I haven't attempted to use any other mods for FF7, so no. Sorry.

The only mod you absolutely need, in my opinion, is this one:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=179295659

What. Why.

I understand what you're saying, but Cactuars in general aren't meant for late-game, except Yomi, where Cactuar is pretty great for non-Stagger strategies, but the thought going in to Giant Cactuar's skill setup was mostly to complete the circle of the patterns that Cactuars were making, while buffing HP and attack power to match the growth. It's like with the MED Cactuars, if you were going to use one endgame, would anyone really use Cactuarina or Cactrot? Cactuarama is clearly the best. But that doesn't mean that Cactuarina or Cactrot aren't also useful in their own way, just as a different way to play. Think of them as sidegrades more than upgrades and I think you'll enjoy them more. You don't necessarily need the best of the best in your group at all times. Just look at Microchu.

Caius is pretty ridiculous, there's no disputing that. But that's kind of the point. It is possible that Krisan might have gone all out, but it was his first character, and why not enter the scene with a bang? I don't know if you were around when all this started, but Caius originally started out a lot more basic and unrefined than his current state. A lot of love and care went into a couple of months of tweaking and improving him to make him about as perfect as he possibly could be, becaues he's Caius and he's totally deserving of everything we've given him. Caius also is serving as a RAV/SYN/SAB hybrid, with his subskills. As a pure RAV, Lightning, Cloudburst, Swampmonk, Valfodr, or Blue Chocobo could be considered just as well, for a few examples. Less flashy, but purer RAV and have their own perks.

I'm actually surprised to hear someone be positive about Vanille. We were kinda bummed at her release as she was widely met with a "meh" response. I really liked her a lot, and there really was no other job than SAB that would have worked for her if she was going to have Death. And you've no idea how much testing went into Death, because, if you didn't realize, nothing in XIII-2 actually has that status effect, except for the Doom counter that very few things actually use on you. And it's not even on the bestiary entries as something that can be resisted, because you can't normally wield it. It... doesn't work the same way that it did in the first game, to put it lightly.

But really, with the next update, I think you'll be pleased.

Originally posted by Enfo:

Are any of the modded monsters going to exceed the power of the current ones? Like, is Giant Cactuar going to be a better Cactuar, or Caius an insane Rav?

EDIT: Alright, Vanille and Caius are strong, but the rest of the monsters are pretty mediocre, and not really worth leveling over their counterparts.

You have to take into consideration availability as well as balance and lore implications with respects to power levels. For example, Giant Cactuar wasn't meant to completely blow normal Cactuar out of the water or anything. From a design perspective, he's filling the gap that was left in the Cactuars... between Cactuar, Cactuaroni, and Metallicactuar, each of those were representing a certain facet of buff, but they left an incomplete coverage which Giant Cactuar steps in to bring balance to. His attack power is slightly higher than normal Cactuar, representing that Giant Cactuar does get a bit more powerful when he grows. But it was mostly a personal gripe that I had that Giant Cactuar wasn't recruitable because... reasons, I guess, and there wasn't much incentive to fight him, aside from the Monster Professor fragment. But let's just say that we're not quite through with Cactuars, not yet. And it's not because I just love the little buggers to death or anything, Krisan has a personal gripe that's gonna be addressed as well.

Azure Behemoth and Nightblade Puma are available as soon as you get to the Coliseum for the first time, so they can't be endgame strong or anything. They're still pretty unique, though, and that's the theme that Krisan tends to go for. Balance, but still with something that sets it apart to make it stand out. Stemming off Jihl's Saboteurness, Azure Behemoth uniquely gains the Resilience+60% perk. And while the Azure Behemoth you fight has more of a COM role, standing on its hind legs, the one you recruit is on all fours, assuming a more defensive position, so it's a SEN. An alternate take on the original idea, really. There's just so many COMs all over the place anyway, we didn't really need another COM. And then Nightblade Puma was coded in-game as a SYN, but I personally found that boring, because the other two robodogs were already SYNs, so instead of a straight-up SYN, I suggested to make it a COM that is able to steal all the buffs, so it still can perform as a SYN while being more offensive. And then Krisan took the design into consideration with all the sharp bits and decided it should have bleed-like tendencies with its attacks, which also plays at Jihl's Saboteur role in inflicting and feeding off of Wound.

As far as Phosphoric Ooze is concerned... we didn't touch him. He's exactly as Square designed, because unlike the others, he was already fully set up and ready to go. We didn't have to come up with a build, because he already had one. It's a mystery why he wasn't in the game to begin with. The FF Wiki (wrongly) supposes that he's not in-game because he has Auto-Haste at level 1, and Haste kind of being nerfed for XIII-2, they decided he'd be imbalanced. But, as you can see, this is not the case. We didn't take away his Auto-Haste, he just never had it to begin with. There's another dummied-out enemy, Glyptodon, which the FF Wiki also cites as having Auto-Haste, and he doesn't. He also has a fully developed and ready-to-go build, but it isn't exactly clear where he should be placed. We only really added Phosphoric Ooze back in because 1) he's featured in a paradox ending and unobtainable and that's annoying and B) look at him, he's just really cool, from a design perspective.

In conclusion, there may well be (there will be) more monsters that are powerful, best in class type, but they won't be available until endgame or near-endgame, for balance, and they will make sense why they are that powerful aside from just because. Or if not raw power, they will serve a unique purpose that will make playing the game fun. That's what we're after, fun.

I don't have the Ghostbusters. Only the Cactuar Nation.

I kinda like the way that looks without the red and adding the grey, but I do like the masks, so how about a full-circle where you've got the color swap and leave the masks on? That'd be cool.

Is there a reason that you would want to? The music has been restored to its original form.

Starting off, you don't want to run any of this as administrator. It wasn't designed that way, and if you do, it doesn't work properly, because it doesn't run from the directory you're in, but C:\Windows\system32.

From your first image, it appears that you don't have the files in the same folder as the patch files. They can't be in a folder in that folder, the bin files themselves have to be in the same location as the patching bat file.

Well, I'm certainly happy to hear that. Imagine the crushing of hopes and dreams if everything grinded to a halt due to none of us being able to run the game anymore after tomorrow.

Though Microsoft has promised that it's a seamless transition and that everything will still work just like it did in Windows 7/8, I always take whatever it is that they say with a grain of salt. I do know a few people who have been on Technical Preview of Windows 10, though, and haven't heard anything negative, so I've been very optimistic about this one. They're even giving it away for free! Which is crazy for them.

As an aside, must you use Beachwear? It's hands-down the silliest outfit to me.