I agree and disagree with this at the same time. Solo can be quickly very powerful but if you fuck up once and get captured by say the goblins and you hit a point of them powering up, they can basically get you stuck in a tough situation where escape is extremely difficult with a solo run. You really need to level up party members as an insurance. Now you've beaten Dithilion solo, I have been unable to since I have never gotten Twin Bracelets. However, overall, if you are having a very good run of the game, it can get easy with a solo run, but the same can be said with a party that is well leveled too.
Perhaps the solution lies with some enemies scaling with levels to a degree. I dont' think making the game more difficult is what I'm implying here, but like level triggers that adjust stats for certain enemies. Like say...Journey ( don't why you all say Destiny) hits lvl 15, adjust stats by +x%. Just so certain tough baddies never become push overs.
Re Journey:
Yeah, since I only ever play once or twice per update to see, if anything meaningful has changed, I skip everything and never pay attention to the item-/skill-/character-names.
That actually goes for most H-games.
It's an ocean of them out there and I'm always on the hunt for those few hidden pearls, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. A lot of those games are RPGs with their own naming variants for similar skills, characters etc. So I guess most of us just go by whatever is mentioned in this thread - and thus you get compounding wrong names.
Re equipment like Twin Bracelets:
As I'd mentioned - you just need to roam around enough times to get everything you need - w/o ever touching an enemy (if you're ever unlucky you can just restart the game and redo the level w/o consequence - or bring some bombs).
At some point I'll always end up with OP gear and then head straight for the first boss - up to that point you don't have companions anyway.
And that's the point: You start out vulnerable, yes. But in order to even get the team mates, you first need to become solo invulnerable.
So once you've beaten the first boss solo, you gain the mob group killer skill - and you already have your OP equipment, that got you this far solo.
So what's the point of a team then?
And re solution:
Level scaling is never the answer.
You need a robust system of risk/reward. So everything (skill etc) needs a strength and a weakness.
Especially at the start you need lots of weaknesses on both you and your enemies.
Later you gain the ability to either "patch up" those weaknesses or gain even more power.
And the same goes for your enemies.
And that's where it's so hard for so many devs (because usually H games are their first rodeo) to create anything meaningful.
And it's even worse once you try to introduce H combat.
Because that's a second layer, that needs to follow the same rules and quadruples the balancing efforts.
In the case of most games, H combat becomes the after thought and you either willingly need to let "bad shit" happen on the player side or you get discouraged to even have your heroine touched once (because it's a clearly signalled spiral downwards).
That's why games like Karryn's prison are so highly regarded (though I have my qualms with that one, too):
You are incentivised to use H, but you also quickly learn, that it's a trap, if you lean too heavily into it.
So you start tip-toeing the line / thread the needle - and that's where the fun lies. There's no one OP strat (or skill or equipment), everything has its place, many strats are viable - but there's also a constant danger threatening to mess with your meticulous planning/strat to which you might need to adapt.
