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Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin DLC: Trials of the Dragon King is locked behind the hardest difficulty in the game

PolskiGamer17

Member
Oct 27, 2017
607
So the new DLC dropped today, and I have found out that you cannot start the DLC on any difficulty other than Chaos, then after the first DLC mission, the game forces you to play an even HARDER difficulty setting just to progress through the story.

Now you have to repeat stages to farm the "dragon treasure" that is only obtainable in the "Bahamut" Difficulty.
Basically the game expected you to grind (a lot of equipment) for the DLC, before it even released.
Kinda a cheap way to make the DLC hard and long in my opinion.
 
ProstatePuncher

ProstatePuncher

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
5,800
443
 
Valcrist

Valcrist

Tic-Tac-Toe Champion
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,710
Yeah, this DLC has been pretty disappointing to me. All this DLC is, is "earn a new type of currency by running through old levels again and maybe something will happen".
 
Lemony1984

Lemony1984

Member
Jul 7, 2020
6,729
PolskiGamer17 said:
So the new DLC dropped today, and I have found out that you cannot start the DLC on any difficulty other than Chaos, then after the first DLC mission, the game forces you to play an even HARDER difficulty setting just to progress through the story.

Now you have to repeat stages to farm the "dragon treasure" that is only obtainable in the "Bahamut" Difficulty.
Basically the game expected you to grind (a lot of equipment) for the DLC, before it even released.
Kinda a cheap way to make the DLC hard and long in my opinion.
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You can't fail the first mission in the DLC and it rewards you with level 200 gear. No pre-release grinding necessary.
 
Alpheus

Alpheus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,665
There's also that infinite Devil Trigger toggle they added that I believe can be used in vanilla CHAOS difficulty which might help ease the grind for people who want to have as much ilvl 300 gear as they would like before tackling the 200-300 difficulty levels of Bahamut difficulty (with the super mode toggled off since the super mode does forfeit you certain drops in Baha Blast difficulty)
 
demi

demi

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,858
Sucks for people who didn't play past the story, but there are easy ways to farm Chaos for gear. You could probably just grind the same easy levels on Bahamut and get gear that way too -- unless you can only play certain levels on Bahamut difficulty

I'll wait for all 3 packs to be released before checking this out
 
speedwagen

speedwagen

Member
Oct 27, 2017
863
UK, London
This sounds disappointing. Has the PC version been patched at all as well? I was really excited to see what the DLC would offer since for nioh it looked like it was pretty worth it. I'm guessing Square is to blame here?
 
Hektor

Hektor

Community Resettler
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,884
Deutschland
Grinding in the game is absurdly easy tho, you can literally play any mission vastly beyond your level, kill the first one or two enemies and be gear appropiate
 
Alpheus

Alpheus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,665
Hektor said:
Grinding in the game is absurdly easy tho, you can literally play any mission vastly beyond your level, kill the first one or two enemies and be gear appropiate
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Yea especially since mini bosses like the odd hippogryph or Marlboro or what have you can be found near a cube more often than not, you can even farm the last boss of a stage as long as you can consistently get past their first phase. It's really hard to get stuck in this game, for all it's difficulty it really goes out of its way to give ya an out. In my view at least.
 
Kalor

Kalor

Resettlement Advisor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,632
speedwagen said:
This sounds disappointing. Has the PC version been patched at all as well? I was really excited to see what the DLC would offer since for nioh it looked like it was pretty worth it. I'm guessing Square is to blame here?
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There's still two more DLC packs so this one is probably just lighter on new maps since its not that long since release. Nothing to really blame Square or Team Ninja for. They still made a bunch of new system changes with this update, and there's new bosses and jobs.
 
Mr. Nice_Guy

Mr. Nice_Guy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,716
This makes zero sense to me. People who grinded out high level equipment are going to play on the highest difficulty anyway, so why lock this out from people who don't want to play at a higher difficulty?
 
speedwagen

speedwagen

Member
Oct 27, 2017
863
UK, London
Kalor said:
There's still two more DLC packs so this one is probably just lighter on new maps since its not that long since release. Nothing to really blame Square or Team Ninja for. They still made a bunch of new system changes with this update, and there's new bosses and jobs.
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ah thats fair enough! I want to put more time into this game but the piss poor performance is putting me off.
 
Mesharey

Mesharey

Member
Dec 7, 2017
2,757
Kuwait
They made the same mistake with Nioh 1 (even the first difficulty required high lvl gear) but they corrected it in Nioh 2.

I have a high lvl gear (300) but the way they made the DLC is stupid, it should be accessible to everyone like the main game.

Anyway, you can select any mission and go for the highest difficulty, kill the first enemies to get gear & repeat.
 
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Oreiller

Oreiller

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,863
Man, there really isn't any new level? That's really disappointing after nioh 1 and 2's DLC.
 
JJD

JJD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,513
Mesharey said:
They made the same mistake with Nioh 1 (even the first difficulty required high lvl gear) but they corrected it in Nioh 2.

I have a high lvl gear (300) but the way they made the DLC is stupid, it should be accessible to everyone like the main game.

Anyway, you can select any mission and go for the highest difficulty, kill the first enemies to get gear & repeat.
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It's been awhile since I played Nioh 1 but I don't think that is true. I played the whole game on the normal difficulty, never tried the harder ones and when the DLC released I just played it without needing to grind anything at all.
 
Hasney

Hasney

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
18,674
Wow, that's awful. Those horribly designed corridors were getting worse the longer you played the game anyway, then having to replay them on a harder difficulty was already well overstaying it's welcome. No thanks.
 
Gunny T Highway

Gunny T Highway

Unshakable Resolve - One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,041
Canada
I mean I did grind to get roughly level 300 gear for all my party months back, but this sounds like a dumb decision because it locks so many people who just did the main story and called it a day.
 
