When does the battle system get good?

[square721bt]

I've been playing SMT games since Digital Devil Saga so I'm used to the press turn system, but not being able to switch your abilities during combat is such an obviously bad idea that I feel like another shoe has to drop? But I'm 19:13 in, in the first leg of the tournament. Does the combat system ever open up? I'm tired of going to a boss, finding that my archetype setup is wrong, killing myself, restarting, finding that the archetypes I need aren't leveled or they're leveled on the same character, going and grinding with the action battles.... it's so much wasted time and it's so incredibly not fun, why would they do this?

[Tiasmoon]

There's enough enemies in the game (including bosses) that have some kind of physical resist or immunity. You can also add weakness once you unlock a certain arch-type at which point elemental becomes mostly better then physical since its easier to apply a weakness for them.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Just keep a party having a variety of attacks and magic, that works for me.

[Dregora]

Messaggio originale di square721bt:

Messaggio originale di Dregora:

I don't have a problem with it, but granted I play on normal. I've never felt limited or hampered at any boss aside from maybe less than a handful of mobs who conveniently counter all physical skills for example.

I can imagine this becomes a bigger problem on Hard and above, though. But it's not exactly hard to keep a lot of weaknesses around.. You can inherit certain skills to cover up whatever skill or elemental attack you naturally don't have, you've also got igniters you can equip that give you a variety of elemental attacks/buffs that you might lack and so on.

The possibilities do exist beyond just ''i use these 4 archetypes and that's all''. It's true sometimes you gotta switch up a little but at least on normal that's an incredibly rare occasion.

Okay, well. You fight Zorba. Zorba has no weaknesses and resists all magic, and constantly summons mobs who are weak to fire and light, so to start, forget my mage that I've been using throughout the dungeon to hit weaknesses. You need a healer to heal and hit with light, a knight to take aggro/attacks and debuff defense, and a warrior to use that slash skill that sounds like it's not going to be great but turns out to be amazing because you need to do tons of physical as quickly as possible to Zorba because on a long enough timeline he wins by attrition. On hard you'll want a fire skill on one of your characters too because the action economy is very tight and you need to kill at least one zombie a turn to keep them from downing one of your characters - if you get a character down it's L3 because losing a turn plus another turn to heal will put you too far behind.

I hadn't been using warrior because the brawler seems to do just about everything it does except Slash but better, so I had to grind up warrior.

Then you fight the big human. You need a bunch of bludgeoning now and still fire, so you need to have a brawler and a knight because for whatever reason that's still the only way to debuff defense, and then someone who has at least one healing skill. This is a much easier fight, but I had been leveling both brawler and knight on hulkenburg so I had to burn a ton of incense to get Stohl's brawler up to snuff.

Then you have a fight out of bloody nowhere on the trail. The last boss I had fought was that human, so I'm still in brawler/healer/knight, but these guys are immune to all physical and weak to ice so fantasy is dead.

I don't understand - demon fusion was fun because it turned difficult encounters into a puzzle of fusing the right thing to be invincible to what you're fighting. You built up a team so that you can swap things in an out to be able to deal with multiple kinds of threats - having the right depth to your team was important too.

Now it's just... trial and error? What's the point of that? It's such an obviously bad change that I have to think that they're going to introduce something else to make this not bad? But I'm almost 20 hours in, you would think I would have seen all the cards by now.

I had to look up Zobra because I forgot. Idk what difficulty you play on, maybe it's different on hard, but I nuked his butt real fast on normal. Didn't even consider anything else.

But you're still early game. You have limited resources, limited archetypes, limited options etc. I'd argue the early game is when the game is most tough overall because not much is open just yet. But i've not had a problem with Zobra personally.

But I can see why it would be tough on hard. But I guess that's why it's hard.

[BabyPanda]

Messaggio originale di dustin1280:

Weird, I played on hard with no boss or enemy guides and never had a problem beating bosses I was put up against. Sometimes I DID have to change archetypes and/or gear around, but ultimately I never had to grind really at all...

I was stuck at zorba when I fight him at lv15, figuring out my damage are so low

[Syynx]

Messaggio originale di sisanchubc0107:

Messaggio originale di dustin1280:

Weird, I played on hard with no boss or enemy guides and never had a problem beating bosses I was put up against. Sometimes I DID have to change archetypes and/or gear around, but ultimately I never had to grind really at all...

I was stuck at zorba when I fight him at lv15, figuring out my damage are so low

The early bosses were the more difficult ones imo, especially Zorba. Everything since has been much easier.

[BabyPanda]

Messaggio originale di Syynx:

Messaggio originale di sisanchubc0107:

I was stuck at zorba when I fight him at lv15, figuring out my damage are so low

The early bosses were the more difficult ones imo, especially Zorba. Everything since has been much easier.

agree, I hate the time when I figure our zorba is so hard for me to beat at lv 15.

