Combat is this game is fine and while not difficult, it's visually beautiful.

I think the thing that strikes me most while playing is just how powerful spells can be. It makes the game so darn easy.

I always saved up 99 of each element, then put it all into one spell, add some rare items and I suddenly have 24 firaga multicast spells that absolutely obliterate enemies outright or weaken/freeze them.

What do you guys think? I could be over leveled maybe? Are others feeling this?

When I was doing the Deadeye quest I killed him in 1 shot from a fire spell, so probably.

I would hope so. Anything that forces me to deviate from spamming the first choice (in traditional turn based rpg's Fight, Action or whatever basic physical attack) should be more powerful. I haven't played this game yet though :p

You are pretty overleveled. Later on in the endgame content magic isn't the nuclear bomb it used to be since enemies have a shitload of health and resistances.

For the first 25 levels, yeah. After that 9999 damage isn't what it used to be.

What I'm confused about is how summoning works. I just have Ramuh right now but I don't understand how he can be used? So far it just seems like the conditions are that it needs to be outdoors and raining. Then you summon him and it's....just a mega insta kill for everything. He killed a boss and made the fight completely trivial. someone please explain.

@frostyryan: No one knows how to summon, It just kind of happens if specific conditions are met. I've been playing for 22 hours and have only summoned once. I got the option to one other time, but the summon wouldn't actually happen, no matter how many times I pressed/held the button.

@frostyryan: Each summon has different conditions, and all of the conditions require you to be doing poorly in battle. Low health, danger state, fight taking a long time, etc. They only appear outdoors, as well. Ramuh is the most frequent summon, he appears in a ton of places. Basically, play the game completely normally, and when the screen turns purple, hold L2. That's it. That's the summon system. I think I've summoned Ramuh 5 times and Titan 2 times, and I'm halfway through the game.

It's kinda disappointing, but at the same time they wipe the entire screen and are incredibly impressive, visually.

@doctordonkey: Thanks for the explanation.

As someone who loves this game, I must say that kinda sucks. Well, the "hardcore gamer" in me that appreciates actual mechanics and systems in rpgs says that sucks. The part of me that switches my brain off thinks it's awesome because of the visuals.

Regardless, I'm having trouble not calling the summon "system" shallow.

@doctordonkey: Summons can occur indoors too. I summoned Ramuh in the sewers for a mini-boss. He threw his judgement bolt right through the ground, it was pretty cool.

@gerrid: Huh, weird. I figured they wouldn't, cause I would guess they'd just be clipping through the ceiling.

@doctordonkey: Summons have always had a history of clipping through stuff, so why not here?

@frostyryan: I don't know how far in the game you are so I'll only explain the first 3 summons for you.

1st: Titan can only be summoned while outside and in the overworld ( you have to be in an open field.) The more of your friends that are dead, 0 max hp not in danger state, the faster he will show up.

2nd: Ramuh can be summoned anytime anywhere. He will show up if you are taking a long time to finish a fight. He will also sometimes, very rarely, show up at the beginning of a fight. I had this happen twice and I've summoned him at least 8 times already.

3rd: Leviathan is he one you will probably never see unless you actively try to summon it. In order to summon Leviathan you have to be fighting by a large body of water and Noctis has to be in the danger state, the longer you spend in it the better your chances of the summoning happening are.

rpgsite.net has a good article detailing the exact conditions you need to meet in order to pull off these summons. Give it a look if you want, I found it to be very helpful.

@doctordonkey: What happens is, he appears in the sky above wherever you are on the overworld map, and throws the judgement bolt through the ground. Then it cuts to show it crashing in through the ceiling. And then everything is dead. So there's no clipping really, it looks kinda cool.

I agree magic is way more viable for the first 25 levels, but I'm 45 now and mutli-cast spells, that do multiple hits of 9999 in addition to status affects and even straight up DEATH is still killing almost every group of enemies I come across.

I don't care, it's really fun and how good do those magic spells and summons look?! The frost and burn marks on enemies and your team is amazing.

I used three fire spells and it didn't do more than 40% of his health. You guys might be overpowered for where you are in the game?

Do you know you can add treasures to magic to make them ludicrously powerful very early on?

@drekly: Yeah, I didn't do that yet because it seemed very costly. I only had one of the types of items they required. Seemed like something to do later on.

@zevvion: I don't feel overpowered when I fight without magic though. I'm only like level 21 or something, playing on normal difficulty.

@zevvion: it isn't too costly. throw cooking ingredients into spells and you get wonderful combinations. Milk is especially potent. I don't waste curatives when mixing magic, however.

Magic looks really cool, I'll say that much.

I'm pretty early but so far seems balanced by how much magic I can carry / create at once.

This topic is funny because I've seen a fair amount of people say "magic is useless!"

Probably because you hit one of the explosive barrels. You absolutely can not one shot him with a basic fire spell.

@gerrid: if it is the sewers I'm thinking of then Ramuh also appeared for me there as well. But not for the mini boss, but the actual boss itself AND he wasn't able to kill it (took about 90% of its health). His staff barrelling down was pretty cool.

The only thing that really bugged me was that they stressed that magic could hurt your allies as well, but it's a pittance compared to the actual damage you do. I get it'd be pretty frustrating if you constantly knocked down one of your party members everytime you used a spell but I wish there was a little more consequence cause eventually I realized they could all take the hit no sweat and just fired away blindly.

@fugoy: It's still hilarious every time you electrocute your party. Best sounds in the whole game.

@feralchemy: It's great. I wish the effects of the soot and frost lasted longer.

@kishinfoulux: Can if you quintcast fira, which is possible with some item crafting combinations at that point in the game.

he said fire. The person he was quoting stated he one shot with fire. He didnt say multi, quint or dualcast, fira or firaga or anything added. Reason he stated that he probably hit the barrel.