Is the first playthrough supposed to be this hard?

[Maverick6146]

On 4/27/2021 at 1:51 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

 

Setting aside the opinions about 'clunkiness' in the combat  (I disagree, so I must be a 'fanboy' of course - it can't possibly just be that the poster is wrong or anything - that would be impossible! ), but a lot of the rest of this post is just factually incorrect.

 

A single Normal play through and a Hard NG+ will result in more than ample maxed materials - and maxed out character stats by around Chapter 8-9 of the NG+ - to make it through the Hard Mode playthrough.

There is absolutely no requirement for 3 playthroughs, and no reason to start on easy mode, as doing so will not teach you anything about what you will be dealing with on Hard mode, and is likely to actually harm your chances, as you will get a rather false concept of how to fight.

 

The toughest optional bosses are hard fights, but not so hard as to require deferring to guides etc. It's just about learning their tells and weaknesses, and how to counter their attacks.

There is not just one strategy that will work - it is better to use whatever strategy you come up with that works best for you, than to try and copy someone else's - in these cases, multiple approaches are viable, and using your own materia set-up that is tailored to your own play-style will always be more successful than trying to use someone else's, as their play-style may be wildly different to your own.

Unless someone wants learn the system from scratch and all by himself, I personally don't see the point of starting on normal to "Prepare" the hard playthrough. The best place to learn the mechanism of hard difficulty is the hard playthrough itself, and there are guides all over the internet just in case.

 

Based on my pervious experiences i totally ditch the approach of "preparation".