[MeanMothercyka]

1

Messaggio originale di Dregora:

Messaggio originale di square721bt:

Okay, well. You fight Zorba. Zorba has no weaknesses and resists all magic, and constantly summons mobs who are weak to fire and light, so to start, forget my mage that I've been using throughout the dungeon to hit weaknesses. You need a healer to heal and hit with light, a knight to take aggro/attacks and debuff defense, and a warrior to use that slash skill that sounds like it's not going to be great but turns out to be amazing because you need to do tons of physical as quickly as possible to Zorba because on a long enough timeline he wins by attrition. On hard you'll want a fire skill on one of your characters too because the action economy is very tight and you need to kill at least one zombie a turn to keep them from downing one of your characters - if you get a character down it's L3 because losing a turn plus another turn to heal will put you too far behind.

I hadn't been using warrior because the brawler seems to do just about everything it does except Slash but better, so I had to grind up warrior.

Then you fight the big human. You need a bunch of bludgeoning now and still fire, so you need to have a brawler and a knight because for whatever reason that's still the only way to debuff defense, and then someone who has at least one healing skill. This is a much easier fight, but I had been leveling both brawler and knight on hulkenburg so I had to burn a ton of incense to get Stohl's brawler up to snuff.

Then you have a fight out of bloody nowhere on the trail. The last boss I had fought was that human, so I'm still in brawler/healer/knight, but these guys are immune to all physical and weak to ice so fantasy is dead.

I don't understand - demon fusion was fun because it turned difficult encounters into a puzzle of fusing the right thing to be invincible to what you're fighting. You built up a team so that you can swap things in an out to be able to deal with multiple kinds of threats - having the right depth to your team was important too.

Now it's just... trial and error? What's the point of that? It's such an obviously bad change that I have to think that they're going to introduce something else to make this not bad? But I'm almost 20 hours in, you would think I would have seen all the cards by now.

I had to look up Zobra because I forgot. Idk what difficulty you play on, maybe it's different on hard, but I nuked his butt real fast on normal. Didn't even consider anything else.

But you're still early game. You have limited resources, limited archetypes, limited options etc. I'd argue the early game is when the game is most tough overall because not much is open just yet. But i've not had a problem with Zobra personally.

But I can see why it would be tough on hard. But I guess that's why it's hard.

Kids these days want hard to be easy.

[BabyPanda]

Messaggio originale di MeanMothercyka:

1

Messaggio originale di Dregora:

I had to look up Zobra because I forgot. Idk what difficulty you play on, maybe it's different on hard, but I nuked his butt real fast on normal. Didn't even consider anything else.

But you're still early game. You have limited resources, limited archetypes, limited options etc. I'd argue the early game is when the game is most tough overall because not much is open just yet. But i've not had a problem with Zobra personally.

But I can see why it would be tough on hard. But I guess that's why it's hard.

Kids these days want hard to be easy.

this game's hard is already easy enough than those that raise stats.

[Zaph]

I play on hard and I just went full magic on my main character and have not had an issue with the game. It's pretty easy to figure out the enemies weaknesses, especially of the bosses. They have the same weaknesses as majority of the enemies. Stuff is weak to wind in the dungeon? 19/20 times, the boss is weak to wind.

[Kandidaten]

I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not, to me the battle system is very similar to SMT3, albeit a few differences. Passing turns on a character can net you a massive boon, as passing only uses half a turn icon. If you then hit a weakness with the next character, they too only use another half a turn icon (if you have big icons remaining).

Buffs - on hard - completely useless unless you can hit enemies until you only have small icons remaining, then passing would use an entire turn, so might as well buff or debuff the enemy at that point, for the coming rounds.

[Kandidaten]

Messaggio originale di Syynx:

Messaggio originale di sisanchubc0107:

I was stuck at zorba when I fight him at lv15, figuring out my damage are so low

The early bosses were the more difficult ones imo, especially Zorba. Everything since has been much easier.

Zorba would've been hard because you didn't exploit the weakness hits to gain more turns to hit him instead. He's basically an introduction to turn management, and the upside of hitting weaknesses. Think I did him at level 11? or 12? on my first play through.

[BabyPanda]

Messaggio originale di Kandidaten:

Messaggio originale di Syynx:

The early bosses were the more difficult ones imo, especially Zorba. Everything since has been much easier.

Zorba would've been hard because you didn't exploit the weakness hits to gain more turns to hit him instead. He's basically an introduction to turn management, and the upside of hitting weaknesses. Think I did him at level 11? or 12? on my first play through.

I am replaying now and beat him in 3 turns on level 13, on hard mode. I just uses all 3 warriors and then keep using strohl to sythesis attack