I'm still a ways to finishing everything, but I have similar sentiments about Plus Disk's design falling off in the postgame. Though I feel that it starts happening around the time Murakumo's Blessing is acquired. Murakumo's Blessing has the same issues as the singular items that are ridiculously strong, like Magic Sword Chaos, in that it gives too much strength to be balanced by only having one character be able to use it. This goes even more so for Dragon God's Power. The inherent design of that kind of subclass regrettably needs to be super strong to justify only 1 character being able to use it, but then the bosses also need to be balanced around the usage of these subclasses, and it doesn't seem that they are. Like, of the bosses that I felt were well designed post-Murakumo, so far there's only the story Orochi fight (hampered by the various blessings though, really overpowered), Ryujin-sama, and the
fight, and to a lesser degree Serpent of Chaos (it's only challenging because of Time-Space Warp + Disintegrating Breath shenanigans though). I've yet to fight the 250f Corridor boss,
, but after wiping out the
in three attacks, I'm a little hesitant to assume that they'll be great fights. I've been trying to follow Hard Mode rules for everything (average Brave Level seemed to be roughly 90% of the boss level so I used that, and I followed the character level *1.2 for library levels, eventually going for round 100s around the character level 500 range), so as to try to fight the bosses at what I thought would be closest to the intended party strength, but this has generally led to disappointing results in Plus Disk.
Basically all of the B1-4 optional bosses and everything in the Corridor have been fairly disappointing, with one or two fights being more like one might expect for a normal boss fight than feeling like mid-bosses. All of them were easily defeated with simply overwhelming power, and as the game goes on and better options for equipment become available, this becomes even more true. Recently I don't even bother putting any HP level up bonuses on the left slots because 1x Regalia and 1x Medicine of Life makes a character durable enough to take 3+ hits from most Corridor bosses. And for attacking with Tenshi, I just put Magic Sword Chaos and 2x Scourge because there's no need for defensive equipment. With Dragon God's Power she's 2-shot at worst by the stronger multi-target attacks, because it offers so much affinity. I'm hoping that, by the absolute endgame, the bosses genuinely will be balanced around this level of gear, and they'll be good fights, but the present state of the game doesn't leave me confident about it.
I'm a big fan of having fights be challenging enough to make players adapt to the boss instead of using whatever strategy they want, so being able to blow over everything through overwhelming power has been a little disappointing. Still, I understand that with the incredibly huge amount of possible character combinations and strategies, the bosses need to be balanced in a way that everyone can reasonably defeat them, so for a player that tries to utilize every possible advantage available, it is inevitable that dissatisfaction should be encountered, since the game isn't supposed to be played like that. But there were still great challenges like the Guardian of the Crystals, which I'd like to see more of.
Regardless of criticisms, the game is fun though, I'd just like to see more of a challenge from it like the earlier sections of the game had. I think, because there were less options available earlier in the game, it was easier to balance around them, but as more options become available, from characters to skills to subclasses to equipment, it becomes harder and harder to balance, leading to this problem I have, and various other additional problems. Plus the balance of SPD, player DEF/MND and enemy ATK/MAG, and other imbalances as a result of the levels getting too high. It's difficult since this is a consequence of things that 3peso wanted to do with the game, and it would be hard to scale levels back down, or alter how stats function.
Although, I have to say,