I really enjoyed the game, but hit a difficulty spike that just totally stalled the experience for me. No fault of the game but I just couldn’t figure out if I wasn’t leveled enough or lacked the skill. I’m willing to admit my reaction times aren’t what they use to be.
I’ll give it mad points for helping make turned based combat finally click for me. It was never my bag, but this one really worked for me.
If anyone hits a wall at about the midpoint of the game, I found a really good place to grind. Right after you get Monocco, there is an area you can go to called Frozen Hearts. If you immediately go and start to explore, you’ll soon realize this is a late game area that you are massively under leveled for.
HOWEVER, the first enemy you see is a Danseuses, and if you start the battle you’ll fight 3 of them. It will take a little bit, but they only have like 3 different attack patterns, after a few tries you should be able to learn them and parry/dodge them consistently. Once you have that down, you’ll be able to beat them without getting hit and they give a MASSIVE amount of exp. Then just head over to the nearby flag, heal up, and do it again. I stayed there for about hour fighting them repeatedly and bumped everyone up by like 10 levels.
The tricky part is memorizing their attack patterns consistently, I died a lot until I got it down. But the flag is really close by, so you can just keep throwing yourself at them until you do. Don’t bother trying to fight any of the other battles in this area, all the other ones have enemies that will outheal any damage you can do.
There’s a quest danseus in the area that will allow you to practice without penalty, unfortunately it’s a bit high up in the area so getting to it without knowing how to defeat the danseuses would be pretty tricky.
This often happens to me in RPGs because I’m missing some combat mechanic or fundamental.
It’s made me want to design better optional tutorials for those games to help people discover certain strategies. Eg;
“Hey, you have many different tuning macguffins on this character, but it means their stats aren’t built to any one strength. For an example, try using 8 yellow macguffins to build them for taunting/defense so they can use their self-heal unique, and build up stun on enemies each time they’re attacked.”
Those things feel so witty to discover, but many RPGs now build up and prioritize so many systems it’s understandable people aren’t quickly attuned to them. What often gets me is thinking I’m not making the right decisions mid-combat, when my menu decisions around equipment/abilities are completely wrong.
No fault of the game but I just couldn’t figure out if I wasn’t leveled enough or lacked the skill.
Even the hardest boss in the game can be killed with one shot on normal difficulty with a correct build and the right turn order.
I say that because while learning how to parry and dodge are important, pictos and equipment can more than make up for inabilities in the middle-to-late game.
Overall, pictos are arguably the most important thing in the game.
I wound up playing the game through twice, once on normal difficulty and then again on story difficulty (I just really enjoyed the game and wanted to 100% it and had missed a couple of the only missable achievements).
Don’t feel bad playing it in a lower difficulty level, and then try to learn when to parry attacks. There are often visual and audio cues.
A lot of the difficulty when playing the game as intended (at normal difficulty) is learning the pattern of when to press the parry button. You can learn this more easily on story mode because it’s more forgiving. Counterattacks are very powerful throughout the game, and only happen if you learn how to parry.
Maelle being powerful also has a lot to do with the weapon she wields. If you didn’t beat the last Gestral arena fight with Maelle, you might want to restart the game and do that, because that weapon will carry you all the way through the regular end game (though you might need a better weapon to 100% the game).
You can beat the main story using Lune’s abilities for your main damage pretty easily. The one-two punch that I found very useful (after building around it) was using “Elemental Trick” followed by “Elemental Genesis”. With Elemental Trick, you can produce 4 stains in a single attack if you get your critical rate up. One easy way to make critical high is to use the Critical Burn picto and make sure to keep around a burn on one of the enemies to attack with Elemental Trick. Once you have the stains you need (4 critical hits, one of each element), Elemental Genesis can one-shot a lot of enemies throughout the game. It’s great because it’s a multi-hit attack and a multi-enemy attack. It works very well before you can do over 9999 damage in a single hit.
Another possible option if you’re on PC is using the mod that makes dodge/parry window bigger or smaller. I haven’t used it but I know people who have and it can really change your enjoyment of the game.
What difficulty setting were you playing on? I think Story mode post nerfs should be manageable even if you get hit a lot - at least as far as main story goes.
If you want to give it another shot, invest in HP and Defense, bring a healer and build Maelle as a tank with Egide to give yourself a lot of margins and sort of grind out encounters safely. There aren’t many DPS checks - if any.
Late game you can stack so much damage on Maelle that she one-shots everything, if you like.
