In all the times I've played the game I have never broken enough to fight that boss. I can understand the mindset though. It is the fastest and easiest way to end fights. I just don't like it.
If you want to play without breaking enemies I could give some more information about them (though you might know some of it already) otherwise I'll let you figure it out on your own. Just know, fights are likely to last longer.
It was the only way I didn't have to slog through hours of fights just to experience a miniscule amount of the game. Basically what I did in version 1.1 was get Red to level 100 as quickly as possible by mass draining everything. Then I swept through every fight getting Sam and Vix to level 100 as well, drained every boss as close to level 1 as I could get them, killed them all normally, and THEN broke them just to see what would happened. The result was the fight against Darkness. A level 100 superboss that drains the fuck out of your whole team every turn and by like turn 10 or something you're either dead or level 1 again.
No clue if that whole thing was changed in version 1.2 though.
Anyways I just don't think that's how the fights should be. A constant back and forth of
->Drain ->get drained ->repeat
->Damage enemy ->enemy is healed to full ->repeat
->Do anything ->thing is countered by enemy ->repeat
Is just not very fun. I mean I've played games where the odds are as stacked against you as they could possibly be (Evil West on Evil difficulty for instance) and that was WAY more fun than this because no matter how hard the enemies hit me, no matter how many times I got my ass whooped, I still felt like I had a chance against them. Sure the enemies were tanky, sure they could heal to full in seconds, but I had the tools I needed to counter them and it DIDN'T feel like a never-ending pointless battle, every kill, every action I took made ACTUAL progress in the fight. The fights were actually tense and thrilling (which is admittedly hard to do in a text based RPG so that's a moot point) and not a boring back and forth.
This isn't a bad game per se, but it needs balancing imo, it needs some more stuff to give the player some extra OOMPH. And I think that every enemy shouldn't have a counter to every ability/strategy that YOU have. Each enemy needs a more PRECISE specialization and YOU need to figure out what abilities YOU have that counters THEIR'S. NOT the other way around. It's like it's trench warfare and I'm fighting for hours, sometimes DAYS, just to gain a single foot of ground at the cost of thousands of soldiers. It isn't fun. Plain and simple.
Still, it's more balanced than Tales of Mystra though. Once again, those who know, know. And I will not elaborate.
That's the thing. you are looking at single enemies when thinking about counters when you should be looking at the group. If there is a tank you know they'll taunt if other enemies lose enough health, but they can't taunt for themselves. So if there is a healer they heal the tank meaning they aren't attacking so their attacks take longer to buff. It also means no taunt so you can drain your target.
Tinkerers are the main problem because what they make decides if you run or fight. If the enemies double up then it depends.
Not to say there aren't problems it just feels like some of what's been pointed out aren't it. Like the levels, those are fine. The healers aren't a problem ether. Drainers can be annoying and maybe only one should be able to appear but multiple are beatable.
I don't know what the problems are and I'm not going to pretend to know. All I do know is what is annoying to me, and none of it has kept me from enjoying and getting an ending. Not sure if I'll find out how to get anymore but it is what it is.
I promise I have not been thinking about them in singular terms. It's just incredibly annoying when every enemy has about 3 to 5 counters to anything I do. Whether its to them or someone else.
The fights shouldn't be a constant back and forth and the enemies shouldn't have infinite loops that can only be broken by completely rng stuns. Multiple enemy comps can only be defeated with extra turns or powerful items which require you to defeat enemies to get. And the random boss encounters are sometimes instant losses because you just straight up aren't prepared to fight them.
Every enemy type has their weaknesses that you can exploit but every enemy type shores up the weaknesses of another and sometimes multiples of the same type completely negates their own weaknesses. Tinkerers are the biggest offenders because they literally fill all roles at once. Drain totems are immediately your #1 priority as they drain from everyone and funnel it into a singular enemy which powerlevels them, barricades next as they completely gimp anything you want to do, and mending totems are actually worthless and I usually ignore them as I can easily out DPS the healing they do. The overhealth cap helps a little with infinite healing loops, and the revival cap helps a shit ton as it means you can permanently remove enemies without breaking them.
