Gotta say, this is by far the most grindy game i've ever grinded.
You grind for character XP, which gives levels and ability SP.
You grind for money to unlock gear and spells, and bigger wallets so you can grind more.
Each piece of gear also gains experience when worn (your active inventory is shit tiny of course) to unlock their effects passively. Each unlock gives you a passive skill point. (Higher tier passives cost multiple skill points to enable, you can reallocate freely)
Grinding multiple enemies at once is a massive time sinking pain because they can grab you, which you have to struggle out of, except that ends your turn, they get another. And you dont get your first AOE spell until forever into the game.
Did i mention that happens in a dark cave, so you need a lantern equipped which blocks one third of your inventory you badly need to grind item xp.
Besides grinding for consumables you also grind for upgrade materials. They are quantity limited in areas.
Most pieces of gear have multiple upgrade steps, each of which has its own seperate unlock to grind (wtf) - i mean atleast they can stack later
Grinding higher tier drops is only possible using the treasure finder item, which blocks one third of your tiny shitty inventory you need to grind item skill unlocks.
Of course the treasure item finder can be upgraded with grinded materials.
The treasure item finder works in the most grindy way possible: It "charges" a low percentage with each combat encounter. Naturally grindy this resets when you leave an area. Once it finally reaches 100% it starts increasing the odds of running into a treasure item. That means you need to do even more combat encounters until you finally hit your treasure. THEN IT RESETS AND YOU RESTART THE GRIND (WTFF-FFFFF)
You grind for relationships to unlock scenes and story progress - this is very slow times. Leveling Nel literally takes many real-time-hours. Leveling Demonea/Mistress is almost as painful, but she doesnt have as many levels.
The author fully acknowledges this and added the Nel possession mechanic - a literal autogrinder where you give control to an NPC and she grinds for you. This is slightly faster than doing it by hand, but now you sit infront of the screen for hours and watch the game play itself. (What the omega fuck)
The smallest possible mercy is that this autogrinder is capable of running in the background, like some demented cookie clicker.
If there is any way to speed up the grindy gameplay (battles where i oneshoot trash, wait for chest opening animations, comments...) i'd love to hear it.
