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Hello there, I've been playing this hack for a few days now and I wanted to throw in my two cents. Registered just to do so in fact lol so that's a pretty good sign I'd say.
If I'm being brutally honest, I wouldn't normally touch A1 with a ten foot pole, but I'm enjoying myself with this mod so far. I find myself greatly enjoying the fact that enemies can actually be somewhat threatening so far, and enemy scaling is a must in my book as far as rebalance mods go. Also, I practically shed a tear of joy when I saw then enemy actually revive one another haha. Additionally, I like the reduced AP costs on lower end skills, to help get the ball rolling a bit faster. To that end, however, I would like to suggest a few other things that may help keep up the pacing a bit. First and foremost I should say that I'm still somewhat in the beginning of the game; I'm only really now starting to unlock more advanced classes to give you an idea. If "keep playing" is the appropriate answer to any of my suggestions that's cool :p
Same goes for anything that simply isn't possible with the available modding tools.
-The first thing that stands out is that at this point, it feels like tanks take way too many hits. While I do think they should be pretty beefy, I think it may be a bit much. I would prefer if they took 5-6 or maybe even 4-5 hits (with dedicated attackers, of course) instead of 7-8 to down. Maybe this won't be as troublesome later on with better skills/equips, but right now it feels like it drags a bit much for my tastes. For example, the soldiers and warriors in one of the first clan battles (Clan Marble? I think that's the one) come to mind. I would almost go as far as to say that everyone feels too beefy by default. To that end, I would probably suggest a reduction in base HP/growth. I'm not overly familiar with the formulas in this game, but I will say that it's not particularly fun to chip away at ~180 HP of health 20-30 damage at a time. It wouldn't be as bad, but most of these guys have a way of clearing status on themselves while simultaneously healing so poison doesn't really help shave off time, and disabling status effects only put off the inevitable fact that you still need to deal all that damage. I also feel that a change like this would make players play more carefully with their mages/squishies, as right now I don't feel all that threatened by having them in range of multiple enemies at a time, if that makes sense. This is a bit tangential and possibly misinformed, but if the AI is anything like PSX FFT then perhaps less health or more damage would help prevent the AI from doing as many silly things and make the enemy more threatening, since again, if it's like PSX FFT then the AI absolutely loves to knock out units and get big damage.
-Status is insanely good. The Bard is the huge offender, and it screams "OP" to me, at least in context of the beginning of the game. MP free 4 Range sleep with 50-70% accuracy is way too good. If I may make a suggestion, Sing skills most definitely need an MP cost. Either that, or maybe move Lullaby to after the first shop upgrade? I've been able to pretty well trivialize what otherwise seem like well thought out maps just by spamming that one move. Sleep is pretty much like a temporary KO, since that unit is essentially removed from the fight for the duration. It's almost certainly always enough time to gain the upper hand, at the very least, and can be used indefinitely if I want.
-In fact, Fencer Skills need MP cost too, there's never a reason not to go for Swarmstrike, for example, since it deals 100% damage and poisons. Arts of War is probably fine as MP free, since the skills are more situational. On the whole though I think it wouldn't hurt to have small MP costs even for physical jobs, just to encourage you to strategize on when you should be busting out that special move, or if you should be trying to conserve MP to take down a particularly annoying enemy more easily.
-Viera are still insanely fast, and relatively good at everything. I know this is a playstyle thing, but I will always value speed above all else unless I'm given significant incentive not to. The extra turns will almost always make up for any kind of slight increase in defensive or offensive capabilities, since even if they don't deal as much damage as the strongest attacker, or aren't as good at magic, they can still do it twice in the same amount of time. I'm trying so hard to raise up a Bangaa, for example, but he's sitting about 2 levels lower having been deployed in more maps since everything is dead/dying by the time he really gets into the action. Also, he doesn't feel that much more durable or strong to compensate, since almost everyone takes at least 4-5 hits anyways, which is more than enough time to react to just about any situation thus far. I get that from a lore standpoint it doesn't make sense for them to be anything but fast, so maybe have them be a touch more frail on the whole? And that's coming from someone who loves using Viera in Advance/A2 haha.
-The AI does really funny things sometimes. I know the AI here won't be as good as the PSX FFT because of the limitations of the system, but I had the Antlions in White Flowers use Lv. 3 Def-Less on themselves just a few minutes ago. I know that advanced AI script rewrites probably aren't on the table, but I can't say I remember them ever deliberately debuffing themselves in vanilla.
-There are some minor text inconsistencies that I'm sure you're aware of so I won't nitpick those :p
Don't get the wrong impression though, I really like the changes I'm seeing and it's certainly more fun than vanilla ever was! The fact that I'm even talking about strategies other than "attack everything" should be a testament to that. In fact. I'm probably going to keep playing after posting this lol. Maybe I'll even change my mind about some of these as I get further, but I just wanted to put my own observations out there. Overall though, good stuff man.
