The Shrine

I'm now on Meryl's quest of power and Titan Force kills me in one hit with full HP. I think I also missed a Resist Knockdown book somewhere because while I have 1000% resist to stun/knockback/critical hits I have only 15% resist to knockdown. Speaking of which, the defense/offense numbers are pretty meaningless since it's all relative so your stats are meaningless since you don't know what % the enemy has to attack/defend. I'm level 71 now and it doesn't look like leveling up does much, if anything, to improve your stats, so it's all dependent on your Force Arts.

I'm totally against instant death to all spells, including overpowered attacks that kill you with full HP. 7th Saga was bad about this, and Vagrant Story was another that had an instant death spell (for a game with one hero).

At least Vagrant Story there's a spell that blocks the next spell so you just cast it whenever you know an enemy with instant kill spell is around.

Anything that can stun, knockdown, or paralyze you in SFN might as well be able to instantly kill you because you can get these effects reapplied while you're incapaciated. Granted you can use items that grant you immunity to those effects and they're not in short supply, but not abundant enough so that it's the first thing you try. Besides you'd like to think having 1000% stun resist means you don't get stunned, but like I said it's totally relative and you've no way of knowing whether the next boss requires 100% or 2000% stun resist to actually not get stunned.

This game has huge swings in the range of damage you take. In this battle I have about 1200 HP. You fight Cyclop and Titans that do 20ish damage to my defense, and Gigadeaths that do about 200 (which isn't as bad as it seems because you can attack 4 times between one of its swings and then evade it), and then all the sudden you run into the leader, Titan Force, and you die instantly before you know what's going on. I'm sure if I live past the first hit his attack is a guaranteed stun + knockdown without having a ludricous amount of stun and knockdown resist.

This game is really an exercise in stat building. The boss before the Trial of Power hits for 700 and after building defense a bit and putting on a shield it was hitting for 37 and that's with him critting every hit because you probably need 2000% crit resist to not get crit every hit. It reminds me of Grandia series where the game is really just an excuse for the battle engine, though the engine is quite good.

Thanks to the Diablo 2 like structure, you're always only 3 minutes from where you last saved, unless you forgot to TP back to a town before an important (or for that matter, every) battle.

Unfortunately Radiata Stories just got this way, too. I'm been steamrolling through the game with no problem and am at the last level where i cream the monsters leading up to the final boss, only to be so badly decimated by the final boss. I'll finally have to stop and level up, which is gay because now i want to see the ending.

Why allow me to go on cruise control the entire game just to make a hard ass boss?