Back when I started this game I thought the "play on crisis" thing some people talked about was a joke, because even on Very Hard the first boss was nigh-unbeatable. Later I realized it wasn't - it's just that the difficulty curve peaks at first boss (who takes a few days of grinding and a couple engrams to beat even at just Very Hard), after which the rest of the game is smooth cruising.
it just takes some grinding but its not particularly challenging otherwise yea, still definitely a more fun experience than breezing thro the game like u do in the other difficulties imo
What build do you recommend for crisis?
i felt like doing a close-combat based playthro so that's what i did until pretty much the post-game areas where u're kinda forced to go for other stuff, definitely unlock the healing engrams as soon as possible since they give u more souls when u purify the soul fragments then i close combat but either of them are fine honestly. For the end / postgame non-boss combats usually are just spamming the highest lvl fire/explosion magic for multiple targets or the lightning one for single targets, that usually takes care of any non-boss enemy in 2-3 turns at most, for the strongest mobs in the very last area i'd use primal darkness (from the dark engram you get for killing dark gazer in the true ending) to get them to 1 hp and then finish them off the turn after.
For bosses it's mostly a fight of attrition, Multi Action first for the double turn, then Last sanctuary for the damage reduction n regen + Memoria empowerment to boost all stats and u're set for the next 4 turns, refresh Multi Action and the buffs whenever they run out and spam your highest damaging skill (usually the highest lvl lightning one or the physical multihits in my case).
For engrams to equip i was keeping mostly the close combat and heal ones, the highest exploration u can for secrets n traps, and later on i added lightning for agility (its important to make sure u act before the opponent or it makes the whole thing more annoying to deal with), in the post game i switched to most of them for fire (+ Magic attack) frost lvl4 (less mp consumption) and explosion lvl4 (mp regen) and kept the healings mostly cuz more hp is nice and lvl4 is pretty busted.
Screenshot of my equipment in the endgame, demon god cloak is good stats (from the secret boss u kill in the last mission), auto heal because passive regen is always good, magic guide for even more magic damage, and squishy heart as costume (from the miniboss in the very last area behind a secret passage) gives insanely good magic damage so definitely a must, i was running the regular celesphia before getting it n that wasnt too bad either.
Oh and when you have some money make sure to get lucky cards from the vendor in the netherward to basically guarantee mobs to drop stuff, makes farming/grinding way less time consuming its definitely worth it
Edit: added the stats in transformed form 964 magic attack i was doing like 25k+ a pop with the lightning skill