Enemies and insta-death

[Gareque]

Is it me, or does CS4 seem to have ramped up the number of enemies that just randomly kill you from a single attack with no way of avoiding it?

At the start, as expected, you're so weak that you can't cheese the combat like you can end-game and it gets kinda frustrating when a non-boss encounter just destroys your party because it insta-kills 2 people right off the bat.

Currently my irritation is aimed the Grim Blades n the Gral...

[Stormy Dawn]

Yeah. I somewhat noticed.

Not so much that the Deathblows are designed cheaper, but that the game presents you with facing off enemies when surrounded by the Higher Elements much earlier, and more frequently than in past games - which to be fair does make thematic sense, but I did feel a little cheated in a couple early battles myself early on.

Sometimes you can't do much about it if you don't have the time or opportunity to manipulate turn orders. Having random elements, as long as they aren't too pervasive, adds just the right about of luck to these battles, so overall I don't mind them at all even if I will be knee-jerkingly upset about bad luck in the heat of the moment.

[muthman]

Yeah, I felt the same way. I also found all the monsters that can put you to sleep early in the game very annoying. I could go in with a full health party and be annihilated with a well placed hypnosis bomb!

[Nater]

I've noticed this on Hard. I've also noticed that break seems to be a lot less useful since most enemies recover from it either intimidately or in one turn.

[Stormy Dawn]

Originally posted by Nater:

I've noticed this on Hard. I've also noticed that break seems to be a lot less useful since most enemies recover from it either intimidately or in one turn.

Yeah. In general it seems like enemy Speed stats are much higher in this game, especially compared to your party at least in the early game.

Enemies not only recover from Break quickly, they seem to get their turn orders quicker than you, and can fire off Artes faster than you as a result.

None of it necessarily a bad thing, but it is requiring a bit of a different strategy going into the game, especially on the harder difficulties.

[Gareque]

Originally posted by Nater:

I've noticed this on Hard. I've also noticed that break seems to be a lot less useful since most enemies recover from it either intimidately or in one turn.

Yeah, this even happens on normal. I think I've had 2 fights where break actually knocked them further down on the initiative order.

Add into it that enemy speeds seem to be inflated to a point that in at least 50-60% of the fights I've been in so far have had enemies acting multiple turns one after the other.

Hell, I had one earlier in a fight against 3 enemies, 2 of them got an attack, spell start, spell completion, then 'another' attack so essentially 8 full turns before one of my guys even got another go. Which then, obviously triggered all of my guys to be hit by the last guys full party paralysis so I could literally do nothing until my entire party was dead except watch it happen.

The combat in this is by far the cheapest I've seen yet and it doesn't feel like it's balanced in the slightest. Just hope it improves because tbh, it's spoiling the end to what I've really enjoyed as a great series so far.

Doesn't help further that in the 2 boss fights I've had so far, the bosses have fallen on a 50% hp gain immediately after getting below 10% and the delay abilities are both so pitiful in what they delay by and how expensive they cost to use, that I simply could do nothing to stop it... Hence why it's feeling excessively cheap.

[Stormy Dawn]

Originally posted by Gareque:

Yeah, this even happens on normal. I think I've had 2 fights where break actually knocked them further down on the initiative order.

Add into it that enemy speeds seem to be inflated to a point that in at least 50-60% of the fights I've been in so far have had enemies acting multiple turns one after the other.

Hell, I had one earlier in a fight against 3 enemies, 2 of them got an attack, spell start, spell completion, then 'another' attack so essentially 8 full turns before one of my guys even got another go. Which then, obviously triggered all of my guys to be hit by the last guys full party paralysis so I could literally do nothing until my entire party was dead except watch it happen.

The combat in this is by far the cheapest I've seen yet and it doesn't feel like it's balanced in the slightest. Just hope it improves because tbh, it's spoiling the end to what I've really enjoyed as a great series so far.

Doesn't help further that in the 2 boss fights I've had so far, the bosses have fallen on a 50% hp gain immediately after getting below 10% and the delay abilities are both so pitiful in what they delay by and how expensive they cost to use, that I simply could do nothing to stop it... Hence why it's feeling excessively cheap.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's cheap.