Its a great game and worth trying to finish. Now as far as the optional superboss… Yeah, that’s another story.
I was shocked to learn that Maelle can one-shot that superboss as well. I would not have beat him otherwise: I spent literally weeks pounding my head against the wall, trying to beat him more conventionally.
I couldn’t beat it “fairly” either, but approaching it as a puzzle fight where you’re trying to figure out how to deal with its bullshit is also kind of fun. I ended up stunlocking it, which in itself you can do in several different ways. The game has a lot of fun things you can do with builds.
I really enjoyed using Lune as my main damage character. I did this somewhat out of necessity in my first play-through – because I didn’t beat the final Gestral tournament battle with Maelle – after discovering the power of the combination of Elemental Trick with a high critical rate and Elemental Genesis and did it from the start because I enjoyed it in my second play-through.
Lune was by far my favourite to use mechanically, the stains system just made for such fun planning of rotations. There is a lot of fun with various weapon combos too, like the Potierim support build that applies Greater Slow. I personally used her as AP and buff battery with Typhoon giving everyone max AP and refreshing greater versions of all buffs every turn. And then I used Braselim with Storm Caller and Lightning Dance to farm a tier 3 Gradient every turn.
The Genesis build is AP efficient but once you have 9 every turn it gets outdamaged by Lightning Dance (single target) and Hell (AoE). Though you wouldn’t guess so going by the astronomically poor and unclear skill descriptions.
I didn’t get Medalum either but honestly you don’t need it. The one shot builds only need it pre Cheater to start in Virtuoso, after that you can just Last Chance anyway.
I self-inflicted some pain like that for me as well.
I got close to the end of Act 2 and my friend said that the difficulty was too easy and I was breezing pass everything and to switch it to Expert. Well guess what. I didn’t level, upgrade or put my Pictos in a way to deal with it. So most of my boss fights turned from a close-win into 45 minutes of me dying a lot. Like, I’d be one-shotted so often.
I then took some time and then cashed in some Lumina for stories and then actually put some strats in and went through the skill tree. I think it was worthwhile in the end but it totally changed the experience for me.
I really enjoyed the game, but hit a difficulty spike that just totally stalled the experience for me. No fault of the game but I just couldn’t figure out if I wasn’t leveled enough or lacked the skill. I’m willing to admit my reaction times aren’t what they use to be.
I’ll give it mad points for helping make turned based combat finally click for me. It was never my bag, but this one really worked for me.
If anyone hits a wall at about the midpoint of the game, I found a really good place to grind. Right after you get Monocco, there is an area you can go to called Frozen Hearts. If you immediately go and start to explore, you’ll soon realize this is a late game area that you are massively under leveled for.
HOWEVER, the first enemy you see is a Danseuses, and if you start the battle you’ll fight 3 of them. It will take a little bit, but they only have like 3 different attack patterns, after a few tries you should be able to learn them and parry/dodge them consistently. Once you have that down, you’ll be able to beat them without getting hit and they give a MASSIVE amount of exp. Then just head over to the nearby flag, heal up, and do it again. I stayed there for about hour fighting them repeatedly and bumped everyone up by like 10 levels.
The tricky part is memorizing their attack patterns consistently, I died a lot until I got it down. But the flag is really close by, so you can just keep throwing yourself at them until you do. Don’t bother trying to fight any of the other battles in this area, all the other ones have enemies that will outheal any damage you can do.
There’s a quest danseus in the area that will allow you to practice without penalty, unfortunately it’s a bit high up in the area so getting to it without knowing how to defeat the danseuses would be pretty tricky.
This often happens to me in RPGs because I’m missing some combat mechanic or fundamental.
It’s made me want to design better optional tutorials for those games to help people discover certain strategies. Eg;
“Hey, you have many different tuning macguffins on this character, but it means their stats aren’t built to any one strength. For an example, try using 8 yellow macguffins to build them for taunting/defense so they can use their self-heal unique, and build up stun on enemies each time they’re attacked.”
Those things feel so witty to discover, but many RPGs now build up and prioritize so many systems it’s understandable people aren’t quickly attuned to them. What often gets me is thinking I’m not making the right decisions mid-combat, when my menu decisions around equipment/abilities are completely wrong.
Even the hardest boss in the game can be killed with one shot on normal difficulty with a correct build and the right turn order.
I say that because while learning how to parry and dodge are important, pictos and equipment can more than make up for inabilities in the middle-to-late game.
Overall, pictos are arguably the most important thing in the game.
