- Nov 25, 2020
- 1,463
- 2,861
What i said, increasing stats isnt good difficulty design
If you play on a higher difficulty you might expect more punishment, less resources, different attacks from enemies making you switch to different strategies
Ultimately if your game is mechanically deep or simply thought out enough where the player actually has to think to beat his enemies than to bum rush by grinding to the point of godhood, you dont even have to touch the stats of enemies
in horror games for example, higher difficulties limit if not erase your save function
This is an IMMENSE change for the player, and the tension of the game ramps up to a hundred, one loss might mean starting over, or starting over to an area they were at hours ago
As for why it's not deep, well...
Paradox has numerous classes with skills that have no real benefit others ones, nor does the game encourage you to use other weapon skills, and yes, the game has to do that, through enemies or otherwise, because it implies no enemy in the game requires you to change your strategy in the slightest, and most of them in the game dont (you have no reason to use axe or spear skills other than personal choice)
None of it is unique to play, nor does it provide any tangible benefit or demerit for using them, you could technically change luka into a spear user and have no issues difficulty wise, but you never had a reason to change it other than simple curiosity, and now you're too lazy to go back to a different class (which are equally the same)
Altough one might think that there are various party comps that you can have in the game, most of the 400 are basically useful and so are their traits, with races failing to do the same thing classes dom and that's being bland and boring
You'd think that hearing that every companion has a unique trait and several racial combinations would lead to even greater variety in what you could do, and the enemies you encounter, but not really
Aside from a few gimick skills, and some minor differences, for completely different races some of them are eerily the similar
And not to mention how the meta is heavily out of balance, scyllas and slimes massively outscale anything that the other races could give you
LoC bosses are the only real place where you'll meet difficulty, and due to the fact the game hasnt really taught you much, or the fact that most loc bosses are immune to every element and status effect except that one specific thing that you'll need to read a guide to figure out
Speaking of LoC it's where the difficulty design shines the most (in a bad way)
After 60th floor of CloC, you'll meet generic enemies that will one shot you, you wil not survive, this isnt a question, it's a fact
The only way to win against them is to act first and one shot them first, which is using one of the 3 popular metas (buff the shit out of yourself, crush them with pleasurable gravity, or act 5 times per turn per companion and hit them 11 times per each of those 5 turns per companion, technically this isnt a one shot, a one turn shot is better)
3 metas, that's all it boils down to, at the very least on the lower levels, i saw some videos of people play through 100+ CLoC bosses and it is impressive, god knows when they learnt all of that since the game ceratintly doesnt encourage you to learn in the first place, but knowing there's people with 300 hours of playtime on this i guess it makes sense, hats off to them, after hundreds of hours they finally learnt how to play the game, it's like a child raising themselves despite their neglectful parent, very inspriing
Anyways, TLDR
- The game doesnt encourage experimentation, status effects are risks you can take but give no more benefits than not using them, atleast for most enemies, and in LoC most enemies are completely immune to most effects except the very few, by it's definition denounces the notion of there being multiple ways to beat an enemy
- The game doesnt teach you it's mechanics either, since it doesnt encourage experimentation, it has no reason to
- Despite the numerous classes, races, their evolutions, ability modifers, types of equipment, companions and their traits, most of it is basically the same shit in a different package
- "enemies are stronger now" is not good difficulty design
That's all, if you want to denounce my opinion, here's a reason, i hate turn based games, i always have, always will, and i am completely transparent that im being biased, but out of every game i've played, paradox wont escape mediocrity in my ranking