Falcom might have finally taken note of all the manipulation people were doing with AT Delays, stacking, etc... and were like "Yeah... Hard and Nightmare are supposed to be a challenge."

Besides, I imagine it will balance out eventually once you have access to better equipment and quartz to boost your own Speed and more readily inflict enemies with stronger Delays.

[StackzGaming]

Originally posted by Gareque:

Is it me, or does CS4 seem to have ramped up the number of enemies that just randomly kill you from a single attack with no way of avoiding it?

At the start, as expected, you're so weak that you can't cheese the combat like you can end-game and it gets kinda frustrating when a non-boss encounter just destroys your party because it insta-kills 2 people right off the bat.

Currently my irritation is aimed the Grim Blades n the Gral...

While I didn't personally feel it was as significantly difficult as you propose, it is more difficult than 3.

The reason is that 3 was a cakewalk and people complained. So they decided to do something about it.

I mean, at some point (and this is NOT directed at you specifically), people need to make up their minds. Because this is the same thing that happened with Bravely Default 2.

Game releases, it's either moderately easy or can be made to be = "TOO EASY REE!!!"

Developer (over)reacts and adjusts it to make it harder = "TOO HARD REEE!!!"

Make up your minds!

I would rather people stop complaining about "TOO EASY REEE" because ultimately, that only happens when you abuse game mechanics. Stop doing that.

[Gareque]

Originally posted by Tsurayu:

I wouldn't necessarily say it's cheap.

Falcom might have finally taken note of all the manipulation people were doing with AT Delays, stacking, etc... and were like "Yeah... Hard and Nightmare are supposed to be a challenge."

Besides, I imagine it will balance out eventually once you have access to better equipment and quartz to boost your own Speed and more readily inflict enemies with stronger Delays.

While I understand what you're saying about it needing to be a challenge etc... I'd like to take a second to remind you that currently, Kurt's Rain Slash does +2 delay... It costs 30.

So add to that the fact that you no longer have the vast majority of enemies slowed 'at all' by a break, means that at least early on, there are absolutely NO way to actually make use of it. And considering most people don't play on nightmare, to change it so drastically, they are basically punishing the majority to make it slightly worse for the few.

You can't reliably slow them down. You can't keep them at a broken rate for more than 1-2 attacks maximum. Enemies on the other hand 'frequently' take 2-3 turns in a row, which consequently happened to me again just now. I went from 3 broken enemies due to having the break status infliction. Every one of them came out of break status AND attacked me before I even got a turn in. That should NOT happen, yet happens to me almost every other fight.

So yes. I would say it's cheap, 100% lol.

[StackzGaming]

Originally posted by Gareque:

Originally posted by Tsurayu:

I wouldn't necessarily say it's cheap.

Falcom might have finally taken note of all the manipulation people were doing with AT Delays, stacking, etc... and were like "Yeah... Hard and Nightmare are supposed to be a challenge."

Besides, I imagine it will balance out eventually once you have access to better equipment and quartz to boost your own Speed and more readily inflict enemies with stronger Delays.

While I understand what you're saying about it needing to be a challenge etc... I'd like to take a second to remind you that currently, Kurt's Rain Slash does +2 delay... It costs 30.

So add to that the fact that you no longer have the vast majority of enemies slowed 'at all' by a break, means that at least early on, there are absolutely NO way to actually make use of it. And considering most people don't play on nightmare, to change it so drastically, they are basically punishing the majority to make it slightly worse for the few.

You can't reliably slow them down. You can't keep them at a broken rate for more than 1-2 attacks maximum. Enemies on the other hand 'frequently' take 2-3 turns in a row, which consequently happened to me again just now. I went from 3 broken enemies due to having the break status infliction. Every one of them came out of break status AND attacked me before I even got a turn in. That should NOT happen, yet happens to me almost every other fight.

So yes. I would say it's cheap, 100% lol.

Ok but...stop relying on Break and Delay. Because that's what people were abusing in 3. They "fixed" it.

