Alright, guess I'll respond to your rant. It feels to me like the problem is actually sort of the opposite of what you say it is - you say it takes learning by trial and error to figure out the second and third phases, but that's really more the result of thinking there's more to the fight than there is. On Anima, the Sensor text spells out Anima's entire pattern, so really you can come up with a solution the moment you see and read it, and I still think it's entirely possible to beat on a first attempt if you just engage with what you see as you go, reviving and hitting her when she's not shielding. You may not know she'll throw out two Pains, but as long as you face her with generic preparations - mainly Haste on everyone - there's no expectation of you having anything else in particular. Auto-Lifes are good of course (and I like to think that's at least somewhat possible to imagine) but even if you don't have it, it's not a deal breaker, there's nothing to randomly divine there. Regarding Seymour in phase 3, while of course you won't know exactly what it will be, I do entirely expect that you expect it to be a more powerful version of phase 1 Seymour. The Seymour fight is through and through very faithful to the original battle albeit turned up to 20, so I doubt anybody would expect it to change things up entirely. That being said, the first time you encounter the transition from Anima to Seymour final phase I do think it can very much kill you unless you overly prepare for it, it is a harsh transition. But again the moment you see it - having him use Haste as a counter (you possibly don't immediately realize it's a counter but you can infer it) and using a Penta-spell - you have the full story already right away. I rather not spoil outright what he does in phase 3 ahead of time so it will come as a surprise initially, but point remains, as far as I see it, you DO have all the information to make it through, on both Anima and final Seymour, basically on a single turn of theirs, and again Anima you can absolutely get through in one attempt, two if something goes really horribly wrong but even if you only beat her on your second attempt there's not much reason why you shouldn't be able to face phase 3 well prepared and likely capable of beating it first try. None of this stuff needs trial and error, you can come up with a solution in your head ahead of time just on how to deal with what you see, and well then it's just about keeping your cool and executing it. The one thing I get will trip you up is actually the assumption that you may NOT yet have the full story, so you try random statuses and stuff against Anima while it's futile and in reality the info you get is all the info there IS to get. I do regret Anima being immune to Scan, I'll have to see if I can do something about it still; I work with somewhat limited space when it comes to Scan texts so a bunch of enemies are left immune to Scan when they kinda shouldn't be. I will say I think people arguing the whole "figure out the one strat the mod creator had in mind" thing are generally full of crap. Both for my mod and the pbirdman mod, you'd expect that if that criticism was true then everyone would end up landing on the same strategy, but for both there's been a wide diversity in strategic approaches to basically every single fight (except the more heavily scripted puzzle bosses like Extractor, but hell even on those you'd be surprised). This Seymour fight I'd argue is largely antithetical to that even, especially phase 1. The enemies go in super prepared but have tons of weaknesses - the rest is yours to figure out. There's a lot more ways to do it than you may think, though I guess your problems aren't with phase 1 anyways. The design for phase 2 and phase 3 are basically having phase 3 be the test of needing to be set up when it hits in order to keep up and stay on the ball until you win, but phase 2 before it threatens to wipe out your preparations and leave you underprepared for it. Perhaps that's a mean fundamental design to have, but I feel like it's for one entirely faithful to what the original Seymour fight already was, and for two it's an entirely reasonable challenge to want to present within the boundaries of this game, given one of the main conceits of the mod is to challenge you on things you can be challenged in this combat system that you were never pushed to in the original game. And well I dare say it was a success on that front, by your own words you solved the fight using tools and means you never had to previously. Plus just for the record, I played through the mod twice myself, and both times my fights - all of phase 1, 2 and 3 - looked quite different from how you did them. You may have used trial and error to figure out your own way through the fight, but don't think it's the only full story there is to the fight. It just may be too difficult/demanding, and well, that's very possible. The target audience of the mod is "myself" after all (and others like me), I just wanted these kinds of challenges to exist for this game. (And no, Threaten in phase 1 is not a trap. You don't need Threaten in phase 3 at all, it's helpful of course to still have it as a card to play, but I'd argue not as much as it is in phase 1)
Alright, guess I'll respond to your rant. It feels to me like the problem is actually sort of the opposite of what you say it is - you say it takes learning by trial and error to figure out the second and third phases, but that's really more the result of thinking there's more to the fight than there is. On Anima, the Sensor text spells out Anima's entire pattern, so really you can come up with a solution the moment you see and read it, and I still think it's entirely possible to beat on a first attempt if you just engage with what you see as you go, reviving and hitting her when she's not shielding. You may not know she'll throw out two Pains, but as long as you face her with generic preparations - mainly Haste on everyone - there's no expectation of you having anything else in particular. Auto-Lifes are good of course (and I like to think that's at least somewhat possible to imagine) but even if you don't have it, it's not a deal breaker, there's nothing to randomly divine there.
