I'm convinced redditards are braindamaged and suck Nocturne's dick so hard because having to use buffs is peak strategy for them. Does the difficulty pick up from where I am? So far most of the fights I've had people hype up were easy. Hydra took me a few tries, Loup Garou needed like three, everything else goes down in two max.
I'm pretty sure my honeymoon phase is wearing out, if it didn't end outright. Random encounters are background noise now, I can spam Estoma for borderline free and completely ignore everything. In SMT4, you needed to hit an enemy with your overworld attack. And I'm pretty sure in general Estoma only worked if the encounter was lower level, so you had to fight till your level outmatched enemies in the area. Here? It's just a big "fuck off" button that completely disables encounters. If I somehow *do* end up in a fight, Trafuri is dirt cheap, so are Smoke Balls.
I'm convinced the game gives the player too much control *and* too much information. Spyglassing bosses on the first turn removes the element of discovery since you already know everything there is to know. Magatsuhi moves are beyond lame, for some reason even if you're fighting a badass sword-wielding physical attacker, their magatsuhi move just
has to be an elemental AoE for some fucking reason (Cum Hail with a Maragion, are you serious???). Oh right, the reason is that you need to be able to cheese the move with a dampener. The most threatening big dick moves are just free turns for the player.
I literally never need to look at my demon's weaknesses. If they're weak to the magatsuhi move, I give no shits, because I use dampener. If they're weak to most attacks, I use dampener anyway for extra safety, or spam Guard and it's the same, since Guard prevents weaks and criticals. I've spent 0 minutes fusing my demons specifically for a boss fight.
[EDIT: i do occasionally use an essence or two to get weakness-hitting attacks onto a demon, but that is at most. i guess just how it works with the essence fusion nowadays. still, usually id have to fuse new demons for resists/nulls, and that's just not the case here because of dampeners and guard anyway, so my point kinda stands?]
Buffs and debuffs are still king, Fairy Banquet and spamming debuffs made Lahmu a walking miserable joke.
Why are dampeners cheaper than shards? Seriously. 150 macca. Shards are, what, 300? 400?? What the fuck Fatlus. 3 dampeners is too much. Nerf that shit to 1 max.
Sorry for the rant, I just... just don't know. Why are people busting nuts over the difficulty? It's not hard. I don't feel in danger. In SMT4 at least I had to concentrate+megido the random mobs, here I just ignore them. I'm playing on Hard, I'm not braindead grinding, the only DLC I own is Return of the True Demon and I'm not even making any use of fiends at all (using a sprinkle of Daisoujou, and that's it atm, Hell Biker and Matador are kinda meh). No bullshit Cleopatra, no bullshit Artemis. Idunn is reportedly really strong, got her a bit ago, haven't used her much though. No Mitama DLC. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be playing drunk? Should I avoid doing any sidecontent to keep myself underleveled? Should I staple my balls to the wall? I even avoided getting the Knowledge of Tools miracle because I can tell it's busted and I found the game to be easy enough as it is.
I'm not good at video games. I'm not a veteran of the series by any means. Old RPGs scare my zoomer brain. I'm not doing any big brain strategies, most of my fusions are just me winging it to get a higher level demon.
Walked into the
fight yesterday by accident. He ripped a new one in my MC with a physical attack. If I boot up the game tomorrow, do minimal prep, and manage to do him second try (first serious try), I think I'm just gonna turn the game off at the spot and start Nocturne. Or SJ:R. I have both. I'll get to see what the fuss is all about.
Internet lied to me again and I'm mad. Am I doing something wrong???