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Comments
If there was "Freely engage within 5 tiles of me," things would be so much smoother. Also doesn't help that the pathfinding sucks ass beyond about two corners.
Don't get me started on escort missions where you have to take an underleveled dude through a dungeons full of dudes who can attack the whole room with Discharge and Ominous Wind no matter what you do (sometimes attacking you from inside the walls of a narrow corridor). What the fuck.
Also doesn't help that even though you can checkbox which attacks they choose from at any given time, it'll still be random what they choose, so 3/4 of the time your ranged teammate will just pass turns while standing behind you unless you explicitly turn off the other attacks. So expect a lot of needless micromanagement later on.
Your comment about certain genres like point-and-click adventures and JRPGs training players to be "mentally weak".
@Bee > I think Dullahan from Golden Sun was one of the only RPG bosses I really
felt remotely proud of on account of making a solid plan and having the
pre-planned capacity to deal with hiccups along the way, and even then
the satisfaction came from two self-imposed challenges (no gamebreaking summon rushing, no grinding).
I actually use Dullahan as a poster-child of fake difficulty.
What strategy did you use if it didn't involve summon-rushing?
Oh, and there are no caps on permanent stat boosts from items. So by the end of the game your unevolved main character/partner are absurdly powerful even for their level.
LIKE A MAN!
Basically, I divided my party into two teams, each with two heavy hitters in the middle, and a main healer and a support on the periphery (Necromancer support is a bonus here for having Revive in the base class). Djinn are organized in such a way that party boosts to Attack and Resist are split evenly, shield Djinn split among healers specifically, and if possible revive Djinn split between support.
Basically, use Djinn to buff Resist and Attack right out of the gate, then start slugging. Try to keep cleansing and turn cleanups confined to the support caster, and give him some of that Water of Life you've probably spent the whole game not using just in case. If he Breaks, prioritize replacing Resist first.
When Djinn Storm happens, start swapping in the other team -- healer first and pop shields, an attacker with Revive next, and support caster last. Have attackers play support until team has stabilized. Then rinse and repeat. He Djinn Storms about exactly as often as it takes a full regiment of Djinn to recover, so your party recycles as fast as it needs to as long as you transition smoothly.
I had my bigger stars in the second party so they could get the full benefit of coming after a Djinn Storm and having a guaranteed full period of attack. As long as the first team was breaking even with his self-healing I considered that good enough. I think I also had a couple of my DPS'ers in one of the alternate classes -- I seem to recall someone was a Protector so they could pinch heal, and someone was a War Adept for more Revives on a transition. The boss went down after a few "DPS phases" like this.
If playing Dark Dawn, it's even easier because Himi can insta-max Attack and Revive from her base class, and Matt and Sveta are goddamn ridiculous, so throw in Rief and that's Team 2 right there. Rest of the strategy doesn't change.
Basically, the fight is more than anything about coming prepared and with a very solid plan and division of resources. Long and with a few tense moments, but totally doable at a reasonable non-grindy level.
I do agree that if a game is blatantly unfair then that's going to get tedious pretty quick.
EDIT: Incidentally, the OP owes it to himself to hit up MAME and play X-Multiply at the earliest opportunity. Try to at least get to the boss of the second stage before giving up on it.
Also, play Armed Police Batrider. Lots of characters mixed with good music.
And also, Kamui is recommended. No exceptions.
YOU'RE NOT MANLY ENOUGH! YOU KNOW WHAT THE LATIN WORD FOR HAND IS? MANUS. YOU'D BETTER START MAKING YOURSELF MORE HANDS IF YOU DON'T WANNA BE A PUSSY SISSY GAY PINK PINKO!!
> Anyway, not only disagree with the OP's assessment, I honestly don't
understand it. With any genre you have little practical experience
with, your first experience is going to be painful.
No; my first JRPG was Super Mario RPG, and I had lots and lots and lots of fun playing that, even the first time around. Some genres are easier than others to get into, and some games are easier than others to get into.
I know you said earlier that you enjoy the challenge of shmups, but see, that's different from what I enjoy of shmups. I enjoy the ability to go in guns blazing and mow down the opposition, as well as the excitement of dodging stuff. Being shot down does not help me enjoy those things (even though it does help give meaning to the latter, indirectly), so I enjoy when I can savestate or credit-spam my way through a game, thus getting to enjoy the awesome visuals (and hopefully, equally great music) without having to deal with a big hassle.
> EDIT: Incidentally, the OP owes it to himself to hit up MAME and play X-Multiply at the earliest opportunity. Try to at least get to the boss of the second stage before giving up on it.
Fun thing is that MAME lets me credit-spam. :P
Now I don't know anything about X-Multiply, but I would assume that it, at best, plops you back down with your next life with only basic weapons. Which just isn't as fun as if you had a crapton of cool weapons to use, but...oh well.
Come to think of it...if I enjoy Gunstar Heroes more than Contra because Gunstar Heroes actually gives the characters life bars...why can't shmups give the player-avatars life bars too?
> More likely, if I'm feeling like an RPG is too easy, it has more to do
with the fact that a lot of the time, once you figure out one good
strategy, you can use it in pretty much every fight in the game.
Yeah, this is something I don't really like with JRPG bosses. It's pretty much what I call a "damage race"--kill the boss before it kills you off or runs you out of items.