Hey everyone! Gui and Chris here (and Masa if you’re reading this in Japanese) with another large update. Gui and I were both avid players of FFXI and have always approached our game like it was an MMORPG. That means that sometimes the way forward is to take a step back and rebalance job classes and gameplay. In that spirit, we are mainly bringing you a QOL update, but I think you’ll agree that it is a massive one.
As we move closer and closer towards the end of the main game scenario, Gui and I realized that this would be a good time to take a step back and update some of the events that take place at the beginning of the game. Before we hand things off to Nintendo, we want to make sure this game launches as smoothly as possible, and that means cleaning off some of the dust that’s settled on the start of our game.
When we first started making this game, we really weren’t sure about what we could and couldn’t do within the limitations of the RPG Maker MV engine. A year later we have a really good idea and know a lot more about what the end of our game looks like. That means we are now able to go back in to the very first steps of Chris and Kyle’s adventure and smooth some things out for the player to further equip them to succeed.
A few examples: Canned Coffee now heals for 500HP, not 250. Fruit Juice now heals for 1000HP instead of 500. We went into all of the monster’s programming on floors 1-25 and updated it so that monster’s no longer spam one move. Chris’ ability “Step Forward Again” is now learned at a much lower level and prevents negative status effects instead of healing them to help with the David boss fight. Stephanie has a lot more MP to work with and her magic can now critical hit. Even the first quest to find weapons in Higashi Nakano has a lot more hints and has been made a lot easier to solve.
Essentially, we wanted to help each character lean into their roles in combat more and streamline the user’s experience overall so that a new player’s entry into our world feels…fun. This is a game we’re talking about after all.
To top it off, for players waiting for additional end game content, we have finished off Boss Rush mode at the battle arena and have added in some cool new accessories we’d been holding off on.
Expect another large update on the second half of version one content later this month. Then we will be moving on to the end of the game and the release of Version 3 of The Benza RPG.
Chris, Gui, and Masa