The Games Difficulty

[Dragonfly]

Let me start up by saying, I do not think the game is impossible, this is not an angry rant to get the game some kind of general difficulty lowering (I am playing on hard mode).

What I do believe is that the game is too punishing and the grind for resources doesn't make up for lost resources. Throughout the game, I am finding myself having to use items alot. Each enemy can take on average 8-25% of a characters health, depending on how well you block. Along with that weak enemies ake 1-2 rounds to kill while tough ones can take 3,depending on if you use TP (while there are 2-3 enemies per fight). That mean most fights will remove a good portion of your health or TP.

Now, this is lessened by town and healing stations being pretty close; most times I only have to walk a few screens to get to a healing station. The problem is that I find weaker enemies to still be annoying, I still take some health/tp loss for enemies that only give me 1 xp few berries, the kind that can be insta-killed with the badge. The grind for money doesnt work out well as even enemies that give alot of xp will not give enough berries to make up for using an inn (less so for weak enemies). The best way I've found to make money is to do the theatre quest over and over again.

I believe the problem could easily be solved if there were options to upgrade your attack (possible defense, but that might be OP). Most of the game I was waiting for some kind of blacksmith that would make it easier to defeat normal enemies and easily deal with weaker ones. There were times that i wondered around to see if i had missed them, but looking online, there doesn't seem to be anyway besides with medals that also debuff you or require status effects.

Yes, i get that if i want to have an easier time, i should remove the hard badge; the problem is that its oddly hard and grindy, even for a hard mode. Does anyone else have this problem or do you believe it is fine as it is?

TL;DR: This game seems to require you to grind alot for necessary resources, but at the same time, doesn't reward you enough to be worth it (Same level enemies don't give enough for inns and weaker enemies barely give any). I believe a ways to permanently buff attack would solve this problem.

[Edit 12/28/19]

I guess I should add this since people are still giving me tips. I 100% the game about two weeks ago, so I don't need tips anymore. Thank you to all those helped and encouraged me to beat this game, it was a great experience. If you want to post still feel free, it might help someone in the future.

[Shark3143]

I just finished hard mode today. I was completely broke for most of the game, but didn't ever need to grind for berries. Didn't feel like it was overly punishing, really enjoyed it overall. Ch 3 boss was the hardest required fight for me, since I wasn't very prepared. The Devourer was pretty brutal, too.

You can buy a permament attack and defense upgrade from the rare berry merchant in defiant root, but you gotta buy the HP and TP ones first.

I used medals to upgrade my defense and attack. I used back defense all game (I think it was somewhere in the golden hills?), got power exchange, defense exchange and front defense from the crystal berry merchant, I believe.

You can farm extremely overpowered food that trivializes the rest of the game once you unlock the termacade and can play arcade games for tangy berries. This was too easy, so I made a point of beating the final boss without using items.

[Saler]

The game gets much easier when you get the ability to stack TP recovery medals. If your strategy is good, you can get out of normal fights with full HP and TP most of the time.

[NLFW]

use the bank, I had like 5k berries by the end of the game. And run from everything that gives you less than 5 exp.

[Songbird]

My advice about difficulty: Just stack attack and use status chance up on either Vi (once she gets better ailments than poison) or Leif. You can just raise Vi's attack to insane levels so she does 40+ damage per turn and status chain (freeze/paralyze) stuff if it ever lasts one turn. I haven't actually seen any of the attacks of the last several bosses and minibosses by chapter 6. For normal battles I Hard Charge + Status Relay and then throw three paralyzing needles that do 8 damage (-2 per hit on the same target consecutively) and (I'm pretty sure) pierce defense.

For bosses/minibosses I feed Vi (with base +2 attack, -2 defense) a Spicy Fries, which poison her and raise attack (+3 attack total), have her low hp (+2 attack) in front (+1 attack) with Hard Charge passed by Status Relay (+3 attack). I then throw a boomerang that does 55 damage and pierces 1 defense if I can kill that turn, or I go for three chances to paralyze instead (while doing 33 damage). Stuff doesn't last past three turns and is generally paralyzed the entire time.

For normal encounters you can do all this while using no resources once you can set up the Hard Charge pass from a character with 2x Prayer, 2x Meditation, Strong Start and Victory Buzz.

[Cute Tea Goat]

I think the feeling of attrition relative to the Paper Mario games mostly comes from the lack of a "Star Power" gauge that fills up on its own. You can use those skills in PM to get your way through some more troublesome fights without using up your consumable resources.

[ripjaw345]

I beat this game using hard mode and I never needed to grind once. I had plenty of money, more so than I knew what to do with. I did need to use items and healing station but the price was so cheap for them that it was completely ok. The game also gets easier as you play and get more badges. My advice is use the bank if you haven't already. Do as much side quests as you can. Not only can you make some good money, but you can also get some useful badges and even some extra experience from optional fights. Also in the hive a bee will sell you his house in ant city for 150 berries. This means you can heal there for free, plus you also get a badge from it. Finally there is an optional dungeon not marked as a quest. If you beat it, you can get a chomper pet. The pet can only attack and do nothing, It also can't target airborne enemies and only attacks the first enemy in line, but enemies won't attack her and it's basically an extra 2 damage per turn

[YBG noelle]

For berries: If you haven't yet, do the Spy Cards sidequest. Once you did the entire thing there's a tournament you can enter repeatedly which is super easy as long as your deck is OK, and it nets you 150 berries for winning. It does cost 25 berries to enter which means your profit is 125 per win. Winning takes about 7 min average but it's definitely worth it.

[Cleril]

I think a valid complain is that enemy defense is never explained all that well and having Vi using a skill only to see four 0s of damage is mean-spirited. The particular types of defense enemies have seems arbitrary and there's seemingly no way to reference the level or kind of defense an enemy has at least in battle.

I'm up to the final bee factory boss and I can always get it to 4-8 hp before I die due to lack of items to recover. Guess I just need to buy a few more recovery items to win which is a bit annoying. Playing on hard mode too but I find it to be less hard mode and more "use more items" mode.

And the game should seriously be patched to have cooking be menu based and sped the hell up. Its so tedious to cook despite the game really wanting you to do it.