#and that mod that alters the racial abilities to make them a bit more interesting and stuff

[hal-o-ween]

Using the alternate start mod in skyrim is very nice from an rp perspective and a replay variety perspective, but it can also be really funny depending on what quests it ends up starting you near. My first completed quest line this file is Blood on the Ice. Before even hearing anything about dragons or an attack on Helgen, I have solved a months long murder case.

[thelongestdamnreviews]

Tactics Ogre: One Vision (mod)

As far as I know, One Vision is the only mod for the PSP version of Tactics Ogre.  The intent behind the mod was to balance things, make the OP things less so, change things around, make the game different but not change it at its core.  This review covers v0.91a, the latest version available when I started playing again.  There's now a v0.92 available as of August 15 2018, so that's worth consideration.  Download is available here. 

The first biggest change is that characters in battle no longer get 0.1 added to all stats when the class they're in levels up.  Instead, classes confer a percentage of given stats at each level regardless of their taking the field or not.  So if you have a character class change to a Lv20 Dragoon, they would have comparable stats to one who was a Dragoon from level one. 

A screenshot of the patchnotes, but this is still a good guide to follow.

Hired generics also are set to randomly be set under four different base stat distributions, for frontline fighters with lots of STR and VIT, archers with lots of DEX and AGI, mages with lots of INT and MND, and all-rounders.  You have to look at the blue bars on the hiring screen to tell what archetype they fit into, and they change each time you enter the screen too. 

Magic changed substantially too.  You're no longer able to use grimoires during battle, so you can't have your Warrior throw out Exorcisms when your Cleric is busy.  If you want magic, you actually need to field people that naturally use it instead of stocking up on one-shot spells.  Instill spells are now learnable Skills that cost TP and quite often I'd get an Instill off after moving and attacking someone instead of sacrificing my attack to power up.  Elemental magic now inflicts Averse of the opposite element so it's possible to set up elemental volleyball combos with two mages.  Reagents are no longer used and use MP/TP/sometimes HP to fuel them instead, though the buffing Ninjitsu still requires them plus a pittance of TP. 

Healing got buffed.  It now scales slightly with MND but it also heals a percentage of the target's maxHP as a secondary effect, but this won't happen when using heals to hurt the undead.  This makes enemy Clerics straight goddamned bats because they can and will undo a lot of the damage you're dealing to the enemy leader and several fights field one or two in the very back.  Enemies still have a ton of HP so enemy healers are priority one...or you can trick their AI and beat the crap out of another enemy in range so they heal that one instead.  I seriously exploited this several times since rushing Hawkmen to deal with them was potentially fatal for my guys.  Knights lost the ability to heal too so thankfully all of the enemy leader Knights won't tank and heal all the hurt you'll bring.

Oh, and resurrect magic no longer exists as far as I found.  You can save someone from death with two new items, the Lifeline Gem that Shiftstones them from the field (but never to return), or the Lifeline Gem that revives the ally and restores their HP, but removes the user instead so you're still permanently down one ally for that fight. 

Magic availability got shuffled around too.  Wizards and Spellblades get access to missile spells, but Warlocks can only use indirect magic.  Draconic Magic now uses the caster's weapon power in the damage formula and I often had it dealing the most damage between plain elemental magic and using the weapon normally. 

Items got the biggest change.  Gear is now normalized and every class of weapon or armor now does the same thing with higher tiers having better stats.  So 2H Swords all deal damage with a chance to inflict Stagger, and they give a bonus to AGIL, so late-game ones would do more damage and give more bonus stats--weight and RT stay consistent.  Armor is split between cloth/caster, light, and heavy.  Light armors boost evasion, while heavy armors boost HP and VIT for soaking up damage.  Ranged weapons have much higher RT values across the board, to make up for their users not moving as often as your frontliners.  

The Cutlass, Khora, and Damasc Sword are all the same weapon, but their stats are different.  I didn’t mess with crafted weapons but I imagine they break the ‘same thing, better stats’ pattern.  

Crafting got overhauled, so instead of getting +1 gear that's clearly better than the original, you get sidegrades.  2H Sword sidegrades are heavier and more damaging, but come with an AGIL penalty, Hammers have a high change to knock a target back, Cudgels trade caster bonuses for bonuses fighters would enjoy, Fists damage the target's MP as well as HP, and so on.  Armor is a bit different, such as light armor getting a slightly heavier and more protective version to heavy armor getting even heavier and tanky.  Some caster armor is different, like the standard Wizard Hat's sidegrade having a sharp RES penalty but innate Absorb MP.  Crafting also doesn't require anywhere near the dumb number of steps like the original game--Wootz Steel for example can be done in one step and crafting is intended to be 100% successful (but it wasn’t in the early chapters for me, so possibly a bug) too. 

