So I just finished the find the military base mission and now the main quest says to continue finding the black samurai but all of the new areas have demons like 5 levels above me and my demons. Do I need to be grinding a bunch or have I just missed out on quests or what? I have checked the guide book that came with the game but it just leads me to the areas with higher level demons so now I'm kinda stuck since I don't want to grind out 5 more levels before moving on.

Anyone have a similar problem or have some advice?

I can't remember what level I was at that point, but a few levels difference isn't that big of a deal if your team is good.

If you end up having trouble make sure you do all the sidequests available in earlier parts of the game.

That kind of level gap shouldn't be too big of a deal. I remember running into a similar situation one or two times, but it's definitely manageable. If you're really having that much trouble with normal encounters, you might want to grind out a couple of levels until you can fuse some better demons, but there's no need to straight-up even the score by grinding out five.

Yeah, simply grinding for stats isn't going to affect much. The only real benefit to level grinding is if it will unlock a new better demon to fuse or a new useful skill on a demon.

Alright I'll go try it again since I've finished some side quests and gotten a few better demons. I also tried to fight Asura at level 21 and that didn't go very well since I couldnt survive his physical attacks.

Exploiting the press turn system makes this game insanely easy, even when enemies are several levels above you. Grinding won't do a whole lot for you if you don't learn how to use press turns and keep track of strengths and weaknesses, at least until the last two thirds of the game where a combination of Makarakarn/ Tetrakarn/ Megidolaon/ Party MP Regenerate practically breaks the game.

Also, do not underestimate the practicality of buffs for the first third of the game. Unlike Nocturne, they stop being essential once the game gets fucking easy about halfway through, but that first third is pretty rough and you'll need your Sukukaja's and your Rakukaja's to survive some of those brutal physical attacks.

Make sure the demons in your party have few, if any, weaknesses, and try to keep track of what demons are weak to what elements. Make sure you have all four of the main spells covered (Bufu, Agi, Zio, and Zan) and make sure you've got a physical and gun attack in there, too. Also, don't use demons weak to Hama and Mudo. Just don't. Some of them have really good stats but are rendered near useless when one surprise insta-kill gets rid of them.

You can push X (it may be Y) and click "enemy" to see what the strengths and weaknesses of any enemy you've fought before happen to be.

I found Tetrakarn/Makarakarn to be great for the first two thirds of the game, but less and less useful during the later parts of the game when bosses loved to spam almighty attacks. There are several bosses that would just spam Megidolaon non-stop if your party completely nulled their normal attacks, making it more efficient just to have a demon or two that could naturally block the attack. (I eventually ditched Tetrakarn altogether on my hero in favor of Debilitate.)

@zeik said:

THIS THIS THIS. I forget which boss would poison, paralyze, and put to sleep (and a million other things, if I remember correctly) your entire party and then Almighty them in one turn but FUCK HIM.

I found that most of the bosses continued to hurt themselves after casting Tetra/Makarakarn. Luck, maybe? Anyway, whenever an almighty attack came my way I'd just use Mediarama/Mediarahan. I didn't find that I needed anything more than Tetra/Makarakarn until the latter half of the Lucifer fight, at which point I just fused a few demons with Null Mind. I also wound up pulling out Fog Breath (I think that's the name of the all stats up skill) and just using Mediarahan whenever he cast his almighty attack. Made the final boss something of a breeze, and really, that wound up being my main complaint with the game - most of it is far too easy, except for the occasional cheap attack. It's like it's got a reverse difficulty curve.

@believer258: Nocturne suffered that problem too. Most of the end of the game was pretty much a cakewalk. (I remember being SO disappointed when I got around to doing the TDE and I totally steamrolled all those bosses.)

I actually thought this game put up more of a fight throughout, even if the beginning of the game was easily the hardest. Did you fight Beelzebub? He's like 100x harder than that joke of a fight in Nocturne.

No, I didn't really go after the bonus stuff in this game, unlike Nocturne. This one really didn't captivate me as much as Nocturne did, and I don't just mean in the gameplay department. Story, setting, etc. I still enjoyed it but not enough to go nuts and spend 77 hours in it like I did with Nocturne earlier this year. There was something about the post-apocalyptic loneliness and minimalistic storytelling in that game that really grabbed me and didn't let go.

As for the difficulty, Nocturne did get easier than it should have, there toward the end, but it was still vastly better balanced (and you couldn't break the game without really working at it). It also made you think about how you were going to use your press turns. You had to use those extra turns to keep yourself buffed and healed, or else you were not going to make it. Regenerating MP was a very rare skill so you had to be careful about using things like almighty attacks and Tetra/Makarakarn. SMTIV, on the other hand, was never difficult without feeling cheap. None of the bosses were really puzzle bosses like Matador or Noah or Daisoujou.

Also, what did you do to make Beelzebub easy in Nocturne? I got to him when I was level 60 something and he was one of the more challenging bosses of the game. Kagutsuchi wasn't hard but Lucifer got me worried a few times.

@believer258: Nocturne was actually very easy to break. Buffs/debuffs were so OP in that game compared to just about every other games in the franchise. Mana Walk was actually pretty easy to get your hands on, there were quite a few demons that had it. It took a bit more work to get Makatora and Mana Walk on the same demon, but once you do you're pretty much set for the rest of the game, as it's basically infinite MP for your whole team. By the end of the game I was able to cast Mediarahan after every battle and spam my best multi-target spells and still never worry about MP. To be frank, the balance is actually one of my biggest issues with Nocturne, so I find it strange you think it was so much better balanced. Matador was pretty much the hardest part of that game, and it wasn't exactly a "balanced" fight.

As for Beelzebub, I didn't do anything special other than use the demons I had at the time. It was actually one of the easiest boss battles in the game for me, which was a huge letdown after everyone hyped it up as some super challenging uber boss fight. Even Kagutsuchi put up more of a fight.