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With my Casual Mode playthrough complete, on to Hard Mode!

Dungeon 1 was trickier, possibly just because of the level cap? At first my girls were basically doing no damage because they were weak noobs, then they were doing basically no damage because of the shame and nudity debuffs. There was allegedly 'no shortcut', but I still found it straightforward to sneak through to the boss, probably because I'm forgetting a handy shortcut that appeared in Casual mode. No, the problem was getting to the boss and then being able to deal any significant damage. I tried putting the Rags on Madoka (oops no, that was the cursed version), and so went with Sayaka instead, hoping to scale Sharpen while everyone else threw down debuffs; that didn't work, because of the defence buff the boss's minion uses; four sharpens later she was dealing like 4 damage a hit, which was not enough for that level of effort. Instead, it wound up being Kyouko with Fire Spear for the win; between Flaunt and Ribbon Tie, she could get 8 a hit from rotation 3, and wouldn't be stunned thanks to wearing the Rags. Not an easy win (she was last girl standing with only a few HP), but still a win.

With Madoka being in the cursed gown, she wasn't able to get enough Shame or Grovel for titles. Fortunately, the gown was removed on reentry, so I was able to use dungeon items to purge her Shamelessness and grind out the titles. 20 fights later, she'd been maxed out, and I could face the boss to get that last title. Those title stats will be a lot more important in this run, for sure!

Dungeon 2 was a significant pain even in Casual; in Hard Mode, with no way of escaping from corsets and heels, it was worse. Beyond a little bit of initial sneaking around to grab boxes before getting too debuffed, there really wasn't anything to do but to grind the first fight repeatedly until everyone learned how to deal with it. When everyone in the party is that debuffed and limited to a single weak random strike, you have to take the fight you can win. Once you're finished with the posture grind, there's not much threat left in the dungeon, but it really was quite a grind. The boss's posture checks are hard enough to occasionally catch out even fully-trained girls, but assuming you've done all the training before facing them, they're still not much of a threat once debuffed. With foreknowledge, there wasn't anything hard here, just a tedious grind to reach that conclusion.

I did notice that the boss lever was moved, so that you can't open the easy way to the boss before beating them, but it hardly mattered; you're almost certainly not making it across the room to get there in the first place until all your girls are fully-trained. Without any access to Happy Pills, I had a bit more difficulty getting Madoka to max Selfworth once I'd moved on to title grinding, since she'd apparently gone negative at some point. It wasn't a huge deal, though; she was barely into positives by the time I had my second girl maxed.

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Dungeon 3 wasn't that big of a deal; it's still quite easy to sneak through most of it. It probably wasn't a good idea, but I couldn't help but equip and try everything I had a free slot for... but that didn't cause too much of a problem. I had an early casualty on the first floor, and restarted. Then Sayaka fell early on the second floor, but with no way back, I pressed on... and proceeded to open all the chests and beat the boss. It probably helped that I was able to clearly identify which enemies were trying to add extra curses, and focused my attention on them whenever they showed up.

The Collar item was probably meant to make sneaking harder, I guess? In Hard Mode, its movement speed reduction is actually pretty excessive. Both surviving party members were collared after the final battle, and it would've been really obnoxious if that'd happened earlier without a good way to mitigate that speed debuff. As per my original run, the title grind remained pretty straightforward with the ability to transfer de-cursed items (the "Curse Remover" also helped!), and it was the XP grind that took longer, thanks to the lingering effects of anti-XP curses.

Dungeon 4 was unpleasant the first time, but you'd made it a little easier for Casual mode since its initial release, as I noted earlier. Not so for Hard Mode! By far the most brutal change felt like locking all the grates; without being able to open up faster routes, my first shot at the boss was Kyouko solo, with just her arms free; everyone else had been mummified and defeated. There was a switch in the boss room just before the boss, but it seemed to do nothing? I also saw the "hilarious joke", and saved just to confirm that it did exactly what I thought it did. Her buff/debuff attack cycle wasn't bad in many of the earlier fights, but was laughably insufficient for the boss.

The level cap here was particularly noticeable, just two levels above where I was exiting Dungeon 3. There were LOTS of pills here, and as predicted I didn't need any of them; I was stuck here long past hitting cap. Hopefully, they'll be useful later.

Once titles started rolling in, I applied gear; Mami got the Greater Tiara, Sayaka got the Lesser Tiara, and Madoka got the obviously-cursed "Queen's Tiara" (being the least-useful mummy, she could at least be an okayish tank with the Slave Collar). Fighting the boss with effectively one and a half characters was hard, but Mami's debuffs and Sayaka's physical damage proved just barely sufficient; Mami beat the boss with 6 HP left (the exact amount of damage the boss had been doing to her with each hit). With no paths backwards opened by defeating the boss, it's a good thing that everyone had gotten their titles by that point; I would've hated to have to do all that again!

I also saw the "hilarious joke"

Heh, it's a shame you saved.

There was a switch in the boss room just before the boss, but it seemed to do nothing?

Of course, hard mode is how the dungeon layout was originally, so no shortcut.