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.
I don't know the minimum level you need to not just lose the game but should not be too hard to reach. I'm also not arguing about the mechanics of the fight, there are a lot of them and it is hard.
Tanks: No idea why they hit hard. They also have a finisher if someone is bleeding, its kinda similar to Vix. Sam has the same debuff. No idea why they heal. Also your full team can taunt.
Healer: Their attacks getting stronger the more they use it. Your team can also heal and revive.
Drainers: The buff only happens when someone on their side gets low enough. Did you read some of what I typed before? I brought that up already.
Structures I kinda agree with you on. They can be really annoying to deal with and make fights unwinnable. If I couldn't run from those fights I would fully agree with you.
I also agree about overclock. To my knowledge it also only shows up on Red Bot (which I run from) and the factory (which is optional).
The stealing, I have no clue why they added that but I think they can't steal what you have equipped until you're bag is empty. And yeah common items are not too useful.
Because you are fighting strong enough enemies to get xp that's worth something. Are you draining enemies? Also what tone of voice do you use in you head when reading what I type because I think there is some hostility that is one way. These are genuine questions.
Healer targeting is the main thing I'm confused about and I think its part of the problem you have with the game. Just had triple healer and if they target someone together they do a lot of damage. This is the first time its happened to me honestly. Still manageable but it did catch me off guard.
Looking at Tanks, they might do more damage when breaking guards so that might be where the high damage comes from.