Why is it like that?

[bogdanski]

So the Shido-Boss fight made me loose all of the fun i had with the game so far.

Whats the point of establishing a system with weaknesses, special combination of abilities and status aberration if youre going to scrap everything and ignore all that exists for the bossfight??

I dont understand becouse I made pretty cool combinations and set ups for my team which in the end are completely worthless and have either no effect or no impact on the game becouse the bosses are immune towards everything anyway.

Is cant be only me, right?

[Bankai9212]

? Outside of madaramas second phase gimmick no boss has a weakness the player can exploit. Main reason is that it’s a form of challenge if all bosses had a weakness they would be a joke to beat.

[pixet]

These are mechanics that can be easily abused against bosses and throw out the balance.

There's still the rest (vast majority) of the game that allows you to do whatever you want with them.

[bogdanski]

Originally posted by Bankai9212:

? Outside of madaramas second phase gimmick no boss has a weakness the player can exploit. Main reason is that it’s a form of challenge if all bosses had a weakness they would be a joke to beat.

Well,bow about balance a boss that all game rules still can apply yet the boss is challenging anyway?

I remember playing Grandia 2 (A game i absolutely idolize) in which constantly all game rules applied to everybody yet no boss was a joke.

This feels so cheap. I am still a victim to everything but the bosses just "nah idc mate"...There are other (Better) ways than completely screwing over your own gamesystem....

[bogdanski]

Originally posted by pixet:

These are mechanics that can be easily abused against bosses and throw out the balance.

There's still the rest (vast majority) of the game that allows you to do whatever you want with them.

Either game rules apply or dont. Why spent hours and hours on understanding a gamesystem when it doesnt matter in the end anyway.

How about -again- balance a boss that still everything applies without him being a joke. This feels just cheap for something that felt excellent so far.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by bogdanski:

Originally posted by pixet:

These are mechanics that can be easily abused against bosses and throw out the balance.

There's still the rest (vast majority) of the game that allows you to do whatever you want with them.

Either game rules apply or dont. Why spent hours and hours on understanding a gamesystem when it doesnt matter in the end anyway.

How about -again- balance a boss that still everything applies without him being a joke. This feels just cheap for something that felt excellent so far.

Except they do matter, you are focused on one aspect of combat.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by bogdanski:

Originally posted by Bankai9212:

? Outside of madaramas second phase gimmick no boss has a weakness the player can exploit. Main reason is that it’s a form of challenge if all bosses had a weakness they would be a joke to beat.

Well,bow about balance a boss that all game rules still can apply yet the boss is challenging anyway?

I remember playing Grandia 2 (A game i absolutely idolize) in which constantly all game rules applied to everybody yet no boss was a joke.

This feels so cheap. I am still a victim to everything but the bosses just "nah idc mate"...There are other (Better) ways than completely screwing over your own gamesystem....

Outside of maybe one optional fight and last boss, there is no way to balance it. The smart player with a full party could easily get a ton of free turns. Also grandias combat system isn’t the same as this.

[bogdanski]

Originally posted by Bankai9212:

Originally posted by bogdanski:

Well,bow about balance a boss that all game rules still can apply yet the boss is challenging anyway?

I remember playing Grandia 2 (A game i absolutely idolize) in which constantly all game rules applied to everybody yet no boss was a joke.

This feels so cheap. I am still a victim to everything but the bosses just "nah idc mate"...There are other (Better) ways than completely screwing over your own gamesystem....

Outside of maybe one optional fight and last boss, there is no way to balance it. The smart player with a full party could easily get a ton of free turns. Also grandias combat system isn’t the same as this.

Thank for mentioning that the combat system of these completely different games isnt the same. I wouldnt have noticed.

What Grandia did was instead of having the Bossfight being a weird 1v4 with logarythmic damage numbers seceeding, they made it that weaknesses are open or laid bare in certain aspects or targets. So rules applied to everyone and the combat was balanced trough the multiplicity of factors.

Ultimately is to say: The combat system in this game is....bad? Becouse evidently, it ran intself into a wall and at some point had to abandon its own gamerules.

[Arifufu]

It's no surprise most action-based / turn-based RPG games will have bosses that will immune to everything except player damage them with charged physical or focused magical attack, so u have like 3 options:

1. Velvet Room Challenge Battle exists for a reason: u can inflict any ailments as many times as u wish there!

2. Mementos at Qimranut against 4 Slimes or a Pixie, a Bicorn and a disaster Jack-o-Lantern, other good place in Mementos is Chemdah against 4 Koppa Tengu (one of them might a disaster one) and an Ame-no-Uzume to test out your best technical damage

3. Some bosses' pawns might susceptible to certain ailment, in 3rd palace the pawns susceptible to shock iirc, but the 3rd palace ruler immune to any ailments

Ailment hunter and Hollow jester shine against 3-5 enemies while Universal Law shines against 1-2 enemies, i don't count skillful technique because increase 25% technical damage is totally useless, ailment hunter against 1 enemy also increase damage by 25%

[bogdanski]

Originally posted by Arifufu:

It's no surprise most action-based / turn-based RPG games will have bosses that will immune to everything except player damage them with charged physical or focused magical attack, so u have like 3 options:

1. Velvet Room Challenge Battle exists for a reason: u can inflict any ailments as many times as u wish there!

2. Mementos at Qimranut against 4 Slimes or a Pixie, a Bicorn and a disaster Jack-o-Lantern, other good place in Mementos is Chemdah against 4 Koppa Tengu (one of them might a disaster one) and an Ame-no-Uzume to test out your best technical damage

3. Some bosses' pawns might susceptible to certain ailment, in 3rd palace the pawns susceptible to shock iirc, but the 3rd palace ruler immune to any ailments

Ailment hunter and Hollow jester shine against 3-5 enemies while Universal Law shines against 1-2 enemies, i don't count skillful technique because increase 25% technical damage is totally useless, ailment hunter against 1 enemy also increase damage by 25%

Understandable.

