I'm 23 hours in, and am about to head out to the Sorla Marsh I think it's called?
It's a little predictable I feel about the Mechon at this point in the plot, so I hope I'm completely wrong on some stuff, or there is another big twist I'm not expecting. Even so, this game is amazing through and through.
Nothing is a challenge currently story wise. I'm like level 28 and the monsters are 23 tops, so it's a bit of a wash.
This is a game that could have definitely used a hard mode of some sort.
I'll probably just avoid side quests from here on out that don't get done along the way, or don't focus on a named monster to hunt.
I doubt there's any way anybody could have the story figured out at that point. There are a few carrots on a stick it's dangling in front of you (and at that point there are some things you might have figured out), but there's a long way to go from there and a lot of major plot twists remaining. There's even some key plot threads that haven't even been introduced at that point.
And I think it's really interesting how people react to the difficulty, some people find the game really hard, others find it too easy.
So do party options open up later? Because I just got
but it doesn't really feel like he fits on the party outside of taking Shulks spot. Sharla/Reyn/Shulk fills the healer/tank/DPS trinity that it feels like combat revolves around, and Shulk is there for dealing with Mechons so it doesn't feel very easy to replace him. I'm hoping we get more healer/tanks... right?
Internet ate my reply. Well, that character you got is an evade tank, so you want to give him lots of agility gems (you want to do that with everyone anyway though, but him especially) and light armor and he'll avoid most attacks that go his way, and deal nice damage too. He has an art that lowers aggro, it's kind of a trap, you want to make sure you get rid of that one.
The game doesn't really fall back on healer/tank/DPS. You can use just about any party and be fine as long as you think it through. With those four characters the only "good" option is to replace Shulk, but you can get by replacing either of the other as well. If you replace Reyn, you should start needing less healing during battle so that will limit Sharla's usage. If you drop Sharla, things get a bit more difficult since Reyn will still eat a good bit of damage since he draws so much aggro. You can account for that though with various gems (aggro up/down) and adjust arts to keep that from happening too much. You'll be thinking along those lines a lot later on as you get more party members, because none of them are damage eating tanks or straight healers.