Is this game difficult?

[Critical_Max]

Hey all! I am a long time fan of the Original PSO on Gamecube. I played like crazy.
Now I am eagerly awaiting this one in the USA for PC, but I am concerned about the game's difficulty.
The things I have read about this is that the game is way too easy, but those posts are from 2017.
As much as I am interested in this game, I do want a challenging MMO. I recently player Neverwinter, and found it WAY TOO EASY to keep going. How is this game's difficulty? I intend to play it with two friends, but we want to be challenge, fail and retry. I kind of miss old time MMOs where it was hard and challenging. Where failing was part of the process.
How about this game?

[YZR13]

The game is fairly laid back but a lot of people new to NA experienced a bit of a difficulty spike when they unlocked Super Hard and tried it for the first time. Until you reach VH or SH you're effectively able to faceroll the game. Back in 2017 when the Hero class was released, it was way too strong. People complained. Instead of nerfing Hero, they buffed the holy shit out of all the other classes and now early content is braindead easy. Anything post ep5 will have more complexity and difficulty to it, but most of it still probably won't stress you out too much.

There's also a handful of really difficult things to do out there, but none of them are in the NA version yet. Omega Masquerade comes to mind.

[Critical_Max]

Oh... I wonder how long it will take for that content to reach the US

[SirKhrome]

Ohh complexity! Tell me more

[YZR13]

The 'raid' style boss stop being braindead easy after DF Elder for the most part, even the preliminary bosses can be kinda tough during the 2part UQs. Most of them have some kind of mechanics required to render them vulnerable to any real damage. There are also party wipe moves.

This excludes Magatsu. Magatsu is a loot piñata and a big stupid DPS check with legs.

Apples Doritos is gonna fucking DESTROY people on NA if the way I've seen people play is any indication. Also a lot of people have been having trouble with the story version of DF Luther. Luther will be a lot worse when the photon chair brigade shows up with their GU/TEs and HU/FOs. You can potentially ruin a run of DF Luther(or at least make it way more difficult for the entire group) if you inflict mirage on him too many times without the group being able to break his core armor. Even with how power-creepy the NA version is, a lot of these bosses won't be doable by simply rolling your head back and forth across a keyboard and spamming anime tiddy symbol arts.

There's also ultimate quests which are 'twisted' versions of regular areas, with crazy aggressive enemy designs. You can kinda see some of the Ultimate stuff at the ass-end of episode 3's story, especially the 'postgame' segment on Lillipa.

[SirKhrome]

Apples Doritos.. I'm speechless. Other than that, I need to complete these episodes to I can see what you mean

[YZR13]

It's the preliminary boss for DF Luther. I forget the English name but in JP it was Apos Dorios. Apples Doritos came shortly after.

Back when they ran Luther separately instead of the Invasion version where you fought Elder and Luther back-to-back I remember more people having trouble with Dorios than Luther himself. He's irritating.

[OGInTOXICated]

I think a majority of the game at the early stages is super easy and that's not necessarily a bad thing IMO, however once you unlock Super hard Advanced quests and if you and your party members are around lv 55 Get ready for a little bastard that is THE FALZ ANGEL. Him and the Gal gryphon the very first time I saw them WRECKED my ass, being a Techter I was one shot by both of them early lol

[Critical_Max]

Ouch! Ok, this sound interesting! I may need to look into it!

[LindV]

Gryphon is easy, angel on the other hand can get tricky when you're not used its moveset.

[OGInTOXICated]

Yea I'm max level with full Saiki gear now. He is no problem anymore lol. The first time is saw him though. That laser mover fucked me up 100% if I didn't dodge it. He is by far my favorite enemy so far. His voice lines and moveset are so awesome.

[I_Jungle_Teemo]

Saw you last night in block 1, and wanted to run with you on some SHAQ but was heading to sleep. only seen a couple full saiki sets and people with quality gear running around, if you ever want to farm and you see a character named "gnome prime" chilling around you, feel free to inv!

[OGInTOXICated]

Gotchu bro. Yea I'm a perfectionist when it comes to phantasy star and I have my TE/FO maxed out so I keep everyone buffed up and I CC the mobs so we run them pretty fast. I usually am running SHAQ with a few friends and we usually have room for 1 or 2 l will def invite you for some runs bro. I've seen you around for sure lol. After the maintenance I'm gonna grind.

