I can only repeat what was previously stated, in that tactician mode has presented no discernible challenge so far because it’s simply extended the length of battles without creating any imaginative difficulty.
I don’t want to post any spoliers, but (and I'm trying to be as general as possible) there’s one particular fight in the blackpits against a group of oil slugs that’s been one of the highlights for me so far. This is a very cunningly designed fight that exemplifies what tactician mode should really be. The placement of the oil spills. The inevitable fire blaze that results. And then the fire immune/resistant slugs that appear later are all very devious contrivances that kept my non-overpowered party on its toes, forced me to actually think laterally and the result was highly rewarding.
There was no banal inflation of stats. Just very cunning design.
It was a tense battle for a party of non-exploitative builds, fairly levelled, using no cheese tactics or overpowered skills. To me, this is the way the game should be played, and it’s how tactician mode should have been structured – with clever ‘twists’ mid combat that keep you on your toes.
Of course, the ingenuity here all hinged around the randomness of the enemy encounters. You never knew how many enemies you were going to face, or what their strengths/weaknesses were going to be. All of the ‘random’ encounters in the game so far (read: battles introduce random enemies at random intervals) have been the most engaging. That’s why I support more randomness, especially for tactician mode.
The inflated stats are merely a chore. With enough workmanlike dedication, you can win – but there’s no sense of reward, since I never felt I had to use my imagination in the same way as the oil slug battle. It’s simply chipping away, chipping away, chipping away until Goliath falls – and it was never a challenge. Never ‘difficult’, because you merely use the same workmanlike strategy over and over to whittle down the inflated health. I won all of the tactician mode fights I fought. And thought all of them cheaply designed in the extreme.
