needs reconsidering. There are both things I do like and things I don't like about this system. Osmosis isn't completely useless though - it can be very useful if you need to top up some MP. This is somewhat negated by the frequency of save crystals, which also recover your party. My thoughts on how to deal with this: Allow saving everywhere, make the crystals rarer and solely for recovery - and perhaps either a limited number of uses, or have a "recharge" period between uses. (I did also consider the idea of removing them altogether in favor of just making Tomes a bit more common, but the difference is that Tomes can be used anywhere (as long as it's outside battle), whereas a healing crystal would only be in one specific place.)

Nepster's segment-by-segment feedback

Works fine. The "Red means danger" hint isn't needed - let the player figure this out for themselves.

Even with this hint, some people have been unable to figure it out. :/

The solid plants are annoying, because I cannor reliably separate them from non-solid ones.

Agree.

I felt cheated that the very fast ghost has no impact on the story at all, even for later. That was disappointing, especially given the amount of work I put into talking to it.
ERATICATOR: Good optional boss, but I would let the guard clarify that everything beyond him is totally optional. I took his warnings merely as "Do some preparation before coming here".

These are good points. Though I do like to put in things that seem relevant but aren't, just to keep the player on their toes. But this ghost was probably a bit excessive.

CRAIG & BRIANNA I: Not a total push-over, but one of the easier boss fights.

This is not a common reaction to this fight, if anything, common feedback is that it's too hard (though I personally think it's just right).

There should have been a save crystal at the north end of the village. Currently one has to walk too much. The Alphas were interesting enemies, but the distinction between Ice, Thunder and Water could be clearer. It took my black mage two wrong tries to determine their elements.

Regarding the save crystal, that would become irrelevant with a save-anywhere system. Agree that the Alphas could use more visual differentiation.

PYRAMID: Easy, but probably intended as a intro boss. But I haven't up to now found any other boss changing their elements, so this into feels a bit weird.

Illusiona, Enchanter and Dark Illusiona can also change their elements (though since elemental spells aren't the only practical way to damage them, nor is attention drawn to it, it isn't as noticeable). It isn't particularly common, but Pyragon is not unique in having this ability.

TRANSIENT: I came there as level 8 and needed some grinding to level 9 to beat this boss, even though I already learned the breaker-attack for one fighter. One of the main difficulties is that the Trauma attack feels like a magical one, not as something doing physical damage. So it took a very long time for me to find out that I can reduce the damage by defending.

One more comment regarding the Transient fight: Someone mentiones directly before the fight, that the Weakening Sand is designed specifically for the Transients. That let me believe for a long time, that no other enemy is affected by Weaken and Meltdown. So you might reformulate that part a bit.

Beating it at level 9 is quite an achievement; even my personal best isn't much lower than that (and keep in mind I know (or at least, knew at the time) every vunerability it has, every detail about it's attack pattern, everything that could be obtained nearby that might help, etc).
I see where you're coming from that Trauma looks like a magical attack, though it is explicitly pointed out by one of the party members that it's physical and that Defend can reduce it (and that Pulse is magical and Defend will not work, for that matter).
Regarding the Softening Sands, I see your point there, especially since this is the first time Weaken and Meltdown are seen by most players.

Nice layout of Saria. The parting with Amanda felt like I would reunite with her pretty soon, so I left her pretty good abilities, which I missed later on.

Yeah, I get what you mean here. I'm thinking the best solution is, rather than offering an option to remove them when someone leaves, just allow reconfiguring them even when they're absent. (This does seem a bit weird - how can you unequip something from a member half way across the world then immediately equip it to someone with you - but I think it's an acceptable break from what makes real-world sense.)

The palace is nice, but I wish I could explore it even after talking to Cameron. So perhaps the Flunky fight could only be triggered when trying to leave the whole palace?

Yeah, I could see that working with a few adjustments. Although the downside would be - if you were to save inside the palace, there'd be no access to recovery points or shops.

Just out of curiosity: What does the shady character sell here?

I don't remember exactly what it is, but in general, they sell very good abilities; I recall one of the very early ones selling Auto-Haste but I don't remember which one it was.

FLUNKY: An extremely hard fight, given my relatively low level (and no way really to grind levels in Saria). This felt like I was using half of my turns just to revive someone.

Did you pick up on his pattern?

Spoiler

He alternates between using Radar (single-target version) and a strong physical attack. The physical attack always targets whoever he just used Radar on, unless they've been knocked out in the meantime (which would only happen by you attacking yourself). So, you can have that character Defend.