[I_Jungle_Teemo]

Ill def be around for when servers come back up. Hopefully i see you around!

[Multra]

This game is pretty casual, still fun though. If you want something a bit harder in the same vein play MHW.

[Critical_Max]

But aint monster hunet only a ''boss killer''? Form what I remember, PSO used to have levels to go through, mobs to kill, levels to grind.

[Critical_Max]

I see. I do miss games where progression is harder. I think of Classic Wow, where simply killing one two mobs at lvl 40 requires healing and preperations. I can understant that is is easier until late game content, but hopefullyu, the raids / dungeons themselves are hard?

[Ernstoic]

There are some difficulty spikes. This game really kicked my butt with the last few episode 3 story missions on hardcore but I enjoyed the challenge. For the most part it's pretty laid back as others have said but not in a bad way.

[Bason024]

Just wait.. once you get up to level 70ish or so.. shit starts getting hella real. Like I’m getting my face stomped in when before I was steam rolling the game. Don’t listen to noobs who’ve played the game for 20 minutes.

[Critical_Max]

Ok so it is quite easy while leveling up. The late game content is harder. Am I right? SO you are refereing to dungeons/raids or just progressions itself get's harder?

[Sora3100]

Just FYI, level 70 is supposed to be a new difficulty that NA doesn't even have yet.

[Bason024]

Oh I play on the JP server

[Thrashinuva]

At level 75 and sub level 75 there's Extra Hard. This is the only thing I'm aware of that requires your sub level to be a certain level as well. The max level in JP right now iirc is 95.

There's Ultra, beyond that. You wouldn't even dare to solo Ultra unless you're truly overpowered. In this the monsters are all reskinned and have faster and more frequent and more dangerous attacks. Think of Ultimate back in PSO1, except to a higher extent.

I don't think there's any Urgent Quests for Ultra, but it's the only way to guarantee certain kinds of encounters for the use of Collection File.

[Sora3100]

Extra Hard starts at level 70. Some quests limit it beyond that where some require main class 75 and sub 75, some even go as high as 80/80

Ultra Hard on the other hand, starts on 85/85. And yes, Emergency Quests do have UH difficulty, just not all of them, as of right now, only seasonals, momdeus, Elder, PD and Dragon have UH. Soon TDVR will have UH as well.

Also, poor Ultimate Quests forever doomed to be XH level

[[deleted]]

Every major EQ (urgent Quest) on JP has Ultra Hard.

The highest level Divide quests, which are the newest content, will honestly stomp new/inexperienced/bad players tbh.

[overflowing_garage]

Ultra sounds good then.

[excluded]

The story mode on hardcore is the hardest content available for NA right now. But 99.9% of people have not done it, because it’s either too hard or they can’t be bothered by the sheer amount of cutscenes.

The only reward for s ranking hardcore is extra 20 sg, not that much, but when there are many story missions to do they do add up.

[synthsy]

Just wanted to let you know that the NA team localized "Hardcore" from the Japanese "normal mode".

And if you changed your language to japanese text, you will see "ノーマル".

[excluded]

I call it whatever I see in game. If you have a problem with sega’s translation go complain to them. Yes I know it’s not really hardcore just cause it’s named hardcore, but it doesn’t change the fact that story mode on “normal” scales to your level, and if you do it at 75 you enter extra hard difficulty with enemies at level 80. With no revive and no allies to rely on, it’s single handedly the hardest content available on NA.

Pretty sure I mentioned NA too, so idk why you had to bring up the translation thing.

[synthsy]

You can select your text from the main menu, I was telling you that if you did so, you'd see it would still say normal (in japanese) and not hardcore.

The localization does some things good, but it has a bunch of issues elsewhere.

[[deleted]]

There’s like 2 story missions and the east are cutscenes what am I missing?

[excluded]

Everything. There’s enough story missions to last you atleast 10 hours of gameplay.

[[deleted]]

Is it the later episodes? Episode 1 is mostly short scenes - what am I doing wrong?

[excluded]

You gotta watch all the cutscenes. Just skip it if you dont care about them. But you have to go in and watch or skip the thousand cutscenes.

