Hard Mode: Would make every final fantasy a million times more fun and addictive.

[kriminal99]

If anyone here is familiar with the star ocean series, then you might know what a hard mode can really do for a game.

The first time you play, everything is foreign, you make a ton of mistakes, and you eventually learn how to work the mechanics of the game. Then once you do EVERYTHING IN THE GAME IS RIDICULOUSLY EASY. At that point what you want is something that will actually require you to apply your new mastery of the game - where the game will absolutely massacre you if you do not use every trick in the book.

Doing this requires virtually no additional content (although it COULD be added) and instead just some formula/resistence tweaking or whatever other kind of tweaking they can think of to make the game tougher.

Every single Final Fantasy game I have played suffered from not having this. Every one had really interesting mechanics that could be toyed with to make your character more powerful which at first would captivate you and get you power leveling until finally you realized - There wasn't a single enemy in the game that a person without a clue in the world couldn't beat.

[Vyk]

See this is why I never used New Game+. It seems like it would make things ridiculously easy (unless it amps up the difficulty for those games)

The only problem I'd see is if the game isn't entertaining enough to warrant a second play-through. But I guess the save would always be there for you to come back to years later (if hard mode is an unlockable, otherwise it wouldn't matter)

[Bunny]

Final Fantasy would be a better series if it was in the hands of a company that wasn't only seeking profit. Square-Enix s out the same game with different characters (but the same character types) every couple of years and people eat them up and praise their creativity because of the label, not on the merits of the games themselves.

[Christmas]

I like it mainly due to the story and the characters. Dun really mind the gameplay or how it will take 1 hour just to kill a Lvl 1 Goblin should there be a hard mode.

[ljkkjlcm9]

Final Fantasy would be a better series if it was in the hands of a company that wasn't only seeking profit. Square-Enix s out the same game with different characters (but the same character types) every couple of years and people eat them up and praise their creativity because of the label, not on the merits of the games themselves.

what company doesn't do that? I mean honestly. i guess the ones that use the same characters. And i honestly don't see any company NOT seeking profit, also the purpose of a company.

THE JACKEL

[MJN SEIFER]

It would also be cool if there was at least one thing that could only be done in "Hard Mode" if that makes sense.

[Bunny]

Final Fantasy would be a better series if it was in the hands of a company that wasn't only seeking profit. Square-Enix s out the same game with different characters (but the same character types) every couple of years and people eat them up and praise their creativity because of the label, not on the merits of the games themselves.

what company doesn't do that? I mean honestly. i guess the ones that use the same characters. And i honestly don't see any company NOT seeking profit, also the purpose of a company.

THE JACKEL

I didn't say seeking profit. I said only seeking profit.

[ShunNakamura]

Hard modes can indeed make a game more entertaining. However, I dislike it when hard mode is merely 'computer cheats' mode. I don't mind the computer getting some 'cheats' since artificial intelligence is just that, artificial. But at least 'improve' it for hardmode. If needed wait a few months and then release it as an 'update patch'(this way you can see unexpected ways to work the system used by players and incorporate an AI that does the same, and then some, it would still be an imitation, but likely a more challenging one than the default AI).

The Game Utawarerumono for example has a godly hard mode option. Not only do the enemies become progressively stronger and more numerous on the higher difficulties but they begin utilizing better strategy as well. Kinda annoying actually. . . I still haven't beaten it on the hardest mode. 1 mistake and it is pretty much game over! The computer really abuses any mistakes you make!

[Rase]

Being harder and requiring a semblance of real strategy from the beginning and throughout the game in general would make most FF's better.

[ShinGundam]

I think hard mode isn't a solution if we consider that there will be extra grinding involved.Do you want a challenge in FF? A better solution is to ditch level up systems and stats or cap the level the characters can achieve but it will end up like a puzzle game after a while.

Being harder and requiring a semblance of real strategy from the beginning and throughout the game in general would make most FF's better.

A real strategy is just a theory, , there is always going to be an obvious solution. There isn't any game in the market where i make a compelling choice in every battle, we are talking about games which have 100+ encounter.

Bottom line :making it harder won't make it any more fun.

[Remon]

Some games sucked badly even in one normal playthrough. Let alone in another hard one.