Every single fight I've done so far in this update, I've won by focusing them down one at a time until they literally can't be revived anymore. I stun whatever enemies would screw me over the most in the moment, divert attention to my characters with the most health, drain the most annoying enemies as close to level 1 as possible, then one or two-shot them as many times as I can as it distracts every enemy in the process. I save-scum the hell out of the game every single time I encounter a composition that is actual torture to fight or a boss I just don't want to deal with. If it's 2 healers (or mages/drainers) and a tinkerer and the first thing the tinkerer does (assuming both of my stuns failed to land) is shit out a 1K health barricade, I refresh the page because its genuinely faster and more rewarding than retreating or trudging through that fight. The enemies are too widespread in their skills, this wouldn't be a problem if there were more ways that the player could use early on to get stronger. But there aren't. Magic attackers are ALSO healers. Buffers/Supports are ALSO drainers. Tanks are ALSO damage dealers. And Tinkerers are the biggest pieces of shit I've ever seen and I hate them with every fiber of my being. Every single enemy can counter roughly 3 of the actions you can take with each character each turn and the only way to do what they do to you is with items.
I think its mainly that the early game is just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with and it just doesn't feel fun. It gets better as you go through and get the ball rolling but it takes considerable effort to actually GET that ball rolling.
You don't need items for normal fights, you don't even need items for slime queen.
I understand your feelings about tinkerer and even share them somewhat, but running from fights never upset me, not even reloading the last save upset.
When it comes to enemies, tank target lowest health so healing those you want to protect can be more helpful sometimes. The healers should be healing because it keeps them from using the only attack they have. Drainers only bubble if you give them the option to and even that can be helpful because it resets their drain bonus. Tinkerers I have nothing yet, just hope it's nothing too bad to deal with, don't care for them much ether. Only tip with them I can give is if all 4 spots are full they should be the first enemy you beat.
Honestly a healer having an attack spell makes sense, a tank being able to deal damage makes sense (bleed is the real killer). Though I could see swapping bubble and the spell I feel that would be more annoying to deal with.
So what I'm hearing in refute to Geeb's genuinely understandable gripes with thought out explanations:
"Well it doesn't upset me to have to run or reload every fight cause I can make a couple enemies not loop their typical move and do their counter move instead, except for one of them that counters everything; just get lucky bro."
Not only is that NOT a viable strategy, but defending poor design choices negatively impacts the author. If something is an issue that drives a majority of people away from a game, shouldn't you let them know what it is instead of blindly yes-manning? The balance in the game is way off. You are constantly fighting at disadvantage no matter what you do. I only beat catzilla by getting lucky and using 3 miniguns, which I was lucky enough to get from the rng store after 17 pulls. Otherwise, I would lack the damage to counter the tail while also being outdamaged, outdrained, outhealed, and stuck fighting the boss after already being in a fight before it shows up.
You spend 90% of the game crippled and bleeding, enemies are in cohesive teams that cover weaknesses EVEN WHEN THEY'RE ALL THE SAME TYPE, items are expensive, do little to actually help you unless you get like 2-3 good ones, thieves show up and STEAL them (which you have no feasible way to stop in the early game), the bosses have every ability under the sun, better turn economy, better versions of your abilities, and no counters besides luck.
In the current state of the game, the only viable way to get anywhere without breaking literally everyone you meet (which isn't guaranteeing success, btw), is to powerlevel Hizi by dumping as much of all 3 characters' levels into her as you can and using Judgement off cooldown. And keep a flamethrower on hand, or else tinkerers will just negate everything you ever do forever.
I never said anything that could be mistaken for "getting lucky". Running a fight you don't see as being worth the effort is fine. The problem is that can be a lot of fights, there is also the battle length and a lot of other things that can make it unfun. If you aren't having fun that's fine. I also wasn't yes-manning.
Catzilla comes out of nowhere and I had to use a the watch to beat it. It is a difficult fight that you do need good items for. Thing is when I first lost to it I didn't get mad, I looked at the damage, saw it was recoverable, and I continued knowing I would beat it at some point.
When it comes to strategy, yes these are viable because they are used in other games. It just looks worst here because there are only 4 enemy types with few moves to pull from. If an enemy has an attack that is dangerous you ether find away to keep them from using it or there is a move that counters it. in this case its the former. With tank you don't give them a reason to taunt, with healer they can only heal or attack and their attack is worst, with drainers you have to manage their drain to keep it from getting too strong and the bubble is like taunt except it can also reset the drain bonus if needed. Tinkerers are too new for me to know how to deal with them. This is honesty kinda a simplified explanation because I'm not good at explaining things.
Most of what I typed were tips to help deal with the enemies and the rest was me speaking of my experience.
Hang on a minute. You thought losing HALF OF YOUR META PROGRESSION (Hizi's levels) and Catzilla returning "Stronger" was "recoverable?!"
Level 55 -> 27 is OVER THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND (300,000) XP LOST TO A RANDOM BOSS. A boss which you CAN BARELY PREPARE FOR. I mean, you know its coming but your prep time is completely rng dependent.