If I'm being brutally honest, I wouldn't normally touch A1 with a ten foot pole, but I'm enjoying myself with this mod so far. I find myself greatly enjoying the fact that enemies can actually be somewhat threatening so far, and enemy scaling is a must in my book as far as rebalance mods go. Also, I practically shed a tear of joy when I saw then enemy actually revive one another haha. Additionally, I like the reduced AP costs on lower end skills, to help get the ball rolling a bit faster. To that end, however, I would like to suggest a few other things that may help keep up the pacing a bit. First and foremost I should say that I'm still somewhat in the beginning of the game; I'm only really now starting to unlock more advanced classes to give you an idea. If "keep playing" is the appropriate answer to any of my suggestions that's cool :p
Same goes for anything that simply isn't possible with the available modding tools.
-The first thing that stands out is that at this point, it feels like tanks take way too many hits. While I do think they should be pretty beefy, I think it may be a bit much. I would prefer if they took 5-6 or maybe even 4-5 hits (with dedicated attackers, of course) instead of 7-8 to down. Maybe this won't be as troublesome later on with better skills/equips, but right now it feels like it drags a bit much for my tastes. For example, the soldiers and warriors in one of the first clan battles (Clan Marble? I think that's the one) come to mind. I would almost go as far as to say that everyone feels too beefy by default. To that end, I would probably suggest a reduction in base HP/growth. I'm not overly familiar with the formulas in this game, but I will say that it's not particularly fun to chip away at ~180 HP of health 20-30 damage at a time. It wouldn't be as bad, but most of these guys have a way of clearing status on themselves while simultaneously healing so poison doesn't really help shave off time, and disabling status effects only put off the inevitable fact that you still need to deal all that damage. I also feel that a change like this would make players play more carefully with their mages/squishies, as right now I don't feel all that threatened by having them in range of multiple enemies at a time, if that makes sense. This is a bit tangential and possibly misinformed, but if the AI is anything like PSX FFT then perhaps less health or more damage would help prevent the AI from doing as many silly things and make the enemy more threatening, since again, if it's like PSX FFT then the AI absolutely loves to knock out units and get big damage.
-Status is insanely good. The Bard is the huge offender, and it screams "OP" to me, at least in context of the beginning of the game. MP free 4 Range sleep with 50-70% accuracy is way too good. If I may make a suggestion, Sing skills most definitely need an MP cost. Either that, or maybe move Lullaby to after the first shop upgrade? I've been able to pretty well trivialize what otherwise seem like well thought out maps just by spamming that one move. Sleep is pretty much like a temporary KO, since that unit is essentially removed from the fight for the duration. It's almost certainly always enough time to gain the upper hand, at the very least, and can be used indefinitely if I want.
-In fact, Fencer Skills need MP cost too, there's never a reason not to go for Swarmstrike, for example, since it deals 100% damage and poisons. Arts of War is probably fine as MP free, since the skills are more situational. On the whole though I think it wouldn't hurt to have small MP costs even for physical jobs, just to encourage you to strategize on when you should be busting out that special move, or if you should be trying to conserve MP to take down a particularly annoying enemy more easily.
-Viera are still insanely fast, and relatively good at everything. I know this is a playstyle thing, but I will always value speed above all else unless I'm given significant incentive not to. The extra turns will almost always make up for any kind of slight increase in defensive or offensive capabilities, since even if they don't deal as much damage as the strongest attacker, or aren't as good at magic, they can still do it twice in the same amount of time. I'm trying so hard to raise up a Bangaa, for example, but he's sitting about 2 levels lower having been deployed in more maps since everything is dead/dying by the time he really gets into the action. Also, he doesn't feel that much more durable or strong to compensate, since almost everyone takes at least 4-5 hits anyways, which is more than enough time to react to just about any situation thus far. I get that from a lore standpoint it doesn't make sense for them to be anything but fast, so maybe have them be a touch more frail on the whole? And that's coming from someone who loves using Viera in Advance/A2 haha.
-The AI does really funny things sometimes. I know the AI here won't be as good as the PSX FFT because of the limitations of the system, but I had the Antlions in White Flowers use Lv. 3 Def-Less on themselves just a few minutes ago. I know that advanced AI script rewrites probably aren't on the table, but I can't say I remember them ever deliberately debuffing themselves in vanilla.
-There are some minor text inconsistencies that I'm sure you're aware of so I won't nitpick those :p
Don't get the wrong impression though, I really like the changes I'm seeing and it's certainly more fun than vanilla ever was! The fact that I'm even talking about strategies other than "attack everything" should be a testament to that. In fact. I'm probably going to keep playing after posting this lol. Maybe I'll even change my mind about some of these as I get further, but I just wanted to put my own observations out there. Overall though, good stuff man.