Seriously, am I missing something here? (Game Mechanics Help)

[Talithmara]

You may be wondering why I made a post asking for help with game mechanics, when I also have a post on Page One about the scenes before the final battle. The simple fact of the matter is that I've finally snapped: I'm surrounded by people telling me Cold Steel is **** easy and the only way to have ANY fun is to play NG Nightmare, but I'm playing on normal and repeatedly being oneshot party wiped by bosses.

Starting at the Altina fight at the Imperial Villa every single boss has given me at least one game over when they break out an S-Craft that oneshots my entire team. EVERY boss. On NORMAL. And this isn't new to that point of the game, just that it's been CONSISTENT since then. It happened in CS1, as well. Now, I could be getting trolled by memelords, but I kind of doubt it - I really do think that I might just be missing something.

People say the training camp arc of Sky SC is the hardest arc of the entire series on NG Nightmare. I don't doubt their sincerity when they say that, but I had an easier time with that than the Golem in the Nord Highlands in CS1, and that Golem has nothing on what I've been encountering in CS2. I've been told that this sounds wrong, but they also wouldn't actually give any constructive feedback as to how to adjust my strategy or quartz or whatnot.

"Well, okay, maybe I just need to lean on specific party members who have powerful tools." Wait, people also say CS1 is way too easy, and you don't even get to pick your own party for most of it, or start with the really good stuff. That can't be it. And if it's as easy as they claim, then it has to be possible with any party, right?

You see my conundrum. I'm either missing something, or people are trivializing the game by overgrinding since the experience scaling doesn't seem to be as severe a dropoff as in Sky. I also think that people wouldn't have the nerve to claim that the game is too easy if they themselves went out of their way to ruin the challenge - it's likely something simple.


I'm going to start by listing crucial things I DO know. This will help narrow down where I'm missing something.

- Speed. I know about Speed, Action Quartz, and all that good stuff. Admittedly, my first time through CS1, I didn't see a big difference at first with the early Action Quartz and I started to think it wasn't as important as in Sky, but I learned my mistake later on.

- 200 CP. Yeah, I know 200 CP increases the power of the S-Craft. (I also know that if there's a critical on the turn order, timing your S-Break for it is big.)

- Buff Stacking. Motivate + La Forte = a longer lasting (3 for Motivate, 5 for La Forte) and stronger buff, for example. I actually DIDN'T know this in CS1 since I was playing on a low-res TV and couldn't even make out all the buff/debuff icons, but I've since learned about it in CS2. It can make a difference.

- AT Delay and ailments and such. Yes, I know AT Delay CAN be good... WHEN the Delay Efficacy isn't low! I've heard a lot of people talk about how obscenely broken it is, but that can't be it when many enemies/bosses have significant resistance to delay. It either doesn't work at all, or delays by a very small amount.



If needed, I can provide examples of my setups. Any help would be appreciated.

[Tiasmoon]

Ranylyn původně napsal:

Sorry it took me so long to reply. I read everything, but as I was typing my reply, things came up. And then I was discussing Orbal Arts with someone who didn't believe me that a certain boss was able to do 45k damage and pierce through Magic Reflect... so I went to fight that boss again to find the Art name, ended up winning (Magic Evade on the Mirage MQ was clutch) and... yeah, uh, you know how it goes from there.

Anyways, although I haven't had a chance to capitalize on it yet, that Delay thing is really neat. I look forward to finding way to use that well - it might make replaying CS1 less tedious. Also, I actually forgot how useful Angel can be with Seraphic Ring (if you can handle the casting time!) I actually ended up replacing it to test a new MQ (Katze) and... yeah. Likewise, I basically ended up replacing Iron with Megalith (I was trying to not double up too hard on MQ elements, soooo....)

Apparently, though, I've also learned that another big problem was that I forgot about Cryptids. I found my first one when I was like level 70, when it was 100, so I noped away. I never did get around to going back to deal with those. My contacts mentioned that these things drop gems, which are where the Lost Arts come from. I had none of that. No overheal, no nothing. That was absolutely a big part of my frustration. And honestly, considering how this series' sidequests tie into the worldbuilding and are not only important but not an insulting waste of time like most other games... I still think it's a jerk move, but I understand balancing the endgame around having these - but having a point of no return when the game is balanced around that is also very mean.

