Octopath Traveler 2 is a fabulous but disappointingly easy JRPG. I finally got around to finishing it this month, and I enjoyed it even more than I did the original, with the caveat that the game only actually challenged me like three times in the 85 hours it took to fully complete it. Two of those times I was purposely under-leveled and still not in much danger. The third and final big challenge was Galdera, the game's proper, secret, for-real-this-time boss battle which, if you were to plot the game's difficulty curve, would be a line that goes straight up.
Galdera is harder than the rest of Octopath Traveler 2 combined, by a factor of 10, and that includes the true final boss of the story. It's one of the hardest fights I've ever seen in a turn-based game, and I've played the most infamous of the Shin Megami Tenseis. I was on cloud nine with the most overpowered, game-breakingly stupid party imaginable, one and two-hitting story bosses left and right, and then Galdera folded me like a lawn chair. It took me five or six hours over the course of three days to beat it – partly because I was busy, and partly because sitting down to fight this demon felt like going to the gym.