Mind you, I'm not saying they're good changes. I'm saying they changed what people complained about. I wish they hadn't complained but they did. It is what it is.

[Gareque]

Originally posted by inveni_te_ipsum:

While I didn't personally feel it was as significantly difficult as you propose, it is more difficult than 3.

The reason is that 3 was a cakewalk and people complained. So they decided to do something about it.

I mean, at some point (and this is NOT directed at you specifically), people need to make up their minds. Because this is the same thing that happened with Bravely Default 2.

Game releases, it's either moderately easy or can be made to be = "TOO EASY REE!!!"

Developer (over)reacts and adjusts it to make it harder = "TOO HARD REEE!!!"

Make up your minds!

Understandable. I had absolutely no issues with the change from 2 to 3. It was a challenge to get used to the new system initially, but it never felt broken.

But as my other posts on here, this seems superficially challenging. It's another take on 'let's make it difficult by tripling its damage', except it's just "Let's make the entire break system totally pointless and let enemies attack constantly/kill the players instantly".

It doesn't make it challenging, it just makes it tedious.

As for making a decision, it's not like you can just stop playing a game after 300+ hours because the devs decide '♥♥♥♥ it, let's just crush them to stop people moaning' lol.

[DeathHydra]

The balance between early-game and late-game is definitely off. I remember struggling on a few early-game fights on Hard diff, while having a breeze on late-game (I played on PS4).

Also, I remember Break builds are quite OP in CS3, but they nerfed it hard on CS4.

[Gareque]

Yeah I can see they reduced delay drastically between 2-3 so it became about delay.

Instead of just making the systems totally useless, they'd have been better off simply removing them and working something else in instead.

[RDG]

The break system got a bit nerfed from III to IV (you could easily "break lock" forever even the hardest enemies in III), you can still do it to some extent in IV but not as consistently.

Game is still very beatable on a nightmare fresh run, did it on ps4.
Their speed stat on nightmare is monstruous and the sooner you can make act 3s the better.

[Gareque]

Originally posted by DeathHydra:

The balance between early-game and late-game is definitely off. I remember struggling on a few early-game fights on Hard diff, while having a breeze on late-game (I played on PS4).

Also, I remember Break builds are quite OP in CS3, but they nerfed it hard on CS4.

ngl, I can understand why it may have needed nerfing (although in fairness, it's a SP game. If people choose to use it then it's their choice). It was extremely powerful n 3, but I would say most of the trails games have been about finding the best way to cheese the system and run with it.

Why stop it now lol?

[Stormy Dawn]

Originally posted by Gareque:

While I understand what you're saying about it needing to be a challenge etc... I'd like to take a second to remind you that currently, Kurt's Rain Slash does +2 delay... It costs 30.

So add to that the fact that you no longer have the vast majority of enemies slowed 'at all' by a break, means that at least early on, there are absolutely NO way to actually make use of it. And considering most people don't play on nightmare, to change it so drastically, they are basically punishing the majority to make it slightly worse for the few.

You can't reliably slow them down. You can't keep them at a broken rate for more than 1-2 attacks maximum. Enemies on the other hand 'frequently' take 2-3 turns in a row, which consequently happened to me again just now. I went from 3 broken enemies due to having the break status infliction. Every one of them came out of break status AND attacked me before I even got a turn in. That should NOT happen, yet happens to me almost every other fight.

So yes. I would say it's cheap, 100% lol.

Rely on other tactics then. There are more ways to defeat enemies than preventing their attack by delaying and breaking them.

I mean I understand your feeling. I'm having to learn to adapt like everyone else, too. I was used to abusing the system as much as the next guy.

But one thing I've noticed is I've been using my Brave Orders significantly more than I ever needed - or felt compelled - to in CS3, and I consider that a good change. No longer am I sitting at near max BP and only using Rush and Burst when the opportunity presents itself, I'm feeling compelled to not sit on it anymore and take advantage of Orders to help level the playing field against not just bosses, but regular enemies, too. When I think about that, I really appreciate the sudden difficulty.