If you expand your character beyond the feasable limits provided by the linear storyline, does this game retain a sense of balance and proportion?
You can kill the final boss in a single blow. You can cut through sin's armour in two blows, totalling over 140, 000 HP. Yet the strongest monsters in the game have millions upon millions of HP.
When I hold these figures in my mind the integrity of the game-world breaks down in my mind, and I can no longer suspend disbelief.
The Dark Aeon's are especially tacky and criminal: (which is a good reason they were never in the original game); not only are they many many times stronger than your own summons can ever be, but they are multiple times stronger than Sin. And in fact they're the exact same pallette-swapped models used for when Yu Yevon possesses your Aeon's on the penultimate battle, combined with some re-used sound effects from elsewhere in the game (For instance, when the summoner of Dark Valefor confronts you in Besaid, he says "Infidel!" and "Prepare to charge!", lines which are uttered by Yevon guards preventing the heroes from reaching Maester Mika, and re-use the same sound effects). The only unique audio for the dark aeons seems to be the Guado who confronts you before you meet Dark Shiva.
Even without the Dark Aeons we have the arena bosses. I understand what they were trying to do in order to extend the life of the game and provide a bit of freedom, but I think that uber-strong monsters should have some reasonable justification for existing, and they should require cunning and planning moreso than ridiculous stats in order to defeat them. I'm so glad they didn't have a break damage limit in X-2 (though I've lost the will to complete that game for other reasons, not the least of which is that I attained level 60+ with moderate ease in the first chapter!).
Furthermore, isn't raising your HP beyond 9, 999 almost completely redundant? Any attack that factors defense into account will do less than 9, 999, and any attack which doesn't usually deals a guarranteed 99, 999 (like Thuban's "convergence"), which is enough to take you to KO even if you have the maximum number of HP, also 99, 999. The only reason I can think of to invest all that effort to reach maximum HP is that it looks "cool"; but next to any monster you'd face where that HP would be useful it actually looks pitifully low.
Not only that, but you have to sacrifice/waste an armour slot to break the HP limit for any character that you want to have the extra HP, which could be occupied by something far more useful like Auto-Phoenix, Ribbon, and I could go on.
You can kill the final boss in a single blow. You can cut through sin's armour in two blows, totalling over 140, 000 HP. Yet the strongest monsters in the game have millions upon millions of HP.
When I hold these figures in my mind the integrity of the game-world breaks down in my mind, and I can no longer suspend disbelief.
The Dark Aeon's are especially tacky and criminal: (which is a good reason they were never in the original game); not only are they many many times stronger than your own summons can ever be, but they are multiple times stronger than Sin. And in fact they're the exact same pallette-swapped models used for when Yu Yevon possesses your Aeon's on the penultimate battle, combined with some re-used sound effects from elsewhere in the game (For instance, when the summoner of Dark Valefor confronts you in Besaid, he says "Infidel!" and "Prepare to charge!", lines which are uttered by Yevon guards preventing the heroes from reaching Maester Mika, and re-use the same sound effects). The only unique audio for the dark aeons seems to be the Guado who confronts you before you meet Dark Shiva.
Even without the Dark Aeons we have the arena bosses. I understand what they were trying to do in order to extend the life of the game and provide a bit of freedom, but I think that uber-strong monsters should have some reasonable justification for existing, and they should require cunning and planning moreso than ridiculous stats in order to defeat them. I'm so glad they didn't have a break damage limit in X-2 (though I've lost the will to complete that game for other reasons, not the least of which is that I attained level 60+ with moderate ease in the first chapter!).
Furthermore, isn't raising your HP beyond 9, 999 almost completely redundant? Any attack that factors defense into account will do less than 9, 999, and any attack which doesn't usually deals a guarranteed 99, 999 (like Thuban's "convergence"), which is enough to take you to KO even if you have the maximum number of HP, also 99, 999. The only reason I can think of to invest all that effort to reach maximum HP is that it looks "cool"; but next to any monster you'd face where that HP would be useful it actually looks pitifully low.
Not only that, but you have to sacrifice/waste an armour slot to break the HP limit for any character that you want to have the extra HP, which could be occupied by something far more useful like Auto-Phoenix, Ribbon, and I could go on.
