Unnecessarily Difficult Late Game

[evandaspit]

The first 2 acts were well paced with good story that kept you on a set path. It allowed you to face different areas and enemies when you were to some degree an adequate level. But now as I've entered act 3, which *spoiler* only given objective is to beat Renoir I've tried to get the strongest items and luminas for my characters. What I'm quickly realizing is how frustratingly strong everything is now. If you don't put enough points into weapon scaling you won't ever do enough damage, but if you don't put points into health you get one shot by everything. So if you're following the best builds for damage, act 3 becomes a hellish parrying game. Quite literally my characters can't take a single hit without dying so in order to clear a group of enemies or bosses I have to memorize and practice every single parry for every single attack. Because if I didn't, and I dare put points into health, I wouldn't have enough damage to kill these enemies.

[MakitaRotSprout]

Most of your health should come from pictos in act 3. If you don't have enough tanky pictos you should be able to find plenty in the side content.

[This PC]

... don't follow best build for damage ?
am doing fine without exploding everything in one hit.

[Tamster]

Yeah, I feel the point system could've been done better.

By act 3 you should be using your points solely for the two stats your weapon scales to and then might. Any defense and health you need should come from the pictos. Points give only a fraction of the stats you get from high level pictos so it's much better to dump them to power your weapon, which can't get stronger through picto stats.

I got through act 3 by pumping up Verso to one shot everything with Phantom Stars. If you don't want to do that you could build Maelle as a tank using Egide to cover the party and pump her health/defense. You also don't have to parry everything. I got through the game just fine with dodging and only parried when I felt like it.

[Cataclism7]

I found it easy (except Simon). The problem is that the game doesn't tell you in what order you shoukd do things.
First, do the party side quests, then Frozen Hearts. At this point you can probably handle Sprong. Chosen Path and Crimson Forest can be done after those. You can sprinkle the endless tower in between the other things or do it in one go.
The picto/lumina "Shielded Death" was a game changer for me. Go get it. That one Lumina hard carried me all the way to Simon.
The Last areas are the Flying Manor and Renoir's Drafts.

[VhagarTheLastOne]

For me, game gets easier as the game goes further. I started on Story mode and finish on Expert.

[bateluer]

You're supposed to spend 8-10hrs grinding in Acts 1 and 2. There are a couple zones specifically laid out for this purpose. Its a huge slog though, since there's little to no story or character development in those Acts.

[Zereul]

Its still like that even if you put on health/defense pictos. Shields(base shield picto USE IT) and dodge/parry are your only way to realistically survive hits. Ideally you should not let them have a turn at all, or only if broken/stunned. I did all the side content and got levels faster than I could clear zones out, and was killing most bosses before they got a turn.

There is a mod that adds levels to zone names. Use the mod, or go into the comments and it gives a level range that works well. Installed that and worked my way up in levels in act 3. Everything would 1shot, or nearly 1shot all the way though though. I just saw it as cheese to counter my cheese of stacking bonuses to kill them in one turn. Not sure if its a good idea to do everything before ng+ as you will 1 shot the final story boss in the 75-80 range. NG+ also needed the 10x hp mod to make bosses survive a turn. That ended up being too much as boss fights were taking 5-10 mins... and I can only sit there parrying for so long and dropped it to 4x(simon was not fun).

As mentioned an auto death char does help. Saves points on auto rush/shell/powerful, gives shields, burns/breaks enemies, and ap. I used Monoco for that, and used his green mask to give powerful to everyone if the fight took over 3 turns, and later the shell/rush double triggers.

[VhagarTheLastOne]

I just killed Creation. It sure gets tough. I just hate soul-like design it gets so stressful sometimes. I havent still played Elder Ring, probably not going to either.

[Vicious]

Maybe you "rushed" through the game? I found it quite easy and Renoir as final boss was way to easy. With the right Pictos/Lumina you can act twice, do a tripple standard attack. As the others said. Also after defeating the paintress it is good to explore the world, beat stronger enemies and find good pictos.

What also helped a lot was the endless tower https://expedition33.wiki.fextralife.com/Endless+Tower

helped a lot to gain more levels and develop the overall stats.

good luck

[Dailao]

Originally posted by evandaspit:

The first 2 acts were well paced with good story that kept you on a set path. It allowed you to face different areas and enemies when you were to some degree an adequate level. But now as I've entered act 3, which *spoiler* only given objective is to beat Renoir I've tried to get the strongest items and luminas for my characters. What I'm quickly realizing is how frustratingly strong everything is now.

There is the main story stuff which is level-appropriate (usually), and there is the stuff where you have to invest time to get better and also increase your level. This is very very normal for games of this type. It offers something to normal players and also to completionists and min-maxers.

