Collecting strands is boring and lame

[Arc]

Unclear on how to do it a lot of the time, like manually burning the hairs on glasstail. No, being able to kill it repeatedly so a magic book will magic up the knowledge on what you're supposed to do is not a fun, immersive or even plainly good solution. I'm grinding to know how to grind.

Allies don't really comment on them. Even when I took down the giants armor and pulled out the strand (presumably first time the mc has ever done that, since her starting strands are gifts), there's no commentary at all. The only time they've said anything outside of the one forced story instance was when I failed to take Glasstail's strand the first time.

Even when you finally DO know what to do and do the thing, it just tells you "Do the thing again". Literally "Go kill the monster you already killed in 100% the same way".
Its just padding the games length at the absolute most generous way to look at this.

Very easy to hurt them too much by mistake too.

[Animiste]

When you kill an Arkon or monster for the first time, Laen will provide information about it, including how to collect strands from it.

[Arc]

I said that in my post yes.
You kill them (grind 1) to learn how to properly kill them (grind 2), then get told to kill them again (grind 3) and then again (grind 4)...
The same fight 4 times
Such meaningful, varied content

[Suzaku]

You get the strand when you kill it the first time, so you really only need to harvest it twice.

And if you think fighting the same boss 3 times is a grind, boy are you going to be upset when you discover crafting good gear.

[Animiste]

I can't deny that leveling up a spell by killing a boss three or four times can feel repetitive. However, the game's gameplay is one of its strong points, and it's clearly designed to encourage you to engage with it.

To be fair, I don't see a real need to grind bosses since quests often take you back to previously visited zones—especially if you're doing side quests. If you encounter a boss, it's up to you whether to fight it or not.

Leveling up a spell doesn’t make a huge difference since you can take down everything just fine with a sword, but for some spell, it's still useful.

When it comes to equipment, you can use lower-tier gear but choose to upgrade it, which come back to the same stat to the non upgraded high-tier gear (to max it you would need a ♥♥♥♥ ton of boss ressources).

Finally, bosses aren’t really necessary to kill unless required for a quest.

[Arc]

Originally posted by Animiste:

Leveling up a spell doesn’t make a huge difference since you can take down everything just fine with a sword, but for some spell, it's still useful.

That's just another issue with the game. It doesn't actually tell you what upgrading a spell will do or has done. At least with weapons it'll give you a single screen telling you what your bonus actually does if its not in the name (but not before you crafted the thing, for some reason)
The rest of your post is just sort of agreeing with me. The system is so bad you can entirely ignore it with no issue at all.

[Savatage79]

I get some of this like level 3 ice wall, no clue what it does.. Feels the exact same as level 1. What bothers me is there are no true tangible benefits like for instance I have thrown ice at bosses feet and they still just bust right thru, or like flying enemies they aren't frozen to the ground, they just stomp the ground anyways. Its like why put stuff like this when it doesn't even really work.

Im gonna have the platinum soon, but there are just flaws that irritate me to no end.

Same with bosses flinging you off even while "holding", that drives me nuts and then half the time I'm fighting the camera or when I'm tryin to hit a point on a boss and the crawling is so wonky I'm over it and hitting the wrong spot but then the window to do so closes and the boss gotta go thru it's whole schpeal again while I wait for the window to open again.

It's a good game but man it can be annoying af. But like I said I like it I just think there's some really annoying stuff in it

[Rando Calrissian]

That is the demographic they are targeting though.

[Cahalith]

Lots of things to criticise about Eternal Strands, but this must be the first time someone has complained that there's not enough talking in the game It's been too long for me to remember the very first boss I've harvested, but I do remember Dahm commenting on at least some new strands I got.

Gameplay-wise, like Suzaku has pointed out, you only need to defeat any given boss three times in total to get the corresponding spell and fully upgrade it. And it's entirely up to you whether you want to upgrade all of them or just a few you use regularly.

EDIT:

Originally posted by Suzaku:

And if you think fighting the same boss 3 times is a grind, boy are you going to be upset when you discover crafting good gear.

Not sure whether you've already finished the game, but I think it's important to point this out, since it'll save the player a lot of grinding: Once you've progressed far enough into the main plot and upgraded your camp to level 5, you actually get the option of buying boss materials in exchange for camp supplies. If I had known that when I started the game, I still would've grabbed any high-level materials I could find, but I definitely wouldn't have done as much boss grinding as I did.

[Sulik2]

Wait till you get to the last three big bosses. They get more complicated and do way more damage. They are kicking my ass.