Aren't the first enemies a bit too hard?

[Chocos Ramabotti]

The player simply starts the game, they aren't even 5 seconds inside the game and immediately the first enemy appears and if you don't watch out they can wipe you in no time. This becomes even more significant on the second encounter where you fight 2 enemies in sucession.

Shouldn't a game... dunno ease you into the experience? There is not really a good tutorial. How many different reaction commands are there? I counted 3 so far.
But the way how they are presented differs a lot and i'm really not sure at which point, which reaction command comes in. Have I seen that right that when the "!" appears you have to quickly press the command button, just so the actual reaction command happens?? Isn't that a bit too sophisticated?

As for now the demo made a pretty bad impression to me, it's not transparent how the whole reaction commands really work, even worse when you've chosen masochist mode at the beginning there is no way to know when you can react how. Snice it states there are no indicators, except there are, sometimes... (bugs?)

Sry this is highly confusing, the first fights should be easy enough so the player can experiment and become accustomed to the battle system. The battle system may be fun and complex, but it looks like you've gone a little bit too far with it.

Sure you can save and repeat the fights any time but this is where the tension goes down the drain to me. With no real throwback, you probably increased the difficulty way higher than it would be usual the case, not really fond of that, quicksaves ruin the JRPG feeling to me and makes decisions rather uninteresing cause I can just load my old save file if something goes unexpected.
You better should've chosen to implement an limited save mode, instead of masochist mode, for the retro fans beneath us.

[LL Cheese Z]

I do agree, the game is ultra hard at first. I'm only in Chapter 2 and it gets a bit easier as you lvl up. I hear it gets easier, too, once you get party members.

But yeah, not quite 100% sure what the devs were thinking. "Hey, let's make the game not enjoyable the first 15-30 mins." Or "hey, let's let players know what kind of game they are getting into right away." Could be either.

[Amazing-X-Brain.]

Agree. First fights do hard. You need to not only take the correct strategy, but also do perfect in every single Q.T.E. or probably lose in the fight. If you ask me, losing to first enemies is a kind of tutorial itself -- I admit it's not a enjoyable process.

By the way, when I started the game for the second time to reach other endings, I found that even if you picked the easy mode (I don't use English in the game and don't know the exact word, sorry) but didn't beat more enemies to level up. The first boss fights are almost unbeatable.
So I think we are also encouraged to beat every enemy in the game?

[Epiknik]

Wow, thankfully I'm not the only one to think like this phew. I just got back from some minutes in the demo and I'm just as confused as you are!! If this is supposed to be the whole game, dear Lord, this is a "do it perfectly in EVERY move or die even in the normal mode" game. I'm not sure I've played something like this before. I think not even Dark Souls are this demanding xDD
Really, I lost on the first encounter but second time I got it, but the second encounter is just nuts! One REALLY needs to not only not miss, but do PERFECT EVERY DAMN TIME!
Not sure if this is fun for anyone lol.
Sounds like the game has fun mechanics, really, I wanted to enjoy it but as it is, the pressure of not missing ANY move cleans up all the enjoyment of the story and destroys the smoothness of the succession of events.
I hope we get some answer from devs, even a "guys and gals, stfu, this is how it is supposed to be" lol. Totally acceptable, not every game needs to be to every gamer :)

[Robbie Dagger]

i really feel that the first boss is too hard especially if you don't feel like doing the black holes

[Halfshell]

Pretty sure most fights in ch1 you can just defend every other turn so you get counter attacks. I don't know how good the tutorial is because I skip them but counter attacks are extremely strong. You can take barely any heart damage at all and still do a really strong return hit. You can even get the 0 cd shield and just defend every turn.

Edit: Although pay attention to purity on gear because defend gives a flat % of your max purity, if it has a skill that gives purity then that scales on the colored stat.

Originally posted by Epiknik:

the pressure of not missing ANY move cleans up all the enjoyment of the story and destroys the smoothness of the succession of events.

For the move timing thing, you can reduce the difficulty on those.

Originally posted by Robbie Dagger:

i really feel that the first boss is too hard especially if you don't feel like doing the black holes

I'd say do 1 blackhole for the green reward, because its really good. Even though its not worth using yet, its key for certain builds. The other blackhole rewards are all meh though, even later chapter's rewards. .

[Ithurtswhen_ipee]

Originally posted by Chocos Ramabotti:

The player simply starts the game, they aren't even 5 seconds inside the game and immediately the first enemy appears and if you don't watch out they can wipe you in no time. This becomes even more significant on the second encounter where you fight 2 enemies in sucession.

Shouldn't a game... dunno ease you into the experience? There is not really a good tutorial. How many different reaction commands are there? I counted 3 so far.
But the way how they are presented differs a lot and i'm really not sure at which point, which reaction command comes in. Have I seen that right that when the "!" appears you have to quickly press the command button, just so the actual reaction command happens?? Isn't that a bit too sophisticated?

