The Balancing in this game is Atrocious.

[Proudly Toxic]

I see people complaining about the modern themes in this game. I'm going to be galaxy brained and instead actually complain about the gameplay.

I expected this to be a game where I would use the job system to tailor a well balanced team that could handle any situation thrown at it by being able to hit a variety of weaknesses, that I'd adjust further if I found that there was a pattern to enemy types in a specific area.

Instead the game has abilities that give you bonus damage and crit chance if you have duplicates of the same archetype in your party, and gives you access to a Phys Almighty skill with 35% crit chance before the first real dungeon.

Phys Almighty will benefit from Heat Up and from Discipline, since its a Physical Skill, despite doing Almighty damage. Because its Almighty, it will bypass phys repel, phys resist, phys null, and even phys absorb.

Because you can get its crit chance to 55% with 4 people going merchant, it is more effective than trying to hit weaknesses since you'll almost always crit and do more damage thanks to the 40% damage boost from Heat Up.

It costs money, but Merchant on the protag is a money printer anytime you kill lower level enemies in the overworld. So if you ever are running low on money, you can just go back to Akademia in whatever dungeon you are to force respawn all spawns in your current level to go whack a moling for cash.

I just did the second story dungeon, I'm thinking of stopping here, since I now also have access to sukunda, tarunda and rakunda as consumable items. The story boss was unable to get any of my party members below half HP, and if it wasn't for the fact he has a phase hp gate that stops you from killing him, I would've skipped his entire second phase with this strategy.

Do yourself a favor and skip this game if you haven't bought it yet. Who at atlus thought it was a good idea to give Phys Almighty to your character WITH NO MP COST this early in the game?

Phys Almighty has been Meta in every atlus RPG it has been available in.

[Proudly Toxic]

Publicado originalmente por DrkCntry:

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

That also consumes double the ammo, has long reload animations, and requires you to have good movement to not get hit during that reload animation by the bigger enemies it won't 1shot like Barons of Hell, Spidertrons, and the Flamer Dudes.

And the archetypes in this game require trade-offs as well...Just because you don't think of them as such doesn't change that.

The point is this, it is not a balance issue, it's both a player choice and complexity one. Given the path of least resistance most are going to take it, but that doesn't make it a balance issue.

The trade-off for Merchant is it spends gold to use its skills, but it also generates gold, so its a self-feeding loop.

Congratulations, you have nailed the balance issue, and its not a complexity one.

[Skelemaniac]

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Publicado originalmente por Skelemaniac:

its a single player game , i don`t get why its such a big deal , play however you want the way you enjoy it , finish the game with 4 merch? good on you but not everyone will play the same way you do. infinite mana also exist with mage archetype , you can infinitely grind and 1 day finish any dungeons with it.

Its a big deal because part of atlus games is tweaking your setup to find good combinations and strategies.

One of the solutions that will deal with everything is handed to you before the first real story dungeon.

i dont think its too much game breaking , not when you have access to infinite mana/money/hp, the only time ive relied on almighty skills on smt/persona games is when bosses do not have elemental weakness , even with that i just usually default to physical skill

[REBirthTheEdge]

How exactly does OP get 4 characters in Merchant class before the first story dungeon?

[Proudly Toxic]

Publicado originalmente por Skelemaniac:

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Its a big deal because part of atlus games is tweaking your setup to find good combinations and strategies.

One of the solutions that will deal with everything is handed to you before the first real story dungeon.

i dont think its too much game breaking , not when you have access to infinite mana/money/hp, the only time ive relied on almighty skills on smt/persona games is when bosses do not have elemental weakness , even with that i just usually default to physical skill

It is for the following reason:

There are equivalents to the Phys version of what I'm doing for Magic.

But to do the Magic Version, you still require to have access to the element the enemy is weak against.

Even if you take Wizard, and you give it Hamaon, Mudoon and Cycle, you will still run into enemies where there's just no elemental weakness, at which point stacking your team's archetypes together to get these damage multipliers is a lot less effective.

Additionally, every spell cast you do is 10 MP. You will need to either have buffs running to regen MP with Wizard, or kill 10 enemies in the overworld for every spell you cast in battle to get your mana back.

With Merchant, your damage is static across all enemies. Always reliably higher than is comfortable. Always able to give you extra press turns.

As the game advances, the efficiency only increases, because at the start killing an enemy in the overworld will give you 250 Gold (half the cost of 1 almighty use, still better efficiency than 4 enemies per 1 spell for Mage), but will be at around 490 gold per kill by the second dungeon.

You also have to consider why you use Phys over Almighty in other Atlus games.

Usually the almighty skill costs more MP to use.

Here the almighty skill costs gold, which you can always earn more of in the current dungeon.

This is why I say "I've solved the game before the first dungeon".

This combo will beat every encounter in the game until you eventually need to swap merchant with Tycoon to do it again but with even higher damage multipliers.

[Proudly Toxic]

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

How exactly does OP get 4 characters in Merchant class before the first story dungeon?

Deduct 10% damage and 5% crit chance from the calculation, and you can get merchant before doing the cathedral.

You did read me saying "Real Story Dungeon" in the post I made right?

You wouldn't have bad reading comprehension would you?

[REBirthTheEdge]

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

How exactly does OP get 4 characters in Merchant class before the first story dungeon?

