Re: The Legend of Queen Opala 2
Challenge can also be a factor I guess, in the first LOQO I decided to go through the whole game using just the hero and no partymembers and it resulted in a challenging but fun game, not too much grind and combat was never too slow or easy. Sadly the same balance seems to be missing in the second part, having either too much grind or really slow combat, sometimes even just both, having simple enemies take over 5 rounds to take down, each, with 5 enemies per encounter.
Part of it has to do with progression itself, I believe.
I still remember the MC becoming a total powerhouse by the path branching decision with Osira. One chest you can open anytime you want a treasure that was as easy as get as entering a building twice resulted in the mithral armor and an elemental weapon. The former pretty much outdoes almost anything you can get for him until around post story, and the latter just kept getting better as you got increasingly more powerful elemental weapons.
Outside of the sheer grind I think Gabe made a decent decision with balance. In particular, the elemental weapons(last I played), are around as good as the weapons you get in that area of the game. I forgot most of the stuff about armor though, beyond equiping the full Nabunoga armor to Kai was obly surpassed by diamond tier and above, and to my knowledge diamond tier wasn't available 'til the northern wastes in common shops, about towards the end of the main story.
As far as grinding goes, I found it slightly frustrating, but I honestly didn't mind it too much. I still had loads of fun with the older version.