As for now the demo made a pretty bad impression to me, it's not transparent how the whole reaction commands really work, even worse when you've chosen masochist mode at the beginning there is no way to know when you can react how. Snice it states there are no indicators, except there are, sometimes... (bugs?)

Sry this is highly confusing, the first fights should be easy enough so the player can experiment and become accustomed to the battle system. The battle system may be fun and complex, but it looks like you've gone a little bit too far with it.

Sure you can save and repeat the fights any time but this is where the tension goes down the drain to me. With no real throwback, you probably increased the difficulty way higher than it would be usual the case, not really fond of that, quicksaves ruin the JRPG feeling to me and makes decisions rather uninteresing cause I can just load my old save file if something goes unexpected.
You better should've chosen to implement an limited save mode, instead of masochist mode, for the retro fans beneath us.

Same experience, I played nearly all the Mario and Luigi games but this ones difficulty on its reccomended difficulty is tough out the gate. Its got restarts and such so that shouldnt be a problem... cept you cant change your gear and some typing or whatever you might have sucks.

Im stuck on the first major boss and I legit have no idea how im supposed to beat them except pure perfectionism on each timing attempt, offense and defense... plus each and every time I restart for4 another try I get to enjoy some 10 minutes of cutscenes and me breaking my Z key... a CS skip option PLEASE for the love of god...

I still as a new player have very little idea whats going on mechanically and yet I see I have hardly any options in my menus... so... Idk, Im quite literally using the options the game gave me and Ive no idea what to do or even attempt... It feels like I need to perform almost perfectly for the first boss.

Ill be honest, for a first time experience you probably shouldnt be on the hardest difficulty... you can change it later and even turn the timing icons back on

[Ithurtswhen_ipee]

Originally posted by LL Cheese Z:

I do agree, the game is ultra hard at first. I'm only in Chapter 2 and it gets a bit easier as you lvl up. I hear it gets easier, too, once you get party members.

But yeah, not quite 100% sure what the devs were thinking. "Hey, let's make the game not enjoyable the first 15-30 mins." Or "hey, let's let players know what kind of game they are getting into right away." Could be either.

I can def feel itd be easier if i could heal without passing a turn...

[Ithurtswhen_ipee]

Originally posted by Epiknik:

Wow, thankfully I'm not the only one to think like this phew. I just got back from some minutes in the demo and I'm just as confused as you are!! If this is supposed to be the whole game, dear Lord, this is a "do it perfectly in EVERY move or die even in the normal mode" game. I'm not sure I've played something like this before. I think not even Dark Souls are this demanding xDD
Really, I lost on the first encounter but second time I got it, but the second encounter is just nuts! One REALLY needs to not only not miss, but do PERFECT EVERY DAMN TIME!
Not sure if this is fun for anyone lol.
Sounds like the game has fun mechanics, really, I wanted to enjoy it but as it is, the pressure of not missing ANY move cleans up all the enjoyment of the story and destroys the smoothness of the succession of events.
I hope we get some answer from devs, even a "guys and gals, stfu, this is how it is supposed to be" lol. Totally acceptable, not every game needs to be to every gamer :)

Some rpgs will be this deadly out the gate but theyre very very rare... still I choose the reccomended option and the first boss feels like I need to play and defend perfectly... also Ive still so little idea on what the stats are and options are... Ive been experimenting but then I go to the boss and I feel my damage or equipment is just wrong but Ive only 3 weapons, 2 of which are the same typing...

[Ithurtswhen_ipee]

Originally posted by Robbie Dagger:

i really feel that the first boss is too hard especially if you don't feel like doing the black holes

I... what????? I thought I did them... did i skip them????

[stunlord]

You definitely have to spend your turns guarding a lot early on, basically that's your go-to. Rely on counters to kill enemies until you get stronger. I agree it's not a great introduction to the game. But JRPGs, at least, back in the day, were pretty much all absurdly punishingly hard and required tons and tons and tons of grinding levels and item drops, generally. This is nowhere near that level of annoyance. Also, you can save anywhere and restart any combat, which are also luxuries you never had in old JRPGs, so it's really not that bad at all

[stunlord]

You also have to be cognizant of damage types; the mutable -> fixed -> cardinal pathway is extremely important to utilize, or you will be making your own life utterly miserable. That's basically elements in this game: 3 element types, in a rock-paper-scissors sort of relationship.

[sora's 青かった星]

It took me about 8 times to beat the first enemy, and the first boss was a pain that took me a half hour. However, it does get a lot easier by the time you've beaten the first level and done some grinding and cleared at least one black hole. Chapter 2 was much easier than chapter 1 and by then you've learned the rhythm of the timing of some of the attacks too. In addition, if you've saved many stars you'll stumble onto some stat boosting exploits that I don't really like in that chapter, but which make it far easier, and there is also a lot of stat boosting equipment lying about that you can pick up.

By the end of chapter 2 I hardly ever died, and it took me under 2 hours to get into chapter 2. I beat the boss on my second try. The game has some weird pacing. It is more forgiving now. If I don't pay any attention to timing or the moves I use I can still die, but if I miss the timing of a few hits then it won't kill me.