Well, no one can blame me for not being sadistic. I managed to get to Shinra building and there two things driving me nuts.
1 - The ecounter with the two Shinra soldiers and the SOLDIER 3rd class. The guy pretty much killed me a dozen times. Plus having him put people to sleep before theres medicine to cure sleep and accessories to prevent sleep is just unfair. Add enough MP to cast Bolt 2 and Ice 2 like there's no tomorrow, plus a long range attack and the thing is harder than the bosses. I wanted to steal the Hardedge from him (supposing he still carries it) but with his level being 22 or 24 its pretty much impossible for me to have enough tries before he kills me.
2 - The fights seem to lack some balance. There are enemies that just deal too much damage for no reason. 250 per hit is too much for this part of the game without some grinding. The bosses deal less damage. Its just unreasonable. It feels like every fight might be a boss if the strong enemy comes and the bosses are just pushovers... I end up thinking that I would be better off just running from everything and rushing through the bosses. It's the same principle used in D&D games. Some DMs like to make each fight a boss fight. But that ends up ruining the experience, because when there's an actual boss fight, there are no surprises or challenges. The player already went through hell and survived. There should be a build up, where players get comfortable, then face challenges, then surpass something difficult, rinse and repeat, culminating in something really challenging. I can think at the top of my head of tree games that did this perfectly: Legend of Dragoon, FF8 and Chrono Cross. There were bosses, sure. But sometimes there would be a different kind of boss, with a different kind of music. More dark, more frightening and you just KNEW you we're in for some pain. If everything's difficult, there's no surprises. No difficulty peaks. It begins hard and stays hard.
Sorry for being blunt, but if there's one thing I like about games is balance. Theres something called a learning curve. Theres also another thing called difficulty spikes. A basic principle of RPGs is that enemies should become difficult at points when players have options regarding fighting them. In the first hours of any RPG there's hardly a difficult enemy, but that's because the players are still supposed to be learning and getting familiar with the mechanics. Throwing off a boss like Air Buster, wich made me level 'till 14 to beat it, has no point. The player can't go back and buy more materia. Also can't buy items. Can't have access to equipment or damaging items that would really help (except maybe Shrapnels, but they are a pain to get). So, it just comes to dying half a dozen times, figuring it out and then leveling to the point of having enough HP to survive it.
Now if we were talking about the boss in Junon, or others beyond there, that would be a whole different story. The player could change equipment, materia, use items or try using other party members. There's real strategy there.
I don't want to make all the work put into this seem like wrongly done. Its not that. I understand that some people like this kind of challenges. Even I used to love them when I was young and in other games more suited for strategical thinking (Front Mission 3, Star Ocean 2, etc). But even from a simple storyteller's point, there's an objective lack of balance.
Best regards