Deduct 10% damage and 5% crit chance from the calculation, and you can get merchant before doing the cathedral.

You did read me saying "Real Story Dungeon" in the post I made right?

You wouldn't have bad reading comprehension would you?

I haven't gotten the Merchant class yet so I can't tell.

But from what I heard you can only get the 4th companion in the 2nd town, early game Grand Trad you only have the Protag, Strohl and Hulkie.

[Proudly Toxic]

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Deduct 10% damage and 5% crit chance from the calculation, and you can get merchant before doing the cathedral.

You did read me saying "Real Story Dungeon" in the post I made right?

You wouldn't have bad reading comprehension would you?

I haven't gotten the Merchant class yet so I can't tell.

But from what I heard you can only get the 4th companion in the 2nd town, early game Grand Trad you only have the Protag, Strohl and Hulkie.

That's all you need. You just need Rank 2 Wisdom to get access to the quest that leads to Merchant Unlock. You can easily achieve this in the first 3 days of time you have for doing the cathedral.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

I haven't gotten the Merchant class yet so I can't tell.

But from what I heard you can only get the 4th companion in the 2nd town, early game Grand Trad you only have the Protag, Strohl and Hulkie.

That's all you need. You just need Rank 2 Wisdom to get access to the quest that leads to Merchant Unlock. You can easily achieve this in the first 3 days of time you have for doing the cathedral.

Ok, but how do you get access to the 4th Companion in Grand Trad?

[Proudly Toxic]

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

That's all you need. You just need Rank 2 Wisdom to get access to the quest that leads to Merchant Unlock. You can easily achieve this in the first 3 days of time you have for doing the cathedral.

Ok, but how do you get access to the 4th Companion in Grand Trad?

You don't. You just have 10% less damage and 5% less crit chance doing this combination in Grand Trad.

Where are you trying to go with this? This still does more damage than anything else you do at that point against every enemy.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

Ok, but how do you get access to the 4th Companion in Grand Trad?

You don't. You just have 10% less damage and 5% less crit chance doing this combination in Grand Trad.

Where are you trying to go with this? This still does more damage than anything else you do at that point against every enemy.

So you just use 3 merchants in Grand Cathedral, that's understandable.

People have been doing 1 day with the Cathedral with a variety of class (I am currently doing 4 days) so I don't think it's a balance issue.

Just keep playing and see how far you go with this all merchant party.

[Proudly Toxic]

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

You don't. You just have 10% less damage and 5% less crit chance doing this combination in Grand Trad.

Where are you trying to go with this? This still does more damage than anything else you do at that point against every enemy.

So you just use 3 merchants in Grand Cathedral, that's understandable.

People have been doing 1 day with the Cathedral with a variety of class (I am currently doing 4 days) so I don't think it's a balance issue.

Just keep playing and see how far you go with this all merchant party.

Party composition is a part of skill expression in a RPG.

If the game can be solved by spamming 1 of the same archetype that is a balance problem.

It isn't just merchant you can do this with, I've seen people beat the cathedral boss with 3 Warriors and 1 synthesis skill for a one shot for the same reason since that boss doesn't have phys immunity.

What I'm handing out will just -always work- since it gets press turns regardless of weaknesses and can't be resisted/nullified/repelled.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

So you just use 3 merchants in Grand Cathedral, that's understandable.

People have been doing 1 day with the Cathedral with a variety of class (I am currently doing 4 days) so I don't think it's a balance issue.

Just keep playing and see how far you go with this all merchant party.

Party composition is a part of skill expression in a RPG.

If the game can be solved by spamming 1 of the same archetype that is a balance problem.

It isn't just merchant you can do this with, I've seen people beat the cathedral boss with 3 Warriors and 1 synthesis skill for a one shot for the same reason since that boss doesn't have phys immunity.

What I'm handing out will just -always work- since it gets press turns regardless of weaknesses and can't be resisted/nullified/repelled.

So it isn't a balance issue then, it is probably intended.

The press turn system is meant to optimize party composition and exploit weakness to the fullness.

It has nothing to do with skill expression or whatsoever.

[shelledfade]

Will say its a bit odd the way they've decided to balance this. You can either make an extremely strong build or you can accidentally make a party that is incredibly weak.

Think they could have done this better tbh...

[Proudly Toxic]

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Party composition is a part of skill expression in a RPG.

If the game can be solved by spamming 1 of the same archetype that is a balance problem.

It isn't just merchant you can do this with, I've seen people beat the cathedral boss with 3 Warriors and 1 synthesis skill for a one shot for the same reason since that boss doesn't have phys immunity.

What I'm handing out will just -always work- since it gets press turns regardless of weaknesses and can't be resisted/nullified/repelled.

So it isn't a balance issue then, it is probably intended.

The press turn system is meant to optimize party composition and exploit weakness to the fullness.

It has nothing to do with skill expression or whatsoever.

If its intended, the game wouldn't have 25 archetypes when it can be beaten with 1.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Publicado originalmente por Proudly Toxic:

Publicado originalmente por REBirthTheEdge:

So it isn't a balance issue then, it is probably intended.

The press turn system is meant to optimize party composition and exploit weakness to the fullness.

It has nothing to do with skill expression or whatsoever.

If its intended, the game wouldn't have 25 archetypes when it can be beaten with 1.

That is the part of the game.

SMT has a lot of demons, you are to find the demon compositon that work.