Hjalmar Fryklund said:
I will say yes and no to this.
On one hand, certain enemies were definitely a bit far up crazy street (the worst one would be the shapeshifter variation that would copy a party member and proceed to spam their spam nukes, encountered in the final level) which gave risk/reward a really wonky skew.
Any enemy that is an equivalent 2nd or 3rd player class analog (like Queen Bees who imitate Reis' light classes, or the upper tier werewolves imitate Kevin's dark classes, assassins/rogues dark Hawk's, and fallen knights Dark Duran's) has that class's level 2 or 3 tech as a regular and retaliation tech.
If you're under-leveled (which is likely; especially if you're me during the Godbeast hunts since I hate grinding for money/levels), a single mis-timed spell/tech can lead to a party wipe on the spot.
In the many, many playthroughs I've done of SD3, counter-techs are the cause of over 90% of my game overs.
But on the other hand, a lot of those enemies can be mitigated with stat ups/downs as long as you are willing to do a bit of micromanaging (though it must be said that this is one of the places where the issues with the casting pause come to the fore). Then you have those scenarios where Hawk´s Wanderer class almost invalidates certain enemies & bosses like Darkshine Knight and Koren.
There's a lot of enemies that are trivialized with debuffs, as long as your party composition and levels allow it.
(or if you farm a ton of stat-down casting items; one of Carlie's 2nd class proofs casts Black Curse, "The Every-Stat Down", but I don't recall the name immediately)
Hawk is especially powerful for that reason, since 3 of his four end classes all feature some skill(s) of cheesing the hell out of the game.
Dark Hawk, Light Reis, and Kevin (any flavor, really) remains my go-to easy-mode team. Early game is a little rough (Golems, Gorva and the Ninja Twins are super annoying, with the latter being a bit dangerous, but after that it's easy street)
Darkshine Knight does pretty much force you to set to LVL 1 Techs though, for sure.
Ol' Darkshine Vader is a special little snowflake who hates everything but normal attacks and level 1 techs.
DSK is immune to Silence, and you can't reflect techs, so that leaves stat-downs.
(I haven't Black Cursed DSK in a while, so I don't recall if it actually cripples him much; I just remember the last time I Power-Downed him, his counter-attacks were still WAY STRONGER than they're supposed to be and nearly killed my party. Though again, I might have been under-leveled since I hate grinding)
Koren on the other hand doesn't retaliate with Techs but actual magic; so he's quite susceptible to the Counter-Magic buff from Wanderer or its item equivalent in Matango Oil; turning his fight into a comedic special effects show where he repeatedly ***** slaps himself in the face with his own magic until he dies.
(the only funnier death is using Anti-Magic on Black Rabite, who kill ITSELF trying to heal via mass-chained Dark Force)
I think Bigieu in Hawk/Reis's path has a similar fight, only she has some "magic" that ISN'T technically "magic" since it's not reflectable.
...Come to think of it, SD3's magic system just isn't well balanced at all.
Kinda why it and SoM deserves a remake overhaul in that regard.
If I were to fix the magic in those kinds of games, I'd probably go to a targeted spell system where the player chooses some spells from the regular menu, slaps it on their hotkeys (d-pad or whatever on a controller) and when they select the spell they go into a casting mode.
While casting, they use a reticule to aim and can still move around, but they have to be careful because as they take other actions while casting the spell, it casts more slowly. If they move around, attack or get hit too much while casting the spell fails entirely.
That way, they aren't stopping the action every 5 seconds to open a menu and freeze the action.
(only major spells should "stop the action" for effect)
Thinking further, I could make it so certain weapons behave differently while certain spells are equipped...hmm.
Things to ponder.