That said, now that I'm in the Reverie Corridor, I've since decided to completely re-equip everyone and come up with some broken tactics, and I succeeded in that thanks to the Thor and Aries Master Quartz. I do feel like nothing in the game is a threat anymore, sure, but it took forever to reach that point, and you also don't get access to these in CS1 (Thor was Instructor Sara's personal MQ and could not be transferred, etc.) I don't get how CS1 is supposedly too easy, but meh. What matters is Chrono Burst + Wild Charge + Thor = Gaius can solo bosses once his turn comes up.

Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I'm already making sure to apply some of it.

Well, that's the problem there: you went out of the way to avoid remotely challenging fights, and as a result you didnt learn how to play the game very well. The cryptids iirc are mentioned as optional goal, but you didn't even attempt them. And they are available untill just before the final dungeon.

Lost Arts aren't remotely needed in this game, even on a NG Nightmare. They make things easier, but so do certain gems, and most MQ at lvl 4/5.

Both games are very easy because a: predictable damage and moves (most of the time) and b: there's a hell of a lot of items, abilities and tactics that completely break the difficulty. On top of that your characters get way more moves then bosses typically do.

The only way the game is difficult (with only a few bosses being the exception) is when you play the game while barely thinking about what your doing.

Ranylyn původně napsal:

That said, now that I'm in the Reverie Corridor, I've since decided to completely re-equip everyone and come up with some broken tactics, and I succeeded in that thanks to the Thor and Aries Master Quartz. I do feel like nothing in the game is a threat anymore, sure, but it took forever to reach that point, and you also don't get access to these in CS1 (Thor was Instructor Sara's personal MQ and could not be transferred, etc.) I don't get how CS1 is supposedly too easy, but meh. What matters is Chrono Burst + Wild Charge + Thor = Gaius can solo bosses once his turn comes up.

What made that happen is that you decided to put in some effort in your equipment. Almost all MQ are broken once they reach level 4 or 5. Thor iirc is one of the weaker ones at that (I dont even recall what it does).

Anyway, the reason the games are easy (and beyond easy on normal) is because there's far more tools available to use, then there is difficult mechanics to deal with.

In Sky the difficulty was broken the moment you learned Aerial. But that game atleast offered challenging boss fights with mechanics where the bosses challenged your broken tactics with their own. In Cold Steel the bosses aren't like that.

The moral here being: Cold Steel is an rpg. That means if you invest some time in building your characters, by giving them good items and learning how to use their abilities: at that point the games are super easy. If you dont do that: well I guess that's probably the only way the games can be considered hard.

Ranylyn původně napsal:

People say the training camp arc of Sky SC is the hardest arc of the entire series on NG Nightmare. I don't doubt their sincerity when they say that, but I had an easier time with that than the Golem in the Nord Highlands in CS1, and that Golem has nothing on what I've been encountering in CS2. I've been told that this sounds wrong, but they also wouldn't actually give any constructive feedback as to how to adjust my strategy or quartz or whatnot.

Indeed it is the hardest part of the entire series. That said I played everything on Nightmare, with that part being the only time I had to drop the difficulty. I dunno, maybe they are complete pushovers on easy/normal?

The Golem in Nord Highlands was one of the few challenging bosses in CS1, and mostly because of its extreme damage resistance. So finding that a difficulty fights is understandable.

Can't imagine how anyone can find the training camp arc to be easy, or easier then CS2 fights, tho. xD

[Talithmara]

Yeah, at this point I'm like 99% convinced that... because I've ruined games by doing OP builds in other games, that I was intentionally playing CS much more casually, when it's balanced around actually having the kinds of builds that would ruin most other games. It's not that I was intentionally playing poorly, but rather that I wasn't approaching builds in a min/maxed way. It's like comparing a leisurely run to a speedrun, as far as mentality goes. It's something I do in most games, leaving my 100% Run for NG+, just so I can focus on enjoying the story the first time.

(By the way, the Training Arc in SC isn't easy on NG Nightmare, but I did find it more manageable than some other things due to how it starts you off. The intro of 3rd on NG Nightmare, for example, is something I found too RNG; I found that I didn't have the speed or resources to reliably win, whereas having two characters for the training arc meant losing one wasn't an instant game over. The Training Arc at least gives you opportunities to get some quartz and the like, I feel like you have a lot more control over it. They really make you work for it, but yeah. I don't think it was AS bas as people say, even if I have no desire to redo it.)

