What's the consensus on Insta-kills?

[Pinhead Larry]

Title, I've been noticing there's a LOT of enemies, mostly the bonus bosses, that have instakill attacks. Personally I think they're a bit egregious, even for the context of a bonus boss being optional harder content since every single one seems to have them, and level grinding doesn't seem to mitigate the ludicrous damage they deal (I skipped over that pink bonus boss with the vertical wind slicer combos in the first overworld area and came back later after bodying everything in the second area with the yellow forest and all that jazz and it could STILL, despite having almost 20+ levels more since I originally faced it under my belt, was able to one shot every member of the party, even the "Tank" character that I focused defense and HP investment into.

It makes healing items and spells feel pretty worthless since everyone goes down in 1 hit anyway, only revives matter.

And normally I wouldn't mind super hard optional bosses with instakill mechanics, but the save system also works against the repeat fights since it often has autosaved me some annoying distance away with no way to just restart the fight if I get pushed into a hopeless situation (Or if I just want to practice doing a perfect no-hit attempt).

[sg1darkcalling]

Unfortuntantely the game is designed around being able to dodge and parry. It is a hard requireemnt for the hard bosses to master.

This game is like a turn based dark souls hybrid. They basically expect you to nearly 100% accuracy hard parry and dodge everything on this fights.

I'm further into the game then you and I reached a point that boss still two shots me. Though to be fair that is probably the hardest optional boss so far i've found. There are plenty of others which are weaker. I think they made that boss intentionally absurd just to mess with people, especially since they made it look weak.

They kind of expect you to level and go back later, once you unlock world travel, like their version of the airship from FF only then would you go back I think..... you went back far too early.

[sg1darkcalling]

That pink boss while it does absurd damage is actually very easy to dodge and parry. IT has very simple and predictible attacks. Compared to the later bosses whlich are DESIGNED around being difficult to read and dodge, as you will see later into the game

[Kashra Fall]

There isn't a single normal enemy int he game that does insta kills, there is a specific boss that does, but you get 2 attempts to avoid it. If you get one shot by standard hit/strong hits, it is because you are squishy.

[Squicky]

Remember to optimize pictos too. They give stats, a whole lot of them. Health/Defense might help you with this, I found that in the end very few attacks do one shot if you're comng at the correct lvl with the correct stuff (but you have to guess what is correct though, and I don't mind that)

[Pinhead Larry]

Oh yeah I'm digging the mechanics, it just seems over punishing that they get these longer and longer combo strings where any misstep is an immediate death combined with the unreliable autosave (Really wish there was a quick save or the game flagged a zone around the bosses as an autosave trigger)

If they simply did extreme damage, and could maybe 2-3 shot you depending on your stat spread and your buffs, that would seem a bit more fair if they don't want to change anything else. I love a "Git gud" challenge, what I'm not so in love with is the irritating walk backs for some of these and the pointlessness of healing spells and items when I might as well not even have a health bar at all, just a single hitpoint.

And keep in mind my current favorite strategy is to run Maelle completely solo loaded down with all those buff passives you get from the Hidden Arena in the yellow area.

[Kron]

Trust me you won't be bothered by one shot attacks from bosses later on, as you'll be the one doing the one shotting. When you hit the post limit break and the ability to take two turns instead of one every turn stage of the game you'll be the one insta killing them. You can hit for millions lol

[Holland Oates]

Originally posted by Kashra Fall:

There isn't a single normal enemy int he game that does insta kills, there is a specific boss that does, but you get 2 attempts to avoid it. If you get one shot by standard hit/strong hits, it is because you are squishy.

The boss he's talking about does thousands of damage per hit, and you can encounter it directly outside of the starting area. It will absolutely 1 shot any character at that point, regardless of build.

[Bad Distraction Carnifex]

Most insta-kills in this game aren't actually instakills, your defense/vit is just too low.