I'm so tired of the way modern JRPG's handle optional bosses.

[Renzokuken]

Now this isn't a complaint exclusive to Expedition 33, this started with games like Xenoblade, or maybe even earlier? Regardless it's getting old now.

You go through a dungeon or you're traversing the world map, there's a bunch of enemies to kill and you're doing fine, you're exploring a bunch, you've got a nice flow going, everything is great, then you find a boss tucked away somewhere and it kerb stomps you pretty much instantly because the game expects you to come back to that area again later for no other purpose than to kill that boss.

It's a system that has never, ever been fun, for two reasons, firstly games used to at least warn the player using icons or level indicators that a fight was out of their league, so if players lost they at least knew it wasn't a skill issue, Expedition 33 doesn't do this, it gives no warning that what you're about to fight is out of your league. Those markers also served as an indicator for players to git gud, by distinguishing between stuff you should be able to beat at your level, and stuff you shouldn't.

Secondly, you forget about them as you progress through the game, typically remembering they exist after reaching the end of that segment of the game or during the endgame. You often end up grossly out levelling them and the fight loses any challenge.

Expedition 33 also has a nasty habit of reusing some normal enemy skins for super bosses on the world map, or tying bosses to groups of normal enemies on the world map so unless you spot the boss nearby you can end up fighting it by hitting the normal enemy, and dying to it without intending to. This is made worse by the fact Expedition 33 is pretty much the only game doing this that doesn't let you escape from these encounters.

I love the game, I really do, but I'm really tired of these gotcha bosses, as a trend it needs to die.

[Ratsplat]

Side bosses are much harder to forget about compared to blue rocks you can break later on. But unlike those multitudes of other JRPGs, nearly every optional boss in a story zone can be defeated the moment you run across them. However, they are indeed harder, and thanks to the parry system, you can defeat things you'd never imagine.

[Platapoop]

I think on expert mode, every "OP" boss in the dungeons were reasonably killable with your current power level, not counting the bosses you can only face after breaking blue rocks.

Now having to backtrack to kill the bosses hiding behind blue rocks is pretty dumb IMO because there's no way I'm going to remember which dungeon and where the bosses were.

Open world bosses is whatever. If they are too op and I die then I die. Once you fly you can spot the ones you missed pretty easily.

Also the save system is really generous so if a random enemy is OP then whatever. I just wish they had level recommendation for the optional dungeons so that I don't do one too high level, but not high enough for the danger description, and then stomp every other dungeon.

[Helldivers™ 2]

Skip all of those. It is just their unsuccessful attempt at making you want to return to the depressing empty maps

[Evilsod]

The overland encounters could do with something to indicate how powerful they are relative to you, I agree.

You go into Dark Shores seeing the "Danger" icon and you know you shouldn't be in there.
You fly into a random mob in Act 3 and it turns out its scaled to endgame. Think the worst was Gross Tete in act 2(?) which was impossibly strong when I ran into it outside of what I seem to recall being an easy zone or a record zone with no enemies.

Even if its just a comment from one of the expedition about how this nevron looks out of our league.

[Renzokuken]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

The overland encounters could do with something to indicate how powerful they are relative to you, I agree.

You go into Dark Shores seeing the "Danger" icon and you know you shouldn't be in there.
You fly into a random mob in Act 3 and it turns out its scaled to endgame. Think the worst was Gross Tete in act 2(?) which was impossibly strong when I ran into it outside of what I seem to recall being an easy zone or a record zone with no enemies.

Even if its just a comment from one of the expedition about how this nevron looks out of our league.

Yeah, most of the dungeon bosses I could handle, I just wish I had some sort of indicator of their relative strength, as some of them did require a revisit later despite there being no danger icon on entering. The world map bosses are by far the worst offenders.

[Svlyn]

I all honesty i tend to love to replay a game over in New Game plus. I think these bosses will show people how much progress they made when they play the game over. A lot of people are not into re-rolling a story again, so this is would be more frustrating for them as they want to kill everything in one run.

[Vashe]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

The overland encounters could do with something to indicate how powerful they are relative to you, I agree.

You go into Dark Shores seeing the "Danger" icon and you know you shouldn't be in there.
You fly into a random mob in Act 3 and it turns out its scaled to endgame. Think the worst was Gross Tete in act 2(?) which was impossibly strong when I ran into it outside of what I seem to recall being an easy zone or a record zone with no enemies.

Even if its just a comment from one of the expedition about how this nevron looks out of our league.

You can beat grosse tête easily, when you shatter it the first time he takes way more damage, like mimes...

[zefyris]

The only chromatic in dungeons areas that cannot (or would be extremely difficult to) be defeated at the level where you go through the dungeon for the first time is the chromatic in the last Act 1 story zone (the one behind a wall that you can break if you've unlocked that ability). That one is monstruously overleveled for the zone it's in. every others, even when they're overleleved, aren't overleveled enough for the fight to not be done relatively easily once you've learned the enemy's moves.
Special mention to the chromatic in the Reacher's zone, which felt weaker than the two regular monsters that were just before him lmao.

Now the ones on the world map are all over the place, sure. But I mean, they're way less easy to forget since they stand out heavily wherever they are.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Vashe:

You can beat grosse tête easily, when you shatter it the first time he takes way more damage, like mimes...

It was getting multiple turns on me even putting aside failing at parrying/dodging and being effortlessly 1-shot. At no point did this look like a mob I could overcome without an unnecessarily frustrating experience.

[Platapoop]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

Originally posted by Vashe:

You can beat grosse tête easily, when you shatter it the first time he takes way more damage, like mimes...

It was getting multiple turns on me even putting aside failing at parrying/dodging and being effortlessly 1-shot. At no point did this look like a mob I could overcome without an unnecessarily frustrating experience.

Gross tete is a meme boss. Every time he attacks, he does 2 additional bounces. After an attack with 24 attacks he dies. You just need to survive all the way up to this point so good luck

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Platapoop:

Gross tete is a meme boss. Every time he attacks, he does 2 additional bounces. After an attack with 24 attacks he dies. You just need to survive all the way up to this point so good luck

While useful to know for next time, there's nothing to indicate that afaik ><