Meta: Progression and power for below-average players is a very slow, steep climb then it plateaus very quickly

[ruff1298]

I'm at 16 hours now, and I've only just unlocked both the 2nd and 3rd areas in quick succession. It seems some Mementos like Healing and Healing Gained, plus other characters are gated so long behind playing well, that a below-average player like myself has an "early" meta game that's in double-digit hours before we get "good" and more so "broken" against the escalation of the game's difficulty.

It really speaks to how good the core gameplay is and how good of a first level you have that I kept playing just Ash and Machine Gun for like 8-10 hours of my total playtime before I unlocked anything new to reset the dopamine treadmill of new unlocks. It seems that if you're not playing well, constantly dying before reaching level 10 and the first mini-boss of the first area, everything unlocks or progresses obscenely slow.

Then, suddenly, everything starts unlocking all at once as sheer stat bonuses start to go your way after so much grinding. It's a very skewed progression.