Fuck this game man. I just spent two hours to get to a dungeon only to find I can't defeat the enemies. That's bad design, there should be a way to know in advance how you'd fair against them, killing enemies in the dungeon only to come across a bird that's a shear cliff wall of difficulty. Such utter bullshit to have your time wasted like that. Really poor game design.

Fuvk the Dragon Temple. They seem to just really wanna put people off from playing the game at this point. I was so hoping this wouldn't be another Persona where I'd fall off in the middle but alas, they just won't allow the game to be fun and flow nicely, there has to be some BS like the stealth in chadadruius and now this shite. Arthur, it was going so well and all.

Yeah I had to unfortuantely grind at the dragon temple. The trance crystal next to the first safe room is quite a good place. Theres also the one down one of the lifts where there are two trance crystals next to each other. Use mage so you can get mp back as well

I do all the monster-hunting side quests before taking on a main dungeon and readjust my parties skills and Archetypes. I keep a lot of those items on hand to level them up as well.  As for the dungeon maze. As someone who played a few Atlus games and finished Nocturne a few times. lol. Every dungeon in Nocturne warps you to something.

I went to a tower in the sea first which was such a major waste of time, crazy difficulty spike. I'll try mage but at this point I'm thinking about just turning down the difficulty to easy, it's the same as grinding. Fuck the press turn system too, I can see why people complain about SMT being difficult now, it's zero fun to get a repel and have to remember which character and skill causes such an incredibly punishing mechanic to trigger. I'd rather they added a simplified combat mode tbh, game was so much fun without having battles turn into memory puzzles. 

Press turn is awesome tho lol. It's a big reason SMT fans love Nocturne. That and everything else being great.

I tackled the Dragon Temple yesterday and got punished for trying to rush in and save Eupha right away (I just wanted a new party member). This is a dungeon where you really need to dedicate at least four days if you explore it as soon as it becomes available. I think devs wanted you to do side quests first, maybe unlock Junah friendship and level up a bit before beating it

I realized this after burning through almost all my MP just to reach Eupha in a chamber at the start of the dungeon. I reloaded my save and went for the "run and rush" approach instead. It's actually possible to complete the dungeon without fighting. When Eupha finally joined, she was at level 41, significantly stronger than my party, but I still beat the bosses effortlessly on my first try using Masked Dancer-Seeker Junah, Wizard MC, and Faker Heismay. Just debuff the boss, buff Eupha as the main damage dealer, and you're good to go—she absolutely demolishes everything. However, she struggles with MP management, so her Summoner Archetype seems better suited for nuking bosses rather than exploring dungeons.

In the end, I gained a new party member, leveled up a a lot from the bosses, and now I'm over-leveled, knocking out side quests dungeons quickly in a day. Once my party hits levels 42-43, I'll return to fully explore the Dragon Temple in one go.

Side quests forst my ass, you can do the first island on that trek easy but the spire is impossible. I wasted 4 days and TP'd back cause the birds are brick walls of difficulty not to mention they have insane evasion stats. Crazy spike but that's this game all over, it gets to easy then too hard and isn't balanced. Gotta grind that island I suppose but that's just shit and outdated design I thought yhey'd have improved, like Tales of Arise which done it so perfectly in that aspect, you only had to grind just a little near the end. A real fucking pity. 

If there was indicators that showed you what was a repel, a block or whatever and weak showed up before you had to trial and error it. Maybe. But this nonsense, not to mention you never know what the options will be for restarting, there should be a restart from battles beginning for every fight guaranteed. You know I'd nearly go with Story teller difficulty cause they obviously don't give a fuck about the gamers time when they designed this game. It's not like dying in another game, you could loose two hours here if you fuck up or get road blocked. 

Not sure what system you are playing on but I press L2 on PS5 and it shows me the weakness. Don't forget to move the party to the front and back at times.