Purified Ore isn’t very cheap, but it beats repetitive stress injury. 

And of course Skills got changed around quite a bit.  Fortify, Strengthen, and the other +stat skills are entirely gone (though enemies currently have dummied-out versions applied), Instills are skills as said above, skills that level up by use do so much faster now (I got Steal up to 2 before the end of the game, even), racial skills are now changed around so you can't stick Anatomy on everyone now (so demihumans have a use for your team), and activateable skills were either changed in function or swapped around between classes.  Some skills like Bash or Counterhit or Field Alchemy had entire tiers removed, so Bash/Counter start at 50% and Field Alchemy I grants you use of most items instead of slowly unlocking them through the four tiers.  Status Effect resist skills are gone and -Proofs unlock much earlier, and they allow you to cast a 'free' single-target cleanse against that type too.  You'll generally have more SP than normal since you're not dumping them into +stat skills. 

Finishers were balanced and Brimstone Hail is no longer the be-all end-all it was in the original.  Each one inflicts a status effect or hits twice, and accuracy or damage is determined by current TP. 

And there's a bunch of other small mechanical changes like changes to RT, cost, range, area of effect, and so on.  Many things have new names now too. 

Some character sprites were changed.  Catiua now wears blue pants, Vyce has a red coat on Chaos/Neutral, Folcurt has a new sprite, Sara and Donalto have different portraits and have permanent sprites like unique characters, Tamuz was made into an interesting hybrid Hawkman that has access to Orc classes and he ended up being a pivotal part of my team as a Juggernaut.  Templar Knights were given distinctive colors so you could see at a glance what they were capable of--red Templars were either Wizards or Warlocks so could cast magic, green were Archers or Fusiliers, so they could snipe you, blue with a black collar was Cleric so kill them first, etc.  Given how many you have to go through in the last part of the game, having this kind of information is extremely helpful so you don't need to keep checking all of the identical mooks to see who's dangerous and who is easy pickings. 

Please brain enemies with your giant hammer, flying heavy armor man.  He can get Battering Ram to ignore Rampart Aura, but flying units kinda do that already. 

I think the difficulty as a whole was increased somewhat, mostly at the start when you have terrible gear and skills.  For example, the very first real battle has Canopus join you as a guest...and he died my first time in that fight.  Uh.  Canopus, the gamebreaker, died in an easy fight.  I wound up making Denam a Cleric and fielded a second one and I still had quite a few incaps.  No deaths, but I had to use the Chariot more than a few times because things went south fast.  The Chapter 2 Chaos fight against Vyce 1v1 wasn't bad with Cleric Denam, mostly because I used whatever to inflict Falsestrike and gave myself Truestrike, so I could whittle him down.  The Chapter 3 Neutral fight to save Cerya was made easier by her being given armor and leggings, but I had more trouble with actually killing Oz than keeping her alive (since you can use Lifeline Gems to ensure your guest lives).  That was one of the instances where I had to grind. 

I don't really have anything negative to say about the mod.  I had to grind a bit and that was off-putting, but I think that was what killed my interest in the original game.  The changelog is set up logically, but there's no rolling "this is everything that's different as of this moment" sort of list, so you kinda have to read from the bottom-up to get an idea of how many changes there are.  And there are a lot.  The PDF changelog is 67 pages long and 65 of them are patch notes, though not all of them are full pages.  Still, there's been a lot of work done on this mod and it really shows.  And it's not even done.  It is kinda annoying to have to actively overwrite your own memory of "oh, well X is different than what I read a few minutes ago" while you read, though. 

This isn’t a change that the mod made (as far as I know there’s no text alterations) but this is something that happened while I was going through a second route and I never knew this was possible. 

The changes to gear kind of makes new tiers unlocking less exciting, not that they really were much in the original.  Every standard upgrade does more than the prior one, but I don't really think it's a negative.  The author has also tried to use the crafting system to give direct upgrades to some items that have big gaps between levels so that does help to keep things feeling consistent.  I felt the light helmets gap between Circlet and Damasc Helm was pretty wide but that's something that can be addressed later.  At least the system is otherwise pretty consistent instead of having one item increasing one set of stats and the next iteration increases something else. 

One Vision is definitely worth a look if you're kind of tired of standard Tactics Ogre.  I think it does a fine job of cutting off the chaff and streamlining things, but you should take some time to look over the extensive changelogs so you're not going to get your ass handed to you when the tried-and-true tricks of old cease to work.  I'd suggest downloading a save that has classes maxed and so on so you can get a preview of all of the differences, if spoilers are no problem for you. 

I honestly feel like trying a for-fun run where Denam only has monster allies for some reason now... 

Edit:  Hi, I’m an idiot and I guess I thought it was the same name as the Deus Ex mod, but nope!  I fixed the name here almost a month after the fact.