I'm still watching the newest Coffee Potato video, but at around the 6:30 mark he explains how he's not sure anymore if his previous video about broken scaling is accurate, because there are still obtuse stat logic to be unpacked and tested like in most Matsuno games.
Godspeed, minmaxers.
View: https://youtu.be/MZFqq-jE-KM
i'm not scrubbing through a one-hour youtube video but
this guide on steam sums up what is currently known regarding mechanical quirks - the 'Particularities and issues' section specifically.
the ultimate conclusion i came to after thinking about it while letting the AI run through palace of the dead is that the primary exacerbating factor of class balance in reborn (and PSP; arguably moreso there with no in-game speedup or potential cheatengine access) is there are simply too many fights.
~7 floors crit path pirate's graveyard, 7x6 for shrines, 6x6 for the runback to pick up apocrypha 2s, ~70-80? floors for crit path PotD, ~40 stages for the other two story paths you didn't do initially, ~20 floors of san bronsa, ~30ish? for PotD runback in coda 2 if you use guidebooks, ??? floors of PotD for charms to get the trio's stats high enough to do coda 4 if you want that. if you also factor in time spent chariot'ing for drops in PotD and san bron...
are summons & apocrypha better than melee or bows/fusils? unquestionably, but if the postgame was tighter, the 'average' player - average who cares enough to even do all the postgame content anyway - would not hit the fatigue point of 'fuck all this, i'm letting AI summoners handle it' until relatively late in the game, if ever
that said... game mechanics are an issue, to be sure, not just stuff like resists working bizarrely but also things like magic targetting going through PotD walls but hard countering bows/fusils (even course correction!), 75% heal items on enemies in san bronsa strongly encouraging alpha strike damage vs. physical's steadier intake & other little contributing factors... but also, rarely mentioned: high RT/weight on endgame weapons vs. the RT of a summon spell or apocrypha
it's 24 RT for a summon2, 28 for an apocrypha2 - casters typically have lower equipment weight than any non-ozma character prior to cursed weapons to begin with; they also accumulate less RT from movement in postgame maps (especially when engulf procs)
conversely the best 2H PotD/san bron weapons are as heavy or heavier than a wand+caldia combo; 2H sit around the 40-45 RT mark but even 1H are quite chunky - 25ish for daggers and 1H katanas, 35ish for other 1H weapon types. double attack becomes extremely punishing (to the user's RT) in the lategame because of this. then consider that parry & counterattack only affect physical damage... and only physical damage feeds MP to the target, not magic (or, to be fair, finishers)... melee are much more susceptible to PBAOE auto skills like lament of the dead and cyclops roar...
about the only mechanical bone melee got thrown in reborn was the removal of accuracy as a factor, and i am 50/50 on this being an intentional change to account for parry existing vs. just being a screw-up with stat scaling, because it makes two stats meaningless and removes tactical depth
i forget why i started writing this post or what my point was. the game is great but it's a mechanical mess like all of matsuno's games (though he did not direct this), enjoy the writing and the music and that first satisfying run through the main story and don't worry too much about the rest
