Unbalanced Second Boss Stats

[morahman7vn]

Okay, it's been a while since I've last played Everlong. I don't remember this game being easy by any means, but I don't remember the second boss in the game being so d**n over powered!
How the hell am I supposed to beat the General!? With a Level 4 Party. I've been able to beat him without any trouble in the past, in all of his forms, but in this new release, for some reason whenever he hits a party member, he does at least 50 HP of damage! Forcing Brad to take educated 3 out of four turns healing the others because the d**n flamethrower attack usually does 150 HP Damage each.
And it's not just his high offence, defense too. The only way to insure that Sammy won't die in the first five turns is to have him be in the back row; I've never had to do that with him before. I understand that's it's really early in the game, and thus I have VERY fem items. But d**n it, why should I have to revive a character every THREE TURNS!?
There weren't any enemies to grind off of, I didn't want to play in Story Mode, because I wanted to see how far I could get on my own.

So please guys, give me a few pointers on how to beat this boss. Because I am getting frustrated enough to send the author a nasty complaint about bad game design.

When the best that can be done is just 100 HP of damage per turn, ether it's the game, or it's me, I personally think it's the game, but I want to hear a second opinion.

Mo Rahman 7Vn

[morahman7vn]

Wait, never mind, I know what I needed to do now.

I now realize that I should have started a New Game after I added the v3.26 Patch.

I originally implemented the patch after my first two failed attempts.

I wonder why we still have to use a patch, can't we just get a new stable release?

Anyway, I hope this helps someone somewhere eventually.

[DJC]

You shouldn't need to start a new game after applying the patch. Looking at the patch notes, I don't think it affects the first battle against Gerovitus either. I'm confused why the battle was so difficult for you, I don't recall any serious problems with this boss before requiring difficulty adjustment.

You can Defend to halve the damage by Flamethrower to make the battle easier. Gerovitus always uses it after he defends, which will also mitigate damage he receives so it's not a good turn to attack anyway. Gerovitus does start using his more powerful attacks as his HP drops, but if you unload with your skills he'll be finished swiftly possessing only 1500 HP. Level 4 is a bit lower than average, there's knights you can fight throughout the castle prior to the battle to earn some extra EXP, but it shouldn't be necessary.

I usually wait to release a full updated version in case I made a mistake with the patch. It's been enough time, but now maybe I should look at this boss battle first. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, and sorry about the frustration.

[morahman7vn]

Well, the thing I didn't mention, was that I was playing on a computer with a six year old processor. Could that have anything to do with it? The OS is Windows XP, the CPU is clocked at 1.90 Ghz, but it's six years old and runs less smoothly than the newer computer with a 1.60 Ghz processor.

I know it sounds pretty silly considering that the System Requirements call for 200 Mhz and up but...what I also didn't mention was that I experienced some minor Slowdown (on the old computer).

I know that my old CPU's specs aren't the reason for the Unbalanced gameplay. Because it was on this very Computer that I first played Everlong on.
I'm sure, but once I buy a new CPU for it, I will be.

So yeah, it was the newer computer that I was able to defeat General Gerovitus.

And thank very much for responding!


Postscript: Speaking of a potential new release, would it be possible to render the game in 640 x 480? I mean 240p isn't bad, when I play the game on my CRT TV is does look pretty good, whether or not that's what was your original intention I can't entirely rule out.
Because that was one of the reasons why I was playing it on the (six years, only six years) old computer anyway.
But yes, getting back to the point, expanding the window does the trick, except it's natively 240p, and down scaling my (new computer's) monitors' resolution can be a bit problematic. So you can see why up-scaling the native resolution in the first place would be preferable (if possible).


And one last thing, Windows 8; my new computer didn't recognize the installer, I told it to run it anyway, and it did just that. Not that any thing really needs to be done about that, I'm just throwing that out there.

[DJC]

I know what you mean about the different playback speed, I've seen it myself on differing hardware. It's particularly obvious with long battle animations. The slow down should never happen, computers from the turn of the century should be able to run the engine, but there's something wrong with Enterbrain's code.

Unfortunately there's not much I can do about that problem or the resolution scaling. RPG Maker does not use vector graphics, which can automatically scale. All the art assets are pixel based, and when enlarged to display at higher resolution they only look worse. All graphics would have to be redrawn at a higher resolution. It does suck having an enlarged square, I use a widescreen TV myself as my computer monitor, but to my knowledge nobody ever made a resolution hack for the engine. It's also a problem because some modern video cards have difficulty running the game in full screen. If I did a new release it'd be on a different engine with HD capability, and I'd instruct the artists to use higher bit depth and pixel resolution.

I haven't used Windows 8 myself yet, so you're the first player on that operating system. Good to hear it still works. The installer was made with an old Clickteam freeware program. It probably doesn't have some digital signature that Windows 8 wants to trust it. Maybe next time I release a full version of the game I'll look if there's an updated install creator.

If you find anything else in the current version, don't hesitate to comment! I keep a running list of stuff to work on since I usually release a small patch once a year.