The game had a story? Who knew.

I thought it was just a pervy dress up game. :P

Nice read! Tbh I think X-2 aged quite well, it's quite funny to play. Still some chore moments from what I recall and pace issues, but the gameplay and the characters compensate that. I'm going to start Valkyria Chronicles 2 today btw.

If a weakling like Angra kicked your butt you have no right to complain about the difficulty of the game. The main path is easy so you story readers can go through it. Go fight Trema at the 100th floor of Via Infinito to see an actually challenging boss.

Why did I find this game hard? XD I mean the boss fights were really easy but I found that some regular enemies had very cheap abilities. It's kind of hard to deal with a new enemy that suddenly uses pertify on the whole party. And I thought the Malboro were a lot harder to deal with than in FFX. Also it sucks when an enemy gets oversouled at the beginning of a battle -.- I think I tried to raise too many different dress spheres for each character at the same time.
But I wasn't a big fan of the game over all. It lacked purpose and I struggled to want to keep playing. It didn't help that they changed the perfect battle system from FFX to something rather dull in my mind. But my favorite part was the leveling system.

Yes. The game gives you several warnings in the previous acts so I did as much as possible before going to the desert in act 5.

I used skills a lot instead of just mashing x without thinking because unlike attack using skills gets AP for the characters. Gotta put to good use that free MP I get from touching save points, you know. I guess that after 50 hours my characters had way more skills learned than yours. I used Lady Luck which has 2X Exp too, so they weren't Lv 40 either. I used the mug-granting Garment Grid for info on what enemies carry (getting potions and other stuff for free is nice too) and stole every oversoul enemy I meet (and a few bribes too), so I guess I had better gear as well. Since the thief job starts with the time bar full after learning First Strike I usually start boss fights with one or more characters with it, switch to the class I want, do what I want and get extra Garment Grid node bonuses before the boss gets to act.

Via Infinito is in Bevelle, right from the temple's hall (if I remember correctly). Just touch the (turquoise?) light. It has a boss every 20 floors and you get story %, some key items and cool gear in it.

Are you going to play Dragon Quest VIII?