Regarding Seymour in phase 3, while of course you won't know exactly what it will be, I do entirely expect that you expect it to be a more powerful version of phase 1 Seymour. The Seymour fight is through and through very faithful to the original battle albeit turned up to 20, so I doubt anybody would expect it to change things up entirely. That being said, the first time you encounter the transition from Anima to Seymour final phase I do think it can very much kill you unless you overly prepare for it, it is a harsh transition. But again the moment you see it - having him use Haste as a counter (you possibly don't immediately realize it's a counter but you can infer it) and using a Penta-spell - you have the full story already right away. I rather not spoil outright what he does in phase 3 ahead of time so it will come as a surprise initially, but point remains, as far as I see it, you DO have all the information to make it through, on both Anima and final Seymour, basically on a single turn of theirs, and again Anima you can absolutely get through in one attempt, two if something goes really horribly wrong but even if you only beat her on your second attempt there's not much reason why you shouldn't be able to face phase 3 well prepared and likely capable of beating it first try. None of this stuff needs trial and error, you can come up with a solution in your head ahead of time just on how to deal with what you see, and well then it's just about keeping your cool and executing it. The one thing I get will trip you up is actually the assumption that you may NOT yet have the full story, so you try random statuses and stuff against Anima while it's futile and in reality the info you get is all the info there IS to get. I do regret Anima being immune to Scan, I'll have to see if I can do something about it still; I work with somewhat limited space when it comes to Scan texts so a bunch of enemies are left immune to Scan when they kinda shouldn't be.
I will say I think people arguing the whole "figure out the one strat the mod creator had in mind" thing are generally full of crap. Both for my mod and the pbirdman mod, you'd expect that if that criticism was true then everyone would end up landing on the same strategy, but for both there's been a wide diversity in strategic approaches to basically every single fight (except the more heavily scripted puzzle bosses like Extractor, but hell even on those you'd be surprised). This Seymour fight I'd argue is largely antithetical to that even, especially phase 1. The enemies go in super prepared but have tons of weaknesses - the rest is yours to figure out. There's a lot more ways to do it than you may think, though I guess your problems aren't with phase 1 anyways.
The design for phase 2 and phase 3 are basically having phase 3 be the test of needing to be set up when it hits in order to keep up and stay on the ball until you win, but phase 2 before it threatens to wipe out your preparations and leave you underprepared for it. Perhaps that's a mean fundamental design to have, but I feel like it's for one entirely faithful to what the original Seymour fight already was, and for two it's an entirely reasonable challenge to want to present within the boundaries of this game, given one of the main conceits of the mod is to challenge you on things you can be challenged in this combat system that you were never pushed to in the original game. And well I dare say it was a success on that front, by your own words you solved the fight using tools and means you never had to previously. Plus just for the record, I played through the mod twice myself, and both times my fights - all of phase 1, 2 and 3 - looked quite different from how you did them. You may have used trial and error to figure out your own way through the fight, but don't think it's the only full story there is to the fight. It just may be too difficult/demanding, and well, that's very possible. The target audience of the mod is "myself" after all (and others like me), I just wanted these kinds of challenges to exist for this game.
(And no, Threaten in phase 1 is not a trap. You don't need Threaten in phase 3 at all, it's helpful of course to still have it as a card to play, but I'd argue not as much as it is in phase 1)