I have played JRPGs my whole life

[Sawyer]

But I have never played a Saga game, except for this demo, should i play on the easiest difficulty or will I be ok on normal?

[AliceShiki]

You can change difficulties at any moment, so I'd suggest trying Classic.

If you struggle, you can always turn it down.

[Chrisme]

I'm playing on normal and it isn't overly difficult. That is to say I'm not struggling with the LP mechanic at all. Unless something goes terribly wrong (e.g. aoe stun, aoe stun again, everyone dying without a chance to react) hardly anyone ever goes down. Just try to keep everyone above 70 % HP, stuff people in good protective gear and keep a sensible formation that protects the more squishy members of the party.

No idea about classic difficulty but normal is sort of a cakewalk with the occasional tougher fight.

[AliceShiki]

LP isn't very relevant in this game tbh. LP dying just means you gotta replace one unit for another, which really isn't a big deal.

Worst situation that can arise is facing a boss with a 1 LP unit, and then having that unit die, since it means you're gonna have to deal with the rest of the boss fight with only 4 party members.

But other than that, LP really doesn't cause many issues.

Some other SaGa games do put a heavier emphasis on LP, but this game doesn't have it as a feature you should worry much about.

[The Living Darkness]

just play classic, im an avid JRPG player and play them all on hard to start with. This game is very well balanced on classic, honestly its a bit easy after the start. So you should be fine playing on whatever difficulty you play any other JRPG on. I advise sticking with classic if it feels doable to you while on Gerard. If you change the difficulty mid play you cant get the complete the game on on specific difficulty achievement.

The main thing is to not go out of your way to grind until you are crushing enemies at lv 12 like nothing. You can kill all enemies in a dungeon and not overlevel. Once you are fighting around lv 11 or 12, if you are crushing it you will likely stay in that position until you reach cap, lv 16. Bosses will be a joke on classic by this point, easier than basic enemy fights often. You will simply kill them by using two levels of United Attack, so a single round. This holds true until the boss of the game, who is a bit harder, but easy compared to many final bosses in JRPGs.

[Aegix Drakan]

Okay, if you've played JRPGs your whole life, you should be fine to play on Classic (hard).

The game may seem brutal at first, due to the high damage, and the LP system... But outside of one early boss (before you can tag out to a new Generation), the difficulty there is actually pretty reasonable for a hard mode.

The thing you need to remember is that once you can tag out to a new generation when you lose your emperor, abdicate, or hit a Timeskip, your party's LP functionally resets.

[huangism]

the game on normal does not get hard until some specific fights. Some fights you need specific setups and a lot of harder fights is a DPS race. The real hard fight for me personally was Noel as the second last hero I tackled. I did not grind at all just naturally played all the quest I can without guides so missed some stuff for sure. I had to setup my party correctly to take Noel down. Then eventually I finish the game today and tried Romancing difficulty on new game+, it was impossible, getting one-shotted in the tutorial fights lol

[gatsu86]

Originally posted by huangism:

Then eventually I finish the game today and tried Romancing difficulty on new game+, it was impossible, getting one-shotted in the tutorial fights lol

I read that they recommend that once you finish on classic difficulty, play on expert in ng+ and only tackle Romancing difficulty in ng++.
I'm still on my first run on classic, so I have no experience with it.. good luck. :)

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by huangism:

the game on normal does not get hard until some specific fights. Some fights you need specific setups and a lot of harder fights is a DPS race. The real hard fight for me personally was Noel as the second last hero I tackled. I did not grind at all just naturally played all the quest I can without guides so missed some stuff for sure. I had to setup my party correctly to take Noel down. Then eventually I finish the game today and tried Romancing difficulty on new game+, it was impossible, getting one-shotted in the tutorial fights lol

Supposed to go Classic => Expert => Romancing. Romancing difficulty is like for a nearly maxed out party, 100 in weapon skills and nearly maxed HP with multiple copies of the best equipment in the game. I guess good news is, there's still a difficulty setting that provides a challenge to a fully maxed out party.

Enemy levels 1-16 for Classic, 17-32 for Expert, 33-48 for Romancing. You got completely destroyed in Romancing because you went from fighting level 16 enemies to level 33 enemies skipping an entire difficulty worth of scaling.