So. You've never played a Press-turn game from Atlus, and your balls are getting mercilessly smashed. We've all been there, it's part of the process. Lucky for you, we help each other in the old Atlus community because we wanna see folks enjoy themselves, difficulty and all.

So here's some quick little words of encouragement and things to consider if the game is putting you over it's knee and spanking you like a misbehaving child!

1. You're not doing something wrong. The game is just THAT punishing.

A big one to know. It is frustrating. Don't feel stupid. You're able to Retry ANY fight from the beginning ON YOUR TURN. Especially on higher difficulties, your odds of beating a big fight the first time are slim-to-none. True to SMT, consider your first time fighting a larger enemy as information-gathering. Then, load a save, gear and skill up accordingly, and go in for round two fully prepared. This is straight up HOW YOU WIN FIGHTS.

2. Bonds are CRUCIAL.

In Persona, if you don't like a character's SL, you can comfortably skip them, missing a handful of perks, and sleeping on some bonus EXP. Not a dealbreaker. In this game though, how well you've bonded with a character has a BIG impact on how efficiently you can grow your archetypes, how many skills they can inherit, how powerful they are, and whether or not you unlock the next tier of an Archetype line. All bonds reduce how much MAG it takes to study new Archetypes within a specific Archetype line, and how much it costs to learn their skills for inheriting to OTHER archetypes. Most bonds give you your first reduction at around rank 2 or 3, so get at least that far before investing too much in any one Archetype. MAG is hard to come by sometimes, and you'll need a LOT of it.

3. Don't be shy about having multiple of the same Archetype in a party.

Diverse party composition has its place and can be useful for first-time fights when looking for weaknesses, but push comes to shove, you need to zero in on those weaknesses once you find them. While inheritance skill slots give you more coverage, they won't make up for a focused party. By late game, those slots will mostly be utilized for helpful passives from other archetypes. If an enemy is weak to fire, three Mages and a Healer with a fire skill is not just a valid strategy, but may even be the IDEAL one for thriving, or even just surviving, in a fight.

4. EVERYONE IS BACK ROW UNLESS OTHERWISE NEEDED.

Metaphor has a very simple formation system. Front row let's you deal full melee damage, but take full melee damage. Back row reduces the melee damage you deal and take. Magic/Ranged damage is not affected in any capacity. That's it. It doesn't affect aggro. Every enemy follows the time-honoured mantra of "these hands are rated E for Everyone."

Unless you are attacking with melee skills, there is LITERALLY NO REASON to have someone in the front row.

It'll feel weird putting tanks in the back line when drawing enemies with taunt skills, but it is MANDATORY for both your tank and your party's survival. You can adjust formation in the Party tab, and best practice is to have everyone in the back row by default and only move them to the front when your melee DPS has an opening to end the fight or at least deal significant damage. The damage reduction will save your life in a lot of fights.

5. The Press-Turn System

Explaining the depth of strategy in this game's combat would literally take me hours, and the game will give you a basic run down, but I cannot stress enough how CRITICAL to success playing to an enemy's weaknesses is. In Persona, hitting weaknesses makes fights easier, to the point of being a cakewalk sometimes. In Metaphor, it makes fights POSSIBLE. Informants in town will straight up TELL you the weaknesses and strengths of bosses relevant to your current quests, so use that info to build your party accordingly.

And for the love of God, PAY ATTENTION. If you hit an enemy with something they are either immune to or repel, you will LOSE TURNS. Same thing if you miss with an attack, and yes, magic can miss in this game. I cannot tell you how many times ONE careless mistake or unlucky miss has gutted a sure win out from under me.

This game is mountains and craters. There's very little middle ground, and falling into a crater fucking HURTS. Go prepared for every possibility.

6. Party members are Stat sticks.

While some party members have specific passives in their Bonds that relate to their character (Hulkenberg has a passive where she protects the protagonist if an enemy goes after his weakness, for example), ANY CHARACTER CAN DO ANY JOB. While characters have stats that lean toward doing certain things better, everyone does most things well. The power difference can matter sometimes, but making sure you're equipped to hit weaknesses consistently will ALWAYS matter more. Some higher-tier Archetypes require having levels in multiple different others, not just the preceding one in the relevant tree, so it's worth the time and effort to make everyone fairly well-rounded and diverse.