Reposted due to a lot of editting.
Stage 2:
1. Just tried out Crazy, and in 2-1 phase 4, I get swarmed by a group of 10, half Marks half Knights. There weren't this many in non-Crazy difficulty. Thank goodness Luce has her big bang.
2. Please destroy the vampire bats at the end of each stage phase. Its really annoying to have them hurt my allies when they're proceeding to next stage or stop me from trying to milk in peace.
3. Consider dropping 2 milks(can be times: 2) instead of 1 - allies have a notorious habit of stealing your milk.
Btw knights are considered very difficult enemies in LF2 even if their HP is low; he can tank attacks meant for other enemies, can deal a lot of damage and are very proficient with weapons. Without fire, ice, 3006 or vrest >>JA/multihit attacks, they're a real nuisance, and only a handful of characters use those. Try not to go overboard with adding them.
Also, healing in the game potentially triples the HP of the healed characters; so again, don't go overboard with the Jans. That's why in stage you usually see only 1-2 Jans with very high HP but only spawns once, instead of being a soldier; it gives you a chance to kill the healer to make the battles less drawn-out.
Stage 3:
As usual I'm using Luce.
1. Why is Morph's grab INSTANT? That's really overpowered! In addition, since you are grabbed, the other minions can attack you for massive damage. This is especially deadly if you are alone. Make Morphs transform faster, but make their grab take time to startup.
2. Why is LouisEX in 3-4 with 750hp AND has Jan to heal?! He wiped out ALL of my troops (even when I abused Asche to keep my ENTIRE army alive), and by the time I reached 3-5 I'm all alone against the monk final boss with 4 minions(usually with a respawning Jan!) for each of his multiple phases!
3. So I was reduced to dash attacking(or DJAing, but remember I have trouble inputting DJA) the monk boss all alone at constantly <100hp, and died just before I could kill him in the 3rd phase - in other words I never reached the last phase.
4. I found out that the monk boss's shotgun palm can actually travel diagonally. Please fix this; its not fair for such an attack to move diagonally when its invisible (at least not without modifying henry_wind.bmp).
5. (with Asche) I managed to clear 3-5. The Last Word segment is really easy because you are often so far away from all the attacks the boss tries to throw at you. Plus I was distracted by the Morph spawning on the left.
You don't have to make the phase boundary big or make use of all the potential space in a background, and in stage mode you can even make the boundary smaller to deliberately push the player backwards to where the milk will be.
Other:
The white wind orbs, when opointing the wind ball, should also opoint the dust effect to make it clear that the orb isn't simply disappearing. You might need to modify henry_wind to make this possible (see the Monk version of shaolin palm).
Asche's D>A is actually very overpowered in stage mode, because its basically Henry's D>J but costing only 75mp instead of 200-250mp(John's equivalent). Stage mode also usually gives you a lot of room to run away & plenty of beer, plus AI is dumb when it comes to piercing attacks and most enemies die in 2 shots.
* D>A mp75->125 to reduce spamming. dmg40+55->40+50.
* During 2nd part of ball, use hit_a 25 timer to limit its piercing to roughly 20tu before turning into a state3000 version of itself like Julian's D>J).
With these changes, D>A can no longer 2-shot most enemies, cannot be spammed especially when low HP, and cannot be used to permanently snipe & keep entire rows of enemies offscreen.
Moeyy is still way too weak at fighting by himself. At the very least buff up his melee damage to be on par with the default characters: punch/super/run/jump/dash 15/45/45/45/45 -> 20/55/50/45/70.
Bart's main issue is that his attacks are very inconsistent. For example, D>A shoots out 2 skulls quickly, and then it takes a long pause before the next 2 skulls come out. His D>J takes a while to summon 1 bat, might as well just wait for the bat to come out and then cancel, and its weird to cancel by holding back too. He's only effective in stage because he's an archer based on Henry whose basic attacks are already very solid - most of his specials outside of D>A and D^J are pretty much useless.