I wound up playing the game through twice, once on normal difficulty and then again on story difficulty (I just really enjoyed the game and wanted to 100% it and had missed a couple of the only missable achievements).
Don’t feel bad playing it in a lower difficulty level, and then try to learn when to parry attacks. There are often visual and audio cues.
A lot of the difficulty when playing the game as intended (at normal difficulty) is learning the pattern of when to press the parry button. You can learn this more easily on story mode because it’s more forgiving. Counterattacks are very powerful throughout the game, and only happen if you learn how to parry.
Maelle being powerful also has a lot to do with the weapon she wields. If you didn’t beat the last Gestral arena fight with Maelle, you might want to restart the game and do that, because that weapon will carry you all the way through the regular end game (though you might need a better weapon to 100% the game).
You can beat the main story using Lune’s abilities for your main damage pretty easily. The one-two punch that I found very useful (after building around it) was using “Elemental Trick” followed by “Elemental Genesis”. With Elemental Trick, you can produce 4 stains in a single attack if you get your critical rate up. One easy way to make critical high is to use the Critical Burn picto and make sure to keep around a burn on one of the enemies to attack with Elemental Trick. Once you have the stains you need (4 critical hits, one of each element), Elemental Genesis can one-shot a lot of enemies throughout the game. It’s great because it’s a multi-hit attack and a multi-enemy attack. It works very well before you can do over 9999 damage in a single hit.
Another possible option if you’re on PC is using the mod that makes dodge/parry window bigger or smaller. I haven’t used it but I know people who have and it can really change your enjoyment of the game.
What difficulty setting were you playing on? I think Story mode post nerfs should be manageable even if you get hit a lot - at least as far as main story goes.
If you want to give it another shot, invest in HP and Defense, bring a healer and build Maelle as a tank with Egide to give yourself a lot of margins and sort of grind out encounters safely. There aren’t many DPS checks - if any.
Late game you can stack so much damage on Maelle that she one-shots everything, if you like.
Its a great game and worth trying to finish. Now as far as the optional superboss… Yeah, that’s another story.
I was shocked to learn that Maelle can one-shot that superboss as well. I would not have beat him otherwise: I spent literally weeks pounding my head against the wall, trying to beat him more conventionally.
I couldn’t beat it “fairly” either, but approaching it as a puzzle fight where you’re trying to figure out how to deal with its bullshit is also kind of fun. I ended up stunlocking it, which in itself you can do in several different ways. The game has a lot of fun things you can do with builds.
Or just Stendhal.
I really enjoyed using Lune as my main damage character. I did this somewhat out of necessity in my first play-through – because I didn’t beat the final Gestral tournament battle with Maelle – after discovering the power of the combination of Elemental Trick with a high critical rate and Elemental Genesis and did it from the start because I enjoyed it in my second play-through.
Lune was by far my favourite to use mechanically, the stains system just made for such fun planning of rotations. There is a lot of fun with various weapon combos too, like the Potierim support build that applies Greater Slow. I personally used her as AP and buff battery with Typhoon giving everyone max AP and refreshing greater versions of all buffs every turn. And then I used Braselim with Storm Caller and Lightning Dance to farm a tier 3 Gradient every turn.
The Genesis build is AP efficient but once you have 9 every turn it gets outdamaged by Lightning Dance (single target) and Hell (AoE). Though you wouldn’t guess so going by the astronomically poor and unclear skill descriptions.
I didn’t get Medalum either but honestly you don’t need it. The one shot builds only need it pre Cheater to start in Virtuoso, after that you can just Last Chance anyway.
I self-inflicted some pain like that for me as well.
I got close to the end of Act 2 and my friend said that the difficulty was too easy and I was breezing pass everything and to switch it to Expert. Well guess what. I didn’t level, upgrade or put my Pictos in a way to deal with it. So most of my boss fights turned from a close-win into 45 minutes of me dying a lot. Like, I’d be one-shotted so often.
I then took some time and then cashed in some Lumina for stories and then actually put some strats in and went through the skill tree. I think it was worthwhile in the end but it totally changed the experience for me.
I hit a wall at some point, the difficulty seemed to have ramped up or I was super weak.
Probably my stats and bad weapon and skill choices and I had not picked up certain items and pictos.
I left the game for a few months and picked it up again, started over and I just finished it now, about 30 minutes ago.
I’ll admit I used some build guides and it helped me along, I wanted to finally finish the game without struggling as much as I did before.