I say this with the most amount of respect I can muster. You HAVE to be a masochist... There is no other explanation as to how you find something like THAT "recoverable." Because in ANY other game THAT is game ending. Better off starting from scratch. THAT is equivalent to your 4 best soldiers dying in XCOM and you losing everything they had equipped to them (your best gear).
I mean, it's not entirely "random" as it shows up when you hit level ~50, so when you hit level ~50 you KNOW it's going to pop up. But whatever fight it takes over IS completely random. 3 tanks? You're fucked because everyone's bleeding now. 3 drainers? Manageable. 3 Healers? Manageable. God forbid you get ANY fight with a tank or tinkerer in it because starting the Catzilla fight with bleeding AND a 50% heal reduction is a guaranteed loss. Not to mention in its second stance the Head removes one of your characters until the stance ends IN ADDITION to draining A PERCENTAGE of their xp. You can technically free whatever character it steals if you damage it, but oh wait. You can't! Because BOTH of the Hands are taunting and have about 2K health... My Red was level 62 and she was losing over 8000 xp a round. Enough to level up ALL of Catzilla's parts INSTANTLY. Not to mention IT FUCKING HEALS ALL THE PARTS FROM IT TOO. The fuck am I supposed to do to that? I can kill the tail the next time it cycles back to the first stance, but by then each part is over level 60, and all of my characters are bleeding, crippled, burning, and half health. Meaning I have to choose between mending, defending, or taunting. All of which are almost guaranteed to do nothing to help fend off my impending demise.
You SHOULD be mad at this fight by the way. In my opinion this is the epitome of bad design. It's not difficult in any way that actually matters. Nor does it have any unique mechanics other than the dual stances. It's just "difficult" for the sake of being difficult. The tail and hands all have about 2K health, the head has roughly 3K AND drains AND applies the stolen xp to EVERY SINGLE PART (meanwhile your drain doesn't do the same, despite it making sense for it to do so. I mean it's technically a SINGLE entity. If it copies the stolen xp and gives it to each part, then each part should LOSE any xp drained by me. I shouldn't GAIN that xp as it'd mean quadrupling the xp I get from draining it and making it the best farmable enemy in the game, but the parts should still lose it.) AND heals every single part for HUNDREDS of health EACH TIME IT DRAINS YOU, the tail also applies AOE burns to your whole party, and heavy hitting single target burns as well, one hand applies burn (because there isn't enough in the fight as is), and the other applies bleed (yippee), the legs have roughly 3 - 4K hp as well and deals about 350 damage a hit.
It's a fight basically meant to fuck you and put you back to the start of the game. If the dev's intentions were a "Mr. X" type of impossible fight it could've been done WAY better than this. As it stands, the Catzilla fight isn't "recoverable" because that would imply it doesn't click the "reset timeline" button FOR you. Taking away HALF of Hizi's levels is way too harsh of a punishment for losing what might be a quite literally impossible fight. Not to mention its horrible balancing.
The only loss is Hizi losing xp, you can recover from that. 1 Level goes farther when you are a higher level than Hizi. You only lose when she can't fight back. Though I've also only fought to win against Catzilla when I was level 100 so I've never realy ran into the problem of her leveling up. I actually beat Catzilla with mostly common items recently and found a way to tell if she is going to appear.
Also I don't "Have" to be a masochist. I just don't feel the pain you do.
I didn't have Hizi high enough level for her to even be "just drained down to low level". It straight up ended the game and gave me the catzilla ending. Geeb is right that the boss has far too many mechanics in its favor. Taunting doesn't work half the time, as the legs stomp whoever they want, AOE from the tail doesn't even care, bleed and burn take away from your severely lacking turn economy to counter unless you want to just soak up an immense amount of damage, drains heal for an exorbitant amount which puts you at a health, level, and turn disadvantage (cause in the multiple tries I did to beat the stupid cat, I only struggled free ONCE EVER; so you may as well just count that character as lost till phase change), and having to chew through multiple thousands of health to get to any meaningful damage in the span of 2 turns is not only unreasonable, but there's only 1 or 2 strategies to do so. This is an unescapable fight, which means you HAVE to fight it out. If you DON'T immediately gameover from losing it, then you may as well be since you're just put back at the beginning of the game. Have fun grinding back through the slog of enemies just to encounter the same boss, but now even stronger since it gobbled your hard work from before.
Here's some questions for you:
Why do the tank enemies have so much damage output, apply debuffs, and have self-sustain? (Bleeding heals, for whatever reason. Not even just for the vampire bat enemies, but the starting area pigs, too)
Why do the healing enemies have high damage AND a revive?
