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By the end of Part 1 I was using CheatEngine to max Arte Usage - this gives each arte a modest buff and was enough for me to clear Part 1 after a lot of tries. I'd put my proficiency at roughly a 6.5/optimistically 7 on a scale of 10 where Passaro (see Youtube) is a 10.
Unfortunately, it still was not hard, but it was interesting to finally see characters die. Admittedly, I do not feel these games are meant to be legitimately difficult, so I just enjoy it for what it is.
That said, I do hope you enjoy a play-through on the hardest difficulty. I think for most people it will be just right.
Unknown will be straight up impossible for most people, and tough for most of the remaining ones.
I dont recommend that difficulty to anyone on NG unless they want the absolute hardest challenge possible. Or I guess if they want to use the DLC items/equips/Artes.
For NG+ like in OPs case, I would recommend Unknown. Having learned the game mechanics makes it much more managable.
was a blast it was very challenging but no where near impossible .
they where some good difficulty spikes thou mainly Ganabelt and the entire Ganath haros was the most challenging for me .
At less in this game the Ai is good at staying alive and don't always die to dump stuff like in the previous tales .
In terms of damage output, Shionne, Rinwell, and Law easily surpass him. And in terms of survivability he's dead last. And as you mentioned, Alphen also has the least cheese available to him. Even being as generous as possible toward him, it's impossible to put him in the top half, let alone claim he's the strongest. There's also a very curious phrase you use that also directly states Alphen is weak... "if you aren't up for playing the game with more real challenge", which is a direct statement that playing as Alphen makes the entire game more difficult, which also very unambiguously means that he's weaker than other characters. Please keep in mind that the discussion was about high difficulties, not the low ones where Alphen is a viable party member.
Reigning Slash. Its kind of cheesy just spamming it, but then again you can do great damage with his fire abilities too. And in Shionne's case she only does great damage with just the one ability too. (Tres Vents)
Alphen's big cheese is different from the others tho, in that you can use it when he's in the backrow or your playing someone else. (use his special to knockdown any monster, including non-human bosses) So there's benefit to not using him.
Its a ''weakness'' that Law has.. much worse. Which by your own logic would make Law much weaker then Alphen.
Ironically this is true. Law is indeed that weak, because unlike Alphen he cant spam a single move for massive damage or use fire moves that are also quick to activate. His moves have very lengthy animations which make him too vulnerable to damage. Alphen doesnt have that problem.
In terms of survivabilty Law is dead last, and it doesnt come close either. Kisara and Alphen are both melees only but have much faster moves that also have mobility. Dohalim can be ranged, with his melee being the closest to Law's lengthy combos but unlike Law's add a good amount of mobility. Dohalim melee would be the next closest thing to Law's low survivability.
Dohalim ranged has the most survivability. He can stay up in the sky raining damage down and avoid most attacks without effort.
Shionne is second, with her abilities not giving the same mobility or avoidance but offering somewhat more dps since they are easier to spam.
Rinwell is third because she's still a ranged. But her casting makes her more vulnerable to taking damage so she has to spend more time actively avoiding attacks. Her survivability in boss fights is worse then Alphen's tho, if she's the one being targetted by a boss.
For the melees Alphen and Kisara both have good survivability, its just more challenging then taking Shionne or Rinwell and running literal circles around an enemy.
Playing Law is making the game intentionally harder for yourself. If you mained Law im not sure how you can say Alphen has poor survivability, tho. If you can survive as Law, surviving as any other character should be no problem at all.
That said looking at my own statement there, I dont think I agree with it. I used the wrong words there. It would have been better to say using ranged is ''lazy'' and melee requires more effort. Rather then challenge perse.
How much did you play Alphen if you say that?
On unknown due to inflated health pools, damage potential while not dying matters the most. That makes Law easily the worst party member (because he gets hit too easily) and well most people consider Alphen the best one.. so.