The bowling maze is very nice, the calculator a good idea. Even though I got the basic idea pretty soon, I was totally stumped, because every green operator button recalculated the number. This was totally unexpected, so I aborted the idea, until the guy confirmed it again. I am not so fond of the sand area afterwards: I have no clue at all what the red button does and the Monster-in-a-Box is so hard, that I had to replay the area again. And I am still stumped about how to get to the other side of the chasm at the Monster-in-a-Box.

You and Proxima are actually the first people I know of to figure out the calculator puzzle.
The red button, I'm not sure off-hand if it actually does anything. It might be that it unlocks the optional side room, the next actual room, or a path to a treasure chest. But knowing me, it could indeed also be that it literally does nothing.
I don't think the other side of that chasm is accessible. It might be possible to come into that room on the other side from somewhere else later (I don't remember for sure), but it isn't possible to cross it IIRC.

Given that one is transported to this area rather unexpectedly, I would have liked some kind of basic tool shop in the area (with items being twice as expensive), e.g. the girl just outside the prison.

Yeah, a shop there is probably a good idea.

The way to Yuvia is pretty neat, but the random encounters are rather difficult. You basically have to know in advance what each enemy can do to beat them. But that's fine with me. The only major annoyance was the Bloob: At that point one has only pretty weak magical attacks and Ivy needs to cast more than 10 times to take it down, with noone else being able to do anything else. It would have been much better with only a third of its current HP.

Yeah, this is a major difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere. I think the difficulty here needs to be toned down a bit. Regarding the Bloob though, do keep in mind that it's not intended that every random encounter is reasonable to take on the first time you get somewhere - this is why the Escape option is pointed out at the start of the game, and again when Vince joins.

GANGSTER: This was pretty easy, as Darkness and Sleep lets you basically take them one-by-one.

Yeah, this is meant to be a somewhat easy fight if you remember to use status effects.

Very nice dungeon. But the Exp-values of the random enemies are way off: Obbies are pretty easy, Accras almost surely kill one character and are pretty hard, the roaches here are still extremely nasty, but the Spellpot is laughable (just use one Silence attack on it). But then the Spellpot gives very nice items and a ton of Exp. It would feel much more deserved, if it had a special action healing Silence.

To be honest, I don't feel the EXP / AP balancing in this game is very good at all. It needs significant reworking. Though I think a significant factor here is that the dungeon wasn't intended to be taken on when it's first available. So, the enemies "level" is higher, which in turn means lower-level characters gain a lot of EXP from them - whereas AP is "max X, and this decreases slowly if you're above the enemy's level", EXP can be adjusted upwards if you're below the enemy's level.

GREAT OBBIE: The worst boss I have encountered up to now. The first two thirds are trivial, then there comes a brief interesting part with Plague and lots of status effects. And then the Desaster, wiping out the whole party.

Yeah, I don't feel Grand Obbie is a particularly great optional boss. It's pretty much just a long-lasting Gobbie fight, with the catch that you need to have one character with high HP fully healed before you lay the finishing blow - which you don't know exactly when it is due to him not being scannable, although there are warning signs that you're getting close (such as him starting to use Plague).

TRANSIENT: Pretty easy this time. I always got the transient killed before it got to cast Trauma.

These Transients are a fair bit weaker than the storyline one from earlier, in addition to you now being at a higher level.

Ok, here is a HUGE difficulty spike, both with the new Phantom and the random encounters afterwards (and their instant death attacks). I tried it once, got badly mauled and then decided to do some grinding with the whole parts. I went from level 12-13 to 17-18. With these levels, I felt I was actually a bit over-leveled, because the optional boss was pretty easy, even though the random encounters were still challenging. I didn't like the invisible maze, even though its layout was good.

It sounds like you were a bit underlevelled when you got to this point. The optional boss is accessible a fair bit earlier in the game, which is why you felt overlevelled for it - you were.

Note that I wasn't yet strong enough to fight [Deadhead] head-on (pun intended), so I had to study it rather well and then be pretty sneaky: Casting only Light and healing spells on it, to avoid the draining counter-attack.

That's awesome to hear. The whole idea behind that was that a head-on assault wouldn't work too well, and you needed to pay attention to what it does.

ENCHANTER: An extremey easy boss. I targeted the man right away and was surprised when it got down and I didn't even got a chance to steal from it. I only learned about the element-changing nature from Proxima's video - it never changed any colors when I played it.