[Roogle]

I think a Hard Mode or a special type of New Game + Mode would be great for any future Final Fantasy title.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, recently released on the PSP, allows you to travel to various points in the game to pick up nearly anything that you might have missed the first time. The game has a total of three paths spread out over four chapters, and it is impossible to get everything on the first run. The WORLD System, as it is called, added a lot of replay value to the game. Every battle after The WORLD system is activated scales to the level of your party for the rest of the game, so there will always be an additional challenge factor.

This is one example of a recent Square Enix game with a type of mode that allows the game to be more challenging and more complete. I know that they have the capability to do so.

[Mirage]

You guys misunderstand S-E's vision. Replay value is poor business. People playing the same game over and over again doesn't bring more money in their pockets, so it is a waste of money to code it in.

Instead, it is better to focus on getting the next FF-related game out as fast as possible. That's where the money is.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm thinking of The World Ends With You in how to implement it. It did a pretty snazzy job imo. You can control the difficulty of the game as you go along, meaning that if you start getting your ass kicked in a boss fight you, can switch it to easy mode and win, or likewise, if enemies are too easy, you can ramp up the difficulty and make yourself an extra challenge. I feel such a set-up would allow even new players to work their way into more challenging modes of play instead of feeling inadequate by having to ask lots of questions when they finally attempt to play the game on a harder mode.

I feel the biggest challenge with RPGs (really this applies to lots of genres in general) is that too often developers feel all they need to do is make the enemies stats 25% higher and lower you're effectiveness by 25%. Anyone who has played KH on hard mode or Crisis Core will know what I mean. The mechanics and the strategies are the same, its just the enemies hit harder and you take more damage and while that is effective in making you gain a zen like state with abilities that prevent this, I don't necessarily feel it creates real challenge, its just you trying to overcome a statistical handicap and often times it just means pushing your own parties stats to 11. This creates a scenario of mindless grinding and spending more time in the menu trying to build god-mode. Even worse, it makes going back to normal or easy mode impossible cause these same exploits work in that mode as well so the challenge is completely negated.

The other big issue with JRPgs in general is that the genre has given players too many perks. The biggest one is the fact that you're party is usually well rounded. By which I mean that not only are they effective mages and warriors but even flimsy mage type characters can take surprisingly high amounts of damage before going down and warrior characters get equipment that makes them immune to all of their weaknesses and generally their physical brawn is effective on everything. You're party is often times too effective for whatever the game throws at you and thus customization is left to exploiting their strengths even more so or giving them more of an absolute defence but really you don't need any of these buffs.

RPGs need to make your whole cast have well defined weaknesses that can never be actually overcome and instead build a combat system that simply allows you to mitigate the damage at best. In games like P3/4, the early bosses have weaknesses that can be exploited but in the second half of their games, the tables are turned and instead, you're building your party in a way to lessen any advantage the computer can have. You're forced to remove heavy hitters in your party cause the computer can exploit their weaknesses and ultimately destroy your party in a few rounds because you were silly enough to bring them in. I pretty much love this way of thinking and if their was a way to bring this into other RPGs without building an elaborate Pokemon style system, it would be awesome.

FFIV and FFV also had some clever checks and balances that made them much more difficult. In FFIV, you had the retort system where enemies would counter attack if you hit them with certain moves and combining this with the fact these games stuck to the whole "resource management" style of early RPGs, this became an issue as you would inadvertently make battles much longer and take more damage than was necessary. FFV on the other hand made multi-hit abilities less effective by either randomizing damage or adding target boxes that only multi-hit attacks could see and have these invisible hit boxes have no stats so you would waste half of your attacks on something that wasn't there. There is a reason why Neo-Shinryu and Enuo are some of the tougher fights in FFVAdvance.

The enemies need some better advantages and the player characters need to be nerfed a bit in order to create a system that is about creating the best party dynamics for the scenario you need.

[Rase]

A real strategy is just a theory, , there is always going to be an obvious solution. There isn't any game in the market where i make a compelling choice in every battle, we are talking about games which have 100+ encounter.

Every battle, no. Nearly every time fighting a new enemy, yes. The first time I face something I like to have to find a good pattern and have a reason to use it and not just hammer on "Fight" 95% of the battles, with the occasional "Cure".