Addressing one point at a time, trying to not be
too jaded (but probably still rather jaded):
TJ108 wrote:The game to me sort of came off as bad, maybe because of the major grind that everything was, or just that I was so used to PSU, with the more open world, instead of one lobby.
Still true. As an added bonus, going from 45-50 (level 40 unlocks very hard difficulty, level 50 is super hard difficulty) quadruples the required exp per level. Not even exaggerating,
check the wiki (44-45 is 270,000, 49-50 is 1,120,000). The top graph on that page is exp per level, the bottom one is total exp.
TJ108 wrote:I also noticed when I played that leveling up a photon art or spell did nothing to its appearance, and it seemed to have a rather low level cap. Has that aspect changed? are there any actually hard spells/photon arts to get now? or are they all still around lower levels and have very small changes upon leveling up?
The current level cap for PAs/techs is 16. The way Sega rebalances PAs is to have it take effect at the next level tier, so a lot of PAs suddenly jump in power at 11 or 16. PAs level 11+ can't be traded or bought/sold on the player market. Some PAs are only available from rare monsters. I'm sure you can do the math here.
TJ108 wrote:Another topic I wonder about is the sub-class system, or the advanced classes as they call it. How have those developed? and do they have real benefits? or are they just a way to re-roll your character?
Officially, the second-tier classes are supposed to be the same level of power as the original ones, just with different weapons/skills (e.g Hunter gets sword/partisan/wired lance/gunslash, Fighter gets double saber/knuckles/twin dagger/gunslash), but you have to level their basic class to 30 to unlock them.
Subclassing is a different thing entirely--you can select a second class, in order to gain 1/5 of its stats, the ability to use PAs for its weapons (you can still only use certain weapons on off-classes--for instance, partisans are normally hunter-only, but Soul Eater can be used by all classes), and the ability to use its skills.
Note that Sega's insistence on making 90% of your skill points go into "+x% raw damage" skills largely wrecked the ability to use interesting class combinations. Hunter doubles all striking and ranged damage, fighter adds 50% extra to all damage (if you hit the monsters from the front), braver adds 40-something% extra all damage for hitting monster weakpoints or weak elements (for techs). Ranger/gunner only add ranged damage, force and techer only add teching damage, ...
Hunter's Fury Stance was underpowered (it added 150 S-ATK/R-ATK at level 10, +100 if you max both of the Fury S Up skills) compared to Brave/Wise Stance (+44% for brave if you max it and its boost skill and hit a monster from the front, +70% on wise if you max it and its boost skill and hit a monster from behind). They changed Fury Stance to give +25% all damage, made both of its boost skills give 10% extra damage each, and then added a +20% JA bonus skill while fury stance is active, for a total of +81% damage in exchange for taking 10% extra damage.
Gunner had major issues; it's pretty much an exclusively single-target class (primary main mobbing option was gunslash, which literally every other class uses better) and had two skills that added +15% damage each for being less than 3 feet from a monster, then one more that'd add 20% if you were at 100% HP (it's not gradual--it's on or off, so if you equip an item that adds 10 max HP, it's no longer active). They responded by adding a skill that literally doubles its damage output.
This is Sega's approach to balance.
They occasionally add clever things, but they always manage to find
some way to ruin it.
"We'll add a new quest that's completely different from anything before!" ... "and then we'll make it only available at random times during the day."
"We'll add a way to upgrade old weapons so you can use them at higher levels or by different classes!" ... "and then we'll make it depend on either buying AC or relying on the RNG to make a weapon usable by other classes" ... "and also we'll make them have far higher variance than any actual 10*, rendering them pretty much worthless in most circumstances".
"We'll add quests that have fun challenges and let you work towards 11* weapons"... "and then restrict you to one run a day".
Some things have gotten better, but...
Raujinn wrote:If you hated it at the start you're still gonna hate it.