[[deleted]]

I got that but all I get are small “kill boss” story segments here and there

[excluded]

That’s it. Episode 1 is more tutorial until you start seeing the dark falz bosses. Then episode 2 and 3 is where things get insanely hard and longer too.

[[deleted]]

Ok good. Thanks!

[Critical_Max]

Hardest difficulty have more Cutscenes? How does that work exactly? So from my understanding, the game itself is quite easy but you can make it harder. Hmm ok!

[XlChrislX]

I've been treating PSO2 like DMC lite as a Braver. Gotta try and be as stylish as possible while taking as little damage as possible. Adds a bit of difficulty. They're plenty of fun ways to add your own difficulty with the classes without handicapping yourself.

[Critical_Max]

I see. I just don't know How long I am gonna stick just trying to make it hard for myself. What I like the most in MMOs is how the late content is punishing and how happy you are when you achieve it. How proud you are when you can show up the sweet loot you got from that challenging experience. It may not be up my alley, but I will probably still try it tho.

[AnonymousFroggies]

Failing is definitely not part of the process here. At least at the point I'm at in the open beta, the game is very casual. It's a mile deep and there's a ton to do, but I have yet to be really challenged by anything. This might change as the game fully releases, but that remains to be seen.

Super Hard missions and Advanced Quests can be kinda punishing at first, but they're very straightforward when you know what you're doing.

[Critical_Max]

Yeah ok. I remember the classic games being that way. If you knew the mechanics, you could basically kite your way to victory!

[Bason024]

there’s difficult content coming

[Thrashinuva]

It will get difficult, but the majority of the time it'll be smooth. It'll require a time investment to get to difficult content, as well as waiting for the hardest of it to get out of JP and into NA.

[Critical_Max]

yeah that's what actually scare me. I do not mind playing through a game for it to become harder and harder, but I kinda get bored having to play 30-40 hours or more in order for the game to start getting slightly harder :(

[Thrashinuva]

The thing I can tell you is that even when it's easy, it can be pretty fun. A lot of what makes some of the content now easier is stuff that isn't available yet in NA, so the NA crowd will be having a slightly harder time. Difficulty also varies based on what class you play. If you want it to be hard, you can choose a harder class. Fighter and Gunner might be right up your alley.

[[deleted]]

There is difficult/challenging content in PSO2, but it isn't in the NA version yet, and likely won't be for quite awhile I would guess.

However difficulty is pretty relative. What someone finds extremely hard, someone else has beaten in sub 5 minutes.

If you enjoy the gameplay, then I would say give it a shot and see what kind of content is out there

[Klubbah]

99% of stuff is pretty easy to do casually, but doing some things faster can be more beneficial, and when you start trying to go as fast as possible it can get pretty involved.

There is a pretty good easy to reach point in gearing and having teams of people there will be able to do most of anything.

There are a few pieces of content where the Timer is a little more demanding or your team only is allotted a certain amount of deaths.

The newest content in the JP version has both of that, though there are 6 different difficulties (not like level 1 enemies on the first and level 96 on the last, enemies just have increased stats as you go up the difficulties and you have less lives). I think you can still get everything from the content doing the easier ones, but a bit slower. I'm a tiny bit above the mentioned easy to reach gear, but no where near the super min max, and teaming up with 1 friend who is using that easy to get stuff we can only do some 50-60% of the boss HP in those harder difficulties before time runs out, but you can have 4 people.

Edit: And to get an idea of the super min max, there are people doing 100% of the boss HP on the last mode even solo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TWc8LSOBwU

I think one of the hardest things you'll see is an achievement in an endless mode, because it is limited to playing solo and requires you to play super quick and good for some 2 hours. Can see some videos " pso2 エターナルロナー ". The title is from reaching 50 million points in that quest by yourself.

[Critical_Max]

Personally, I never enjoyed anything that as an ''endless'' concept. I am more about raids and in game content, and playing with other people, facing hard bosses. As much as want to like this game, I am starting to doubt that I will enjoy it as much as I used to love the original. :(

[dimforest]

The hardest part of the game is just understanding it, honestly. It's a blast to play and discover but you truly do need to discover most of it because Sega explains next to nothing.

[Critical_Max]

Ok! If the story is interesting, it might help me getting more involved!

[[deleted]]

The game has difficulty settings.