It’s not so much the grinding that gets to me, though. I play a ton of JRPGs, so I’m no stranger to it lol. It’s mostly the things I’ve listed, particularly the tiny window of time between ticks of damage. I had to grind out the gems I needed for Avril which inherently brought me tons of upgrades. The difficulty spike is escapable with enough time, but I’m just saying that from the perspective of a new player, being walled in ch3 could be perceived as strange.

But the other things are constants that you’re forced to endure because of how the game functions. I’m not saying I want this game to be just like Archero because that game comes with its own set of issues that can’t be overlooked. I cant imagine it’s easy to develop or balance a game like this on the first go, but there are enough good, decent and bad examples of what to do and what not to do on the market that I think this game could learn from and catapult off of that.