And yeah, the Golem was definitely one of the hardest ones, but belive it or not, the Old Schoolhouse trial bosses also made me retry 10+ times for some of them. They go first, completely immobilize your whole team with an ailment like Faint, Sleep, etc. and then you just wait as they kill you. So then you had to load and specifically equip accessories to counter that, which was dumb. You wouldn't know which to equip in advance. Maybe I'd do better at CS1 now that I've adopted the right mentality for CS2, but at the time I just thought it was frustrating and dumb.

That setup I mentioned with Thor, by the way? Level 5 Thor makes physical attacks heal you for 20% (HP) and 2% (EP) of the damage dealt. Chrono Burst, Wild Rage, Chrono Burst, S-Craft, Chrono Burst, Wild Rage, you get the idea. With a gladiator item and emergency Tearal Balms for bosses with high defense, Gaius can sustain his EP forever and keep bursting. It needs EP Cut/ EP Up items, but yeah, once I set that up, Gaius ended every fight before anyone else got a turn. It's kind of tedious and a little dumb, but yeah ;p

[Tiasmoon]

Personally I used an Alpha Strike build with the gem that doubles the damage of the first craft (works with S-craft as well), + a damage boost multiplier MQ. There's several of those.

With a setup like that you can end battles in 1 turn, even boss battles.

I wouldnt call your approach a wrong one, btw. The downfall of Cold Steels combat difficult is its OP stuff after all, so the challenge is more enjoyable if you do manage to avoid those.
That said, despite the OP stuff breaking the difficulty, messing around with builds and what not is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the gameplay, imo.

I agree with you on the status effects. I really hate those in any game. From what I recall now one of the Cryptics spams sleep(?) almost every turn.

Sky was better in that regards. Bosses would be OP because they got a lot of turns in, and because they had the same/similar tools to the player. Sometimes even better. But they didnt really use cheap moves like status effects.

I haven't played Cold Steel 3 yet, but I hope they made the boss fights more interesting gameplay wise. It would be amazing to use OP skills or builds and have bosses hold their own against that.
Would make the battles a lot more epic.

Never got to see most of the S-Crafts in Cold Steel 2..

[butterbattle22]

Tiasmoon původně napsal:

Indeed it is the hardest part of the entire series. That said I played everything on Nightmare, with that part being the only time I had to drop the difficulty. I dunno, maybe they are complete pushovers on easy/normal?

I can comment on this. On hard mode, SC prequel is still fairly intimidating and requires tactics. However, when you get to normal, the damage becomes manageable to where you can comfortably just attack and heal without much thought.

[Bison]

Tiasmoon původně napsal:

I haven't played Cold Steel 3 yet, but I hope they made the boss fights more interesting gameplay wise. It would be amazing to use OP skills or builds and have bosses hold their own against that.
Would make the battles a lot more epic.

Never got to see most of the S-Crafts in Cold Steel 2..

If you end up replaying CS2 at some point, you can probably give my difficulty/balance mod a shot if you haven't already.

[ZWabbit]

Indications in CS3 are while they've made some adjustments, they've also added new ways to break the game. Difficulty balance, is not one of Falcom's strong points.

[Alex]

The worst thing happened to me was the 'harderst' Glacia optional boss at second NG+ Hard run with only items/orbs ported and leveling from scratch. It required me about 20 attempts and Chrono Burst trick to finally subdue him.

Otherwise, the game is too easy overall indeed without mods. First run on Normal is almost walk in the park (including Cryptids which I just killed on first sight) if you kill every monster on each map. Second/third runs on NG+ are totally walk in the park on any difficulty level except for this one optional boss.

I wonder if the online guide at the gamefaqs concentrates at the first run at Nightmare, for builds and stuff, never tried it to be honest. For Normal run and NG+ run the party of Rean(tank)/Alisa(support/ranged)/Elliot(healer)/Laura(damager) with a bit of good crystals / CP recover items pushed to slots was enough to not even think of any strategy with bosses, meaning at all.

And yeah, at any run on any difficulty we have a decent Chrono Burst cheat that works for *any* bad situation out there, had to use it on the overpowered Glacia shrine boss due to lack of interest in building a strategy after 19th attempt where he killed me from the first cast again:
After we get Chrono Burst + good CP recovery item(s) / level 5 Force master quartz + EP Cut 2 / Deus Gem + enough EP + enough of EP recovery items. Just Chrono Burst, attack or recover your EP with item when it's not enough for next step and Chrono Burst again. Once your damager CP recovers by bonus from CP recovery items + master quartz and attacking enough, attack by using S-Craft, this won't consume Chrono Burst. Rinse, repeat. No foes will ever get a chance to act that way.