Despite me considering Rinwell circle running cheese, most people do not consider her a super strong character, I think. Maybe its different if you have DLC Artes, I dunno. I recall someone saying once that one of her DLC artes is her best.
Since your'e clearly unfamiliar with how high difficulties work, I'll just tell you. Survivability from best to worst is Shionne, Rinwell, Law, Kisara, Dohalim, Alphen. Kisara is the only one who can reliably survive taking one single basic attack from an enemy 2 levels below her, and the 3 members above her have the best dodges. All characters' armor is effectively equal at most points in the game, with the main exception again being Kisara, who unlocks one of her best armor pieces extremely early compared to the rest. The extra hp doesn't even play a role in survivability, it just makes it harder to get them back to full. Law also can keep himself alive via Inspiration... he can't reliably survive a hit, but the rare occasions where he does, that keeps him in the fight at a point where Alphen just dies.
For the record, you also said yet another thing that proves definitively that Alphen's damage output is inferior to the other party members... claiming Alphen's damage is better for "Pretty much all of it, if you don't have the devil weapons". The devil arms increase power when that individual character gets a kill. Kills by other members don't count. So if other party members start catching up by unlocking their devil arms, that directly means THEY ALREADY WERE DOING MORE DAMAGE, as proven by the fact that they have a larger number of kills. Which, in case you missed it, must be the case for their damage to increase by a larger amount when given devil arms.
You keep saying things that prove yourself wrong.
Contrary to what you believe Reigning Slash is Alphen's highest DPS move, aside from the flaming moves later on when you get appropriate skill tree unlocks and accessory. Reigning slash has a damage coefficient of 14 which is nearly 2x the next closest skill, with most being much lower than even that. In addition, it is a single reasonably quick hit that can be spammed. In theory it is the highest DPS attack in the entire game for single target enemies because it can be spammed faster than Law's Divine Fang Blast, Alphen's flaming moves at a rate that results in more hits vs animation to either get parity or surpass without the HP upkeep/risk, and any other skill. However, in practicality a well built flaming Alphen can just use Incineration wave to 2-4 shot all strong enemies while being quite safe and offering AoE (esp multiple hits for large enemies/bosses) that makes it good enough to devalue Reigning Slash's strengths in real world application.
Dohalim's Ground Dasher is heavily flawed and impractical to use optimally so it gets knocked out by default. If it lacked the knock up, was faster to cast and land on moving targets, was vertical and not horizontal it could have had much greater potential and probably been the king of DPS.
Rinwell has some that seem deceptively high but have limitations of actually hitting 1x, most hits or too many miss on most targets (such as ones spawning from the sky slowly descending), are too slow (an issue all of Dohalim's spells tend to suffer), too wide area impacting with spread effect and thus not as high as they appear nor as spammable. Rinwell does have Thunder Field which is potent vs large enemies (only due to multiple dmg effects on body parts) but it still fails vs Reigning Slash and even more so against Flaming moves in this situation.
Here is someone's spreadsheet of the different attacks in the game and their damage coefficient (aka higher coefficient = bigger boost over base damage): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n8UQbohEGyjAFIBdbWa1gxeJVT0AYoGazPd29PqHSGw/edit
Note: The moves with absurd coefficients on Alphen are flaming moves and (same for everyone else) Mystic Artes/Boost Strikes.
The flaming moves are very safe if you are competent at dodging, positioning, analyzing openings and taking advantage of the right ones. It can be easily spammed later on, aka by the time you got the skill unlocks and accessories to make it good (as prior his flaming skills are actually quite horrible), due to Shionne's healing capability, notably her global 100% heal spell. Even if you messed up she can easily revive and fully heal you, or just revive and use it at the HP you have then have her heal you for the next hit.
Further, Alphen gets Reigning Slash near the very start of the game (you should generally have it around beginning of Cyslodia... where no one else gets even remotely comparably powerful abilities until much later on (typically near the very end of the game), and they're still inferior.
