What am I doing wrong?

[Ultric]

Why do the fights in this game seem unbelievably unforgiving on Normal difficulty? I just took on the first lock keeper and despite me using elements it was weak to, lowering its defense, increasing my attack, I was doing 1-3 damage per hit and taking forever to deplete its down meter. I learned how to get through the things before it, I figured out how to play the game more methodically and not charge in and die, timed my dodges... what's the secret I'm missing?

[Ashley]

If you're having trouble notice their elements and leave the jail for the heals then come back with a good party that can spam the right abilities. Least from what i've noticed but i'm still only in the first jail. Getting hit by bosses is supposed to hurt.

[Ultric]

Originally posted by Ugandad Commando:

If you're having trouble notice their elements and leave the jail for the heals then come back with a good party that can spam the right abilities. Least from what i've noticed but i'm still only in the first jail. Getting hit by bosses is supposed to hurt.

Oh yeah, doing that too. I'm fine with getting punished for getting hit, I've gotten good at dodging and awareness, no worries. My issue arises when I have to keep this up for 10+ minutes on one boss because my resources are finite and my attempts to ration out the damage (due to my perplexingly small SP pool) only go so far because the boss shrugs off everything I do.

EDIT: It legitimately felt like a freakin porting bug skewed some values or something, ratcheting its defense up into the sky.

[Eyune]

Just letting you know that your not alone im scratching bosses and the only time i do significant damage is when i exploit their weakness which equals 10 times the chicken scratching damage lol.

I'm thinking they designed it this way so you really have to think about which personas you bring to tackle boss fights. I'm getting used to the difficulty but it is very surprising coming from a musuo game format where usually you just whack 2 buttons and win on normal difficulty.

As with any game if you enjoy it enough you learn and you get better.

[Homer Morisson]

You need to think about your party setup, especially their strengths and weaknesses, but for the most part, if your damage is still _that_ low, and you've checked that you've got the most up-to-date gear equipped, then:

Grind. Sadly.

[Ultric]

Originally posted by Homer Morisson:

You need to think about your party setup, especially their strengths and weaknesses, but for the most part, if your damage is still _that_ low, and you've checked that you've got the most up-to-date gear equipped, then:

Grind. Sadly.

AIght, so I don't have any regrets setting it to easy then. Unfortunate, most of the other fights well balanced, just some spikes in difficulty. I retried fights until they went from total party wipe to nearly no damage/SP cost on anyone.

I went into that fight (against something with weaknesses against Wind, Fire and Bless) with Morgana, Ann and Sophia. Consistently used abilities on it as long as I could, did tag teams, unleashed showtimes, all to watch the bar lower a few pixels. Best gear from the shop on all of my people (I did grind cash a bit) and swapped through my whole party for the dungeon to ensure they all kept up in level with Joker.

If I need to grind more than that then that's simply bad game design. Unfortunate. I was hoping there was some weird trick to the Down gauge that I was missing (in Hyrule Warriors: Calamity, parrying and doing followups is what's meant to cut through that gauge real well, whereas it barely did anything in this). Wish there were more custom difficulty settings, I'd try to make a config in between the two.

EDIT: Almost forgot, I also spent some time getting all of my personas leveled up as well so my stats wouldn't be trash. Even got a few to be accidental misfires so I'd have some extra powerful ones.

[GreenLotus14]

something to keep in mind if you aren't doing it the 3 square then triangle combo (for ps4/ps5 controller) should be 3 normal then special button will end with your persona using its type skill with weaker damage allowing you to break shields without requiring sp which gives a huge burst of damage against enemies.

[Ultric]

Originally posted by GreenLotus14:

something to keep in mind if you aren't doing it the 3 square then triangle combo (for ps4/ps5 controller) should be 3 normal then special button will end with your persona using its type skill with weaker damage allowing you to break shields without requiring sp which gives a huge burst of damage against enemies.

I appreciate all the feedback, I definitely was doing this, tried it with both Arsene and Jack O Lantern. I found whenever I don't play as Joker, the game drains his SP (no AI settings in regards to this like in the original game?). I'm pretty sure a bunch of other attacks also inflict curse (gun attacks with strong attacks, most of the strong attacks really).

As for grinding which someone else said, this game does a lot to point out what the original did right. If you needed to grind, you went to the lowest floor in mementos or the furthest part in a relatively linear level and just moved back if things were killing you too easily. Granted, I only needed to do go back up floors on my first playthrough (I got better at SP management early on because the game kinda guided me to what I should be doing), but the fact that it was setup to help make something tedious a bit simpler was appreciated. Oh, and of course, Royal's changes made grinding go from tedious to highly rewarding. Just weird that despire all of the clear gameplay decisions they inherited from the main game, they lost several of the strong ways the game taught you about itself.`

[arof]

Yeah, this game is no standard mindless Musou, you have to pull out all the usual Persona tricks, at least on bosses. Buffs/debuffs, weakness exploiting,etc. Like P5 turn based the all outs and even showtimes are not going to finish off bosses on their own, it takes some time. I was actually rather pleased after killing off bosses how much it scratched the same mental itch as planning out moves in a Persona/SMT boss. Using persona skill pause time to decide moves and the like really helped.

[Scouali]

I play on hard and I did had some trouble with the first boss since all my party members died pretty quickly into the fight.

I can tell you it become easier on the next jail, basically since you'll have more HP/SP and Persona, you'll have a lot more option to beat the boss.

Like in the Persona and SMT games, the beginning is the hardest.

[Moon Rabbit]

Never thought I'd get my ass kicked by a Silky, but damn.

[chaotic fried rice]

What helped me was really try to use elements synergy to score lots of technical hits. for example use fire to inflict burn as Ann then switch to Morgana and use wind spells you'll do way more damage because wind and fire go together.

look in the tutorials for synergy and base your party around this you don't have to stick to just what the weaknesses are this way. it ofc helps if two elements that work well together are also both weaknesses then you can just go to town.

Joker will always be able to fit with everyone but certain members compliment each other more than others.

[GIGAJACKMAN]

I struggled majority of the first dungeon too, but by the second you start to get more SP for spells, deal more damage, and more combos from Master Arts etc, you just generally get stronger and the difficulty eases a bit!

[Kira]

Make sure you are using your special attack(Y on Xbox controller) combos. Some of them have elements attached and will hit weaknesses.

[Ultric]

Some folks have mentioned the first dungeon is harder than the rest, I set it back to Normal after chapter 1 and chapter 2 has gone considerably more smoothly. Just awful balance in the beginning, go figure.

[Moon Rabbit]

That castle segment toward the end of the first dungeon is absurdly designed. Several boss fights and huge groups of enemies with no save points and no backtracking, is really annoying.