Act 2 Version 2

I tried to work harder on an update, to hopefully get it out quickly. It did not go well.

Anyway, this update's goal was to mostly finalize the game's base systems, so ideally I don't have to update every single thing in the game every update.  With that being said I've widely updated every aspect of the game, again. I've struggled to write a whole changelog because I've changed such a wide variety of things that it's hard to be concise about what's different.

Scale System

Every attack now has two parts a Raw Might and a Scale Stat. The selected skill's damage is now the attacks base stat, i.e. Strength for Physical, plus the Raw Might, plus a percentage of a particular stat. Both the stat used and the percentage of that stat are listed on the attack skill. All stats have been updated to accommodate these changes.

Indirect Combat

Status Affliction moves have been updated, there is now a fifth status affliction, Curse. Curse makes all skills cost 50% more. Additionally, Poison, Bleed, Curse, and Fear all drain a stat HP and MF for each pair, along with their usual effect. Additionally, Stat change skills work differently now, the main ones (Expect more) are split into two groups and if you try to apply different versions of the same stat change type makes those stat changes weaker.

Heraldries

Heraldries are a new system that take up the final slot of a party member's equipment menu.  These give you a series of skills however, unlike Marks, there is only a single version of each Heraldry in the world. Additionally, each Heraldry can be upgraded, typically by finding a place to upgrade them in the world. Upgraded Heraldries give more and better skills and at certain levels they grant an Unleash unique to that Heraldry. Each party member has an exclusive Heraldry that gets partly upgraded through the plot, though Alexios is the only party member to only get upgrades from the story.

Additionally, I've made changes to large portions of the story. Just more consistent writing and actually putting thought into certain lore implications. As such the Act 1 Flashback has been extended, so now you can meet Lisa now.

The actual plot of the game has not extend past where it stopped last update, content ends one scene afterwards. So the problem from last time where the story just kinda... stops, immediately before it starts getting interesting is still there. But the good news is that the latter half of Act 2, or more accurately the next third to, like, 2/5ths of the Act have a very rough draft set up already. So it should be ready quicker... ideally.

That all being said, with all the plugin stuff and related things I've been dealing with, I am worried about the possibility of crashes or things looking worse overall, so feel free to mention any issues you encounter.

On an aside... how is this post get 8 views before being made published. I thought it counted my accesses, but there is no way I went here 8 times.