Phew. Now that this crazy work week is over, I can properly respond.
First off, Dark Holy, thank you for taking the time to play through KO. Your input and feedback is greatly appreciated and tremendously helpful, and I hope you're enjoying your KO adventure! Even though KO stays true to Vanilla, I hope that you're finding the balance changes to be refreshing and fun.
Allow me to explain some of the design details in regards to Wizard and Summoner, since that's been a point of contention for me for a while now. The challenge with Wizard and Summoner in Vanilla is basically that Summoner is a better version of Wizard. Most classes in FFT aren't straight upgrades from each other. Most classes have some sort of niche which makes it appealing in comparison to other jobs. I would argue that Summoner is still a pretty incredible job, but for reasons different from the sheer power in Vanilla. In KO, Summoner is about AoE- smart AoE, at that. Whereas Wizards have more sting to their spells, they're a little more unwieldy, requiring a little more precision, but with a higher damage output with less MP/CT. Summoners however, can hit a lot of things at once with perfect accuracy while ignoring unintended targets. Further, Summoners have a very versatile skillset, even though it may not appear as such at first. AoE Regen, AoE percentile damage, AoE Death, AoE Reflect (great for Queklain), damage + Blind through Salamander, damage + Silence through Sylph... there's a lot you can do. Although Summon damage will never really top the potential Black Magic damage has, I used Summon Magic through a lot of my own test run, using elemental boosting and Magic Attack Up as well as MA gear for really high damage summons. Later on, I dropped MA Up for Short Charge and Summons were still devastating. Summons were actually buffed from previous versions of KO, where Summons were frankly crap. Further, Summons can hit a wider variety of elemental affinities than Black Magic, which can really only hit Fire/Ice/Thunder. I also think part of the challenge is that early on, Black Magic is far more cost effective, since MP healing and MP cost mitigation is rare. Later on, once you have Chakra, Ethers, Bards, etc., Summons become far easier to spam. Cyclops was changed as such to make it a viable choice for early-game Summoners. Lower MP cost, easier to use, etc., but remained non-elemental so that the elemental summons would have individual use. Summons were incredibly hard for me to balance, but give them a little love and I'm confident that you'll enjoy using them. Besides, their animations are kickass.
And yes, Boco (and all Chocobos, for that matter) is incredibly useful. He's a good introduction to how having monsters in your party can actually be beneficial and not a detriment.
Panda, you should give it a try! Your feedback would be great!