Law's moves are combos spread out over time which results in lower DPS (DPS being a factor of damage per second, aka time). Alphen's Reigning Slash and Flaming attacks are, literally, massive up front burst attacks that are, for some absurd balance fail reason, very reliably spammable. As an AI Law is the winner vs AI controlled Aphen, but for direct control Alphen is strictly superior.
I've posted the spreadsheet above but you are factually wrong. Reigning Slash if, factually, Alphen's most powerful non-flaming move, and even for single target is typically surpassing the flaming moves in raw DPS (an application of time in case you fail to recall).
Another amazing statement is you state Alphen dies faster than any other party member. This is under the assumption you are just really bad at dodging, positioning, and finding proper windows to act. I had no issue playing Alphen and staying alive. That is like telling me it is impossible for me to play NG+7 at level 1 in Dark Souls or something because I supposedly could not possibly be skilled enough to not get hit or sneezed on and explode, which is false as I definitely can and have plenty. Dohalim is the one known to factually have the worst issues surviving and requires careful application of his kit not to use certain trap moves that can get you readily killed, as well as Kisara early before she gets block upgrades as she cannot dodge.
Reigning slash is not a long animation and its dps is not "subpar" as it has the 2nd highest coefficient of all of their normal non-MA/BA (excluding flaming) moves just after Law's Divine Fang Blast, which is noticeably longer animation than Reigning Slash. Sorry, but your facts are not correct as proven by actual exact figures in the spreadsheet.
As for survivability on the higher difficulties it is Shionne > Kisara (can be built to be nearly immortal, but not getting hit nearly ever, aka Shionne only, trumps that) > Rinwell > Law > Alphen > Dohalim per AI only control. For human control it is Shionne (gun based) / Air walk Rinwell (exclusive, aka no ground) > Alphen/Law (because they can dodge and dodging in this game is typically very reliably consistent) > Kisara (really tanky, nearly fail proof, but dodging these easy enemies will not be hard for decent players) > Offensive caster Shionne/Ground Rinwell > Dohalim (his kit simply has too many issues, even the caster builds).
This isn't to say you are bad at the game or that you can't use other characters and do well, just that your analysis about Alphen and DPS potential/survivability is wrong.
As for original question: OP as someone else said here you can dodge basically everything reliably so it isn't so bad on unknown, but it is obviously built with NG+ in mind as is historically the case for the hardest difficulty of Tales of games. If you do it on a fresh NG you can expect, per their proper example, a kind of Dark Souls solo type experience later on during certain points of the game but near the last stretch of the game you have custom accessories you can make Shionne a healing monster and even toss revival rings on the 3 AI characters to make them much better at surviving even if they get 1-2 shot in worst case scenario.
As for things like "better at dodging", all of them are equally good at dodging since you are controlling them, a dodge is a dodge, no matter the character. For example, your "worst dodge" Alphen can permanently dodge the end boss Black Hole without taking any damage at all if you just keep spamming the dodge button. If you say he is worst, then the rest should have no problem taking no damage at all either. In fact, for area damage effects like that, you can even make use of them to pull off counterattacks while still taking no damage. (You just keep spamming dodge until it hits slow motion, then click attack then continue spamming dodge once the lunge is over, you got enough time to pull off a counter then continue the invincible dodge.) The last fight with Vholdron and The Great Spirit is a good example of this situation, you can get through the whole thing without damage just dodging and countering.
Assume N.V. = Normal Value (i.e. Base stats of enemies on NORMAL difficulty)
Unknown Difficulty
HP: 2 x N.V.
Strength: 2 x N.V.
Elemental Attack: 2 x N.V.
Penetration: 2 x N.V.
Endurance/Resistance: 3 x N.V.
Cast Time = 0.5 x N.V. (this means enemies cast TWICE AS FAST!)
Attack Interval = 0.5 x N.V. (enemies attack TWICE AS FAST!)
Item --> 5 seconds until you can use another one.