Odin Sphere

I played some more Odin Sphere today, I'm on the 2nd book that you get to play through-The Pooka Prince. It didnt take me long to get quite far through this one because I used most of the stuff I knew about the game from the first book - Valkyrie, where you play as Gwendolyn. At first, some of the gameplay aspects were quite confusing to me, for example the Alchemy-I didn't understand that at first, but now I can make useful potions and tonics quite easily...well when I have the materials necessary. That isnt very often, at the moment I have quite a bit of a drought..I dont have materials to make anything like Health Tonics which would be really useful. 

I'm right at the end of Prince Cornelius's story, in the Epilogue and my god...its hard... and annoying. I died so much before giving in by returning to the base...meant I have to start the level over, but I could not be bothered anymore. The game is usually hard, but this area just frustrates the hell out of me. I usually play the game on normal difficulty, only really turning it down to Easy when I get stuck or frustrated. I'm not going anywhere near the hard difficulty lol.... But anyway, this sewer area of the Titanian capital or wherever is much harder than anywhere I've seen so far. The miniboss, the Axe Knight took me so long to kill....its that stupid combination of a lack of decent healing stuff some of the time and insanely powered bosses that this game throws at you so often. I finally figured out a way to exploit the goblin reinforcement's poisoned knives to inflict poison on him by killing them and then striking their knives as they fall to the ground. So I did that boss eventually, and then tried to complete some of the other stages in the area...I shouldnt have done that. I was near the end of the area, almost having done all the stages despite the fact I didn't have the map somehow, and went to a 5 star stage. Shit...that place was hard...It has this crazy amount of goblins, the wizard dudes that teleport whenever you attack them and the wee green slimes that are resistant to physical attacks and if they trap you, you are pretty much dead. So I could go on, but thats what pissed me off and made me go back to the start of the level. I'll have to do it over some other time....I'm thinking I'll have gamefaqs open next time I go through, stock up on healing stuff first and then go through only the stages I need to.

It may look like I hate this game, but I actually love it. I really like 2D RPGs such as this, and I like games to have some sort of challenge, like this does. Sometimes though, its quite sadistic...It may just be that I suck a little too much still at the game. Maybe when I get further through I'll be better at it. If I can get past this damn level...