[Oguzhan]

Bosses in CS 2 do hit hard on nightmare mode (I only played that one) , especially with their S-Crafts. However we still call it easier then the prologue of SC because of the options you have.
In this game a character can have like max evasion (combined with the counter mechanic its broken), auto revive after death , magic evasion , earth wall etc etc etc etc.....

Because of all the options you have the CS games are SUPER easy. At least its the "you have so many options that is why its easy to break " sort of easy rather than just being pathetic easy.

[Talithmara]

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, a big part of what makes the training arc in SC a challenge is the limited tools available, since it happens so early on. A lot of the time, the hardest parts in the series is early on (Seriously, Sky FC on NG Nightmare actually made me game over on my way to the mine like twice) since you're not yet properly decked out, and later on, you have everything you need to put together a winning strategy. Case in point: By the time I got to the Reverie Corridor, I was breaking the game in two just from going "Ooh, this combo could be fun."

According to my acquaintance who's decently knowledgable about the game, though, the endgame doesn't really matter too much based on difficulty since the bosses are the one threat, and they can oneshot you with their S-Crafts regardless of difficulty level. In other words, the difficulty level difference isn't as drastic as I expected, and the lower levels weren't intended to be this light, casual romp.

What I'm getting at is that... I guess I expected nightmare to be harder. I'm trying it now (Technically NG+ but I didn't import levels and I'm playing through naturally, saving my imports for the lategame.) and yeah, I do feel like I expected Nightmare to be a lot harder. There's been a few close calls, but nothing Normal wouldn't have given me!

I also think part of it is that my luck is notoriously weird. If I have 10% evasion, I'll get 5 dodges in a row, and if I have 90% evasion, I'll get hit 5 times in a row. I found CS1 got easier once I set up a dodge tank, and I wasn't doing the same in CS2 since I find it too RNG and unreliable. (For comparison, for any Fire Emblem fans here, I'll take a General over a Swordmaster any day; give me the high defense and base damage over the reliance on dodges/crits.) The beautiful irony is that I actually only pulled through the Vita/Crow fight because Emma had the Mirage Quartz and it's magic evasion activated against an art that wiped the rest of my party.

(Of course, I realize that was kind of stupid of me, since this isn't a game where evasion and other survival have to be mutually exclusive. Just treat a dodge as nice when it happens instead of banking on it. I think that was part of my problem, mindset-wise.)

Anyways, if my PS3 was set up, I'd go replay Cold Steel 1 to try it again with this knowledge, because yeah, I want revenge on that dang golem!

[Alex]

My Vita/Crow fight on Normal was just few S-Crafts applied in a raw long xD (and maybe one cast of Lost Art, don't remember). Doing it this way is mostly the reason I could not fill the monster book on first run. On NG+ there's more breathing space so I am able to Analyze before finishing it the same way xD How bosses hit does not even matter there, they get too low a chance to do so.

The most fun part is second NG+ run 'unwinnable' fights, where outcome do not change even if you scrapped boss to ashes on the first turn. At least some dialogue changes may have been nice, but alas, there are none.

[Oguzhan]

Alex původně napsal:

My Vita/Crow fight on Normal was just few S-Crafts applied in a raw long xD (and maybe one cast of Lost Art, don't remember). Doing it this way is mostly the reason I could not fill the monster book on first run. On NG+ there's more breathing space so I am able to Analyze before finishing it the same way xD How bosses hit does not even matter there, they get too low a chance to do so.

The most fun part is second NG+ run 'unwinnable' fights, where outcome do not change even if you scrapped boss to ashes on the first turn. At least some dialogue changes may have been nice, but alas, there are none.

From what I hear CS3 solves this problem by giving you an indicator to how much hp you need to take off of the boss to end the fight. Which is better but I rather win the fight and have the boss mop the floor with me later.

[butterbattle22]

I wish they'd just set the threshold for those types of fights at zero, make them a lot harder, and eliminate the time limit. The Loewe fight in FC is still my favorite fight in the series so far.

[Tiasmoon]

Indeed. And its even a fight your ment to lose, only being optional to beat.