Richie has a HUGE bug with his ultimate weapon: it seems if you drop it, you can no longer use special moves with it! Also you can make the deletion frame after ascension about twice as fast.
In general the
large but invisible AOE attacks are overpowered:
* Janice's DvA is basically the best aspects of Henry(itr size) & Freeze(freezing) D^J fused together... and costing only 125mp instead of 350/300. Yes, the damage is only 10 and it can be easily blocked, but in stage mode this is extremely overpowered. Plus invisible, so its hard to judge the AOE size & very wide z-axis width too.
* Rudolf's new D^A makes him INVULNERABLE and constantly attack with no initial MP cost and very low MP maintenance. So low in fact, that if my HP is <100, my MP bar practically doesn't move! Why even bother to use any other move?
* Dennis' new DJA is a lot more overpowered than you think. You know Dennis has an infinite combo that is "AA (G)Ax4-5 D>J(hit 3 times) (G)(repeat)"? Well, because DJA pulls enemies towards you, this infinite combo that can normally be avoided by blocking is now unavoidable for the same amount of MP cost. And you cannot even flip to avoid because the range is so big despite not having any z-axis.
Deep's DJA is useless since it takes too long to charge & still has a range limit when fully charged.
Henry's input for DvA & DvJ should be swapped.
Rudolf's DvA is considered overpowered because it removes his main weakness of not having a close range attack or reversal.
Louis' DvJ invulnerability is too abusable.
Davis' DJA is useless overall, especially given the mana cost.
Luce:
luce new.zip (Size: 120.04 KB / Downloads: 79)
- Pickup/throw weapon faster; same as default chars.
- Punch bdef16->30, 1tu faster(frame 61 & 66).
- Super/>>A bdef16->50 dmg50->55 slightly bigger itr.
- Added "frame 4 standing" that lasts 2tu(wait 1); this frame is used after using certain special moves with next: 4 instead of next: 999.
- DvA shrafe has been removed.
- Input changes: D^A is now DvA. DJA is now D^J. DvJ is now DJA. Most moves also have a narrower window to combo (because you can start comboing a bit too early, which is both impractical for human players and has bugs with cancelling an attack BEFORE it takes effect).
- D>A bdef16->30, mp150/100->125/75; too weak to cost that much mp, but still cost more than average because startup is very fast.
- DvA (high kick) startup 4->2tu, less forward movement, bdef16->60, vrest15->12, mp75/50->100/75. Usable at end of grab(due to faster startup) but not from rolling.
- D>J vrest15->9(bugfix for D>J High Kick combo), fall40->60 dmg50->45, mp75/50->125/100, changed to startup 3tu, then dvx60 no bdy for 2tu(so you can actually avoid attacks in-between you & target), then properly stop movement with dvx550 instead of dvx-1, recovery 1 tu longer. Can be used directly from running.
- D^J: white portion of col is now translucent. mp350/275->300/225, startup & recovery +2tu each, adjusted opoint's y-coordinates(100->79) graphical update. col lasts only a very short while, bdef40->60 dmg110->75. The data(not the sprite) for col only applies to Luce and not the stage 3 boss as Luce now spawns her col data from luce_ball.dat instead of julian_ball2.dat.
- DJA (healing) now recovers faster(24->16tu) and cannot combo into itself (because 1700 healing doesn't stack with itself in the first place). Personally I think this move should be removed, but I left it in anyway.
Combo 1: AAA (G)Ax5 DvA -> (D^J >>JA) or (J A)
Combo 2: Super/>>A D>A x2
These changes should make her on par with the actual melee heroes(exactly 4 moves excluding heal & no clashing inputs!) and be able to deal with knights without abusing D^J. Let's face it, the way she is designed, she's not really a battle mage, she's a fighter.
AI's mana cost values & inputs for heal/pillar/kick have been tweaked accordingly, and changed the speed kick input from DlA/DrA to DlJ/DrJ - I didn't touch anything else.
That'd be all for this patch. No more edits on my end.