Yeah, Enchanter isn't meant to be a particularly hard fight, though probably could use a bit more difficulty.

TOROPHO: Very neat boss, even though the Torando is extremely powerful. Unfortunately I never got it down completely with Split Attacks before it casts Tornado, so I had to pool all my HP+ and DEF+ on Ivy, and revive the other party members afterwards.

...he's vunerable to Split Attack? That was not intentional, I don't think.

My favorite is the first room with the question, especially the third one. Only of the last two rooms, I am not so fond of. But I would allow doing the rooms in an arbitrary order (perhaps only forcing the bottom one to be the third one).

I like this idea.

CRAIG & BRIANNA III: Very hard, but extremely clever battle! Here comes the power of the Zombie attack on a regenerating character...

As I've mentioned, many people have stated that they feel this is the hardest battle in the game. But yes, making good use of strategic points like that is definitely the key, far more so than any grinding - they're quite capable of taking down even an overlevelled party if you just try to brute force them.

DARK RETURNER: Much harder than the first Returner, because you need to store a lot more damage to avoid the more damaging alternative spell. With level 26-27 things went very smoothly, especially as I had Haste now.

Indeed. And unlike the first one, which with a bit of luck you can get through without figuring out how he works, you really do need to figure it out for this one - unless you're so overlevelled that you can take him down before his first unleash energy.

This is the point where Proxima is up to, so I'll continue the rest in the next spoiler tag.

Beyond Proxima's current progress

DARK TRANSIENT: This requires the "Zombie counters Dark Rain" knowledge, which I didn't have and namida had to tell me. This is especially frustrating, because one would expect that the recently aquired Death Resist abilities would work at least partially here.

Hm, yeah. This fight probably wouldn't be much harder if Deathly Rain was affected by Death Resist. But to me, "zombie prevents instant death" just felt like a normal, expectable mechanic. I should probably stress this at some point, maybe put in a new earlier boss (or modify an existing one; perhaps Entity would work well for this) where this becomes apparent during an easier fight.

KNOWLEDGE TEST: I didn't like this one. I am still wondering what the "Use something that affects different enemies differently" is, because in my opinion almost all attacks work like this. That some question (even correctly answered ones) pop up multiple times is weird.

I believe the answer to that one was to use an elemental attack.

So I found out that the item Poison Dust works as well (despite the intro text), even though it gets healed (not treated via infection) and so has to be applied multiple times.

Virus only prevents HP / MP healing, not status effect healing.

The encounters at the normal time, especially the ones in the sand cave proved far too difficult for my party, so I decided to do some grinding to level 28-29 afterwards.
I went into the deep sand cave with the ability "No Encounters" put on, but got stuck there. A lot of stuff like the red crystals, the pentagon next to it or the blocking white crystal didn't do anything. And the hints Alicia translated didn't make sense, too. I will have to try this again later on.

I don't remember how to solve the cave (or even what kind of puzzles are in it), but I do remember that it's a very high-level dungeon. IIRC, the optional boss there will very easily wipe the floor with a level 30ish party. However, the ones outside the cave may need to be toned down a bit.

I did not go further to the Mayae Temple yet, because I felt I did enough of levelling up.

You wouldn't be able to anyway. It was one of those areas I never got around to making, although two of the boss battles for it - Sludgeon and Relica - exist in the source and are accessible via the debug room. Relica is a fairly interesting fight, though you need fairly high levels (it has 150k HP IIRC).

CRAIG & BRIANNA (Zombie edition): This is exceedingly difficult, even for my party of level 34. I probably made the mistake not to learn Dispel for Harley, so I have no way to remove the Haste state. While I can completely avoid Brianna's spells for three party members, a hasted Craig (even with Darkness) manages to kill them easily.

Interesting, I thought the 3rd battle was harder (though the 4th is definitely no cakewalk either).

On a side note, Nepster, I'd be very interested to see what you think about the next boss (after the one you're currently on - and just in case there's one I forgot about, the one I'm trying to refer to has the "intense" boss theme rather than the regular one). This boss in question was a lot of work to create, so if it isn't well-received I might want to consider ditching that idea for any remake.

[Nepster]

Comments on the general mechanics (very mild spoilers)

Why is it impossible to flee from boss fights, especially the ones you can see coming?