Morrigan

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
34,406
nsilvias said:
they did this in nioh too im pretty sure
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Nope

In both in Nioh 1 and 2, the campaign DLCs could be played on any difficulty that you had already unlocked (so if you were in NG+ you could play them in NG+ difficulty, or even NG if you wanted to, though you'd get crappy loot).

The only thing that was locked behind the max difficulty setting was the Underworld thing in Nioh 2. Once you unlock NG+++ (called "Dream of the Nioh), you had access to the Underworld, which is a set of 108 "floors" which are remixed levels with re-used bosses. It's basically some totally optional/bonus post-game thing though, and separate from the actual DLCs.
 
PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,975
Gunny T Highway said:
I mean I did grind to get roughly level 300 gear for all my party months back, but this sounds like a dumb decision because it locks so many people who just did the main story and called it a day.
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You unlock Chaos difficulty automatically by beating the main story.

Cokesouls said:
How can I access the first mission? I can't find it anywhere on the map
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The first mission of the DLC is right next to the Chaos Shrine as long as you set the difficulty to Chaos on the world map.
 

Deleted member 4090

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,053
I think that is misleading, as Chaos is a variable spectrum if difficulty levels. The actual required difficulty level is half the actual maximum difficulty. Chaos is just the general term for the entire post game setting.

You basically have to do a tiny bit of post game stuff to be ready to do the DLC, which is I guess comparable to the giant difficulty jump in Nioh 1 to that DLC.
 
TheChrisGlass

TheChrisGlass

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,606
Los Angeles, CA
THQ did the same thing for Titan Quest's newest DLC. You can only play it on the highest difficulty.

It's probably the most shameful gameplay decision I've seen from companies and the fact that people embrace or accept it is fucking disgusting.
 
Surakian

Surakian

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
10,895
Guess I won't be playing the new DLC, then…I didn't bother with the post-game stuff.
 
ArkhamFantasy

ArkhamFantasy

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,553
I don't necessarily have an issue with locking DLC to a certain point of progression, but this type of thing should be well communicated before the season pass went on sale.
 
Spacejaws

Spacejaws

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,850
Scotland
Morrigan said:
Nope

In both in Nioh 1 and 2, the campaign DLCs could be played on any difficulty that you had already unlocked (so if you were in NG+ you could play them in NG+ difficulty, or even NG if you wanted to, though you'd get crappy loot).

The only thing that was locked behind the max difficulty setting was the Underworld thing in Nioh 2. Once you unlock NG+++ (called "Dream of the Nioh), you had access to the Underworld, which is a set of 108 "floors" which are remixed levels with re-used bosses. It's basically some totally optional/bonus post-game thing though, and separate from the actual DLCs.
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Not sure about Nioh 2 but the Nioh 1 DLC absolutely expected you to have grinded ng+ before attempting it. It's recomended levels were way above anything in the base game so in a way it did do something similar where it expected you to have run theough the game a second time to get top level gear begore tackling it which felt super grindy. At least that was what I found when googling why the DLC was so fucking hard after beating the last main campaign boss without much trouble.
 
Maxim726x

Maxim726x

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
13,082
Any sales on the Steam version?

Just had my Deck delivered and I want to give it a test run on an action game.
 
Ferrs

Ferrs

Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
18,829
Spacejaws said:
Not sure about Nioh 2 but the Nioh 1 DLC absolutely expected you to have grinded ng+ before attempting it. It's recomended levels were way above anything in the base game so in a way it did do something similar where it expected you to have run theough the game a second time to get top level gear begore tackling it which felt super grindy. At least that was what I found when googling why the DLC was so fucking hard after beating the last main campaign boss without much trouble.
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Nioh 2 DLC difficulty was more seamless to your current NG cycle, instead of being one cycle ahead like 1. Much better paced.
 
Cana

Cana

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Mar 27, 2021
1,579
Nioh 2 had a massive part of the DLC (the underworld, scrolls, ethereal gear) locked however all the new levels outside the Underworld were able to be played through in the base difficulty.

This seems like a worse version of that amazing system? Like Nioh 2s incentivizes the player to get better and theyre rewarded as the NG+ modes offer a buncha new stuff after beating NG+ (NG++ has different enemy layouts and NG+++ introduces etheral gear iirc)
 
SilverArrow20XX

SilverArrow20XX

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,485
It's locked to CHAOS, but that's really just NG+.
All the DLC is, is farming Dragon Treasure, which you can get from any CHAOS difficulty missions, which start at a lower level than the final Normal difficulty ones.
It is tuned to Hard Mode though.
The new missions are level 200, and you'll have done quite a bit of grinding before unlocking them.
 
MrBS

MrBS

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,244
This was a dissapointment when I booted up to the game last night. I cheesed malboros for 300 gear to get all achievements last time. Now currently getting my whole squad up to 400 great score via the same trick so I can tackle the new content being hopefully OP enough for this scrub. Difficulty selection would have been better.
 
Chaserjoey

Chaserjoey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,648
While I got the platinum trophy from farming the hypogriff in the FFX level countless times, I'm really disappointed that this DLC is locked behind a new, harder difficulty.

I'm hoping the next two DLCs aren't also difficulty exclusive otherwise what a waste of money it was getting the edition with the season pass.
 
PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,975
Chaserjoey said:
While I got the platinum trophy from farming the hypogriff in the FFX level countless times, I'm really disappointed that this DLC is locked behind a new, harder difficulty.

I'm hoping the next two DLCs aren't also difficulty exclusive otherwise what a waste of money it was getting the edition with the season pass.
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The difficulty isn't harder, it's just the same kind of adaptive difficulty as the post-game.
 
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