[LordDeimosIV]

I'm just starting Act 3 and I'm not liking the fact that if you don't one shot everything before it gets a turn you will get one shot. Shields are the only thing that will save you if you miss a dodge/parry. That seems like very lazy design tbh. I was looking forward to long battles like in other rpgs rather than everything getting killed in the first turn. Super boring.

[Ralathar44]

I agree that there are ways around the issue. stacking health and accepting its going to take longer to kill stuff (ive seen no dodge no parry runs of some really hard bosses, it can be done), stacking enough offense to kill things before they can kill you back, downloading the parry mod from nexus mods that gives you longer time frame to parry, etc.

HOWEVER, now that's out of the way, I still think there is a major problem here.

The problem is that the difficulty in ACT 3 is basically straight vertical from story content to optional content and from most story fights to 2-3 specific story fights. This is bad design for there to be such large difficulty spikes.

Also, equally as important, how you need to build to deal with this is unintuitive even for verterans of the genre. HP is an all or nothing game pretty much since moderate amounts of HP do jack ♥♥♥♥♥ for you. You either want massive amounts of hp so you can take hits, or almost no hp so you can kill everything before you take hits. Defense is a bad stat that almost does nothing. And might is also a garbage stat that almost does nothing.

The game also gives you the ability to level your stats and gives these effects on your hp and defense and speed as if its a traditional RPG, but the reality is most of that does not matter outside of your weapon scaling. Your pictos give you most of your stats.

The game does a very poor job of explaining its quite frankly obtuse stat design to the player. And the balancing? JFC the balance is horrific. Either you understand how tehir backwards systems work and you crush the game being ludicrously OP, or you don't and you get screwed and struggle. This is also bad design.

[Farewell]

Originally posted by MakitaRotSprout:

Most of your health should come from pictos in act 3. If you don't have enough tanky pictos you should be able to find plenty in the side content.

i've got 15k hp and still get oneshoted be everything

[SoupAssassin]

Originally posted by Ralathar44:

I agree that there are ways around the issue. stacking health and accepting its going to take longer to kill stuff (ive seen no dodge no parry runs of some really hard bosses, it can be done), stacking enough offense to kill things before they can kill you back, downloading the parry mod from nexus mods that gives you longer time frame to parry, etc.

HOWEVER, now that's out of the way, I still think there is a major problem here.

The problem is that the difficulty in ACT 3 is basically straight vertical from story content to optional content and from most story fights to 2-3 specific story fights. This is bad design for there to be such large difficulty spikes.

Also, equally as important, how you need to build to deal with this is unintuitive even for verterans of the genre. HP is an all or nothing game pretty much since moderate amounts of HP do jack ♥♥♥♥♥ for you. You either want massive amounts of hp so you can take hits, or almost no hp so you can kill everything before you take hits. Defense is a bad stat that almost does nothing. And might is also a garbage stat that almost does nothing.

The game also gives you the ability to level your stats and gives these effects on your hp and defense and speed as if its a traditional RPG, but the reality is most of that does not matter outside of your weapon scaling. Your pictos give you most of your stats.

The game does a very poor job of explaining its quite frankly obtuse stat design to the player. And the balancing? JFC the balance is horrific. Either you understand how tehir backwards systems work and you crush the game being ludicrously OP, or you don't and you get screwed and struggle. This is also bad design.

A lot of the RPG elements are incredibly broken, and it's so unfortunate that people just don't seem to care. I think a lot of it has to do with the sheer distance modern gaming has placed itself away from turn based and stat driven RPGs. In addition to everything you mentioned, the elemental system is also virtually worthless. You want fire and burn status effects pretty much exclusively, everything else is wildly niche and situational.

As a videogame, I'm coming to really dislike this game. I do however love the story and characters.

What really shattered me was the end of Act 2. What a damn slog, just the same stuff you've already done shrunk down and made way harder. It's a solid 3-4 hours of difficult battle after difficult battle, literally seconds away from each other, and it's all recycled content - some of which you didn't even experience the first time all that long ago.

Effective builds are limited and narrow, and at a certain point you kinda just do the exact same thing every time to every enemy and it's not fun.

This is, from a mechanical perspective, one of the most poorly playtested games I've ever experienced. It feels so increasingly half baked as you progress.

Weapons, skills, pictos, and luminas. That's it for stats. Everything else is frivolous, you might as well just mega dump luck and speed because they are all that even kind of truly affects you by end game.

The game is way, way, way, way, way, waaaaaay too heavily reliant on dodging and parrying. It's almost like it's all they cared about during development, and no one really sat down and thought the actual stat based elements through at all.

[Cataclism7]

Shields. Use the picto/lumina "Shielding Death" on all characters. It hard carried me all the way to Simon. Base Shield is also very useful.