More generally I've expected that most bosses are immune (or at least highly resistant) to certain "cheap-ish" maneuvers that would otherwise work on most random-encounter enemies, for example percent-based damage that eg. takes out half of target's remaining HP, and escape would certainly be something I expect to fall under "haha, nice try but it's a boss".

Sorry, but I didn't want to suggest fleeing as a method to bypass a boss. Even after fleeing the boss, it should still be there and requireing actual defeat. But sometimes you run into a boss that turns out to be much too difficult for the currently (unprepared or under-levelled) party. In such situations I would like to be able to flee, in oder to avoid the "Game Over" screen and having to restart from the last save point. Sometimes it only needs healing the party again and redistributing some abilities to defeat the boss.

I don't remember the specifics of item costs, but if an item is not generally available for sale (ie. your characters can buy them) in a shop, I do expect that many would not be valuable to sell back for GP either.  Items that are available for sale in a shop I usually expect maybe sold back at 1/3 to 1/2 of bought price [...]

The problem here is, that e.g. a tool shop buys abilities or potions at the normal rate, but not stuf like "Vampire Fangs" (which is a flowery name of a bomb-type item).

This is a fairly standard RPG mechanic. The idea is basically "you can get rid of them if you want to, but you won't make money off them". Perhaps this could be removed (and the items just made unsellable) with the addition of a way to simply discard unwanted items.

What is the point of disappointing the player that seemingly semi-useful items are worth nothing? Grinding for money can still be done, because some monsters have Ice/Water Touch as steals, which sell for 800. So apart from "standard RPG mechanics", I still don't know any actual reason why this should be done like this?
With the blue magic items, I agree. They should simply not appear when your Blue Mage has learned the spell.

I think for the most part, it makes sense that you can't stack abilities. The +??%s are a special case where maybe it doesn't make sense, but imagine being able to stack four HP+100%s... (yes, those exist, at least in the code; not sure if any are accessible in-game). It would be a total gamebreaker if the enemies weren't adjusted for the possibility, and basically just reduce it to "grind until you can afford four of them for every character" if the enemies were adjusted for it - unless they just became extremely reliant on proportional damage attacks, which isn't ideal either.

I think stacking abilities is not really a problem, as long as stacking four HP+100%s only yields five times as much HP, not 16 times as much (i.e. the percentage always refers to the base value). At the point where the player has multiple HP+100%s, the party members will fare much better with Omniproofs or Multi Resists or similar, instead of just some more HP.

Osmosis isn't completely useless though - it can be very useful if you need to top up some MP. This is somewhat negated by the frequency of save crystals, which also recover your party.

I almost never need more than half of my MP points and only ever used Liquer once at all - at the very first dungeon . So Osmosis would very likely still be totally useless (especially once Vince can recharge MP).

My thoughts on how to deal with this: Allow saving everywhere [...]

This would change the game-style quite a bit, so think long and hard whether you really want this. Allowing saving everywhere will likely result in players saving after every battle or treasure. So there would never be any reason to continue playing if a random encounter didn't go very well.

[...] make the crystals rarer and solely for recovery - and perhaps either a limited number of uses, or have a "recharge" period between uses. (I did also consider the idea of removing them altogether in favor of just making Tomes a bit more common, but the difference is that Tomes can be used anywhere (as long as it's outside battle), whereas a healing crystal would only be in one specific place.)

I like to have some way to get unlimited recharges. Limiting the crystals and making them rarer is probably still a good idea, but perhaps turn staying overnight in an inn into a full recharge?
With all items or stuff that have only a limited amount of uses and no way to get more, I am incredibly hesistant to use them. So making the crystals having only a few charges, will likely result in me being a lot more hesitant about using MPs, even though I probably wouldn't have to worry about that.

Comments on comments regarding specific segments (big spoilers)

I see where you're coming from that Trauma looks like a magical attack, though it is explicitly pointed out by one of the party members that it's physical and that Defend can reduce it (and that Pulse is magical and Defend will not work, for that matter).

Yeah, I remember. But the Pulse looks so much like a physical attack and the Trauma so much like a magical one, that I automatically assumed to have misremembered that part and swapped the two names.

Just out of curiosity: What does the shady character sell here?

I don't remember exactly what it is, but in general, they sell very good abilities; I recall one of the very early ones selling Auto-Haste but I don't remember which one it was.

That would be surprisingly cheap for 17,000 gold. I got Alchemy for 6,000, Auto-Reflect for 60,000 and Multiproof for 100,000.

Did you pick up on his pattern [of Flunky]?

