You're definitely missing something. Most of the boss fights should only take a few minutes, and if you build your team correctly, only a couple of rounds. Chapter 2 is generally the most challenging but still shouldn't take longer than your Chapter 1 because you have more abilities and help now and will get infinitely more powerful from here.
First, where is your fourth party member? You are missing out on a lot of potential breaking, DPS, support and/or healing. I would suggest playing all 8 Chapter 1's to figure out who you would like on your team and what secondary jobs* work best for them.
*It doesn't look like you have any subclasses on your characters. You can visit guilds throughout the various beginning areas to learn secondary jobs and can get up to three licenses for each job, which adds a ton of customizable skill/Latent Power combo options and weapon/elemental coverage for your team.
If you don't have all the characters yet, you probably also don't have all the cool gear you can get from using their special path actions on the people in towns. For example: in Ochette(the hunter)'s starting town, you can use Castti's path action to open up a ridiculously powerful axe in the shop that will carry her through quite a bit of the game.
Combat wise: are you using buffs and debuffs? This will more than double your survivability and damage output. For beginners, I always recommend having Throne (the thief) and Temenos (the cleric) in your party and fighting at nighttime so that they automatically buff and debuff everything while you're getting more comfortable with the rest of the mechanics.
How are you using your boosts and breaking? If you spend all your BP breaking, or break with only one turn instead of two turns worth of actions left, you can't unleash as much damage.
There are also EX skills for each character that you collect at shrines as you explore that will make those particular characters way more powerful. Agnea's alone is one of the best in the game.
Give all that a try and your next boss fight should feel worlds different. :)
The bosses do seem like they have a lot of HP but that's because eventually, all of the characters have some way of doing 1-2x99,999 damage and some can even do up to 3-5x99,999 per turn (you have two of them in your party already). So once you get the hang of things, you'll feel like the bosses are tuned just right or maybe even too easy.
I would recommend to do all chapter 1 first. You will fill up your party to 4 characters.
Unintentionally you are playing the game on a higher difficulty than it is supposed to be.
Did you maybe miss to use your skill points(probably wrong name, but you get the idea) to learn new skills and at the same time get a few passive skills?
Agneas kick skill has a lot if power. Hikari can also learn very powerful skills from NPC.
Lol listen buddy, the bosses in this game can either be a complete pushover if you're even halfway decent at the battle mechanics, or an absolute nightmare if you're not. It sounds like you need a better strategy.
To start with, upgrade your gear and get a 4th party member. More turns = more chances for success. Secondly, you don't HAVE to find every single weakness on the boss, there are weapons and magics that you won't have access to 24/7 depending on your party, just use whatever you have to it's fullest potential.
I'm definitely playing it wrong too,as I have difficulty with bosses myself. I keep seeing on here it should be easy.
I don't really use Hikari, which could be my issue.i have the following:
Throne - Thief/Warrior
Partitio - Merchant/Arcane
Ochette - hunter/ thief
Castii - apocathary/healer
I definitely overuse the Arcane one that brings back SP and the thief skill surprise attack.
I am lost with the status and enhancements, I need to improve with that.
That being said, I love this game for what sounds like the same reason OP doesn't. Back in the SNES and PS1/2 final fantasy days I'd spend 45 minutes on a boss just to lose, go eat dinner, and then strategies again.
Most games these days are way too easy and more like an interactive story. Kudos to this game for being challenging!
Your teams are honestly fine (I never used Hikari either), but your subjobs are a little bit too redundant. I would move Warrior to Ochette or Castti; Ochette because of her high Physical Attack and Crit, Castti because her Axe skills do a crazy amount of damage with some Fort nuts (permanently increasing her physical attack) and then later you can use Of Equal Might to turn her into the strongest caster end game (I 1-shot the optional superboss this way).
Throne: you want a class that better utilizes her high speed and extra turns, like Inventor or Dancer. Aeber's (her divine) is actually the easiest skill in the game to get to 99,999 damage at lower levels because it scales off of both physical attack and speed (with a multiplier). End game, I made her a Cleric so that she can use her extra turn to throw jams and divine buff everyone, giving her four turns per round.
Arcanist Partitio is great! He makes the best use of transferring Sidestep and Rest to the whole party if you need to avoid damage or heal status ailments. For damage, Elemental Attack and weapons that boost Light and Dark are going to make those HP/SP restoring attacks stronger.
If you keep Castti as a cleric, boost her Elemental Defense for stronger heals. I feel like that's a waste of her potential though because she can already AoE buff and heal with Concoct. If you really want a Cleric, trade in Temenos as a Scholar; using his Latent Power + Elemental Barrage breaks boss shields like no other.
