What Works – Re-Blockading

This is pretty much what I wanted it to be. At periodic times, landmarks on the map will refill with enemies to be reconquered. This is a way to both loot more gear, but more importantly, get more combat XP to earn Abyss skill points, which more or less just evaporate in time, outside of scholar pickpocketing and lingering engram challenges.

I’ve been using this to train my up-and-coming Damiane, who I never got to use during the main campaign because A) she’s barred from half the missions and B) it was never, ever worth investing skill points into her. Now, I’m taking on these zones I had no business fighting in before, and getting a significant amount of skill points for her and her gear in the process. Considering she’s not leveled up, some of these were a real challenge. I actually had to pull her from a Marni fight on the east coast and sub in Kliff because she was just getting destroyed.

I would love a little more depth to this here rather than just pure XP grinding. Some new items or gear to unlock and work for as you do this, and considering how much Pearl Abyss keeps adding to the game on that front, I think they could do that easily.

Not Loving It – Boss Rematch

Not sure how I feel about the Boss rematch system, which has literally zero rewards at all, just rewarding your curiosity about how it might feel to fight a stronger version of an old boss, or how to take them on with Oongka or Damiane this time when you couldn’t before.

I get doing a challenge like this for the love of the game, but again, I’d like to see this fleshed out more with any kind of reward system since it’s not giving you XP. I think there would be potential issues “farming” a super easy boss if it was giving out too much, but maybe defeating X number of bosses in the powered-up mode unlocks some level of stuff you can’t get otherwise.

Boss fights themselves still need work. Probably 70% of these remain somewhat mechanically dull, and you have to just spam food in order to get past them rather than rely on any sort of coherent tactics. This needs to be looked at further, and the “leveled up” bosses just require…even more food, really, as they do more damage (and you do less). That’s really the only difference. But unlike reblockades, you keep all the stuff you use, so you’re not burning healing for no reason, at least.

Great start with both of these! I’m looking forward to seeing how they’re built out from here.

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