Why do draining enemies have buff abilities and spawn in multiples during a single venture?
Why do structures outclass your entire team? A draining totem is pretty much a death sentence for a run if you don't take it out in 2-3 turns.
Why are there buffs that are far better than you as the player have access to that don't have duration and will quickly overwhelm you? Looking at you, overclock.
Why have enemies specifically around that steal your items, that are so polarized in either completely useless/near mandatory, which are nearly impossible to get due to the cost and rng of the shop, and you have no hope of stopping them in the early game?
Why do you, as the player, never have advantage in any fight, no matter how deep into the playthrough?
It's hard to believe you just shrug off a lot of these frustrations unless you just do not value your own time or enjoyment of a game, and are just saying this as inflammatory dialogue.
Running or reloading every fight until you get one that's actually manageable ISN'T FUN. It's not really all too upsetting it's just NOT FUN. Every fight shouldn't require you to retreat, refresh, or trudge through it to squeeze out a win. You also shouldn't have to min-max a standard fight either. Almost every single average player is being pushed away from the game because you NEED to min-max fights just to win.
I mean, how am I supposed to deal with 3 Tipsy Ghosts (all with a 35% chance to dodge physical attacks) at the same time? It's doable, sure, but it's just NOT FUN TO DO. That fight requires constantly taunting with Vix and Sam, draining them as close as you can get to level 1 with Red, and then either killing all 3 at the same time or killing 2 of them 3 times so they can't be revived anymore. Items make that SIGNIFICANTLY easier to deal with but in order to get them, you gotta win fights and grind for money, then gamble on lootboxes for one of the very few items that actually help you.
It's just not a good gameplay loop imo. It's an infinite uphill battle where the enemies constantly have the advantage over you. Even if YOU somehow gain the advantage they just take it back through some random bullshit. You can and will eventually win the war of attrition but dear god is it painful, not fun, and just straight up bad design. There's very few fights that actually FEEL like fair fights, the rest are just you punching a brick wall until your hands shatter, waiting months for them to heal, returning to punch the wall again, and it EVENTUALLY breaking down after years of punching the same wall. Or (after punching a few walls down) walking into Home-Depot, buying a random toolbox, and HOPING it comes with a sledgehammer in it.
If you enjoy min-maxing every single fight. Making sure that EVERY SINGLE action is used to the BEST of its ability then sure, have fun. But the majority of people don't. Especially if it's quite literally fight #3 that requires min-maxing. You're supposed to be slowly lead INTO that. Library of Ruina for instance starts getting complicated as all hell past Urban Plague and it SLOWLY leads you into upgrading and perfecting your decks before that point. Every fight in that game gives you MORE resources and tools at your disposal. Meanwhile this game actively gives them to the ENEMIES instead and just hopes you can figure out how to deal with it.
The dev's recent response makes it even worse. A meme that can basically be summed up as "git good," ONE actual balance change (big rat spawnrate), 3 tutorial prompts, and then text pretty much saying "Instead of voicing your concerns on Itchio (AKA a public space), go to the Discord, that I own, full of people who will (probably) vehemently defend me, so I can (maybe) kick you out if I don't like what you say." I've probably taken too many embellishments with this paragraph so far but that's just how it reads to me. That post really drove it home, it wasn't the dev saying something along the lines of "yeah, ok sure, I GUESS I can add some stuff to make it easier for you all." Instead he basically said to just deal with it. He can add/change things to make the game easier without ruining the overall experience. Hell it doesn't even need to be forced on you, just make it all optional. Summons were optional in Elden Ring. The Scadutree Fragments are technically optional too in its DLC. They are there to make the game easier for those that want to use them. They don't compromise the vision of the game at all, they're just there for players to use if they want to.
Meanwhile the closest you get in this game is Gaze, where it feels like you'll get screwed over and locked into a bad ending for using its mechanics to get stronger. That's not the same as the ones in Elden Ring. There should be an opposite to Gaze where you get substantially weaker buffs for sparing enemies instead. Hizi technically works for that but she requires so much XP for any meaningful benefits and half of them are just random chances anyways whereas Gaze's buffs are actual flat stat increases. Significantly more reliable than Hizi's as they don't trigger off of random chances.
I don't min-max, I control the enemy with my actions. For 3 ghost you don't need to taunt, just attack the one on the right, there's more to it like draining the left one but its harder for me to explain when I'm not doing it.
Though I'm just going to say I don't speak for other people, I speak for myself and for what I know is posable. I don't decide if its fun for others, I just gave the information to deal with the enemies and share a bit of my experience. If your not having fun that fine.