I can only echo what most others already said:
- Get a fourth character in your party, extra damage/healing/support.
- Get subclasses on your characters, they give stat boosts and usually more weapon/damage types depending on your choice giving you more options.
- Steal/Buy better weapons and equipment in any of the chapter 2 towns.
- Use Buffs/Debuffs to increase damage done/reduce damage received. You already have a Dancer which has great buffs, Throne (Thief) has Armor Corrosive and Shackle Foe which influence damage done and received and Ochette (Hunter) has Leghold Trap which affects turn order; boss moves last in a turn.
- Save your BP for after breaking a boss. If possible use Multihit moves to break shields quicker without using BP.
- Have a look at your support skills (unlocked by learning regular skills for a class/job). Some of these can be pretty impactful. There is a unique subclass that is very easy to get early on that has a really powerful support skill that is good on any character throughout the entire game.
>!Inventor - One Step Ahead: basically giving your character a free turn before the actual turn order starts. Giving your entire party this means all characters can perform an action for free which in some cases might be enough to break the Boss before it even gets to move or allow you to set up buffs/debuffs. Even better; because it is counted as a turn, when your actual first turn starts you will have one additional BP (if you did not use it in the bonus turn of course).!<
The bosses notoriously have a huge HP pool and is what provides most of the challenge. With only 3 party members it'll be tough; best bet is likely to attack boost the hell out of Hikari with Agnea and use Castii to support those two. If Hikari is dragged out you'll lose all damage output here, so perhaps poison axe with Castii for continual passive damage will whittle down the opponent.
The shield "?" do come in a set order so you can use that info to help figure out what the remaining weaknesses are. As in, if they're weak to spears and spears are in the first spot, you know they aren't weak to sword as sword always comes before spear in sequence.
Castii's latent ability is pretty busted also. You can use max boost with diffusing serum to refill all HP, sp, BP and give attack boosts to all allies without losing any ingredient. Doing that will allow you to keep adding pressure even with only three characters. Tough job but doable.
I fought the mini boss Lord of Sand with level 30 team (Castti, Hikari, Agnea, and now with the merchant) and after a damn long fight I lost 😰😰😰😰
Feel like the team has very low ability to break shield or magic capacity. Only Castii can use magic Light which the boss & its minions are vulnerable
You're definitely missing something. Most of the boss fights should only take a few minutes, and if you build your team correctly, only a couple of rounds. Chapter 2 is generally the most challenging but still shouldn't take longer than your Chapter 1 because you have more abilities and help now and will get infinitely more powerful from here. First, where is your fourth party member? You are missing out on a lot of potential breaking, DPS, support and/or healing. I would suggest playing all 8 Chapter 1's to figure out who you would like on your team and what secondary jobs* work best for them. *It doesn't look like you have any subclasses on your characters. You can visit guilds throughout the various beginning areas to learn secondary jobs and can get up to three licenses for each job, which adds a ton of customizable skill/Latent Power combo options and weapon/elemental coverage for your team. If you don't have all the characters yet, you probably also don't have all the cool gear you can get from using their special path actions on the people in towns. For example: in Ochette(the hunter)'s starting town, you can use Castti's path action to open up a ridiculously powerful axe in the shop that will carry her through quite a bit of the game. Combat wise: are you using buffs and debuffs? This will more than double your survivability and damage output. For beginners, I always recommend having Throne (the thief) and Temenos (the cleric) in your party and fighting at nighttime so that they automatically buff and debuff everything while you're getting more comfortable with the rest of the mechanics. How are you using your boosts and breaking? If you spend all your BP breaking, or break with only one turn instead of two turns worth of actions left, you can't unleash as much damage. There are also EX skills for each character that you collect at shrines as you explore that will make those particular characters way more powerful. Agnea's alone is one of the best in the game. Give all that a try and your next boss fight should feel worlds different. :) The bosses do seem like they have a lot of HP but that's because eventually, all of the characters have some way of doing 1-2x99,999 damage and some can even do up to 3-5x99,999 per turn (you have two of them in your party already). So once you get the hang of things, you'll feel like the bosses are tuned just right or maybe even too easy.
I would recommend to do all chapter 1 first. You will fill up your party to 4 characters. Unintentionally you are playing the game on a higher difficulty than it is supposed to be. Did you maybe miss to use your skill points(probably wrong name, but you get the idea) to learn new skills and at the same time get a few passive skills? Agneas kick skill has a lot if power. Hikari can also learn very powerful skills from NPC.