Sadly in the end, it turns from a wide array of possible playstyles into some meta-stuff.

I enjoy freedom in games. And this game kept itroducing so much freedom but then again turned around and took it away. Things like that in games make me sad becouse it limits its potential (Necessery to a certain degree, I understand, but...).

Its hard for me to understand why, this is all. And i´d love to know why becouse I truly believe that there is a better way.

The story was deep, menaingflul and quiet often very serious but the combat system, sadly isnt, while the potential still lingers.

[Turbo Alice]

I agree that some major bosses being immune to weakness, crits and status ailments is a problem of the combat in this game, aside from the game being way too easy.

The problem becomes more noticeable when you bump the enemy's HP using mods.

You don't see this with mainline SMT games.

[Nibbie]

This problem exists in pretty much every RPG with powerful statuses and such effects. I know bosses in many of the FF games are typically immune to almost all status effects for the same reasons.

Status effects are usually very powerful; skipping entire turns from sleep for example. If the bosses were balanced around being vulnerable to status effects, they would have to be so much stronger, to counter how absolutely wrecked they would otherwise be by such effects. If you could just chain sleep into shock into freeze into fear and so on, bosses wouldn't be able to do anything before they die as they currently are. Kamoshida going to spike you? No need to block or steal his crown or anything, Ann dorminas him every turn, problem solved. At that point, the use of such effects would be more or less required, since if the fights were balanced around that level of power, they would be incredibly hard if you *weren't* skipping 90% of the bosses' turns. Divinity Original Sin 2 is an example of this; you can apply most statuses to most bosses, and can hard CC them for the full battle with the right setup (namely enough front-loaded damage). That becomes more or less the only recommended strategy for every fight in the game though, because if you don't CC your enemies, you will likely get wrecked quick.

Instead of making the bosses super hard, the other choice is making the statuses much worse so they don't just overpower the bosses, at which point those statuses would be mostly pointless, especially against weaker enemies. Even the ol' "the boss isn't immune to these status effects, just 90% resistant to them" kind of system isn't great, as wasting a bunch of turns trying to get lucky with the status isn't fun either. Divinity Original SIn 1 used this; again, most bosses were vulnerable to most statuses, but it used a chance based system instead. The chances were influenced by both your stat allocation and your enemies' stats, so if you wanted a decent chance to stun a high stat boss, you needed to dump a ton of points into your couple specific skills so your 40% chance of stun could be an 80% chance instead (and then still lose the fight because your three 80%-90% chances of stunning all failed and the boss killed you, no I'm not still salty about that fight).

All of this largely goes for All Outs and weaknesses in general in this game too. Especially with the consumable items that allow any party member to perform any elemental damage, the bosses would have to be balanced around being All Out Attacked on almost every single turn, or All Out Attacks would have be nerfed. Persona 5 Strikers demonstrates this, actually; it gives all its bosses weaknesses, but to balance that, hides your powerful All Out Attacks behind several layers of shields that require you to hit those weaknesses over and over to break through.

Ultimately, every system has some kind of tradeoffs, none of them are just better or worse than another.

[Moist Butt]

tbf some non boss enemies also don't have weaknesses and require you to do technical to deal with them. Basically how I see it is weakness are for normal mobs, technical is for elite mobs, and buffing/debuffing is for bosses. I am sorry if the game misled u, but the weakness mechanic was never designed for bosses to begin with.

[benji]

Every mini-boss and boss in every other Palace was the same way, not to mention all of the enemies in Shido's Palace cept, like, 2.

[Moridin]

except persona 3 and 4 both have the vast majority of bosses have a weakness of somekind which rewards the player for finding them. so dose mainline SMT. hell nocturne/lucifers call has a early game boss that is weak to a specific status ailment.
the bosses are also tuned so that you cant just one-shot/one cycle them. mostly due to making it increasingly more tedious to over-level.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by Moridin:

except persona 3 and 4 both have the vast majority of bosses have a weakness of somekind which rewards the player for finding them. so dose mainline SMT. hell nocturne/lucifers call has a early game boss that is weak to a specific status ailment.
the bosses are also tuned so that you cant just one-shot/one cycle them. mostly due to making it increasingly more tedious to over-level.

"majority" yeah no, not even close. Majority is a word that has a meaning, don't just toss it out on the first occasion. The correct word here is "some". Some bosses in P 3, 4 and mainline SMT games have a weakness. Definitely not majority of them, which implies it's over a half. Maybe there is an SMT game that I have not played where it truly is a "majority", but it definitely does not apply to all of them, or "majority" of them to use the word properly this time.