Side missions in Act 3 don't make sense either story-wise or balance-wise [spoiler]

[Magnus]

If you do all the side content in Act 3 before facing Renoir, you will end up being overleveled and will just one-shot him at level 80-90, ruining all the atmosphere and epicness of the fight (what happened to me).
On the other hand, if you first go facing Renoir, and then choose Verso's ending where the world is erased, then continuing the same game doesn't make sense story-wise.

I think the right solution might have been auto-leveling the final location to match the current level of your party?

[Hormesis]

i agree. but even auto leveling the enemies would do little to match the utility you gain from the pictos from side content. it would at the very least make it somewhat more cinematic. i still have never seen any of renoir's moves

[Fanta]

In my view, continuous auto-leveling throughout the game would have made the game even more enjoyable.

[Cataclism7]

Yeah, the last dungeon should have some sort of auto-leveling.

This is a common problem in many of the games that inspired them, namelly the Final Fantasy series. I remember having the exact same problem with Final Fantasy XII. I did almost everything before finishing the story and then just demolished the last boss.

[Meewec]

that's the rpg payoff. screw around enough and you become unstoppable. that's probably why the developers tend to hide optional bosses that are a lot harder in their games.

[Elsuya]

Continuing after the story doesn't need to make sense story wise, since Maelle's ending doesn't really makes sense either, since Lumiere is still messed up.

But auto-levelling Lumiere would've been the best way to handle it.

[DmonHiro]

Think about it this way: when you fight Aline or Renoir they are SUPER weak. They've been in there for 67 "years". Aline couldn't replenish her chroma and still was able to put up a fight AND keep Renoir sealed. Renoir regained control of the chroma once she was gone, but as Cela said he's not as strong as Aline was, and he was tired as well. They're very far from their strongest which is why some side stuff is WAY stronger. If you'd have fought prime Aline or Renoir you'd have gotten curb stomped, canonically.