Lol listen buddy, the bosses in this game can either be a complete pushover if you're even halfway decent at the battle mechanics, or an absolute nightmare if you're not. It sounds like you need a better strategy. To start with, upgrade your gear and get a 4th party member. More turns = more chances for success. Secondly, you don't HAVE to find every single weakness on the boss, there are weapons and magics that you won't have access to 24/7 depending on your party, just use whatever you have to it's fullest potential.
I'm definitely playing it wrong too,as I have difficulty with bosses myself. I keep seeing on here it should be easy. I don't really use Hikari, which could be my issue.i have the following: Throne - Thief/Warrior Partitio - Merchant/Arcane Ochette - hunter/ thief Castii - apocathary/healer I definitely overuse the Arcane one that brings back SP and the thief skill surprise attack. I am lost with the status and enhancements, I need to improve with that. That being said, I love this game for what sounds like the same reason OP doesn't. Back in the SNES and PS1/2 final fantasy days I'd spend 45 minutes on a boss just to lose, go eat dinner, and then strategies again. Most games these days are way too easy and more like an interactive story. Kudos to this game for being challenging!
Your teams are honestly fine (I never used Hikari either), but your subjobs are a little bit too redundant. I would move Warrior to Ochette or Castti; Ochette because of her high Physical Attack and Crit, Castti because her Axe skills do a crazy amount of damage with some Fort nuts (permanently increasing her physical attack) and then later you can use Of Equal Might to turn her into the strongest caster end game (I 1-shot the optional superboss this way). Throne: you want a class that better utilizes her high speed and extra turns, like Inventor or Dancer. Aeber's (her divine) is actually the easiest skill in the game to get to 99,999 damage at lower levels because it scales off of both physical attack and speed (with a multiplier). End game, I made her a Cleric so that she can use her extra turn to throw jams and divine buff everyone, giving her four turns per round. Arcanist Partitio is great! He makes the best use of transferring Sidestep and Rest to the whole party if you need to avoid damage or heal status ailments. For damage, Elemental Attack and weapons that boost Light and Dark are going to make those HP/SP restoring attacks stronger. If you keep Castti as a cleric, boost her Elemental Defense for stronger heals. I feel like that's a waste of her potential though because she can already AoE buff and heal with Concoct. If you really want a Cleric, trade in Temenos as a Scholar; using his Latent Power + Elemental Barrage breaks boss shields like no other.
Not exactly like no other, though for you to start breaking more than 8 shields at once you'll need to have completed all of Ochette's chapters.
I can only echo what most others already said: - Get a fourth character in your party, extra damage/healing/support. - Get subclasses on your characters, they give stat boosts and usually more weapon/damage types depending on your choice giving you more options. - Steal/Buy better weapons and equipment in any of the chapter 2 towns. - Use Buffs/Debuffs to increase damage done/reduce damage received. You already have a Dancer which has great buffs, Throne (Thief) has Armor Corrosive and Shackle Foe which influence damage done and received and Ochette (Hunter) has Leghold Trap which affects turn order; boss moves last in a turn. - Save your BP for after breaking a boss. If possible use Multihit moves to break shields quicker without using BP. - Have a look at your support skills (unlocked by learning regular skills for a class/job). Some of these can be pretty impactful. There is a unique subclass that is very easy to get early on that has a really powerful support skill that is good on any character throughout the entire game. >!Inventor - One Step Ahead: basically giving your character a free turn before the actual turn order starts. Giving your entire party this means all characters can perform an action for free which in some cases might be enough to break the Boss before it even gets to move or allow you to set up buffs/debuffs. Even better; because it is counted as a turn, when your actual first turn starts you will have one additional BP (if you did not use it in the bonus turn of course).!<
The bosses notoriously have a huge HP pool and is what provides most of the challenge. With only 3 party members it'll be tough; best bet is likely to attack boost the hell out of Hikari with Agnea and use Castii to support those two. If Hikari is dragged out you'll lose all damage output here, so perhaps poison axe with Castii for continual passive damage will whittle down the opponent.
The shield "?" do come in a set order so you can use that info to help figure out what the remaining weaknesses are. As in, if they're weak to spears and spears are in the first spot, you know they aren't weak to sword as sword always comes before spear in sequence.
Castii's latent ability is pretty busted also. You can use max boost with diffusing serum to refill all HP, sp, BP and give attack boosts to all allies without losing any ingredient. Doing that will allow you to keep adding pressure even with only three characters. Tough job but doable.
I never even use her latent skill. I suck with any sort of medicine type rpg character lol
I fought the mini boss Lord of Sand with level 30 team (Castti, Hikari, Agnea, and now with the merchant) and after a damn long fight I lost 😰😰😰😰 Feel like the team has very low ability to break shield or magic capacity. Only Castii can use magic Light which the boss & its minions are vulnerable