>You are mistaken if you think that this isn't the case for me, but if you think it's good balance to still be susceptible to RNG even when you ARE strong enough, then we just disagree. No amount of real consistency can be achieved.
Most RPGs are like this though. If the rng gives you a bad roll 10 times in a row, you often just lose and have to try again, no matter how prepared you are. If the RNG hating you was surviveable, it would make all the statistically normal outcomes easy.
>They were only doing 1 damage after all. So a boss on story mode dealing 1 damage, you wouldn't think is about to kill me right? It winds up, sure, something to think about if I was playing seriously on a higher difficulty, but it was flashing yellow so I just decided to test out if I'd kill it. I didn't. So this story mode encounter that was dealing 1 damage, with its enhance and wind up uses pierce, one shotting me on story mode. *The point isn't whatever you think it is.* I'm using *examples* for how egregious many enemies multiply their damage and disregard your defense.
It is true that damage threshold systems (as opposed to reduction) have this behavior. It's much less of an issue lategame, and I think it's also not a great argument. The stat boost on nightmare was not chosen randomly, it has been balanced with the systems that are in the game in mind. That 30% stat boost will almost always mean more than 30% more damage taken it at worst an issue in explaining how much harder nightmare is.
>Notably you completely omitted a response to John and Paul's magic vulnerability you CAN'T effectively defend against, ESPECIALLY post-avaritia.
Most enemies that use spells do so on a predictable turn, so you can guard against it.
>But again, if you don't ignore the broader point, her existence then makes John just a protect-bot.
Or you could protect with aura, or slime, or defend with charlotte and let the chips fall where they may. And once you get protect II, no one needs to spend 100% of the time protecting anyway.
>You know, except it's not because avaritia > dark attack > tactical crit generally one shots ANY ally through their guard, especially if they reach enhancement.
Great, he still absorbed a massive crit that could have killed Aura.
>Sure I'll just dodge the moves like I'm playing Elden Ring. Oh wait it's a turn based RPG where even the standard difficulties are quite grindy. There's no such thing as 'stepping up your game'. There's grinding for more stats (something that uses precious time) and relying on luck. Your tactical advantage dodges are luck. Flash bombs avoiding damage are luck. It's luck and grind all the way down, which contradict many of the timed events and rewards in the game.
What exactly is it that you find grindy? Enemies never respawn, and there's very few forced encounters, you can ignore/stealth a lot of them. There's a fixed and fairly small amount of skills and materials (especially gold). The only grind potential I can think of is workshop job and bartending. Those are indeed bad uses of time, as you mention. They're also not necessary, "no workshop or bartending" would barely qualify as a challenge run imo. Tactical advantage + flash bomb will mean that you dodge a large majority of hits. If a single hit kills you on normal, probably you have a bad strategy (like letting a buffed enemy hit you) or you are understatted for the fight. And unless you specifically enjoy a challenge, you should remove collar for the especially tricky fights.
As for skill expression, you are obviously correct that this is not a real time game, so quick reflexes will not help you. But there is a lot of optimization to do in using items, smithing the right materials, learning complementary skills, learning enemy attack patterns and reacting to them appropriately as well as planning your days for quick progression. Probably more things as well that I just can't think of right now.
>Even one of the other threads posted today mentioned they play on story because of poor difficulty.
I strongly disagree that the difficulty is poor. You and many others may not find it enjoyable, which is why story and casual exist. But personally this game has a really enjoyable difficulty.