I noticed that Radar is cast on every second turn, but not the other part.

Regarding the [redacted] though, do keep in mind that it's not intended that every random encounter is reasonable to take on the first time you get somewhere - this is why the Escape option is pointed out at the start of the game, and again when Vince joins.

Yes, but if a moster is beatable I want to beat it, in order to see whether it has any interesting spoils. And almost all random monsters can be beaten the first try. The only cases I actually fled have been some specifically nasty flower combination on the Yuvia road (not including the one mentioned above), and the Deadhead.
So if you want me to flee from random encounters, then you have to add some clearly too-difficult random enemies.

But to me, "zombie prevents instant death" just felt like a normal, expectable mechanic.

As I already mentioned in chat, this might be true for someone familiar with FF. But I was familiar with Zombie meaning a "zombie state of mind", i.e. some kind of sleep without wearing out on being attacked. Obviously here it's something different, so I don't have any assumptions at all, what it does and what it doesn't do.
And keep in mind that the game has the monster state "Undead" and "Zombie - Auto". And while I intuitively assume that Death attacks won't work on undeads, this distinction muddies the waters quite a bit.

Virus only prevents HP / MP healing, not status effect healing.

And here I thought Regen was a status effect healing...

[namida]

Spoiler

And here I thought Regen was a status effect healing...

Maybe we're on two different pages here. The healing from Regen is HP healing, so it should prevent that. What I meant to say was that, for example, being under Virus won't prevent you from healing status effects on that character; you just can't heal their HP or MP. (And I might even be wrong about MP.)

I don't remember the exact details of the fight this is concerning, just that in general those four bosses have some very unusual rules, so maybe there's something I'm overlooking, too.

[ccexplore]

More Comments on the general mechanics (very mild spoilers)

Why is it impossible to flee from boss fights, especially the ones you can see coming?<snip>

Sorry, but I didn't want to suggest fleeing as a method to bypass a boss.<snip>

Now that I think about it, you may have a good point.   At first I somehow thought even when the boss isn't bypassed by escaping, the player still gets some advantage.  But on further thought, the advantage is usually pretty minimal if not none, and for the most part, it really wouldn't be all that different from restarting at a savepoint with full HP/MP/status heal right before the battle.

I do want to point out that in most RPGs, there is usually a savepoint right before a boss battle, to the effect that you can often tell you're about to have a boss encounter just by presence of the savepoint.  I don't remember if namida's game is like that or not.  I can also imagine some (admittedly rare) setups where escaping can create some unwanted side effects:  1) sequences of bosses where the game intentionally do not want to allow you to heal between one boss and the next; 2) bosses which you are expected to use certain rare items as part of the intended strategy, so fleeing then restarting becomes a problem since you no longer have the items.

Perhaps an alternative is to have something like Lemming's nuke, where the player can immediately trigger a give-up of a boss battle and go right back to the last savepoint (then again, I believe this is no different than simply allowing you to reload from a savepoint anywhere, anytime in the game [edit: to clarify, I'm talking strictly about reloading; saving can still be confined to specific savepoint locations]).  Together with being consistent with providing savepoints right before boss battles, it should mostly cover what you'd want out of the ability to flee boss battles.  (Oh, and yes, ability to skip certain types of dialogs, which frankly is pretty standard nowadays, not just in RPGs but more generally in games, to the point that sometimes I inadvertently skip dialog by accident and is sad that there is often no way to revisit dialogs I've skipped.)

What is the point of disappointing the player that seemingly semi-useful items are worth nothing?<snip>

[edit: perhaps I should lead with this instead:  will it make any difference for you had the game stick consistently to a system where:
  - items that are never sold in shops (for you to buy), you cannot sell back either (the shop simply won't give you the option to sell back those kinds of items).  There's a way to discard items to declutter the inventory
  - items that are sold in shops, you can always sell back at a fix % of the bought price.]

Short answer: Isn't it enough that the items are useful?  I'm not opposed to having a stronger convention where monetary values are always proportional to the item's usefulness to the player, but at the same time, I'm generally fine with items being primarily only beneficial in either ability or monetary but not both, especially items that are only obtained through steals and drops from random encounters.  I will concede that items that can be bought in a shop should probably stick consistently to a formula (based on the bought price) when it comes to resale value.  For other items, one can argue that you have no expectations of resale monetary value since for whatever reasons, it's not generally being sold in the world to begin with.  Maybe it's bad luck in your game's universe to try to sell certain types of items.